Anyone here not take meds?

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A common side effects of all anti depressants is 'increased risk of suicide'.

Read the whole forum and you'll see.

And people who think they're stronger because they don't take any drugs are called straightedge, and they're a**holes. Being against medication is just one step closer to being straightedge.

Straightedge > you.

Maybe you should stick to commenting on the current thread, instead of getting worked up about what someone else said somewhere else cause I don't have a clue what you're on about and frankly I'm not going through the whole forum to find out.

I take ibuprofen every day because I have chronic toothache (though that's more my fault).

I also drink caffeine, despite the fact I have high blood pressure.

I also do some more "recreational" things once in a while, though nothing illegal.

Prescriptions though, no. I used to years ago, but they made me want to off myself because I felt like a zombie.

Ha, no.
I'm not restricted by labels.

Then what's you take on this?



It's just the genuine feeling people have towards medication, especially stimulants.
And I was a bit confused about which thread those posts were in. I have ADHD.
It's feel great though when I hardly have the energy, focus or motivation and all I need to do is take a pill and in a few minutes I've suddenly got it.

What's wrong with that statement? I agree with it. And it isn't saying people who use medications are 'less strong' or anything derogatory. You may not agree with the opinions contained therein, but there's nothing offensive about it.

He (or she) is not saying that no one should take medications, he (or she) is saying they are over prescribed.

I think you've taken it personally, but really there's nothing in there that suggests that you shouldn't be on the medication(s) that you are.

I've been taking OC pills for the last 18 years - first for one thing, than for other, and I suppose I'd be taking them for another 20 years at least.
Apart from that, I don't generally take anything except for an aspirine about once a month when I have a headache or antifungal medicine when I go places where the water more alkaline that what I'm used to - about once a year.

I suspect I have ADHD but I do manage it by modulating caffeine and sugar intake. That is, if I need to concentrate, I need coffee and chocolate, or any type of sugar-containing substance.
Started brewing my own coffee at the age of 9 or 10 - must have felt that I do need it. I remember that when I switched schools around grade 8 (because the local school did not go beyond grade 7), I got ridiculed at the school canteen because I, age 12, asked for a cup of coffee there - as none of my 15-year classmates drank coffee at the time.

my major concern with medication is dependency and our bodies attempts at homeostasis. When you take something for long enough your body will usually get used to it and then the desired effects will be minimised or removed entirely.

This is complex as homeostasis is a physiological thing but psychology can plays a large part in the effectiveness of a drug too. something could be habbit forming but i can't say whether that is psychosomatic or not.

to me it is all about balancing the risks. There will always be downsides and often big ones to taking psychiatric medication. it just depends how you cope with them and if you are bad off enough off in the first place to use them. That is entirely personal.

there is of course the issue that pharmaceutical companies do not want to cure you but medicate you. there is no point in them investing hundreds of millions of dollars developing a drug for it to only be used once.

A good example is how ketamine can be used alongside talk therapy to bring people out of major depression (sciencedaily.com)

another example is MDMA's use in PTSD. It is remarkably effective.
(Sciencedaily.com)

i think things like these show the hypocrisy in modern drug development. These drugs have both been known about for over 40 years and there is plenty of annecdotal evidence extolling the virtues of both but little actual research into clinical use.

I was on Prozac for about 3 and a half years, didn't help me at all.

I have als tried Ativan for a medical procedure and couldn't handle the side effects.

wierd I didn't get any side effects from ativan...everyones reaction is different though.



my own procedure with medication...

I take them for 2 months maybe..then take a month or so off...
the side effects become to much and I feel the need to know what I am like without medication...sometimes it feels like I am losing something when i take medication- I lose alot of my sense of humor, am less creative, get agitated easier. I have been trying to find a decent combonation that I can respond to without to much reprocution however I have not found it yet, I currently take dexedrine 2-3 times a week (Supposed to take it everyday) and a good multivitamin on days off to try and get my body to regular. I find that stimulants when in tablet form have more imperfections and cause more side effects compared to capsules, unfortunately my psych didn't listen when I told her I wanted capsules but I'll put up with these tablets for a month.

I've never taken any medicine (unless you count weed as medicine)

I've never liked taking pills or getting injections, so it's only something I would do if it were life threatening

Bear in mind that I am NOT a doctor. I've done plenty of independent research, but nothing more than a COMPETENT doctor would know. (Good luck actually finding one of those.)

Most psych meds are actually toxic, but then, so are many mental illnesses, in a different way. So in SOME CASES, people find that whatever the pills do to them, the alleviation of their symptoms (which is not a certainty) is enough to outweigh it. After all, if you're psychotic and risking your life on commands from voices that would rather see you dead, you're not very likely to benefit from having a lower risk of diabetes than if you were on meds. On the other hand, perhaps you do have hope of recovering without meds, and in such a case, you may feel that it would be stupid to use them without exhausting every other course of action.

You have to make that choice, if the choice is even available. And the choice should ideally be available, but it isn't always, as you've just found out.

I don't know what you were taking meds for, but autism itself does not benefit from meds.

So here's what I think. I think if you have the choice, you should consider it very carefully. And if you're forced to do without meds, research your specific condition. Whatever it is, someone will probable have some insight. But there's no general guide to how not to use meds. That just plain doesn't make sense.

Perchance before taking my words in vain, you might read all of them. That was the third paragraph of a statement regarding the usage of medications for various disorders. My main point was that there are disorders which are basically neurochemical in nature ("medical", if you will), which are amenable to medical treatment; ADHD was in fact one of the examples I gave. However, those same meds will not treat any of the symptoms of AS (or, to grab a couple more examples from the above statement, Down's or Williams syndromes), because those are neurological in nature, not neurochemical. There is no chemical imbalance to correct; the symptoms result from the patient's own neural structure, which cannot be altered by any means available at our current technological level. Further, there are purely psychiatric disorders, in which the patient does not have a medical condition or neurological disorder, but has fallen prey to what can be called, for lack of a better term, disordered thinking. These patients can be helped by guiding them to an understanding of the disorder of their thoughts, and of how to correct that disorder.

All the psychiatric counseling in the world won't help someone with ADHD or schizophrenia; all the medication in the pharmacopoeia won't help someone afflicted with a phobia; and neither is going to provide any relief for the symptoms of a neurological issue. It's got nothing to do with "strength" - my wife is no "weaker" for needing her daily dose of sertraline in order to deal with the world, any more than she's "weaker" for needing daily levothyroxine to deal with the effects of a dual thyroidectomy.

What a great post, DeaconBlues. I also agree with your paragraph Pensieve quoted. I don't see any negativity in your thoughts on medicine. I see reference to the questionable methods by which medications are advertised.

@Pensieve, I am well acquainted with straight edge as I lived not far from DC in the late 80s and early 90s. Anyone can be a jerk, but not all straight edge kids were or are. Ian MacKaye is very cool. It was the militants who really gave it a bad name - they're just extremists who have misinterpreted the original intent.

Besides, people can prefer not to take prescription drugs for many reasons and as you get older, Straight Edge is not usually one of them - in my experience, anyway.