Antipsychotic WARNING!

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The thing about antipsychotics is that they block the dopamine molecule, which is supposed to give you pleasure. Now they tell you that the newer antipsychotics only block specific dopamine receptors (D2, D4, etc.) and so have fewer side effects, but I've been forcefully injected numerous times by these drugs and they still had that same pleasure-killing quality for me.

Now I'm avoiding psychiatrists like the plague (they tried to snatch me three times now), I'm completely off all medication after a diagnosis of Paranoid Schizophrenia, and I'm a straight-A student. Near the top of my class.

If you were disagreeing with a psych, it's entirely possible that restraint and forced medication was intended as a punishment, rather than for any claimed therapeutic benefit.

If they can't find you, they can't lock you up and drug you. I've disengaged from all forms of healthcare (except a dentist who I see privately) and the NHS does not know where I am for this reason.

I agree with the OP, antipsychotics are miserable drugs but how are they worse than heroin?

I used to take them to get to sleep which they were the only effective medication for doing, but I lost part of myself while on them. I now just live with many sleepless nights over taking those nasty medication.

The thing that I found galling about these medications is the fact that doctors believe there are little side effects. Any time I said anything about the fact they made me feel like s**t my doctors were like "how? why? no, they shouldn't do that". I have taken both the older antipsychotics and the newer a-typical antipsychotics and they both gave the same general feeling but the newer ones to a much lesser degree.

I can see from the posts here than antipsychotics work for some people and are hell for others. To be honest it has been the same story for myself. The first one I took (dipixel - an old - fashioned one) seemed to work, although I put on a lot of weight and spent a lot of time sleeping. However, that didn't matter to me at the time as I was young, didn't have a clear personality yet and didn't have to work. Saying that, when I came off them I became anorexic (terrified of getting that fat again), very rigid and obsessive and had no periods for years, which has caused various problems in bone density and potential early menopause - definitely long term effects

The second time (Zyprexa) was a nightmare - it only suppressed the problem slightly, but I felt as though the best bits of my personality disappeared (by this time I had a clear personality and independence) - my strong willpower went, my creativity and ability to concentrate disappeared, my weight went up dramatically (the binge eating I started doing on Zyprexa has continued even now I haven't taken it for 4 years and am back to a normal weight). When I came off it (myself as I couldn't stand it) I felt incredibly depressed and started to become paranoid again - I thought I would end up killing someone. My doctor was good. He prescribed me Abilify, but only a very small dose (5mg), and it did the job - after a short period of anxiety I felt better than I had for ages - in fact better than normal (although I think I had a warped idea of normal). However, this only lasted for a couple of months before the side effects built up, similarly to Zyprexa.

Basically, antipsychotics suppress brain activity in general. I think it might depend upon personality type, and certainly personal brain chemistry, but clearly in some people their brain activity is far too high and a general suppression works. For others (like myself), anything more than the slightest bit of suppression starts killing my personality, and as I am normally a highly motivated person who has to think and be creative for my job, this is particularly difficult. This can be permanent. Since coming off the Abilify (over 3 years ago) I feel like a different person. For the first year I didn't even feel real. I felt like a machine (a faulty one) to which everything happened distantly and I was dispassionately aware of it. After a year I had a bizarre semi-psychotic episode, with weird realistic dreams, memories and fears from childhood, strange moods and once voices. My impression is that my brain was finally recovering itself from all the antipsychotic use - making new connections, sometimes in the wrong places, and reassembling my personality to some extent - I am not the same and aspects of my personality have changed permanently (not obviously attributable to my experiences). In particular my concentration is impaired (it used to be really good), I've completely lost any hopes/dreams for the future (I live more in the moment or near future), my will power is somewhat impaired and I have become more obviously eccentric and less inhibited because things don't seem to matter so much.

I was quite shocked a while ago to come across a scientific paper (I am a biologist) which used Chlorpromazine (the old antipsychotic) as an inhibitor of certain important forms of endocytosis. Endocytosis is the process by which a cell takes up things from its environment, and this form in particular is needed for taking up most signals in the cell, aswell as for essential cellular processes. If we prevent this type of endocytosis in the lab in cells, they tend to die. Obviously taking the drug is not a total prevention, but it is reducing to some extent, most communications with other cells and the environment around the cell, if not killing cells themselves. No wonder it makes people feel like zombies.

Some people can clearly benefit. However, I don't think anyone should be forced to take them against their will, apart from for short periods (maybe a month or two). Doctors in general do not appreciate the side effect profile. It is very difficult to explain to someone who hasn't been there how their personality can disappear. Most people think of their personality as something integral to theirselves. So did I until the Zyprexa. Now I just see it as the chemical reaction it is - I am aware of the self as an illusion. And certainly the drugs are overused. For florid hallucinations or excessive mania I can see it being useful, but now they are prescribing it for many things including depression, anxiety, Alzheimers and worst of all to children. I hate to think what effect these drugs will have permanently on the developing brains of children.

Personally, if things get very bad again I will be happy to take a small dose of Abilify (or something else I haven't yet tried) for a very short period of time (3 months max). I will not take more than this. The problem is that I don't see a doctor regularly (in fact noone here knows anything about my last episode as it happened whilst I was working in France) and have no way of making my wishes known, so any objections will appear to be 'resisting medication' and I will end up being forced to take it or worse. That is the real problem with antipsychotics, and treatment of mental illness in general. The doctors do not realise the impact of the treatments on people and underestimate our own wishes of self-determination.

Being cautious about prescription drugs of any kind is wise. Read the side effects, believe the warnings, doctors too often just get in a habit of prescribing certain drugs. My son many years ago had a neurologist who prescribed a whole bunch of medications, not for their primary therapeutic use, but because the side effects would handle various symptoms, example: Haldol (antipsychotic) not because he had any signs of psychosis, but because one of the side effects was it helped eliminate the tics (Tourettes). She kept adding drugs to the mix, scared the hell out of me, he felt like crap all the time, and cut back on them on his own, then she threatened me with child services if I did not make him take all the drugs. Certainly got my back up, quit going to her, a couple of years later learned she herself was such a flake, filed personal and professional bankruptcy (which can happen) but was so irresponsible, she hadn't opened her mail in over a year, got an attorney and just took all these bags of unopened mail to the attorney. While she was ignoring the disastrous state of her finances and not paying bills, they had sold her house out from underneath her because she hadn't made a payment in over a year.

Another Dr. story- when my son was being diagnosed, part of the protocol was a session with a psychiatrist. I met with the Dr, he was obsessed with the fact my shoes matched my shirt exactly (heck, it was the nineties and that was part of the fashion), he met with my son, determined no psychiatric issues for him, and decided after a few minutes with me I had ocd.. Well, ok

About two years later, as luck would have it, I met a very "free" woman, she drank a lot, had many sexual adventures, and one night she was telling me about some of her experiences, and she was talking about how some of the most respected people in town were closet freaks etc She tells me about the freakiest guy she used to mess around with, and it was like nothing I had heard before in my life, and then she told me his name- it was the psychiatrist I had taken my son to.

Just because they are doctors doesn't mean they are caring, smart, well balanced, or have good intentions, or even that they have their lives more together than the people they treat.

im used to be on that stuff but it never did anything to help and I was fine before without them. I also got terrible side effects such as sezuires and nighmares from some of them. But i do agree that they are more dangerous than heroin and doing cocaine was cleaner than those drugs. Doctors push those pills so they can get paid vacations or other rewards/bennifits.

I'm heading in this direction myself. Can't say I've been through anything like what you have, and I had the opposite problem with misdiagnosis (am bipolar but was misdiagosed as having depression/untreated ADHD - pretty sure I'm ADD and the "H" part of it is actually hypomania), but I jolly well correctly diagnosed myself before I even went to see any psychiatrists - and then I went through 3 over a period of just a few months, and took some medication that seriously screwed with me (such as Escitalopram -> which after only 5 days resulted in me having extreme psychomotor agitation (so extreme it was like I was having a seizure and my parents had to hold me down) and echolalia, anxiety, panic, etc).

Also, folks, I'm currently on Valproate which seems to be going very well for me (better than lithium, which was still not bad), but last week my doctor had me try Abilify. I went off it after only 4 days because of the side effects; exhaustion, feeling feverish and headachy, blurred vision, a little bit of nausea but relatively mild (It was all the blurred vision that really started worrying me). Do you guys reckon I stayed on it long enough or should I have given it more of a chance?

I don't pay for my medications; I get income support benefits which give me free prescriptions. And before I turned 18 (the youngest age for income support), I had free prescriptions on the NHS because I was "in full-time education".

Here in the UK there is no such thing as advertising drugs like they have in the US. And my psychiatrist was totally impartial at putting me on two very expensive medications, because taxes pay for it to be honest.

I am shocked when I see an advert in the US saying "take drug X, it will help you with this". This does not happen here.

I am on £283 worth of medication per month, but even if I was not on disability benefits and income support, I would be able to get an HC1 form which would give me "free" prescriptions for £100 a year.

These things take time it took me nearly 3 years for my medication to take full effect , hell on earth thanks to meds my brain way able to cure itself of brain damage plastic really is fantastic

Don't include Abilify with the other atypicals. Abilify doesn't have nearly as many side effects, due to it being a dopamine partial agonist. Very low risk of weight gain (and the associated type-II diabetes), low risk of EPS, and low rate of sedation. Zyprexa is probably the worst atypical as far as side effects go. Try to have your doctor avoid Zyprexa unless absolutely necessary.

I have a problem with this being posted. I had a quick glance at it on Wikipedia and noted that it was not properly cited or referenced. There is no indication as to which drugs cause which of these symptoms and to what degree. As there is no reference to any properly conducted studies I urge people reading this to who are concerned to do a proper investigation by reading peer reviewed articles in medial databases or talking these concerns through with your doctor to see if you are at risk.

Abilify has the greatest risk of akathisia/movement disorders compared to the other atypicals.

Not for long-term tardive dyskinesia, since it's a dopamine partial agonist and not an antagonist like the others. TD is usually the EPS symptom considered most risky.

The worst psycho episode I've ever had is

I saw a white baby horse being raped dead in front of me

Then a wolf lay beside me

A labrador dog but not a puppy I don't know were that went

When I looked at he baby horse face it looked human for a second

Then I move next to a girl that looked some how identical

A ghost of a man walked straight past me

It makes me paranoid

That is haunting and I hate her

My doctor says I suffer from psychotic episodes.
Can someone help explain to me what these are and how they might be manifesting in me. Because I think its just aspergers syndrome and hes making it up.
I have to take 2mg antipsychotic risperidone. is that a high dose

I started 2.5mg/d Zyprexa last year and have since gone up to 5mg/d. It took the edge off of the rabid, almost manic need to grab a knife and slice myself open repeatedly. God, that was such torture.

I'm left with some muscle spasms but I feel that the benefits outweigh the side effect I get. To be honest I was more concerned about the stigma attached to taking an anti-psychotic. I have a few people that I write to about my issues and I don't tell most of them about the Zyprexa out of fear that they will think I am "crazy".

Tried Abilify first; it made me suicidal again despite the 40mg/d Lexapro and 300mg/d Wellbutrin XL I take.