It's impossible to know how much of my physical health issues and how much psych meds caused this but my mind is destroyed. Its been 30 years now and it just worsens. All you are is your mind. I remember in 4th grade my friend and I were asked to stay after music class to move the teachers standing piano against the wall for her. We wound up pushing wrong and the piano toppled over onto my foot. Excruciating pain. I had something like 24 fractures in it. I was in agony for months but I was still able to enjoy my thoughts, television, conversation etc. The way my mind is the worst fucking torture I can imagine. Its taken everything from me.
MidnightDream
Warlock
- Sep 5, 2022
- 732
IntoTheLight
Member
- Oct 11, 2022
- 46
Goddamn psych meds. How do doctors not realize how much risk playing with someone's brain chemistry carries. And people who've never taken them don't understand how severely they can fuck you up. I emphasize wholeheartedly.
That kind of situation could have led you to almost every kind of repercussion. Did it ultimately turn out fine, or have you been having flashbacks to this situation...? Since you are mentioning it, is sounds like it, at least, has etched itself into your mind somehow.
almaranthine
Wizard
- Nov 28, 2019
- 616
When I'm experiencing a full blown manic/psychotic episode I start to hear voices in my head and shit... the worst aspect of this being the voices are clearly people I recognize like past friends, acquaintances, coworkers, professors/teachers, or even actors/actresses from shows I've watched. It's pure insanity inside my mind... like my brain becomes some kind of botched spirit radio "channeling" random people living or dead. It is literally impossible to be a successful and functioning human being while this is happening. Occasionally, a "voice" will take over me so to speak and I will start physically talking like them. It's terrible... I am literally fucking crazy. When the manic/psychotic period dies down I am left shattered, completely alone, in absolute desolation and occasionally even miss certain "voices" because at least I had someone to talk to. At that point, I just want to die so as to never experience this type of mental dissolution again. I'm at that point now.
FuneralCry
Just wanting some peace
- Sep 24, 2020
- 37,187
It really is so awful how life can torture people in so many ways. It must be so tiring what you are going through as after all there is no real relief from ourselves and our thoughts in this life. It's such a cruel existence where so much suffering exists and this is why to me the thought of being dead is comforting.
I couldn't agree more and thank you.
I'm so sorry. That must be truly exhausting and just nightmarish to deal with.
almaranthine
Wizard
- Nov 28, 2019
- 616
It's not ideal. I definitely should have been on some kind of medication for years but I haven't had health insurance for the past 5 at least. Then of course, when I'm really in the throes of being absolutely mental, I'm not honest to people about my symptoms. Despite multiple hospitalizations and even voluntarily checking myself into mental hospitals, I've never been correctly treated or diagnosed.
locked*n*loaded
Archangel
- Apr 15, 2022
- 7,262
I'm so sorry you are going through all of this. I can't imagine what this must be like for you. I hope you can get this sorted out somehow and get relief from this man-induced torture.
KlMeNw
They killed me at seven, I just didn't know it- Me
- Dec 15, 2021
- 122
brokenworld
Member
- Aug 13, 2022
- 16
Really sorry to hear this. i don't know the overlap in terms of extent and nature, but i'm only in my young 20s, have had bad brain damage due to a neuro condition i have, and had my mind permanently ruined by zoloft. it put me in a permanent adhd and depersonalization/derealization state. i have been beddridden for past two years. all i do is watch youtube all day. i rarely feel good enough to actually make posts on here. i wish u well. and am always here
wanted to ask if u ever found anyting that gave mild improvements to your brain/mind?
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Sorry to hear this happened to you. I have found nothing that helps. I belong to an online group that is all suffering from psych meds and they highly recommend fish oil and magnesium supplements. I have not had any benefits but others have. You might give that a try. I hope things get better for you.
IntoTheLight
Member
- Oct 11, 2022
- 46
Have you tried Lion's Mane extract? It has been proven to have beneficial effects on the brain, including promoting BDNF and NGF.
actual_fox
Arcanist
- Sep 15, 2022
- 469
Long story. From 17 to around 22 clonazepam. Then at 22 it was switched to restoril which is a very strong benzoyl for sleep and I stayed on that nightly until I was 36. Also at 17 was tried handful of antidepressants over the course of several years. At 34, a couple years before I tapered off benzos, I was on cymbalta and quit it cold turkey when my benzoyl taper was done. Horrible idea. I thought the withdrawal was from the benzos. Massive withdrawal or 2 years straight on top of my health issues. After two years I went on lexapro and after about 4 months felt much better. Stayed on lexapro for another 4 years or so and I started feeling off. I switched to Prozac which didn't really change much but I stayed on it for another couple of years until my father passed away and then my mother had a stroke and was slowly dying in the hospital. I was in a really dark place and as meds weren't helping my mood I stupidly just quit. I went into another withdrawal and jumped back on the prozac. It did not stop the withdrawal. After several months I switched back to lexapro in hopes I was just resistant to Prozac now but it helped very little. I spent the next 2 years tapering very very slowly this time but I have not recovered.
I think the damage is just done. I think the benzodiazepines had a hand in my cognitive decline. About 20 years back I started forgetting what I was talking about mid sentence. Its like all of a sudden you suddenly find yourself saying words that you don't know where you are going with them or what you were even trying to say in the first place. Like 0 recollection. Its scary. At first it happened only once in awhile but just increased over time. More and more types of issues kept arising and now I can't hold enough thoughts in my head to do simple problem solving. I can't follow simple tv shows. I just can't keep up. My emotions are destroyed, I guess from the antidepressants. I remember being able to take in liitke things like how certain lighting looked or little smells and stuff like that and it would bring peace and start a whole thought process based on the mood it created and now its all gone. no thoughts or feelings arise from anything. My head physical lulu feels horrible too. Like my eyes feel like they are pulling in different directions, buzzing feeling in my brain, the back of my skull and neck throb, there is the weirdest feeling if my head being stuffed with cotton. I can't do this anymore.
Please do not try and quit cold turkey. That shit is serious. Before I started my taper the doctor who had been prescribing it told me I could switch straight to lunesta . I had been feeling shaky and horrible during the days and thought I had just been in the pills to long and asked the doctor if I could try coming off. They said I could just stop them and switch which is inexcusable as it was around 2007 and benzo withdrawal was well established. The lunesta was making me sleep but after about 4 or 5 days the benzos withdrawal hit me like train. I couldn't control my arms, it felt like my brain had gone to some nightmare void, utter terror set in, my jaw was clenched like I was being electrocuted. I went back on them and the withdrawal still lasted for a couple if weeks before withdrawal settled.
Here's the part that might help you. How I got off was I found a psychiatrist and told him what was happening. He said the other doctor, my rheumatologist, was bat shit crazy and he wound up switching me to the equivalent dose of valium which has a longer half life, and had me take it 3 times a day. Then I slowly made cuts to first one of the doses and then another and so on until I reached 1 low dose a day and then zero. It took about a year. Maybe your doctor could help you do something like this.
I just brought up the broken foot incident to illustrate how important a functioning mind is. Even with all if the pain my mind was just fine and life was still worth living.
I haven't tried that but I'll think about it. Thanks for throwing that out there.
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My brain's destroyed too psychiatry should be banned. Your memory seems intact I wish I could say the same I pretty much have dementia.
Sorry you are going through this. I can remember things from a long time ago but I can't remember 2 days ago and have no working memory. I do not forget things like my address or names if my family members yet thank god.
I'm in the exact same situation. Ask me about something that happened in high school and I can most likely tell you about it in great detail. Ask me to tell you the plot of the TV show that I just watched? Not going to happen. It's made it impossible for me to work, at least in my preferred career (computer programmer) for the past several years. It drives me crazy because I've always considered myself an excellent thinker and problem solver, and to have my brain just up and leave on me is, well, one of the reasons I find myself hanging out in in a place like this site. If it weren't for making to-do lists and my phone calendar, I wouldn't remember to do anything in my life right now.
I've said it before, this place is a graveyard of psychiatric negligence. Psychiatrists need to come here and see what they have done and are doing to people.
CTB Dream
Injury damage disabl hard talk no argu make fun et
- Sep 17, 2022
- 2,430
Really understand, body keep self brain never self, now injury damage all gon nothing have real terrible where self never see, where chenic enjoy things all go ,self work brain when not all lose now vegetable all lose brain what have go
freedompass
Warlock
- Jan 27, 2021
- 768
@Sad_Sack, man that accident to your foot was beyond unfortunate. I know what you mean about mental pain being worse tho. With the physical you can distract yourself, there are painkillers, plus other people are way more sympathetic and considerate to bodily illness or injury. Mental anguish just gets you stigmatised and shunned.
These days tho my outlook is better than ever. I know that probably sounds ironic given where we are. I've noticed that even when I had a fairly dire psychotic episode and fully expected a severe depression to match…it didn't really happen. Can't explain it but yeah.
I'm only on one med, a mood stabiliser, no antipsychotic and been nicely stable, even upbeat all year.
I've definitely felt my brain was destroyed and I'm sure a few brain cells did get fried over the years. But considering what a fucking basket case I was for so long I'm doing pretty good now. Neuroplasticity is a thing apparently. It's amazing what we can bounce back from.
I'm not 'cured' of manic depression as I believed each and every time I became psychotic. But I can honestly say it no longer defines who I am. My stress levels are low. Most days are pleasant. I recognise that I'm lucky to feel better now than I had any reason to expect in the bad old days.
I'm a survivor of umpteen psychotic manic episodes myself. I never heard actual voices but reality and me definitely parted company often for months on end. Totally feel you on the comedown. The humiliation and shame. The terrifying existential isolation. The depleted bank balance. Ruined relationships. There's no end to how fucking awful it all is.
These days tho my outlook is better than ever. I know that probably sounds ironic given where we are. I've noticed that even when I had a fairly dire psychotic episode and fully expected a severe depression to match…it didn't really happen. Can't explain it but yeah.
I'm only on one med, a mood stabiliser, no antipsychotic and been nicely stable, even upbeat all year.
I've definitely felt my brain was destroyed and I'm sure a few brain cells did get fried over the years. But considering what a fucking basket case I was for so long I'm doing pretty good now. Neuroplasticity is a thing apparently. It's amazing what we can bounce back from.
I'm not 'cured' of manic depression as I believed each and every time I became psychotic. But I can honestly say it no longer defines who I am. My stress levels are low. Most days are pleasant. I recognise that I'm lucky to feel better now than I had any reason to expect in the bad old days.
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locked*n*loaded
Archangel
- Apr 15, 2022
- 7,262
Yeah. Were psych meds not created by man? ASccording to the OP, 30 years of man-made psych meds. Hence, man-induced. As in by the hand of mankind.
KlMeNw
They killed me at seven, I just didn't know it- Me
- Dec 15, 2021
- 122
You're not alone. Same reason I'm on this site :/ past 6/7 years unable to feel emotions or really work
What cocktail of psych meds brought you to not being. Able to program and problem solve?
What started you in the first set of meds?
I covered some of it over in the thread "Do you feel like you're no longer yourself", but I'm happy to recount it here as well. I've fought with Tourettes syndrome and some associated anxiety and depression for most of my life, so I've been on one or two meds for that since my pre-teen years. For the most part, that was without issue and I always went to a neurologist for those meds, not a psychiatrist. I have nothing bad to say about any of my neurologists, I feel like they all knew what they were doing and I was well cared for.
Things really started to fall apart for me a little over a decade ago when I was in a serious car accident, which left me with a mild traumatic brain injury and PTSD. I complained to my neurologist that the meds for my anxiety and depression "just weren't working" for me any more, and that's when I had my first experience with a psychiatrist. I got put on and off of a lot of powerful meds in the first few years after the accident, including things like depakote, lithium, seroquel, benzos including lorazepam and valium. I was tried on mood stabilizers including lamictal and a number of antidepressants including wellbutrin, effexor, and luvox. I know I'm leaving things out. At one point I was on 7 or 8 meds at once. That's when I was pretty much sleeping all of the time.
Early on after the accident I was still "working" for a large software company, though I spent most of my time on disability leave, unable to code due to the effects of the meds. About 3 years out from the accident I found a more reasonable psychiatrist who realized that I was very much over-medicated and was able to pare down to just 3 meds (sertraline, topamax, and olanzapine). I did quite well on this combination for a handful of years. I had been laid off from my software job but started taking in freelance coding jobs. I was also teaching myself electrical engineering in my spare time, and working on some fulfilling projects in that domain. I felt like I was finally healing.
Then about two years ago, my pharmacy changed the brand/supplier of the sertraline I was getting, and I started getting violently angry about an hour after taking my dose. I had always struggled with my temper while on that med, but this was much worse than I was used to. My psychiatrist decided that I needed to be off of it ASAP, so we did the "prozac taper", by way of switching me to prozac because of its longer halflife, for about 4 days, then quitting that cold turkey. In hindsight, it was not a good decision with how long I had been on the sertraline for. In the following months I developed severe anxiety, panic, insomnia, and depression. I slowly lost my confidence in my ability to do the things I'd always done. My psychiatrist added a couple of new meds (doxepin and gabapentin) that got me sleeping again and got the panic under control, but since then, I've felt like a zombie. I'm depressed, anhedonic, foggy, and fatigued. All I do is sit around and browse the web. I don't have the executive function to solve problems or code like I used to, and I don't have the motivation or confidence to do other things I would like to like work on cars or projects around my house. I moved last year and most of my stuff is still in boxes, because I can't figure out how to unpack and arrange it in the new space.
I hope that gives you an idea of my journey. I definitely do NOT trust psychiatrists. I am currently seeing one, but it's one who listens to me and we're working on a plan to slowly taper me off of my current cocktail of meds. I still have to fight him from time to time whenever he suggests "maybe if we just try adding this med..." I had to go through a number of different ones after I moved before I found somebody who would work with me and listen to my input. I just hope I have the patience to see this through. I'm on 4 meds still, and tapering all of them properly could take a number of years.
Sound rough, and I am sorry to hear you have had it all thrust upon you.
I haven't started the setraline that I just received. After seeing many peoples' reactions to it, then it will be one of the last things I would try before offing myself.
I have up and down days. I don't sleep for days, get a manic high from being exhausted. Then I crash and when I wake up, it is like a reset. Button, and I panic, get anxious, afraid and don't want to leave the bed.
The psych I have now is all I have due to the folks that I go thru for medical care. He is very against meds, but has tried things in me after discussion and at my approval. I don't trust the meds, and he fully lets me know that if I don't fix me or the root of the problem..or i I. Don't acccept it is done (good or bad) and react differently, then my meds won't do much and won't change my thought. The problem is I can't change the way I react a lot. It's controlling me. It's consumed my spirit.
Well the benzo the ER put me in proved that wrong temporarily, but it was almost evil how it made things go away without a care and festering still. But it was a relief. I am tapering still because I know they are short lived and will wear off. And we will only be worse the longer I am on them. I am not a glutton for punishment, but I also don't trust a little pill and what it makes me think
Should something crazier happen I will drug myself up I guess to forget if I can. Unless something happens where I can't take the meds. Then I hope I'd it is bad enough, that I have an exit option.
I lost my SN option after an incident. I hope to get more soon. Before too late and it dries up.
Thanks for your input and story. It sucks how life goes. Things go great, then things turn quickly. Mine hasn't turned on me completely yet, cuz I created my problem and waiting to see if it turns bad as expected. If it does. I just don't know what to do.
I just do know, that it has scared me enough to already go extreme and attempt.
Folks that have never been this pressed don't and won't get it. Then get on news and media against the idea. I don't like the idea of cutting life short and leaving loved ones in a bind and also screwed up mentally by my actions. But I also dont want to suffer either. I am afraid to start anything new because don't want to waste the effort or resource if my future may be non existent. The fam would need those resources more than I would, obviously.
My brain can be a bad place to be. Usually these days my enemy.
Thanks for posting.
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