Has anyone ever been on medication called Anti-psychotics?

You may want to consider weening off the drugs altogether. It doesn’t sound like legal or illegal is helping at all. There’s a huge community that’s willing to help addicts. Might want to look into something like that. Psychiatrists will just throw more and more meds your way. That’s all they know. Then again, I’m no doctor. What do I know?

A close family member I take care of, if you would call Geodon and Abilify antipsychotics. (I think they are.) Of course other medications are used for depression and anxiety that I think are not necessarily antipsychotics. SSRIs such as fluxotene or paxil, Anxiety meds such as Buspar, Xanax, Klonopin, depending on what is going on…. I don’t think I would call those antipsychotics even though they are psych meds.

I do not think his problem was caused by drug use. I do think his drug use may have been an attempt to self medicate his misery from an already existing psych problem. Sometimes it is hard to tell which came first, the chicken or the egg. The only thing I wonder about is some acid he dropped.

Well the drugs were just a trigger for what I was predisposed to having. The trouble is when people say psychotic people get the wrong idea. There is nothing seriously wrong with me. The medication just helps to deal and relieves intrucive and negative thought patterns.

@Barnaby So does cognitive behavioral therapy… If all you’re having problems with is negative thoughts, you should consider an anxiety/depression program. Eat better, exercise, meditate… do whatever you can to relax. There are thousands of people suffering from this crap and there are alternative methods rather than meds. It’s harder work, but the payoff is much better. Be good to yourself!

The thing is I got myself into such a state that I couldnt actually do anything.

There was a really, really dark period in my life about 10 years ago, where I found myself kind of stranded and in a seriously mentally abusive relationship with a clinical narcissist with anti-social tendencies. I was young and it was the first time someone I loved intentionally hurt me. I was driven into a really deep despair and ended up in the hospital for help. I was given Effexor along with a couple other meds whose names I can’t remember, but one of which was an anti-psychotic. I was told this was to help put a damper down on my extreme depression and wild thinking (such as wanting to kill myself to get out of my situation).

I never had the reaction you mentioned. Actually, the cocktail worked really well for me, it was amazing, actually.

Yes they have worked wanders for me. I think sometimes no amount of exercise and meditation can help. You have to be comfortable with yourself first before you can do anything else.

I had a total breakdown a couple years ago. The doctors put me on Geodon and Celxea. The combo of the two made me feel more out of my head than i did in the first place. I felt like I was on acid. Numb. And the cost of the Geodon was burning a hole through my wallet faster than the hospital bill was. I have been off the drugs for about two years now and have never been better with keeping a positive attitude. I think sometimes your brain chemicals just need a kick start and its up to you to keep that attitude going. I’ve been to hell and back. You just have to take a breath and know that it’s just for today. That this feeling will pass and a new and better feeling will come. You have to be cautious with the combo that the doc will put you on. The dugs will mask so much of you.

They put me on Risperdol for hair-pulling. I’m not sure why they put me on such a strong medication for basically OCD. I gained so much weight instantly, and was miserable. (I was only 14!) I came off it immediately after the side effects took into place.

I am only on one drug – Amisulpride. It has indeed kickstarted positive thinking but it does not mask my personality or my urge to do things so that can only be a good thing.

I currently take an anti-psychotic called Abilify, but then I’m bipolar. It’s necessary for me to function.

I have been off my meds once since I was diagnosed, and it was a horrifying experience to see my psychosis untreated.

I think that stopping the medication based upon advice from people from Fluther is a horrible idea. Under no circumstances would I stop a medication without direction from your physician.

The only trouble with Amisulpride is the weight gain. Call me vain but I wish I could get back to my natural weight.

A guy in my support group takes Geodan. He’s interested in finding something else, because Geodan makes him impotent. We were talking to an expert in the field last night, who said there wasn’t anything else he could take to help him get it up.

The other refrain, over and over, was that he couldn’t diagnose anyone by looking at them. They needed to go to their doctors to get the information they wanted. You can read about the side effects of every drug you might take online at any number of sites.

If weight gain is your worry, the only way to deal with that is to consume fewer calories. As far as I know, there is no magic bullet that will help you reduce your appetite. With or without your anti-psychotic, you will have to reduce your intake of calories, and increase your expenditure of calories.

However, one easy thing is to stop drinking anything with sugar in it. No soda; no tea; no juice. Just water. We take in an enormous amount of calories through sweet drinks. So if you can manage that one thing, you may be able to keep from gaining more. Otherwise increase the amount of exercise you get as much as you can.

As you know, there is always a trade-off for us crazies. It’s side effects vs beneficial effects. My hands shake so much I can’t hold chop sticks any more. It annoys the shit out of me. I could go off the lithium and I might be all right. But I might get manic and then depressed and lord knows what will happen to my family if that happens again. Of course, it will happen again,so we’ll see. My wife thinks she can only handle two episodes per year. Kind of scary for me.

@barnaby are you in the US? I thought Amisulpride wasn’t available in the US in spite of being available everywhere else (UK, Australia, Italy, Germany, etc). The FDA were being difficult about approving it. I was hoping it would become available here because I’d heard good things about it and I can’t imagine why the US won’t approve a drug used so widely around the world.

I am in England. It is a very good medication! Sorry it isn’t in the US yet. I dont know why?

@wundayatta Crazy is too much of a general term for me. Noone functions perfectly. It is just about scale in my opinion but I know what you mean.

I have never taken them myself, however, I am very up to date on them and all of the possible side effects. For some people, these medications allow them to function and lead productive lives. For others, the medication causes problems that border in severity to the diagnosis that called for the medication. I hope you are able to have some benefit. I recently read a quote from the director of a psychiatric facility stating that anti-psychotics offered the least amount of benefits with the highest cost and severe side effects.

I’ve been on several of them. My favorite is Invega. It’s just a time-released capsule of an older AP, yet it made a huge difference. It’s one of my PRN meds. I didn’t have any weight gain, grogginess or tremors (had a bit of a leg jerk on the highest dose but it doesn’t happen at lower doses for me).

I hate Seroquel because of the weight gain, sugar cravings and grogginess. I didn’t like Abilify either- didn’t work right for me. Invega was, and is, the best for me.