January 21, 2008Six Months Off-MedsNot that anyone cares, but yesterday marked my six-month anniversary of going off-meds for bipolar disorder. After 18 years of taking meds consistently, my psychiatrist figured I might do well off-meds, so he suggested that I give it a whirl. So I have, since I've earned the right. What's stunning to me is that I remain virtually without symptoms, even of depression--and that's just not supposed to be happening here, especially since I am under massive amounts of stress, personally and professionally. Not according to the medical literature I've read. The course for bipolars who go off-meds is supposed to be highly predictable--they wind up in big trouble and either die or spend time in a psych unit or what have you. And of course they wind up back on meds after wreaking havoc on the Western world. They never get better or do just fine off-meds. But, then, maybe the unbiased researchers who write the medical literature never talk to or examine people like me. OK, I know they don't. So what is going on here? Was I a bad diagnosis back in 1989? Did meds somehow cure me while messing me up at the same time? Did therapy cure me? (Um, no since I haven't seen a therapist since the early 1990s.) Did I cure me? Or does bipolar disorder just burn out over time? I am leaning towards the latter two possibilities, but I'm not sure how to explain this except to say that's what seems to be going on. I just don't have any reference points to go on. Everyone from Kay Redfield Jamison on down says I am supposed to be a train wreck waiting to happen, but I'm not. That's both encouraging and disconcerting all at once. On a positive note, I ran into a friend of mine last night who commented that I was finally losing weight in my face. He's gay and notices these things I guess, but he's right. Atypicals and meds in general really puffed my face up and it's been difficult to lose that puffiness. I'm glad it's ebbing away. Or at least that my friends think it is. Thoughts? Posted by Philip Dawdy at January 21, 2008 12:32 AM
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Dear Philip,
Second, the human body is dynamic and ever changing. Third, I hope your wellness continues indefinitely. Fourth, there still remain treatment options to consider should your wellness tank. Lastly, why fret over what may be unanswerable questions as to the reasons for your wellness. Simply enjoy that wellness, good fortune and quality of life and simply get on with business. All are not as fortunate. Warmly, i care philip. i'm watching your experiment with great interest. i wonder if you're feeling any mood swings at all? Posted by: anonymous mom at January 21, 2008 03:50 AMHey Philip, Well done on your semi-anniversary! There are lots of whacky ideas out there, none of which are proveable, given that nobody may observe a mind in action (except by watching the superficial manifestations (ie, behaviour)). The thing is, the concept of neuroplasticity tells us that the brain is anything but fixed in its make-up - new neuroconnections are being laid down, all the time. There are examples of people who have suffered limb paralysis, due to brain damage, actually having a different part of the brain learn to operate the limb. In the face of that, I don't see how anything to do with the brain is immutable. Matt Posted by: Matthew Holford at January 21, 2008 03:54 AMi have 2 years since i dropped any and all atypicals and 1 year since i dropped everything (which was klonopin addiction and lamictal, the last drop). i'll wait another year before i use all my money (not that i have any) to sue everybody out of existence. kaiser for diagnosing me, eli lilly/zyprexa and whoever makes lamictal for obliterating my life AND all my dreams for 6 long years (2oo1 - 2oo6) during which i had 7 "full blown manias" my foot. traLaLa. ps: now the suing part is not for me, i pledge all the money (because i really don't need any) to SFjane@youtube who is manically driven to heal mental trippiness without the aid of drugs and/or genetic therapy (when that comes along, can you even begin to imagine the horrors)? Posted by: z0tl at January 21, 2008 04:09 AMAddendum: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1580438,00.html Matt Posted by: Matthew Holford at January 21, 2008 04:09 AMCongratulations! Here's hoping for many many months to come. Posted by: Jonathan Schnapp at January 21, 2008 04:15 AMI have all of the same questions. I'm uneventfully off all meds now for almost 15 months. The medical world doesn't see those of us who get off meds and have a fine and regular life. They only see you when you crash and burn. Posted by: undiagnosed at January 21, 2008 05:41 AMCongrats on your six months off meds. After hearing all the horror stories, I'd frankly be scared to death to give that a whirl. But I'm damn glad it is working for you. I wonder what the actual statistics are: the percentage of those who, on average, can go off meds (with a doctor's recommendation that they do so) and endure happily. That would be interesting number to have. Posted by: Ed Renehan at January 21, 2008 05:50 AMI don't know whether to congratulate you or not. If you accomplished something by going med free, or were wronged by the psychiatric traditional belief of medication for life. I'm a new reader, but had to comment here. My husband was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in late 1994 and today is not on meds either (for a few years now) and has had no ill effects. We know that is not the norm but have no answer for why this is. We considered that maybe he'd had a bad diagnosis, but knowing what he went through then (what WE went through) -- I believe his diagnosis was accurate. Despite all this, we are always aware of what "might" happen. People who know him now can't believe the stories we've had. Hopefully you will continue to have this positive experience as well. Posted by: jae at January 21, 2008 06:11 AMPhilip, Congratulations, that is fantastic. I am sure all your readers like me care a great deal about your accomplishment. In 12 to 16 months, I will join the club of people freed of psych meds. I have a depression diagnosis and am withdrawing slowly off of my meds to prevent any withdrawal problems. So far, so good. To the professionals who think we are trainwrecks waiting to happen, I say bleep them. It angers me greatly that most of us are sentenced to a lifetime on meds at a huge risk of side effects without any efforts made to see if we can live med free. By the way, I am doing better than I ever did on meds in spite of dealing with stresses also. I know when I started this process, my psychiatrist was sure this wouldn't last. Well 16 months after starting this process, I sure proved him wrong and anyone else who doubted me. Just keep doubting me as I will continue to prove everyone wrong. Finally, I think one main reason the research is so negative is that when people try to go off their meds, they are withdrawn way too quickly. As a result, withdrawal symptoms are mistakenly attributed to a return of the illness. It is a viscious horrible merry go around that people don't get off of unless they understand what is going on. By the way, I saw a citation that I wish I could find about how this was true with people with schizophrenia being taken off their meds. They found that the people who were tapered slowly had a significant rate of less relapses. Another reason the research is so negative that psychiatrists are usually clueless about non med alternatives. They claim the research isn't there to support those types of options. But yet, they are willing to experiment with drugs that are unproven. That makes alot of sense. NOT! I won't say anything about big pharma's influence as we all know what the deal is with that. Anyway Philip, congratulations. You have earned it my friend. AA Posted by: AA at January 21, 2008 06:14 AMthanks very much to all of you. Posted by: Philip Dawdy at January 21, 2008 07:10 AMHerb - When I thought I was destined to spend a lifetime on psych meds, I kept repeating your line that everyone can't be med free. It was only when I started suffering devastating side effects such as a hearing loss, tinnitus, greatly impaired memory, and a hand tremor that I realized that I needed to rethink this position. When I started this process, there was no doubt in my mind that I was going to succeed because I saw what the alternatives were and that certainly wasn't an option. Ed - I didn't get my doctor's ok as I knew he would be opposed to it. I just started doing it and said "Oh by the way". Fortunately, even though I think he had doubts, he has been very supportive. The key to a successful taper in my opinion is to to taper 10% of current dose every 3 to 6 weeks. I admit I have gone faster with my first two meds. But when I tried that with my current med, I paid for it big time and won't make that mistake again. Unfortunately, cutting by 10% is very hard to do. In that case, simply make a small as cut as possible and wait at least 3 weeks Your brain needs time to adapt to the chemical changes of having less of the drug. If you don't give it that time, it will rebel big time and that is why people end up with nasty withdrawal symptoms. Sadly, most doctors minimize this. Ed, in my opinion, the horror stories are because people taper way too fast off of their meds as doctors put you on a schedule provided by the drug company. That has about as much chance working as my becoming President of the United States. Anyway, tapering off of psych meds is one of the smartest decisions I have ever made in my life. I have been on them since 1995 by the way. AA Posted by: AA at January 21, 2008 07:10 AMOf course we care!! And as I follow in your footsteps you are one more inspiration. My coming off drugs was not my doctors idea either, but thank god, he believes in self-determination. I wouldn't be where I am now if it weren't for him being willing to be educated by me. Most doctors are clueless when it comes to withdrawal and it tends to be dangerous to trust them. I hate to say it, but being in many withdrawal communities I've seen it to be true again and again. I'm now seeing a specialist who seems to be speeding up the withdrawal process considerably. I was on 7 drugs---this is a multiple year process for me---but doing real good right now. thanks so much Philip for sharing your story. It's so vitally important to hear from you and all of us doing this successfully. Like undiagnosed said the medical establishment only sees those people who crash and burn. We remain invisible, off their radar and outside their belief system. We don't exist in their minds. Posted by: Gianna at January 21, 2008 08:05 AMGood for you, Philip. Just out of curiosity, have you made any major changes in your lifestyle vis-a-vis diet and exercise that you feel contributed to your recovery. And did maintaining this blog help in any way? All the best for the future! Posted by: Masale.Wallah at January 21, 2008 08:22 AMAWESOME!!!! Maybe the diagnosis was wrong maybe it wasn't... I think maybe it's you "learned" how to behave and not give in to those bipolar systems. Kind of like how people with dyslexia "relearn" how to read. Just because you brain works a certain way, doesn't mean you can't retrain your brain. (I have been pretty okay for the last 9 or 10 months - so I suspect that) Posted by: Janet at January 21, 2008 08:33 AMI suspect as more and more people go off these medications and discover that most of their "symptoms" were either made worse or came about by these drugs we will hear more and more about spontanous remission. It would take a pretty big admission from the medical community to admit they have been prescribing damaging and costly drugs. Spontaneous remission sounds a whole lot better than saying "I'm sorry I was wrong Mr. Dawdy, I have finally read the data and the medications I had been prescribing you weren't really life savers and did nothing to improve your quality of life after all." Wow, Phil. I know nothing of this topic and am only exploring supplements only as the most radical I can imagine. But I have read several articles about schizophrenia burning itself out in later life. I believe that is what happened in¨The Brilliant Mind. Have you searched for trials or articles that speak to this topic, as I think I will. Buena Suerte. Posted by: Sorrowful at January 21, 2008 12:04 PMI care, Philip. Congratulations on your six-month anniversary. Since you mention it, I suppose I am nearing my five-year anniversary without meds and without symptoms of what was once schizoaffective disorder. There are a lot of us out there. I think it was the psychiatrist Dan Fisher (recovered from schizophrenia and without meds for 25 years) who ponited out that i spite of our numbers, the researchers are not looking for us and we are not speaking up. I wish you continued wellness and peace. :) Posted by: Cindy at January 21, 2008 02:27 PMCongratulations! To take a stab at one of your questions, I think it's very likely that your brain has changed. Nothing in the brain - okay, almost nothing - is permanantly disabling, so even if "Bipolar Disorder" is this neurobiological mess that psychiatrists love to promote, well, it's also possible that it can be cleaned up. Otherwise, how do we explain the plethora of individuals who have recovered entirely from "schizophrenia"? Certainly, their brains were up to some hairy stuff when hearing voices, but their brains are fine now... I just passed my 6 month med-free aniversary, and wow do I have a lot of concerns and anger about the messages that were sold to me in the past. Your blog is part of the solution though, and I commend your good work! Posted by: Steven Morgan at January 21, 2008 03:47 PMChiming in with congratulations and another primary dx of schizoaffective disorder, on drugs for over a decade and going on 2 years med-free without averse effects. Posted by: flawedplan at January 21, 2008 04:19 PMPhillip, I'm glad you're doing well, and I appreciate your courage in sharing your story. The lifetime meds rap is terrible and unscientific. Mathew, thanks for the link to the Neuroplasticity article. Posted by: Sally at January 21, 2008 05:18 PMCongratulations, I think you are amazing. Posted by: Stephany at January 21, 2008 05:51 PMOF COURSE you were a bad diagnosis back in 1989 phil. Everyone is a bad diagnosis. Think about it. You had lived for thousands of days, maybe even ten thousand if you were over 28, and one day or a couple of them, you exhibited behavior that is on a checklist that supposedly diagnoses a biological disease, a disease 'voted' into existence around the round table at the APA. No biopsy no nothing. The sad part is that you think you are leaning toward you 'cured' yourself. You still seem trapped in acknowledging that believe such a disease exists. There is no biological lifelong genetic brain disorder driving your thoughts and moods pal. There just isn't. I was in a chemical straight jacket for five years even. You, almost two decades of your life. There is guaranteed to be permanent neurological damage and or restructuring in your brain Phil. How do you feel about that? What two decades of counteracting the code of nature has done to you? As your entire biology fought to adapt to living with the toxins you daily inflicted on it. It was a whole twelve months after ending the chemical mind rape that I became fully lucid the way nature made me again. So my five year ordeal extended into six. At the six month mark after 18 years of filthy pseudoscientific compounds flushing through your neurology, it is gonna take a hell of a lot longer than six months for you to return to your natural born self, if that is even possible. If I were you, and I'm very similar, I'd be angry. Very angry. Without a legitimate basis, your body has been impinged upon for the entirety of your life's prime. Forgetting what assaults and violence was done to your biology, what was done to your standing the world as an equal and non criminal human being? Do you honestly believe that you carry filthy defective genes that can create human beings that should be resigned to a life of disability and have their neurology soaked in a soup of utter filth from Big Pharma? They've been (as a science) throwing darts at a board the entire pharmacological age. And the untold human experiment, the greatest breach of the scientific method in the history of science, let alone medicine, is something that you have been a party to and a part of for almost two decades. You didn't ask to be part of it, you had it imposed on you, imposed on you at a young age, and when you were at your weakest. And what is the key driver that allowed you to sink headlong into two decades of assault, well that is simple and you mention it in your post, the FEAR. You mention the fear from the Redfield Jamieson version of what is supposed to happen to you. The fear, the statistics, which are cooked and littered with individuals who have been fed a diet of fear too. Fear is the only reason, apart from blind trust, that your life has been torn up by your diagnosis. It is disgusting to think back, how I trusted them when they told me the three in ten suicide rate, the expectation to be hospitalized at least seven times in my lifetime, each closer apart than before. But then I got wise. I learned the power of the notion of the self fulfilling prophecy. The self fulfilling prophecy is a very powerful concept. Once you can grasp it you can see how the statistics can come about, the schizophrenia statistics, the bp statistics. Are all comprised of individual cases of human beings who have been TOLD to expect something by alleged 'experts'. And then they start analyzing evey single thought that they have, they get analysis paralysis and just languish in disability. When you are thrust into the most diabolical maze you could imagine, that of 'oh my god they say im crazy and will get sick again and again and oh my god I hate my brain' when you are in the maze, and your only hope of a normal life is to reject psychiatry, medication, the whole concept of a proven biological disease, and to eject the idea that you are defective in any way from your being, when you are at the foot of the mountain that I have climbed and you are on your way to climbing, what do you need? One phrase..... You need your neurology clean, you need your cognitive ability, executive function, at fullest capacity as the universe has given you. You need to be in a natural, clear thinking state. Of course it's gonna take you five years or eighteen years to find your way out if for that whole time your brain is soaked in vat of filthy chemicals, devised by psychiatry to make you more 'managable' for the world at large. The only thing they want you to be able to do, and they half the time can't get that right, is work a job. Now i've begun a career recently, have decades of hard work in front of me. But I know, in all my heart, that the hardest thing I will ever do, the thing that required the most brain power, was to find my way out of this maze called psychiatry. How can someone accomplish the hardest task of their lives with their brains in a chemical straight jacket?
The chief reason is that most people don't make it out of the maze, not because their biology is defective, not at all, but because they never get the information about the truth about the mental health industry, and because their minds and identities are in chains. Their hands are tied. And now my hands are not tied in any way apart from the languishing stigma still attached to my name in my community from the slanderous label psych put on me. You phil, you're on the way out of the maze pal, good for you, you're not out yet though, you never had a disease, why can't you get that through your permanantly restructured due to drugs basal ganglia? The reason why the researchers don't include people like us in the stats is that hardly any of us exist, on a percentile basis. I'm very happy you're off meds pal. I'm sorry if I was rude the other day. I'm by nature a very angry man these days. Very angry. You see I was raped every second of every day for five years, and I didn't ask for it. I lost touch with reality after a death and some drug abuse, I lost it for a couple of days. My punishment for playing the game of life? 2000 days of utter violence and turmoil. Thanks psychiatry! 'Do No Harm'. People should get 'do no harm tatooed' to their Zyprexa ass cheek. It's criminal what is going on. And it's criminal what happened to you Phil. You haven't 'healed yourself' you never had a disease pal. The truth is much less benign, you were a victim of extreme violence, and discrimination, and a target for a eugenic idea pushed on you, it is very dire what happened to you. The only reason to be happy is that your biology is no longer under fire from psychiatry Phil. I'm sad to see that your psychology is still very much conditioned to accepting psychiatry's unproven and corrupt bloody handed ideas. You take care of yourself Phil. In another six months, you'll feel great. You're never going to get sick again. Just don't take any illicit drugs. And when a loved one dies next, take a trip to a tropical island and ride it out. You're full of shit Forever. You've looked too far into the abyss and have become the Monster you abhor. Assuming definitional power that has not been granted you, colonizing the selfhood of another, taking liberties and assuming familiarity that has not been offered. Refusing to acknowledge the right of self-definition in the most basic form, his name is PHILIP, he made a POINT of spelling that out to you in a previous thread. Ya passive aggressive shithead, mired in black and white thinking, because to you, the opposite of psychiatry must be anti-psychiatry. Re-think, boyo, the abuse you continue to demonstrate in the name of anti-psychiatry is no different from what you claim to decry, that coincidentally ALSO happens under institutional psychiatry. Get it? Abuse is abuse. Congratulations, Philip - both on getting off of the meds and on getting rid of the puffiness. Psychiatric drugs create physical effects like that, and sometimes the general public is led to believe that those physical effects are a result of the psychiatric disorder rather than the drugs used to treat it. It never has made any sense to me to label as a "disease" something that is diagnosed without any reference to an observable physical condition. I think it's behavior and experiences that shape how a person's mind works, and many years of life-affirming behavior and experiences have led you to a state of mind that transcends whatever negative events led to your original diagnosis - that's just my interpretation. Anyway, congratulations! Posted by: Kent at January 21, 2008 10:36 PMCaring cured me. Posted by: Wes Browning at January 22, 2008 12:54 AMPhilip, of corse we care. My thoughts: If we look at this within the psychiatric paradigm of chemical imbalance and all that, then it is quite a mystery how anyone's brain could just spontaneously un-disorder itself. But consider an alternative that everything that gets labeled symptoms of psychiatric disorders, however severe and troubling they may be, are really reflections of problems in living. Then it's no surprise that for many people the troubling 'symptoms' abate, or at least become less overwhelming problems, when we find better ways to live, and better ways to cope with the problems in life. One way to cope with problems in life is to do drugs. The difference between 'psych meds' and 'street drugs' is just a socio-political construct. For some people, doing drugs may be the best of the options available to them. I don't know, and wouldn't presume to judge anyone else's difficult choices. But I noticed that people around me who have chronically used drugs for long periods haven't really matured emotionally or spiritually. My cohorts who spent years on prozac or risperdal, or who drank or smoked pot everyday, have the mind-sets of the teen-agers they were before they started, but faces and bodies that sag towards middle-age. Drugs are a trap in that they make us less able to overcome, or at least deal with, the forces that led us to use them in the first place. Philip, I am glad that you are trying and impressed that you are succeeding. I was involuntarily drugged, under threat of court-ordered ECT (yes, it's rare, but they still have court-ordered ECT in my state, anyway), and the doctors insisted that 'the only thing holding you together is the medication.' Everyone said that if I stopped meds, I was sure to become floridly psychotic. I ran away from them and tappered very, very slowly. I've been drug-free from nearly five years now, without any 'symptoms.' For me, the single biggest part of feeling better was rejecting the psychiatrists' chemical determinism dogma that my life was bad as a result of my brain being diseased. I realized that even though some problems may be intractable, we are all the masters of our own destinies and not merely objects being pushed around by biochemicals. That empowerment itself gave me more strength to change my life, instead of just my brain chemistry. Regarding anger: certainly you have reason and every right to be angry. Anger is good when it motivates us to take action and make positive changes. But for years, I would wake up angry, before I even opened my eyes, about all the things I can never change, the brain damage, humiliation, and lost years, and it was totally paralyzing. Philip, I hope that having escaped from the drug trap that you will not fall into the anger trap. I think that you 'cured' yourself, by your own strength and efforts, and should take this as evidence that you are a strong and capable person who can overcome whatever challenges you face in the future. Congratulations and good luck.
I was off meds for over 2 1/2 years & had a manic episode that landed me in the hospital. I still see all of my med free years as being the happiest & most productive years of my life, but am now living in a very rural area where Alternative approaches just aren't considered Kosher. A month from now I will be heading back to a midwestern city that I lived in for most of my life. There are many doctors there willing to work with a patients desire to go off their meds, & my only hope is that those docs are still practicing! I take a mere 1/3 of my prescribed lithium dose now (300 mg) & find the biggest problem I now have is sleep=related. For that I take an anti-depresseant & benedryl. I have one of the atypicals & try using it for sleep on only the rare occasion. Seems horrid to me that I'm taking so many psych meds to get a good night's sleep. My moods are very stable now inspite of much stress (loss of marriage/death of favorite pet/unemployment.) I don't doubt my BP I diagnosis, but a lifetime of medication seems somehow significantly wrong! I'm a new reader here, and just beginning a taper of my psych meds, starting with risperdal, lamictal, cymbalta, klonopin, adderall, etc. etc. I've started a week ago with the risperdal. I believe my psych made a bad call 6 years ago when he declared I was bipolar after telling him symptoms I was having as a crystal meth addict. Who wouldn't be exhibiting bipolar symptoms on meth. Anyway, the drugs sure screwed me up just as much as the meth did, which I'm off of for four years. One thing I couldn't help noticing in your posting that struck me as very odd. You referred to the weight in your face, and how your friend commented on it. "He's gay and notices these things I guess....". So, I guess gay people notice weight loss in faces? Or, just what is the point you are trying to make here, telling us that he's gay. I'm glad to hear that you are handling your mental health well without medication or self-medication. Most people would prefer to be naturally in a state of good health. You raise a lot of good questions. Misdiagnosis? What made it better? You may want to really investigate what made you better. If it was the medications only, then removing them from your therapy may indeed lead to derailing in the future. It takes a considerable amount of time for our bodies to adjust to medications and from the removal of them. Some people with bipolar disorder remain in remission for years before returning to medication therapy. Like cancer patients, I suppose. I have not yet come across "cured until natural death" cases. Though I am hopeful they exsist. There are forever cancer-free persons. If other factors increased your wellness then you should keep them in your repetoir for maintaing good health. I.E. meditation, social or religious ties, exercise, nutrition, hobbies etc. That something other than meds helped does not necessarily negate your diagnosis, however. Some people treat high blood pressure with lifestyle changes alone and some with medications. It is a common fallicy in western medicine currently to backwards-diagnose. I.E. if a medicine makes it better then you must have been suffering from such and such. Rather than, you are suffering from such and such so lets see if a medicine will help. But without evaluating the why, it will be difficult to be confident of maintaining a recovery. Best of luck. All of life is an experiment in which we are each both a subject and researcher. Posted by: Moira at January 23, 2008 10:53 AMthe sad, sad part is: 30 or so people here arguing pro and cons, while millions are being drugged out of existence. all you can really do is take care of yourself and by remaining strong and stable, bit by bit, your personal example will hopefully lead others to freedom from mind altering drugs. Posted by: z0tl at January 23, 2008 11:17 AMPhillip, thanks for the personal communication that led me to this popular blog of yours. As an M.D. I might recuse myself from the debate. My experience has taught me that only two things really help with my disease: medications and electroconvulsive therapy. As the disease is cyclical, you can have good years off meds. But if your diagnosis is correct, the disease will come back and you'll find yourself on meds again. Treatment has truly saved my life. The disease never goes away. It's real, it's historic, and we are lucky to live in an age where treatment is available. I would definitely doubt the diagnosis of anyone who goes off of their meds and stays healthy for the remainder of their lives. For me depression is much more of a mind-mangler than medications. I find a lot of misinformed polemics on this thread and I say that more as a patient than a doctor. BTW, I'm going to add your link to my blog. Feel free to reciprocate! CE Posted by: C. E. Chaffin at January 24, 2008 02:53 PMCongratulations, Mr Dawdy. And thank you for sharing your experiences -- if all goes well for you, who knows how many others may work up the courage to try living without psychotropics? No pressure. :) Wes, I believe you. I wish THAT treatment option were more easily found. Tracy Posted by: Tracy at January 24, 2008 08:32 PMCongratulations on coming off psychiatric drugs. Six months without medication is just great. Last year being off my Lithium was like being taken out of the freezer. My emotions were so free. I laughed often and more freely. My face took on a different look - being so relaxed. My eyes lost that dark colour and became a lot brighter. It is a good idea to get your photo taken and compare it to an old photo. It is very inspiring to read so many blogs and indeed to read so many positive comments on being off psych meds. Thank you for sharing with us. Posted by: Ametyst at January 26, 2008 04:17 PMI was out of town when you posted this or would have added my congratulations too, maybe not so much on coming off the meds although that certainly is an accomplishment, but more on providing support to so many others who may finally for the first time ever consider this as a viable option for themselves too and learn something about how to go about it and what to look for, like the fact if they start to feel bad after coming off maybe they should hold on for awhile and realize it might just be a rebound reaction from the meds and not their own "character disorder" that's creating the problem. Honestly I hope many of your readers take heart and courage from your journey and those of other commenters and blast their way to freedom from a treatment paradigm that is ironically harmful to good mental and physical health and disempowering to those who follow it. Posted by: Sara at January 26, 2008 05:46 PMI have to share that I am experiencing the same success in life without the meds. I was on Trileptal, Lithium, Zyprexa, Buspar, Cymbalta, Adderall, and Ambien, all at once. At least, I think that all of them. Chaffin: With your wishlist of psy-meds for your own (bogus?) ailment, and your despondent remarks about the drug-free route, you sound awfully like a shill for Big Pharma. Posted by: Eileen at January 30, 2008 05:59 PMI hope that everyone here can live meds free without symptons. I was diagnosed early psychosis in 1984 when I was eighteen, after taking haloperidol for one year and discontinued. Within this 21 years no apparent symptons found. Till 2006 I relapsed and misdiagnosed atrophy in the brain;delirium due to continuous alcohol drinking,so taking halodol decreasing by months for 4 months and stopped by doctor but the delusion,hallucination returned after few months and hospitalised. Afterwards I was diagnosed paranoid schizophrenia and put on risperidone 2mg since June 2007.I quit drinking beer as well. The doctor told me to take I think it is wonderful you got off them. I am very bad side effects from the drugs I take (cymbalta, wellbutrin XL, seroquel, depakote ER) that I would be willing to be admitted to a hospital to be taken off. I am 65 yrs old and been on them for 8 yrs and would like to spend my remaining life without the side effects, BAD weight gain, hungry all the time, sweating, hot flashes, insomnia, tired all the time, etc. Donna Posted by: Donna at February 27, 2008 06:34 PMPost a comment
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