Immanence

Recently been taking antipsychotics

All the drugs I’ve taken for most of my psychiatric life — except for that brief contact with bupropion — have been anticonvulsants. And I’ve actually been okay, oscillating between mild hypomania and no hypomania at all. Remember, I started psychiatric drugs because of depression, which hasn’t happened for more than a night or two since I started treatment.

Then somehow I got into the (hypo)mania that wouldn’t stop. I’d take 6 or 8mg of clonazepam and still be awake all night. Spending massive amounts of money in luxury stuff like $250 headphones or a 160gb iPod. So we finally entered the strange world of atypical antipsychotics. I had learned a lot about anticonvulsants, but this is brave new world to me.

For a while I though they were horrible drugs that silence the chatter inside your head. 1.5mg o risperidone made me smart — as in shutting out all other stimuli that made it difficult to concentrate on the smarter stuff. 2mg made me a bot.

We’re phasing risperidone now and introducing Seroquel. Like with risperidone I’m quite liking the effect — which is very different — but I’m not at the final dose yet. OTOH, I’m still on risperidone, so I might be on the right track regarding antipsychotics.

I’m getting pleasure waves around 6PM everyday, and my first theory was that that could just be the Seroquel (which has a half-life of 7 hours only) wearing off and leaving the 4mg clonazepam that’s still on my daily cocktail. But, hey, I’m on minimal doses of Seroque, and that’s supposed to hit your H1 receptors first, which could mean I’m only getting a sedative — or maybe it’s enough for the antipsychotic effect to kick in — and no one in the world can tell. And I’m on risperidone as well.

Maybe the antipsychotics don’t cut out the pleasure effect of clonazepam — and the pleasure effect of clonazepam has just been wildly delayed by my manic wiring, or maybe Seroquel is augmenting the antidepressant effect of lamotrigine. But why? Why at that precise time? And why at 300mg of lamotrigine, which is supposed to be already antimanic as well as antidepressant.

My weird brain chemistry and the complicated drug cocktail (and, hey, we’ve phased out Topamax) makes it pretty much impossible to find out why I have about 90 minutes of heaven starting around 5:30-6pm. And I don’t know if that’ll still happen on full Seroquel (and no risperidone).

With all this confusion (and a tougher time at work) I haven’t touched the book since the last time I wrote a non-photo post. I really should make it a habit to write 30 minutes of the worst drivel everyday so the good stuff can bloom or be nitpicked.

Breadcrumb trails:

160gb Ipod, All;, Anticonvulsants, Antidepressant Effect, Atypical Antipsychotics, Brave New World, Bupropion, Clonazepam, depression, drugs, Headphones, Hypo Mania, Hypomania, Lamotrigine, mania;, Massive Amounts, Psychiatric Drugs, Receptors, Risperidone, Sedative, Seroque, Seroquel, Stimuli, Strange World, USD

Related posts:

• (antipsychotics = nootropics) |- an antipsychiatry nightmare? I NEVER SHOULD HAVE WRITTEN THIS POST. I was manic, trying to drug myself out of it, and I used...
• New cocktail After a period of mostly funny (except when racing thoughts outpaced myself, rendering me semi-catatonic) hypomania, I sunk into a...
• Three Buzzing Conditions The "three buzzing conditions" are epilepsy, bipolar disorder and migraine.The mainstream medical explanation for both epilepsy and migraine involve convulsions (seizures) triggered by abnormal electrical activity...

© 2008 μ = m // dayvan cowboy // music is math ↵.