// μ = m // dayvan cowboy // music is math

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.

I NEVER SHOULD HAVE WRITTEN THIS POST. I was manic, trying to drug myself out of it, and I used broken, terse english that recquires extra reader attention to get the point. Antpsychotics are not nootropics. Risperidone won’t make you smarter. I addressed these points on a comment, but this has become the primary driver of traffic to this website, so it should be STRESSED OUT.

Risperidone makes me smarter.

This is not the first time a drug is introduced in my cocktail for circumstantial reasons and has deep, nontrivial effects. Apparently antipsychotics make me smarter, and since I’ve been taking more of them than I should — even though they make me depressed and I’m only supposed to take them for two weeks ending thursday — I’m switching to Geodon, which is supposed to work the same, not mess with your hormones (making me smelly and even more girly) and be a mild antidepressant too.

So, wait, is this just for bipolar people who were really really smart to begin with, but had their wits fogged down by the illness (something which I have felt), or is there smart sauce in antipsychotics which is being kept from the general population as part of a giant conspiracy?

I think it’s pretty much obvious from the phrasing which version I subscribe to, but what if more people are just fogged down and can be cleared up with antipsychotics?

Is this another “Psychiatry is underutilized” rant? Yes. Is there even such a category? It seems so .. obvious, so generative. Anyway, more young people who feel their (even mild) emotional problems have fogged their brilliance over the years should consult psychiatry.

And that symbol in the title is a bad attempt at a turnstile.