Paradoxical Reactions from Benzos amplifying existing psychosis[Long post]

[Ligaturd]

I have had alcohol psychosis before. I chugged a mickey of whiskey (13 oz of 40 percent whiskey) 3 times in one day on top of taking 5mgs lorazepam in the morning with the first mickey. I can't be sure the lorazepam was the cause of this episode but it definitely potentiated the alcohol and I have read of alcohol psychosis before. I was actually seeing letters appearing on my bedroom wall in what appeared to be blood telling me to kill myself and that it was the end of the world. I did actually try to take the lock off my brothers gun and shoot myself (it was actually loaded for some reason). I was uncontrollable and irrational and it seemed so real. The episode faded into alcohol poisoning and being sick for a week.

I wonder if this happened through a similar mechanism to what you experienced? although I have never had a paradoxical reaction to taking benzodiazepines on their own before. I have experienced it a few times before this with just alcohol as well. Maybe it only happens to those of us with a predisposition to psychotic symptoms? I have been going through a psychosis lately, it's very important to remain grounded and to be able to differentiate between what is real and what is a delusion or one can get lost.

If psychosis is caught early and with professional help, the person is able to understand what is a hallucination and what isn't, people can heal and avoid full blown schizophrenia. This is what I was told from the man that works with the psychosis team at the hospital. If these delusions are allowed to root themselves and be unchallenged the damage can accumulate and get worse. Schizophrenia does cause actual physical changes to the brain but there have been cases where people have healed and come out of it. I have been challenging various hallucinations I have been having and proving to myself what is real and what isn't and I seem to have much more control over how negatively these episodes affect me. I can retain control over my mind and my emotions.

 

[RusselDunbar]

I have had alcohol psychosis before. I chugged a mickey of whiskey (13 oz of 40 percent whiskey) 3 times in one day on top of taking 5mgs lorazepam in the morning with the first mickey. I can't be sure the lorazepam was the cause of this episode but it definitely potentiated the alcohol and I have read of alcohol psychosis before. I was actually seeing letters appearing on my bedroom wall in what appeared to be blood telling me to kill myself and that it was the end of the world. I did actually try to take the lock off my brothers gun and shoot myself (it was actually loaded for some reason). I was uncontrollable and irrational and it seemed so real. The episode faded into alcohol poisoning and being sick for a week.

I wonder if this happened through a similar mechanism to what you experienced? although I have never had a paradoxical reaction to taking benzodiazepines on their own before. I have experienced it a few times before this with just alcohol as well. Maybe it only happens to those of us with a predisposition to psychotic symptoms? I have been going through a psychosis lately, it's very important to remain grounded and to be able to differentiate between what is real and what is a delusion or one can get lost.

If psychosis is caught early and with professional help, the person is able to understand what is a hallucination and what isn't, people can heal and avoid full blown schizophrenia. This is what I was told from the man that works with the psychosis team at the hospital. If these delusions are allowed to root themselves and be unchallenged the damage can accumulate and get worse. Schizophrenia does cause actual physical changes to the brain but there have been cases where people have healed and come out of it. I have been challenging various hallucinations I have been having and proving to myself what is real and what isn't and I seem to have much more control over how negatively these episodes affect me. I can retain control over my mind and my emotions.

Absolutely, I have, every time I have had alcohol, enough to feel the effects of it, had an alcohol induced psychotic episode.
I just realized that short time ago, after I posted this tread here that of course are the effects that people are seeking from pouring them silly of alcohol, not the same as I feel them. Because I just get detached from my own body and soul, my environment, get paranoid delusions and hallucinations. It's pretty amazing really.

But I do agree, that it is quite possible that psychosis from Benzodiazepines could only be experienced if you're predisposed to psychosis. That's more than a possibility in my mind.

It was the strangest thing, and still is the strangest thing I know of, that the Xanax actually caused this major psychotic break of mine, for two whole weeks. That not 40 minutes after ingesting the 0.5mg tablet, I entered one of the most severe psychotic episodes of my life, something I'd never felt before as the voices were a lot stronger than during those childhood episodes of mine. 40 minutes, 40 minutes, 40 MINUTES! Isn't that about the exactly the same amount of time it takes for the pill to dissolve in my stomach and enter my system? I think so, that's at least about the time with other medications.

I think my theory certainly is bulletproof and no longer a theory but a fact after those findings of mine about the 'Agitated Toxic Psychosis'. I feel as though that instead of me, personally, becoming agitated, that the psychosis itself fed of of my preexisting agitation, anger and rage which I had bottled up over the years which caused those incredibly violent delusions, hallucinations and ideations.

All I need now is some expert, someone who's willing to confirm this whole thing for me. That it is in fact possible.

Can you guys find some sense in this, what I consider a fact?

My mother came up with a great theory actually the other day, about that other thing I wish to find out about. She said that she thought that my body took the Xanax so hard, even for a tiny dose only for those two weeks, that the eighteen month psychotic period in my life after those two weeks were really just withdrawals from the drug.

I know it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but it's actually something to think about being possible. even though I'm almost certain that it's not, possible that is.

And you're absolutely right, I've heard that too that if the psychosis is caught early, the person in question can be thought to control it, learn what is a hallucination, delusion and irrational paranoia and what isn't. And after a successful treatment, it can actually be cured and the brain damage that the Schizophrenia induces can actually be reversed. Healed!

It's just that what happens during my episodes are these feelings called Derealization and Depersonalization which made it extremely difficult to see what was real and what wasn't, during my episodes. All of a sudden I felt as if all my thoughts were sent from an external source, into my head. As if my thoughts were being transmitted into me. So realizing which thought was mine and which thought was a hallucination deemed extremely difficult.

My voices described them selves as being entirely internal, as in Intrusive Thoughts, rather than me hearing them with my ears as some people get them. So, again, it makes them much more harder to detect than the usual hearing-with-the-ears voices, when I get these Deralization and Depersonalization feelings.

Here's actually a depiction/illustration of what it sometimes feels like in the first person perspective this Derealization thing.
http://i.imgur.com/1xr8IjY.gifv
Quite amazing how accurate it is, only someone who's experienced it first hand could have made this. What amazes me even more about this is how I don't even remember half of what I went through during a psychotic episode, yet this guy managed to depict/illustrate it perfectly. Absolutely spot on!

But about your suicide attempt, I don't care what you call it, having the intent to shoot one self, no matter how far away one is from said gun, is a suicide attempt in my eyes, there being this whole meditating process you'll have to go through first in order to accept your faith, or that's at least what I felt.

When I tried to kill myself, during those two weeks of me being psychotic on the Xanax, there was this uncontrollable force inside of me which seemed to force me to act on those feelings and ideations I was having. Does that ring any bells for you? Just this uncontrollable thing that pushed me towards death. As if something took over my consciousness and forced me to act on the idea that killing one self might be the only and best way out of this horrid nightmare we call psychosis. And exactly, I felt irrational, uncontrollable and unreal. There was something inside of me, not sure if it was the delusions or the hallucinations, that had convinced me that if I died here and there, by my own hand, I'd wake up as soon as I died in some sort of incredible magical world. World filled with the people I loved and could be there with those individuals until eternity ran out. That it'd be the real world I'd wake up into. That this world, this incredibly unrealistic world of mine was just a dream and in order to wake up, I had to kill myself.

It's amazing how these psychotic disorders work. Being able to override ones consciousness and just control you as if you were an Radio Controlled Car.

Anyways, I hope this post isn't too much of a bother to read, it being pretty long. And I just wish you a happy Sunday and I hope the sun is shining bright for you over there in Canada, if that's your actual location

 

[RusselDunbar]

Great news guys, After sending my long time, then secondary, now primary and only psychiatrist an extensive letter about my history with psychosis, the past and the present, he actually answered this question for me.

Well, the first one anyway.

I've come to the conclusion, using evidence I found on the web as well as evidence directly from my psychiatrists mouth, that what I felt as slight paranoia, a full year before the faithful two weeks, was in fact not only the Schizophrenia trying to break loose, but actually the prodromal period of the Schizophrenia starting. As some of you actually know, the prodromal period works much like this figure, the arrows actually pointing on to the build up of the prodrome, that arrow(1) pointing to the lowest point would have been my slight paranoia.

While number 5 is actually pointing towards the highest point of the prodrome, the first major psychotic episode itself.

What I believe happened was that this prodrome for the Schizophrenia started whenever I started talking/feeling about this paranoia in 2013 and got medicated with Risperdal for, even though it did absolutely null to those symptoms I was feeling.
It then building up in severity, the paranoia at least, as I always felt it to become a bigger and bigger part of my life, until I started taking the Xanax, and like you know already, me entering a brutal psychotic episode not 40 minutes after my first ingestion of it, lasting for two weeks or until I stopped taking said medication.

What only makes sense that happened there is that somewhere between arrows 3 and 5 being the point I started taking the Xanax, it actually managed to skip the rest of the prodrome for the Schizophrenia and throw me even harder into the abyss that is psychosis consequently.

How long my prodrome would have lasted if I'd never actually taken the Xanax, I guess I'll never know, but I know this for sure; That if I had been allowed to continue on the path of the prodrome, eventually feeling more and more symptoms, varying in severity, but the prodrome period allowing me to become more used to these symptoms as they would have come over me steadily and gracefully, more so that being thrown into the deep end with just a teeny tiny paranoid warning, I probably wouldn't have been hit so hard with the psychosis during the my first Schizophrenia related episode.

That's it, I figure I've successfully solved the riddle.

And if we delve even further, than it's pretty safe to say that this prodromal period of mine lasted for almost all of my childhood, through my teens and into my twenties/adulthood. Because I've felt the negative symptoms, and my family noticed negative symptoms, ever since I was a small child.

This could potentially be the missing piece of the puzzle I've been looking for this whole time. This could be the reason for my socail withdrawal around the age of, I don't know, whenever I remember my first conscious thought. Why I've always felt as if the toothbrush had some plot against me and why I've never been much for hobbies, aside fro playing around in my own head.

If you want me to simplify this theory of mine that I have come to the conclusion of being confirmed, as it all adds up, even to my so called 'behavioral' problems as a child, I would put it like this;

Imagine this one guy(The psychotic episode of the Schizophrenia) waiting for the end of the world. But he's slowly watching, plotting his plan(The prodromal period), but get's sick and tired of waiting for the Americans, Russians and North-Koreans(The prodromal psychotic symptoms) to get with the plan, 20 years from now, so he decides to hack all the nuclear weapons'(Xanax) launch silos around the world and just launch a preemptive strike on everyone, ending the world as we know it in a blaze of nuclear power(The initial two week psychotic episode).

I know you guys understood the it the first time I explained it, I just did this explanation for the pure laugh-factor of it.

What my psychiatrist agreed with me on, in case I didn't mention that already, was the fact that the Xanax pushed me into this famous two week psychotic episode of mine. That other stuff is just something I realized today, after him confirming that initial thing for me two days ago.

Does anyone agree with this half confirmed theory of mine? That this is at all possible?

Anyone know of someone who's keen in the psychiatric world and would be willing to have me ask him/her questions about all this?

It actually being wrong what I said first, this not only explaining that first question of mine, but the second one as well.

I find it pretty amazing that me, a total loser at school, college dropout and just a complete half-asser in general could puzzle all this together from scratch. Maybe I'm not that dumb after all, maybe it's right when people tell me I'm highly intelligent. ME simply not believing them because of this strong belief(Delusion perhaps?) that I'm the dumbest little turdstain in the universe. Because I was raised with both of my sibling brothers telling me that as if it were a fact, over and over again.

So again, is this at all plausible in your guys' minds? Do any of these ramblings of mine make sense, at all?

Let me know! :D

Peace and Love to you and everyone around you as I was seriously thinking of killing myself these past few days and this, putting this together, being the only thing that could possibly shine a glimmer of light in my life.

 

[RusselDunbar]

Raysu, Ligaturd, where're my peeps at?

I'd love you guys' opinion on this "new" theory of mine :D