Paradoxical Reactions from Benzos amplifying existing psychosis[Long post]

[RusselDunbar]

Hey there,

The fine people at /r/Drugs on Reddit pointed me to you guys.
The thing is, I have this question burning on my mind,
it's been on there for two whole years and has become somewhat of an obsession.

I'm no specialist at all of this, no PhD or M.D. or anything like that here.
My only knowledge about all this is what I've scrounged around on the internet.

I guess some backstory is major key.

Here comes a copy/paste from a Reddit post I made a few months ago,
Simply because I don't have the stamina to write it all up again, the Speed wearing off and all.

So, The thing is, I got put on Xanax or Tafil Retard as it was called a couple of years back. I was starting a new job after a long time unemployed, with people that knew me but I didn't know them which made me very anxious and uneasy. So, My psychiatrist prescribed me Tafil Retard which is basically just Xanax.

ME: "Cool!", until however I googled the name and found out it was Xanax, one of the most controversial drugs in the history of prescription medications. I read that people have actually died from the withdrawal and it's HIGHLY addictive and abused.


"Well, what can you do" I thought and popped one right before my first day, I don't remember the dosage but it was tiny, so tiny that there was no chance of getting addicted for those two weeks I took it.


Everything started okay, I drove those 20km to work, entered, said hello to everyone and was constantly waiting for that legendary "I don't give a fuuuuuuuck" high I had read so much about.


But after a while something happened, things started to change, I felt like I was in a dream. All the senses got fucked up, I started hearing these whispers and shouts from inside my head and got super paranoid that everyone was listening, following, looking at me.


I didn't understand it then but now I know it was psychosis. I just thought these were real thoughts, I't was my conscience talking to me, like it does sometimes, right?


I go through a couple of days like this, I fall asleep like this, I wake up like this. One night I had to escort my sister and her class along with other guardians/parents to the movies and I remember how I got extremely claustrophobic, heard everyone talking about me, making fun of me, telling me to kill myself and felt as if there were millions of cameras, all pointed at me.


The movie was finally over, I got out of the theater and into my car along with my sister and her best friend. On the way home I'm fine, at least until I drop off my sisters friend. After that the voices started again, telling me to kill myself, my sister, driving at top speed off the road and crashing into the next thing I saw. I broke down, I love my sister, I never want anything bad to happen to her so I just try to drive slow and steady, crying my eyes out. She must have been like "Whuuuuuuuuuut, the movie wasn't that bad"(It was Bad Neighbors with Seth Rogan and Zac Effron btw, so yes, it was pretty bad, but it wasn't because of that.)


I arrive at home where I break down completely on the couch next to my mom and tell her about everything. She shrugs it off as just something, you know, else... And I just go to sleep crying.


The next day she wakes me up for work and I get this big knot in my stomach, telling me not to go in because something awful is going to happen, That I'm going to do something awful to my co-workers. I tell my mother just to call the nice lady who owned the greenhouse(Where I worked), they knew each other from living in the same county for twenty years, and tell her I quit.


After that I feel like I've let everyone down, myself, since this was my first big job in a long time, my parents, since I finally was getting out of the house for something else than just a Lay's bag and a Mtn. Dew and my co-workers and supervisor for losing an employee.


The voices came back, told me to hurt and kill myself. Which I did, thinking it was my own inner monologue talking, so I started slicing up my leg with the intention of killing myself later.


Most people, as you probably know, slice their arms first because it's quite easy to get to them, I however loved the idea that I would survive this so I decided to start cutting my legs so, IF I survived, people wouldn't see the scars.


I wrote my suicide letter, named names of previous bullies, teachers and some other folks who made me feel bad through out history and made arrangements for all my stuff, along with my gaming computer tower, my most priced possession, which I was going to give to my sister.


I was holding the knife, bloodier than the rarest stake in the world, and was beginning slicing up my, what do you call'em, arteries, when my mom knocked on my door and asked me if I'd like to go to the psychiatric hospitals E.R. I was feeling so bad, I didn't want to go through with what I was about to do, so I just said "Oh god yes. Let's go!"


My father, my mother and I all drove to the hospital which was aprox. 100km away. Me feeling like shit. Voices telling me to off my self, off my parents and everything in close proximity. We arrived at the hospital and met with this very nice lady. One thing which constantly shocks me to this day is remembering when she asked me why I did all this and me saying "There is something inside me that told me to do this."


It shocks me thinking about this. How crazy it sounded, but it was all too real, for me, my parents and everyone around me. The nice doctor lady didn't want to take me off the Xanax unless my psychiatrist gave the green light, I got offered to stay a few nights but my prejudice against psychiatric hospitals and mentally ill people stopped me in accepting that offer.


We went Back home and got an appointment with my psychiatrist, which took me off the Xanax a few days later. As soon as I stopped taking the Xanax, everything went away. The voices, the delusions and the paranoia. Everything went quiet. As if I had actually killed myself. It was amazing, I don't think I've ever felt as good in my life. It all just stopped.

Do you think this story ends there? No, sorry, it doesn't. Ever since those faithful two weeks, I entered psychosis around 2-4 times a week for eighteen months. Some psychiatrists even go as far as saying that I never left the psychosis, that these eighteen months were one non-stop psychotic episode.

I do remember, after doing some digging during Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, anxiety induced psychotic episodes before all this happened. Long before, since early childhood, ever since I can remember.

I would get derealized, depersonalized, hallucinate, get extremely strong and powerful delusions along with paranoia and sometimes those mixed together into paranoid delusions.

Ever since I was a small child. I can't believe it myself, but I, now, highly suspect that I was born with some sort of prodromal Schizophrenia. Something that lies in wait, waiting to be triggered so it can strike, like a terrorist sleeper cell.

My question how ever is;

I know for a fact, and has it been confirmed by a number of psychiatrists and psychologists that I endured during those two weeks I had this major psychotic break, the Paradoxical Reactions of the Xanax. That the Xanax, instead of relieving anxiety, stress and pressure as it's supposed to do, did the exact opposite, induced more anxiety, stress and pressure, so much so that my brain couldn't handle it anymore and I entered psychosis. I went full on psychotic at work.

Now, I'm crystal clear on that part. For those of you not knowing what Paradoxical Reactions are, they are often called Benzo Rage from Benzodiazepines. But instead of getting ticked off as I keep hearing about people getting sometimes when they abuse Benzos, I got psychotic.

I haven't been able to dig up anything about anyone this has happened to on the internet, that Benzos can actually turn you psychotic, which leads me to believe that this is rare. So rare that there's nothing about it easily found on the internet. Which tells me that it's rarer than you'd even think. Because you can find some rare stuff on this internet we have here.

But again, I'm crystal clear on that part. However, what I'm wondering, is that whether the Xanax or the psychosis caused by the Xanax could have amplified this existing psychosis, this prodromal Schizophrenia if you will, into the full fledged Schizophrenia I have today? That the initial psychotic episode that happened over those two weeks during MAy of 2014, caused directly from the Xanax, could have pulled the Schizophrenia I have today out of it's dirty, disease ridden lair and into the open air?

As I said, those psychotic episodes I was having every couple of days, sometimes two days in a row, were completely unrelated to all anxiety. I could have been doing anything, relieving stress the old fashioned way, if you catch my drift, and out of the blue comes a psychotic episode.

So, I ask again, just to be clear; Is it at all possible that the Xanax possibly broke something inside my head that brought on this permanent disease I have today and will most likely have for the rest of my life?
I'm of course not saying that it wouldn't have eventually come out of it's shell, maybe.
I just refuse that it was all a coincidence, me having such a bad reaction to Xanax, AND possibly the onset of the Schizophrenia, a potentially life threatening disease, I have today.

Is it possible that the Xanax is at fault here?

I'm coming to you guys for your expert opinions, I've asked some nut jobs on other forums about this which they believed Benzos being the most innocent little child there is, never causing anyone harm, but I'm tired of getting those answers, from people who know exactly nothing about any of this, while I've studied exactly this for quite some time and have come to the conclusion, which my specialists agree on, that the Paradoxical Reactions from the Xanax caused that major psychotic break of mine.

I'll be forever grateful for what ever useful answers you provide me, and do I wish you all a merry chrismtas and a happy new year!

 

[Ligaturd]

Absolutely, it is rare but some people get the exact opposite effect from benzodiazepines and it is as you called it, a paradoxical reaction. I haven't read into it in depth but when people get this, they get extremely agitated and anxious and if there was an underlying psychosis this could definitely bring it out. Just extreme amounts of life stress can bring it out in some people, kind of like what happened with me.

 

[RusselDunbar]

Absolutely, it is rare but some people get the exact opposite effect from benzodiazepines and it is as you called it, a paradoxical reaction. I haven't read into it in depth but when people get this, they get extremely agitated and anxious and if there was an underlying psychosis this could definitely bring it out. Just extreme amounts of life stress can bring it out in some people, kind of like what happened with me.

What happened to you, if I might ask? Something similar to what ever it was that happened to me?

Thank you for your response by the way, it clears up some stuff. Cant wait for more people to share their opinions though, I'm, as always, all ears!

 

[RusselDunbar]

Is bumping allowed on this board? Well, judging by the importance of these questions, I'm doing it anyway. I want anyone with half a brain to comment and share their opinions and if you happen to know anything about any of this, even if it's just about psychosis or some other small part of the original inquiry, please do bring it. I'm a big boy, I can take it!

 

[Raysu]

I think this may be useful to you ?:http://www.benzo.org.uk/breggin.htm

 

[RusselDunbar]

I think this may be useful to you ?:http://www.benzo.org.uk/breggin.htm

I wrote a long ass reply on my phone a couple of days back, to this post. Went to edit a mistake and accidentally deleted the whole thing. How I managed to do that is beyond me, but it happened. Hahahaha


Thank you for your reply, I have in fact seen this site before. Having scoured it for answers, some I've found, others I did not.

I consider it a fact that the Paradoxical Reactions from the Xanax caused me to go psychotic for the two weeks that I took the drug, it inducing enough stress and anxiety to push me over the edge from the Northern part of town to the Southern(Cities always getting worse the farther south you go, A little joke I heard somewhere, a cookie for whom ever knows where!). So I'm pretty set on that 'fact'. One of the supporting factors being that as soon as I stopped taking the drug, the day after last ingestion, those psychotic symptoms went away. But, this leads me to my question, a couple of days after those two weeks, I started having psychotic episodes quite regularly, as regularly as some people tend to shower. Sometimes every other day, sometimes every third day. It even happened a few times two days in a row.

What I'm specifically looking for an answer to is; Can the Paradoxical Reactions of Xanax(Alprazolam) induce full fledged Schizophrenia or trigger Childhood Onset/Prodromal Schizophrenia? In theory of course the question being, me not expecting to find any examples of it really, since there was simply nada to find pertaining to this online.

I hope you've got some answers for me. As I might have mentioned I sent Professor Malcolm Lader an email, asking if he was the right man to give me some answer, to which he responded, pointing me to the Wikipedia page for Paradoxical Reactions. After I got that mail, I apologized for not sending him my question in the first post as I wanted to introduce myself and inquire if he was the right man for the job but promising more information if I got a response. Which I of course stood by, one hundred percent, sending him everything I remember about these two weeks and eighteen months. And finally asking the question, he has yet to get back to me, this all happening during the weekend, so I'm okay with him not getting back to me yet, what with the man being allowed a couple of days off during the busy work week.

Anyways, Peace and love, you guys. And thank you for the answers you've already brought me.

 

[Raysu]

No worries I've done that before after long messages and poof wtf it's gone. Well I'm not a chemist by any means and you've no doubt researched it a great deal more than I but if I were to have to respond to your question my calculated response would be leaning to: no I don't see Xanax as bringing out a dormant disorder so much as adversely effecting your biology and creating a psychosis of extreme level. Even at low doses and for something I wanna say as brief as two weeks use I do feel it may have altered some part of how you function and that is the source of the residual psychosis break trough moments. Are they less severe in comparison? My hunch would be the "damage" takes time to resolve and replace at the cellular level. Perhaps a neurologist would be of merit far more than a psychiatrist though that's good too. Again not my field of expertise but it's what my gut and intellect have agreed upon since you so sincerely asked for help. ?

 

[RusselDunbar]

No worries I've done that before after long messages and poof wtf it's gone. Well I'm not a chemist by any means and you've no doubt researched it a great deal more than I but if I were to have to respond to your question my calculated response would be leaning to: no I don't see Xanax as bringing out a dormant disorder so much as adversely effecting your biology and creating a psychosis of extreme level. Even at low doses and for something I wanna say as brief as two weeks use I do feel it may have altered some part of how you function and that is the source of the residual psychosis break trough moments. Are they less severe in comparison? My hunch would be the "damage" takes time to resolve and replace at the cellular level. Perhaps a neurologist would be of merit far more than a psychiatrist though that's good too. Again not my field of expertise but it's what my gut and intellect have agreed upon since you so sincerely asked for help. ?

Thats exactly why i find it so extremely unlikely, i took the second lowest dose and that once a day for two weeks. Thats nothing. It even says on than benzo.ork.uk site, another page than you posted, that the Paradoxical Reactions usually happen to either children or the elderly, more frequent than the other age groups.
Thats the problem im having, both the posibilities of it being a coincidece and that i had the Paradoxical Reactions are so highly unlikely. Equally unlikely Id say. The timing being impeccable for the coincidence to happen, so impeccable that if thats in fact the reality, im thinking of callin the guinnes book of world records to have them dot it down for the most amazing timing in the world hahahaha.

But yes there was a little differance between the initial psychotic episode, the two week long one, and the ones happening after that during those eighteen months of mine. The main differance being that i had more paranoid delusions and sometimes the voices didnt come out to play(which was rare but happened enough to be noticeable) during those eighteen months. That being the only real differance. Otherwise it was just as intense, just didnt last so long, it usually working to sleep at least 6 hours to get rid of the psychosis, but if it was that simple i wouldnt be complaining for it being very hard to fall asleep with a raging soccer stadium in your head, England vs. Russia playing.

Interesting theory however. But what ever damage happened was enough for me to meet the diagnostic criteria for Schizophrenia, more than enough even. Which makes me wonder.... lets say you are correct, when whatever station of the brain got damage, most likely the dopamine production centers of the brain, is it possible that i could quit my medications some day and never experiencing psychosis again, after the brain successfully repairs itself? That it is in fact not the permanent Schizophrenia, rather brain damage that acts exactly like Schizophrenia.
Ive heard of people actually go medicine free after some time, would that be the same thing? The damage to the dopamine centers just healed itself and everyone's happy, psychosis free for the rest of their life? Am i understandig you correctly?

About the specialist you mentioned instead of the psychiatrist, i did contact the neuroscience or somethin like that department of King's University or College in London after i realized i just sent an email to the first person i found, that beind Prof. Lader. Im awaiting a reply, the guy that handlea that email i sent the letter too is on a break and vill return June 15th.

 

[bingey]

Maybe it was just rebound effects tied to alprazolams short half life and lack of metabolites. .... it occurs a lot in users of strong gabaergics with short half life such as ghb and ethanol and in this case delirium tremens would be a more accurate description than paradoxical reaction.

 

[RusselDunbar]

Heres some more, actually mentioning the paradoxical effects. My theory adds up it seems, all aside from the obvious 'agitated' part of the induced psychosis as i was any thing but, being terrified of everything that was happening, even what i precieved to be another dimension.

 

[RusselDunbar]

How the actual fuck do i keep deleting my posts? Fucking shit, it took time writing what i just deleted on a phone...

 

[Raysu]

Atypical things happen in science everyday and anatomy can have slight to major variations. If your super sensitivity to Xanax invoked rapid significant damage only time will tell if the body is capable of healing said damage. It's plausible....person ok, person takes substance that alters something, person stops substance and body responds adversely, person refrains from substance and body heals gradually. The increases time between episodes gives hope that at least something is resolving. Run with it! And that's a damn good reason to pay more attention to what is introduced to the body across the board.

 

[RusselDunbar]

Atypical things happen in science everyday and anatomy can have slight to major variations. If your super sensitivity to Xanax invoked rapid significant damage only time will tell if the body is capable of healing said damage. It's plausible....person ok, person takes substance that alters something, person stops substance and body responds adversely, person refrains from substance and body heals gradually. The increases time between episodes gives hope that at least something is resolving. Run with it! And that's a damn good reason to pay more attention to what is introduced to the body across the board.

I appreciate this response of yours. It being probably the most plausible explanation to what might or might not have happened to me.

But I see you said that the "increased time between episodes....." What increase? Did I mention that somewhere? The only increase in time between episodes being me taking the Abilify that smothers the positive symptoms, the episodes.

But it doesn't matter, you're probably right, "damn good reason to pay more attention to what is itroduced to the body across the board".

Maybe quitting all bullshit could help heal my brain, in case there's some sort of brain damage in there.

But I just sent a mail to some people, the APA, The American Psychiatric Association. And while writing that whole thing, just for kicks I copy/pasted it into the Reddit reply window, and it was not 10.000 letters, or 20.000 letters, but 29.XXX letters. Damn I can write... But yeah, while writing this whole thing, I started digging in my brain and I remember vivid hallucinations and delusions along with derealization and depersonalization ever since I was a small child. The Hallucinations being even more visual than they are today, them being almost exclusively auditory today. I remember what fellow psychosis sufferers call "Shadow People" for example, them being just shadows, no face, no skin color, just people made from shadows.

The hallucinations being more visual matches up with the whole Childhood Onset thing, but I still had some delusions. Nothing as severe as I was having a few times a week last year, but still, some delusions.

So I guess, from all this garbage, that I've just always been Schizophrenic. That I had Pediatric/Childhood Onset Schizophrenia or something like that.

I've been reading about Childhood Onset/Pediatric and I've gotta say, I see myself a lot in these writings, such as here:

http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/childhood-schizophrenia/basics/symptoms/con-20029260
http://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/conditions/psychosis-schizophrenia-children-and-youth

If all/most my problems as a child can be summed up into this Schizophrenia thing, I'd be one happy camper. To get to know that I was just insanely insane, that being the reason for me being so unstable us a child.

I just wish I had told someone about my, what I thought then was claustrophobia, but turned out to be psychotic episodes.

Why was I so afraid of people? Why couldn't I just tell them?

This is something I'll have to work on with a psychiatrist, preferably one of my existing ones, for a long time.

The thing that fears me about that is the fact that they'll probably think I'm lying, trying to become more unique or something like that. I'd at least think I was lying, me never having mentioned these psychotic episodes until I was 20 years old, when I had the longest and the worst one of them all.

What do you think, guys? Do you believe me when I say I remember all those symptoms from when I was a child? I could go as far as copy/pasting my recollections of those childhood psychotic incidents if you want, from the APA post.

So I guess the question is, Did the Alprazolam unwrap the Schizophrenia I have today? Is there/has there ever been a case where this has happened? As in, someone taking a Benzodiazepine and some underlying issue has awoken like a zombie from a grave? It having to dig itself those six feet/two meters through the dirt until it can finally stand in those two legs and start eating brains? Did my ingestion for those two weeks weaken my psyche, enough so to make the Schizophrenia come out, maybe, ahead of time or something? Was I maybe supposed to develop the onset of the Schizophrenia a couple of years later? But the Xanax just sped the time up, for the eventual to happen?
Were those two weeks just the Schizophrenia, induced by the Xanax, not from thin air I might add, digging and clawing it's way out from under all the dirt(My grey matter) that was pushed over the grave(My body)?

This is something I'll have to search for a little more, me only having found the proof of Alprazolam and Halcion actually inducing psychosis, and other adverse reactions, with a greater frequency than the other Benzodiazepines. Then in fact, being able to cause psychosis, that being the only thing I cared about from that sentence.

Prof. Malcolm Lader, not finding it professional to advice me himself since I'm already under the care of psychiatrists, actually pointed me towards searching literature, as in, going here: www.scholar.google.com and punching in some great search words and seeing if there actually exists some information on what you're looking for on paper rather than on the internet. This being a side of google I never knew about, me still having stumbled across it during my travels, but never realizing what it actually was. So even though there isn't a ton of information about this whole thing on the internet itself, not visible using google at least, there is still some to find using this literature search thingy, Google Scholar. But it appears as if it's just as difficult finding a combination of good words to search for because, as like google, it brings you anything containing the words you enter, and sometimes even leaving some words out of it, so maybe you'll have to search until page 63 for that thing you're looking for.

Anyways, thanks for now you guys, I will update if I do find something interesting.

Thanks for not calling me delusional, by the way, Although you are completely free to do so and don't I have any way of stopping you, me only finding it not that far fetched calling this a delusion.

Do you guys have some sort of faith in these theories of mine? Why haven't you called me delusional yet? Are you this polite that you're willing to let a young man delude himself into thinking he's on the verge of a major breakthrough just as long as he doesn't hurt himself or others, or do you actually believe in any of this in some way?

Or are you just indulging my insanity for laughs? Seeing how far I'm willing to go to satisfy my insanity?

(These last few questions being how you look at what you're doing, answering me. I of course appreciate it from heaven and back how helpful you guys, and most of the guys on Reddit have been, and in no way do I want you to stop helping, it's just that I've gotten so used to being called delusional or insane that I'm wondering why you guys haven't done the same as those few rotten, benzodiazepine-loving apples.)

 

[Raysu]

Me again haha and I wouldn't call people names except maybe in the lounge as a joke or to put someone in their place for out of line posts I guess. I can't fault you for wanting answers to what's going on and even if it's uncommon, that is how science meets individuality. If I used something that changed my world so much it would raise lots of questions for sure. And it's not uncommon to block memories for any reason. I often wonder if I am and just totally oblivious because my addiction took me to "a dark place" as my doctor put it and most feel something horrific occurred in childhood to take me down that road but I can't think of anything remotely close in nature to what most people suggest. Either my brain is a great protector or some day I have to simply concede to say there was no event and I just went way overboard simply because I wanted to. Either way it's in the past. With this new evidence if you were schizophrenic all along and just now recall memories to identify that then I'd think that your condition responded due to a sensitivity to the drug then not so much that it emerge so much as respond...like if you have an allergy to peanuts and suddenly were exposed and had a reaction. Not like the peanuts worsened or created or were the problem themselves but that your body in the presence of them had a severe response compared to people who have the same exposure but not the allergy. Hope that makes sense.

 

[RusselDunbar]

Me again haha and I wouldn't call people names except maybe in the lounge as a joke or to put someone in their place for out of line posts I guess. I can't fault you for wanting answers to what's going on and even if it's uncommon, that is how science meets individuality. If I used something that changed my world so much it would raise lots of questions for sure. And it's not uncommon to block memories for any reason. I often wonder if I am and just totally oblivious because my addiction took me to "a dark place" as my doctor put it and most feel something horrific occurred in childhood to take me down that road but I can't think of anything remotely close in nature to what most people suggest. Either my brain is a great protector or some day I have to simply concede to say there was no event and I just went way overboard simply because I wanted to. Either way it's in the past. With this new evidence if you were schizophrenic all along and just now recall memories to identify that then I'd think that your condition responded due to a sensitivity to the drug then not so much that it emerge so much as respond...like if you have an allergy to peanuts and suddenly were exposed and had a reaction. Not like the peanuts worsened or created or were the problem themselves but that your body in the presence of them had a severe response compared to people who have the same exposure but not the allergy. Hope that makes sense.

Thank you, friend. As the person I was before everything went down, those two weeks of psychosis and the eighteen months following that, I would have definitely called me, if I saw me posting this question, insane or delusional. But after I looked death in the eyes, eye to eye, during the moment I decided, or, well, the voices decided for me that it was time to end it all, but I was interrupted, thankfully, I wouldn't do that anymore, call people names. Point being; I was a terrible person before all this but I decided and learned to become better after this all happened as I had a new appreciation for life itself and the people in it. So if I'd see someone like me posting something like this now, I'd try to help in any way that I can, like you guys are obviously doing.

I am of sound mind and soul, by the way, not having had psychotic symptoms in some eight months.

But yeah, this makes perfect sense, what you're talking about being what I'm kind of asking about. Maybe my wording just wasn't up to code. should I maybe reformulate the question? You'll have to excuse me, I'm from a non-English speaking country, only passing one college course of English 103, barely passing with a six our of ten, hahaha, I was a terrible student.

Maybe the question could go something like this; Is it possible that my already congenital Schizophrenia was predisposed to the effects of the Benzodiazepine in question which might have led to the severe, eighteen month long psychotic period leading up to my Schizophrenia diagnosis?

Or do you have a better guess on how the question might go?

And do you happen to be able to put together some sort of series of search words I can enter into Scholar Google to search for literature on the matter?

This whole drug/medicinal/pharmaceutical/Doctor world is so new to me that I hardly know any words from it hahahaha.

 

[Raysu]

Well I guess it depends on the type of info you want to obtain....and your English is easy to understand by the way. If you want to find others like you perhaps post in the basic drug discussion thread something short and sweet like: benzos and schizophrenia for the the title then has anyone with schizophrenia gone into psychosis after taking benzos as the question. If it's only a short paragraph simply worded you may get more people to post their experiences and you can just post a link to the long thread here if they want to read more. If you want published stuff google scholar would be along the lines of how you posted here I would guess but I've never used that search engine maybe try: benzodiazepine induced schizophrenic flare.

 

[RusselDunbar]

Am I crazy, or does this suggest something, something of which I'm looking for?

"High dose therapy in acutely ill patients can causesedation, memory disorders, disinhibition, ataxia andrespiratory depression. Behavioral disinhibition is particularlya serious problem, as this side effect may mimican exacerbation of psychosis. This has been noted withclonazepam (Karson et al, 1982), alprazolam (Faucett etal, 1987; Feighner et al, 1984; Gardner & Cowdry, 1985;Rosenbaum et al, 1984) and other benzodiazepi ne preparationsas well. Ataxia may lead to fall and fractures inelderly. Excessive use in the hope of achieving a quickresponse may produce benzodiazepine toxicity.Respiratory depression can occur when combined withother central nervous system depressants. With long termuse, dependence, sexual side effects, mania (Bacher et al,1986) as well as depression have been reported."

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2978475/pdf/IJPsy-35-73.pdf Page 4/8.

Here being another interesting one, something about increased mortality in those that have comorbid Schizophrenia along with some sort of Anxiety Disorder with Benzodiazepine use. If I understand it correctly. This information you being able to find in the link below, the last paragraph on the first page. It, the Bonzo use, even decreasing the patient's functioning.

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11920-013-0354-7#page-2

I... I don't know, just read the whole thing in the link right above this text, me simply not understanding a lick of it.

I'm, although still rummaging around the literature/scholar section of google, awaiting responses from all those specialists I contacted with my inquiries. They can hopefully provide me with some answer to all this, so I don't have to go even more insane searching for the answer.

Just a little bit of information missing from this post, but was included in the letter I sent the APA;

One time I remember being inside one of the largest shopping malls in my country, I get separated from my parents somehow, don't remember the details, but as I'm walking towards them, inside this massive crowd of people, shopping, hanging around, eating, talking, all of a sudden I get these unrealistic feelings, start hearing people talk about me, to me even and see the people somehow grow even taller than me. As if they're trees and after a while, I'm like an infant compared to these massive 4+ meter tall people all around me. I remember this also happening at a football(I guess you call it soccer) stadium as we're spectating the game that's going on, I get invited, due to me being just a kid, to the kids section of the spectating area and I find my claustrophobia and social anxiety/stress increasing so much so that eventually I enter this state of psychosis.


That's what I blame those incidents on, claustrophobia and social anxiety/stress. What is Claustrophobia other than stress? And stress induced psychosis is a thing, right? So I guess most of my childhood psychotic episodes can be blamed on my stress exceeding normal, healthy limits and we all know what happens then.


I also remember times, completely separate to these episodes, those not really being episodes but more of what I thought was just me being extra careful and thinking differently than others.


Those incidents were mostly me being extremely terrified that my parents had installed spec-sized cameras all over the house, to monitor and spy on me while they were out and I was home alone or with my siblings.


And thees thoughts that have somehow followed me through all this, telling me what to do, what's best for me, why and what ever else I needed to know. I, of course, finding out these were hallucinations or "Intrusive Thoughts" as they're called within the Psychiatric community.


I remember them telling me to press a button on my dying grandfather's hospital bed, which I did, only to have the bed roll from one wall up against the other, the nurses coming into the room and fixing it, calling me adorable in the process.


Then there's another example, where I was at least 10 years older, where as my teacher is talking about what we spend monthly on our selves, I mention I spend roughly $250 a month on video games, my then main hobby, she takes it for an example and there's something inside of me telling me that she's making fun of me, succeeding and everyone is laughing at me. What they told me to do to stop this behavior, was to grab whatever wasn't bolted to the floor next to me and throw it at her. That thing, that thing that wasn't bolted to the floor next to me, being a metal chair which I proceeded to throw in an uncontrollable rage at her face, missing by only a few centimeters, yelling obscenities at her and storming out. The teacher followed, emotionally wrecked as I just tried to kill her, crying her eyes out, while all I saw was red, molten lava, extreme anger and hearing the thoughts cheering for me and my behavior.
This incident, not only caused me to go sleepless for a few days once I calmed down, but also traumatized the kids in my class.


This happened in tenth grade, or when I was 15 years old on my 16th year.


Then there was another incident in the tenth grade where we all went on a school trip in the end of the semester to Denmark, our ex-owners as you might now if you're worth your weight in geography or history, which I'm so far from being that it's not even funny. We arrive, I get these strange feelings but instead of telling someone about them I try to mask them along with my insecurities as I always did. One day the Danish kids we were staying with decide to throw a party, most of us being 15 year old's on the 16th year while the Danes were 16-18 year old's. Fine, they gather a whole brewery together and one rum distillery, straight from the sandy beaches of Cuba. And as soon as a stupid me takes his first strong alcoholic drink he begins feeling feelings he hadn't felt in years. Mostly being Derealization and Depersonalization but a hint of Hallucinations, Delusions and paranoia.


Have I tried drinking after this, and it's always the same story with the same psychotic symptoms. But after 12 hours of hard, first time, drinking, we go home and try to sleep it off. Me waking up in the morning after getting some sleep with these strangest feelings. The same feelings I'd felt while intoxicated but only more, both, auditory and visual hallucinations. I think that it's just my first hangover, or that I'm still a little drunk. After a few days however I came to the conclusion that it was my medication(Prozac), interacting with the alcohol and causing me to be drunk for all that time. These feelings got old quick as I began hallucinating what I've heard others prone to psychosis call "Shadow People" and those feelings didn't dissipate until I'd almost crawled back into my bed at home in Iceland, 4-5 days later.


All this, what I've been describing for the last half an hour, was something I thought everyone endured at some point in their life. That they heard these thoughts they didn't understand from inside of their heads, these strange ideas and mistrust, that you just felt that terrible when drinking and people just found these awful dreamlike feeling soothing or something, that being the reason for why alcohol is so popular. That this was something that everyone endured, but just wasn't talked about... Like... you know.... the Appendix... We all, or most of us, have one of those, yet.... it's so rarely talked about.


But it wasn't until I took Cognitive Behavioral Therapy at the program I'm in that I realized that all these things were psychotic episodes. So, what I'm basically trying to say is that, It's a pretty, pretty, pretty big possibility that I was just born a Schizophrenic, that I've been so severely sick my whole life. BUT! BUT, the psychosis never being a problem, it always something I was able to shrug off, either as something else or it just dissipated with time. It not becoming a problem until my first ingestion of the legendary Xanax, every drug addict's wettest dream.

Now that you have this information, isn't it quite safe to say that I was just born with Pediatric/Childhood Onset Schizophrenia. More than likely even. it, though, being very rare, especially with the onset appearing before 13 years of age.

I, of course, find it highly unlikely, that me, a big fat piece of trash from the middle of nowhere, endured something so rare. That I was born with it and the onset appearing before the age of 13, then me experiencing these effects that I so wish to believe from the Alprazolam. Every inch we dig deeper into this mysterious case of mine, it seems to get unlikelier and unlikelier.

Am I maybe just this un/lucky, having endured all the previously specified illnesses? And that along with what I believe to be the Alprazolam exacerbating the Schizophrenia/Psychotic episode somehow.

Again, I feel as if this is quite the reach on our(my) part. *Strokes his long Kung-Fu master beard*

What do you think? That this isn't all just a tad too unlikely? I don't know, maybe I'm just lucky, finding answers where I look for them to answer this delusion of mine. I don't know anymore.

But on the other hand, to answer your post;

Well I guess it depends on the type of info you want to obtain....and your English is easy to understand by the way. If you want to find others like you perhaps post in the basic drug discussion thread something short and sweet like: benzos and schizophrenia for the the title then has anyone with schizophrenia gone into psychosis after taking benzos as the question. If it's only a short paragraph simply worded you may get more people to post their experiences and you can just post a link to the long thread here if they want to read more. If you want published stuff google scholar would be along the lines of how you posted here I would guess but I've never used that search engine maybe try: benzodiazepine induced schizophrenic flare.

I of course wish to find the truth, but if I have to specify what I define as the 'truth' then, of course, I guess I'm looking for someone who has seen anything like this, either first hand or through someone, that I can get a confirmation that this exist in the psychiatric community. Benzos amplifying or triggering existing psychosis or weakness to psychosis in any way, hard enough to be able to "induce" these sorts of severe psychotic symptoms, the symptoms I endured for that extended period of time.

I might even go as far as to asking here and maybe on /r/Schizophrenia about BZ use along with the SZ illness.

But about Google Scholar, I feel as if I've searched every possible combination for these answers on there, it only giving me this stuff that's at the beginning at the post. The thing with side effects causing something that mimics exacerbated psychosis and the thing about the increased death rate for people with comorbid SZ and Anxiety or Panic Disorder.

I'm actually gonna give up for tonight, gonna check if there's anyone interesting on Facebook to converse with.

 

[RusselDunbar]

I was lying, I didn't give up for the night, me only finding more and more evidence of how, apparently, my theory being that my underlying rage issues, agitation, acute agitation, caused all my psychotic symptoms for those two weeks I endured what I call my first major psychotic break, adds up. It's described in the last paragraph of this article.

http://link.springer.com/article/10.2165/00003495-200565090-00003#page-1

But somehow, my detachment from reality and other severe psychotic symptoms, masking my agitation, again, my theory being that instead of me actually getting agitated, I just got incredibly scared as my psychotic symptoms, hallucinations, paranoia and delusions, feeding off my agitation instead.

It adds up, it all adds up. Me being known to bottle up my agitation and releasing it as the theoretical bottle overflows with extreme agitation, anger and fury, exploding into this gigantic fireball of unstoppable madness.

But why, instead of me getting the typical agitated toxic psychosis Benzo-rage, I just got afraid and detached, without a violent or an angry bone in my body. Only fearing what I believed was my own unreality.

I apologize for my spamming this thread, I just find this, what I just found, so amazing. How this disease of mine can manifest itself in my underlying rage. The hallucinations and delusions all being about killing and dismembering the individuals closest to me, like my sister. I might add that if she hadn't been in the car with me when I started getting these suicidal/homicidal thoughts, after the movie theater, I probably would have cracked under this, then unknown pressure from thoughts I thought were my own conscience talking, and proceeded with killing myself the first day of my ingestion of the Xanax. I also gather that if the strong unrealistic feelings, the derealization and depersonalization, hadn't been there, to make me fear everything along with my environment, my reality, my agitation probably not having stayed underlying during all of this.

The above statement of mine being entirely theoretical. A theory.

Do you think I'm terribly wrong about this whole thing, Raysu? These theories of mine? Since the only psychosis Benzodiazepines can cause being 'Agitated Toxic Psychosis' it probably not out of the picture that the agitated part not necessarily having to be my emotion at the time. Rather that my psychotic symptoms were feeding off those agitated feelings of mine.

And if anyone's curious, it was Bad Neighbors with Zac Effron and Seth Rogan I saw with a bunch of twelve, turning thirteen year old kids. Awful, awful movie. Being nothing but stoner humor that got tired before Cheech and Chong got famous for it in the seventies. So the quality of the movie didn't make me feel a lick better as a result.

There's actually one thing I've never told anyone about about this whole first major psychotic break of mine. The reason for that only being me feeling it so unimportant that it doesn't really matter. That thing being as we got to town, me, my sister and her friend, walked into Domino's and as they were ordering those twenty Pizzas for all those kids, I heard every single kid in there mocking me, calling me every bad name in the book, I also felt them all staring at me, as if I were a monkey having sex at the Copenhagen Zoo, me not handling the pressure, so I just stood up and left. Entered my car and drove to KFC where I could eat my, then, favorite fast food in solitude.
As I came back, they were done eating, gathering in front of the movie theater and me leading them inside. You know the rest, I feel as an absolute crap, and as soon as I sit down, with no one wanting to sit next to me, and the lights turning off, I felt as if what happened inside the Domino's and at work happened to me eighteen fold. The thousands of cameras pointed at me, everyone talking about me, whispering, telling me that I'm ugly, fat and will never find anything that resembles happiness, and that the only thing left for me to do was to just get it over with, and kill myself.

Breathing the relatively fresh air, as I exited the theater with the kids as the movie ended, being one of the greatest feelings of tranquility I'd ever felt, aside from that couple of day gap between those two weeks, after I stopped taking the Xanax, and those eighteen months as I became psychotic two to four times a week for the remainder of that one and a half year.

The strange thing being, and I think I mentioned it on Reddit rather than here, that as I got switched from Risperdal to Abilify and everything went quiet, I felt as if I actually missed my frequent psychotic episodes. The voices not always being terrible to me, them being my best friends at times. I felt as if this was some sort of addiction, an addiction to being psychotic, my body and soul had become so used to being psychotic that like with any other substance addiction, as the substance(the psychosis) is stripped away after an extensive period of getting my fix, even though how horrible everything was in those times, it felt as if being stripped of the psychosis was like losing a thumb, something so minuscule that you don't realize how great big of a part of you it was, until it's gone. You having to have to use it every single day.

To this day, there's some lingering feeling inside of me telling me to just not take my medication for the day, by the off chance I'd get my best friends back. The only friends in this whole life of mine that get me and understood what I'm going through, one hundred percent of the time.

Anyways, call me crazy, insane even, but those are some feelings I simply cant control.

 

[Raysu]

That post reminded me of a movie with Ryan Reynolds where he goes off meds so he can continue to hear his pets talk to him. It was gory, and a but disturbing but the plot was interesting. The isn't too much I can add at this point as its conjecture well beyond research haha but it reminded me of when I take hydrocodone. Every opiate/opioid taken orally has the same sort of effect except morphine which doesn't do much for me. Effectiveness varies too. However when I'm coming down from hydrocodone I get irritated by everything, especially sounds, and I have trouble controlling rage because of it. I can only assume that some part of its chemical structure metabolized by my brain doesn't click right. It's easy to see how yours may also respond acutely to Xanax or any drug really. Most definitely share your insights with your medical professional team. They may shed more light on specifics.

 

[RusselDunbar]

That post reminded me of a movie with Ryan Reynolds where he goes off meds so he can continue to hear his pets talk to him. It was gory, and a but disturbing but the plot was interesting. The isn't too much I can add at this point as its conjecture well beyond research haha but it reminded me of when I take hydrocodone. Every opiate/opioid taken orally has the same sort of effect except morphine which doesn't do much for me. Effectiveness varies too. However when I'm coming down from hydrocodone I get irritated by everything, especially sounds, and I have trouble controlling rage because of it. I can only assume that some part of its chemical structure metabolized by my brain doesn't click right. It's easy to see how yours may also respond acutely to Xanax or any drug really. Most definitely share your insights with your medical professional team. They may shed more light on specifics.

Ahh, I used to hate him, but after seeing 'Two Guys, A Girl And A Pizza Place', that 90's sitcom he was on, I began to love him. Then I saw Deadpool, and even though me seeing the film in the largest movie theater in the country, it was stuffed with people, which made my anxiety, stress, social anxiety and claustrophobia to start acting up. Luckily the movie was just so good that I soon found myself not remembering any of those stressful feelings. Which was very well appreciated. After seeing that short lived sitcom of his, I always meant to illegally download that movie where his pets are his best friends. You know what? I'm gonna throw it into µTorrent right now.

Does he have some sort of Schizophrenia in the movie? Does that ever come up during the movie? I love seeing my illness on the white-screen, having, before Christmas, seen the movie 'Legend' starring Tom Hardy playing these twins, the Kray twins, who controlled the underworlds of London during the 50's and 60's, one of them having Paranoid Schizophrenia, which would only be called Schizophrenia today.

I felt as though, even for it being a fantastic movie, Tom Hardy a hell of an actor, the psychiatrists at that time didn't really know what they were doing. Them diagnosing him with Schizophrenia rather than the obvious Antisocial Disorder and severe psychopathic tendencies.

So the supposed Paranoid Schizophrenic during the movie was an extremely violent, sociopath. Nothing like me or those 30+ other people with psychotic disorders I know. But hey! The movie was really good and really entertaining either way and maybe just goes to show how little progress the psychiatrists had made during the 60's and the breakthrough in psychiatry not being until around the turn of the century.

Donezo! Now the movie only going into my huge ass movie folder on my computer, along with movies I anticipated greatly like Star Wars The Force Awakens and Interstellar, me not having seen those yet. NO SPOILERS!

But that sounds interesting those reactions of yours with the opiates/opioids, although me always thinking that those kinds of narcotics were only intravenous. But I of course know nothing about drugs in general hahaha.

I'm, though, not sure when I'll see either of my psychiatrists next, me usually having a monthly appointment with one and meeting the other one at least two or three times a week during normal weeks. As in weeks where I'm not working my fingers to the bone.

But yeah, I will definitely, and I do have both of theirs email addresses, tell them about this, these findings of mine and my theories. Or maybe I'll just email some of this shit to them, before I forget all about it, like has happened so many times before.

I just hope that some of those emails I've sent these past two weeks will pan out, provide me with some answers. I don't care what those answers will be, just hearing them from a revered professional is enough for me. Because I'm getting pretty sick and tired having this thing hanging over my head, creeping inside my head, controlling my life. The obsession that is, the obsession to find out about all this stuff. It having successfully taken over my life, me not spending any time on this $3500-4000 supercomputer of mine, this computer that can handle all the prettiest games that are coming out in the top graphical settings at 1080p, it being my main hobby before I got so severely sick, video games. But now, now I just obsess over this one thing. The timing of my first ingestion of the Xanax to when I terminated my ingestion of it and the, literally, hundreds of psychotic episodes that followed, although me constantly being told that hearing voices counts as being a part of psychosis too, so technically those eighteen months were a one big psychotic episode, me hearing the voices daily from the Xanax to the Abilify.

Another thing I find so amazing is that while under the influence of Derealization and Depersonalization, these unrealistic feelings of mine, Me not remembering one/third of what I did during those episodes of feeling as if I was in another dimension. So there's a large chunk, both from those two weeks of mine and the eighteen months after that, where I don't even remember a whole day, missing from my memory. That feeling, that feeling that you should know something, that you possibly did something, is like, although never having experienced that, it only being what I imagine, waking up after blacking out after a night out with the fellas. Time and time again. For over eighteen months.
This feeling of feeling like someone used an ice-cream scoop and just scooped out chunks of your brain, your memories, is mind breaking and do I so wish that not you nor anyone else that's been helpful to me and my cause, ever feels this. Any of this, what I've felt for the past two years.

Ps. I'm looking for anything but pity with these writings of mine, support maybe, but not pity. Pity being something that shouldn't exist in the modern world we live in as it feels so condescending that it's not even funny.