Hey people!
Neuroleptics have a very bad reputation as recreational drugs. In fact, most people will claim they have no value whatsoever in that respect. I beg to differ. Prison inmates don't seem to entirely agree either. There have been a large number of scientific articles mentioning the phenomenom of quetiapine having abuse potential and being relatively popular among the prison crowd.
I will try to give you my understanding of what is going on here, myself being a huge fan of the substance. One case report has quoted a prison inmate stating that he gets a "rush" out of IV quetiapine. I cannot personally comment on that very extensively and will focus my efforts on another aspect of the drug's effects. Quetiapine is a strong centrally active antihistamine among other things and I imagine that is how this person gets his enjoyment out of it, as other centrally active antihistamines like hydroxyzine are considered to have recreational value when IV'ed by many bluelighters.
A short bit of history about myself: I DO have access to proper drugs! I can score pretty much any psychoactive compound known to the scene at ridiculously low prices, usually for free. I keep DMT stashed at all times. I have a bipolar 1 diagnosis and have been prescribed olanzapine and quetiapine, the latter for the past 4 months or so at a dosage of ~150mg.
I have both used the IR and the XR form of this substance with the IR being accompanied by stronger akathisia, an extremely unpleasant side effect. The way I describe akathisia to those who have not experienced is by comparing it to the feeling you get when you hold your breath for as long as you can, e.g. underwater. Right before you cannot go on any longer you will get an extremely imperative urge to move. When holding my breath this feeling covers most of my body parts, while the drug induced akathisia is usually limited to certain body parts (in my case, inner thighs and feet). It is attenuated by moving around, but only for the duration of the movement.
Despite this absolutely agonizing side effect, I am a huge fan of the quetiapine and I will finally explain why that is:
Vivid dreams that often linger on into my waking state! I have always been a heavy dreamer and have had a few out of body experiences induced from a state of sleep paralysis right after drifting off to sleep. I am not sure if others who aren't natural dreamers like me will consider quetiapine as valuable as I consider it.
Due to my psychiatric illness, I have had to get 1 year vacation from studying medicine. Due to having a daughter I am not partying anymore or very rarely anyway. Since I am separated from my daughter's mum, I only get to see my daughter 4 days of the week.
The rest of the week I currently don't have a whole lot to do except lifting, eating well and getting my tan on. Now most jailbirds don't really have many options to perform either of the the latter two activities, so I imagine they experience the same problems. Lots of time, being very bored and lonely, without much hope, just feeling like shit whatever they do (hang around I suppose).
I often end up coming home from workout at noon, down a huge meal and find myself in a state of anhedonia, not even enjoying computer games or watching movies. This is where quetiapine comes into play!
I would take my prescribed dosage of e.g. 150mg extended release q and then lie down. It is crucial that I do not smoke too much pot now if I want to get the most out of my dose.
Sleep doesn't come very easily to me, even on q. There is a tendency to wake up after every single REM phase (bout every 3 hours). The first 2 cycles or so are usually not worth mentioning. It gets interesting when most of the quetiapine has been metabolized to norquetiapine. Norquetiapine inhibits NET, a protein that transports noradrenaline (a stimulating monoamine) from the synaptic gap (where it is active) back into the presynapses. I will now wake up much more frequently than every 3h. About hourly I'd say, but there's a large variance.
Every time I wake up I carry to my waking state the memories and emotions I experienced during my dreams. I could fill books with my dreams. I will not bore you with details. Some dreams are gruesome, in others I fall in love, in some I can fly, in others I travel the world. Sometimes I work through issues I experience in waking life during these dreams, though this becomes more rare the more I have dreamt in the past weeks.
Whenever I wake up I smoke a ciggie, eat some snacks, drink some proteine and go back to lala-land. In my experience the dreams increase in intensity for about 15-17h with each cycle of going to sleep and waking up again.
Large parts of my life are currently not enjoyable to me. I imagine that's how a lot of the prison population feels about their life as well. My dreams ALWAYS are exciting and enjoyable, no matter how much pain and blood they are filled with. I prefer a good night of dreams over nodding out on opiates, especially when those have a very bad comedown/withdrawals. I even prefer it to dissociated states these days. Ketamine never gets me to the places my dreams take me.
If you have anything left to enjoy during daytime, you will probably not consider "escape to dream land" an option. If you are like me, you can easily dream away 15-21h per day this way and wake up fully refreshed. It just feels like it's the best I can currently do with my time...
Hope one or the other found this an interesting read. And if it isn't obvious already, the stuff doesn't do shit for my hypomania or depression, it just helps me go to bed so I won't slide off into mania.
