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Mental Health Those who experienced severe drug-induced psychosis, how long were you on meds for?

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Viola123

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Jul 20, 2014
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Hi everyone,

I'm curious to know those who experienced a bad drug-induced psychosis in the past and the duration of their medication/recovery. My brother had a psychotic episode for the first time in March. Ironically, he started acting bizarre after he was released from a mental hospital(he was admitted involuntarily due to his angry behavior and threats to kill my mother...he wasn't psychotic though and he refused bipolar medications at the hospital). So when he came home from the mental hospital, he heavily smoked marijuana and maybe took ecstasy pills, his mental state went downhill and was admitted 4 more times due to his psychosis. He exhibited schizophrenia symptoms (paranoia, delusions, visual hallucinations, talking to the TV, no sleep, etc). Now he's on Geodon, stabilized with weird sleeping patterns since April. Geodon is a godsend compared to the other meds he tried: Zyprexa 30 mg, Risperdol 4mg and Haldol (it worked for 2 days until he stopped taking it due to side effects, the psychosis rebounded). Now he's pretty much complaining about being on meds because his sleeping pattern is off and wants to stop taking it cold turkey. I'm scared of him not being on meds.
 
Wow your brother and I have had some very similiar experiences it seems. I have been sober (relatively) for a year from a pretty bad addiction to uppers.

I have also been on 35 or more psyche medications over time. If your brother quits geodon cold turkey it will NOT be good. This is just my experience so keep that in mind as well. When I discontinued geodon cold turkey I had 3 seizures in 4 days and had withdrawals for around 4. Geodon is most likely the worst of the psyche meds to quit without hospital supervision.

I also totally understand why he would want to quit medications, I felt like a zombie on quite a few of the medications I was prescribed and in the end I think they actually made things worse for me for a time.
 
^^^ same thing!!!! I was on the zyprexa, geodon remerron all the poisen, it did zero good in my case, I think it's pretty much the same story for most of us... Hang in there and I hope he gets better . Most of us self medicate cause we found a substance rhat made made life bareable without horrid side effects so we decide to go that route. At least it's somewhat enjoyable...
 
i think he will recover as fast as he wants to most likely, and as his self-awareness, personal situation and environment provides

it wasnt very smart to be taking mdma and smoking weed after getting out of mental hospital

i stopped taking my psychiatric medications that id been on huge doses for like 1-2 months, and i did not sleep for 4 days, i had similar discontinuation effects as your brother, but then i began to live healthily and slowly recovered, but that was my determination that got me through.

i mean, is the hospital even going to allow him to be supervised to be taken off of geodon? does he still think its a good idea to be doing recreational drugs with his mental health situation, cant he see that he is very unstable at the moment?

its a really shitty situation to be in if he cant be supervised off it, because those drugs are toxic to your system IMO. i dont know if you will be able to keep him on them if he has resolved not to take it...

theres a cool movement in family therapy called 'open dialogue', it comes from sweden i think, but its basically a kind of group therapy that is informed by the family itself and there is not much involvement by the moderators except to offer some objective guidance to help the conversation flow. it is specifically designed for these situations, people that have just been through psychosis and are now trying to pick up the pieces of their life, and it involves the family as well, because often these situations are greatly informed by the families communication styles and the environment that this person grew up in and formed them as an individual. so yeh, i would recommend looking around your area and seeing if any psychologists/therapists are familiar with open dialogue and whether they would do a session ASAP...

im saying all this as someone who, 7 months ago, became psychotic (after an acid trip), was hospitalised, then was institutionalised for over a month and since have become happier as a person than i was before the psychosis, im also completely drug free, but i do think that if the trauma of the psychosis triggered an underlying mental health pattern such as bipolar, it is a good think for them to take a mood stabiliser such as olanzapine or seroquel if they are aware of a manic episode beginning, which can be hard to notice in yourself if its never happened before.

to answer the question in the thread title, i refused all medications the second i left the open psychiatric ward i was in, so i was on meds as long as they were forced down my throat
 
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I had a drug induced psychosis last November, was hospitalized involuntarily for a week, and put on Risperdal for 2 months. They originally wanted me on it for 6 months (until May) but I complained so much about the side effects they took me off it early. None of my psychotic symptoms returned, and they probably could've (and should've IMO) taken me off it even sooner.
 
some psychiatrists are on a bit of an ego trip when it comes to them making decisions for their patients, its pretty sickening to me
 
His psychiatrist originally said he needs to be on meds for one year and said Geodon would need to be tampered off. Apparently my brother told him that after his 1st mental hospitalization(non-psychotic), he took 2 MDMA pills for 4 consecutive days + smoking marijuana. Anyways, now my brother is complaining because he doesn't want to be on meds for a year. He blames Geodon for making him sleep 12 hrs into the afternoon around 3pm. He is able to wake up at 1:30 pm but he wants to "sleep a little more." Geodon used to make him super sedated but that has worn off after a month. He wants to change medication. I'm scared if he changes medication because what if it doesn't work? I've seen him take 3 different ones. Zyprexa for 3 weeks under hospital supervision, Risperdol for 2 days (he was already psychotic). I don't want him to be back at the hospital again.
 
i guess you probably just have to find some way to let go then,,

he wants to change medications because of the side effects its having on him, so he will be taking the risk of the medication being effective, or not, for curbing future psychosis.
 
I got drug induced psychosis after smoking weed for 13 years with no problem. then bang i went nuts. Spent a month in a psychiatric ward in hospital. That was in November 2012 and I'm still taking respiridone.
 
I experienced psychosis the whole first year I smoked weed. When I would smoke I would get massive panic attacks and be extremely paranoid of everything and everyone. I would try to avoid the paranoia by smoking alone. my panic attacks were caused by a really bad synthetic cannabinoids trip I had when I was 16.

I was over a friends house and he was unfortunately hanging out with a now very reputable scumbag. This guy decides to mix 3 or 4 brands of spice (containing what I can only guess to be some JWH or AM synth) together with some weed and smoke it all. once I took a hit and instantly knew I had made a mistake, I was immediately thrown into severe panic and paranoia. Right after we smoke the previously mentioned scumfuck grabs my friend's crossbow and starts acting tough and talking shit. I honestly believed he was going to kill me and I was paralyzed with fear.

After that incident I've always gotten auditory hallucinations as well as intense paranoid delusions while high. getting high is what I imagine it's like to be a paranoid schizophrenic for a couple hours, without any visual hallucinations.
 
I have been on psych meds for over six years.....I had a meth induced psychosis but was stuck in jail with no advocate for two and a half months. As soon as the Abilify started getting into my system I got better. I stopped early due to no wanting to change my drug habits. About a year later I started getting psychotic again so I laid the drugs down and life got so much easier until My OCD kicked in and the doctors have just used me as a lab rat....I will eventually come off everything. Risperdal and klonopin are the hardest to come off of cause of withdrawals.
 
I arguably have drug-induced psychosis from cannabis. But it's turned into a permanent illness, so I'll probably be on anti-psychotics for the next ten years at least.
 
Ho-Chi-Minh said:
I arguably have drug-induced psychosis from cannabis. But it's turned into a permanent illness, so I'll probably be on anti-psychotics for the next ten years at least.
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Same here. They say I have cannabis psychotic disorder on top of other Dx's so it will be a minute before I'm fully stable.
 
I experienced amphetamine (rx adderall) induced psychosis after staying up for 5 days in a row and abusing the hell out of my add meds. I was 36 years old with no history of severe mental illness. I became paranoid, thought I was being followed poisoned as revenge for threatening to turN into the police neighborhood kids who we're hacking into my computer, I started having very intrusive thoughts and had a disconnect from reality until I was hospitalized, put back on benzos, and got some sleep.
i was put on risperdal for 9 months which was awful. I thought I was hearing voices, but it was amphetamine induced sleep depravation that made my internal voice/conscience (the voice I hear when I think) seem like it was coming from an outside source, which was very scary.
 
I had meth induced psychosis also it was a bunch of meshed up psychosis so i can't speak on cannabis by itself but I have abstained from all drugs for years and if I smoke any weed I flip out and think I am in hell. One where this dimension is just proof that since I am suffering so bad that I must be there.......It's kinda like you died but didn't know you died and than you start getting revelation upon revelation that you are dead and it get's worse and worse. The only thing that made it go away was klonopin and a Anti Depressents....
 
alcohol brought on the worst psychosis for me personally, went ballistic.

was treated for 6 months on saris, hypnotics, benzos - all really put me to sleep apart from the SSRI'S which actually sent me into a anger induced rage that severely deformed my knuckle after smashing my hand up on the cupboard and ripping it open with scissors.

not sure if the drugs made it worse or better frankly.
 
St8penr said:
I experienced amphetamine (rx adderall) induced psychosis after staying up for 5 days in a row and abusing the hell out of my add meds. I was 36 years old with no history of severe mental illness. I became paranoid, thought I was being followed poisoned as revenge for threatening to turN into the police neighborhood kids who we're hacking into my computer, I started having very intrusive thoughts and had a disconnect from reality until I was hospitalized, put back on benzos, and got some sleep.
i was put on risperdal for 9 months which was awful. I thought I was hearing voices, but it was amphetamine induced sleep depravation that made my internal voice/conscience (the voice I hear when I think) seem like it was coming from an outside source, which was very scary.
Click to expand...
Yeah this happened to me after 40+ hours awake I think it was, my thoughts became voices talking amongst themselves. lol... it is definitely a shock.
 
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