whatanillusion
Greenlighter
- Joined
- Sep 8, 2016
- Messages
- 2
Hi there,
First off this is my first post on here, to be frank I think my first post on any forum, so would like to start by saying: please bear with me (!), that if this is in the wrong place, I apologise and will repost/move, but first and foremost thanks for all and any advice and stories! As with any post, if there's something I've omitted to detail, just ask
Bit of a ramble but bear with:
Firstly, this post isn't about my medical history of course but I feel a 'brief' description will make it make more sense. I have basically been in and out of community mental health teams for a few years now for various reasons, most of which surround mood (borderline personality has been suggested in the past though I don't feel diagnoses to be relevant to getting myself better).
Basically I have been taking two meds, an antipsychotic and antidepressant for a few years now; neither have much alleviated any symptoms despite Drs forever increasing the dose. The gist of it is, given this, my GP and I decided a bit back that seeing how I go without them would be a good option in planning for the longer term. After a few weeks of lowering dosage I found myself out of town and without a script so had to stop them abruptly sooner than planned. Obviously many negative side effects have ensued, most of which are *beginning* to lift now.
I have been left though with certain symptoms of psychosis, but not necessarily what I would call actual psychosis. I've been left with varying visual hallucinations (more visual distortion; not particularly vivid but enough to be pretty distracting) and varying degrees of disorganised thought (often hard to keep a coherent line of thought that doesn't jump all over the place). No voices, paranoia or delusions (that I am aware of, ha). I have found a lot on the web about how the above is a fairly common symptom of antipsychotic withdrawal even in people with no prior history of schizophrenia. I have found nothing at all though on how and whether opiates and opioids can relieve these symptoms (solely literature on the opposite).
Basically when in a particularly bad moment of distress I took 30mg of dihydrocodeine which had been sitting in the medicine cabinet for months, with a faint hope that it might calm me down slightly despite being a fairly 'low' dose. What I found was not only that it did calm me down, quite considerably, but that my scrambled thoughts and visual distortion all but ceased. As the day/night went on, I staggered another 20mg and found that this effect continued. This was yesterday. This morning my symptoms began to set in over the course of two hours from waking (usual) and I found myself in quite bad again, literally to find that 30mg of DHC later, and I am sitting now relatively calm and composed with little going on in my head that I would call 'mad'.
At such low doses, as to be expected I am not feeling euphoric or any of the recreational effects of this sort of med. From brief past experience taking moderate codeine doses, I can say that this does not feel like that, with the exception of a quite a bit of itching, but that has simply been relief of my symptoms and bringing me 'back to normal' so to speak.
Obviously taking any opioid on a continual basis for these reasons is fairly stupid and reckless for the risks we all know of, and if I were to find myself getting hooked on DHC then I feel I may as well have continued taking the other meds. But I would find it extremely interesting to hear of other peoples' views and experiences regarding anything relating to this sort of mental health problem (or even more generally) and the acute use of opioids. Would be interesting to know what drug, the dose, the problem you were trying to alleviate, what happened in the end and also how you managed these problems longer term (either with or) without the opioid. And anything else you want to divulge... Thanks!
PS: despite as mentioned a bit of experimenting with codeine in the past, I am still relatively new to opioid/opiate meds. For this and other reasons I am trying to tread with caution with what I am doing...but it also means, go into as much detail as you feel is necessary, as I am very interested to learn beyond what everyday google searching will tell me.
First off this is my first post on here, to be frank I think my first post on any forum, so would like to start by saying: please bear with me (!), that if this is in the wrong place, I apologise and will repost/move, but first and foremost thanks for all and any advice and stories! As with any post, if there's something I've omitted to detail, just ask
Bit of a ramble but bear with:
Firstly, this post isn't about my medical history of course but I feel a 'brief' description will make it make more sense. I have basically been in and out of community mental health teams for a few years now for various reasons, most of which surround mood (borderline personality has been suggested in the past though I don't feel diagnoses to be relevant to getting myself better).
Basically I have been taking two meds, an antipsychotic and antidepressant for a few years now; neither have much alleviated any symptoms despite Drs forever increasing the dose. The gist of it is, given this, my GP and I decided a bit back that seeing how I go without them would be a good option in planning for the longer term. After a few weeks of lowering dosage I found myself out of town and without a script so had to stop them abruptly sooner than planned. Obviously many negative side effects have ensued, most of which are *beginning* to lift now.
I have been left though with certain symptoms of psychosis, but not necessarily what I would call actual psychosis. I've been left with varying visual hallucinations (more visual distortion; not particularly vivid but enough to be pretty distracting) and varying degrees of disorganised thought (often hard to keep a coherent line of thought that doesn't jump all over the place). No voices, paranoia or delusions (that I am aware of, ha). I have found a lot on the web about how the above is a fairly common symptom of antipsychotic withdrawal even in people with no prior history of schizophrenia. I have found nothing at all though on how and whether opiates and opioids can relieve these symptoms (solely literature on the opposite).
Basically when in a particularly bad moment of distress I took 30mg of dihydrocodeine which had been sitting in the medicine cabinet for months, with a faint hope that it might calm me down slightly despite being a fairly 'low' dose. What I found was not only that it did calm me down, quite considerably, but that my scrambled thoughts and visual distortion all but ceased. As the day/night went on, I staggered another 20mg and found that this effect continued. This was yesterday. This morning my symptoms began to set in over the course of two hours from waking (usual) and I found myself in quite bad again, literally to find that 30mg of DHC later, and I am sitting now relatively calm and composed with little going on in my head that I would call 'mad'.
At such low doses, as to be expected I am not feeling euphoric or any of the recreational effects of this sort of med. From brief past experience taking moderate codeine doses, I can say that this does not feel like that, with the exception of a quite a bit of itching, but that has simply been relief of my symptoms and bringing me 'back to normal' so to speak.
Obviously taking any opioid on a continual basis for these reasons is fairly stupid and reckless for the risks we all know of, and if I were to find myself getting hooked on DHC then I feel I may as well have continued taking the other meds. But I would find it extremely interesting to hear of other peoples' views and experiences regarding anything relating to this sort of mental health problem (or even more generally) and the acute use of opioids. Would be interesting to know what drug, the dose, the problem you were trying to alleviate, what happened in the end and also how you managed these problems longer term (either with or) without the opioid. And anything else you want to divulge... Thanks!
PS: despite as mentioned a bit of experimenting with codeine in the past, I am still relatively new to opioid/opiate meds. For this and other reasons I am trying to tread with caution with what I am doing...but it also means, go into as much detail as you feel is necessary, as I am very interested to learn beyond what everyday google searching will tell me.
