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Zodd: Maybe Wrongly Perscribed Risperidone


Zodd

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What "it" are you referring to when you post, "impairment of risperidone while taking it. Other than it usually takes a long time for it to come back, and usually not with the tenacity it previously held."

This is not medical advice. Discuss any decisions about your medical care with a knowledgeable medical practitioner.
1997-1999 Effexor; 2002-2005 Effexor XR 37.5 mg linear taper, dropping same #beads/week with bad results

Cymbalta 60 mg 2012 - 2015; 2016: 20 mg to 7 mg exact doses and dates in this post; 2017: 6.3 mg to  0.0 mg  Aug. 12; details here


scallywag's Introduction
Online spreadsheet for dose taper calculations and nz11's THE WORKS spreadsheet

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Well, besides degenerative muscle weakness, loss of muscle mass, chronic fatigue, increased fat gain, and poor emotional regulation, low testosterone causes a variety of sexual side effects including loss of libido, decreased spontaneous erections, erectile dysfunction and even impotence. Since my loss of testosterone has been so drastic and sudden over the last few months, I've seen severe loss of all things sexual. My use of the word 'it' here refereed to this aspect of testosterone loss and an attempt for polite reading between the lines.

 

The irony of this experience cannot be understated. The event that lead to my hospitalization involved, in part, delusions of a group of people intent on seeing me violently separated from my testosterone producers. In an attempt to see me restored to my normal self, my family forces on me medication that doesn't help. Now I try to get off the medication, it seems intent on taking said producers with them. Dealing with the fact that my family made my delusion come true has been... frustrating just isn't a strong enough word. 

Risperidone 2mg twice daily from June 2016 Oct/November: 1mg; December: .75mg Jan. .5 Feb: OFF

Benztropine Mesylate 0.5mg twice daily August 2016 - stopped.

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  • Moderator Emeritus

So "it" refers to functions affected by withdrawal, including serum levels of testosterone. Thanks.

This is not medical advice. Discuss any decisions about your medical care with a knowledgeable medical practitioner.
1997-1999 Effexor; 2002-2005 Effexor XR 37.5 mg linear taper, dropping same #beads/week with bad results

Cymbalta 60 mg 2012 - 2015; 2016: 20 mg to 7 mg exact doses and dates in this post; 2017: 6.3 mg to  0.0 mg  Aug. 12; details here


scallywag's Introduction
Online spreadsheet for dose taper calculations and nz11's THE WORKS spreadsheet

Link to comment

I don't believe the testosterone decrees to be an affect of withdrawal. There's no evidence to support it yet. It stands to reason it was my undisclosed hypoprolactinemia. Now that I am fully off the medication, and have changes my diet to promote testosterone production, if then the levels don't increase, I'll know it's withdrawal.

Risperidone 2mg twice daily from June 2016 Oct/November: 1mg; December: .75mg Jan. .5 Feb: OFF

Benztropine Mesylate 0.5mg twice daily August 2016 - stopped.

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  • 2 weeks later...

So I am little more than a week out off my medication. I haven't seen any real difference between my last step down and now. At times, my head is on nearly as straight as it ever was before. It's hard to say, as I avoid most stressful situations, even talking with my family now. Mostly I binge on internet garbage like facebook and tumblr. I haven't had any response from my prospective employment endeavors. I've missed a few meetings with my case manager as well. I really just have no desire to interact with people anymore. I don't mean from chemical inflected standpoint, but from plain exasperation and regret.

 

Night time is hardest. The insomnia hasn't improved, and my sleep cycle has shifted toward nocturnal. Mostly out of more avoidance of family. I get to lay in the dark, day dreaming about my future and how I want a family and to love someone completely, satisfactorily. A future I will probably never have thanks to this medication. I can be upbeat and positive to the end of the world, but I can't beat reality. I've seen little improvement physically that says my testosterone levels are going to grow. I fear my future may never have a healthy, normal sexual relationship. Outside of more humiliating medication.

 

Really, at night, it's this realization that makes it so hard. I have this scream inside sometimes that I know if I let loose, I'll never stop screaming. The fear of this event was what lead to my actions that my family insisted needed my hospitalization and subsequent medication. It was wrapped up in a delusion that no one wanted to hear about, but it was the driving force of my action. After my hospitalization, my delusion persisted that if it wasn't 'people' coming to mutilate me, which I doubted even as I told my family that's what i thought, then 'they' gave me something at the hospital that would do it. Some secret syringe while I was asleep that would sterilize me.

 

Even as I said it, half a year ago now, I knew it was absurd. At no point did I ever fully believe that delusion. But there was enough doubt where I had to get reassurance for it. And of course I was assured that it couldn't happen. That none of the things I was worried about happening to me could possibly become reality. And since my trusted, wise family couldn't possibly be wrong in their judgement, I accepted it. Just like I accepted their opinion that all the strange personality side effects I was experiencing were a product of my sudden onset of illness. That I was getting worse and worse while taking medication, more tied into my delusions, was because I was lacking in some form of self control. I should be trying harder.

 

But here we are today. Every one of my predictions came true.  I hate my family. I feel like an entirely different personality, removed from who I was before. I very well may be infertile and functionally might as well have been castrated, as I feared 'they' would do. I'll never reach the potential my chemically altered brain might have achieved before. At 27, the future I had worked so hard for is gone. And my family made it all possible.

 

I laugh now, at the fact. The irony of it is too great. It bursts out of me. It's a sick laugh. The shocked laugh you have when you see your arm or leg broken and twisted in an absurd direction. Like the Joker. So I laugh, when I don't outright crumble and weep.

Risperidone 2mg twice daily from June 2016 Oct/November: 1mg; December: .75mg Jan. .5 Feb: OFF

Benztropine Mesylate 0.5mg twice daily August 2016 - stopped.

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I really want to touch on something I said here. The assumption that my delusions stemmed from a lack of self control. I don't believe this was entirely incorrect. However, I believe the medications effect and side effects prevented me from having the realization that was needed to overcome my delusions. I feel that if there had been the dialogue I wanted from the from beginning, rather than medication, I wouldn't have fallen so far into it's trap. That the medications destructive affect on self control and impediment of expectation realization stopped me from having the proper chemical response to delusional behavior. As I said, my first response to what I was 'remembering' was to doubt it's authenticity, and seek advice. But the fear of repercussion for the things I was remembering got the better of me. Once I was taking the medication, and recovering from it's initial zombie inducing state, which my family mistook as me behaving calmer, the memories and delusive constructs they presented continued. That the medication did nothing to treat my underlying problem was immediately apparent to me. I just couldn't convince anyone else of that fact. The excuse came that I just needed to give it more time. When I stopped being a zombie and started reacting in a destructive manner to situations, already thinking the problem stemmed from me, my family concluded that there was NO WAY I should stop taking the medication if that was how I was going to behave. Without the knowledge of the side effects, I had no way to counter their claim that I was the root of this new behavioral element, and was forced to accept it.

 

So month after month, despite protests that I wasn't seeing any advantage, I still took the medication.

 

It wasn't until I was in full swing to the tune of psychosis, several months in, unable to sit still due to akathisia, hands numb and shaky, barely able to form coherent arguments or hold a train of thought for more than ten seconds, completely unable to make the most minor decisions for myself, dread causing me to scream at the ceiling and still seeking clandestine meetings with my delusioned people who kept standing me up, that I realized I was not getting better and that I was no longer the problem.

 

The medication had done nothing good for me. All I had gained were side effects. There had been no relief. My family was under as much a delusion as I was. I had given complete control of myself over to them, they had watched me suffer, I had given them above beyond the rational amount of time needed to prove that this pill had no benefit and had in fact made me worse. I knew none of these affects were my fault. I no longer felt I had any real control over my brain. Where before I had my bare hands in full grasp of it, now it was slicked and oiled, somehow electrified to the touch.

 

If I could sum up my state in one word, it would be Misery. Perpetual distress. But my personality is one that rejects things that stress me. I knew I needed to confront these things that were controlling my behavior. And the first step was to get rid of the medication, it's root. While I didn't know the new world of suffering this would cause me, stopping my medication so suddenly, I did start confronting the things holding me back.

 

I got on facebook again, talked with the people who my delusion yelled were part of the team out to get me, reformed connections. By the way, one of the first "advises" I got from my family and psychiatrist was to not talk with people least I start accusing them like a crazy person. I believe now this was fearing mongering, and was an unfair thing for them to lay on me, as I am by nature an articulate and non confrontational. Furthermore, it fed my psychosis which allowed it to further twist and isolate me. Anyway, I soon started to see my fears were unfounded about these people, that they were actually my friends, and had I told them about my situation sooner, would have gladly have helped me, and would have given me insight to my delusion months prior.

 

Talking. All I had wanted from the beginning. My family's fear of my delusion had fueled my withdraw into my psychosis. It hadn't stopped me from seeking conference, instead I expressed it through my fallacy, seeking to meet my imagined tormentors. And after months of disappointed ventures to approach them, gave up and rebelled. This disillusionment of my friends involvement in this strange history I'd recovered started the domino effect that lead to my realizing fully that these events couldn't have happened the way I remembered them.

 

But GOD DAMN IT, it should have been that way from the beginning. If all it took was doing what I naturally wanted to do in the first place, I wish I'd never taken any advice from anyone. Looking back at how my family judged me and fed me their dissatisfaction and I ate up their bullsh*t on the way I should be expected to conduct myself, how I ruffled their precious security blanket covering them, I just want to puke. Knowing my retention for guilt and my bowing to peer pressure, they convinced me that my ONE LAPSE IN JUDGEMENT was enough to condemn me to chemical lobotomy. As long as they kept pushing their agenda, that I not disrupt my mother with my petty, trivial delusion, heaven forbid, I'd fold like a cheap suit. They convinced her this was the best option too. That was the real deal closer. They knew I would do anything for her. My poor dying mother.

 

And it worked, I poisoned myself for her. I knew it wasn't helping, and I poisoned myself some more. Don't complain, no one likes to take their medicine, please poison yourself some more. We can see you're not getting better, better poison yourself some more.

 

It's not my fault. This book of memories unfurled in my head in under two weeks before I freaked out. Moments, conversations, events, days, adding up and up to whole years of hidden history I had repressed so perfectly that somehow explained why there were things in my life I couldn't remember. Things that were affecting me well into my adult years. I thought I was healing, finally recovering from the awful trauma these memories said existed. I wanted to include my family in this healing, so i started telling them the story of what happened. They couldn't figure out if or when these things happened and I wasn't sure I'd gotten everything so far. Like seeing the Directors Cut of your favorite movie that changes the whole meaning of the film, I kept discovering new things. This was their first clue something was wrong, and too be honest I didn't really care. I wanted to keep talking, keep recovering and sharing. This was the most interesting and mysterious thing that had ever happened to me. I was at the center, and I wanted to play detective.

 

To be clear, this was the best I'd felt in a long time.

 

But my family wasn't interested in listening. I wanted to find out if it was true. I wanted to ask people if they recalled me acting this way or that as a child. Problem was no one involved was around. The most prominent people didn't use facebook, were moved out the state or hadn't been spoken too in some ten plus years. And due to the nature of some of the events, and crimes, I was hesitant to even talk to my family about them. I still needed answer though.

 

I wouldn't get them. I wouldn't get the chance to ask the few people in 'knew' to be involved who were still around anything. I don't drive, so I had to rely on my family to cart me to these people and they refused after I learned the first person I went to talk to no longer worked where I'd last seen them. My family took this as further excuse that I wasn't right in the head, probably hallucinating people and that I was possibly going to confront someone at their place of work. So they stopped helping. More judgemental fear mongering. Of course, much later my brain managed to work even that coincidence into the grand fold of the story it was drawing out.

 

Soon after, things became dark. Everything I was recalling was pointing to the fact that this mysterious group of people who caused me so much pain as a child were still involved in my adult life. That I had been repressing, blocking things out even as I worked at my very public job. They could have gotten to me at any time. They were involved in my previous place of work. They knew where I lived. Did they know I was remembering? I had posted things in my facebook status, subtle things, that might reveal I knew. What would they do if they knew I remembered.

 

So, when your family, your home, is threatened, what do you do? You seek to defend yourself. But I was beginning to doubt myself here. There should be no reason anyone would be after me after all this time. If what I was recalling was true, no one would know I remembered. My delusion came up with answers to these questions as well, but I was still doubting now. I had taken to pacing about my living room.

 

I decided it was better to be safe than sorry. I did a very stupid thing. I'll be paying to price for it the rest of my life.

Risperidone 2mg twice daily from June 2016 Oct/November: 1mg; December: .75mg Jan. .5 Feb: OFF

Benztropine Mesylate 0.5mg twice daily August 2016 - stopped.

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  • Moderator Emeritus

Zodd, I'm sorry that people did things that caused you enough pain that you repressed the memories.  These situations are multi-layered betrayals -- the initial events, repressing the truth of what happened (a survival response), then later dismissal or denial of your recollection.

 

Your post is thoughtful and responsible. I hope getting it out of your head helped you.  ((((hugs))))

This is not medical advice. Discuss any decisions about your medical care with a knowledgeable medical practitioner.
1997-1999 Effexor; 2002-2005 Effexor XR 37.5 mg linear taper, dropping same #beads/week with bad results

Cymbalta 60 mg 2012 - 2015; 2016: 20 mg to 7 mg exact doses and dates in this post; 2017: 6.3 mg to  0.0 mg  Aug. 12; details here


scallywag's Introduction
Online spreadsheet for dose taper calculations and nz11's THE WORKS spreadsheet

Link to comment

Scallywag, thank you for the kind words, but you missed the point a little. I was delusional. I was experiencing some kind of delusion with these memories. They weren't real. At least 90% of them weren't. By trying to investigate and disprove their reality i was trying to exercise it from me, to either confirm or disprove its reality. However, my family kept dismissing, hushing and enforced my isolation out of fear I would start making accusations or act out or something. They helped segregate me from the reality I was trying to hold on to. When I could no longer tackle these delusions with reality, I simple gave up & started indulging it. Why would I doubt what my 'memories' are showing me? The fact that my family knew nothing about what I was remembering only reinforced that what I was remembering was traumatic enough to have me completely hide it from them. That story is a little more complicated, but involved the most extreme form of denial it ever happened. If they had helped me focus on the events I could disprove or reinforced my internal investigation, I feel The truth would have come to light so much sooner. Instead, I was forced to stew in my feelings of disappointment my family left me with, forced to seek the truth of it from in my brain. This lead to my spiral into no longer questioning what I was experiencing. When I stopped my medication, what lead to my recovery from this delusion was talking and engaging with the people who my psychosis had warped into my delusion. I would have recovered without having to suffer those months on medication, not living with possibly perminantly side effects I am now, if my family had simple given me the help I'd been asking for. Help I kept asking for.

 

I still don't know what happened in the years I'm missing. I still have these false memories. But they're somehow less now that I have accepted they couldn't have happened. Except now I have things happening that are so much more serious.

Risperidone 2mg twice daily from June 2016 Oct/November: 1mg; December: .75mg Jan. .5 Feb: OFF

Benztropine Mesylate 0.5mg twice daily August 2016 - stopped.

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  • Moderator Emeritus

Ok. thanks for clarifying. I'll clean my glasses and my interpretation process.

This is not medical advice. Discuss any decisions about your medical care with a knowledgeable medical practitioner.
1997-1999 Effexor; 2002-2005 Effexor XR 37.5 mg linear taper, dropping same #beads/week with bad results

Cymbalta 60 mg 2012 - 2015; 2016: 20 mg to 7 mg exact doses and dates in this post; 2017: 6.3 mg to  0.0 mg  Aug. 12; details here


scallywag's Introduction
Online spreadsheet for dose taper calculations and nz11's THE WORKS spreadsheet

Link to comment
  • 4 weeks later...

I am concerned that the alterations my brain has experienced has left me in a sociopathic like state. Along with the intense anger and other personality changes, I seem to have lost a lot of my empathy. My response to the suffering of others just isn't the same.

 

These moments of intense rejection of what's happened rise up in me. It ramps up in me, like a guitars turning his amplifier up too fast, before I can even realize it. I've taken to punching things like my desk or bookcase. Behavior I never exhibited until the medication. Sometimes the betrayl is so bad, I just have to scream. Like a madman.

 

Sometimes I can catch myself and turn my impending breakdown into laughter. I predicted everything that has happened to me, but not from the medication. Out of my delusion, thinking the threat came from some external group of people come to mutilate and manipulate me. And I do mean everything. My personality changes, becoming an emotionless tool, the sexual dysfunction, being forced to abandon my family. I irrationally feared all these things would be done to me. That was my paranoia, that's what my memories informed me would happen.

 

My siblings feared I would start exhibiting that violent behavior when I started telling them about my memories, that's why they insisted and persisted that I seek psychiatric help. Then I started exhibiting violence BECAUSE of the medication, and might forever be like this. Along with all the other things I just described that happened to me. I was afraid they would happen, forced to take medication to stop being afraid they would happen, making them happen.

 

Everything that's happened is so goddamn horrible & ironic it's funny. So I can laugh sometimes, turning my frown upside down. Pretty sure I sound like the Joker when is do. I don't know if I've already said that or not.

 

My life is a ******* Lovecraft novel.

Risperidone 2mg twice daily from June 2016 Oct/November: 1mg; December: .75mg Jan. .5 Feb: OFF

Benztropine Mesylate 0.5mg twice daily August 2016 - stopped.

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  • 2 months later...

I'm disappointed I only come here to vent my problems, but I've found other areas to reinforce positivity. It's been sufficent enough time to for my emotional and cognitive functions to resume their normal expressions. I feel closer to how I was before the drug, but still far from right, and am seeing no progress anymore. I feel changed the way meth addicts brain chemistry are changed.

Risperidone 2mg twice daily from June 2016 Oct/November: 1mg; December: .75mg Jan. .5 Feb: OFF

Benztropine Mesylate 0.5mg twice daily August 2016 - stopped.

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  • 4 years later...

@Zodd

How are you doing? 
Did you ever get back to your old self?

June-July -21 Zyprexa 2.5-7.5 mg 

July -21 Mianserin 20 mg four days

July-Aug -21 Valium 30 mg a day, tapred, return of symptoms 

Aug-Oct -21 Oxazepam Tapred from 10 mg x 3 to zero

Dec-Jan -21/22 On and off mirtazapine 15 mg. Kindling reaction?

March 8.-19. - Zopiclone 7.5 mg to combat insomnia 

March 20 - 5 mg valium because of akathisia and panic 

April 3. - 5 mg x 2

 

 
 

 

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  • 3 months later...

@Sofa

 

my realization is that you already found your old self, you body and mind may have been altered but you DNA shall always be the same.

 

you memories are there, and they are set. Even when experiencing depersonalization and worst fears ever. 
 

know that nothing changed, except your emotions. You brain heals right now. Just like mine.

 

and if you realize that your old self is not gone, that its impossible even when you have completely gone insane. It shall always be in your DNA, so you will never lose it.

 

you will win

2014-2020 Haloperidol
2017-2021 Zoloft
2018-2021 Issues zoloft so i decreased on both Haloperidol

November 2020 Taper down Haloperidol(barely any issues)
March 2021 taper down from zoloft(alot of issues)
Zoloft taperdown from march till late june
25mg was my dosage, may 10mg(from 10 too 5 was hard), 5mg in end of june every lowar dosage gave me alot of issues. clean in end of june.

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