My Experience With Mental Health and Antipsychotics
As a note I may or may not change this article at a future date.
Disclaimer:
I am not a medical professional and this article or any other articles in this blog can not and should not be used as advice on your own mental health. Mental health is a very complex subject and everyone’s treatment for mental health will be unique to them. I am in no way in this article advising anyone at all that they should stop whatever treatment they are taking and am not in this article advising anyone to stop whatever medications they are taking. This article and others on this blog are simply by own ideas and opinions on the subject. Please consult your own doctor for advice on the correct treatment options for you. I intend no harm in this article to anyone and are just sharing my own ideas on the topic of mental health.
I WILL NOT BE HELD RESPONSIBLE IF THIS ARTICLE OR OTHERS ON THIS BLOG HARM OTHERS IN SOME WAY AND THIS ISN’T MY INTENTION.
This article is about 5300 words and I do believe it is the longest article I have ever written on this very small blog. If you could please do read the following articles before reading this one as it will give this article a little more context if you do:
My Quest for Perfect Mental Health and Sanity
Things That Have Helped My Own Mental Health
Introduction
In this article I am going to share all the various antipsychotic medications I have taken and my own personal experiences with each of them as well as my history with mental health. I want to preface this by saying that I was diagnosed with psychosis back in 2018. I am impartial to my diagnosis, I neither believe I do or don’t have this diagnosis, I simply see this is just what the doctor thinks (for more info read my article on Things That Have Helped My Own Mental Health). I have taken some form of medication pretty much every year since having been given this diagnosis.
If you don’t know section 3 in the UK is specifically for treatment and means they can legally keep you in hospital for up to 6 months and they can also decide to extend it by another 6 months if after the 6 months they feel you still need treatment. However, I was told by the nurses when going into hospital for section 3 that people seldom stay for the full 6 months and they are usually out of hospital before then.
My history of hospital admission is that I was sectioned under section 2 in 2018 again at the start of 2021 and put under section 2 at the start of 2022 and then put on section 3s mid-2022 and near the end of 2022.
First a little bit on Mental health and Mental illness
Mental health is how well you are mentally. Things that may improve mental health are exercise, correct amount of sleeping, being social, going out etc. Mental health is the general overall wellbeing of yourself.
Now mental illness is basically any kind of symptoms that you have that stems from some kind of mental health disorder. Example of mental illnesses are schizophrenia, psychosis (although this is technically the same kind of thing as schizophrenia), bipolar, depression. The only known thing that stops mental illnesses is some kind of medication, usually antipsychotics of some kind. Generally, most people go into hospital under section 2 and section 2 is literally only to assess and is only for 28 days and is purely so that the relevant people can figure out what kind of mental illness you have – if any at all.
Now I want to say here that you can have bad mental health, such as a mental breakdown of some sort – but you may not have a mental illness. For example, if you are really stressed with exams and you have a mental breakdown from it, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you have a mental illness. Equally you can have symptoms of a mental illness, but your mental health may be generally fine. For example, with schizophrenia you may have thought withdrawal and thought block, but otherwise your mental health is completely fine, and you may not necessarily need to go into hospital for your disorder. Please do check out my article on Things That Have Helped My Own Mental Health as this explains this a little more.
A little on being hospitalised and being “unwell”
I want to say here that of all the times I was hospitalised generally apart from the admission in 2018 I was completely fine on the ward that is. I wasn’t psychotic on the ward, I didn’t have any kind of incidents on the ward, I wasn’t in any way shape or form violent to staff or other patients, I wasn’t delusional, I wasn’t paranoid, I didn’t think “they” were out to get me or anything of that nature. I generally behaved very well on the wards that I was in and was very respectful to the staff and patients. The reason I say 2018 was unique and different is because that was my first admission and generally my mental state throughout that admission varied greatly, although towards the end I was better.
I will say here because I feel it needs addressing, that before being admitted to the ward they sometimes first put me in an A&E department and generally I would present pretty bad initially when in the A&E department, particularly the admission to A&E in 2021 before I was hospitalised was particularly bad – I was genuinely in a very dark and bad place in that one admission to A&E and really my behaviour there was inexcusable and I in no way attribute my behaviour there to any kind of mental illness… That was probably one of, if not the lowest point in my entire life and I really am sorry to the people who had to witness my behaviour during that admission - like it was pretty bad and disgusting my behaviour during this time in A&E at the start of 2021. But as the old saying goes “once at the bottom, the only way is up”.
But I also want to just say here that generally in the mental health world they class you as either “mentally well” or “mentally unwell”. If you read my article Things That Have Helped My Own Mental Health then you would know that I feel that to label mental health as either “mentally unwell” or “mentally well” is to simplify the issue whereby any meaningful discussion on the subject is fruitless. You are not simply either “mentally well” or “mentally unwell”, there is so much variation and diversity in mental health than to simply label someone’s mental health as either “well” or “unwell” simply isn’t an accurate representation of their actual mental health.
For example, I in 2021 and 2018 had this [delusional] belief that I was possessed by a demon of some kind (It is actually quite common for people in the mental health world to believe this) and I would act and tell people about this belief I had. Having this [mistaken] belief I was possessed by a demon doesn’t in and of itself mean that I am “mentally unwell” because I am still able to function and operate normally. Or put another way, having a mistaken belief in something doesn’t necessarily mean that you are “mentally unwell”. Equally, having certain symptoms of a mental illness doesn’t immediately mean that you are “mentally unwell”, for example having thought withdrawal and thought block doesn’t necessarily mean that you are unable to do your job and you need a hospital admission.
I feel that this simplification of labelling people either “mentally well” or “mentally unwell” comes from people who haven’t themselves experienced some kind of mental illness.
The point I want to make clear in this article is that labelling mental health by saying someone is “mentally unwell” or “mentally well” is incorrect. There is so much diversity and variation in people’s level of mental health that to label it just as “unwell” or “well” is completely absurd. Throughout most (apart from 2018) hospital admissions I would present and behave completely fine and my ability to reason and rationalise was completely normal and functioning, even with perhaps several mistaken beliefs.
But let is also be said here that even mentally well people or people who have no history with mental illness can themselves have mistaken beliefs. Having mistaken beliefs isn’t synonymous withe being “mentally unwell” - the two are not mutually exclusive.
Anyhow! Onto the review of the medications, I have been on since 2018.
Risperidone on it from 2018 stopped in 2020 and started again in 2021 and then on it during various periods in 2022
I want to preface this section by saying that I had several experiences in 2018 leading up to my actual admission into hospital which made me believe that I was being targeted by some sort of nefarious group. I don’t want to get into any specifics, but I feel there was something deeper at play in the months leading up to my first admission into hospital.
But be that as it may I am now going to talk and discuss about my experiences of risperidone.
Risperidone is the medication that they gave me initially to treat what they believed to be some kind of psychosis and while on it I had no symptoms of any sort of mental illness. I want to add here as well that throughout the duration of taking it between 2018-2020 I was inconsistently taking it due to this very nasty side effect of sexual dysfunction, essentially, I would take it for 4 days and then stop taking it for 3 days so that I could overcome the sexual dysfunction side effect for a day and then start taking it for another 4 days and then repeat. I also want to add here that there were various periods where I would not take the medications for weeks at a time and never really had any kinds of symptoms from my diagnosis. Of course, I genuinely am not advocating for people to stop taking their medication – this is simply my own experience on this medication and what I used to do.
Do I regret not taking risperidone consistently throughout this time? I feel that in truth I moreso regret lying to people about taking this medication. I feel that this was a greater kind of death to my soul - so to speak than the actual act of not taking this medication. Granted I have since told my family of the truth of this and my feelings towards this medication and they generally have been quite understanding. I think I may have mentioned it to the people involved in my care, but I don’t think they really cared that much. Had I taken this medication would I still have become unwell at future dates? I am no fortune teller; I have no idea.
This medication also made me gain a lot of weight, I don’t have the exact measurements of how much weight, but it is noticeable in the pictures taken of me while I was inconsistently taking this medication. I also had my bloods taken about every 6 months on this medication to check the issue of raised prolactin which can cause various side effects such as sexual dysfunction, which I did experience and lactation from the nipple area, which I thankfully didn’t experience. The issue of raised prolactin was an issue throughout taking risperidone and also I had the same issue when I was put on paliperidone.
The one thing that really made me against this particular medication was because of this news article I read of a man that was prescribed this medication and wasn’t told that there was a potential that he could grow breasts from taking this medication, you can read more about this here essentially the pharmaceutical company didn’t disclose this was a possibility and so they were fined a large sum of money, although they probably have made more money from risperidone alone to compensate for the fine they received (pharmaceutical companies are very powerful and are a force to be reckoned with). Obviously, being a straight male (perhaps a rare thing these days) I really do not want to grow breasts of any sort and having this be a risk to taking this medication is perhaps a risk I am not willing to bare.
This story also made me a little sceptical and distrustful of the mental health services because there were people in these services that knew of this real risk of growing breasts as a man and they [deliberately] chose not to disclose this to myself or the many patients who they were giving this medication to, I wager that there are many people taking risperidone who are still unaware of the risk that it can cause men to grow breasts. This for me just doesn’t sit well for me, that these people that are supposed to be trusted knew of this risk and yet still were happy to prescribe this medication to myself and many others without revealing this real risk. Perhaps some didn’t know, but I have reason to believe that some of them did.
In 2020, it was agreed that I would stop taking risperidone because I had been “officially” taking it for about two years and at the time it was thought that the risk of me not taking this medication was very low.
Paliperidone depot injection started 2021 for about 4 months
Fast forward about 7 months to 2021 and I experienced what was believed to be a relapse in mental health (although looking back I really question if it was an actual relapse). I experienced on just one occasion an auditory hallucination. I was sectioned under section 2 and put in a mental health hospital where they started me on risperidone again. I told the Dr in one of the meetings I had that I don’t want to take this medication because of the side effects (although I don’t recall if I made it clear that it was the side effects I was concerned about, think perhaps at the time I was strongly opposed to taking medication) and said I would refuse it and the Dr said that he would have to put me on the depot if I refused the oral medication. About a week later they gave me the maximum dosage of paliperidone. Paliperidone is the primary active metabolite of risperidone and the two act very similarly and this drug hit hard. This is the most sedating drug I have ever been on and probably will ever have been on.
While I was only on paliperidone for about 4 months, its effect on me was very big. I would be so sedated that I would want to eat dinner at say 6pm and then feel the need to go to sleep at 7pm and it was a constant struggle to stay awake between 7pm-9pm. There were many days that I simply went to sleep straight after dinner and would wake at 5am and start my day. The medication was very strong, and it had a big impact on my life while I was taking it, granted only for 4 months. I also had complete sexual dysfunction and because its injection there was no doing what I did before on risperidone whereby I take it for a couple days and then stop for a few days in order to alleviate the issue of sexual dysfunction.
At the time as well, I was in my last year of university and considered doing my last year of university next year because of the whole issue with my mental health. However, through absolute sheer determination I wrote my 4000 word dissertation (granted only getting a whopping 40/100 - a pass) and completed the remaining assignments that needed to be handed in and I finished my degree with a 2:1. Not bad for someone who had to complete half of his last year on the maximum dosage of paliperidone and feeling extremely sedated and going to sleep at 7pm.
While I was in hospital in 2021, I had a tribunal. If you don’t know tribunals are where you go to court (although due to covid its mostly digital via webcam) and you try to plead your case that you don’t need to be in hospital, and you are not “mentally unwell”. In my experience having been in hospital 5 times and having had 2 tribunals and having seen other patients have tribunals that I have never once seen a patient actually get any sort of success or win the tribunal case. To be honest I feel they are mostly rigged against the patient trying to profess his mental wellness.
However, I will say that arranging for a tribunal is a good move to try get people at the hospital into gear and make them more accountable for how the place is being run and generally my advice is to always get a tribunal if you ever find yourself in hospital under section, even though you probably won’t win it. Also, as a note if you are on section 3, then the tribunal usually takes place a longer when you arrange for one because you have more time in hospital. While having a tribunal on section 2, you can be quite sure that it will happen in perhaps a week and a half later.
I feel I also need to be forthcoming and say here that I am of course not saying at all that I have heard from patients that the mental health nurses and the Dr would literally make things up about them to make it seem that they are more mentally unwell than they actually are – I am not saying this at all. I am also not saying that I have requested my own mental health notes and read the fine details and found that there were various details that were simply made up to paint me as a more mentally unwell patient than I actually was – I am not saying this at all. The people that work in mental health are all completely trustworthy and reliable people and by no means do they make things up to destroy the credibility of the patients they treat. Absolutely not, because if they did I’m sure that they would be found out and have to face some sort of justice one day.
I’m sure that everyone in the mental health world all genuinely care about treating real mental health illnesses. I am also not saying at all that I have seen firsthand people that seem completely fine be given absolute bogus diagnoses. If I were saying this, I’m sure that my article On Attacking The Person and Not The Ideas may be of some use to the reader. I am also not saying at all that these people that work in mental health get away with their wrongdoing - making things up to make the patient appear more mentally unwell than they actually are – not at all!
Equally, I am not saying that I have seen firsthand a patient go out for their section 17 leave and come back to the ward an hour late and then have it be reported on their notes that they were 4 hours late just so that it would cause the Dr to stop that patient’s leave - I’m not saying any of that. I’m sure that all the people who work in mental health all have genuine good intentions for the patients that they treat. If I were saying such accusations, then it probably isn’t all the people working in mental health who engage in such unethical practices.
Anyway, during the tribunal my solicitor rang me and said that they may agree to let me out if I agree to take medication for a certain amount of time – which I refused (I think because I was arrogant and felt I didn’t need medication), and the tribunal ended, and it was agreed to keep me in hospital until my section expired. It was then agreed upon leaving hospital that I would take the paliperidone depot every month and was given procyclidine for side effects (which I rarely took). After about 4 months of taking paliperidone I just flat out stopped taking it and they didn’t section me or put me in hospital after I refused to take it.
Aripiprazole on it for just about 5 months at the start of 2022
I was sectioned again at the start of 2022 after about 10 months since coming off the paliperidone depot injection and took some time off work before being hospitalized because I knew I was becoming unwell. The actual story of how I actually went into hospital at the start of 2022 is perhaps a miracle or just dumb luck, but perhaps a story for another day.
Once in hospital they started me on a medication called aripiprazole and generally this is well tolerated and doesn’t have the issue of prolactin as other antipsychotic medications have. However, this medication came with a major side effect, and I heard my health care coordinator say that this medication can make people think that they are really good at gambling and gamble all their money. Well, it wasn’t this exactly, but this medication for me had the very unfortunate side effect of making me spend literally my entire life savings of a five-figure nature – literally all the money I earned at my employment in 2021 and money that I saved from my maintenance loan at university and also money I had saved from my PIP.
Now what did I put my life savings into? Charities… Yes charities – I was feeling very generous at this period of time and gave a lot of money to various different charities. My Dad being the absolute hero that he is managed to get about 90% of the money that I gave to charity, but I really don’t know if the guilt was worth it… I gave money to charities and then took it back… It felt I had literally taken food out of starving children’s mouths. To be honest during this period of time I really don’t think I was thinking straight, perhaps because of the medication.
I then received most of the money back, however I was still taking this medication… probably a bad decision because weeks after receiving the money back I spent the money very quickly on another thing which I thought was completely justified and warranted. I spent 5 figure sums on advertising this very small blog on Google ads, Snapchat, Reddit, Facebook, Twitter (although I’m pretty sure Twitter scammed me because I think it was mostly bots that were clicking the link) and Pinterest.
The worst part about it was at the time I had no analytics on this website, so essentially, I had no idea how many people were actually visiting this site and reading the various articles it had on it at the time. These tech companies I gave money to were more than happy to rinse out my bank account and I guess its quite concerning that there really are no safeguards to stop these kinds of actions of spending mass amounts of money in such a short period of time. I feel that really there should be precautions in place to stop this kind of thing, I mean these companies didn’t care, they were more than happy to accept my money and gladly took it. Also, just to add wood to the fire, the link I advertised was the https://lovehumanity.github.io. not the one I use now https://lovehumantiy.gitlab.io meaning that anyone that actually did bookmark my blog when I was advertising will now come across a dead link. So technically all the money I spent on advertising was wasted… However, I prefer to think that it was invested…
I just want to add here that I have no expectation of getting any of the money back I spent on ads. I also just want to say here that as of this day 20/12/2023 I have roughly accumulated about the same amount of wealth as I had at the start of 2022. Also, I will be bringing out an article soon analysing the money spent on ads and how many clicks I actually managed to receive - so stay tuned for that article.
I also want to add here that I’m not saying at all that while I was advertising this blog on these various platforms that I had a certain message on this blog that certain “secret” world leaders probably don’t want to be shared - the same message that I still have on a certain page of this blog. I am also not saying at all that they used some sort of secret radiation direct energy weapon on me whilst I slept to persuade me to remove such a message and I am not saying at all that I was able to combat this by wearing a tin foil cover – I’m simply not saying this, because such a notion would be completely deranged and nobody at all would be crazy enough to believe such a thing.
Also, I’m not in any way shape or form saying that certain groups or the “secret” world Government are actually hiding from humanity advanced technologies that would greatly benefit humanity such as zero-point energy or levitation technology. I’m not saying this at all, but if it were true that certain technologies were being hidden from humanity that would greatly benefit humanity, I’m sure that the people responsible will one day face justice for such crimes that thankfully are simply not happening in the world. Not at all! I’m not saying any of this!
Long story short, I moved out of the place I was living and then essentially stopped taking Aripiprazole.
Aripiprazole and risperidone back on it mid 2022
Fast forward mid 2022 I voluntarily go back into hospital because I was genuinely unwell. I could literally hear myself speaking on the phone, I mean this may just be a technical glitch in the IT system, but it just felt like I had auditory hallucinations, and I simply couldn’t do my job at all. Once in hospital they started me again on aripiprazole and while in hospital I did spend a fair amount of money on various colouring books and pencils and board games for the ward. Which is why I requested to go back on risperidone and took this throughout the hospital stay.
Back in the community I took the medication for a month or two and then refused it due to its sexual dysfunction side effects, around the same time I was experiencing mental illness symptoms – but it felt artificial for some reason. I then told them of these symptoms, and they agreed to put me back into hospital. Third time is a charm!
Risperidone and the start of zuclopenthixol near end of 2022
I then go back into hospital in 2022 for a third time and they start me on risperidone which I took while in hospital. Then they heavily advocated for putting me on a depot injection just prior to my release, probably because it was believed I wouldn’t take the oral medication each night (I really couldn’t say if they were right, I think I would have probably learned my lesson and would have taken the oral tablets). They suggested paliperidone, but I really didn’t want to go back on this medication. They then decided to start me on zuclopenthixol or clopixol which I agreed to take.
I took zuclopenthixol for about 4 months and generally this medication was very well tolerated, and I had no symptoms of any sort of mental illness. I did have very strange dreams of urinating when I started this medication, but overall, the medication was generally ok.
The Start of Quetiapine started near start of 2023
After a few months of taking zuclopenthixol, I asked to be switched to an oral medication because the zuclopenthixol was quite sedating and they suggested quetiapine. I then started taking quetiapine and have been on it for most of 2023. Generally this medication is a little bit better than risperidone in that it doesn’t come with sexual dysfunction, however throughout 2023 I have suffered with a skin condition whereby any time my skin gets hot or irritated it breaks out in hives and has small red blotches where it’s extremely itchy – which I attribute to taking quetiapine because I didn’t have this skin issue before taking quetiapine. This skin issue has caused me a lot of discomfort and has made it very difficult to do any kind of exercise because when I get a little hot from doing exercise I literally break out in hives and need to take breaks to itch.
Also, throughout my journey of mental health, quetiapine is the medication that so far I have taken the longest and have been genuinely consistent with taking it each night. Whether or not this actually stops me from going into hospital and becoming unwell in the future is yet to be seen.
Another side effect from the quetiapine that I have had since I have started it is that I would swallow an undue amount of air each time I took a gulp and would oft feel the need to burp literally every time I took a gulp. Also taking liquids before bed and laying down would cause the liquids to be stuck in my stomach and like liquids for some reason were not correctly digested. I would find it very uncomfortable and would oft times need to keep sitting up to bring up a lot of wind and burp (think it’s called belching). But essentially this has caused me to stay up at stupid times 4:30am after having gone to bed at say 01:00am and I would literally wake up evening time the next day.
The last side effect I wish to mention of this medication is that it would often cause me to sleep for ridiculous amounts of time – I think the longest I have been asleep on this medication for is about 14 and a half hours, meaning that on certain days I am literally asleep for longer than I am actually awake and on some days I have as much as 7 and a half hours to my day until I need to go to bed at 12:00am-01:00am.
I have been taking this medication since the start of 2023 and have raised the issue of the skin thing, which is probably an allergic reaction and was told by the pharmacist I saw that antihistamine tablets and using epaderm instead of shower gel (because shower gel often has fragrance of some sort that irritates the skin) would fix the issue. After taking the antihistamine tablets for about 2 weeks and using the epaderm cream instead of shower gel I still had the issue with my skin breaking out into hives and being extremely itchy (especially on my hands). However, recently the consultant I am seeing has agreed to reduce quetiapine and is slowly weening me off it and I am in its place taking lurasidone which I have stared this week and so far, I have had various nightmares on this medication.
Conclusion
I am by no means an expert in mental illness or mental health (I mean who is?) but I have so far tried 7 medications related to my mental illness; Risperidone, Paliperidone, Procyclidine Aripiprazole, Zuclopenthixol, Quetiapine and Lurasidone (not counting the medications I was given when very unwell in 2018). Generally, most antipsychotics come with sexual dysfunction and weight gain of some kind. But I feel that the medication that best suits your needs will be different to mine and I feel that no two people have the exact same mental illness symptoms and the exact same response to medication. I also want to add that this is kind of a continuation to my article on Things That Have Helped My Own Mental Health so please do read this article, also I feel that the article I made on My Quest for Perfect Mental Health and Sanity is relevant to this article.
I also just want to add that I feel it is irrelevant whether or not I actually have a genuine mental illness because I have since 2018 been acting as if I actualy do and my whole world has been played as if I do have a genuine mental illness, therefore whether or not I actually do is irrelevant.
Also, if you have any questions or want to talk to me about anything on this blog in general, then please do reach out! My email address is lovehumanityx[AT]protonmail(.)com and you can also encrypt the email with my key found here (if you have no idea about encryption then don’t worry about it).
If you did indeed enjoy this article, then please do consider sharing it on social media. This article in total took me around 7 hours total to make and there was a lot of re-reading and checking for grammatical errors, which this article still probably has somewhere. I also have tried to remove specific details for personal privacy.
Update 1: 04/01/24
In 2022 I also took the medication promethazine which was used to help me with sleep problems at the time. I have not taken it since.