no, i've embraced my internal whackadoo, and just hand him the reins whenever he feels like driving. speaking of which.........he knows where you live...be afraid. be very afraid......!

You guys are funny with your thinking you know what it's all about! Believe me when I say you need to take ALLLLLL your preconceptions and notions about this, and throw them all away.

This would have been a tremendous luxury when I was crying my eyeballs out for hours on end, week after week, after my divorce. And what a terrible thing, to miss the beauty and joy of the world that has come to me from the women I've seen since then (yes J, most especially the latest!). The excitement of the transformation in me. The emotion of the music I'm rehearsing to audition next week. I feel it all.

But it might not have, when I was at the higher dosage. At the higher dosage I felt "compressed", like instead of going from 1 to 10, I was going from 3 to 8. I was very aware of this compression. But the problem is, which is a better choice: the anxious illness or the compression/side effects? I would not take this choice away from any individual. It is their life; it is their choice; and they are fully conscious of their choice at all times.

This is the side effect one would get if one were taking it incorrectly. It's what happens if you go from a high dosage to a low dosage or no dosage at all. You are not supposed to do that. Either you switch to another, similar drug in the family of drugs, or you wean off of it, no faster than losing 5mg per week.

Unfortunately many docs don't understand this in depth, or the patients don't care enough to take the precautions of understanding what they're doing...

whaddya mean, guy(s)?

i was just asking questions. I have no preconceptions, because i have no experience with it.
being ambiguous on purpose? jim or jag?!

shuddup you

i'll take that as "jag"

fucking psycho :)

What if you're doing 2-8? How would you know?
Who doesn't? That's a hard question, I've got plenty of bats in the belfry but I've learnt to manage them so they don't effect how I operate, at least not in a negative way, it's part of being human. In a sense you seem to be to be making a trade off - lose some of the bredth of human experience at both ends of the scale, that's your choice and as long as you're aware of that I guess there's nothing wrong with it.

I do know what it's about, been there and watched plenty of friends do the same to varying degrees, some far worse than me, I've seen what the drugs do and how they work and as far as I'm concerned it's soma.

It is literally impossible for you not to know. You are, in fact, the only one who CAN truly know.

well i'll give you that

I think there comes a point when most intelligent people look at the society around them and decide that insanity may in fact be an appropriate response. However, mental illness is not about appropriate responses.

I have a friend who comes from a large family of two girls and ten boys, five of the boys whom became schizophrenic in their late teens to early twenties. This to me seems to be a classic example of a defective gene controlling brain chemistry - most likely sex-linked recessive like the one for hemophilia since his two sisters were untouched by the disease.

Of my friend's brothers, the one who is doing best has done just as Wolf said, accepted that he has the disease and sticks with his meds. The brother who refuses to accept his illness and constantly goes off his meds is the one who spends the most time down at the state hospital. My friend who was untouched by the disease needs no meds and is about as normal as a person can be who has experienced such a great family tragedy. If ever there was a case of gentics in action, I think that family would serve as a textbook example.

In my own case, I have suffered from depression all my life and I believe it to be endogenous (or genetic). My father had difficulty with depression as did his mother - my grandmother. I had been able to compensate for my depression with first the tri-cyclics and then the new serotinin re-uptake inhibiters. When I was subjected to the CO poisoning episode, however, my meds stopped working (big surprise!) and now the doctors tell me that in addition to my other difficulties, I exhibit all the symptoms of someone with PTSD (post traumatic STRESS disorder - not slave!). Apparently some primitive part of the brain which acts as a sort of thermostat for emotions can become damaged by loss of O2 supply as occurs in things like CO poisoning. I'm going thru a lot of testing right now as the docs try to figure things out.

I do my best to keep an upbeat attitude, take my prescribed meds and follow my doctors' advice. I think attitude is an important as anything. One has to acknowledge the problem, but refuse to accept defeat by it.

Good luck with the testing process. ;) :thumpsup:

While I do not have anything close to clinical depression or any kind of disorder, having kidney failure does take a toll on patient mentally and emotionally. I have a section on my board that deals with this specifically:

http://dialyze.org/forums/viewforum....680eb6ffe9d271

I am thankful that I didn't need to take antidepressants to deal with kidney failure (since I'm on enough drugs as it is), but for some patients, it may be necessary. It's hard to just say, "Hey, work it out", or "just deal with it" (as my therapist said in so many words...actually he said, "Sometimes, you just gotta suck it up!" Easy to say when you are not experiencing it. Needless to say, I didn't care for his tone or attitude when he said that). Heh, I wanted to tell him, "Hey asshole, suck this!" :mad:

At any rate, different things work for different people. It could be drugs, alternative medicine, support groups, etc. Gotta find what's right for you and go with that.

Thanks, Lady Syc! Your therapist sounds like an ass. :mad2: I hope you replaced him (or her)!

LOL, well not replaced (not yet at least), but definitely no longer seeing. I couldn't understand why he went that route on the last day. He even had the nerve to sound angry when I called him a week or so before the appt. to tell him that that would be the last one. :confused:

He asked me to keep in touch...thanks but no thanks. :p I've pretty much said all I have to say to him. :rolleyes:

Put any given person in front of a therapist, and they'll come up with a reason why that person needs frequent therapy sessions with them indefinitely. I once asked a friend of mine's therapist to name someone who DIDN'T need therapy, and she waffled her way around the question. When I kept pressing her on it, she suggested that perhaps I was protesting too much and I needed to explore my aversion issues with therapy.

I mean shit, it's like they make MONEY by diagnosing people as needing therapy... oh wait. :rolleyes:

i think all therapists should trade their cars in immediately

If you're nasty enough to deal with :rar: :flipbird: or have poor enough personal hygiene :whofart: :vomitblu: , there's some incentive to pronounce you cured (or incorrigable) and in no need of further therapy.