Like you, medication gave me no relief. Like you, I was paying over a hundred dollars a month to feel no joy, no happiness, no authentic human emotion at all.

I quit my meds over a period of about two weeks, had a horrible week of feeling terrible, and then things started to get better.

It feel good to be back in the real world, doesn’t it?

You made a good point about Clozapine. I had my drug name wrong. It was Clonazpan that I was on not clozapine.

I will fix my post.

I do feel very lucky. It’s been a couple of months now and so far no symptoms or serious withdrawl in sight.

Who on earth prescribed that to you?!

Clozapine is usually reserved a “weapon of last resort” against the so-called treatment-resistant schizophrenia.

Clozapine has a host of iatrogenic problems in itself – it can cause an intractable organic psychosis, dementia and a very serious and potentially fatal blood disorder called agranulocytosis.

No wonder no drug company wants to manufacture Clozapine as a generic. It’s one of the worst liability drugs of all time.

Clozapine must be up there in the rogue’s gallery with the likes of thalidomide.

You are a very lucky woman to have recovered from ingesting all that psycho-pharma muck!

I came into this world of mental health care in ‘69-’70. My mother was committed with a dx of schizophrenia, and we were off to the races. As a six year old, hearing the stories of her treatment and the visits to the psych. hospital were terrifying! I was already a severely depressed child with suicide attempts beginning while i was 4 or 5 (another story which i wrote poems about). It wasn’t long before i was in therapy “since my mother was”. Our family was torn apart.

Grade school (’69-’77) was an all too painful experience but by high school (’77-’81) my pronounced mood swings began…i had discovered alcohol, minor league drugs by 14 and ran away from home at 16. I developed anorexia that year as well. it was determined that i would not be able to attend a traditional college, maybe a junior college…but likely “i might be able hold a job bagging groceries and my parents would have to support me the rest of my life”. i did get into a small college (’81-’83) and excelled in my pre-med and fine art classes (only), but the drinking and starving got way out of hand and eventually the depression gave way to wild mood swings. I was given Buspar by a psychiatrist who worked with people who have eating disorders. I took the meds for a bit but I didn’t get any better and I was not receiving any sort of counseling. I was becoming a very unpredictable and scary person! I dropped out my sophomore year (‘83).

After leaving college, I began working in a vitamin store and with my love of all things medical i threw myself into learning everything i could. I became pregnant with my wonderful daughter and for several months everything seemed to be in a bit of a remission. Although, my post-partum behavior was indicative of problems, they did not have “post partum depression” per say back then (‘84). I walked out on my 18 month old daughter and I went down, bad, with my alcoholism leading the way. I starved to nearly ninety pounds (i’m 5′ 6″ and weighed in at 182 pregnant). I began self-mutilating with cigarettes and safety pins. I was a punker, a “d-rocker”, now referred to as “Goth”. I loved death and wanted to die 24/7. I lived as if I were immortal on the one hand but had a death wish in my other hand.
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