Whats with people taking so many different meds at once?!

Excellent post, Row Jimmy

Before I joined the mental health system my life was a struggle.
I was high functioning, but I knew I could be better.

After being "diagnosed" I was in and out of hospitals for 11 years.
During that time I was put on many combinations of meds.
During that time I became low functioning.

When I left the mental health system and stopped taking meds, I gradually became high functioning again.
I am now better than I could ever imagine and getting better all the time.

End of Story

It's awful you had to go through all of that to come to the realization that you became high functioning without medication as a treatment. I am so happy for you that you are getting better all the time. Thanks for sharing your story it could change someone's life. But at the same time, remember, that some of us are alive because part of our treatment includes/included medication.

That was not my brother's story... he "white knuckled" it for years because of the "embarrassment" of my mom's mental health issue and the stigma of admitting he needed help and, yes, some need medication.

Gain knowledge about what is going on with your brain/body... with/without medication ... but at the same time WE WORK ON ENDING THE STIGMA getting help is SMART!

Everything you say is true, brainhi. I needed the help I received to get where I am now. I continue to seek help when I need it. I find the best help is to be honest with ourselves and others, never settle for less and never give up!

My Mom has bi-polar. She never sought help because of the same reason as your brother.
She was dysfunctional and so of course married a dysfunctional man (my Father who was an adult child of an alcoholic who never sought help)
They of course raised dysfunctional children. My brother who was a year younger than me never sought help. He ended up taking his own life.

I realize that I am fortunate and lucky to have had the opportunity to break the cycle of denial and dysfunctionalism.

EVERYBODY WHO ADMITS THEY HAVE A PROBLEM AND TRIES TO GET BETTER IS A WINNER!

I'm one of those on a med cocktail. I am lucky to have a really good pdoc who listens to me. He listens to what I say about how I'm doing. He accepts what I say about how I'm doing. Yes, I'm on a cocktail of meds, but it took us a long time to find a combination that works for me. We worked together to find what works for me.

At first I was against the idea of having to be on meds the rest of my life. I've changed my mind, mainly because with the meds I have a life, without them I'd likely be dead. I tried weaning off the meds several years ago. It scared the poo out of me when I realized one day that I was back to planning different ways to kill myself. I wasn't scared about being suicidal. I was scared that the ideation didn't scare me. I called him ASAP and we got me back on meds.

I've come to accept that I need these meds to have a life I want to live. I take a medication for allergies. Without it I would be alive, but would be miserable with allergy symptoms. I take a medication for acid reflux. Again, I can live without the med, but life without it is not pleasant. Why do people have a different opinion of psych meds?

Folks mentioned potential interactions of meds. I make danged sure my pdoc knows everything I take. He will let me know if a combination is not healthy for me. My PCP once tried to prescribe me a medication that boosts serotonin for another health problem I have. Two of the antidepressants I take target serotonin. I asked pdoc about taking it. He was peeved with the PCP for what she prescribed. Could've had a major negative reaction as a result if I took it.

As for different folks reacting differently to the same meds, I can use myself as an example. I over react to most mediation side effects. A doc I used to see told me it had something to do with the way my liver processed meds. A dose of a sedative that might make someone else drowsy will knock me off my feet. The doc who told me about the liver and meds used to prescribe me pediatric doses of meds. Our bodies are not one size fits all in the way we respond to meds.

Thank you for this!

Everything is in our heads. Why medications help? Well, because we believe they do and automatically we feel better but not because of medicines yet because we have inserted that fact in our brain. Medicines are nothing but poison. Pharmaceutical industry is controlling people for a very long period.

Meds cannot cure anything! Only the body can cure itself, meds can often help the body get back in balance or, if not that, make the pain or difficulty not seem so painful or difficult.

I think we all know stories of older people or people with mental health difficulties who are on multiple medicines such that it has gotten confusing and not so funny as:



But I think there are many individuals for whom multiple medications help. I think implying that all individuals taking multiple medications are necessarily deluded and would do as well without is simplistic, and as useful as telling a depressed person to just "cheer up" or a manic individual to just "control themselves".

Medication is not very good and certainly not perfect because we do not really know that much about the brain yet. On Wednesday my husband will be having gamma knife therapy (who names these things????) a type of radiation to the brain but it is possible when they get to where they can "see" after an MRI during the process, that they won't be able to do this kind of therapy after all and will have to do "whole brain" therapy instead. Yes, there are lots and lots of possibilities out there as to what causes an illness and what might help it but there is now also lots and lots of medical data and experience on what seems to help in what conditions.

Eating well, exercising and practicing yoga helps people with anxiety disorders but often, not enough. That one has to literally put poison in the body to kill cancer cells and that it kills healthy cells too is lamentable but beats the alternative. I had to take too much Levaquin back in 2003 when my appendix burst, for an infection, and now it has a black box warning, since 2008. But it helped save my life and I'll go with that rather than lament the other issues it left me with now in 2015? I think each individual has to try or not try whatever their advisor/doctor thinks will work and live with that decision on their own.

Someone else's experience with a drug might help me decide whether I want to take it or not but other people's non-experience is just their opinion, and not worth as much to me, or anything, if it is about a third person not ourselves: what I see looking at others' experience is worth more to me than what you see looking at others' experience.

I have often thought about why someone would take multiple medications. I didn't think it was harmful or necessarily helpful, but I felt like maybe I was in the minority only being on one SSRI myself. My one psych medication seems to help me function, and since I am not really clear on my exact diagnosis other than "depression" it seems like a good one pill fits all that works for me.
If people feel better when they take medication, whether it be one med or more, I think that is a helpful thing. I have tried the holistic route myself in the past, but it didn't really work for me. I trust the doctors to know what they are doing.

Cannot say I entirely agree...though the placebo effect is a real thing. But for instance when I take valium to help a panic attack, that is not a placebo it is actually a drug that can calm nerves fairly quick due to its actual effects on brain/body chemistry. And the feeling that smoking cannabis for instance causes is hardly just a phenominon of thinking it will have effects, it has documented effects and we have receptors in the brain that react to it....so to say all drugs are just a placebo is well ignorant at best.

All drugs/medications have risks and there is plenty of problems within the pharmaceutical industry as well as over-prescribing, and sometimes doctors not really listening to patients about negative reactions to medications. Not sure how that makes all medicine poison....especially when aside from pharmaceutical drugs there are plenty of natural drugs/herbs that certainly aren't poisonous per say.

I am currently in sort of a mix between holistic/alternative routes, as well as the more typical treatment approaches. I take what I find useful from it all and attempt to apply that rather than feeling limited to just a single approach.

meds helped me but i can't speak for everybody. we are all different, maybe biologically too. what may work for one person may not work for another-i myself have been on almost every psych drug until clozapine came around. it seems to be working in addition to several other meds. i refused drugs when i first got mentally ill, realized i did need it because of trial and error. i am thankful to God that i took them as i would have been a worse wreck now than if i didn't take them.

Sometimes it is pure luck. Spoke to someone who's antidepressant helped her with depression, anxiety and sleep. I've never come across a med that helped me with everything. If I did, of course I would not take more than one. But now I happen to need one for each of those three issues. I have been in monotherapy for the longest of time, and I had some stupid pride about it. Like I'd be "better" for it. Duh! Of course it's not good taking more than you need, but I happen to need what I'm on. It's not a contest.