Roll Call 24

medicalfox: I am so glad that you have a better place to live now. Your boyfriend's mother sounds like a really nice lady. Now you'll be able to save up some money for your new place. What did your boyfriend say about you changing jobs? I know a lady who I worked with in the classroom a few years ago. She is a dog walker/sitter and she loves it. She says it is a lot less stress on her. And she makes close to the same amount of money that she made before as a co-teacher. Plus she has flexible hours.

WeepingWillow23: I hope you are having a better day today too hun

Gr3tta: It was great to hear from you last night.

Costello: How is your son doing with the tapering off his medication? My oldest daughter started her tapering off of Celexa today. She usually takes 20mg and today she took 10mg. I worry about her getting real depressed and having those uncontrollable crying spells again. She's been on the Celexa for about a year and a half and hasn't had any depression. I just really hope this is the right thing for her. Her pdoc did say that if it didn't go well that we could do the 20mg again. That is a low dose from my understanding but so far it has really helped her.

T must be worried about me cuz he keeps texting me asking me how im doing......i dont want him to worry......i tell him im ok......and im taking my prns..like he said to....hes a workaholic....it feels good to know he cares so much but i dont want him to get overwhelmed.....its his day off!!!....oh well

punkybrewster6k
faerie_moon_x
justmeandmyhead
Atypical_Disaster
Erti
sunshine1995
WeepingWillow23
cannablissfully
blackwhitered
Sometimes psychotic
newtus
junkDNA
medicalfox
Gr3tta
costello
Firebird
Kureha
and anyone else I missed from Roll Call....

I hope you all are all doing well and I wish you all a wonderful day

You are so blessed to have such an awesome caring T! I wish all T's would care that much.

I was beginning to think I was the only one here! Lol!

yes i got lucky. i never thought i would trust a T again after what my former T did......but i took a risk. and decided to work with my T now. our relationship is very healing for me....helps me realize that not all people are evil

I do hope that one day I will have the courage to find a T. And when I do, I hope I am blessed with a good one like your T

Sometimes psychotic: Weren't you going downtown to a convention today?

Yeah I was there all day yesterday and then didn't sleep well last night so I was going to skip the 8am session and then I just decided to skip the whole thing today. It's just really hard for me because it was actually giving a speech at this very convention 3 years ago at this same convention center that triggered my psychosis. So a lot of the people I'm meeting or interacting with were the voices in my head. Also there was one guy who I wanted to kill for some reason and now they have a poster that contradicts one of our published papers and that is weird and conflicted for me almost like he is an actual threat...I'm not delusional but the there is this little part of my mind that thinks it was right about him somehow. After considering it for a bit I just decided that nothing showing today was good enough for me to risk my health over. I have to go tomorrow because I have a poster and it will be up from 8-5 so I can't just go home so I decided better to be well rested for tomorrow. I actually have to stand in front of the poster to answer questions from 12-2 and I don't wan to freak out or anything.

So yeah just recuperating today...I am kind of exhausted...

Oh I see. It's good for you to relax then. I'm trying to force myself to get up and do laundry! Lol!

Sometimes psychotic: I can't imagine standing in front of a poster for 2 hours answering people's questions! You are a very strong person!

Well I'd say 90% of the people who stop by are friends with my boss and want to see what we're up to so it's kind of a social thing but they are all MDs so they are fast and smart and you have to be sort of "on"... That's one of the hardest things for me because I'm not naturally social and certainly not as social as these docs...

It sounds kind of intimidating...It would be for me. But I bet you'll do great because you are extremely smart!

What is resistant starch? Yeah I hope he gets enough sleep too. seems to make my symptoms worse if I don't get enough.

Well that scare me. The pdoc in the hospital said the more times u go on and off meds the harder it is each time to get you stable. That's just what I was told.

Newt, you're not stupid at all.

Good for you junk. I loooove candles, when I'm struggling I lite them and listen to my music. I love to just meditate on the candle.

Thanks cracking.

Newt, I remember when u posted ur drawings. They were really good. I wish I could draw like that.

Sometimsp--so what is the best thing in your opinion to do for sz and bp, if it sounds from what ur saying meds aren't the answer? Or they don't work as well as we're led to believe?

It totally depends on how you handle it...if you just go on and off like cold turkey that's likely going to cause psychosis because of the way the drugs modify your receptors and yes you will probably need a higher dose to stabilize if you go back on again...thus tapering....

So at two years post psychotic break people on and off meds have about the same level of recovery ie they haven't recovered but by 4.5 years there is a 50% recovery in people off meds but the same baseline function in people on meds....so the recovered people are working and have friends those were the criteria in the harrow study. So the basic thing is that medicine seems to be actively preventing recovery.

Interestingly from 7.5-15 years none of the people off meds relapsed but an increasing number of people on APs did in fact it doubles from the 7.5-10 year time point to the 10-15 year time point to 67%...now to be fair it's a longer time period but in the people off drugs it's zero percent this whole time. Overall it doesn't really look like people on meds get worse so much as they just don't get better.

Anyway this harrow guy is on of the docs at the place I was being treated originally so they very much try to get people back off the meds and in my case they said 6 months symptom free and you can try it. It ended up being more like 2 years due to issues with the first taper but the thing about tapering is you can always go back up...the British model suggests trying a reduction at 1-2 years post break.

The thing about the harrow study and others is people who got off meds early relapse a ton at first but then they recover whereas the people on meds tend to be more stable but they just never get better. Nobody has optimized the outcome yet...

I really don't know enough about bipolar so I'm not sure on that one.....but for psychosis I support short term AP use 1-2 years then very slowly over like 6 months or more start to taper off. See how much of a dose you need and stay as low as you can. You can always go back up and you can always to to taper again later. That is what worked for me and finally I could get off entirely.