Risperidone didn’st do much for me really. It just made me feel worse, it didn’st do much for the voices, like you think, but the Seroquel, at first worked a bit. But it only did, it normally lasted the effects as well for like half an hour, but I, you know, all the voices all the time, then it just wore off. But I was taking a lot of it and it wasn’st powerful enough to be honest.

And the rest of them well, quetiapine, I can’st remember, if that, I don’st think it helped, but I can’st remember totally. And Abilify (aripiprazole), didn’st do much. The only thing that’s helped really is time, I think.

And what did it feel like taking this medication?

It made me feel worse than I did before normally.

It what ways?

Just like, a bit more depressed than, didn’st feel as good. I think they liked blocked dopamine serotonin receptors in the brain. And I don’st know really.

So I got prescribed diazepam by the doctor, and that helped, that’s helped a hell of a lot.

Oh really.

Yes. That’s actually taking all the voices and stuff away actually.

Really?

Yes. Because it lasts so long. If I take it, like I take half and half like, half about ten and then half about 12 or something, of what I take, and chills me out a lot and makes it easier to sleep. And it lasts into the next day, well into the next day. Nearly until I take it again.

So what was that one?

The one I still take now it’s an antidepressant. I find that antipsychotics don’t really work for me and it’s when I can manage other things that I can manage hearing voices and things.

Brilliant. Okay. So it was the antidepressant was that gives you the best benefits.

Mmm—

Yeah. And then which, do you know the name of the one that you are on?

Yeah, it’s called, Sertraline.

How would you describe the benefits when you started taking that?

I felt like it [sighs] helped me to feel a bit lighter. Like a bit more, you know, less weighed down by things. Helped me to feel a bit less tense. I dunno, I feel like it helps me to kind of stay at an okay level and then the rest of it comes from myself, making myself happy.

And so that Sertraline is that one a day or how many tablets do you have to take or when do you take them?

I take two a day in the morning.

And does it fit in with your routine okay?

Yeah, it’s the, I’m not too strict on the times. I just take it when I wake up, really.

Did you have any medications that you remember were particularly good or bad?

Yeah, I’ve had Abilifi, Abilify (aripiprazole) was, was horrendous. I, I think for two weeks, just two weeks and I, it had to be the medication, ’cause it couldn’t be anything else. I’d be sitting here like this [looking forward] and all of a sudden I’d be doing this (head turned abruptly to right). So my neck would just completely cramp. And I wouldn’t be able to move my neck back for about an hour, that’s just how I’sd be.

Crickey!

There was another one, olanzapine made me so, first it made me really fat. It made me put on so much weight, but it increased my suicidal thoughts a lot.

Wow.

To the point where I started planning out my suicide. Because there’s a lot of different steps to suicide. There’s, I’m gonna kill myself. There’s I’m gonna kill myself with this. And then you’ve got, okay, I’m gonna kill myself today. Then you get- there’s planning and then there’s actually going out to a bridge and thinking about doing it. There’s a lot of different stages. And, with the olanzapine I was, I was planning it out. I was ordering stuff online to help with it. And I was really going for it. And I luckily I had a meeting with my therapist just before I was planning on doing this and I said, look, you’ve been great. You’ve been amazing. What’s happening next? Is it about you? What’s happening next about me? And she knew, straight away what I meant. And she put me on house arrest

Quetiapine (anti-psychotic), it’s also called, Seroquel. And it works for me. It before it, I had insomnia every night, around eleven o’clock I started with panic attacks, because I knew I wasn’t gonna sleep.

That was the side effect of something else.

No, that was just in general. After I got diagnosed, sleep was a myth for me. As soon as I, as soon as I, because I, I there it was a symptom of a lot of different things. I was avoiding the voices all day and then going to bed, the moment you went to bed, there then more sounds and so the voices happen. So I was getting really panicky about going to bed, ’cause I knew that’s when it was gonna start kicking off. So I ended up not going to bed. If I fell asleep on my computer chair, brilliant. If I didn’t I was up all night. Then she put me on quetiapine which stopped my sleepwalking, ’cause I would sleep walk sometimes and I’d do crazy things. In my sleep walking state, I’ve put a knife to my, to my brother’s throat. I’ve gone downstairs, locked the front door and got duct tape and completely covered the letter box with it [laughs] I’ve walked into my mum and dad’s room and just gone over their bed like that [demonstrates leaving over]. I’ve done a lot of crazy things. And this quetiapine helps with that a lot. I don’t have problems sleeping any more, which is just great. But what it does for me is it reduces the amount of voices I have. I no longer have seven voices.

Before I ever had psychosis, I was on like, you know, I was four hours sleep at night. I was going to bed at about two or three o’clock in the morning. I’ve always, well, I wasn’t gonna sleep then, it was always all my life taking about two hours to get to sleep at night, other than when I’m on the anti psychotics and I was on, I was sleeping about four hours a night. When I ended up with the psychosis I slept for like an hour at night. One of the things I don’t like about the medication is it does make you very sleepy, also makes you very hungry. And it makes me very sleeping for like 12 hours a night and I kind of all my life have liked the fact that it take me for hours to get to sleep at night. You know, ’cause I sit there and I start to actually think and reflect on the day and when I go on the anti psychotics, they send me to sleep. They zonk me out quite quickly. So I often feel quite frustrated the next day when I wake up, ’cause I, I wanted to reflect on certain things during the daytime. And I feel like I’ve gone to bed and I didn’t even get a chance to do that.

I don’t know whether this is a common side effect, but it seems to create quite vivid dreaming. Like before I was- it might have nothing to do with olanzapine, it might something else going on in my life or something. But, I imagine it’s the olanzapine, because I, you know, often have, sometimes I oversleep. It seems to, doesn’t seem to affect—I take it late, I take it at night but it doesn’t seem to kick in and I wake and struggle to get up in the morning. Sometimes I overslept to about twelve o’clock or often overslept to twelve o’clock. But I was, I used to leap out of bed at like 7. Set my alarm at 7 and I’d leap out of bed in the morning and so I know it’s definitely the Olanzapine. But I been experiencing, it was quite distressing having these quite surreal dreams that are quite vivid in the morning where you’re trying to get when you’re trying to wake up. It’s kind of almost hallucinary, because you are kind of semi awake and you kind of start to develop these quite weird dreams, yeah.

So, ultimately the bits of the brain – or at least in her opinion are – that deal with psychosis are – and I agree with this – about fear. It’s fear of things happening, fear things that won’t happen, etcetera. And it is that – Seriously, when you get a hallucination it is that complete fight or flight. You’re either going to just rail against it, or flee.

And it – So, hallucination is probably a bit of your brain that doesn’t speak the same language you do, warning you about something. So, she said, it’s like sitting on the sofa watching TV with one of your friends, and an enormous poisonous spider climbs up, and you say “Watch out for that.” And medication in that scenario is someone getting a big – that person getting a big awful dirty sofa cushion, and just pressing it on your head so you can’t say anything. And I think both I and my voices really agree with that, because it’s [sigh].

Yeah.

At the end of the day, all your voices are still a part of your brain, they still have your bests interests at heart, even if they don’t know how to tell you. And I think making peace with them that way. So instead of just putting a shield wall up and saying ‘nah’, saying ‘okay, I understand why you think that, but I’m fine’, has been a lot better for me in the long run.

And on a kind of day to day basis now, how do the symptoms kind of manifest?

It – At the moment, for about a month and a half, they’ve been almost gone. So I get the occasional like internal voice/thought that’s not me. So, much, much better than it used to be. I found that as soon as I stopped taking the psychosis medication most of my symptoms went away [laugh]. Which I think is quite unusual. But can happen. So I think now I’m left with kind of just the – kind of the mood issues. And still struggle with things like concentration. But I think the – like the hallucinations have stopped completely now. And the external voices have stopped completely too. So, yeah.

But I met up with a new psychiatrist who said, well, no, no, no you don’t need this at the moment. You know, You need a different combination. So I was transitioned onto Abilify or aripiprazole fluvoxamine, not fluoxitine, fluvoxamine and melatonin to help with regulates sleep and that was a wicked combination. Wicked in terms of really good. It was like the psychiatrist knew exactly what I needed and prescribed me exactly what I needed. ‘Cause that combination it, it helped build my motivation again. It helped get my energy levels back. The side effects wasn’t as severe. The fluvoxamine helped with some of the obsessional thinking that was going on. And by talking to me, like a human being again, the psychiatrist sort of was able to work out what I actually needed.

So by interacting with me as a human and as a normal person, he managed to get the information he needed to provide the right combination of medication. And he did it really good as well. So, like the Risperdal (risperidone) was up here [indicates it being high] and then he started the Abilify (aripiprazole) on top of that. And then he slowly reduced the Abilify and increased, slowly reduced the Risperdal and increased the Abilify. Increased the Abilify again and reduced the Risperdal. It went up like that until the Risperdal was gone. I also had PRN, which I took when I needed to take it. So I think I was on lorazepam PRN which really helped me deal with some more acute episodes. But the, the fluvoxamine, melatonin and Abilify worked really well at that time and it worked well until I got transferred over to adult services, completely. And then had no psychiatry input. So whereas my previous psychiatrist was adjusting medication when I needed it. He was talking to me about it. Talking to me about the side effects. The new psychiatrist wasn’t interested in any of that. It was like, well there’s the medication you’re on, deal with it. If you don’t wanna take it that’s your choice. And as time went on with this combination of medication the side effects started to become a lot more real.

So, started to get the same side effects as I did on Risperdal as time went on. I was like, one day I just said, you know what, I’m not gonna take this med—tablets any more. And it was simultaneously the best and worst decision I ever took. It was the worst decision, because I nearly killed myself as a result, ’cause it was, it just threw my chemical balance all over the place, it weren’t, it weren’t a wise thing to do. ‘Cause I didn’t tell anyone either. So I did it without telling anyone. I think if I could change anything about my journey it’d be that I’d come off my medication better, so I’d tell someone and do it gradually as opposed to just coming off it, ’cause that really it caused me a lot of physical and emotional problems, really.