Posted by TomG on December 12, 2004, at 14:57:42
In reply to Sorry if I'm going off topic a bit...., posted by pretty_paints on December 12, 2004, at 13:02:34
pretty paints, Unfortunately my diagnosis has been a long time in the making. I started to know something was wrong about eighteen or nineteen when I started using illegal drugs. I'm 29 now. I was using pot, LSD, cocaine, X, and almost anything else I could get my hands on. But, the bad thing is that I wasn't enjoying the drugs. They made me suspicious of friends, withdrawn, and left me in a highly confused state. I know those drugs will do that to anybody, but now that I can analyze the situation with a clear mind I know that my behavior during that time was much different compared to my friends who were doing the same drugs. My symptoms had been emerging for some time prior to drug use, but the drug use in a sense brought everything closer to the surface so to speak. At 21 after going into an amphetamine psychosis from cocaine use one evening I went into an outpatient rehab program where I was assigned a psychiatrist who thought I needed to be on Prozac. This sent me into about a three month hypomanic episode. At the time I didn't even know what hypomania was much less think that I had a mental illness, because I felt great. To make this long story shorter after I came down from the hypomania I tried in and out for several years to regain what the Prozac had given me. I've had over 8 doctors in that time. Doctors thought that I had social anxiety and doctors thought I might be bipolar, but none of the medicines to treat those disorders helped me one bit. My paranoia and delusions presents itself in thinking there is a cospiracy against me in the town that I live in that people know there is something wrong with me. And sometimes I even thought that my parents may have given me the illness to some extent and that they planned it all. Usually I don't fully believe the delusions. Half of me wants to believe and the other half doesn't so I wasn't completely involved in false beliefs. Also I had a very inflated sense of myself and thought that I was better than everyone else. This is not uncommon with paranoia and more accurately paranoid schizophrenia. So, I don't know if I have full blown schizophrenia. When I ask my doctor if he thinks I do he always replies, "Do you think you have schizophrenia?" I think that there is enough evidence there and I believe he does too. He is a great doctor and although I have taken medicines other than AP's over the two years I've seen him at my request he has stuck by his belief that I need to stick to AP's based on the symptoms I've relayed to him. I finally hit jackpot although its not a full jackpot with Geodon. It has put an end to my suffering for the most part, but I am just so sleepy. More than anything it has left me in control of my thoughts. Before Geodon my thoughts were out of control. They were very disorganized and negative, and I was confused most of the time. I now think that I have schizophrenia based on my response to Geodon and my relation to most of the symptoms of schizophrenia that have been in evolution over about ten years. It is not full blown schizophrenia nevertheless it is still a form of mild schizophrenia. To me it has been more of a thought disorder with depression and anxiety accompanying the paranoia and disorganization. I guess I can be very thankful that I don't hear voices.
poster:TomG
thread:427750
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20041211/msgs/428358.html