God I hate drugs, I don't care what their function I hate drugs

[Lesley_Roberta]

I have a very significant hate going for anything that comes in a pill.

I have seen them fold spindle and mutilate my own mind from 'expert' advice of shrinks.

I turfed them from my life back start of the century after being badly mangled by them in the late 90s.

Today I look at common Tylenol with distrust. I'd rather the wife did whatever it took to not need her birth control. Frankly, it is one of the reasons I'd like the doctor to remove my testicles. Hey, I'd rather she not take pills that much eh.

I read all the comments about HRT, but I must admit, it's a drug, I loathe drugs. I'd be going into the process if I were with the attitude 'ok what manner of buggered is going to happen to me because of this?'.

I think precious little of psychiatry over all. I think shrinks are at best 50% idiots with inflated ideas of self worth. The other half to be treated with suspicion. I think the profession has a lot of gaul using the word science anywhere connected with it.

I suffer a lot of pain mainly because I am resistant to taking my ibuprofen prescription as I distrust medicines that much.
I don't care if weed is ever made legal, I am not in a hurry to employ it.

My wife is in a state where she is frantic, suffering a good deal, pondering having herself put in the hospital while she switches meds she is using, mainly for depression. I am not sure what the hospital would do for her.
I wish I could just tell her forcefully, 'enough with the stupid drugs pretending to claim to be the cure all so many think they are!'.
I would prefer her to go 6 months and take nothing at all. She needs to purge her system. I see her dealing with what I dealt with years ago. Too many 'let's try this then' attempts in too short a time frame. I think her shrink is useless. Personally I'd like to walk in on him and just tell him to stop pushing the f**king pills and make a real living doing something useful (like flipping burgers).

I've met more shrinks that were clearly malpractice waiting to happen if you ask me.

But my wife is her own person and I can't force her. I can just tell her 'I've been there'.
I have been there.

I think we honestly DO believe a lot of the crap we are being told about medicine curing everything.
Nope, I think you get further with better strategies that you do with pharmaceutical solutions.
I've heard plenty of people tell me all about their successes, and I often am not sure I really believe them.
We lie to ourselves all the time.

I'm glad my pension is paying for this stuff, because I sure as hell wouldn't.

[Darkflame]

Medicine doesn't cure everything, and it definitely should be a last resort when it comes to mental health. The over dependence on pharmaceuticals is pretty pronounced in westernized society. There seems to be a lot of pill pushing over relatively minor things in medicine generally. But by the same token, they were invented for a reason. Some people need psychotropic medications, the same way some people need insulin injections.

I've had the fanciful idea of stopping all of my meds many times before, and I went through with it a few of times. It never took me anywhere good that's for sure. Sometimes it became downright dangerous. I can actually say I'm pretty lucky to still be around, I put myself in a lot of dangerous positions, both intentionally and unitentionally. I know that it can be easy to dismiss the validity of these medications when they aren't necessary for you, but nothing quite puts it in prospective quite like a full blown manic episode with psychosis. Psychosis is the most terrifying thing that's ever happened to me, and drugs are the only way to make sure I don't end up like that.

But other things are important too besides just pills when it comes to mental health, maintaining a healthy sleep schedule, eating balanced, and generally just taking care of yourself are all important to being mentally healthy. Drugs aren't miracle pills, you have to lead a life conductive to getting better. Psychotropic drugs help lift the burden and make the brain do what it's supposed to do itself, regulate it's chemicals. Acute symptoms like mania or psychosis or very severe depression are almost always treated with medication because the outcome of not being medicated is extremely risky.

I can't know for sure if your wife needs medication, but it might be dangerous for her to just stop drugs if she's already thinking of going  to the hospital. Maybe these decisions should be made when she is doing better? And it ultimately is her brain and she's the one living with it. Though you are too, you live with the symptoms of her illness to a degree too. You might find that you won't like how she is off medications. Both of my parents were very anti psychotropic drugs before I got sick, but after a couple of really bad episodes caused by deciding not to take them at all they both became the med police.

[Lesley_Roberta]

It looks like the wife is sticking it out with the meds, and basically she seems ok with the advice being given. The woman she talks to, she's known to me as one of the few opinions I don't mind as much. She's not a shrink just a skilled social worker in the same field.

Everyone has to cope in their own way.

I don't want my demons medicated, I want you to hold them down so I can beat the ->-bleeped-<- out of them physically

I don't advocate hiding, and I think meds are just a form of hiding.

I see your pills, and I raise you good friends and good strategies to cope.

I suppose I am glad I can cope without them.

I think I'm coping at least.

[kelly_aus]

For some people, meds are part of the solution. I wasn't one of them. After I gave up drugs, I didn't take anything, not even low end pain meds. When it came time for me to start HRT, I had to think long and hard about it - did I really want to be taking pills? In the end, I decided yes, I did and I'm so glad I did.

[Darkflame]

I don't think I'm hiding behind my drugs. In fact I envy people who don't need the medications I need, I hate my meds and I've tried to stop them so many times. Every time has gotten me in the hospital against my will. Some problems are psychological, some are biological; what I take my meds for is biology. I have bipolar disorder and the things that happen to me when I don't follow my meds are pretty scary. I respect that some people don't agree with psychotropic medications, but when it comes to disorders like schizophrenia or bipolar I think a differentiation has to be made. Some people are dangerous when they aren't being treated, either to themselves or the people around them. That's serious. My father had to call an ambulance because I became noncoherent and I hadn't ate or drank or slept in three days and he was honestly afraid I would die. I almost got hit by a car because I walked the middle of the road in a busy intersection without even looking around me. I stopped being able to understand people talking to me. I almost jumped out of a moving car. These are things I would never do normally. I was in therapy for years before I was diagnosed with bipolar, I talked about all kinds of things, my friends family and school supported me, but my behavior didn't change. The difference from before my first mood stabilizer to a week after I started it was unrecognizable. 

Like I said, I envy people who don't need medications. I wish I could be like that. but my brain wasn't wired that way. I take my pills because I honestly cannot function when I'm off meds. I have my trans issues to deal with by talking and coping, but my brain needs to actually function properly first. They don't solve everything by a long shot, but it gives me an even playing ground. Some people can manage a mental illness drug free, but not everyone can. It's all about risks and benefits

[Eva Marie]

Some people can manage a mental illness drug free, but not everyone can. It's all about risks and benefits

I understand the OP's position about wanting to avoid drugs.

My wife started having cycles of severe rage followed by deep depressions. This wasn't the girl i married. She got on an SSRI and her world evened out. Her doctor told her that her brain needed a chemical that her body could not make. Made sense to me.

Fast forward a few years and I started having severe dysphoria attacks - i heard voices in my head and I was absolutely fearless about wanting to go whole hog girl mode and get divorced - this wasn't me!. I've never had experiences like that before and they came out of the blue. Low dose HRT stopped all of that. My brain needed a chemical that my body could not make.

My daughter is severely ADHD. When we finally figured it out and got her on ADHD meds her grades went from low C's to A's. The change was amazing. She just missed out on being a national merit scholar by about a point.

Yes, the over prescription/overuse of meds can be bad but in the right circumstances they are appropriate.

[Carrie Liz]

I hated pills my entire life, and I actively avoided ANYTHING of the sort. Even when I was sick, I always just tried to let it run its course and let my immune system do its thing rather than resorting to pills.

HRT is the first time in my entire life that I have ever been on a medication. And, well, I must admit, it is the only kind of pill that I not only don't hate, but freaking love! I swear, Spiro, Finasteride, and Estadiol are totally my new best friends. Still avoiding all other pills like the plague, though.

[brainiac]

I have to say, I've met two kinds of psychiatrists in my mental health travels: ones who focus on disorders, and ones who focus on symptoms. The former type seems to slap a label on you and give a generic treatment based on that and adjust if needed, and the latter seems to look at individual symptoms to get a combined treatment. I agree much, much more with the latter approach, and I've had better experiences with psychiatrists like that.

I don't mind pills--in fact, they make my life livable. But we have a huge problem. The general public doesn't seem to understand just how unscientific most psychiatrists are and how little researchers understand most psychiatric disorders. That means there's a lot of unfounded trust in what psychiatrists prescribe, and I think people want to believe that the "easy" fix of taking a pill means that they don't need to go through the "work" of therapy, but it's simply not true for the vast majority of patients.

And, at least in the US, we have advertisements for psychiatric medications and pharmaceutical companies essentially bribing doctors to prescribe their products (including off-label for things the FDA hasn't tested them on). And there are massive problems with the studies these companies pay for that "prove" effectiveness of medication, too--they almost never have correct controls in terms of factoring out placebo effects. This is stuff that should be based purely on effectiveness. But hey, it's not like that's gonna change anytime soon here... sigh.

And just as a side note, there was one thing unrelated to therapy or medication that really helped me emerge from my depression in the past: volunteering. It has to be the right thing for her individually--for me, it was helping special needs kids in a therapeutic horseback riding program, which combined a structured time to "get stuff done", the calming influence of animals, the joy of helping people in need, and exercise. I've actually recently gone back to it after slipping back into depression this winter (my vitamin D levels were incredibly low, which actually can cause depression), and it's really great for pulling me out of my own head and getting me out of the house. But I'd really suggest volunteering for her as an alternative.

[CloudyKino]

I can see where you're coming from. I had a fear of certain medicinal drugs for a while up until recently.

[calico]

I wish I didnt have to take some of the drugs I take at this period in my life, but if I didn't I wouldnt be able to walk,I'd be sick (ill)and dizzy all the time. The only drugs that I am ok with is my hrt, the others are just neccesary evils that keep me mobile and not suffering, if there was something I could do to quit taking them I would in a heartbeat.

[Joelene9]

  I didn't care for drugs either.  I would buy ibuprofen for pain and never use it.  I had to throw away a full bottle because it had expired.  Getting as old as I am these drugs are life savers.  Prostate, thryoid, GID, severe foot pain and other problems I had treated the past 3 years I could not focus away.  I am better off than the rest of my friends my age in the number of pills taken daily.  I got 4 prescriptions while some of my friends are averaging 6-7.  My scripts may fall to 3 by the end of summer. 

  Joelene

[sandrauk]

I've always been against pills for  the mind but when my daughters' husband left she was beyond consolable.

I'm not exaggerating when I say that she sobbed continuously for a year. Therapy had no effect. When she went off to throw herself in the river I said that's it, get  the pills. After a month or so she was right as rain and came off the pills slowly, so they can have their place.

[StellaB]

I see drugs pretty much the same as I see guns and cars.

It's not the drugs themselves that are the issue, but how and why they're used.

I have to admit that I'm glad that some of the people I come across are taking tablets and then there are others who I wish would be on some sort of medication. But that's just me.

[Lesley_Roberta]

The wife just did a full week and a couple of days in the hospital mental ward (self admitted) to sort out her meds.

They tried her on something new, seems like it might have calmed down the shaking hands.

And every day she came home between 3 and 7 in the evening. And the whole time she was here, she was a crying mess from wanting to come home (she was there by her choice though).

My thoughts, well if she was getting ANY sort of REAL worth out of these pills, she would have been able to cope with some simple home sickness. She had books to read, and that is about all she does at home, she was eating better in some cases than if she were at home.

I think somewhere somehow, she has to unlock something she is simply unwilling to unlock inside herself that will get rid of her depression and make the pills unneeded and unwelcome.

She's very insular, very isolated in lifestyle, not anti social, merely disinclined to put herself anywhere where she might be able to socialize. Her capacity to communicate is limited thanks to a life of just not needing to thanks to living out of town and having a father that was a dick about letting her experience so much as ordinary TV when she was a kid (he was one of those jerks that thinks only his TV needs matter).

I am not sure how I will get her off the pills, but I plan to drag her all over town till she realizes she's not going to be holding a pillow down most of the day. I'm going to be dumping her in any social setting I can think up.

[Joanna Dark]

The wife just did a full week and a couple of days in the hospital mental ward (self admitted) to sort out her meds.

They tried her on something new, seems like it might have calmed down the shaking hands.

And every day she came home between 3 and 7 in the evening. And the whole time she was here, she was a crying mess from wanting to come home (she was there by her choice though).

My thoughts, well if she was getting ANY sort of REAL worth out of these pills, she would have been able to cope with some simple home sickness. She had books to read, and that is about all she does at home, she was eating better in some cases than if she were at home.

I think somewhere somehow, she has to unlock something she is simply unwilling to unlock inside herself that will get rid of her depression and make the pills unneeded and unwelcome.

She's very insular, very isolated in lifestyle, not anti social, merely disinclined to put herself anywhere where she might be able to socialize. Her capacity to communicate is limited thanks to a life of just not needing to thanks to living out of town and having a father that was a dick about letting her experience so much as ordinary TV when she was a kid (he was one of those jerks that thinks only his TV needs matter).

I am not sure how I will get her off the pills, but I plan to drag her all over town till she realizes she's not going to be holding a pillow down most of the day. I'm going to be dumping her in any social setting I can think up.

Well maybe you should show some patience and compassion and try to empathize rather then condemn her for seeking some therapeutic release from her depression. Like others have said, meds themselves are not evil it's how they are used and there is a time and a place. I'm not trying to be contrarian but you seem to be more focues on the pills then helping her as if taking away the meds will cure her.