Thursday, March 13, 2008
psychopharmacology etc.
I am now on:2 Lexapro (total 20mg a day)
3 X*anax (total .75mg a day, sometimes I go up to 1.0mg a day)
2 Lorazepam (total 1mg a day, down from 2mg)
1 Seroquel (total 100mg a day, up from 50mg)
If you are like me and like to read online about medicine, and you will find out that Seroquel is more commonly used for schizophrenia or manic-depression or bipolar disorder, if I am not mistaken. But my doctor is using it as a sedative and to calm me, not because I have been diagnosed as a schizophrenic, meaning I don't do things that 'mad' people do like facial twitches, shouting at invisible people, or dribbling in catatonia. I also don't suffer from mania, that is, I don't have episodes of hysteria where I think I can jump off the roof and fly...
The fact that depressed people don't do these so-called 'crazy' things is probably the very reason why when people like us tell others that we have been diagnosed with clinical depression, it is almost hard to believe, because we often hide it. And it is actually concealable, because depressed people behave normally on the outside like regular folk do. In fact, we might be charismatic leaders in real life (like Winston Churchill), behave like natural comics (Charlie Chaplin), be cheery people (me, to some people). To the unsympathetic layman: the depressive needs to 'cheer up', the schizos act 'strangely'.
If you want to find out more about schizophrenia though, one of my favourite books "I Know This Much Is True" by Wally Lamb, talks about a pair of twins, of whom one is schizophrenic. We also of course know amazingly smart people who are mad, most famous of all John Nash immortalised by the movie A Beautiful Mind.