It has been almost two years since I started taking psychotropic medicines. Although I can't always adhere to the prescriptions due to financial constraints, I can say that there have significant improvements.
For one, rumination, the repetitive mental replay of disappointing, saddening, or embarrassing life events, became rare. By rare, I mean it stopped from being an everyday occurrence to being a once in a long while phenomenon. Before taking medications, I can't put a stop on a replay. Now that I'm medicating, at least, I can through effort.
Before, I had this paranoia that almost everyone I pass by ridicules and laughs at me because of my age of mid-twenties I still am not finished with school. The paranoia's intensity was at maximum whenever I was at locations frequented by professionals. That made going to places difficult. With the help of meds, I overcame the thoughts and, now, no longer have this. I still have paranoia, though it is now triggered by a different situation and I can handle it better than the previous.
The auditory hallucinations were ebbing to a stop even before I started taking meds. It was quite scary when, after two years, I heard an echoing sinister laughter in the absence of a voice origin. I have to say, I should be blamed on this, because that day I drank coffee, which I am prohibited from drinking.
Coffee takes off the reins of my hyper mind. It brings the needed wakefulness during the day, but its effects do not wear off even after the sun sets. When it's time to sleep, it unleashes the hounds from the deep depths of my mind and I cannot do anything but think, think, think! My thoughts suddenly are racing and I can't help but think of the same thing over and over again.
My racing thoughts have been effectively addressed by medicine. By racing thoughts, I mean that my ideas run through my mind really fast. It's like going through a thousand-word article in a minute without sacrificing comprehension. Another description is: when I am thinking of idea-A then I switch to idea-B, idea-A still echoes at through my thoughts while I think of idea-B.
The medications have slowed down my world to a significant degree that I felt life's pace became boring. Although, I got used to it little by little and learned to appreciate the change since I can now pause, and live in the present (sometimes).
I thought taking medicines would just eliminate the rumination, paranoia, hallucination, and racing thoughts. I did not expect that it would paralyze some of my capabilities. Initially, it affected my short-term memory. Before taking meds, I could compute a good estimate of the grocery bill as I shop. After the first weeks of taking antipsychotics, and mood stabilizers, I can no longer remember the price of item-A or the partial sum of the groceries to add the price of item-J. After quite a while, I regained the ability, and my short-term memory improved.
After more than a year, I find it a bit hard to think visually thus it dulled my creativity. I miss the days when it was almost effortless for me to draw stories in my mind. I am certainly annoyed, almost angry that my mental faculties are considerably blunted. It's now hard for me to concentrate on a subject for a long time. Challenging ideas take a longer time to seep into my mind. I can no longer multitask. It's now seldom that I can work on a task while listening to music.
I have no plans of stopping my medication, even as I see their negative effects on me. They are still keeping the scary phenomena at bay. As they say, the brain has neuroplasticity. I believe I can relearn the abilities that I lost through persistence.
Before, I had this paranoia that almost everyone I pass by ridicules and laughs at me because of my age of mid-twenties I still am not finished with school. The paranoia's intensity was at maximum whenever I was at locations frequented by professionals. That made going to places difficult. With the help of meds, I overcame the thoughts and, now, no longer have this. I still have paranoia, though it is now triggered by a different situation and I can handle it better than the previous.
The auditory hallucinations were ebbing to a stop even before I started taking meds. It was quite scary when, after two years, I heard an echoing sinister laughter in the absence of a voice origin. I have to say, I should be blamed on this, because that day I drank coffee, which I am prohibited from drinking.
Coffee takes off the reins of my hyper mind. It brings the needed wakefulness during the day, but its effects do not wear off even after the sun sets. When it's time to sleep, it unleashes the hounds from the deep depths of my mind and I cannot do anything but think, think, think! My thoughts suddenly are racing and I can't help but think of the same thing over and over again.
My racing thoughts have been effectively addressed by medicine. By racing thoughts, I mean that my ideas run through my mind really fast. It's like going through a thousand-word article in a minute without sacrificing comprehension. Another description is: when I am thinking of idea-A then I switch to idea-B, idea-A still echoes at through my thoughts while I think of idea-B.
The medications have slowed down my world to a significant degree that I felt life's pace became boring. Although, I got used to it little by little and learned to appreciate the change since I can now pause, and live in the present (sometimes).
I thought taking medicines would just eliminate the rumination, paranoia, hallucination, and racing thoughts. I did not expect that it would paralyze some of my capabilities. Initially, it affected my short-term memory. Before taking meds, I could compute a good estimate of the grocery bill as I shop. After the first weeks of taking antipsychotics, and mood stabilizers, I can no longer remember the price of item-A or the partial sum of the groceries to add the price of item-J. After quite a while, I regained the ability, and my short-term memory improved.
After more than a year, I find it a bit hard to think visually thus it dulled my creativity. I miss the days when it was almost effortless for me to draw stories in my mind. I am certainly annoyed, almost angry that my mental faculties are considerably blunted. It's now hard for me to concentrate on a subject for a long time. Challenging ideas take a longer time to seep into my mind. I can no longer multitask. It's now seldom that I can work on a task while listening to music.
I have no plans of stopping my medication, even as I see their negative effects on me. They are still keeping the scary phenomena at bay. As they say, the brain has neuroplasticity. I believe I can relearn the abilities that I lost through persistence.