THE (Other) MOSS REPORTS

[Guest guest]

Dear Frank and AMF People,

 

I have my own Moss Reports, and I post them to my blog. I thought I would share

today's entry with you.

 

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I usually talk about things happening outside in my life. I think I'll do

something different today.

 

The last several months have been very hard for me, inside my head and body, due

to the change in treatment. The supplements have been keeping me stable, but my

body is still in the process of repairing all the damage caused by the drugs I

used to take; I've been on some psychoactive drug or other almost continuously

since the age of 12, which is what I remember my age as being when they started

me on Mysoline (primodone), an anti-convulsant. (If I remember the year wrong,

I'm sorry.)

 

It has been shown that the dopamine-receptor-blocking neuroleptic drugs (which,

fortunately, I have not taken until very recently, with Zyprexa) actually cause

your brain to grown up to 50% MORE dopamine receptors to recover from having the

dopamine being blocked. When a patient stops taking the drug, they are then up

to 50% more dopamine-sensitive, and it takes a while for their brain to recover

to its former (pre-drug) state. This also shatters a myth we were taught in

school, that brain cells do not grow or change. However, being

dopamine-sensitive, the patient is considerably more prone to have a relapse of

the condition s/he was taking the drugs for.

 

Similar studies have not been done for SSRIs (Selective Serotonin Receptor

Inhibitors), of which I've taken quite a few over a long period of time. But it

will probably prove to be the same case. And they don't even KNOW what lithium

and the anti-convulsants do... " treatment " is limited to suppressing the

symptoms, not curing the condition.

 

So the past 5 months, my emotions have been pretty wild. I haven't been

cycling, thanks to the fish oil, so I've been able to look at the feelings that

come up and try to understand them and control them the way a " normal " human

would. But it's like being a teenager again, my emotions have been blocked by

the drugs for so long that there is a fairly steep relearning curve.

 

I know I have been encouraging everyone I can talk to about getting off the

drugs. On the one hand, my current problems illustrate something else " bad "

that the drugs do, and I have to recover not only from my disease but also from

all the effects and side effects of the drugs. On the other hand, it might

scare a few people who are on the drugs, and make them just want to adjust to

the drug problems instead of taking on new issues.

 

I know for myself that I need to do this. I want to be the person I am SUPPOSED

to be, not the person the drugs make me into. But it's not easy, and I continue

thanking the people who are helping me through this, including the people of the

ALT-therapies4bipolar , the various other groups and chatrooms I'm in,

and most of all Beth, my 3rd ex-wife, who has made herself available to me on a

daily, sometimes hourly, basis.

 

All my love,

Moss Bliss

 

 

 

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