Posted by blueberry1 on January 8, 2007, at 18:41:03
In reply to Drug-induced psychosis; anti-psychotic meds?, posted by Kath on January 8, 2007, at 15:42:25
Sounds like a real tough situation. I am very sorry. My heart goes out to you very strongly.
I was a coke addict a couple times and was entering that stage of psychosis/depression. I quit cold turkey both times. The psychosis part faded on its own in about 48 hours. The depression part was severe, almost totally crippling, and took a full 2 weeks to fade away. A month later I was back to where I used to be.
For drug-induced psychosis, I do not believe risperidone is a good choice by the doctors. Or any antipsychotic for that matter. Waiting it out with supportive help such as xanax would have been better in my view.
The problem is that no matter what tips or suggestions you pick up here, what will the doctors think of your requests? Will they cooperate? Will they get defensive and resist? After all, the way they see it is psychosis is psychosis is psychosis and you treat psychosis with antipsychotics. In my mind that is lame.
If it is long lasting or lifetime psychosis, then I favor safer strategies such as depakote or benzodiazepines. If they don't work, then go to zyprexa. Not risperdal. And if depression is an ongoing issue, an antidepressant may be needed. The choices are staggering, but I would limit the field to zoloft, prozac, lexapro, effexor.
In the antipsychotic arena when one is really needed, it is my opinion based on observations here and studying clinical research that zyprexa should be the number one choice. Forget risperdal.
If they wanted to see him improve rapidly, like within a week or two, they should have given him prozac+zyprexa and maybe xanax to back it up. The drugs they have him on now have nowhere near that kind of clinical efficacy or speed.
poster:blueberry1
thread:720522
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20070107/msgs/720583.html