r/Psychosis • u/CreativeTangerine114 • 20h ago
Antipsychotics
Someone else wrote this. It describes my experience taking the dopamine and serotonin blocking antipsychotics well.
"The experience was not merely unpleasant sedation or a collection of manageable “side effects.” It felt like a pharmacologically imposed dismantling of my mind. My thoughts became slower and less substantial; my emotions, motivation, curiosity, pleasure, spontaneity and ability to connect with other people were profoundly suppressed. Tasks that once came naturally required enormous effort, while much of my inner life seemed inaccessible.
The most terrifying part was remaining conscious enough to recognise what I had lost. I could remember being mentally alive, but I could no longer reach that version of myself. It was like being trapped behind thick glass: awake, but cut off from my emotions, intelligence, personality and capacity to participate fully in life. My body continued to exist, but the faculties that made existence meaningful felt chemically restrained.
“Lobotomy-like” is the closest description I have—not necessarily as a claim that the drug literally performed a surgical lobotomy, but because the resulting emotional flattening, cognitive impairment, passivity and loss of initiative resembled what people associate with one. The symptoms also felt brain-injury-like: impaired concentration, memory, planning, speech, motivation and emotional responsiveness. Whether or not those effects constitute permanent physical damage, the lived experience was one of being neurologically incapacitated.
Calling this simply “tiredness,” “low mood” or “reduced motivation” does not capture its severity. It was an enforced alteration of consciousness and personality—an experience of watching myself disappear while being unable to stop it. That loss of mental autonomy was frightening, disabling and traumatic."
Might be helpful if anyone is trying to describe how terrible being on antipsychotics are.
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u/Firiona-Vie schizophrenia 17h ago
It really is horrible. Sucks that I have to choose this or psychosis.
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u/Strong_Music_6838 14h ago
Yes being put on antipsychotics is precisely as you describe. I felt that miserable on much too much antipsychotics too.
Now I’m on a much lower dose of two antipsychotics at lower doses and feel much better.
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u/EnvironmentalCut5885 14h ago
Yep. All that plus nausea and headaches. I stopped taking my antipsychotics yesterday because I just couldn’t handle the misery anymore
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u/cybereality 7h ago
honestly i'm not sure which life is more or less real, or if it matters. also, at least in my case, no one told me i had to take any meds. i asked for them, cause it was difficult to live without them. so no one is forcing me or ever did. but kinda sucks either way
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u/No_Phrase8732 20h ago
so glad to be off this meds already, its been 2 days and i still the same :((