#Antipsychotics – Long term effects #Electroboy

Like many of us who agreed to take ‘anti-psychotics’ Andy Behrman (Electroboy) has changed the way he thinks about these.

Since publishing Electroboy speaks out I have been asked about research into how people who have taken these drugs for years cope when they eventually get off the drugs. I do not think there has been much research – as a reader can you tell me of some?

My own personal experience is that it is tough. In many ways my life has been more difficult since my first day visiting a psychiatric ward and being given a small cup of orange liquid and a nurse saying, “Drink this. It will help you feel better.”

It was years later that I discovered the cup contained chlorpromazine. That drink was a turning point in my life as when my parents came to visit me I was suffering memory loss and confusion from the psychosis it induced in me. The effect of the drug was to convince them that I had become severely unwell. It was my first and to date most severe experience of psychosis… But then surely an ‘anti-psychotic’ is supposed to lessen psychosis and not cause it? Well, not really. As with other psychiatric drugs ‘anti-psychotics’ are essentially sedatives. See: The Myth of the Chemical Cure by Joanna Moncrieff

I am sure such the practice of nurses tricking people into taking their first fix of a drug, (without saying what it is) is now strictly forbidden in the UK. There again  student nurses are mainly just given the drug company information about the drugs and not a chemist’s perspective, so those offered the drugs are unlikely to have any idea just how long-term the consequences of that first dose are likely to be.

So 42 years on I am still suffering everyday from the first addiction to an ‘anti-psychotic’ and from the one started in a more violent way years later… being held down by five nurses while the sixth injected the drug into my bum! The ward manager looked on and seemed to be crying… now I understand why.

I am now getting by without the drugs, but most nights it is just getting by. It does not seem I will ever fully recover from the damage the drugs did to me. If you are thinking that you need psychiatric drugs please don’t rush into getting them. If you have a choice make some lifestyle changes and stay away from the drugs.