- Hey, Lauren, how did reducing your meds too quickly go?
[Scary Voice] Not well.
So some background context for what's been happening.
Some of you may know I've been trying
to reduce my medications.
This is stemming from, you know, partly,
you know, it's kind of hard to actually weed out
between delusional thinking around medications
where I believe that the medications are, you know
poisoning me or whatnot and weeding that concept
and that mentality out from,
well, there's a lot of evidence out there that, you know
antipsychotic medication and psychiatric medication
in general are not great for you long term, or, you know
the long term effects are not really well known.
I think there's some healthy skepticism going on
around my medications and, you know
wanting to reduce them and whatnot.
And maybe ideally at some point go off of them.
But then it's kind of hard to kind of weed that out
from a delusion that I particularly hold
around medications being poisonous.
I think that kind of wove itself into
maybe why I reduced too quickly
but basically I had been trying to reduce my medication
working with my psychiatrist.
The idea I guess, was to reduce very, very slowly
but I think I ended up getting a little bit
carried away with it and reduced too quickly.
Part of why this happened is because
things were going really well at first.
And I was gradually reducing, you know
half a pill of different medications that I'm on
every couple weeks or every few weeks.
And that seemed to be going okay.
You know, I was feeling good.
I was doing well, but two, two and a half weeks ago
I started to experience more symptoms.
And what I mean by this is I started
having more hallucinations
and I started having more paranoia
and I it was hard to keep up with my thoughts
and they were getting really muddled
and it was hard to maintain a fluent thought process
or, you know I was just feeling really muddled
and very confused.
My symptoms were getting harder to deal with
and harder to manage.
I was also experiencing some other, you know
potential warning signs.
Like one of my warning signs is shopping.
And so I started online shopping again,
and I started just exhibiting behaviors
that were kind of elusive in nature,
which is one of my primary warning signs
that things aren't going very well.
And so I was kind of ignoring some of these warning signs
or maybe just being blissfully ignorant of them,
thinking that, you know,
things were still going really well.
And that I could just continue with the rate of reduction
that I was doing in terms of reducing my medication.
However, the symptoms started getting really, really bad
about a week ago.
I think it's important to mention as well
that we were going through some stressors in life.
You know, my family got COVID
about a month ago and that was
a really, really stressful thing for us all to go through.
And so perhaps that in conjunction
with just the stress that goes along
with reducing medications, you know
kind of maybe led to an exacerbate an exacerbasement,
is that a word?
- [Man] Is that a word?
- I don't know, whatever,
but it led to the exacerbation of my symptoms.
So things were getting a little rough
with symptoms and whatnot.
And then this past weekend
I also had a bit of relationship conflict.
So Rob and I were, you know
fighting about this or that or whatever.
But I think that also kind of exacerbated the symptoms
that I was experiencing
and the hallucinations that I was experiencing.
And, you know, some of the delusional thought
that I was falling into started having a really negative
you know, nature to it.
And I started getting hallucinations
that were really negative in nature
kind of around the relationship conflict.
Anyway, it began to be very difficult to manage them.
And so Friday night,
so after my psychiatrists office was closed for the week
it got to a point where I felt
that I really needed help and guidance
in terms of figuring out what to do with my medication.
'Cause I had kind of identified at that point
that medication was kind of where the root issue was.
And so my psychiatrist had actually instructed me
to call a mobile crisis team if ever this, you know
problems came up like this when it was after his hours.
And so I made the decision to reach out for support
to a mobile crisis team.
I think they're called something else now
and they're no longer kind of as mobile
but they're a crisis response team that was available
at that time of day.
I called them and a bit of back and forth.
They were at first hesitant to kind of offer
any kind of guidance around medication
because they didn't wanna step on my
my treating psychiatrist toes, I guess, around medication.
But they ended up booking me for a kind of emergency session
with one of their psychiatrists for the Sunday.
It felt like I couldn't really wait that long.
And so I made the decision to just increase
my antipsychotic, that I was on a little bit Friday night.
And by the time Sunday morning rolled around
I was feeling like I was a lot more stable
and kind of able to handle things.
And so I decided to cancel the emergency appointment
with the other psychiatrist and just call my
my own psychiatrist Monday morning.
Called my psychiatrist's office and left a message
saying that I needed to speak with him as soon as possible.
The crisis response team actually followed up with me
a couple times, which I was really kind of surprised about.
And, you know, it was kind of nice to see
that they have that kind of service available
to people who were experiencing crisis
because, you know, it's hard to navigate that.
And so to have that extra support was really good.
So where things kind of landed there is
that they ended up reaching out to my psychiatrist as well
and they were able to talk
and they let me know in a follow up conversation
that my psychiatrist is going to be calling me
on Thursday to kind of check in
and go over everything that happened.
But he suggested to them that I be a part
of their stabilization team, I think is what it's called.
And so they're going to continue checking in with me
until my psychiatrist can check in
and kind of figure out what's going on.
So that's kind of where things are at
but also on over the weekend,
I reached out to my therapist to see if she could fit me in
in terms of having a cancellation sometime this week.
And she did fit me in this morning.
And so those are kind of all the steps that I took
to address kind of the crisis situation that I was in.
And that's kind of where things are at right now.
So what I really wanna convey is actually, you know
partly what I talked to my therapist about this morning
and that was kind of around the idea
of she pointed out that I'm experiencing a bit
of a disconnect between how I'm choosing to frame
seeing the medication increase that I inevitably
had to do this weekend and what my feelings are around that.
And I've kind of disassociated a little bit
in terms of trying not to fall into the feelings that I have
which are around, you know, a sense of loss
and a sense of failure
in terms of having to go back up on medications.
And I think that that was a really important insight
in terms of understanding that I need to kind of reframe
how I'm seeing that event and seeing it less as a failure
and more as a tool or kind of more information
for how to go about it, again.
Understanding that my ultimate goal
of trying to reduce medication and seeing how that works
for my mind and my body and whatnot is still,
you know, a possible goal to have.
And it's still the goal that I hold.
But understanding now that I have more information
in terms of how to go about it now again.
I think that some things that I learned were basically
that it's kind of an ebb and a flow process.
It's not like because it was going so well to begin with,
that it's always going to be that way.
I think you kind of always have to take into account
stressors in your life
or how your body is responding to different reductions
in the medication or, you know, all that kind of stuff.
And I think you always need to be kind of reacting
and taking into account what your body is telling you
that there were some warning signs
that I detailed at the beginning of this video
that my body was kind of telling me like,
hey, we need to slow down.
You know, this is not
this is not going the best it can be anymore.
And I should have been more open
to listening to that and understanding
that it's okay to not follow strict, you know
regimen of reduction in terms of reducing meds.
And it's okay to kind of be more in tune
with what my body's telling me and go with the flow
a little bit more in terms of, you know
listening to my body
in terms of what is appropriate reduction.
And then again also being okay
if I do need to increase and being okay with that
and not seeing that as a failure or a sense of loss.
I think I also learned from this experience
that I need to be more aware of the stressors
that are going on in my life.
So, you know, my baby started daycare
and then we all got hit with COVID
and that was really difficult to manage.
You know, we're still dealing with symptoms
and it's been hard to work through that.
And so understanding that other stressors in life
are going to have an impact
on how I'm experiencing symptoms and whatnot too.
Factoring that in, I guess
to my medication regimen is important as well.
Another thing that came up in therapy
is around my relationship with my psychiatrist.
So, you know, I'm always telling people
that I'm working very closely
with my psychiatrist in terms of navigating this reduction.
But I think something that I kind of became aware of
talking with my therapist this morning
was that I haven't had the most open communication
with my psychiatrist, I think, you know, and,
you know I'm grateful for this,
that he's kind of taken the approach of following my lead
in terms of having this goal of medication reduction
and figuring out when to reduce
and how much to reduce and whatnot.
He's kind of been following my lead on that.
And so in an effort to not lose that, that sense of trust
I've kind of just been spewing
what I think he wants to hear.
So saying, yeah, it's going really great.
I'm doing really well.
Maybe sharing that I'm having more symptoms
but saying that I am managing them.
No problem.
Since COVID happened, all of our appointments
have been over the phone.
And so they've just been quick five minute
just kind of rushing through everything appointments.
And ultimately that is harming me.
And so, you know, going into my appointment
on Thursday with him, or when he calls me on Thursday
I'm going to try to be more mindful of this
and really be more honest about not only
what I'm experiencing in terms of increased symptoms
and how the medication reduction is affecting me
but being more honest and hopefully transparent
about what my ultimate goals are and hopefully trying to get
on the same page a little bit more around that.
So I highly doubt this is going to be
the last you hear for me in terms of my journey
around reducing medications.
But hopefully this is going to be the last time
where I am coming from a place
of kind of blissful ignorance in terms of how it's going.
And hopefully I will be able to have a more
realistic understanding about
how to navigate it,
understanding that I absolutely need to keep people
like my psychiatrist and my therapist in the loop
and work more collaboratively with them.
I don't want anyone to see this video and be like,
oh, Lauren's going off medication.
So I'm gonna do that too.
That's absolutely not what I am trying to advocate
with this video.
Maybe more like healthy skepticism around it
but more so I guess
if you have any,
you know, skepticism or thoughts around that,
around anything like medication, trying to be open
with communicating about them with your medical care team
I think is really, really important.
And finding a medical care team that really cares
about your goals and what you want
and what you wanna work toward and kind of helping you
to work towards that.
So thanks for watching this little catch up video
on my journey of reducing my medication.
This last week was really, really hard.
And I very much hope that none of you guys find yourself
in this sort of situation as well, because it wasn't good.
And I learned that I don't ever wanna find myself
in this kind of situation again
where I am in crisis and unable to handle symptoms.
Hope that sharing what I learned
from this experience is helpful in some way.
If you guys have any other tips
for navigating this kind of situation
I would love to hear from you in the comments below.
Thank you so much for watching and as always,
wishing you and your loved ones good health.
We'll see you in the next video, bye.