Prologue

I was diagnosed with psychotic depression few years ago, i will try to write about various medication i went through and how they made me feel and various side effects they had. Don't use this post as a guideline for your treatment, always consult your doctor. This post is aimed to show what can you expect from certain psychiatric medication, effects may vary from person to person.

Symptoms

Mild paranoid thoughts, thinking that my family want to harm me, not physically but emotionally. Constant anxiety, suicidal thoughts, fear, panic.

Medication

At first doctor tried to treat my psychotic symptoms, so they gave me Risperidone.

Risperidone

Risperidone, sold under the trade name Risperdal among others, is an antipsychotic medication. It is mainly used to treat schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and irritability in people with autism. It is taken either by mouth or by injection into a muscle. The injectable version is long acting and lasts for about two weeks.

How it made me feel

Well at first i had mild insomnia with an increased sweating at nights. They usually gave me risperidone in the morning, so a couple of hours later after consuming it i felt like my legs was getting way heavier than they are, it wasn't a problem to walk or something like that but i definitely noticed that. It helped with my panic symptoms, i remember staring at some chips in the market while my panic was raising and i was thinking well it's so bad after all. A week pasted and i well more side effects, one of them was sexual dysfunction, i still could get hard but it required way more effort. Also i started to feel one side of my body differently like i was touching my forehead and i was feeling like i was touching my chin, so i told my doctor and she immediately put me off of risperidone due to high risk of seizures. Psychologically i didn't feel any different except for that panic thing.

Olanzapine

Olanzapine (originally branded Zyprexa) is an atypical antipsychotic. It is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Olanzapine is structurally similar to clozapine and quetiapine. It is a dopamine antagonist and is classified as a thienobenzodiazepine. Despite its close structural relation to traditional benzodiazepine anxiolytics, it possesses no affinity for the GABAA receptor, its anxiolytic effect is mediated through its effect on dopamine and 5HT receptors.

How it made me feel

I slept way better on it, like deep sleep 12 hours straight. It is sometimes prescribed for insomnia, so it really helped with my sleep. I started to feel emotions i once had, like love, strong empathy, also started to really miss my relatives which i previously thought were trying to harm me, i was talking with my sister on the phone and just sobing because how much i love her and the rest of the family, also it eradicated my paranoia. I still felt depressed though. Side effects was just sexual dysfunction, which wasn't that strong keep in mind.

Mirtazapine

Mirtazapine, originally branded Remeron, is an atypical antidepressant with noradrenergic and specific serotonergic activity. It blocks the α2 adrenergic auto- and heteroreceptors (enhancing norepinephrine and serotonin release), and selectively antagonizes the 5-HT2 serotonin receptors in the central and peripheral nervous system. It also enhances serotonin neurotransmission at the 5-HT1 receptor and blocks the histaminergic. Mirtazapine is not a serotonin or norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor but increases serotonin and norepinephrine action by other mechanisms.

How it made me feel

It helped my depression, but just a little. It actually didn't had any significant effect on me, it just made me dream very vivid and interesting dreams, i was actually getting excited then i needed to take them, like you get excited when you go to the cinema to see a movie you were hoping to see for half a year. But it had really strong sexual side effects on me, even though mirtazapine is associated with having less sexual side effects than other tradicional antidepressant medication like ssri. It made me impotent, i just couldn't get hard despite my efforts.

End of part one.

I actually really enjoyed writing this, i hope you will enjoy reading it. I went through way more medication, but i will end it here for now to look if this kind of post gets even the slightest attention. If it does i will continue writing.