Posted by aminated on March 26, 2004, at 0:05:24
In reply to Re: music in my head, posted by chriscat on March 24, 2004, at 6:25:18
Lots of interesting info in this string re: my auditory hallucinations. I haven't talked to many other people (real or otherwise) who've had this problem. My voices (I don't think i've ever heard music) have much in common with the hallucinations of music i've been reading about. Sometimes they are so insistent and loud that I can't squeeze in my own thoughts, and thus cannot really function at all (or sleep, even multiple consecutive nights).
The good news is that after about three years of taking Risperdal (only when I really needed it, not daily; I took it daily at first and had a few fine cases of akathisia -- I'm also a little averse to ingesting neurotoxins generally) I am much less affected by the hallucinations (they are not cammand hallucinations -- they are of other people, usually talking about me, but never TO me). I am manic-depressive and have "lost" (10 or 11 years ago) my manias entirely, unless the voices are a mixed state. I have no other symptoms of mania, only of depression in degrees varying from time to time. As I progressively lowered the amount of risperdal I ingested over time (more than two years), the voices became less insistent (easier to function through) and finally came to occur much less often. I don't attribute the decline of the hallucinations to the reduction (essentially elimination) of risperdal, but risperdal was not necessary in order to rid my mind of the really painfully boring chatter that occupied my conciousness for much of the past few years. My pdoc considers that, whatever produced the voices in the first place, I may have by now finally "learned" to ignore them, usually with the help of outside noise such as radio or music, enough to not be hearing them most of the time. I think it also shares some characteristics with the neurological phenomenon of 'kindling' in which a neurological pathway is or pathways are repeatedly triggered, and thus reinforce themselves -- make themselves more easily-triggered, and thus more commonly-ocurring.
There are lots of things about my voices I find interesting, like the multitude of "characters" (voices) my mind generates, and the ideas, even the language it generates, unbidden, things I've never thought or heard. Only most of it is dead boring, and that's sometimes seemed like the hell of it all -- I have a vivid imagination, can write a story, etc. Why must my damned hallucinations be so tedious?
I guess that's different than music after all.
poster:aminated
thread:1295
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20040325/msgs/328577.html