Posted by torturedbypsychiatry on August 9, 2009, at 3:40:43
being involuntary commited to a mental hospital i was prescribed SEROQUEL becaues i was (wrongly) diagsnosed with "schizoaffective disorder" (i have since been relieved of this "charge"). i was supposed to take a single dose nightly. about an hour after my first dose, i noticed that there was something terribly wrong with the way my heart was beating. it was so frightening that i really thought i was GOING TO DIE. i had to lie down because it felt like i was "going out" any minute. then the BAD TRIP started. extreme depression/dysphoria, total confusion and HALLUCINATIONS. i wanted to get up from my bed so i could talk to somebody. but i COULDN'T MOVE. after about half an hour of this HELL, i finally managed to force myself up from the bed. i tried to talk to some people but i just couldn't find any words to make people UNDERSTAND what was going on. i also was so tired that i could barely keep my eyes open but was too frightened to go to sleep. i felt trapped. eventually, after about an hour of COMPLETE TORMENT i went to bed again and managed to fall asleep. the next morning i felt more or less normal.
in my country it's ridicilously easy for someone to get involuntary commited and subsequently put on "forced medication". if i refused to take a neuroleptic in pill form i would be put on forced "depot" injections. i'd previously tried every atypical and a few typicals, all with intolerable adverse effects. so seroquel was the only neuroleptic left. because of this and also because I had trouble remembering my agonizing experience the previous night, i decided to continue taking seroquel just to see if i reacted differently this time. surely enough, i experienced the same kind of reaction, although less intense this time. for some reason i thought i only had myself to blame for my bad reaction and stupidly thought i could get used to it, so i took seroquel for a couple of weeks until i just couldn't handle any more of these experiences. i finally managed to convince my psychiatrist to give me zopiclone together with the seroquel so i could fall asleep before the seroquel would fully kick in. luckily that worked.
i continued taking seroquel with zopiclone for about half a year, but sometimes the zopiclone didn't work and also out of curiosity i tried not taking the zoplclone a few times, each time resulting in the same kind of hellish reaction as before. i discontinued seroquel more than half a year ago, and to this day i've often experienced FLASHBACKS from my severely dysphoric seroquel "trips". it was no less traumatizing than that.
so "thanks" to everyone involved and i sincerely hope you all b*** in H*** for this.
poster:torturedbypsychiatry
thread:911077
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20090801/msgs/911077.html