The side effects of some medicines make them little better than poison.
Seroquel was a medicine that was more effective than most for a time. It was an anti-depressant in addition to an anti-psychotic, and severely reduced the amount of times I was depressed in a week. Instead of waking up every morning and lying in bed for several hours in depression, I woke up just to my voices. An improvement. I still got depressed on occasion, but not as many times and it did not last as long.
Seroquel I ended up nicknaming the eyekiller medicine. One day I woke up with strong pain in my eyes. I took eyedrops and ignored it. The next day same thing. I took more eyedrops and ignored it again.
By the third day the pain in my eyes became so intense that my vision blurred, I couldn’t focus, and I had to call off work partway through my shift.
I mentioned it to my girlfriend and she was…displeased. Apparently ignoring pain is a bad thing. Apparently pain means something is wrong.
She asked if it could be the new medicine.
I was like, nah, I’m fine.
She looked up the side effects of my medicine and sent me a screenshot. Apparently the intense eye pain was on the list of side effects, and I was supposed to call my doctor if it happened.
I called the doctor’s office and no one was there so I left my number for a callback from the emergency on-call doctor. In the meantime, Marie determined that I could not go off the medicine cold, but skipping one day would be fine.
The next day the doctor called me and let me know I could stop taking it. I did, which meant I was down to one anti-psychotic. I was doing fine without it until disaster struck in the form of COVID.
Post 15 in Socially Unacceptable: The Daily Life of a Queer Schizophrenic Wreck (2022)
This is an autobiographical series about my life, something I have wanted to do for a long time. I intend to add new content daily.
For the whole series, follow this link.
The Queer Schizophrenic 