Trigger warning: medicines, mental health

Imagine having to take artificial mind altering (although medically prescribed) drugs every day for 16 years. Well, actually don’t. You won’t know how unless you have.

Taking an aspirin for a headache is a common thing we might do. Sometimes we fall ill and take medicines for a week or two. There are some chronic illnesses though that need to be continuously treated for maintaining health. These illnesses can be physical or mental. Most of us might be aware of the regular precautions of diabetes patients, blood pressure patients, heart patients and so on. These are the physical chronic illnesses that one face usually later on in life, but you never know.

The other category of chronic illnesses is mental illness. Yes, there are mental illness that aren’t chronic and easily curable. There are also mental disabilities, which is entirely different. But there are also mental chronic illnesses like severe depression, anxiety, personality disorders and mood disorders. Depending on the degree of severity, these are treatable but not curable.

So as treatment, a patient of one of these also has to take medication at some point, depending on severity. The medication is usually a daily affair. But there’s also one important caution. The patient cannot miss a dosage, else there are serious implications later. These medicines could be anti-depressants, mood stabilizers or other inhibitors and so on. These medicines affect the brain directly and keeps it at check from releasing access chemicals or too less of it, for example.

Medicines in Psychiatry are usually heavy at first and then tapered down over long periods of time, which is months to years (again depending on severity).

The story of ‘mg’ (milligram)

When you’re taking meds for a mental illness and you’re a patient; let’s say the doctor prescribes you 20 mg of a particular medicine for treatment. Over the course of treatment, the dosage is tapered down…6 months…15 mg….1 yr… You look at your doctor with desperate eyes. But he replies, “Continue 15 mg for another 6 months.” That’s how it goes on. 15 becomes 10, 10 becomes 5, 5 becomes 2.5, 2.5 becomes 1 mg. It doesn’t stop there. 1 mg also becomes 0.5 mg. That’s like a precautionary dosage for depression.

But if you have a bipolar disorder, you are eventually put on mood stabilizers, which are nothing but tablets. But the quantity of composition is greater. 250mg or 500mg of, say, Sodium Valproate. This might put a pressure on the liver. So, the doctor regulates the dosage after some trials and blood tests. You probably should consider it a right time to cut off alcohol. Anyway, when you’re on medication, you do need to avoid alcohol, smoking, recreational drugs and sleeping late.

Also, severity of the illness is always something to look at. The doctor can also prescribe 1 g (gram) or “1000 mg.” Sounds like a bit number for daily medication, right?

But this medication (mood stabilizer) prevents a patient from having a major depression or manic episode. Now that’s a bullet dodged. I’d go without meds any day if you give me an option. I mean, who doesn’t? But the consequences of not having it when it is required is far worse than having to, almost religiously, follow the restrictions and take the medications daily until (maybe) one day when you no longer need them.

(Here’s a big hug to everyone out there trying to making it through 🤗 and kudos to those managing so well. 🏆)