You don't need to drive, it's a short walk for you

Look, the Internet is a very simple thing. It is a series of protocols that enable your computer to talk with others. Many others. Thanks to the magic of search engines (Google.com is undoubtedly one of the most powerful computers on the planet 30,000 parallel CPUs even if it isn't good at SPECmarks) you can find all sorts of things.

The net result has been said to be like drinking from a firehoze. But even that's easy if you know how (pipewrench). The answer is the same -- you have to learn some selection and editing skillz.

Or maybe you'd rather trust someone (parents, spouse, boss, govt, media.congloms, priests, etc) to do you filtering and tell you what is safe for you to watch?

In December of 2003 I went to the emergency room paranoid and hallucinating. The doctor they paged increased my dose of risperdal from 3 mg per day to 5.

My symptoms abated, but I struggled in my work. During the summer of last year, my paranoia flared up, and I increased my dose on my own to 6 mg a day.

Doing such things as bicycling every day improved my mood and relieved my stress, so in December my dose was reduced back down to 5. In February I was doing really well, so it was again reduced, this time to 4.

Stress from my job makes it so I haven't done as well recently as I was in February, but I'm managing to do well at my work. Today my psychiatrist, concerned about side effects from the risperdal, suggested I switch to seroquel. I suggested instead that I reduce the dose again to 3 milligrams. Tonight will be my first at that dose, since December of 2003.

I actually did really well at 2 mg for a number of years, but stress caused by the economic downturn made me increase my dose to three in the spring of 2001.

I think that if I am able to continue to do well for myself, I could go back down to 2. I'm not sure I could go lower than that and not ever hallucinate. Some people are able to live with the hallucinations, even this guy I heard of who sees bugs crawling on him all the time, but the ones I have tend to stimulate my paranoia, which tends to snowball.

I've been taking a high dose of the antidepressant imipramine for a while too. Maybe next time I'll try reducing that too.

I have to just always take valproic acid (depakote or epival). The symptoms it treats don't happen to me very often, but when mania hits, it is quite sudden and dramatic. I usually don't realize it until it's too late. If I weren't to take valproic acid I might decide one day it would be fun to hijack a 747, just to go on a pleasure cruise.

Some people say that mental illness is on the rise due to drug company conspiracy, and maybe that's true. They say that we just need to get stiffer upper lips. Well, maybe for some. But there have been times I have hallucinated so hard I could not see where I was going when I walked. That was really unpleasant, and I find the medicine is pretty good at preventing that.

I first took risperdal in the spring of '94, just a few months after FDA approval. It put a stop to a profoundly paranoid psychotic episode in just a few days. The staff at the hospital where I was treated seemed to regard it as some kind of miracle drug. It's not without fault - a side effect called tardive dyskenesia can put you in a wheelchair. But I don't think it's unreasonable to describe it and the other atypical antipsychotics as miracles.