Control: Medications

I, Dalton Lewis, am not a doctor, but I worry about the medications I take. My psychiatrist prescribes me several medications to make me healthier, and I worry that they are killing me. I remember when I was a kid I felt so sorry for those sad, sad crazy people with their horrible delusions and low quality of life. Well, now I’m that guy with that low quality of life.

I gained one hundred pounds over fifteen years after becoming schizophrenic. In that time I stopped working out and started eating poorly, but I also started to gain weight exactly when I started to use antipsychotic medications. My psychiatrist, a nice man with little hair and super skinny, apologized when he prescribed the meds because of the side effects. I didn’t think it would be a problem, but it sucks being fat, and I am fat.

My friend Finnegan works in the field of prescription medications and says that those meds will make you die a lot younger. I don’t know if that is true, but I know that I have to lose one hundred pounds or die in my middle age. I don’t really want to die during middle age so I have to regularly work out and eat healthier. I know that I need to do this, and yet it is not happening. I have to work out to counteract the schizophrenia telling me not to pay attention to the junk food and the meds slowing my body down.

That’s essentially what the meds do — they slow my body and mind down to tune out the voices and let me focus more on the world around me. Although slowing down my mind and body does help with the voices it also makes me slow, weak, and unmotivated. I find it hard to find a job that I think I can do — one that will be in my wheelhouse.

Why do we take these meds? The pharma companies design them so that we will take them for life, right? That’s the goal, to find one citizen of America who needs this medication forever and start giving it to him? I understand. That’s a hard case to solve. I can’t finish sentences without the medications, but a lot of stories in movies and television show wonderful, sympathetic characters throw away their meds and get better. I think that’s total bullshit — most people don’t get better without any medications. Without medicine people often get more sick or even die. Gosh.

One’s choices determine a lot of what happens to that person. The choice of whether or not to live on meds for years and years is an important and difficult decision. Some meds will turn out to be terrible, and some will turn out to revolutionize the fight against some ailment. I don’t know how to tell the difference, and that confuses me. I just think that I have to try my absolute hardest to make smart choices in life. So should all of you.

Thanks, and take care, friends.