chapotraphouse

I've seen that story go around quite a bit, about schizophrenia, and I must admit that I'm very skeptical of it. Not in the sense of 'these stories are wrong', because even in the west, there's people with schizophrenia that report benign hallucinations and delusions. But I'm skeptical of it scaling, of it being 'the norm' to only experience benign hallucinations outside the west.

I have schizoaffective disorder, and my hallucinations are unpleasant, but like, bearable. Annoyances more than anything else. The two big disruptions for me are the mood disorder (big crossover with bipolar and schizophrenia-spectrum disorders, with some people not knowing that bipolar can cause psychosis on its own), and delusions. Being able to rationally identify and order my hallucinations makes them fairly benign (if distracting), but the difficulties with identifying baseline reality, truth from scattered thinking, is far more of life-ruiner to me, and the interplay of all of those together is where my ability to live my life kinda tumbles out of my hands. Alternatively manic and depressive, while hallucinating and unable to order my thoughts, I feel like it wouldn't matter if all my hallucinations were the calm voices of my ancestors.

Regardless, anti-psychotics (Seroquel, in this case) are not a cure to me, but they lessen that burden. Any one of those symptoms is bearable with good habits, a regular schedule, a solid support network, and generally low stress-levels. The pills make the symptoms less frequent and less absolute, lessening the load on the more holistic parts of 'treatment' and management. I don't like the lethargy I get from the anti-psychotics, but it is manageable, while without it, the house of cards is less stable. Manageable, at times, but also prone to collapse, and hard to rebuild from that collapse, y'know? And like, a lack of stress, the grace of time and peace to build networks and stability, is the best single treatment I have. If I had to pick one or the other, between low-stress and anti-psychotics, its low stress, every time. But that's hard to prescribe, hard to just say "well, stop being stressed!". The destruction of capitalism sure would help there, but also, its nice to not have to pick one or the other, when I can aim for having both.

Which, none of the above is hard disagreeing with anything you've said. I think the overall criticism of psychiatry is absolutely correct. I think the blanket pushing of anti-psychotics as a 'cure for what ails you' is incorrect.