A Dizzying Array of Psych Drugs & Health Issues

 

Since I was 18, I’ve been on psychiatric medications, so that’s 40 years sometimes on just one or two meds, sometimes not on any, sometimes on up to 7 at once. When I was younger, I didn’t experience noticeable health problems with them, but by my mid 40’s physical problems started.

You may write off some of this as aging, or say I’m stretching to connect the dots, or that such adverse effects are unknown or uncommon, etc. etc., but I live with all this, and it’s important to note for others who might also, or who may as they continue taking psych drugs.

For me, the worst health problems surfaced with a psychiatrist who treated me from 2014 to 2019 for bipolar disorder. She kept adding meds, or trying new ones, or prescribing to treat adverse effects. My mind was in a whirl, and at the same time I felt incapacitated, leading to frustration and self-injury, ending up with me in many psych units where more psychiatrists thought they could fix things by changing up or adding to the drug mix.

That’s some background, and now I’ll just launch into a listing of my health issues either directly caused by psych meds or associated with taking them for years or as a result of how psych meds changed my previous abilities to care for myself properly.

 

IgA vasculitis

This is an autoimmune disorder that revealed itself to me in itchy red skin spots which are actually tiny blood vessels bursting just below the skin. I had no idea what these rashes were, and they weren’t awful, only slightly concerning, but I went to see a dermatologist. She took a biopsy, sent it off to Johns Hopkins, and it was confirmed to be IgA vasculitis. The dermatologist then worked with me on tracking down what had happened at the time the vasculitis rashes began appearing. Finally it was narrowed down to taking the psych med Abilify, which I’d only taken for about 2 months. Is there a treatment for this vasculitis? No, not really, and the story doesn’t end there.

A couple of years later, around 2016, the psychiatrist suggested I try a new drug, hey! -let’s see what this does to your bipolar!, called Vraylar. Within 2 weeks, I had a vasculitis rash, worse than the Abilify ones, very itchy. The dermatologist and I both knew it was from the Vraylar and after a few weeks off that drug, it faded away.

Then, in a psych hospitalization a year later, the psychiatrist there decided that duloxetine would rocket me into new dimensions of mental healthiness and after 10 days of that addition to my other psych meds, I was discharged home where the next day I broke out in the worst looking vasculitis rash yet that covered most of my body and had me in the ER, then right back with my dermatologist. At that point, with 3 drugs to look at that had caused vasculitis outbreaks, she could pull up the molecules and theorize that common nitrogen-carbon bonds may be the culprit. She prescribed an external cream to apply for the itchiness and gradually the rash faded away. When I’m talking about a horrible vasculitis rash, I mean this, real pictures of that rash:

 

Kidneys

Does IgA vasculitis go away, cause further health issues? No, it doesn’t really go away, but I haven’t had another flare up, and yes, it can lead to kidney damage in some cases, but not all cases.

However, I took lithium for over 20 years, and it can also lead to certain types of kidney problems. And I’ve started having kidney problems. Last year, I had a kidney stone removed and it was found that I had, may still have, tiny stones in both kidneys. Also, I frequently get UTI’s.

Too Many Drugs at once and Adverse Effects

By 2018, the psychiatrist had me on 7 meds and it’s difficult to sort out what adverse effects came from which drug, but I’ll try to unwind it a bit.

Quetiapine is a drug I’d been on for 20+ years, and among other lovely things it did to me, it sedated me, gave my dry mouth, and caused sun sensitivity (I’d almost pass out if I was in the sun beyond a minute or two). I would wake up in the middle of sleep and eat, often not even remembering, but the kitchen would be messy when I woke up. I gained lots of weight, rapidly. In 2 years, I went from very skinny to chubby.

Then blood tests indicated low vitamin D levels and hypothyroidism, so I was prescribed vitamin D and Synthroid along with the 7 other meds for treating bipolar:

-lithium (mood stabilizer)

-quetiapine (because sleeping was sometimes hard in the past)

-pramipexole (to treat RLS, or restless leg syndrome, a form of akathisia induced by meds)

-desvenlafaxine succinate (as an anti-depressant)

-benztropine (used in treating bipolar)

-gabapentin (to treat anxiety)

-Vivitrol monthly injection plus oral naltrexone (to treat impulsivity leading to self-injury)

In August 2019, the psychiatrist stopped quetiapine, benztropine, and gabapentin without taper and I ended up in ICU in severe withdrawal, and her answer to that was to then discontinue pramipexole and desvenlafaxine succinate also without taper, and then I basically wouldn’t see psychiatrists any longer and was off ALL psych meds by November 2019. I note that to say that since I made it past the worst of withdrawal and the psychoactive symptoms, I haven’t even experienced the desire to self-injure or had strong bipolar swings, so drug upon drug to treat those issues was really just exacerbating them, and I was the victim in that cycle.

All of these drugs have adverse effects and you can google them or search patient forums or just know for yourself if you’ve taken any of them. It’s too complicated to even try asserting that this drug did this, or in combination with this or that drug, or then I couldn’t go out and exercise or eat properly, and so on.

Since being off the meds, I’ve had to not only deal with kidney stones that may or may not be from taking them, but also another problem.

 

Dental Issues/Damaged Teeth

In 2020, I went to the dentist to have my second wisdom tooth with a big hole in it extracted. Most of my life, I’d had very few cavities and no real issues with my teeth. After the wisdom tooth was pulled, the dentist then informed me that I had tiny cavities all along my gum lines. Why the sudden dental problems? Most likely the answer was dry mouth from the psych meds I’d been on for years, particularly quetiapine. I spent many hours and much money in the dental chair having my mouth drilled and filled.

 

These days, I do weigh a little less, but that’s because I quickly lost 30 lbs. in severe psych drug withdrawal. I hope that I don’t go through another painful kidney stone trying to pass. Life isn’t that bad, but it isn’t that good either, but it’s not bad enough that I get desperate to try psych medication again. Ever. Psych drugs didn’t do anything for me, despite the assurances and promises, but they certainly did a lot to me.