Counteracting (antipsychotic-induced?) obsessive compulsive symptoms?

[Alchemica]

I've developed severe tics and obsessive-compulsive internet use/addiction (particularly facebook use) It could be due to my antipsychotic: "Second generation antipsychotics (SGAs) have been implicated in the de novo emergence and exacerbation of obsessive-compulsive symptoms (OCS) in patients with schizophrenia" [1]. Any techniques or interventions people suggest for beating this? N-acetylcysteine?


 

Edited April 26, 2016 by Alchemica

[ThunderIdeal]

Try shooting a pm to bush turkey.

[stonewolf]

I think you'd do your mental health a favour by throwing out DSM 5 and concentrating on cultivating good habits and sticking to a supplement regime for a fixed period before tinkering.  I'm absolutely not saying you aren't suffering from mental health issues but it seems, please do correct me if I'm wrong, that your extensive knowledge of pharmacology might be exacerbating your problems.  

 

I really don't think it is possible to medicate yourself to a state you are 100% happy with because everyone is fundamentally flawed.  

 

Your list of issues sounds like an awful thing to live with but they are also what makes you you.  Brilliant people are usually fucked up.  

 

Damn hard to do but try to accept yourself a bit more, try being more methodical with your treatment, you've got a lot of good ideas but one at a time, and don't view bad behavioural choices as disorders.  I think you'd be hard presses to find someone who doesn't spend 6 hours plus a day on the net.  Gambling is also fun.  Shit choice yes, disorder not necessarily.

 

I dont know your circumstances well so please correct me if I'm wrong but that's just the feeling i get.

[Alchemica]

You're spot on with all that. If I didn't have issues to try and tackle, I'd have nothing to do with my days which is THE problem. I'm so isolated socially, too Trying to get more volunteering hours to shut my brain up and escape the pathological pathologising.

I certainly have a flood of ideas which makes things hard  - don't worry, they are merely me running through possibilities and not all used at once.



 

[stonewolf]

Where do you live? Id be keen to catch up if you are in seq.

[Alchemica]

South Australia - appreciate your kind offer though If I'm ever passing that way, I'll be in touch.

 

Thanks for the perspective shift and reality check, too.

[ThunderIdeal]

is it actually considered OCD to spend the entire day pressing F5 on facebook?  whether or not its a wise way to spend your life, i would say it's just a situation where some of the most rewarding day-to-day events in your life come from facebook and other rewarding activities require more effort than pressing F5 while you wait for something cool to float past.  you didn't mention other symptoms like odd rituals etc

 

like the analogy to gambling, and also like drug abuse, you need to somehow defy biology (reward system) which isn't an easy thing to do.  as with all of these arguably negative and disproportionately rewarding activities though, if you can bottle them for a few weeks it's like a huge space opens up in your life for other stuff, and with a bit of luck your biology won't argue too much when you decide the new stuff is a lame but acceptable substitution for the previous IV route.

 

maybe once you've checked facebook, you have to read x pages of a book before you get to check back.  weird tricks and routines seem to help me modify behaviours.  any opportunities left open for you to revert to natural tendancies. 

 

maybe i'm on the wrong track, but really life is all about behaviours which means where a direction has been chosen consciously, to convince the river to flow over the mountain instead of down the valley

 

 

[Alchemica]

my GP thinks I have OCD but I won't go dwelling on it too much - It's very ritualistic behaviour and accompanied by tics/swearing at myself. With my long history of anxiety, it fits.

I like your tips, thanks!

[ThunderIdeal]

Fair enough.  Tics seem to be very complex and inter related from what ive read I guess at least there is a similarity between Tics and ocd.  I thought Tics were pretty well unconscious though, which sounds worse than compulsions which you have conscious control over somewhat.

 

Anyway so you see where im coming from?  There must be ways to hijack the behaviour-moderating reward system, because people do in countless examples, like being celibate, or successfully not being a meth-injecting 250kg KFC worker.

 

Consider "grinding games" which come in different genres but involve grinding away to earn achievements etc.  In a way working life is a grind but you cant find 1000 gold and a kickass helmet of hellyeah that imbues the wearer with +50 awesomeness.  In other words the meager sense of reward you get by attaining food and shelter is supposed to set your priorities, but people lose their jobs taking time off to build character traits in a computer game (while life success quantifiers plummet)

 

Do games provide a pleasure reward, or just a tangible sense of achievement (mum says im not going anywhere in life but I levelled up twice today).  it has something to do with egging the gamer on with the promise of a more formidable character, like learning new skills or hitting the gym.

 

Im gonna end the post prematurely but im just illustrating how the impulse generating behaviour modifying pleasure pain system can mess itself up in unusual ways and maybe even in ways we can put to good use.  If you can somehow align your primitive impulses with your life goals then youre unstoppable.

 

 

[-RC-]

Not that I'm recommending it, but as I understand it psilocybin has shown promising clinical results in the easing of OCD... if we are talking measurable 'behavioural and neurochemical change'.

 

[Alchemica]

 

Not that I'm recommending it, but as I understand it psilocybin has shown promising clinical results in the easing of OCD... if we are talking measurable 'behavioural and neurochemical change'.

 

Going down the serotonergic direction definitely seems promising. Cautiously adding 5-HTP to my extreme dose of SNRI (aware of the risks) seems to have helped my tics. Still struggling with the internet aspect but I think that's isolation that's the main problem.

[stonewolf]

Downregulation might be an issue if that's part of your regime.

 

 

[Alchemica]

Yeah, 5-HTP wasn't the answer I was looking for. Could look down the GABAergic direction but that's going to cause issues... I feel this needs to be confronted both from a psychological direction (I am working with a psychologist) and with better meds (or less!). Not convinced that massive doses of a SNRI is great (fluvoxamine might be more optimal), nor aripiprazole necessarily agrees with me. Really don't want to get back on clozapine as I was just as OCD on that (if not worse) but psychotic/delusional enough to not be so worried about it. Will discuss with my psychiatrist. Got so fed up with the OCD/tics that I downed a bottle of wine the other day - that "worked" but I don't want to keep relapsing into detrimental self medication which is so tempting when life is getting so crap. Anything anxiolytic seems to help slightly. Tracing the genesis back, it mostly, the tics anyway, relates to the experiences I had back when I was "psychotic". Those experiences were so real to me that they haunt me and my tics are essentially an emotional reaction to that (and earlier) trauma and a feared outcome... I probably had subclinical OCD before going psychotic and now it's just bad.
 

The following is a good review of OCD

Definitely relate to:

"intense somatic and/or psychological tension or discomfort, often described as something feeling incomplete or “not right.” Sometimes, the distress is heightened by a belief that unless the behavior is performed, the discomfort will be intolerable and/or infinite."

Be nice to have a less offensive tic...

 

Edited April 28, 2016 by Alchemica