Having formerly been diagnosed as schizophrenic as an adolescent (15) and admitted into long-term back wards of mental hospitals both in France and the UK until I was 18, I got this book to understand Schizophrenia and what may have happened to me better. It’s a lovely quick little read. Apart from the obvious list of vitamins and their doses for the treatment of mental illness, two things jumped out at me.
First, is the four-day water fast. Hoffer talks about 60% of his schizophrenic patients being cured or showing improvement after this procedure. Basically, some schizophrenic or psychotic episodes are triggered by cerebral allergies. The allergen can be different for each person. Hoffer gives three examples of different patients having different cerebral allergies; Asprin, wheat, and meat. The four-day water fast – where only 8 glasses of water of drunk each day for 4 days – cleanses the system entirely. After the end of 4 days, food is re-introduced one food type at a time: a new food being added only after you have shown no reaction to the previous food type.
Even if it doesn’t manifest as a full-blown psychotic episode, I am ready to infer that, if not 60%, a large portion of all mentally ill people’s mental illness is the result of some sort of food reaction. So it would be an interesting and worthwhile personal experiment to conduct the 4-day water fast to test and identify if your mental illness is triggered by a reaction to certain foods.
The second thing hits me right in the biography. In the chapter “Medication”; sub-heading “Tranquilizers and Recovery a Catch-22”, Hoffer explains that tranquilizers (normal antipsychotic medications) actually make normal people psychotic.
“…Tranquilizers are helpful in quickly reducing the intensity of psychotic symptomatology but they do not remove them…. Tranquilizers make normal people sick (obvious to anyone who has taken them in error, or to the Russians who, committed to hospitals dissidents, were placed on tranquilizers such as Thorazine, and were made psychotic that way)”
Hoffer goes on:
“… Spontaneous recovery from schizophrenia is rare. Partial recovery is more typical – many patients will no longer complain of visual or auditory hallucinations but will suffer from chronic depression or anxiety. In many cases, the thought disorder becomes manifest only under severe stress, and for many only under the influence of alcohol…”
Neither I nor my psychiatrist are sure if I had schizophrenia back then. I always felt l I definitely had a psychotic episode but only once I was in the mental hospitals. (My fixed rigid thinking revolved around escaping the mental hospitals and civilization to live in the wild and live or die as nameless presence.) It’s clear to me that either way if I wasn’t already psychotic, the drugs I was given in the mental hospitals made me so. Bearing in mind, as a small 15-year-old at the time, I was given 12 milligrams of Resperidal (which still is twice the max adult dose) by a hospital psychiatrist that wanted to “nip my schizophrenia in the bud”.
Hoffer goes on: ” The problem with tranquilizers is this. The drugs start the process of recovery by reducing the intensity and frequency of symptoms and signs. But it becomes a Catch-22: As the patient becomes more clinically and biochemically “normal” that person begins to react more and more as if she or he were normal, which means they become psychotic from the drug. We are considering two different psychoses – the initial schizophrenic psychosis described earlier, and the tranquilizer-induced or iatrogenic psychosis characterized by both psychical and psychological symptoms. Physical side effects range from mild to severe, with shaking and tremors and grotesque involuntary muscular movements of tardive dyskinesia being the most severe. Interest in sex may wane; males may become impotent and refuse to remain on the drugs.”
That one page, uff, it hit me hard. The memory of “grotesque involuntary muscular movements of tardive dyskinesia ” where my tongue wanted to stick out as far as it could stretch while my jaws wanted to lock open… and the emergency injections of antispasmodics so I didn’t bite my own tongue off… Tardive dyskinesia is where the tranquilizer starts to melt your muscles and the runoff poisons you.
“Psychologically, side effects may include perceptual changes, but they tend to be less intense than if the patient were not medicated at all. The same is true of thought disorder – although it is not as troublesome, there is increased difficulty in concentration, memory problems occur, and the patients become increasingly preoccupied with themselves. Inertia, flat affect, and an inability to feel sorrow or happiness are all side effects of tranquilizer use. Many of these tranquilized patients lose the qualities that make men and women spontaneous, responsive, interested, and interesting. In most cases, they cannot work in any responsible positions. I personally would not allow a surgeon on 6 milligrams of Resperidal to operate on me, not would I want my bus driver to be on 50 milligrams of Haldol,”
Let me repeat that: “inertia, flat affect, and an inability to feel sorrow or happiness are all side effects of tranquilizer use. Many of these tranquilized patients lose the qualities that make men and women spontaneous, responsive, interested, and interesting.” The psychological side effects of antipsychotics describe the “epigenetic autism” my psychiatrist speculates I have. I think it’s now reasonable to infer that growing up as a teenager from 15-18 with these drugs, the areas of my brain responsible for feeling and higher social functioning were not only not stimulated by my being isolated in a mental hospital ward rather than in a school and a normal life, but that the drugs also actively chemically froze the development of these areas of my brain.
Perhaps, my healing journey hasn’t been about recovering from schizophrenia, but, whether I was misdiagnosed or not, more about recovering from an “iatrogenic” psychosis and the long-term developmental cognitive consequences of the side-effects of the anti-psychotics I was given as a teen.
My gut reaction is to forgive and let it go. I don’t want to be entangled in any more personal stories. So instead, embracing the unexpressed anger, understanding the helplessness and trauma caused by both the setting and the side effects, and remaining personally unidentified with the story and emotions seem the be my next steps.
I will also adopt a regime of niacin and selenium.
For more info:
From the youtube channel:
SUMMARY of Dr ABRAM HOFFER’s recommendation for: schizophrenia, paranoia, bipolar disorder, ADD, ADHD, anxiety disorder, panic attacks, depression, OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder), psychosis, alcoholism, addictions, anorexia nervosa, autism spectrum disorder , PTSD, insomnia:
BASIC PROGRAM BY ABRAM HOFFER, MD PhD for mental illness:
1) Vitamin B3 (niacin or niacinamide) 1000 mg three times per day.
2) Multivitamin, two times per day
3) Vitamin C, 3000 mg. three times per day .
4) B-50 Complex tablet three times per day.
OPTIONAL SUPPLEMENTS, ADD:
1) Vitamin D3 5000 IU per day
2) Vitamin E 400 IU three times per day
3) Zinc 50 mg per day
4) Selenium 200 mcg per day
5) Calcium 1000 mg and Magnesium 500 mg
6) Salmon Oil (Omega-3 Fish Oil) 1000 mg three times per day
7) NAC (N-Acetyl-Cysteine) 1000 mg two times per day
OTHER SUPPLEMENTS YOU CAN ADD: – Astaxanthin, 12 mg, 2 times per day – Turmeric (Curcumin) , 2 times times per day – Ginkgo BIloba , 2 times times per day – Bacopa monnieri (Brahmi) , 1 per day