6 ms·

I'm sorry your friend went through all of that. I've had friends and immediate family in similar situations. It's a genuinely impossible situation to navigate.

by chrsig 4y ago

I'm sorry your friend went through all of that. I've had friends and immediate family in similar situations. It's a genuinely impossible situation to navigate. Sometimes these situations turn out tragically because the patient was involuntarily given drugs, sometimes they turn out tragically because the patient wasn't. I'm surprised they went with a time release injection -- from the sounds of it, when you say "time release" you mean on the order of 30-90 days, not "12 hours". I'd have expected them to just work on stabilization and then moving to an outpatient program. I'm very surprised they'd have used it without any history of it being effective. In a more recent tale with a family member undergoing an involuntary stay, I'd have wished they'd used a longer term haloperidol injection. There's not a one size fits all solution, and it's hard to balance legislation around personal freedoms vs recognizing when the patient is a harm to themselves/others, or even capable of making informed rationale decisions. > My observation is that agony-inducing drugs are not actually helpful for substance abuse. Haloperidol isn't for substance abuse, so I wouldn't expect it to perform well at it.

tcj_phx 4y ago
She'd made a deal with the devil: they agreed to release her from their September 2015 pursuit of an order for involuntary treatment if she agreed to take haloperidol voluntarily. We picked up the prescription, but she resumed drinking the day she was released. Her alcohol consumption got progressively worse, but I had no authority to intervene. After a week+ I took her liquor bottle away anyways, even though I did not have legal authority to do this. 10 hours later I witnessed full-on alcohol withdrawal psychosis. When she got captured again, their thinking was "she's obviously back here because she didn't take her haloperidol". They never asked me about her alcohol consumption. Whitaker's book points out that the Quakers' asylums fed people 4 meals a day and provided activities. iirc around 80% of the patients recovered to the point where they could leave the asylum. Think that was covered in Mad In America. The psychotic patients who do the best, long term, are those who are never treated with antipsychotics. Those who do second best are those who are tapered off antipsychotics promptly. Those who do the worst are those who are maintained on antipsychotics in perpetuity.

by chrsig 4y ago

tcj_phx 4y ago

She'd made a deal with the devil: they agreed to release her from their September 2015 pursuit of an order for involuntary treatment if she agreed to take haloperidol voluntarily. We picked up the prescription, but she resumed drinking the day she was released. Her alcohol consumption got progressively worse, but I had no authority to intervene. After a week+ I took her liquor bottle away anyways, even though I did not have legal authority to do this. 10 hours later I witnessed full-on alcohol withdrawal psychosis. When she got captured again, their thinking was "she's obviously back here because she didn't take her haloperidol". They never asked me about her alcohol consumption. Whitaker's book points out that the Quakers' asylums fed people 4 meals a day and provided activities. iirc around 80% of the patients recovered to the point where they could leave the asylum. Think that was covered in Mad In America. The psychotic patients who do the best, long term, are those who are never treated with antipsychotics. Those who do second best are those who are tapered off antipsychotics promptly. Those who do the worst are those who are maintained on antipsychotics in perpetuity.