Change in medication circa 2001

02/11/13 05:57 [Saturday]
I have been awake since Very Early and mainly I have spent the time scanning my diary from June 2001. Thinking to give people (my public lol) a flavour of what life was like for me without troubling you to read my handwriting, I transcribed one day's entries from the diary for that month. Finishing up what I was doing this morning I noticed a diary entry from May 2001 - scanned two or three days ago but not read through - which is very helpful in including a copy of a letter I wrote, this letter setting my life then in context. So that day's diary also got transcribed.
I haven't really sorted out very well the sequence of my life in the decades 1980-2010, and especially the years preceding my parents' deaths in 2003. I haven't been able to think clearly, either because I was on a high dosage of medication or because I was on zero medication and was then rushed and confused. I have, since being on the present Risperdal medication starting 2011, sorted out past years to the degree of understanding my theories to explain events were wide of the mark. I was not compelled to have medication at very high dosages since 1980 because of some long-term scheme to 'investigate' schizophrenia or the effects of medication in schizophrenia, but rather the compulsion originated in the incompetence of the psychiatrist I did not escape from between 1980 and about 2000, Anthony Dew Armond.
He retired sometime around the year 2000 and thereafter I was under the care of Dr Matthew Kurian, a much more sensible fellow. I haven't tracked down a record of just when the changeover took place, and I have pondered whether my greater sociability and greater general activity level since say 2001 were due to the medication change when Dr Kurian took charge, or, alternatively, from the advent of the internet in my life making it easier for me to communicate with people before ever meeting them in person.
This question is now answered pretty certainly from what I have gleaned from the diary volumes I have been looking at. I first got onto the internet and into AOL chat rooms in the summer of 2001, but already by then my interest in life had reawakened (following decades of nothing better than death-in-life) as can be seen from my joining a dating agency earlier in 2001, that is a dating agency which did not rely on the internet. I had also had cable TV installed in my bedroom (I was living with my parents), and my own phoneline. I had bought my first motor caravan: again, early 2001. So all these changes - and my signing up with AOL to get on the internet - had come about thanks to Matthew Kurian lowering the dosage of dopamine-blocking drugs I was by then not able to evade, and also putting me on antidepressants.
Words of explanation
25/5 means procyclidine (anti-side-effect tablets) from a prescription dated 25 May, so I could keep track of how long the supply was lasting.
I was taking ibuprofen because I had toothache (constantly for months I think) and I put it in inverted commas because I suspected these tablets contained improper drugs I was being spiked with.
Symptoms like leg cramps and nasal congestion I took to be evidence I was being spiked with drugs.
I was suspicious of the water my mother put in the kettle.
Over many years I particularly noticed reversing vehicles and could not believe it was natural for me to see so many.
By the Ancient & Medieval people I meant a book club
I did not feel myself responsible for things going well - for example successful computer programming - nor indeed for things going badly.
I was constipated a lot of the time I was on the older dopamine-blocking medication, say up to 2005 when I was first given Risperdal.
Diary entry
12th June 2001. [Tuesday] 03h50
I woke up about 03h30 (five hours) with an upset stomach. I have had a mug of Nescafé and some biscuits, and have taken two indigestion tablets, and now feel a bit better. Perhaps I should take another indigestion tablet, though.
The 25/5 and "ibuprofen" I took (22h14) have no doubt helped to wake me up.
The birds are starting to twitter.
(What I mean is the 25/5 and "ibuprofen" may well contain amphetamine.)
04h00. Back to bed....
07h22. I have woken up after another 3 hours (eight hours in total) with severe cramps in my legs and severe nasal congestion.
My mother has got up and is in the bathroom.
What else can I say (write)? I am having a little difficulty hand-writing.
08h05. I am depressed, for example about going into Kingswinford, which we are supposed to be sometime today. My mother made sure to supply the water for my coffee this morning. It was noticeable how she had filled the kettle.
I have taken 25/5 and "ibuprofen". I am not anxious. I am fairly "relaxed". I have yet to wash.
08h38. I have become rather anxious, now, about having to go out.
09h50. I went out on my own. I drove into Kingswinford and took and fetched sheets at Cavendish Cleaners. I posted three items and bought stamps. I paid for the papers and got a Coke. Now I have returned home. (Oh yes - I got What's On TV.)
10h08. I am a bit irritable and remain anxious.
12h18. Sibelius before lunch/dinner. It has occurred to me: I didn't see one reversing vehicle this morning. I am very pleased. But what shall I do this afternoon?
P.S. My rear-view mirror had come off when I went to the vehicle this morning. I have tried to get it to stick back. It remains to be seen how firmly it is now fixed.
All-Share down.
12h54. I thought I might go out this afternoon, but since dinner/lunch I have been feeling tense. It seems to be wearing off as time passes. Perhaps it was hot food bringing some drug (pemoline, probably) out of the tablets inside me. At other times, pemoline does not seem to be acting.
I am no longer what I would call anxious.
... If I'm not going out, I should get the computer running.
... I can't decide.
13h41. My rear-view mirror has come off again.
To be posted:
1. Order to the Ancient & Medieval people.
16h09. Mozart wind concertos. Tomorrow I have to see the nurse Fifi at The Poplars. I may go early to get in a visit to Merry Hill. I need a few spare rear-view mirrors.
All-Share down a bit less than 1%.
16h54. I took 2nd 25/5 and "ibuprofen". The computer is working on. I have said I shall probably go to London next Monday. I am thinking of going very early in the day. Last time I went I was underactive and didn't get much out of it. I could go to the Atlantis Bookshop, despite their letting me down and not sending a Crowley title I ordered. A. Crowley: not V. Crowley. (I wonder if that is her real name.)
This recognition is virtually 100% accurate. I have been quite successful as regards pattern recognition. I am unsure how much hypnotic help I have been given. They helped me write programs when I was on ASM [antischizophrenic medication] and couldn't think. They with a capital T.
20h09. The computer is still on. I went downstairs this evening and we listened to Mendelssohn. I was "high" and very talkative. Now I am rather subdued, after supper, and have unnatural hunger. I shall have to eat some chocolate biscuits....
20h26. I have taken three Senna laxative tablets.
21h21. The computer is testing now to see how many and how fast it can recognise. This run seems to be less accurate. The text is taken from a magazine, not a book.
21h40. Since eating supper my mood is not so elevated.
This computer is not recognising so well.
I am drinking Nescafé and eating biscuits. I might have a go at a packet of crisps.
22h21. I did eat those crisps. The PC has come to the end of what it was doing. I am going to bed.

Boisterous stimulation

28/10/13 08:06 [Monday]
I am in a bit of a condition of excitement, or perhaps a better word is urgency, which without a doubt has developed (or the propensity for it has) over the months I have been on the lower dosage of Risperdal instead of the higher dosage (in fact the dosage I was on was the middle one of three available dosages, and I am now on the lowest). One major point I wish to make is that this condition - an elevated turnover of dopamine, doubtless - has taken many months to work itself up and does not correspond hour by hour (or even day by day) with the reduction in Risperdal in the metabolism. I presume the condition has come about through some sort of slowly effective positive feedback by which the dopamine turnover has ratcheted up. One alternative hypothesis is that it has come about so slowly because it depends on changes in the synapses, that is synapses altering in the sort of way they do when memory traces are laid down, to gradually allow more transmission of dopamine. I believe there is evidence that people on dopamine-blocking drugs over an extended period develop some slight tolerance, as the synapses adapt and allow more dopamine through despite the dopamine blockade. So one would guess the number of receptor sites in the target plate increases as some of the existing ones are rendered ineffective by being blocked constantly. (Of course the trouble with that theory is it might lead one to expect the opposite on withdrawal or reduction of a dopamine-blocker, that is for the number of receptor sites to decline as a greater proportion of them become effective.)
I did not get a lot of sleep last night. I slept from about 8 pm to about midnight, and this is a feature I have in my nature, to get sleepy early but also to wake up early and what one would have to call disproportionately early many mornings. I have been logged into Twitter most of the hours since midnight, and I was finding that slight stimulation (which you can understand mostly disconnected fragments such as get through from Twitter provide) was capturing my interest and keeping me 'on the hook'. However, the interest I find in explaining myself here was enough - the foreseen interest, that is - to persuade me to turn Twitter off and start writing down my experience and my interpretation of it.
I have to say some nights I do catch up on my sleep and the following day feel refreshed and able to cope easily with any stimulation I need to process for. I suppose it strengthens what I think of as the positive feedback if I am tired (not having had enough dreaming sleep to post-process during the night) so that in the daytime I rush at things without adequately preparing. Deliberately removing stimulation (turning Twitter off) and taking time over what needs to be done surely is a method which despite the electrochemistry of the brain (versus the pharmacology) will improve matters. To be honest, that's one thing which hospitalisation has always provided - even before effective drug treatments - that is removal of factors needing processing in a version of a holiday, hopefully to interrupt the positive feedback loop. That was the ideal of hospitalisation, although on first arriving at the hospital finding a weird and unlearned milieu (and quite possibly unanticipated, if the patient was Sectioned) would worsen symptoms by giving more to process on.
As regards my situation today - I mean today Monday - while I was on Twitter I was not planning what I need to do, to make sure I cope efficiently and effectively; and I am not even planning adequately now, as I am writing this. If I had had more sleep (to show up with more exemplary detail how it would work) I would be doing the planning at the same time as doing other 'processing', on Twitter or composing what I am writing. Without adequate planning I will rush from place to place, from activity to activity, and tire myself out more than need be, and worsen the 'positive feedback' cycle of having to cope with more and more but having fewer and fewer resources (especially if I keep missing sleep).
What I actually need to do today is fairly simple, when thought through explicitly, and certainly is less taxing than if I were in a position where I needed to go to work and also cater for my home life. I need to go shopping, and the only slight complication is I need to go to two different towns, and what I call planning for efficiency and effectiveness comes down (to a large degree) to going to the towns in the right order, and (I suppose) at the right times. I am better off, in some ways, with spending my time writing this, as it is not actually costing me much physically - in terms of energy or money - and at least it is related at one remove to the genuine planning I would be well to engage in.
When I was awake in the night - possibly this was caused by the numerousness of the distinct stimulations on Twitter (separate Tweets, put simply), or more likely by less time having passed since the physical stimulations of yesterday at home (even if the additional passing time has not seen me sleep a lot of the hours) - I was feeling active and as though I might go out very early (say as soon as buses started running) which would have been a cost in money (because my Concessionary Bus Pass is not valid before 9.30 am) and a cost in worsening positive feedback from exposing myself necessarily to more stimulation out and about. (Incidentally, readers will see that getting into that sort of cycle is the very antithesis of leading the empty worthless life I lead on too high a dosage of medication.)
I think all I have to add now - before thinking more thoroughly about what time to go out and where to go first - is that mentioning 'physical stimulations at home' I had in mind the fullness of the house this week, my grandchildren (step-grandchildren, anyway) having come to visit their mother who with her dog is herself a semi-permanent fixture in our home now. What I mean is, my elevated level of mental activity, which risks turning into an elevated level of physical activity and elevated in the sense of variety requiring processing (not going for a brisk walk every day on a regular route at a regular time, which might be a beneficial increase in activity), could well have come about substantially because there are more people now in my day-to-day life, and they are more boisterous people.

What good is Risperdal to me?

07/09/13 07:01 [Saturday]
I have thought on and off about making a diary entry (with the intention of uploading it to my blog) and asking myself (in the introspective way natural to me) why I am setting pen to paper (electronically) now, I note that yesterday I converted my Twitterings for August into a form suitable for publication and uploaded the result to my website colinbrough.co.uk.
For several months now I have been waking up early, on and off: in contradistinction to the way things were when I was on the higher dosage of Risperdal through 2011. I was on 37.5mg of Risperdal Consta injection every two weeks from the time I was in hospital early 2011, but from Thursday 03­-Nov-11 it was 25mg every two weeks. The changes I have noticed since coming off the higher dosage - changes which I suspect professionals in the field might deny derived from the drug dosage but would attribute to something within my own nature - have occurred over a period of many months, that is (in fact) over getting on for two years. One of the changes, as I say, is in my sleeping pattern. On the 37.5mg dosage through the summer of 2011, I recall, I was sometimes awake in the night - suffering discomfort in my tummy as often as not - but (having in mind something along the lines that there was no point) I just lay there. This is an example of the effect of dopamine-blockers (which Risperdal is) of reducing the activity level in a manner parallel to the way in depression the activity level is reduced, sometimes to near zero. What I think to myself now in the night when I suffer discomfort in my tummy (or when I wake up for other reasons) is in complete opposition: what I feel now is that it is too boring to lie there so I should get up if there is anything at all I could find to do.
The point I am mainly making, though, is that in this recent period I have been sleeping fewer hours overall and seemingly not suffering any ill effect. In the earlier period I had come off the higher dosage I did wake up early and frequently got up early, but also I went to bed early and if I had not had enough hours of sleep would be tired in the daytime (and would catch up on sleep subsequent nights). I suppose it is still the case that if I get very little sleep I feel tired and catch up as I have just said, but it is also the case that I do not (usually) go to bed so early but still get up early, and get fewer hours of sleep on average while still feeling satisfactorily rested. I put this down to what in my terminology of a few years past I called ‘processing capacity’: that is on the lower dosage of Risperdal I have higher processing capacity and can take in and use more information through the waking hours without the need for such lengthy ‘post-processing’ during dreaming sleep.
I can see that being on the dosage of Risperdal I am on is a help to me, and it interests me to understand - if the lower the dosage of Risperdal the higher the processing capacity - what is wrong with a zero dosage (and I used to be convinced a zero dosage was best, certainly in my own case, and that any dopamine-blocking was negative and a horror). The answer is that with so much dopamine in my head as was in it on a zero dosage of dopamine-blocker, I did do a lot of processing while requiring relatively little sleep, but the fact is I was making mistakes in the processing without in the least suspecting they were mistakes (if I had suspected, then that itself would have elevated the ‘processing requirement’ which I suppose - striving to sort out my suspicions - would have required me to sleep more: indeed would have ensured I slept more, because it would automatically have made me tireder and I would either have slept at night or had to sleep in the daytime). To give a concrete example: when my computer went wrong, instead of understanding the real reason - or guessing and then checking until I found the real reason - I dismissed it with hardly any ‘processing’ as some organisation - ‘the Authorities’ - trying to steal and perhaps succeeding in stealing information from out of the computer, by introducing non-standard software that is some sort of spyware. Looked at from a more global, top-down perspective which I was not capable of in the years before 2011 because of the flood of data from the environment (and from my memories) taking up my processing resources in other ways, it is easy to see that no organisation with such influence and capabilities (able to interfere with the postal system, for one thing) would have any reason to want information from me.
I think I’ve explained that well enough (self-congratulatory preening here: I am lucky to have high natural levels of serotonin so I don’t castigate myself at every opportunity as some with my diagnosis do) and I don’t want to tax readers too much so I will close and defer until another time an exposition more focused on the events in my life the past few weeks.

Dopamine-blocking drugs

01-02 April 2013 [Bank Holiday Monday - Tuesday]
When my thoughts and feelings were less restrained by dopamine-blocking medication - that is in the years preceding 2011 - I was very concerned that I might be made to have dopamine-blocking medication as I had been over decades up to my parents’ deaths and that it would affect me very badly as it had then. This fear (to say genuinely what it was) was combined with anger that I had been made to have such medication in those decades and that it had resulted in a terrible and empty experience for me of life then.
I am now being given the minimum dosage of Risperdal Consta injection, which is 25mg every two weeks, and I can see that it is improving life for me. This contrasts with the conclusion I had reached, that any dosage of a dopamine-blocker would do the opposite of help me.
My concern now is that - especially as I am moving home soon - a new psychiatrist may increase the dosage and thereby again consign me to hurt. Up to about a year ago I was on a higher dosage of Risperdal Consta - in fact it was 37.5mg every two weeks - and it made for an unpleasant experience of life for me, doing me hurt not good. I wish to set down the effects of the higher dosage in a version I can make available to any doctor who might think to put me on a higher dosage than 25mg. (This is especially so when at the time I am on the higher dosage I cannot formulate words and sentences adequately to convey what I mean.) It strikes me such a description might be of help to others if published on the internet - not that everybody responds the same to the same dosage but still it would be a warning of the possible adverse effects of too high a dosage for the individual - and a description of the helpful effects of a successful dosage (25mg for me) might be an encouragement too, for example to patients who have encountered nothing but hurt from the dosages (too high I mean) prescribed by psychiatrists who may be insufficiently caring and attentive. For now though I defer a description of the helpful effects.
The main results in me of the higher dosage of Risperdal were those I read reported as side-effects of reserpine, that is depression and anxiety (but anxiety not accompanied by the usual physiological symptoms such as increased heart rate and increased breathing rate). Also I was markedly underactive - going to bed early in the evening because I could find nothing of interest to do and not pursuing my usual interests such as those connected with computing - and indecisive. I found it difficult to engage in conversation because thoughts did not come to mind: my mind in fact was a blank. If I was in a context of requiring to talk to people - as I was because matters arose relating to the bungalow I owned and occupied, in 2011 specifically - I lost track of what I had to say and could not draw together the facts of the case in my mind as the conversation (what passed for a conversation) progressed.
It seems plain to me that the way the brain works one thought leads to another - or ideas presented from other people through language or other symbols set off chains of thought - through a mechanism where neural structures are physically linked by dopaminergic connections. Blocking some dopaminergic synapses weakens the connections so that the excitement of neural structures downstream from some stimulation is reduced, and blocking too many synapses results in thoughts petering out before they really get going. This effect was very apparent to me through introspection in the years when I was given very high dosages of dopamine-blocking drugs.
As regards anxiety, my experience of it since being on dopamine-blocking medication (but not at the current low dosage) is that it arose because the little degree of mental ‘processing’ I did resulted in no decisions being come to - I did not (and could not) think things through enough to reach conclusions - so I was in a constant state of uncertainty. On top of that because of underactivity I did not do things I should have done in preparation for any known up-coming need, so that I was unprepared for things which might arise even when I knew beforehand that they were going to arise. Examples of that would include getting together (that is I did not get them together, because I was underactive) ready for some application I was going to make (say a form I had to fill in, or to be more specific phoning a workman for help with my central heating).
Regarding depression: I am sure nature (or rather evolution) has made it a pleasure to mentally ‘process’ (up to a certain degree). What I think happens in the absence of dopamine-blocking is that as one becomes aware of problems or decisions to be taken the dopamine turnover in the brain increases. This corresponds to ‘processing’ to try to resolve what is perceived as needing resolution (an example which could be tested being the presentation of and the attempt to solve some mathematical puzzle). When the problem is perceived as solved - when some final decision is come to - the level of dopamine drops, sometimes quite suddenly. This gives a surge of serotonin, which is experienced as pleasure. But it is the ebb and flow of dopamine which gives rise to surges of serotonin, and a constant low level of dopamine does nothing for serotonin (and for completeness I remark that a constant high level of dopamine - corresponding to having puzzling problems which never get resolved - equally means there are no surges of serotonin).
Returning to the phenomenon of anxiety, I remark that the more usual origin of anxiety is, not insufficient ‘processing’ to come to any conclusion or decision, but rather, constant ‘processing’ on and on without ever coming to a conclusion or decision because there are too many factors in the ‘processing’, that is too much going on in the mind, in a mutually contradictory and self-defeating range.
In summary, too high a dosage of dopamine-blocking medication causes my mind to be empty. I do not do things I need to do and I do not reach any conclusions, this manifesting as anxiety; I cannot find anything to contribute to a conversation; and life is nothing but depression - death-in-life with very high dosages - because it is so unstimulating.

Levels of dopamine, high or low

25/03/13 01:35 [Monday]
I’ve just woken from a dream about dopamine, and specifically the different behaviours associated with different levels of dopamine in the brain, from high down to low. The basic idea is that higher levels of dopamine create more of a distinction (when translated into behaviour) between objects or concepts the nervous system differentiates. The subject feels more certain that things which appear different from each other - perhaps only slightly different - genuinely are from different categories. On the other hand things between which differences are not noticed are more readily believed to be identical, or from identical categories. Things are seen more in an all-or-nothing manner. At lower (more normal) levels of dopamine the subject feels less certain that things are either different or (on the other hand) the same. At lower levels (I suppose) there is greater acceptance that things in the real world might be being perceived mistakenly: the response to things and events is more ‘gradualist’ with less investment in the initially formed way of regarding the thing or event and an easier quicker ability to change tack. (Also with lower levels of dopamine other people’s, or ‘Society’s’, ways of interpreting objects and events play a larger role in determining the individual’s response.)
Something I have been thinking about when awake recently is that some behaviours can be associated (the same) with both high and low levels of dopamine. For one thing this makes it difficult for doctors to be sure whether symptoms of schizophrenia are being seen, or on the other hand the effects of too powerful a dosage of dopamine-blocking drugs. For example, if the subject’s mind is empty of thoughts (from low levels of dopamine) he will be silent and appear withdrawn; but also if his mind is full of thoughts he may well appear the same since he cannot put the many and probably mutually contradictory (or ‘counteracting’) ideas into words until he has processed them, and he may never have time to process them to make them definite especially if he is being bombarded with new experiences either questions and an insistence on engagement from the doctor or (worse) the fearful experience of being hospitalised especially the first time and especially if it is by compulsion.
I adhere to the view I have come to, that schizophrenia (and related conditions: for nowadays I get the impression schizophrenia is less readily given as a diagnosis but conditions like Asperger’s or Autism more readily and earlier) results from dopamine responsivity which is too high. Given only slight stimulation very high-amplitude and possibly fluctuating waves of excitement of dopaminergic systems result. The degree and duration of the continuing fluctuation will depend on the precision of the neural networks available to do the processing ‘downstream’, that is on their resolution. The effect of such unpleasant results from any stimulation is that the subject evades stimulation, that is he becomes ‘avoidant’ or withdrawn. In turn that results in an absence of fluctuations in dopaminergic systems and this also is experienced as unpleasure, in the form of loneliness and perhaps boredom. There are ways available to a person having an over-responsive dopaminergic system of obtaining stimulation which is (if things go well) not at an overwheliming level, some more traditional (like reading, or listening to the radio or watching TV) and some new-fangled (like communicating with others - and best it is with others similar - via the internet). I will mention that Emily Brontë obtained pleasurable stimulation from her sister Charlotte when the latter described to her her ventures ‘into society’: there is something more directly appealing in real-life stimulation even at one remove (more nearly real-time, I suppose) than is available from fictive stimulation as from reading a novel.

From Monday 26 May 2008

Another part of the cost to us in being drugged is the waste of my time now trying to work these things out, the motivation being as I say to hope to avoid, or better avoid, in future such drugging, because we derive entirely disbenefit from it. Furthermore my time is wasted more than it would be by virtue of the fact my thinking is less efficient because of mind-altering drugs still in my metabolism this morning.

I have in the past had varying hypotheses why I - in particular - have suffered such drugging. One frequently cropping up has been that it was to assess the hurt to me from previous such drugging. I find this hypothesis again rearing up this morning, but dismiss it on the basis that I have had it over so many years that it cannot have been right then (because I - and now we - would not continue to suffer year after year for that purpose) so most likely is not right now.

Another major hypothesis was that it was to produce a simulacrum schizophrenia for research purposes, and I cannot so readily dismiss this same hypothesis now. What I myself suffered from the drugging yesterday - particularly in the thinking I was doing trying to sort out why we were delayed unnecessarily (as far as I could see) from the alterations to train timings due to Sunday engineering works - was very close to a condition of paranoia, and has been so but much worse in the past.

The third major hypothesis has been that the drugs were supposed to be an assistance to me because I was supposed to be schizophrenic and they were based on antischizophrenic medication (but with extras, presumably to try to counter ‘side-effects’). This hypothesis is one I have only quite recently entertained, because it seemed so ridiculous. It seemed ridiculous to imagine that psychiatrists presumably regarded as especially competent and presumably concerting together (that is, not just one of them making his own diagnosis) could make the mistaken diagnosis, and ridiculous to imagine the debilitating effect of the drug mixtures given could be missed and the view continue to be taken that the drugs were an assistance to me.

Therefore to convey the truth about the effect of the drugging - that it had entirely disbeneficial effects, for Dawn and for myself - I need to transmit this exposition (and presume it will be correctly understood) to those arranging for the drugs to be supplied. I have to say this is difficult firstly because I cannot be certain where the drugs were supplied. I cannot know how the authorisation has been given for the drugging. Those authorising the drugging - that is those writing the prescription and those organising for the railway coffee (it may well have been) to have drugs put in it - are remiss in not advising themselves adequately of the effects of the drugging, and further in causing me the frustration of needing to work out how best to transmit expositions such as this diary entry.

When I put this diary entry on my various websites it will reach a certain audience (including some MPs) but they may not have time to get to the truth of what I say and may have no particular interest in the subject of mental health. They may not cotton on to the degree of waste in my life - waste and horror for me over the years - so may not take the question sufficiently seriously. (On the other hand I am now kicking up such a fuss that I hope someone with influence may intervene.) Apart from this ‘broadcasting’ in the hope someone with influence may assist me - and really it should be my own MP - I think it might be well to send this exposition to the management of the Premier Inn chain (on the basis that the tea and coffee we drank in the Wakefield hotel may well have contained drugs) and to the management at Doncaster railway station.

We have been drugged on railway stations before (Doncaster in particular) and in hotel rooms before, and those arranging the drugging - who almost certainly read my websites if few others do - may simply be continuing established practices with only a lackadaisical notion why they are doing so. If mechanisms are in place allowing us to be drugged in these ways, ‘the Experimenters’ - to refer to them thus - having only vague ideas (almost certainly being trained in subjects related to psychiatry) may make use of the mechanisms without over-much reflection. I have to say this is wrong - in fact a disaster - that is (this is it basically) to allow antischizophrenic drugs to be prescribed so lackadaisically.

¬¬¬

There is quite an industry of people employed nowadays to ‘help out’. Such people as Social Workers (in Western countries like Britain) depend for their employment on people - some inhabitants of the country - being in a bad way. Moreover nowadays (for reasons which I would do well to think about) the work people do - when it is assessed for purposes of remuneration, or in academic circles reputation - is measured to a large degree by quantity. Scientists - and other academics, I presume - are judged according to the number of papers they publish. It is argued that the papers are scored (by assessors from the peer group) before publication so that counting them counts only worthy publishings. Readers may be aware what I think of this system as applied to psychiatric ‘scientists’, who form what I can call only a mutual admiration society comparable to the clique of theologians in mediaeval times.

Thus it is that with the motivation of wishing for continuing employment (and extending into ‘empire building’) employees of the State - and in particular, Social Workers and similar (possibly including psychiatrists although I would think they deceive themselves more and are less cynical) - feel they need to do ‘work’ in quantity. They need to have a large case-load and they need to take action in each case. Applied to my own ‘case’ this maybe is what leads to continuing use of the mechanisms for drugging me - including perhaps access to those who supply tea and coffee (or the water used) in hotel rooms.

This is an unfortunate state of affairs, as insufficient account is taken - in measuring the ‘work’ - of success or otherwise in achieving aims. Intervention by Social Workers sometimes (I myself do not know whether the statistic is around 50% of cases or is greater) makes matters worse not better. But this is not ordinarily measured. Only the quantity (the number of cases) is ordinarily measured. In extreme cases (such as death of a child) some effort may be made to gather more information on the ‘work’ done.

I have produced ideas in past months on the explanation for the irreversible growth of State intervention - ‘big government’ - and usually I would accept that nothing is to be done, and merely regret the facts. In my own ‘case’ though, because State intervention of this species has led me to suffer so badly, I have been motivated to strive to make an alteration, which comes down lately to publishing words in places they are put in the way of people with influence.

Closer Understanding

The night before this night just ended - that is, the night between Wednesday and Thursday - I got up in the middle of the night and flushed a lot of bread down the toilet, mainly Hovis bought a day or two previous from Sainsbury’s Merry Hill. I did this because I felt effects of drugs - a combination of stimulant and ASM [antischizophrenic medication] - and not understanding why I should continue to be drugged, was fearful - certainly suspicious - that the intention was to entrap me in continuing drugging such as I have suffered in the past. The way this has been perpetrated was to reduce my ability to think for myself, that is my ability to take into account longer range considerations in forming decisions what to do. Certain mixtures of stimulant and ASM have this effect on me, of reducing or zeroing my ability to take account of longer range considerations. It is the antischizophrenic component of the mixture which causes this problem, and with no stimulant admixed (or insufficient stimulant) I become very little active because I find little to motivate me. Under ordinary circumstances - that is, undrugged - the motivations I find for taking action relate exclusively to longer range considerations, that is longer term into the future. I know there are other motivations to be found - for example enjoyment of food - and when I have been on some combinations of drugs - notably in the early years of the new Millennium, that is from about the year 2000 on for a year or two - I have performed activities based on such motivations. Unfortunately I was nowhere near as happy under those circumstances, that is without my usual longer range motivations.
A further problem arising out of my particular history, from being given drugs which deprive me of longer range motivations, is that I become too subject to advice given by speaking to me when I am less than fully aware. (I have reason to believe such advice has been given when my awareness has been subdued - for example I have been heavily asleep, perhaps - by a drug like opium.) Because I have no genuine motivations arising within myself (that is, because the drugs I have been given when this has occurred have removed the motivation available from longer range considerations), when I am given stimulant drugs affecting me in the waking period (usually the daytime but sometimes I have been kept wakeful at night) which give me a feeling of drive which if not put into effect causes frustration (which can manifest in angry outbursts) and certainly distraction (in that the stimulant while in my metabolism puts me constantly on the look-out for action I might take), if I am given suggestion akin to hypnotic suggestion I act on that suggestion too readily.
Thus what has happened is that my ability to think for myself has been reduced near to zero with antischizophrenic drugs and then the actions I take have been too subject to the suggestion I have mentioned, akin to hypnotic suggestion. This suggestion has been used to persuade me to purchase foodstuffs which have been drugged, this leading to continuation in the entrapment I refer to. It has been more difficult to evade the entrapment when there have been fewer choices of places to shop for food: for example in the Harworth area of Nottinghamshire where we (my wife and I) had our park home and where we came close to settling permanently. Where we are living now in Kingswinford, there are so many easily accessible food stores that slight randomisation in our purchasing of food has a very beneficial effect in negativing any ‘hypnotic’ suggestion. The upshot is that those wishing to persuade me to continue to take in drugged foods and drinks find it impossible. Sometimes still when I do not see things as clearly as this morning I have fear of entrapment, for example through drugging of our water supply from South Staffs Water (which I am sure is a thing capable of being done and which has been done in months past).
The question why these people wish me to continue to take drugs of this nature - reducing near to zero my ability to think for myself - is one I find difficulty answering, and I suppose there must be complex factors arising out of my history. I was first given antischizophrenic drugs in the 1970s as part of a scheme to try to ‘treat’ the schizoid personality I had, which those giving the drugs seemingly felt was undesirable in itself (it is a widely held view that to be sociable is desirable) and probably felt might lead to schizophrenia with ‘positive’ symptoms which would be more widely agreed to be undesirable. Unfortunately they had insufficient understanding of the effects of the drugs given, as well as insufficient understanding of schizoid personality and of schizophrenia, and moreover they were very negligent in not assaying (at all, it seems to me, incredible though this may sound) the effects in practice of giving me the drugs surreptitiously.
The consequence of this sequence of drug administration - first surreptitiously, as I say, and in 1980, and subsequently, by compulsion (this leading through the effect on my ability to think for myself to continued acceptance by me of the abusive drugs) - was that I was under treatment with these drugs for almost twenty-five years.
In 2003 after my parents died I left the town where I had lived since the age of three and went to live in Retford in Nottinghamshire (although I have now returned to Kingswinford). Regrettably the people following the course of the treatment I had been receiving (successors to the original perpetrators from the time I was a student at Cambridge University) took the view that I needed to have antischizophrenic medication. I presume the reasons they had were not unethical reasons but rather were related to their mistaken way of understanding schizophrenia and its treatment. The sequence which followed from the time I started living in Retford was that in 2004 I was given powerful stimulant drugs which (in combination with antischizophrenic drugs given at the same time) caused me to behave in a confused and sometimes aggressive-seeming manner which resulted in the September in my arrest in Bristol and conveyance (under circumstances which I myself deplore extremely) back to Nottinghamshire and in fact to detention in Bassetlaw Hospital.
While in hospital there I met Dawn who is now my wife. The people following the course of my life and who had power (evidently) to order that I be given drugs, sometimes surreptitiously and sometimes by compulsion (when I was under a ‘section’ of the Mental Health Act improperly applied, in my view), seemingly felt that my choice of Dawn as a marriage partner was undesirable. Factors accidentally arising - for example the ‘talking-therapy’ treatment which had been applied around Easter of 2004 to a friend I had made on the internet (Caroline, who lived in Bristol) which had most unfortunate consequences for her and for me (again blameable on the mistaken way psychiatrists in Britain - including those promoting ‘talking-therapy’ treatments, evidently - have of understanding schizophrenia) - led now to a sort of panic in those following the course of my life (mistakenly believing I was schizophrenic and that they were gathering knowledge of the life of someone schizophrenic under treatment for schizophrenia in an ordinary British scheme of treatment). This is the best way I can find to explain events. In 2004 I had lost a lot of money online gambling, this resulting from the drugs I had been given (and possibly from ‘hypnotising’ advice in combination), and as I say Caroline had been caused a lot of heartache and general distress from the foolish treatment she had been subject to, so the perpetrators must have panicked, coming close to realising the error of their ways and (perhaps having the mens rea as I have suggested recently and surely having regret for the sequence resulting from their inadequate understanding) feeling they must brave things out and try to promote (or prove, as they may have presented it to themselves) the diagnosis I had of schizophrenia thus justifying the treatment I had been meted.
My fears change according to the mixtures of drugs I am given from time to time, but this morning I feel that surely what is going on now is not a further attempt to entrap me but rather an endeavour to obtain evidence, directly on the effects of drugs given to me surreptitiously (for example in recent days in bread) and further from what I say about events over the years, and from documents I produce (and publish on the internet) relating to what has happened over the years.

Includes cost to the economy

In the 1990s I had a number of pen-pals who I had got in contact with through the NSF (the National Schizophrenia Fellowship, by the old name it was then called). Possibly one of these, or possibly it was someone who came on TV with his story, explained what had happened to him: he had developed schizophrenia (according to doctors) and had been treated with antischizophrenic drugs. His mental organisation had become totally disrupted: whereas before he had been (I think) a Civil Servant, or anyway in some position needing ability to think clearly, afterwards he was totally incompetent. He himself believed the mental disorganisation was due to the illness, and presumably those treating him did.
I must be about the only person treated with such drugs for schizophrenia (or as if for schizophrenia) who already knew a good deal about the illness. I knew from the start that my mental disorganisation was nothing to do with symptomatology of schizophrenia, and in fact I knew the truth, that it was due to the drugs. How it comes that no one else has understood this I find difficult to unravel. Those testing the drugs seemingly don’t measure the right things, in measuring the effects. They don’t measure the effect on ‘mental organisation’: for example (to harp on again) Armond said that antischizophrenic drugs do not affect intelligence, so I think testers of these drugs must test the effect on IQ and conclude that the drugs don’t affect mental capacity because they don’t have a measurable effect on IQ.
The effect they have (on mental organisation) is as I have said comparable to the effect of lobotomoy. I saw a TV programme about a man in the United States who had had a brain injury destroying part of his prefrontal cortex. Whereas before he had been a high-powered legal executive, afterwards he could only hold down a job as a petrol-pump attendant. This is what happened to me given these drugs: beforehand I was highly regarded as a trainee accountant (for example at Round Oak Steelworks, and for a while at Dudley Council) but afterwards I was what I would call totally incompetent.
It may be - and I hope it is - that someone sensible recently, because of events, has cottoned on to these allegations I make about the effects of antischizophrenic drugs. If they have cottoned on and find a way of testing the truth of what I say (which, if I have been adequately observed, will already be well on the way to being done for my own case) they will discover it is true, and that giving these drugs incautiously results not only in horror for the treated individuals (which they naturally blame on their illness) but deprives the economy of useful workers.

Here's one I did yesterday

The drugs affecting me earlier - probably a mixture of stimulant and ASM [antischizophrenic medication] - have worn off (which for one thing implies the pleasing fact that they did not derive from the bread which I can continue to eat with impunity: probably they derived from the remains of the Sara Lee gateau, as I suspected at one stage this afternoon as well as a day or two back of the gateau then) and my mind is almost as it was when I was in my late teens, certainly as regards activity level (or ‘activation level’) although I suppose I must admit I have more experiential memories so that the subject-matter thrown around in the activity is more varied, and likely more realistically founded.

Just as at that time as a teenager then, I ask myself - before doing anything much at all, including any writing - what point there is in it? The answer today is differently based from then, as regards writing, because I have a readership. Anyone with a blog can hope for readership, but in my particular case almost certainly a lot of what I put up is read by or on behalf of ‘the Authorities’. I put this forward as the explanation for my relative garrulousness in explaining matters such as I am here in these prefatory paragraphs, which would be different - perhaps non-existent - if I did not have in mind these readers for ‘the Authorities’.

A lot of what occurs to my mind to write, in fact, takes shape as though directed at the readers for ‘the Authorities’, and usually it is complaining about what I suffer, or explaining what it is the Authorities are doing that they shouldn’t be. I conclude that most likely such explanations and complaints aren’t understood although at times I have wondered if they are read at all.

Taking on the theory that from the time I was at Cambridge the Experimenters were intent on tracking through life a person thought liable to develop schizophrenia, and that in 1986 Armond (as one of the Experimenters, or employed by them) genuinely concluded I had developed schizophrenia - not entirely unexpected, as I say - and what has been happening since then is treatment of that supposed schizophrenia, using extraordinary methods including admixed heroin (not unheard of in cases of terminal disease in combination with something like chorpromazine, to give a kind of early death in life before actual death, but made happy - supposedly - by the heroin) and later admixed antidepressants and admixed stimulants (this last virtually unbelievable as countering - almost any scientist would have said so - the dopamine-blocking action of the antipsychotic leaving only side-effects of both drug types with zero benefit), with observation - that is, tracking - continuing.

Because, as I say, much of what I write to ‘the Authorities’ - formerly in letters to what was said to be Caroline’s address in Bristol but where a Water Rate bill I found was addressed to a Mr S Phillips if I remember right (because I was reminded of the actress Sian Phillips) and lately via my website - is not understood at all, I wonder what it’s all about. The conclusion must be - this supported by general evidence of the low intellectual quality of psychiatrists, not least of this being Armond’s failure to correct the mis-spelling of his own address in the Medical Directory I consulted (whether corrected since I do not know) - that the Experiment was a lackadaisical affair from the start and did not ever envisage gathering detailed information of the sort which might interest myself were I engaged in managing such a scheme. The failure of the Experimenters (Armond and others at the outset, I imagine) to take in much detail, let alone understand it, led to the error - quite common in psychiatric diagnosis in Britain, I should think - of giving me disatrously hurtful drugs and ignoring my complaints. I am hopeful that in the present phase more sensible people take cognisance and have ultimate control over the psychiatrists’ leashes (for one thing police officers must be quite aware of the sort of things perpetrated, and if my attempts to ‘publish’ are not stymied politicians too will become aware).

Hence my conclusion now (and, my mind clear of drugs, almost certainly this is the correct conclusion) is that my diagnosis of schizophrenia in 1986 on the evidence of my suicide attempt was a genuine diagnosis, so mistaken because Armond - and British psychiatrists generally - are fools. The treatment I have received in the twenty-odd years since has been based on standard British treatment for schizophrenia (but with the embellishments mentioned: admixed heroin, etc) and has resulted in my having a non-life thought to show typical symptomatology of schizophrenia (that is, British psychiatrists know so little they take the disastrous effects of the drug treatment as symptoms of the illness).

Goodness knows what will happen now but I presume I shall be freed.

¬¬¬

That’s how the ‘prefatory paragraphs’ have turned out, and backtracking, what they were supposed to preface was something to the effect that before I was writing to communicate to anyone - in my notes and diaries around 1972 - some of what I wrote (thinking particularly of notes on the computers I designed) was so complicated that after trying to explain them to my best friend I gave up ever hoping to explain such matters.

As regards what point there is in doing anything, I tend to agree with Sartre (at the end of the book Nausea) that to produce art objects is the way to go, because they are slightly less existent and being less existent in real-time have the hope of enduring forever (or a longish time, anyway: certainly longer than the statue of Ozymandias). With art objects I include scientific theories and mathematical (including computer) models.

Preceding correspondence

30 April 2008

Ian Pearson MP
House of Commons
London SW1A 0AA

Dear Mr Pearson

I am writing you another letter now because my mind seems clearer of improper influence (from mind-altering drugs for example) than it has been in a long while. If it has seemed to you that I am mentally ill I can assure you I am not, although naturally you should retain an open mind as yet.

The difficulties I face stem from treatment over decades with antipsychotic drugs, but further to this an inadequate control over dosages (and introduction of improper adjunctory treatment, especially with stimulant drugs).

There are matters it is necessary to complain to the police about, not least among which is the improper diversion of phonecalls I made from home on our then Virgin Media line last June. I believe that some calls I made thinking I was speaking to the police were diverted and in fact I was not speaking to them. In one of these calls I requested that they look into the origin of my decades of treatment, which was back in 1980 when I was improperly (without my foreknowledge or consent) given amphetamine so that I presented a syndrome which a psychiatrist called Anthony Dew Armond treated as schizophrenia, detaining me in November 1980 under the 1959 Mental Health Act in fact. I have no documentation from that detention, and it is not impossible it was an illegal detention: but I do not know what documents I should have been served under the old Act. The response of those I took to be police (in June 2007) was to say it was too long ago to look into. However as it has led to such extended and severe consequences for me I think it should be looked into. Certainly the covert administration or supply of amphetamine was improper and presumably illegal.

Armond was my psychiatrist when I was detained three years later too, in March 1984, although originally it was a Dr R V Cope. I do not understand why she was removed and Armond substituted. After my release from hospital in the April (1984) Armond continued the arrangement of holding me on ‘long leave’, in fact until 26 July 1986. He required me to sleep one night in the hospital every few months so that I could be said to be resident there. I have read that this subterfuge was found in other cases to be an illegal means of insisting that patients who were not truly in-patients take medication. It is my view (in fact it is my certain knowledge) that I needed no such medication, and Armond may have had ulterior reasons for insisting.

For a number of years I was attending a Day Centre (at Armond’s insistence) but in the later 1980s I took on a course at Wolverhampton Poly. I agreed to continue medication from 1987 onwards for one thing because my father felt I would not do well without it. I lived with my parents till they died in 2003 and then felt able to discontinue the medication when I moved to Retford in Nottinghamshire.

In recent years I have, as in 1980, been covertly administered or supplied improper drugs. It is my belief the true reason has been to restrict my forthcoming about the matters referred to above, relating to the 1980s, but police and others (I believe) have been told what is going on is an investigation into schizophrenia using drugs of relevance to schizophrenia. The effect of this distortion is that police are less than ordinarily enthusiastic to assist me, although lately they seem to have been told something of the truth, that drugs given to me unknowing may affect my behaviour.

I object to being given drugs which distort the functioning of my mind, especially as often they cause me to seem mentally ill and further to have the unpleasant experience a mentally ill person has. If at all possible I should like the origin of these difficulties looked into and appropriate action taken, although my main priority is to put a stop to the drugging I suffer supposedly as part of an investigation of schizophrenia.

I trust you can give me your help.

Yours sincerely

Colin Barrass-Brough

Yet another new blog

I am trying to spread the word on my mental health (and mental health matters in general, and even mental illness matters) so on the basis that searchers after schizophrenia might well search blogger blogs I am here too. My healthy interests include as well as mental illness, character recognition.

Because I need to get up-to-date with our budget this morning I leave now with the advice (or request) that you look at www.colinbrough.co.uk at leisure.