Forgive me for posting a non political, personal diary here, but it is fascinating and people may learn some things (any excuse will do! :))
For about 2 weeks, I was virtually brain dead, I don't just mean being 'brain dead' like people say when they are very tired, I mean it literally. And, no, this is not a joke.
As I started going down the process, I asked a person I know on another board about the chemical process of brain functioning in general and he replied (not an exact quote) "dopamine is essentially the oil that regulates brain function and moves thoughts along."
Well, for two weeks, the dopamine was basically not working.
Have any brain researchers heard anything like this before? I'd look it up, but I'm afraid the results would be too technical for me to understand.
This is the full story
I went through a similar process to this about 9-10 years ago (although my brain probably hadn't been functioning properly for at least a couple years before that). I started to believe back then that 'normal humans' took great care in dealing with germs and stuff like that and that I, being brain dead, was so stupid that I was polluting the world with my germs. Over the course of about a year I lost a great deal of weight in all this and in the end I was deemed a threat to myself and placed in a mental institution (signatures from 2 doctors gets you placed in a mental institution here in British Columbia).
I was put on risperdone and, though I didn't realize it at the time back then, thanks to the risperdone my brain started functioning normally and I was able to live life O.K. (Or relatively normally, I'll get to that later). I didn't tell any of the medical people in the mental institution that I was essentially brain dead and my official diagnosis was something like 'fear of germs due to being psychotic'.
Then, 2 months ago, I had pain in my mouth due to a wisdom tooth coming in and took a pain killer (I don't know if the pain killer actually had anything to do with anything) and that night I experienced vivid dreams. Immediately I started to experience strange, psychotic thoughts and I remembered asking my dad "I've heard that the brain subconsciously takes in information that the conscious brain isn't even aware of, is it possible that the brain could just get overloaded and stop working?
Anyway, that was the start of my slide. Following that, I experienced a 'brain fog' which I believe what the result of excess chemicals in my brain and then over the next couple weeks my brain functioning essentially stopped.
To explain what occurred over the two weeks, which may be of interest to brain researchers here:
1.I would get a thought and then be completely unable to move off of it. I had to essentially 'physically' force my brain to move onto another though.
2.I was only aware of what I could immediately see. If I was trying to concentrate on something and somebody would change my focus, I would completely forget about what I was trying to concentrate on.
3.Similar to that, my memory (which to be honest is pretty bad even when my brain functions 'normally') was pretty much shot, although ironically, when I was not distracted and tried hard to concentrate, my memory actually seemed to be better than it is normally. I guess that's what happens when the brain is cluttered by virtually no other thoughts.
4.I had difficulty with simple thinking like the ability to relate two facts together and come up with a conclusion or an observation (like intuition, basic judgement), in short my cognitive abilities had basically stopped.
5.I needed constant prodding from other people to observe things.
At the start of the process, I was told to take additional risperidone to deal with the brain fog (I took 0.5 milligrams a night at the time, so this upped it to 1 milligram), I tried it for 2 days and found it left me completely sedated. (I also take one Effexor at night, I believe it's the lowest dosage possible as well.)
However, I also experienced shaking which may have been partly a result of the nervousness I was feeling over my condition, but was no doubt nearly entirely due to the physical reaction to all the brain chemistry. Because of that, in my desperation and even though virtually brain dead, I decided to start taking one 0.5 milligram of risperidone in the day, and one at night. The shaking stopped and after a few days, most of my brain functioning has returned to normal.
My first thought after all this occurred was 'too bad I wasn't on an MRI machine at the time to see exactly what was going on in the brain' I'm sure it would have made some fascinating research'.
So, that's one of the reasons why I'm writing this diary. It does make sense to me. Just as a car needs oil to function properly, a brain needs dopamine. And just as a car can run low on clean oil, I don't see why a brain can't simply stop processing dopamine properly.
I do still have three concerns now though.
1.I live at home with my parents even though I'm 38 in large part due to all the mental problems that I experienced prior to going on risperidone at 30. This time, my parents were around to take care of me and help me through the process, what am I supposed to do if the risperidone stops working properly say every 5 years from now on? To be sure, next time I might notice the signs a lot better, but still.
2.Initially I felt sedated from taking the additional risperidone but that seems to have worn off. However, now I can't sleep properly. When I was 'brain dead' I was sleeping from approximately 4 AM to 2 PM every day (yeah that sounds great but I'd happily trade being brain dead for having a 9-5 job and getting up at 7 AM Monday-Friday). The one other smart decision I made was to keep a steady schedule like that so as not to fall back into being in bed 20 hours or so a day. I get to sleep now around 8 Am and wake up around noon. I've been going back to bed after that, in fact, I plan to go back to bed shortly after I post this diary.
3.My brain functioning still doesn't seem to be as sharp as it was prior to this occurring. I'm pretty sure I have aspergers based on a few things (not officially diagnosed) and I realize there are multiple different types of 'intelligence' and I've always been a better 'long term' thinker than having the ability to make quick decisions and be super observant (which is why I think I have aspergers), but I still seem to be slower. For instance, when I was on the computer earlier today, a light was left on which glared slightly in my left eye. I was busy doing something and was deep into it (also like aspergers) but it simply didn't occur to me to switch the light off (I like to think I would have after I had finished what I was doing). As I said, I'm 38 now and this could just be my brain normally aging (what a horrible thought), but I like to think it could also be because, the last time this happened, I went back to school shortly after (working on a major in economics) and 'honed' my brain with complex thinking and the like. This time I have nothing to do right now to engage my brain in deep and complex tasks. Does this sound right? Does a brain need to be 'honed' to work at peak efficiency? What sorts of things can I do to do that? It makes sense to me that I would have other cognitive problems given that it's possible for the first 30 years of my life my dopamine wasn't working properly, so that includes all the developmental years for the brain. That could explain my aspergers like symptoms.
Anyway, hope some brain researchers and the like read this and I hope you find this interesting and possibly informative. If no brain research has been done in this area, keep in touch with me and I'm sure in a few years my dopamine will again stop functioning properly and you can make me a research study case. We can win the Nobel prize together.