Thanking Dr. Revella Levin

First some background:

I have been taking psychiatric medications for more than 20 years and I have been taking antipsychotics for about 15 years. During the past 15 years, any time I stopped taking antipsychotics, the psychosis would return within a few months. Several months ago, I reached a difficult stage in my life, where I had to make a difficult decision. The difficult situation was caused by the side effects from the medications and the complications of the disease itself. Even though the antipsychotics had had side effects previously, their side effects did not seem that dagerous. But this time, it appeared that their side effects had risen to a dagerous level, probably due to my being generally inactive in the past 15 years, my obesity, and my older age.

My first option was to continue taking antipsychotics. But a large group of antipsychotics are anticholinergics. Anticholinergics lead to dementia and dementia to death. I avoid anticholinergics. A lot of antipsychotics also cause arrhythmias. Arrhythmias can cause stroke and heart attack, and stroke and heat attack can lead to death. I had tried several antipsychotics, including Risperdal (risperidone) and they gave me arrhythmia at this time, probably worsened by the obesity that I had got from antipsychotics themselves. The only one that didn't cause arrhythmia for me was Abilify (aripiprazole). But Abilify's side effects weren't any better. Abilify gave me anhedonia, akathisia, anger and hostility, and worst of all suicidality. The other option was to stop taking antipsychotics and you know where that ends: florent psychosis, losing one's job and family, becoming a hobo, and finally death on a street corner. So my options were limited to death and death.

Here rode in Revella Levin on a white horse:

One night I was thinking of how to deal with my problem and decided to find and read the latest books on schizohrenia to see if I might be able to find something useful. By chance, I found Dr. Revella Levin's Successful Drug-Free Psychotherapy for Schizophrenia. Her brilliant book is full of personal stories, case studies, theoretical discussions, and practical advice for therapists. Her ideas are based on Sigmund Freud's theories and ideas. But she doesn't accept them blindly. She criticizes them, offers modifications, and derives techniques from them. As she says, she separates Freud's wheat from his chaff.

I should mention that I was not unfamiliar with Freud's ideas and had actually found them fascinating. However, I had lost hope of ever finding a psychological cure for my schizophrenia. After trying for many years to find a cure in psychology, psychoanalysis, Freud's theory of defence mechanisms, or to at least explain away the stigma of schizophrenia with a physiological cause like magnesium deficiency or copper accumulation, I gave up and accepted my fate as a hopeless lunatic, accepted the dominant chemical hypothesis for schizophrenia, and resigned myself to taking psychiatric medications for the rest of my life, until survival forced me to search for an alternative.

Although I was skeptical at first, the title was intriguing enough. I got the book and started reading it. I read some parts of Dr. Levin's book each night and it was the most pleasant task of the day. But it wasn't just reading. I read and reread the parts that resonated with me and paused to think and self-analyze along the way. I found the book truly fascinating. But what I found even more fascinating was Dr. Levin herself. I felt her compassion for her patients and her passion for her job through her words. I think I developed some sort of transference feelings towards her. But unlike her patients, my tranference did not involve feelings of anger or hostility. I felt love towards her and I felt she loved and supported me in my attempts at self-analysis.

It is now about four months that I have stopped taking antipsychotics and one month that I no longer take an antidepressent. If past experience is any indication, I should be severely anxious, depressed, and psychotic by now. However, the hallucinations, paranoia, ideas of reference, depression, and anxiety are gone for the most part. The most stubborn problem seems to be grandiosity, but I hope I will be able to let go of it, too. Actually, I have thought of a way to rid myself of it, and am going to put it into action. Not that it's an original idea. I got it from Dr. Levin's book and am going to share it with you in future posts.

Thanks to Dr. Levin, I feel a surge of psychic energy bursting through. I am now happier and calmer than I have ever been in the past 15 years. I have new-found hopes, dreams, and ideas, do not feel that I have to live it one day at a time, and do not wish it were over. My mind, memory, and thinking is improving, and I do not feel like a zombie any more, but feel intense emotions once again. And I am actually losing weight, although not as fast as I would like to (losing 88 pounds is not an easy task). In short, my life has been transformed from absolute misery to at least a contented one because of Dr. Levin's work and ideas.

Revella of House Levin, First of Your Name, Queen of Therapists, Liberator of Minds, Breaker of Nightmares, Mother of Ideas, Revealer of Truths, Lady of Strength and Lightning, Savior of the Disturbed, and the Protector of Souls:

I owe my life to you and I am forever in your debt.

Although I cannot do much to repay my debt at the present, am no knight, and don't know how to fight or ride a horse, I would like to offer my services.