There is no medication to cure PTSD or DID. If someone tells you otherwise they obviously don’t know what they are talking about. Leave the conversation. They are not going to help you.
Many patients still take medication because it can help with specific symptoms like insomnia, depression or anxiety.
I will share some general information, you need to talk to your doctor about this.
There are different groups of drugs.
Benzodiazepines:
like Klonopin, Xanax, Valium or Ativan; they work really well to reduce anxiety, intense inner tension and hyperarousal. You also build up a tolerance over time and they are addictive. These should only be used on rare occasions of emergency, not every day. If it is an emergency and this is prescribed medication, it is ok to take one, it will not make you addicted right away. They are not bad, you just have to be careful.
Sleeping pills/hypnotics:
like Ambien, Sonata or Imovan; they can help you sleep, but they come with the same strings attached as benzos: building up tolerance and addiction. They are a good solution to give yourself a break when insomnia is getting unbearable, but they’re not meant to be used long-term.
Antidepressants:
there are different kinds of antidepressants that work in slightly different ways. Main groups are SSRIs (like Prozac, Zoloft or Paxil), SNRIs (like Cymbalta or Venlafaxin), tricyclic (like Tofranil) and tetracyclic antidepressants/ NaSSAs (like Remeron) and MAOIs (which are rarely used anymore). Your doctor will be patient to explain to you how these work and what might be best for you and your circumstances. Antidepressants often come with side effects like not feeling any deep emotions, changes in appetite or sex drive etc and it might take a few tries to find something that suits you. Don’t be shy, if something is not working for you, try something different. The list of antidepressants is long enough. Some can also reduce insomnia, nightmares or anxiety, without getting you addicted. That is why sometimes your doc might give you antidepressants to approach these problems even if you don’t feel especially depressed. You should never just stop taking antidepressants. Talk to your doctor how to reduce the dose first, so you can slowly come off.
Antipsychotics:
like Haldol, Zyprexa, Risperdal, Abilify, Seroquel, Thorazine or Promethazine (from high to low potency); These are meant for schizophrenic people with hyperactive brains. They usually do 2 things: calm you down and slow down your brain and your thoughts. They differ in how much they do the first or the second. Some can be very helpful if rumination keeps you up at night and they can be a safe treatment for insomnia. Some drugs of this category can also help to reduce your inner tension and hyperarousal. If you take something too strong you basically become vegetable because your mind can’t grasp a clear thought anymore.
I personally am a little concerned that this category has become common treatment for PTSD patients. The sedation and „taking away“ of thoughts can get in the way of learning proper self-regulation skills and working through trauma. This is not really solving anything and it might reduce the motivation to find a real solution.
Many DID patients get antipsychotics based on misdiagnosis, to make the inner voices „go away“. This is not DID treatment, actually more like mistreatment. For some it simply doesn’t work, the voices don’t go away. For others the lines of communication are cut, but that doesn’t make parts go away. It just makes you helpless to take care of them properly. Emotional tension might build up and the situation can cause a crisis. That is why higher potency antipsychotics are usually not helpful in everyday life with DID.
They might be helpful in a very specific situation though. Sometimes systems get caught in rapid switching, which is just as confusing as it is exhausting. This is usually a crisis situation and high potency antispychotics might slow down the switching. Not an ideal solution but sometimes needed.
Other:
there is a great number of other types of medication that is used to reduce PTSD symptoms. Some of them were originally meant to help with allergies or epilepsy or high blood pressure. If your doc offers this to you, she is not confused about your real diagnosis, she might actually know pretty well what she is doing. If you are insecure, ask questions.
If you have DID you might notice that medication is not always doing what it is supposed to do. Here are some of the difficulties you might face:
- nothing happens, you seem to be immune or need extremely high doses
- the effect doesn’t last as long as it should
- you can’t get a stable effect, one day it knocks you out, the other it is not enough
- effects only show for the fronting part who took the meds but not for other parts of the system
- effects end up with random parts of the system but not where they are needed
- effects end up with everyone except the fronting part who took the meds
- the effects or the actual substance trigger because they were used in trauma time or remind of drugs used in trauma time
- the system has learned to resist certain kinds of medication or to dissociate the effect
- some parts show allergic reactions while others don’t
- ….
- ….
Of course it can always be one today and another tomorrow. And maybe none at all.
For some systems it helps when there is always the same part fronting to take a certain medicine.
For others that doesn’t make a difference.
The worst time where DID can mess with medication is for anaesthesia for surgery. There are reports of people waking up too early. We have done some research on this and it looks like certain people consistently struggle with this while the majority doesn’t experience it. So if you have had successful anaesthesia without problems before, you are at less risk to experience this. It would still be good to talk to your doctor about DID related problems with medication so they can be extra careful.
[If you are a doctor, please believe your DID patient if they report irregular effects of medication. I know that it doesn’t seem logical, it is one body that is treated, why should there be so much weirdness happening? I don’t know. I just know that it does. We are, clinically tested, highly resistant to benzos and fully immune to hypnotics, but our intense insomnia is successfully treated with the smallest dose of the least potent antipsychotic. DID is not always logical. Stay curious.]
Medication can support you in managing some symptoms. It is not a solution or healing. It is only an addition to therapy, until you can do without.
Help for the initial interview with a new therapist
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