I follow the blog of Penelope Trunk. I was inspired to comment on her office politics article Don’t Skip Pills—Even If It Seems Interesting. (Link)
Sean: I don’t know much about medication, but I do know that if someone is living with schizophrenia, controlled by medication, and if that person goes off their medication, then no matter how much you believe in freedom, and letting people learn from their own bad choices… you truly have to intervene, perhaps by getting them to see a physician.
Why? Because of the consequences. Because when they get back on pills they may be a at a lower level of functioning than they were before going off meds. A college graduate who went off (I don’t know how many times) ended up at a welfare level of functioning: will never hold a job again.
Penelope: Great public service announcement, Sean. Thank you.
I have a feeling the cycle you mention is true of other meds as well, but it’s not as extreme so we don’t acknowledge the damage. I think the damage is long term.
Celestial: I learned the consequences of discontinuing medication while on my doctoral internship in clinical psychology. We had a fantastic psychiatrist who was much loved and requested.
He ended up on medical leave for months after he stopped taking his own anti-depressant. I learned that if you stop and start a medication too many times it can take infinitely longer each time to regain good functioning. I’ve been faithful to my own meds for 25 years now after seeing what might happen.
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Sean Crawford
Calgary
April
2025
Blog note: I was going to link to Penelope’s article, but then—I guess because I had her URL written down—her article appeared in a box. So instead of me linking, I guess you can just click in the box.
As for copy and paste: I’ve learned to translate: for the Macintosh, when you have a choice of “paste” OR “paste and match,” the “match” does not mean match the font and so forth of your manuscript that you are putting the copy into. No, it means match the font of the article you got it from.
When I hit “match” for a link I probably have a lesser chance of getting a box… but I still don’t understand the Mac.
