Psychotropic medications have their positive and negative aspects; nevertheless, I believe that each generation of psychotropic meds improves.

In the seventies, Ruby took Melarill and to this day, I am not sure how much it helped her. She still remained in bed all day laughing, crying and chain smoking. Maybe it left her without energy as she did not roam the streets like the other mentally ill folks in the neighborhood. She was our embarrassment kept behind closed doors. Over time, the medications she was prescribed changed but each one of course has its side effects that can affect the individual physically and/or mentally.

Prescribing psychotropics can be a tricky business as it affects individuals differently especially if you are prescribed more than one medication. Sometimes the mix is beneficial-i.e. decreases their symptoms and allows the consumer (patient) to function “better” even to the point of being able to fully participate in life. Other times, the consumer can have a bad reaction to the medication and/or the combination of medications prescribed. Sometimes, the consumer can end up in emergency and even to a psychiatric ward if the reaction is bad enough. This is why many consumers do not like to take their medications.

The other half of that is that sometimes the medications work so well that the consumer misleads themselves into believing that they do not need to take the medication anymore and stop. This of course can result in the consumer being hospitalized and is one of the main reasons behind repeated admittance into the psych ward. Then, there are those who self-medicate via alcohol abuse and illegal street drugs to alleviate their symptoms.

With Ruby, she was very, very thorough in taking her medications from the seventies until about the mid- 1990s. In fact, she kept a daily calendar book and would record the medications and times that she took them which is how it was easier to figure out when she stopped taking her meds. Later, I found out why.

My eldest brother had gotten addicted to crack cocaine. It was one of the worst blights to hit the African American community since the times of lynching and Jim Crow laws. It decimated families in a way that nothing had ever done before. Ruby had decided that her daily meds were an addiction akin to taking crack and stopped. That was the first time that she had been hospitalized during my adult years. The psychiatrist finally convinced my mother that her medications are an essential part of her well-being and like the diabetic who needs insulin, she needed her psychotropic meds. By this time, she was on Thorazine which left its own physiological side effects but that is another post.