- Learn Psychiatric drugs & healthcare
- Prepare Readiness for drug tapering
- Taper Practical how-to information
- Heal Withdrawal survival
- More Placeholder text
- What's known about drug risks
- A primer on psychiatric drug dependence, tolerance and withdrawal
- Psychiatric drug taper rates: a review and discussion
- Introduction: the vital role of good preparation
- Step 1 – How do I feel about the idea of coming off psychiatric drugs?
- Step 2 – Learn about psychiatric drug dependence, tolerance and withdrawal
- Step 3 – What is my withdrawal beacon?
- Step 4 – Managing day-to-day responsibilities and tasks
- Step 5 – Building a support system
- Step 6 – Communicating with prescribers
- Step 7 – Listening to the body and its messages
- Step 8 – Being with pain and darkness
- Step 9 – Is the time right for me to taper?
- Step 10 – Get informed about your psychiatric drug
- Step 11 – Ensuring that a drug is relatively ‘taper-friendly’
- Step 12 – Interactions, reactions and sensitivities
- Step 13 – Taper rates
- Step 14 – Taper schedules
- Step 15 – Taper methods
- Step 16 – Preparatory decisions
- Step 17 – Gather the gear
- Step 18 – Essential skills
- Step 19 – Setting up a taper journal
- Step 20 – Implementing a taper
- Help Hub – Support articles
- Family and Friends – Support your loved ones
- Practitioners – Prescribers, coaches, doctors, etc.
- How "Mental Disorders" are Diagnosed
- An Overview of Psychiatry's Diagnostic Manual (the DSM)
- Unlearn "Mental Disorders"
- "ADHD" Stimulants
- "Anti-anxiety" Benzodiazepines
- "Antidepressants"
- "Antispychotics"
- "Mood Stabilizers" and Lithium
- "Sleep Aids" Z-Drugs
- How Outcomes are Measured in Psychiatric Research
- How Psychiatric Drugs are Researched and Marketed
- Exploring Alternatives
- Exercise: Exploring feelings and beliefs about psychiatric medications
- Reflections: To withdraw or not to withdraw
- Exploratory exercise: What does “support” mean to me?
- Optional exercise: Create an inventory of your needs and possible supports
- Reflections: Anchoring in a sense of safety and security for the taper road ahead
- Reflective prompts
- Tips and troubleshooting around a difficult relationship with a prescriber
- Reflections: To ask or not to ask your doctor?
- Exercise: How much do I let my body guide me?
- Readings: Physical health during withdrawal
- Reflections: Coming off psychiatric drugs is about journeying back to our own bodies
- Exercise: How do I manage deep and difficult challenges in my life?
- Optional exercise: Create an inventory of your strategies
- Reflections: Journeying back to being with ourselves
- Gather the key documents
- Reflections: Getting empowered through self-education
- ICI's guide to the FDA-approved drug label
- ICI's key to withdrawal-related information in the FDA-approved drug label
- Readings: Getting a handle on slow psychiatric drug tapering and finding the right rate for you
- Reflections: Making your chosen rate as safe as possible
- The options: A daily microtaper or cut-and-hold schedule
- Discussion: Comparing the pros and cons of daily microtapering and cut-and-hold schedules
- Reflections: Make a decision – or hold off for now
- Making a liquid mixture
- Using a digital scale
- Counting beads in a beaded capsule
- Using a compounding pharmacy
- Using a manufacturer’s oral liquid
- Reflections: Which psychiatric drug taper method is best for you?
- Making a liquid mixture using immediate-release tablets or capsules
- Using a digital scale to weigh powder from a crushed immediate-release tablet or poured-out powder or beads from a capsule
- Counting beads from a beaded capsule
- Using a compounding pharmacy to obtain capsules and/or liquid
- Using a manufacturer’s oral liquid
- Adapter caps
- Bead-counting surface
- Counting implement
- Digital scale
- Empty capsules
- Graduated cylinders and pipettes
- Jars
- Labels and pen/marker
- Measuring bowl or tray
- Mortar and pestle
- Pharmaceutical-grade powder filler
- Pill bottles
- Pill organizer
- Refrigerator and/or cooler bag
- Slip tip syringes
- Transferring implements
- Counting and making cuts with beads
- Diluting powder when using a digital scale
- Understanding the limits of a digital scale's accuracy
- Using an adapter cap
- Using a digital scale for weighing and making cuts
- Using a mortar and pestle for pulverizing tablets
- Using syringes
- Doing calculations for a taper
- Special tips for calculations and liquids
- Section 1 – Tracking calculations and amounts
- Section 2 – Listening to your body and tracking symptoms and experiences
- Review
- Sample implementation: Making and cutting a liquid mixture
- Sample implementation: Using a digital scale to weigh and cut powder or beads
- Sample implementation: Counting and cutting beads
- Sample implementation: Using a compounding pharmacy
- Sample implementation: Making cuts from a manufacturer’s oral liquid
Looking for something specific?
Visual de-stimulation
Give your eyes a break
If you're in the process of coming off psychiatric drugs, maybe you’ve noticed that the bright sun streaming through your window, once a welcome sight, now makes you anxious or irritated and feels almost painful. Or maybe you can’t tolerate staring at your computer screen for long in the way that you used to. Perhaps looking at fast-moving cars on the highway now makes you feel dizzy or nauseated, forcing you to turn away. Being overly sensitive to visual stimulation is not unusual during psychiatric medication withdrawal—nor is experiencing other types of temporary vision problems, such as having a hard time focusing your eyes or following moving images on TV.
Many people with visual sensitivities address them by aiming whenever possible to simply give their eyes a rest. For example, if you’re especially sensitive to bright light, you might try wearing a good pair of sunglasses much of the time, even indoors if needed. Room-darkening shades help a lot with keeping morning light at bay, as can the less-expensive option of wearing a sleep mask to bed.
If you react badly to flickering florescent lights, one possibility is to try replacing them with a lamp that uses a warm-colored LED or incandescent bulb. Should the glare from your electronics bother you, screen filters are an option. For the blue light that emanates from your phone or computer, you can search for an app or program that gradually turns the screen-light amber in sync with the time of day, making it warmer closer to bedtime, in keeping with natural circadian rhythms. There are glasses with lenses designed to help screen out blue light, too.
If you’re drawn to reading but find that your visual problems make it difficult, consider switching to audiobooks for a while—some people in withdrawal find it less taxing. Consciously blinking and closing your eyes periodically throughout the day can be a good general practice, too. In general, anecdotal reports suggest that making several small changes may be the most effective strategy when it comes to easing symptoms of visual overstimulation.