Of Meat, Men, and Medications

[CamSchwarz9182]

Hi, I'm Cam.

I'm 30 years-old. I've been on the path to quitting all my psychiatric medications, and started a diet in order to help with it. Namely, the Carnivore diet, an extreme form of Elimination diet and also a type of Ketogenic diet. My track record so far looks good, I'm happy to say:

• Dexamphetamine (Adderall)—currently tapering 
• Quetiapine (Seroquel): Quit about 6 months ago  this is when I started using diet to help.
• Escitalopram (Zoloft): Quit about 1.5 years ago

The latest semester at University just finished. All my major assessments are submitted and exams are done. I did what I did every exam period, which was to take excess amounts of the Dex while doing this Uni work, all the while feeling guilty about it, and then crash like coal train afterwards in a pit of deep depression where I currently stay. Most days I was taking around 6 to 7x5mg tablets per day.

For the past few days I have been taking just 2–2.5 per day, and plan to gradually reduce this until my current bottle runs out and which I do not refill the prescription for. I recognise that from a certain perspective this idea of not refilling my next script is a tall order to put on my future self. I am decimated right now in both body and soul. I am therefore writing this as a sort of testimony to describe why I have faith in myself and my future progress. I will discuss my diet and how I see that that has been helping me, then will describe the motivations that got me to question my prescriptions in the first place—the observable pathologisation of healthy male behaviour.

Meat Diet
As mentioned, I am on a fairly strict Carnivore diet. Even by Carnivore diet standards I am relatively strict. I only eat meat (muscle meat or organ meat) from ruminant animals (e.g., lamb, beef), and occasionally egg yolks. I got the idea from Jordan and Mikhaila Peterson, who went on this type of diet and were not only able to relieve themselves of various autoimmune related health issues, but also of their mental health issues. This allowed them to come off their prescriptions of psychiatric medications.

I have no way of proving that this diet is what helped me get off the Quetiapine. All I can say is that it seems very much to have helped. I say this mostly on the basis of contrast against the suffering I'd tend to experience when I strayed from the diet. Every time I had something like egg whites, cheese, Monkfruit sweetener, lemon and chicken stuffing, I would feel not just bloated, but also depressed. The hardest thing was giving up cheese. I still miss it very much. Other than that I can't attest to any mental benefits, only physical benefits. I lost a lot of fat and have more toned muscles, and I never get heartburn anymore which used to be a large problem for me. Although I am hoping for my mental capacities to show the improvements people tend to describe of ketogenic diets, I can only assume this won't be perceptible to myself until after I have finished my mission of getting off my psychiatric medications.

Pathologisation of Male Behaviour
My reasons for wanting to come off the Dex stem back to the reasons I was prescribed Quetiapine in the first place, back when I was 26. It was prescribed to me after I went to a psychiatric facility due to experiencing severe depression while living in a place called 'Stucco'. It's not an easy place to describe to people, and it's even less easy to explain why it caused the problems it did, but I'll do my best.

Stucco is a 'Safe Space' student accommodation that is run and managed by University students. After reading more recently about what are called "political cults" (See the Book by Dennis Tourish called "On the Edge: Political Cults Right and Left"), that is what I have been calling Stucco, as it seems to best fit the bill. The place is avowedly Marxist, follows a strict set of rules and doctrines and punishes people who do not follow them. I was not the only one driven crazy from living there. Apart from me, at least two others I know attempted suicide, one of whom ended up in the psych ward just like I did.

My issue was in coming head-to-head with the Feminist doctrine. Everything I did was scrutinised as 'typical male behaviour', and there was no way I could absolve myself of this sin no matter how avidly I had declared myself a Feminist. Even being a gay man was in and of itself no help anymore it seemed. I acted too 'masculine'. Everything I did was an affront to women and transgendered people, and there was nothing I could do to change it, that is, unless I started acting more femininely or went through a gender transition. All this was on top of the issues I was having keeping up with coursework at Uni, a problem made to seem 10 times worse by the fact that Feminist and Marxist theories were ingrained into the curriculum and in the conventions of speech one is expected to abide by.

Things started turning a corner for me after I began realising that my diagnosed conditions of ADHD and Aspergers' syndrome are, indeed, predominately present among men. Moreover, their symptoms are broadly characteristic of typical male behaviour (for this in relation to Autism, see: "The Essential Difference", by Simon Baron Cohen). Further still, men and boys were falling behind at all levels of education (see: "The War Against Boys", by Christina Hoff Sommers), often prescribed ADHD medication as a simple way of brushing this growing problem under the rug.

My question for the longest time remained: If society has decided I'm sick, does that make me sick?
My most recent answer: No. It is society that is sick.

Conclusion
I think I will be able to continue quitting dexamphetamine because (a) I have found a diet that seems to work for my health, and already seems to have helped me get off a different psychiatric medication which by most other standards seems far more difficult to give up, and (b) it was never true enough that I was ill in the first place to warrant going on the medication.

The sickness lies in society, not in me. Living the truth can only take me closer to the light, no matter how dark things seem right now.

[quit-once]

Hi Cam, and welcome to the forum! 

About a year after quitting adderall, I took up the Adkins diet, with strict monitoring of my carbohydrate consumption.  The health benefits included weight loss, better cognitive abilities, and elimination of heartburn (or GERD) symptoms.  I've never been able to return to a dedicated diet nearly free from carbs.

I'm glad you were able to get off Seroquel.  I took it for amusement one time and learned it was a very powerful drug that I didn't want anything more to do with.

I agree with you that society is sick.  Very sick.  And I am not optimistic that it can recover to wellness anytime soon.

I wish you the best of luck quitting adderall.  I assume you have explored our website and read some of the articles and other literature that may help with your journey of getting off this awful drug.  There are a lot of great resources here, in addition to the forums.

[DelaneyJuliette]

Cam, u can do this!  I am a psychotherapist myself and I don't believe in diagnosing people as sick.  I am very different from many of my colleagues.  I believe that you are the expert on you (as are all the people I see) and my job is to help decrease or reframe internal pain in a way that helps them live their lives in a way that feels more rich full and meaningful (while feeling all the human emotions) in alignment with their own personal values.  (And personal values can't be wrong!)  Too much to explain in a quick couple of sentences- all I am trying to say is that if what u have been taught or told u need to do be "be well" isn't working for you, I'm proud of you for having the courage to find out what will work for you!