Nobody would prescribe 11 different drugs in the same class. But some people are on an SSRI, an antipsychotic, a mood stabiliser, an anoxyltic, etc. 11 at once is almost surely an exaggeration, but 4 at once is not unheard of (generally considered to be outside of best practice except in exceptional situations, but often not so severely outside best practice that the prescriber will be disciplined.)
I mean, it’s a news article, so I take the “facts” they lay out with a pinch of salt. From experience, finding a working drug is hard, sometimes impossible. Sure, if she was on 11 at once, that would probably be extreme, but even then I’d rather trust her doctors than my own lay opinion.
As someone with experience with antidepressants, if my doc had me on 11, I’d be talking to new doctors.
You could be right and this is an exaggeration, but it’s a quote directly attributed to her, and it’s the only info we have. Otherwise we might as well not discuss any of this.
I don’t think any of us have enough good info about this situation to form solid opinions, but I do think the circumstances sound like they need more scrutiny.
I hope it's was just some hyperbole from a mentally distressed woman. 11 antidepressants would cause stuff like serotonin syndrome. It would make you sick for sure, I don't know what else it would do.
I knew someone on psych meds through her teens and twenties. She started hallucinating, and I told her it was probably the shitload of drugs her shrinks were giving her. She had so many pills to take, it was like she might run out of room for food. Her school nickname was Pillbottle.
She started using THC (hadn't used it even recreationally before then), and weaned off using her meds. Not only the hallucinations stopped... so did a LOT of her other symptoms. She became way more normal than I ever knew her as being, and got in a few years of full time employment doing public speaking to some surprisingly high level audiences.
The more meds she was taking, the worse her mental health got. One pill made her keep sticking her tongue out. Another pill countered that reaction. And so on. So, eleven different meds is entirely possibly what the person in the article meant.
Not surprisingly, cutting off the handfuls of pills brought my friend back to Earth, and now she's using more human (non-chemical) therapy-related efforts to help her mental health.
She would have eventually killed herself if the drugs didn't eventually poison her first. Now she's pretty much down to suffering age-related aches and pains instead, doing native Powwows, and fending for her demanding and shockingly obese orange cat. She still has the borderline personality, but living a much better life.
In her words "less crazee!" without all the pills.
