+2
A couple years ago a close friend of mine had his first psychotic breakdown while we were hanging out. A few months after that he was institutionalized in Madrid while he was doing the programing for a large digital art installation, resulting in a long series of consultations with doctors, diagnoses and medications (including lithium and I believe rispordal). He spent several months fairly depressed due to being heavily medicated to the point of being "zombified", and not able to function creatively or focus on abstract ideas for long periods. It happened again last summer and he was institutionalized twice more (the second time voluntary) while his doctor tried to fix the proper meds and dosages to keep his bipolar swings from going too far in either direction (as you put it "they felt it was so critical that they needed to shut [his] system down in order for [him] to be somewhat functional.")
The trade-off is similar to what you described in that it stops or dampens his hallucinations and psychotic thoughts and schemes (thinking he can control space in time, read people's minds, or that it's a good idea to try and befriend/manipulate the drug dealers down the street who mugged him, and so on...), but makes it hard for him to think clearly or creatively for any length of time. He has told me that he thinks he's going to have to eventually have more psychotic episodes in the future, and that as unpleasant as some of the meds are, it's better to have to partially shut down his mind for the slow months of recovery that each breakdown seems to presage, than to go completely over the edge into his fantasies. It's also important that each time he also has his wife and family to mediate with the doctor for him when the medication is slowing down his mind too much as well. I will also say that both of his breakdowns so far have been relatively temporary - a matter of at most a couple months.
Having been with him when he's at his most manic as well as in the medication-induced depressions, I would say that the important difference is that when not on the meds he really thinks he can do anything and is potentially a threat to himself and others, while being medicated his judgment basically is improved to the extent that he knows it's dangerous to act on his impulses. A good example is, when I visited him at the Columbia University Hospital psychiatric ward last summer he told me he really didn't trust his wife because she seemed disinterested or resentful of him, when in fact (as he later realized) she was just trying to hold her ***** together while spending days and sleepless nights filling out paper work, asking questions and relaying his problems and successes on different medications to his doctor. I would say the big benefit of being "shut down" is that it made him slow down and wait before indulging the paranoia about his wife or megalomaniacal faith in his abilities abilitie,s and taking some drastic step that could have made it far harder to recover.
Last edited by linespalsy; 10-24-11 at 09:02 PM.
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like Nebbit instead of getting angry over the fact that I think Will did it more instead of me. Although, to be honest, I thought of making light of it even more, but I restrained myself. 
It's brave of you to admit all of this here. I dunno if I could. 
Okay, I'm probably being too silly with the smilies.
