I aim to be a rational voice on emotional topics.

I'm going to create a three-part "carnival" of SharePosts about schizophrenia medication. The first news article will be a general overview. Part two will talk about the reasons people have for not taking medication and how to find a good psychiatrist to get the right treatment. Part three will detail the risks of partial compliance as well as the perils of going cold.

The best minds of my generation have been destroyed by drug holidays.

I'm reminded of the song "Her Diamonds" by Rob Thomas with the lyrics about how the boyfriend is unable to console his girlfriend when life gets too much for her to bear. Her tears are her diamonds.

Would you want to be at the mercy of your psychotic feelings if you didn't have to? Would you want to be bawled up on the couch nearly every day? That song reminds me of this.

You can cry when you need to yet you also need to itemize your wins. If you don't take your meds, you don't get to have wins. These are your accomplishments: I call them wins.

Scratch the surface of those lives where people tout living drug-free and you'll see that the reality makes "Her Diamonds" sound like a birthday party.

Do you love another person more than life itself? I do. Does this person keep stopping his or her medication, and keep being sucked into a vortex of hell? The person I love does. When someone you love is walking this earth in pain when they don't have to be in pain: wouldn't you agree with me?

The rational thinking is that if he took his meds, he'd have a better life. When a person discontinues the drug and relapses, it's hard for the psychiatrist to determine if the drug was originally working effectively.

Just starting out, the longer a person waits to get treatment, the less likely any drug will work fully effectively once he's put on it. (Harvard Mental Health Letter, November 2008)

In cases where drugs allegedly don't work, the prime culprit is that the person isn't compliant, or skips doses or stops taking the meds. An esteemed psychiatrist told me that the root cause of the majority of the cases where the medication doesn't work is partial compliance.

This twin culprit along with the delay in getting treatment is a recipe for disaster.

A friend was put on Thorazine back in the early days when it was the only drug available. It didn't halt his voices, so his doctor tried every new drug that came to the market until 10 years later the newest drug stopped his symptoms completely. It was like a light switch went off: the positive result was sudden and immediate and reversed the 10 years of hell.

In those 10 years, my friend's doctor gave him cognitive behavioral therapy that instilled effective coping techniques so that he could live with the voices while they tried every new medication that came along.

My friend claims the fact that he stayed on the medication for 10 years, even if it had limited effectiveness, prevented any further deterioration in his brain functioning. He rose up to become the CEO of corporations.