How to Live With Schizophrenia

When I decided to research schizophrenia again several years ago, this book came up and I borrowed it from the library and read it. This was the best book I had ever read on schizophrenia, and I had read narratives and doctor perspectives, up to 100 books and articles 20 years ago after I had first been diagnosed. In those days, I had picked up a book on orthomolecular medicine, but other more discouraging reports stated people could overdose and die from too many vitamins. (Dr. Saul is another reviewer on this book and I seem to recall on his website called doctor yourself that there have been under 10 alleged deaths from vitamins in 10 years while over 100,000 die annually from correctly taken prescription drugs, not counting all the shootings - and the press does not report that the shooter was [always or just quit] taking anti depressants.) Since there was no orthomolecular practioner in my area, I didn't go that route, and recovered through other means ... quit substance abuse, and daily went to church and prayed the rosary for over 20 years and the doctors slowly reduced my meds until they took me off them completely.Then I read this book ... one of the aspects of the book I really like is how Dr. Hoffer describes the types of perceptual distortions that sufferers typically experience. Many of these perceptual difficulties were explained biochemically, an area in which Hoffer had experience. He explained how he developed the urine test that would show a particular type of schizophrenia, and if this test were positive, he would give his patient the niacin and the patient would become normal.He would often give case histories. One interesting case was a woman who desired to stay sober, but when she quit drinking she would hear voices. In order to not hear voices (a sensory misperception real to her,) she would drink again. Hoffer suggested she try 1000mg of Niacin and Vitamin C 3 times daily with a mix of other B vitamins and some minerals, and she successfully quit abusing alcohol.In another area of the book, Hoffer offers more on how he was able to help alcoholics and especially the symptoms of withdrawal from alcolhol and drugs. Hoffer also shows how modern processed food doesn't give us the proper nutrients we need to function properly and suggests to his clients in the book ways to eat a better diet in order to improve thinking.So Hoffer was able to see that people on junk food diets or drug/alcohol addicts who didn't eat properly for nutritional needs would fail mentally because of lack of the nutrients in the brain to function optimally. Orthomolecular medicine is just giving the body the optimal nutrients that a body part needs to function appropriately.Also look up Dr Carl Pfeiffer who worked in New Jersey; he wrote some books.So I borrowed How to Live With Schizophrenia from the library, read it, loved it, decided to buy it, and then found it on my shelf already!

Now seen as "dated" by pharmacological specialists, Hoffer and Osmund, in company with their peer and friend, Linus Pauling, were early leaders in the field of using cheap, available methods to intervene in haywire biology, effectively. Because "there's no money in it" this important research has been downplayed by researchers intent upon developing patent-able products for the industy. Too bad for us! Too bad for those without health insurance to cover hospitalization and expensive (and extensive) drug therapy! A good place to start, in finding where we've been lead into a trap of dependency upon medical professionals and today's bewildering array of chemical formulations.

For fifty years, still the best common-sense book on schizophrenia.

Let me have confidence to deal with schizophrenic and know that there is hope to get this illness well. Fantastic!

great info!

I feel I should offer a rebuttal to szwebmaster The report referenced by szwebmaster is the 1973 APA psychological report, a report full of errors, misleading statements and poor arguments. Hoffer has claimed that Niacin & vitamin C works best on acute schizophrenics, the 1973 report used niacin alone on chronic schizophrenics. It sounds like a minor issue, but the biology of schizophrenia and its treatment varies for the two. Hoffer wrote a well thought out retort to the 1973 report entitled `Megavitamin Therapy in reply to The American Psychiatric Association Task Force Report on Megavitamin and Orthomolecular Therapy in Psychiatry.' In it he details all of the misleading statements of the APA report, and I urge everyone here to actually read the 1973 report and its rebuttal. In fact, after reading this retort JR Wittenborn, one of the six authors of the APA report conducted a test of niacin using Hoffer's parameters (acute schizophrenics) and found positive results (A Search for Responders to Niacin Supplementation). Naturally none of the skeptics reference that study. Hoffer claims his theories have helped over 100,000 patients with niacin. Should we discourage all of them to throw their treatments in the trash? PS the methodological flaws referenced by the APA report are mainly a lack of double blinds, which is not only false (hoffer conducted double blinds) but which Hoffer had trouble with due to the Niacin flush.There was a drug for schizophrenia first discovered over 50 years ago, but because it was a medication unrelated to mental illness nobody wanted to use it. Doctors laughed at other doctors who prescribed it and many in the medical community wrote off how effective it was. However for the doctors willing to shrug off the criticism of the skeptics and who tried it noticed massive improvements. This drug was just an antihistamine, how could it treat schizophrenia? That drug was called thorazine (thorazine was originally an antihistamine), and it started the revolution that led to antipsychotic medications which has helped millions of people. Where would we be if we had just written off thorazine because it was `just an antihistamine'? Why is this better than writing off niacin for being `just a vitamin'? Would we be better off today as a community of medical patients if we had let the skeptics win on that battle? Would we have geodon, abilify or risperdal today if we hadn't fought back against the medical dogmatists fifty years ago?All I know is my feelings of unreality, my magical thinking and my paranoia are not present now that I am on niacin therapy. No error laden, misleading study written 34 years ago is going to make me feel like I'm not better or take away the fact that I can function better. Schizophrenia is a horrible disease, and it is too important for us to stop looking for every treatment we can find. Instead of believing me or szwebmaster actually ask a schizophrenic on niacin therapy what their experience is/was.