Anyone here take Verapamil?

[DoctorJimmyRay]

And if you do, did your dreams begin getting weird after starting to take it?

I started having the strangest dreams after beginning an extended verapamil prescription. For example, I dreamt that, during one of the many occasions I got murdered in my sleep, something saw me in the void beyond and attached itself to my soul. Now, every single time I dream of my reflection in a mirror, I see something looking back at me behind my eyes that isn't me. It's happened enough to where I actively avoid my own image in the mirror every time I get up to use the bathroom at night. I'm terrified I'll see something that isn't me behind my eyes looking back at me in the waking world.

Anyone else take Verapamil?

 

[WolfeTone]

That's a medication to treat a condition that isn't able to be treated outside of scrubbing the cholesterol from your arteries. It's pretty easy to do that, you just have to stop eating meat more than once a month and eat lots of oatmeal and beans. I know nothing about most of these 'angina treatments' outside for the fact that angina is a spook. It's called your heart is unhealthy from eating meat, and there isn't a pill you can take that will do anything to stop the consequences of an unhealthy lifestyle.

If you have some sort of genetic heart condition, I feel ya but the same principal applies, angina is caused by high levels of low density cholesterol which builds up as slime in our arteries. There's a multi-million dollar racket run on heart alleviation that has little to nothing to do with actually preventing and treating the illness that's cause by the typical "standard American diet" post-80s.

 

[Autopsy]

Verapamil hallucinations and nightmares are rare, but they do happen in some patients. As with most unclear mechanism side effects, If it happens to you once, it is likely to happen again, but if it doesn't, then you're likely to never see it. For many, taking a CCB (and reducing hypertension in general) seems to reduce nightmares/strange dreams.
It's not too much to be worried about, but you should chart these dreams and see if they happen more often

1. in times of high anxiety,
2. or when taking dopaminergic agents.

The prior can be managed and is a sign to pay more attention to your health, while in the latter case, it may be cause to see the doctor and request a same-category medication swap.

That's a medication to treat a condition that isn't able to be treated outside of scrubbing the cholesterol from your arteries. [...]
If you have some sort of genetic heart condition, I feel ya but the same principal applies, angina is caused by high levels of low density cholesterol which builds up as slime in our arteries. There's a multi-million dollar racket run on heart alleviation that has little to nothing to do with actually preventing and treating the illness that's cause by the typical "standard American diet" post-80s.

Verapamil is not directly linked to cholesterol, you may be thinking of statins in this case. Hypertension is a dangerous disease state and you should not remain hypertensive for extended periods of time, even pending lifestyle modification.
However, the guidelines only recommend pharmacotherapy after lifestyle modification has failed, or in cases where the patient has already climbed to dangerous levels of hypertensive stress. Verapamil is prescribed for a reason. It's also a CCB, not a beta blocker, so not always even first-line therapy.
If a patient is already over the hill, "improving their diet" will not help. If they are not but have refused to diet already, well, that's hardly a "racket run."

 

[WolfeTone]

Verapamil hallucinations and nightmares are rare, but they do happen in some patients. As with most unclear mechanism side effects, If it happens to you once, it is likely to happen again, but if it doesn't, then you're likely to never see it. For many, taking a CCB (and reducing hypertension in general) seems to reduce nightmares/strange dreams.
It's not too much to be worried about, but you should chart these dreams and see if they happen more often

1. in times of high anxiety,
2. or when taking dopaminergic agents.

The prior can be managed and is a sign to pay more attention to your health, while in the latter case, it may be cause to see the doctor and request a same-category medication swap.


Verapamil is not directly linked to cholesterol, you may be thinking of statins in this case. Hypertension is a dangerous disease state and you should not remain hypertensive for extended periods of time, even pending lifestyle modification.
However, the guidelines only recommend pharmacotherapy after lifestyle modification has failed, or in cases where the patient has already climbed to dangerous levels of hypertensive stress. Verapamil is prescribed for a reason. It's also a CCB, not a beta blocker, so not always even first-line therapy.
If a patient is already over the hill, "improving their diet" will not help. If they are not but have refused to diet already, well, that's hardly a "racket run."

Thassa good professional opinion friend, I'm just going off the nutrition-based preventative medicine I've studied the last 5 years.

 

[Autopsy]

Thassa good professional opinion friend, I'm just going off the nutrition-based preventative medicine I've studied the last 5 years.

"Preventative" is the operative word. Please do warn people off of going straight to meds when they're pre-hypertensive & fat, that's good work to do, though more risky if they're diabetic (amputations due to maltreatment are common). When the patient already has vascular scarring, atherosclerosis, and a failing heart, though, even pharmacotherapy barely works to control or reverse it. That's why the main treatment option is dilating the shit out of your vessels so the blood can chug around the cholesterol lumps.

 

[WolfeTone]

I'm sure the last thing anyone in that position would want is some yuppie telling them what to do, but preventative medicine is the only medicine for long term problems, as uninterred it is in our modern, AMA-piloted medical system.