Writing a long (very long) story, and I need to find some information on medications.
Without hypnosis (I won't use that), I need to find a medication for a story. The main character is being really put through the wringer, and while he has significant motivation to comply with the 'torture', there's suggestion that additional 'help' to ensure compliance / reduce defiance would be needed. It needs to:
antidepressant
mood stabilization
increase sense of compliance
reduce ability to be defiant or objectionable
It may be much more realistic if the tormentor is slipping in some medications (under pretenses). In short, is there a real medication or herbal supplement that will produce those effects (or most of them)? (ED, reduced libido, gynecomastia, galactorhea are favorable side effects.)
Comments
chloral hydrate, in low
chloral hydrate, in low dosages, reduces anxiety and induces sleep. It's the historical "Mickey Finn". Any anti-anxiety drug is likely to increase compliance. Also sodium pentothal (the original "truth serum").
Feel free to also just make something up. Estrogens themselves are pretty powerful drugs, as are androgens.
I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.
Look up antipsychotics Risperdal and Zyprexa.
Many nursing homes were found to be overdosing their residents with these drugs to keep them calm and compliant. There were instances of dementa in some of the residents, so sometimes it was warrented, but also these drugs were given just for convenience of the staff.
I had to fend off unwarrented doses of Risperdal they tried to give my mother in a nursing home. An aide was rough with her grooming and mom repeatedly asked the aide to stop because it was hurting her. Mom was 83 and in a wheelchair and the aide was about 30 and she wouldn't listen, so mom tried to scratch at the aide to get her to stop. The next thing the nursing home was telling my father and me mother was combative and needed medication to calm her down as well as move her to a locked ward. We told them no way, because she told us what happened and she wouldn't have done that without cause.
We started looking for another home and it took 6 months to find one. She lived another 2 years in that one before she passed away and everyone there thought she was a doll and she didn't have one issue. The strangest thing was that before mom passed the same aide from the previous nursing home started to work at this one. After a month or so the aide came to dad to apologize. She said she just didn't realize how terribly they treated the residents at the previous nursing home because that is how they were taught, and everyone had accepted that mindset.
Risperdal
After quite a bit of research I used risperdal in a story about a decade ago. I will be revising that story and posting it again in a few days.
Jill
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
I'm looking at Risperdal, but
I'm looking at Risperdal, but another line of thinking is as follows: One drug that's commonly used and has some of the desired effects (albeit short-term) is Ambien. While it can make one sleepy, it also has the desired effect of significantly calming and can have a slight amnesiac effect. If a) it's know the protagonist has a significant reaction of that type, b) the villain knows it, and c) he's unknowingly dosed just before major trauma events, which gets him past the event without objecting and into the 'WTF happened?' mode. Anti-depressants will of course be used - but there will be a couple of points where it gets a bit overwhelming to him.
Could that work?
Imagination is more important than knowledge
A. Einstein
!
Do not give anti-psychotics to a neuro-typical. Best case scenario you trigger a deep depression, as their brain starves on a lack of dopamine and serotonin. Worst case scenario you trigger a full blown psychotic episode.
What's worse, while ~50% of males on risperidone had elevated prolactin levels, only 15% had enlarged breasts, and 10% had ED. (That comes with a decrease in desire, so your femmed out man might not be able to get it up, but he doesn't care.) That's a really tiny window to try and hit when there's HRT that's guaranteed to do what you want.
For what it's worth, the worst side effect risperidone gave me was making me not enjoy video games anymore. Getting a case of limp-dick at an orgy was bad, but at least I got a story about it. Playing Minecraft with my niece and counting the seconds until I could log off was what inspired me to get off that med.
research
I Don't know which country you are in but there is book available in the UK that medical people use when dealing with meds and drug tells doctors everything they need to know including side effects etc. It has an online version, here's the link
https://www.bnf.org/products/bnf-online
Drugs too dangerous to share the name.
I got duped into taking Prescription Drugs that destroyed my personality while I was on them. They were experimental and present day doses of them are far lower. When I finally realized what they did to me, I was going to sue the Psychological folk that were responsible, however the statute of limitations had run out. In my opinion, even the Over The Counter psych drugs have very dangerous side effects. Anything written about the subject you are suggesting, is a terror story.
Peace
Gwen
I realize that there is
I realize that there is danger with medications, even when medically supervised. That's one reason I want solid data.
Based on information I'm gathering, I'm slowly formulating an approach to the story. While the villain is tormenting the protagonist, she is smart enough to not do anything that could cause any sort of formal inquiry; she and a cohort have too much at stake. That's why I'm still struggling to find the best way to tackle the problem in the least heavy-handed way possible.
I've covered the hormone issue, with the developments that causes, in another way - and again, in a way that's medically proper but a little devious.
Imagination is more important than knowledge
A. Einstein
Thorazine
Used to see that used on patients in the military hospital I once worked in security at. You could always tell which patients had taken it, as they shuffled around slowly with small steps, never taking their feet completely off the floor. A bomb could have went off beside one of them and they would not have noticed. We commonly called this the Thorazine waltz.
We the willing, led by the unsure. Have been doing so much with so little for so long,
We are now qualified to do anything with nothing.
~
Alright, so right in the bullet points you have conflicting information. Antidepressants are a different class than mood stabilizers, the function on the body in very different ways. "Mood stabilizers" are not technically a class. A mood stabilizer is just an anti-seizure medication, but you give it to bipolar patients. There are around 15-30 mood stabilizers depending on how you count them, but only two, lamictogrine and lithium (not actually an anti seizure med, and only given to bipolar patients) have properties that will lift you out of a depression.
No, you might get really lucky with a high dose of an antidepressant, hit someone right in their side effects and trigger some compliance. It's very unlikely. The most common side effects with antidepressants are weight gain and fatigue. The most likely outcome is you get a zombie who nods off in the middle of the torture.
I have never talked with someone about their antidepressant side effects and heard anything enjoyable. Certainly none of them used the term "compliant" or "dis-inhibited". Mostly they just wanted a nap.
That said, I have the perfect class and drug for you. Benzodiazapines are going to do what you want. Specifically an old USSR med called phenazepam. Or as it's known on the street "da joose".
Benzos have an effect similar to alcohol. They're very relaxing, very dis-inhibiting, and keep the patient inured to the situation around them. It's not compliance, so much as it is acceptance, but when you're gassed out on Valium the difference doesn't matter. Benzos are incredibly addictive, have extreme withdrawal effects, and should never be taken with alcohol.
Da joose took certain internet drug communities by storm about a decade back. (You can read some of that story on this twitter thread. It's hilarious, but pitch black humor.) It was not illegal to purchase in the US, all you needed to be able to do was read enough Russian to order it from a production facility. It didn't come in pills but in a powder that was incredibly potent at low doses. The people who took it would dose, black out, dose while blacked out, keep dosing, and come to with no idea what they had done in the past 72 hours.
But if your antagonist (or protagonist?) is controlling the dose, more lucid accounts I have read feature very normal people getting involved in out of control violent situations, and just feeling "whatever" about it. Depending on the patients temperament and what they've mixed da joose with, there's some history of violence. But again, controlled dosing is going to give you a patient who feels too good to care about whatever is happening to them.