About 10 months ago when Granny was still living at home, some doctor decided to put her on Aricept. It took a few weeks to realize, but Granny started regularly hallucinating. She saw "monsters that moved things around in the night" and "workmen working on the powerlines, all hours of the night" she saw a "woman laying on the livingroom floor all day long" (that last one she said was there when she was telling us, in a "Don't you see her too?" kind of way). It was sad and scary. But then I realized that she went from no hallucinations to being on Aricept and having constant hallucinations. So, the family decided to have her weened off of it. The hallucinations stopped.

Around Halloween on a visit to Granny in the nursing home, she said that she had been having vivid nightmares that someone was going to come in the nursing home and "cut all the old people's heads off". I told her that would have to be an extremely mean person to do that to all of the Granny's and Grandpa's in a nursing home. Then she decided that the cooks were feeding dead people to the residents (the food is pretty gross, but its not soylent green, if ya know what I mean). Last week Granny tried to convince the health care workers that there were snakes in her room. And of course they didn't see them. Then I remembered Aricept. I mentioned it to my Mom last night and she called this morning.

Yep. They put her back on Aricept in October. Usually they call my Mom to let her know any med changes, but because Granny had been on Aricept before, they just slapped her back on it (They also wanted to put her on Buspar last week "to settle her down" and called about that to inform us).

Probably the reason they keep putting her on these drugs, is Granny is pretty high maintenance. The nurse she liked quit and went to another nursing home to work. So rather than builing a relationship with Granny they just put her on anything that will make her behave. Anyway, she will be off the Aricept as soon as they can dose her down on it.

My opinion is...it is torture to put people on drugs that make them have nightmares and hallucinations, just to be able to control them. Also, sadly, Aricept has not been proven to be such a successful drug anyway. It has a great ad campagin, but its just an ad campagin. It may work for other people, but not for my Granny.