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This bit my brother once, on a trip to visit our grandparents. Grandpa would eat a half grapefruit every morning, believing that the acidity would alkalize one's system in response and lead (along with frequent alternative chelation treatments) to better health. We didn't drink the chelation shakes, but we did eat the grapefruits, since they were there and prepared.

Over the two-week visit, my brother got harder and harder to be around - he'd always been surly, and he struggled with grandpa's wife, but we'd never experienced the level of emotional turmoil he went through on that trip. He self-harmed, sliced his arms up deeply. I stitched him up with the sewing kit that the resort had mercifully left in the room for us, and we kept the wounds dressed with neosporin until they healed.

The next stop on the trip was a visit to grandpa's wife's sister, a professor of neuroscience. She just happened to mention the interaction between antipsychotics and grapefruit, and it was like a light went on in my brother's mind. He stopped eating grapefruit and returned to his usual mental state within a few days.



Did none of the doctors prescribing the antipsychotics highlight and caution against eating grapefruit - hopefully to not consume alcohol either?


I can't speak to his interactions with any doctors. I imagine he forgot. This was before he was 21, so alcohol wasn't an issue yet.


One of the many pitfalls between doctor-patient relationship. Thank you. Hope he's continued to have relative stability.




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