I’m just curious. Which are the benefits? Do we get much less zombie like? What else?
Generally speaking, it ends in death, sooner or later. That’s just generally speaking though.
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The benefits? A few hours, days, maybe a few weeks of feeling human. I’ve been skipping meds, I know I shouldn’t, I just hate them, because of the zombie effect… I’m becoming horribly irritable with sudden extreme mood changes, my mind is in over-drive, a barrage of unpleasant and distressing thoughts, I’m hallucinating. I’m shouting random nonsense, bits of things I’ve heard on tv or things people have said and laughing at things I really shouldn’t laugh at. I’m scared to make eye contact because I don’t want anyone to see the poison inside me. In between these horrible and scary times I’m just fine, but fine is becoming lesser and not fine is becoming more. I am afraid of myself, what I am capable of. I still have insight, I know things are sliding, and I know it’s because I’m not taking my meds. And I still don’t take them because I hate being a zombie. I quit my meds for those few hours or days, maybe even a few weeks of feeling normal. Then that inevitable downhill slide… Pros and cons, but no balance.
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what happens when we stop our meds?
we usually end up back in the psych ward
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I think it depends.
I recently came off a load of anxiety meds and am ok now. But I did it over the course of 4 months and it was quite difficult at points.
Haven’t tried coming off APs but going cold turkey off them is likely a bad idea.
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All meds are different.
You could take the DNA test to see which would work best for you. Like abilify?
People also become tolerant to meds over time and I’m doing well on zyprexa, which says a lot.
My cpn used to tell me how most hospital admissions are because people aren’t taking their meds as prescribed. They often put people like that on injections💉.
If they do try and get on the newer ones if your insurance / health service will pay for it.
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I didn’t know you could take a test like that, I’d never heard of that before. I will ask about that at my next appt.
@NiceHat posted some good information about DNA testing a while back.
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I start to feel more human. Then I start to feel super-human. Everyone is my friend. The universe is at one. I sleep less and less. I enter the realm of gods and demons. The police come to get me. I end up on the psych ward if I’m lucky.
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Thanks for that 
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I can’t answer a “we” question, but I can tell you what happens to me when I stop taking an anti-psychotic. I was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia in 1981 (age 17), so I have 35 years of “data” to draw from. I have been an inpatient at psychiatric hospitals 17 times, stays from 10 days to 151 days, and each and every time was preceded by me stopping my anti-psychotic without consulting my psychiatrist. Almost all of those times my motivation was that the anti-psychotic made me feel like a “zombie” (too sedated), and was robbing me of my “extraordinary creativity.”
For me, stopping my anti-psychotic turns the world into hell on earth. It has led me to have an intimate relationship with restraint chairs and padded rooms. It’s not fun. Perhaps my greatest accomplishment in life is staying on my anti-psychotic over the past 5 years and not needing the services of a psychiatric hospital.
That’s what happens when I stop taking my anti-psychotic. Results may vary.
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U get libido back. Idk wut else cuz its been so long
Dr can prescribe medication for that.
When i stop, I feel great, get the desire to live life to the fullest. Start jogging again because the AP’s aren’t messing with my joints.
Then in about a month someone at work begins to somehow threaten me. The FBI starts learking around. My wife sees me spiraling out of reality and gets very fragile. Life starts to fall apart and I end up in the ER. My job , marriage, family and friends are all on the line. So no thanks, I’ll take my Ap’s.
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Thanks for the answers.
It seems that APs make us less humans and, when we stop taking them, we feel good things in the beginning, but, in the long term, things go bad.
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I’ve gone cold turkey off several kinds of meds. Abilify was the worst, sent me into a severe depressive episode where I self-harmed and had to go into a hospitalization program. Going off trazodone and Ativan gave me intense insomnia for 1 or 2 weeks because I had been using them as sleep aids and it was like my brain forgot how to sleep without them for a while. Going off Risperdal, Latuda and Zoloft had no serious effects for me, and actually improved how I was doing because all the dangerous/bad side effects I was having stopped. (I wasn’t on Risperdal and Latuda for that long though and I was on a fairly low dose of both compared to abilify. Zoloft however I had been on for nearly a year at a higher dose so I was surprised I had no bad effects from stopping that one. Maybe it wasn’t really doing much to begin with)
I am beginning to think that meds did me more harm than good. They did help pull me out of a bad depressive episode initially (maybe…or maybe I just came out of it naturally who knows) but other than that it was mostly just a long time dealing with crap side effects and now I’m 20 lbs heavier. As long as I can avoid killing myself during bad depressive episodes I think I can make it without them.
That is my PERSONAL experience I WOULD NOT recommend dropping meds cold turkey, especially if you have been on a high dose for a long time. I’m just impulsive and I’m lucky things didn’t end up worse for me.
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It will catch up to you.
I can’t go a day without my daily pill of Seroquel. If I do (say, I run out and am waiting for my refill in the mail), I experience withdrawal. I will experience stomach pains. If I go consecutive days, I feel nausea and may need to vomit. I remember one time I went consecutive days without Seroquel and once vomited my food so hard that it was coming out of my mouth and nose at the same time.
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