This morning I woke up feeling irritable and anxious—everything felt heightened. I still have some aripiprazole left, and I realized that the right thing to do was to take it immediately—to try and stop this current state.
I’m calming myself down with ChatGPT and waiting for my doctor to respond—it seems that the long months without medication, or only on a low dose, have finally worn me down. I’m close to the edge of psychosis and I need to seriously reconsider everything and wait for my doctor’s guidance.
The point is… whatever this illness may be—antipsychotics have an effect on it. I sleep better, my thoughts come back to the present, I no longer want to kill myself…
How do I finally give myself the word—to be honest with my doctor, to take the medication, maybe even for life—to accept myself as a person whose brain simply needs constant support? How do I accept the fact that I need help, that I can’t joke around and stop my meds on my own or keep silent about the real, daily suspicion that I feel?
In my experience you have to go through it on your own to figure out if you need to be on meds permanently. I believe I do. Or at least until im old and grey. I have tried reducing meds slowly down to nothing. Didnt work for me.
And psychosis doesnt always pop up quickly, so you think you can handle it, when your reducing. Then suddenly your out of control and dont want meds at all because you think your fine.
Most people with sz need meds at the current time. But its also true that many, if not most, people have to figure this out through trial and error before they come to acceptance.
The worst part is that even the doctor herself isn’t entirely sure about my diagnosis… The medication really helps me throughout the day — within a couple of hours of taking it, I feel much calmer. But is this really classic schizophrenia if no one notices it, and even the doctor at times thinks I might not need the medication anymore? Yet during moments of stress, I collapse very badly, and it’s been years since the psychosis… about 7 years on the medication and I still need it? I’ve started digging a lot online, and I suspect that this chaos, this suicidality, could be related to affect… maybe I have a very mild, medication-controlled schizoaffective disorder? Perhaps @77nick77@Bowens
IDK. We cant diagnosis you. Thats for your doctor.
Again, this is between you and your doctor. Make your choice carefully , though. If you do decide to stop meds, make sure you are closely supervised by your pdoc.
All I know for sure is what Ive typed above. Sz rarely get off meds without having symptoms of some kind. If you are sz, and you think you can manage them, I guess its up to you to decide if you want to take that risk.
I’ll just say that there is a lot of stress in the world for everybody but people handle it differently. You say you collapse under stress; does that mean that symptoms act up? When everything is calm and nothings going on then yes, it’s relatively easy to function and appear normal and the symptoms can become much less.
On a day to day basis do your symptoms, if any, act up? If you go through most of your day without symptoms and that’s true for every day
then maybe it’s not schizophrenia’s or mild schizophrenia, if there is such a thing.
But @Bowens is right we can’t diagnosis you. I can’t tell you for certain whether you have schizophrenia or not. If you’ve had symptoms for 7 years then that means you are not acting and something is wrong. Luckily, you can still function well so even if something is wrong you can still achieve goals and dreams.
I’m not sure mild schizophrenia is a real thing. everybody I’ve known or heard about suffer greatly and struggle on a day to day basis.
You’ve tried going off medication before and didn’t it end badly? I don’t see it being any different the next time you try but it’s up to you.
That’s what’s strange… I have a strong self-preservation instinct – I can feel that the medication really does calm me down. Without the medication, my doctor didn’t notice anything particularly wrong – although, considering my life decisions, like taking academic leave and experiencing more frequent outbursts of anger (which she found to be normal) – it shows that something is different without the meds. I didn’t have delusions, nothing particularly bad happened without the medication, but I could feel that at times something was slipping out of my control… as if I was just barely managing to catch it before psychosis appeared – not someone else. I don’t know… my case feels unusual. @77nick77
There are other strategies you can try to deal with your symptoms. Like supplementing to achieve good sleep and keep you calm and balanced.
Also you could try to manage symptom flare ups and extra stressors with non antipsychotic drugs, like gabapentin or a benzo to take as a PRN.
If you have managed for months without antipsychotics I would look into that, because that means there is a chance to do without them. All of us would quit antipsychotics if symptoms were managable without them, because the side effects really do reduce quality of life a lot.
I had to reply when I read this. I didn’t go through the entire thread but I really wish I’d find the magic bullet to no longer consider suicide a viable option.
I’ve been on meds for 5 years without a relapse. They work, who cares if you gain a bit of weight that is not the issue at hand. I’m on the board of directors for the place where I live, without my medication I would have never been able to achieve that and hold on to the position.
I know the meds aren’t perfect and sometimes I fantasize about leaving far away but I never could. Too stable now. Hope it lasts…
The meds work well for schizoaffective/schizophrenia but sometimes it’s withdrawing from these meds that carry their own symptoms, so beware of this @Teaclipse
The best thing to do is to work with your doctor
