Did anyone here have a very long gap between their first and second episodes?

I had an episode of psychosis around a year ago. I’ve been off antipsychotics for ~6 months now with no relapses, and was on a pretty low dose starting around a month after I got back from the hospital. I have a cognitively demanding job that I’m doing pretty well at, and am maintaining friendships, exercising, etc. I feel normal now but still have no explanation for my ~2 years of mild hypomania/psychosis culminating in a full blown manic/psychotic episode, requiring almost 3 weeks of hospitalization.

On some level I consider myself to have recovered but I wonder if this is a false sense of security. Did anyone else have a long period of normalcy in between episodes? I’m also wondering what steps I can take to minimize the chances of a relapse. I guess the obvious one is to stay on antipsychotics but the side effects do concern me …

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I’ve only been through a psychotic break once that lasted for 7 straight months nonstop and I hope that’s the last one as I will forever remain on a low maintenance dose of Aps.

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You could be a lucky one. Seems it’s around 20% recover from 1st episode psychosis without the need for further medical intervention. For most around here it’s multiple or long episodes or where symptoms don’t dissapear.

As always. Talk to your doctor about the meds. A good shrink will get an idea of you and your symtpoms. It could be worth a shot coming off the antipsychotics but it’s always a risk vs reward thing.

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One way to safeguard is to avoid strange ideas or magical thinking.

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