and if it has changed you, how has it changed you?
I think I’m pretty much the same person except that I don’t have the drive that I used to have. I also don’t get as much enjoyment out of life.
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The MI didn’t change me. I was unmedicated for so many years… I was crippled by it, but I was also a creative dynamo with it. Now, with my AP meds, I feel like I have no inner vision. I can’t see, it’s dead, there’s nothing there. How am I supposed to make things and feel things? What will I put into my art if it’s not scary dark stuff? My therapist (a neuropsychologist) has told me that it will be possible to get working again, but it will not feel like it used to, it won’t work like it used to. I have to develop new ways of doing things, and that SUCKS. I don’t miss the terror and darkness of pre-AP, but I desperately miss my creativity and artistry.
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I’ve never given it any thought, to be honest. Identity is just a construct anyway.
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It changed me completely. I know my limits now.
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I started getting angry in April 2013 about people who wronged me. Then a few months later I started getting delusions and negative symptoms. In 2015 I was taken to the psych ward in Fargo, ND and they diagnosed me with chronic paranoid schizophrenia and psychosis and put me on three meds - an AP, an AD and a benzo. The meds calmed me down but I would start to feel better and would stop taking my meds and go back to the psych ward. This happened many times before I realized I needed my meds so I asked to get an injection because I was forgetting to take my meds sometimes and I’ve been getting better.
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Nice question, kinda similar to a question I asked long time ago about how sz changed my personality and made me shy from the apathy. Being honest, before sz I felt that I wasn’t complete, that I wasn’t myself 100% and that I didn’t reach my potential. But then sz took most of what I had left of myself.
It took my intelligence (I was one of the best students in school, provincial and national competitions etc), my functioning in life, my energy etc But off meds it was worse as I was completely the opposite of myself, violent. On Abilify I was less violent but I became hypersexual so it wasn’t any better than psychosis.
I think now I have 20% of whats left of myself but at least I am not violent or suicidal or hypersexual anymore on 6mg Risperdal. Maybe Vraylar will give me another 20% maybe not.
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Maybe sz impacted your intelligence but you are still an intelligent guy Aziz.
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I mean my grades in university all went down after being on meds and after sz. I had 90+% went down to 55-70% with one course at 55%. I felt bad inside myself and lost my self confidence in studies.
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MI drastically changed me.
I’m more withdrawn.
Less motivation and I experience less pleasure.
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Cognitive decrease started happening 3yrs before sz diagnosis. I used to be able to read and memorize with few notes. Then I couldn’t read anymore, had to take tons of notes to understand one page and I became much slower at memorizing. Without taking tons of notes I would forget everything I read after a few seconds. Its why I don’t read books anymore as I will need to write a lot to understand and memorize. I am sure my working memory got worse as I read it happens in sz a lot.
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My first pdoc told me sz can cause memory and concentration issues especially if I am taxing my brain with university, he told me to drop all my courses and stop going to university.
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Yes, I have memory and concentration issues as well.
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In a weird backwards ■■■■ ed up way I think it’s changed me for the better. I’m so much more appreciated of the things I have, and it really helped to weed out the fake friends from the people who actually love and care about me
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My cognitive tests showed a slight decline in memory, as well.
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It has definitely changed me…
I am not as confident anymore, I am anxious, I am overly aware and self conscious of my surroundings and myself… I overthink everything. Always worried something bad will happen…
That’s all I can think of right now lol
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i got up to 15 or 16 years old before schizophrenia really hit full blown but before that i was an autistic outsider with good grades
learning came easily but social stuff not so much
i was quite paranoid before (after being bullied) and then my own mind turned on me a long time before i went into acute psychosis
then i was a 15 year old druggie then full blown psychotic within a year
now i’m stable and 47 and married lol
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What do you mean?
I mean generally of course, it is a construct like most things are. But more specifically, I don’t feel like I have much of an identity. Or an identity crisis. I don’t feel like the concept applies much to me, besides describing obvious and currently unchangeable things like my sex and my relationships and my skin color.
I don’t feel like I am in some profound way the same person from year to year, hour to hour or situation to situation. So I haven’t really considered if I am the same person now as I was before my psychosis.
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Same bit older and wiser and way less paranoid. Medication has been a good thing for me!!
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I’m the same person, just less focused and capable. I used to juggle responsibilities effortlessly before my first psychosis, now it’s hard to handle the minimum.
I’m still an upbeat fun person to talk to, at least I think I am, in real life.
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