Anyone achieve full recovery? Please do fill me in
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No, full recovery is not possible.
But I’m okay on most days.
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@Looking4Hope
Do you want to recover? How do you define recovery? Do you want to off meds? Do you want to be working? Do you want to be social?
@FlyingPurplePeopleMeeter fully recovery by meaning, minimal symptoms and off of medication
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@Looking4Hope
I am 33 now. I was hospitalized several times and on medication in my late teens and early 20s. Then, for a decade, I was without medication. I lived on my own, worked full-time, volunteered, traveled, and socialized. With the birth of my son, symptoms came back. They were joined by new ones.
From what I’ve learned, you can work as hard as you can doing all of the right things, but you can never make it go fully away. Sometimes there is remission. But physical, emotional, or mental stress can bring an onslaught of symptoms again.
Does that worry you? Never being off of medication?
I have had zero positive symptoms for almost three years. February 2016 was my last hallucination. I take meds, but I’ve found a combo that gives me no side effects.
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@FlyingPurplePeopleMeeter Interesting, what were your symptoms before hand and what were the new ones if you don’t mind me asking? And it does bother me a little knowing I might be on meds forever
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I’ve been symptom free for more than a year. I now hold a full time job and am able to socialize quite decently. But I still take meds and probably will keep taking for at least another year, or maybe forever. It doesn’t really bother me so long as I stay functional.
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I think I’ve maybe seen one or two cases of this in over a quarter century of having this illness. I do know a lot of SZs who range from symptom free to mild but manageable symptoms while on meds (I’m one of them) and who function at average or above average levels. Nearly all of them decline when they go off meds and they don’t always regain previous function after a really bad relapse. I’ve learned not to mess with my meds.
In my own case I still have some positive and negative symptoms while on my current dose of medication, but CBT and therapy have given me the coping skills to push past them and keep productive at work and home.
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I’m pretty symptom free and on a low dose of med, I am remaining hopeful 
I’m pretty low functioning. I guess the cognitive symptoms, anxiety, and delusions are the core of my illness. I sometimes think my delusions are/were real…
I lost at least 10 IQ points but gained some intelligence in other areas.
Some people don’t lose intelligence and those people are lucky, I think.
I take Vraylar and it’s the best medication I have ever tried. The only downside is I drink a lot of soda/energy drinks. I guess to counter the anxiety? But the soda/energy drinks give me anxiety too.
The energy drinks don’t make me more productive.
I also get depressed. I have never had visual hallucinations but had mild, temporary auditory hallucinations a long time ago.
I don’t work or go to school. I have tiredness, fatigue, and laziness.
I’m lucky my IQ was above 100 when I got sick but I wish it was higher lol!
My memory and processing speed has gone down. The memory problems are the worst. I have short term memory problems and long term memory problems.
It’s weird I think I have neurological problems too. I was diagnosed with chronic migraines at one point and Aspergers Syndrome. At one point in my illness, my memory went through the roof as well as my intelligence. I started remembering pi to 50 or 100 digits and stuff and doing mathematics (I did like 500 difficult math problems). It may have been from OCD or something. That was years ago. I tried studying for the P1 actuary test but I gave up because I was slow at solving the problems and they got harder. It feels like mild dementia sometimes. I wonder sometimes if I have vasculitis or something in the brain. I have white spots in my brain and maybe I had a mild stroke or something. Maybe a brain tumor or something. I know, it sounds scary but I really don’t know. They say it’s all most likely due to migraines.
It bothers me, too. It’s impacted my life greatly. I try to keep meds low to lessen the side effects, which means I still have symptoms.
I started hallucinating as a kid. It became more frequent and more intense in high school. I was an honors student, but I could no longer understand what I was reading. I had trouble writing. I was captain of the lacrosse team. I forgot field positions. I cheered. I forgot how to jump. I stopped babysitting because I was worried I was being watched through vents and television sets. My struggle was along those lines.
When I started struggling again ten years later, the difficulty with reading and writing happened again, as did the memory problems and confusion. I hallucinated again, but this time they were louder, more often, and more of them. In my teens, I never questioned reality. In my 30s, I questioned everything. I started thinking I was living in different dimensions. I thought I was imagining my husband and kids and bringing them to life. I thought I imagined my friends. I most often questioned the reality of new people and places in my life, like a new counselor and his office.
I had been social, academic, hard-working, and confident. I became needy, scared, less intelligent, and lonely.
Have you been recently diagnosed?
@FlyingPurplePeopleMeeter yes I was diagnosed schizophrenic a year and a half ago. I was delusional and thought people were going to hurt me like my family. I have never heard voices before and my symptoms have been completely gone ever since I started my meds. I just don’t know how much longer I’m suppose to take them
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@Looking4Hope
I’m so sorry you went through that. And I am sorry you are on meds. I hope you are confident in your doctor that he/she can help you! Ask us anything and we’ll support you in any ways we can!
If you’re schizophrenic it’s just a fact that you have to stay on meds…I don’t like people suggesting schizophrenics don’t need meds…bad bad.
Wrong. Many sz can end up quitting meds, of course with a pdoc’s prescription, I’m 3 months AP free and I’m better than ever. In my case it was always mild sz though.
no, you are just not delusional yet…if you don’t need AP’s I doubt you were ever schizophrenic…schizophrenics need meds…period…I am not wrong and you are out of line. @Bokeh
I would say a smaller percentage, definitely not the majority.
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I think I’m as stable as I’m ever going to be. It can be hard to see why I need meds quite a lot of the time. The problem is after a while you get lured into thinking “Well I’ve always been this way” when in fact it may well be the meds that are responsible for you being at your current level.
Despite wondering whether I need them I’m very wary about quitting them. I guess I don’t want to tempt fate.
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I know this is the case for me. The longer I’m off meds, the farther down the rabbit hole I go. I don’t want to go back to being a catatonic lump ever again.
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