Is it possible for a psychotic order to be treated after being on antipsychotics for years?
Recently i hadnt taken my medication for 2 weeks and i experienced one or two auditory hallucinations but no delusions or accompanying anxiety. That is honestly tolerable to me. Is it possible to taper off of medication if you’ve been diagnosed with a psychotic disorder and be in remission from symptoms?
It’s not recommended to stop taking meds most will relaspe. But their have been a very few people with schiz on here get off medication for good and are doing well. I also met someone who had some depression and psychosis and he got of medication for good without symptoms. He is working two jobs now.
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Yes, its possible,
But not just by stopping your meds.
You need to talk to your doctor and get back on medication at the dose prescribed.
There’s a honeymoon period when you come off meds. Things might seem good for about a month but then they go south pretty quickly.
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I might be in partial remission after a severe hell like existence of 7 years. I dont work or anything. But I’m stable with minimal symptoms. My intelligence is great right now. I recently had a set back due to a medication change but it is returning.
I might get on buspar again or up my trazodone.
This should help with anxiety.
I have poor hygiene.
I can take edx and coursera courses.
My main problem all these years was severe, debilitating derealization/solipsism. I had 2d vision almost.
It was like I was detached from reality. I sometimes felt insane, but I’m not.
I am on a few days and I am already starting to get unpleasant things happening. I finally told my parents what was going on and they flipped - I am not seeing them this week at least now until they calm the ■■■■ down.
Yes it’s possible. I think you need supportive people around you though otherwise this can harm things a lot
In 2003 i was diagnosed and tried several AP’S and was in hospital four times
Went into full remission after 2006
Was meds free and fairly well from 2007-2012
But relapsed in 2012 and returned to meds
Been on them ever since and in and out of hospital five more times
The remission comes and goes now
Sometimes I’m symptom free
But then the sza returns
It’s a cycle now
it’s possible but difficult.
@Joker - had a good point you need to have a good support system in place- people who care about you and will let you know when you need to go back on meds for a little help. You may need to at first.
I’ve been trying this since last year, I told my Dr and my family that I live with beforehand, the DR advised to cut the dose over a few weeks and have meds handy if needed again.
Last year was awful, I had to go back on the meds every 2-3 months for 2-3 weeks. I had voices about 70% of the time but most days were manageable. I felt I was training my brain to learn to be peaceful and block them. But I made myself do things like go out with family/friends and to the gym even on the days when I wanted to hide in bed and sleep.
This year has been much better, I’ve been back on meds only about 3 weeks the whole year (last time was in early June). I have the voices either gone or down to distant mumbling most of the time. I’ve learned blocking and coping.
I’m not totally there but I’d say I feel about 85-90% normal (like before SZ). I function just fine and go and do all the expected normal living things again.
I went off my meds only once, 30 years ago. I became extremely suicidal after a couple of months off them and the extreme suicidal feelings came on suddenly in the space of a minute.
If you relapse you might not have any prior warning signs of an impending relapse, and you may not be able to prevent yourself from doing something ‘terminal’.
most schizophrenics learn they have to be on the meds. Some the hard way. I guess there are a small percentage who can go off the meds eventually though. The lucky ones
I believe that a hint for full remission is the dosage of your medication. I know they are three type of dose amount, one tells you if your long term and the rest tells you if your ready for remission. Al thought I never seen anyone get out of the system completely unless its on tv.
This is really positive news - you must be pleased with that progress despite the difficulty you have faced. I hope to achieve this situation. I think the first few months or year may be difficult, but I am determined to get to do what you have achieved.
RE the supportive thing, I wish I had it but I am going to have to do without :-/ my family have gone nuclear…
It’s possible for sure but you need the right circumstances. You can’t willpower it but you can work towards it. I was medicated on ap’s for 15 years and had minimal symptom improvement but the edge was taken off. I switched meds after 13 years and at that point I went into about 90% remission withinin a few months. I thought it was the Med itself at first but later realized it could be true remission.
My decision to taper off was due to side effects that were not tolerable and it became dangerous for me to take them. It wasn’t just what I was on, it was the class of drugs. I spent 5 months tapering off and I monitored it closely. I had already had about 25 years of experience dealing with the symptoms so I relied on positive coping skills during the withdrawal. I didn’t experience any psychosis but the withdrawal itself was a nightmare. It’s something you can’t really prepare for and the withdrawal itself can lead you back on even if you are in actual remission.
You have to be committed to discontinuing and you have to be in remission before attempting. You’ll need to taper slowly for months to be successful. Each time you go down you have to take time to adjust to the new dose and assess the symptoms. I think the failure rate is so high because people aren’t truly ready to discontinue or go too fast or aren’t prepared for the withdrawal.
It can happen. Most of us are multi episodic. We suffer without meds and it usually means meds for life at out current medical technology.
That could change but it’s the future and that is the unknown!
Most people with a psychotic disorder especially schizophrenia will need to be on an antipsychotic indefinitely.
Once you are in the system it is permanent.
Very few of us are able to go through life med free.
I know if I tried I would relapse in a matter of weeks.
If you are going to attempt to get off of your meds make sure that your doctor is on board with it and work with your doctor very closely, otherwise it isn’t recommended.
I know of people who’ve had psychotic issues, were treated with medication but then were able to get off them after a while. I think it really depends on what psychotic issue you are referring to. If it is a brief psychotic episode, then it is much more likely that you’ll achieve full remission and won’t need medication anymore. For Psychotic Depression you need to treat the underlying depressive symptoms with a combination of medication and therapy. After a while, it is possible for someone with Psychotic Depression to make a full recovery and not need medication anymore. However, when it comes to Schizophrenia, most of the time for people you will need medication for life. There have been a lot of people who’ve tried coming off their medication because they’d been stable for a while, only to relapse again later on down the track. Personally, i’ve only just achieved full stability in the last couple of weeks with the introduction of Clozaril. I can’t imagine not having my medication. I get so unwell without it.
I tapered off medications, but as for remission, I think it depends upon what the definition is. I am still mentally ill and I will be mentally ill for the rest of my life. For me personally, the side effects of the antipsychotic meds outweighed any good they might have been doing for me. I was sleeping at least 16 hours a day, and when I was awake I felt like a zombie and couldn’t do much of anything fun. I had gained weight and was pre-diabetic with an A1c of 6.4 and started having elevated blood pressure. I had the beginnings of erectile dysfunction, and I was very young, so that was quite unacceptable to me. I had mandatory clinic meetings with people I did not like and who obviously did not care about me. It was called Assisted Outpatient Treatment which was a nice way of saying Forced Drugging. I complained about my side effects to my psychiatric nurse practitioner and to the psychiatrist (when I rarely saw him) and to my therapist, and none of them showed any concern about it. When I brought up the idea of going off my meds they all told me they would just start injecting me with them. They had me on oral meds and they tested my blood to make sure I had therapeutic levels of antipsychotics in my blood. They didn’t test for diabetes or liver function, etc. I only found out those test results from my primary care physician, and when I talked to him about it, he said it might be the meds I am on. That gave me the clues I needed to start looking up this stuff on youtube. Then I started to get akathisia and the beginnings of tardive dyskinesia, and that’s when I decided I had had enough and started my legal fight to get off the meds.
After a long and nasty period of withdrawals (even with slowly tapering off my meds), I lost my weight, my A1c is back down to 5.1 and my blood pressure is back to normal, my E.D. is gone, akathisia and tardive dyskinesia faded away, and I am once again enjoying my life to a certain extent. I still hear voices. I still hear people walking up behind me. I still have delusions about people trying to poison my food. But I have insight. I am able to cope with my mental illness. I think that is the main difference between the teenage me and the current me. I learned how to cope with my mental illness, and what NOT to say and what NOT to do in public, or around others to avoid major problems. But am I in remission? No. Not by my definition of it. I am just coping with it. What helped me the most was Cognitive Behavorial Therapy and its spinoffs. They gave me the tools I needed to help me cope. I currently work at two part-time jobs, I attend classes at my local community college, and I live with my boyfriend in his apartment. But each and every day is still a struggle and it will always be a struggle for me. I realize that now.
On a youtube video about schizophrenia I found a very interesting comment from someone else with a very similar to story to mine, and basically he did the same thing I did, and he admits that he still struggles with it every day…
Quote: “with this, was far too much for somebody so young, with no life experience and so much life yet to live. I think it took me at least 4 years to actually accept that my diagnosis was accurate and applicable, but I was so low/depressed, it was a real shock. Social stigma, medication, so many restrictions, would I even be able to get a job? Drive a car? Find a woman? My young life was now completely in tatters, with no bright future, no prospects, nothing. I would have to see the psychiatrist and psychiatric nurses, at least once a week or once every other week. What a huge giant pain in the neck this whole situation was. I didn’t want to see these people, nor talk to them, nor discuss anything with them related to me or the diagnosis. I found their questioning intrusive, far too personal, accusational, self-incriminating, and frankly because it wasn’t my choice to be there I obviously did not want to deal with them… I realised that in order to see them less and not have my medication increased or be prescribed more of it, etc., that I would indeed need to manipulate them and be very careful of what I might say to them. I very quickly learnt that less is more when seeing the psychriatrist and simply knowing about the diagnosis from a medical perspective, regurgitating that information to them, well they lapped it up. I was labelled as having ‘insight’… otherwise my life would be what I was experiencing then right until the end of my days; restrictions, medication, mandatory psychiatric meetings, and really all against my will and personal freedom… So, to cut a very long story short, I have been with my girlfriend for 10 years (she does not suffer any mental health problems, she just suffers me! lol), we now have a mortgage on a 2 bedroom flat in London, we’re not thinking about children, I have to date worked a 15 year career in IT support, I have so many hobbies its unreal, I drive sportsbikes, racer bicycles, high end mountain bikes, and build and repair each kind competently. I swim, play football, cycle, game on my home built PC on a weekly basis, and do lots of other things like fishing, karting, board gaming sporadicly. I haven’t had to see a flipping psychiatrist for about 8 or so years, possibly 10 in fact. I have now been unmedicated for about 5 years, I have no drug (except nicotine) or alcohol dependancies, no criminal record, and I hallucinate audibly each and every day…! Yet I am leading a perfectly ‘normal’ life, so who says people with mental illness cannot? I really don’t know how I managed it, and I am by no means cured in the slightest, I’ll have this illness until I die, but I freed myself from the mental health system. Its a system that has no way out! If you ever ask a psychiatrist what you need to do in order to leave, I promise you that they would not be able to tell you. They’re not in the business of losing customers, they’re not in the business of actually helping people. They are in the business of dosing you up so much that you cannot move or think and filling up vacant rooms in psych wards…”
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I went off APs in 2004 and had no psychotic symptoms until 2008. I don’t recommend it, though, considering I had my worst psychotic break ever in August/September of 2008. It was very bad, ending up costing me a marriage. I should have been taking an AP that whole time; maybe things would have been different for me.
@freakonaleash, I’m sorry that sounds awful! The breaks can be some actual custom-made hell.
I’d recommend if anyone goes off the meds they need to be ok with the idea of possibly needing to go back to them if needed and starting again later.
My personal signs are when I start answering the voices out loud, getting paranoid and I can’t reason out of it or can’t sleep or eat for 2 days or more - it should be obvious but it’s not always - which is why it’s important to have people around who will tell you. If you don’t have someone at home then maybe tell a friend or have a councilor help.
I agree with @Wesley 85% better and off meds works for me more than no symptoms but kind of a zombie. I felt like I couldn’t care for my kids, it wasn’t fair to my husband and I was too sensitive to even the small amounts of meds (like walking into walls when 1st dosed) so I didn’t feel safe driving.
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Your story is so complex and inspirational to me personally. I really hope I am able to post something similar down the line. I have a way to go but your story has given me hope that it’s possible however difficult the road may be. Thank you.
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