[ eyes @Gecko’s ankles and contemplates demonstrating a robust personality ]
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Sorry, I shouldn’t be so negative
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1515151515 @NonExistant
Lol I’m sorry I don’t have blue eyes
Try Sarcosine …Its Might help …its a Supplement…
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Maybe your positive outweighs your negative
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Hi @Kathy and welcome to the forum. My advice would be to talk to your doctor about options with adding or changing medications.
As others have mentioned, Sarcosine is available and is something you can order online that helps a bit with negative symptoms. There are also antidepressants, like Wellbutrin, that can help with negatives a lot too.
One thing that helped me a ton with this same thing was swapping my antipsychotic medication from Abilify to Caplyta. I don’t know how many you have tried already and what APs are available in your country…but trying a different antipsychotic med may be something to look into if possible.
Regardless, I wish you the best of luck. There is always hope 
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Hello and welcome! As others have said, different medications really had different effects on my negatives. Other things that have an effect:
- Making sure I eat enough protein
- Making sure I drink enough water
- Being outside for 20 minutes a day whenever possible
- Making things (silly crafts, meals, writing stories, doing a puzzle, etc. Just something you can look at afterwards and say “That didn’t exist until I decided it would.”)
- Doing some physical activity (Hard to get into the habit, don’t be afraid to start small)
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Hey @shutterbug, I’m finding it difficult to enjoy anything at the moment. I used to like painting, playing the piano and anything outdoors like swimming, skiing and biking. It feels like this illness has taken away my passion for life so it’s been pretty difficult to do anything. I still get some enjoyment out of playing board games though with family. It seems every day it gets worse. Has it been this bad for anyone or are my negatives just too severe at this point?
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By the way, thanks everyone for all your responses and giving me hope!
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I don’t have any new ideas from the ones you already got, but I wanted to say welcome to the forum.
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Mine were really bad. I just sat in a chair all day.
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It was horrible for me after I was first diagnosed. I have always loved reading despite having some issues with dyslexia. After the SZ I couldn’t read at all. Couldn’t sit through a TV show. Had no energy to walk. Didn’t feel like cooking anything despite a life-long love of cooking. It was like I ceased to be ME.
I’ve found that the best way to get back into it is to pick one thing and stick with it. I started with trying to read a paragraph. Then I worked my way up to a page. Then a chapter. Eventually the whole book. It took a while. Once I was reading again I started trying to cook my own food. It’s pretty humbling to be an actual journeyman chef and yet be so disorganized that you screw up Kraft Dinner 3x in a row. Eventually I was making simple things and then more complicated things. I find the hardest part is to get moving on that first thing and to not give up until you’ve made some progress with it. You’re retraining your brain here so it won’t be fast, but it is worth it.
The passion returns as you get more active and do more things. Honest.
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Thanks @shutterbug for the encouragement. I’m glad your passion for things you used to enjoy like reading and cooking slowly came back. Makes me hopefully my passion for life will come back too.
That’s basically where I’m at @anon4362788. Did you improve and what helped you?
I’ve also taken up new things. You can listen live here:
Or listen through the Website:
This is an online radio station I run as a hobby. The humour between songs is a bit off-colour, but it’s lots of fun. Having SZ is not the end, it’s just the start of a different journey. No reason why you can’t enjoy yourself on it while you grow in new ways…
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That’s awesome @shutterbug. Very inspiring. Will check it out again, thanks for all the hope and positivity!
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Wellbutrin is so great, I wish it didn’t make my voices worse. It helps with everything else.
This place has plenty of examples of recovered people @Kathy . I don’t know what you mean by “not having a soul” because I don’t really know what that would look like, but I’m guessing you’re referring to flatness of affect?
I don’t really have that, not sure if I did at one point, probably did, I had all the symptoms my first two years and most in my third. I’m seven years in now and I’ve been feeling really good though so there is always hope, don’t give up! And don’t let people tell you this is a degenerative disease that damages your brain, that has never been proven, and my recovery really goes against that theory.
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Thanks for your hopeful post @agent101g. Glad you made a recovery, very inspiring! What I mean by “not having a soul” is it feels like I have lost my self, like gradually I felt less and less and had less thoughts to the point where it feels like my entire psyche is gone and I’m completely empty. It’s a hopeless place to be in. I’m sure people’s negatives haven’t been quite this bad. It was just a gradual decline. I don’t have any positive symptoms though, I just had extreme anxiety nd buzzing in my head when I tried to lower the dose of the antipsychotic a couple times and then the negatives got worse. I’m on an antipsychotic now but they continued to get worse and I just feel like an empty shell now. But I am trying to stay hopeful, so thanks for the encouragement.
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