Hello!
I believe I was misdiagnosed with schizophrenia and want to come off my abilify maintena injection because its stifling my thinking when im writing papers for school. I swear I had an easier time writing papers before and all my major in university does is write papers. In order to test the theory I would love to come off abilify maintena monthly injection but im not sure how to do so safely.
Can I just stop taking it and it will taper off in my system? Do I have to start taking the tablets and manually taper off those. Does anybody know?
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Hi. Most doctors recommend staying on antipsychotics until you have been symptom free for at least 18 months. Please talk with your doctor if you have concerns with your medication, and do not take medical advice from strangers on the internet.
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Also, welcome to the Community. You’ll find lots of support here. Nobody who thinks it’s a good idea to stop meds, though. We’ve all tried it and crashed hard.
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Thank you for the welcome. I don’t think anything will happen if I stop (in a safe way) since I believe that I misdiagnosed. Me being delusional and believing something outlandish doesnt mean I have schizophrenia and I wish people would see that. I had reasons before so I wont do it again. On top of that, I LIKED over analyzing things it gave my life color and made me see things from interesting points of views. I wasnt taking my meds in the mental institution and was doing fine. But then they gave me this shot before I got released and now im stuck on it. I will talk to my psychiatrist, I kind of have a feeling he doesn’t know though.
Being delusional doesn’t necessarily mean you have schizophrenia, but it DOES mean you had psychosis. And for people with a single psychotic episode, it’s recommended to stay on meds for 18 months minimum, to prevent physical damage to the brain.
Psychosis causes shrinking of the gray matter. On my most recent MRI, it showed greater than expected gray matter loss for someone of my age. That was enough to scare me into staying on my meds. I don’t want my brain to shrink any more! I was unmedicated for ten years.
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Okay that is scary. I definitely don’t want my brain to shrink. Thank you for the information. Its been around 11 months on these meds for me. I will talk to my psychiatrist and see what he says.
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The withdrawals from anti psychotics are scaaaary. They kinda seem like a for life thing once you go on them. You’ll probably have to ask for pills for a taper off and eventual discontinuation though. I’m not sure how strong the injections are, im on abilify pill form.
I came off of invega. I dunno what the best way to do it is though. Why do you want to come off of it? If it’s working I would recommend you stay on it because if you stop your voices will return
I agree with @Ninjastar
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If it were me, I would switch to pill and come off a very tiny amount to test the severity of withdrawl. You don’t want to mess up school.