They caught mine within a year of me becoming psychotic… I think early intervention can help in a large number of cases but that is no guarantee. When I was first put on meds they had me on such a high dose I felt I couldn’t do anything, I slept all the time, I became fat, my blood test results were horrible, my doctor warned me I was at risk of an early death, I spent 17 years at home doing nothing. So even though they caught it early and successfully treated my psychosis my physical health and life style took a huge hit.
I am doing well now that I am on a lower dose of a different med, but if I lower my dosage or quit completely I become psychotic, it’s happened a few times over the last 17 years, so I am on meds for life
I don’t know if being diagnosed later makes the symptoms different. I do know that since my very bad break 2 years ago, I can’t miss even a couple of days of meds without the darkness and noise returning.
What I do think about is what it would have been like if I were medicated on APs for the past 30 years. Most of my time sucked, but there were some awesome things I did, as well, and I don’t know if that would have happened had I been doped up on one of the older meds all the time.
It took 5-7 years to get the right med combo/adjustment after suffering nearly every day from severe negatives and low mood and crap. Vraylar works for me and cymbalta is okay and lamictal is okay. It’s mainly Vraylar that gives me energy, improves my mood, and crap. I have delusions and HAD at one time severe sensory dysfunction like DP/DR and crap. I have negative symptoms like low motivation, lack of energy, and IQ loss.
Abstaining from nicotine and caffeine. I had ocd, philosophical thoughts, and had to change my way of thinking. It took 5+ years to get over it and accept things. I was severely chronically dissociated from something and I kept thinking "i wasn’t real’ ‘things weren’t real’ ‘etc’. I bet you if I quit smoking and quit drinking energy drinks I would be better, but I’m stuck doing it. I tried stopping but it’s difficult.
I think talk therapy helps. I don’t know what happened. I got DP/DR in college back in 2011 when it all started and got severely dissociated from pot. But I just never got over it. I was dumb enough to get a marijuana card in 2012 and then smoked pot again and got really paranoid and dissociated again and then I started feeling worse off for years like 2012-2018 pretty much…5-7 years or so…
It was an every day struggle. Felt like my vision was distorted and nothing felt physically there or real like I was in a black hole or something and lived in a simulation.
I was diagnosed when I was 20. My symptoms were auditory hallucinations and some persecutory delusions, thinking people were spying on me, wanted to kill me that type of stuff. My diagnosis was schizophrenia paranoia. That was before they got rid of different types of schizophrenia. It changed my life and not for the better. I’ve learned to live with the illness. Before I had more suicidal thoughts.