I’m on invega, and I want to lower my dosage soon. I’m worried though, because if I end up in the hospital we’ll owe even more money to them than we already do.
I think I should wait until I get on disability to lower it just in case, but who knows when that will be.
Maybe I should just leave my dosage the same unless I start having side effects, but I eventually want to try to come off of medicine completely. Not anytime soon though.
Oh my goodness I would not lower my dose if I was stable and not having side effects. Sounds like you’ve hit a sweet spot. Unless you are on a very high dose which long term may be harmful.
Yeah, maybe you’re right. I guess it’s not the best idea. My mother keeps telling me how much she doesn’t want me on medication though, at least not in the long-run. My father hates it too.
That sucks you’re being pressured like that. Would they rather have you psychotic in the long run? Do they realize untreated psychosis drastically reduces life expectancy? And DEFINITELY life quality? Don’t let people who are ignorant make decisions for you, ended very badly for me.
Also, just so ya know, towards the end of life most people end up on 5+ meds anyways. So the idea of not wanting to be on medication “in the long run”, while in some aspects understandable, is a bit antiquated at this point.
No, my mother hates me being psychotic as well. She just had brought it up the other day about lowering my dosage. At first I replied kind of like you, saying something along the lines of, “well I’m not having any side effects, and I don’t know if it’s a good idea since I’m doing well,” but the more I thought about it, I realized how much I dislike taking medication.
She has liver problems from taking medication for many years.
The other thing you should keep in mind is older medications had a lot more side effects. For example first gen antipsychotics? Oh man, if you were on those long term you were a total hot mess. However medication has been improving a good deal over the years. The risk for things like movement disorders are drastically lowered in newer APs, I’ve never heard of any AP resulting in liver damage, perhaps if you were on a high dose long term of lithium or depakote you’d need to worry about that.
Lowering dose on a med that works well for you out of a vague fear that something bad may happen 40 years down the line is not the best idea to me. Good chances are something bad is going to happen to you 40 years down the line anyways. Health declines eventually. When we are old our livers don’t function the same way and naturally can’t process many medications like they used to. Heck it even can’t process old foods like it used to. You can get liver failure from decades of too many cheeseburgers. (That’s how I want to go, personally. Just kidding)
I think I’d rather have a very nice 40 years ahead of me with a potential risk of something bad happening then 40 years of extreme suffering/losing stability and being dysfunctional which may very well be cut short by me offing myself. Ya know?
What med are you on, out of curiosity?
You make very good points. I’ll stay on my medicine dosage for now.
As I said in my original post, I take invega. I’ve been on it for over two years now I think, which isn’t that long of a time really.
Ahhh you’re right sorry I’m quite tired or I would’ve remembered. Long day!
Invega just be sure to measure prolactin every once in a while, and it sounds weird but tell a doctor right away if you start lactating randomly. If you get hyperprolactenemia THEN you definitely don’t want to be on it long term as you WILL get breast cancer. However if you don’t get it, and not everyone does, you’re good 
How do I measure prolactin? I’m supposed to have lab work done next week, ordered by my psychiatrist. Do you think they’ll measure it then? I’ve heard high prolactin levels can cause irregular menstrual cycles, and mine are sometimes up to eight months apart.
Yep lab work! If your doc is already running it for you I bet they’re checking it. However you can also always ask, it is good for us to be informed as patients! I always ask what my doctors are looking for when they ask for blood tests. It’s good info to have so if you ever see another doctor you can be like “I was already tested for this”
Also be sure to mention the irregular period to your doctor.
Thanks for the advice. You kinda worried me by saying it can cause breast cancer, because my grandmother has had that in the past, which already puts me at higher risk.
I found out about all this because I was on risperidone, which is like the sister drug of Invega and also can cause prolactin issues, and I was seeing an NP who did not ever order any lab work for me…not good… I started lactating randomly one day and was obviously pretty disturbed and told her and she took me off it immediately. I’m honestly glad that happened or else I wouldn’t have known and would’ve stayed on Risperidone because it was awesome.
My grandma also had breast cancer so I feel you 
However it ONLY increases risk for breast cancer IF you get hyperprolactenemia. (And only SOME people who take it get it!!) It’s not the med that causes it it’s having very high prolactin levels for a long time. Keep that in mind. As long as your prolactin is normal you’re totally fine.
Sorry about that.
Whenever I said “it” can cause breast cancer I was referring to hyperprolactenemia. I looked it up and I have some symptoms, but I’ll try not to worry about it too much unless it comes back in my lab results.
No worries I just didn’t want to scare you off it or anything just wanted you to have the info 
I got hyperprolactenemia while taking Invega. My psychiatrist reduced the dose. I don’t think they were as concerned about the breast cancer because my man breasts are smaller. 
Thank you for telling me. I knew risperdal could cause higher prolactin levels, and could cause breast growth in men, but I didn’t know invega could cause hyperprolactenemia.
Ahaha yes you can also try to reduce the dose but since I already had history of breast cancer in my family and I’m a girl I wasn’t risking it and neither was my NP.
According to my current pdoc, there are also meds you can take with it to lower the prolactin, for people who really want to stay on that one med, but ideally you’d try to find a different med that worked before going into having multiple meds.
Also guys can get breast cancer just so ya know!! It’s just less common. I think for guys the bigger concern w Risperidone/Invega is man boobs lol. Risperidone got hit w a lawsuit for that I think.
Now that you mention that, I think I remember seeing something about risperdone on tv before I ever even got schizophrenia, where it was saying if you had grown male breasts on it, you might have been entitled to money.
Yes I was curious to try Invega as I knew it was extremely similar to Risperidone (which is the only AP that ever really worked for me) but two diff prescribers said if Risperidone gave me hyperprolactenemia then probably Invega would too so I never tried it.