Im going to stop my medication-HELP

I tried to stop medicine after a year and relapsed.

I had anhedonia BEFORE I got meds. Meds are not doing this in my case.

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If meds stabilized you, it sounds like you should stay on them. Start therapy, such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. If you decide at some point to go off meds, be prepared and in therapy regularly. You can not passively hope things will be okay.

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hi comatose …how long it took for the relapse to happen after stoping meds

There’s also a chance of winning the lottery, but you won’t see me buying lottery tickets.

The odds of you functioning well without your medications very, very low.

Pixel.

How recently have you been on anti-P meds?

Did you only have this one episode, ending a year ago? For to nuance a bit, there is a reasonable, not big, reasonable, chance one can gradually get off medication if that’s the case. To be fair, the chances of relapsing are bigger than the chances of not doing so are after having one episode of psychosis.

There may be some relevant information in this thread:

yes that was the only psychotic episode i had.but i had social anxiety disorder way before psychosis even when im 16 yrs old …now im 22

its been 4 days after i quit meds

Well, and I can tell you that my doctor told me, after one episode only, it could be tried to stop medication. Ofcourse, only gradually lowering the dose, and carefully monitored by the doctor. My doctor said it was about a 20% chance of not relapsing.

However, a quick search got me this abstract of a review of studies, that says only 10% does not relapse after a treated first episode:

The large majority of individuals with a first episode of schizophrenia
will experience a remission of symptoms within their first year of
treatment. It is not clear how long treatment with antipsychotic
medications should be continued in this situation. The possibility that a
percentage of patients may not require ongoing treatment and may be
unnecessarily exposed to the long-term risks of antipsychotic
medications has led to the development of a number of studies to address
this question. We carried out a systematic review to determine the risk
of experiencing a recurrence of psychotic symptoms in individuals who
have discontinued antipsychotic medications after achieving symptomatic
remission from a first episode of non-affective psychosis (FEP). Six
studies were identified that met our criteria and these reported a
> weighted mean one-year recurrence rate of 77% following discontinuation
> of antipsychotic medication. By two years, the risk of recurrence had
> increased to over 90%. By comparison, we estimated the one-year
recurrence rate for patients who continued antipsychotic medication to
be 3%. These findings suggest that in the absence of uncertainty about
the diagnosis or concerns about the contribution of medication side
effects to problems with health or functioning, a trial off of
> antipsychotic medications is associated with a very high risk of symptom
> recurrence and should thus not be recommended.

http://schizophrenia.elsevierresource.com/articles/risk-symptom-recurrence-medication-discontinuation-first-episode-psychosis-systematic

What concerns me though, is this:

What I would do in your situation is the following. I would call/visit your doctor and tell him that you are worried about relapsing. That you read research indicating that up to 90% relapses eventually. That you do not want to relapse. And see what he says. The very minimum I would want to hear from him is that you two will very closely monitor how the situation progresses. Frequent and regular appointments, is what I would want from my doctor in such a situation.

Some may recommend changing doctors all together, I think trust in your doctor is an important factor in recovery, and should not too easily be compromised. Depending on what the response of the doctor to the worries I mentioned above would be, I may consider looking for another one. That’s just my two cents though.

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I’ve taken two of those medicines + I know they each have caused apathy or amotivation in me. Your Dr., calling you lazy isn’t being fair.

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thanks for the info :blush:

I’ve lived with sz long enough and seen enough at the assisted living center for the mentally ill where I live to believe that it rarely turns out well when someone quits their med’s. I think your pdoc is a little off base on this one.

It took 3-4 weeks for me to relapse.

It doesn’t sound like you want to go off your meds.

I was interested in seeing how I’d do without them… it took about 6 months of reducing doses before I was comfortable with not being on them… Granted I had some heavy hitting zyprexa doses and sleep aids around.

It sounds like your doctor aint the best if he is just calling you lazy…

Uhhh… so your caught between two things… listening to your doctor and seeing if stopping meds will reduce this “lazyness” and the fear of relapse.

People would bite my head off if I gave you the advice I’d like to give you, but let me just tell you how I felt when I was at that cross road.

I was more interested in seeing how I’d fair off of meds… relapse wasn’t a fear… if I relapsed I had the support network in place to get back on track if need be.

Now there are ups and downs… after coming off of meds… I had to control my caffeine consumption… almost can’t handle any caffeine at all… beyond a soda and I get stressed/angry and that leads to more voices and obsessions… I quit smoking tobacco for about 6 months there (have fallen back into it since the holidays)… gotta quit that again.

I mean you’ll have to make all the sacrifices you can to find the most “natural” stability… you’d have to look at every facet of life and learn all you can… Diet, sleep, social relations, romantic relations, exercise, substance use (if you don’t use substances don’t start)… Even your housing and financing… Stress is the ultimate undoing of a SZ’s stability…

If your doctor is ready to supervise you and the caregivers in your life are aware of the attempt to come off meds… I mean just consider that a requirement if you do go through with it.

Now also… if you aren’t doing any drugs… your SZ aint just gonna come back full swing in an instant… You have to watchful yourself and what is happening in your mind… when you notice erroneous crap… look into it… talk about it on here… sort it out.

I’m not a doctor… take this all as the perspective of someone else… just thoughts you might want to here.

I’d stick to reducing doses and seeing how you fair…

Another note though… Negative symptoms are just as much from the meds as the illness itself. Very similar to depression in nature… though not as severe, but depression and SZ can overlap… there are endless ways to deal with depression.

Mental illness is different for everyone… Attend a CBT therapy group or read up on it on your own… that’s a pretty powerful and more generally applicable tool for most… beyond that though… you’re going to have to find what works for you… meds or not.

But play it safe… just ask to lower your dose if you want to see if it’ll ease up on the negatives… then you can see if how vulnerable you are to returning psychotic symptoms…

It aint the end of the world… you will have time to figure out what works for you. Take the pressure off and do something you enjoy.

I hope some of this helps. :v:

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Psychosis - it creeps up and tricks you no matter how many times you’ve been through it - it will catch you out all over again - please don’t stop your meds.

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I’ve never had a doctor recommend quitting meds if they are helping. But usually if the side effects are interfering enough with one’s life they change meds. I had a lack of motivation and some shaking from the Haldol. I hope your doctor knows what they’re doing,

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azley.that was so nice of u to share ur ideas.thanks

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I am seriously considering getting off of all Antipsycotics or at least reducing my dose considerably.

The reason is that I might have pituitary tumors and all antipsychotics potentially can make tumors grow, because they block dopamine and raise prolactin.

I frankly am tired of facing serious health issues due to taking antipsychotics - the truth is that there are no safe antipsychotics out there.

I don’t think that my psychiatrist will agree with me or she may and place me on mood stabilizers instead.

I am going to confront her on this and stand my ground - my physical health becomes just as important - I really am tired of this.

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When will you know for sure?

I think that they are monitoring my FSH and LH hormone levels - if they go up even more, if when Im off of the Risperdal the something is not right and my GP will most likely send me to an Endocronologist and he will do more blood tests most likely and then I might have to go for an MRI and this will show if I have these tumors or cysts.

Sometimes just by getting off of the Risperdal these tumors manage to shrink or dissapear on their own.

I know that my pdoc will want me on an antipsychotic - choosing the right one that does not raise prolactin so much will become important - i may go on Rexulti, since it does not raise prolactin so much - Abilify would be a better choice, but I cannot tolerate it.