I really don’t understand how some of you guys diagnosed with Schizophrenia/Schizoaffective manage to function without taking meds - Antipsychotics.
It defies logic!
I switch meds AP’s and it doesn’t work, I then stop taking my meds for like 2 weeks tops and I end up losing my mind completely and end up getting Hospitalized Involuntarily twice in a span of 2 months!
I hate the side effects but the bottom line for me is that I cannot function at all without the meds.
Maybe some of you not on meds and functioning have been misdiagnosed?
I don’t know.
Hey, more power to you I guess.
In 2007 after taking smaller doses of clozapine,I stopped taking all meds.It lasted for six months,and then I gradually started taking small amounts of risperidone.I was working hard at time as hairdresser,but became numb,and non communicative so I decided to go back on meds.Now I doubt that I can do it again.
I agree with you @Wave, I don’t get it either. longest I went without meds is a few weeks last time because my Haldol was stolen. my dad and aunt goes without meds. my aunt also has another disorder on top of it and my dad is schizoaffective. my aunt is a bit of spaz without meds and is unstable. so unstable her kids refuse to let their kids around her.
my dad stopped taking his meds because the doctor told him beer and anti psychotics were a dangerous combination. he is paranoid a lot especially about my mother and who she talks to.
Schizophrenia is a spectrum disorder, and, while I’ve been through a lot, and I don’t function on a “normal” level, I am high functioning for someone with sz.
It’s human to want to categorize and compare. If you need to put those without meds in a separate category from yourself and others, that’s understandable. But when I was finally diagnosed with sz everything I had experienced and do experience was “explained” in that one condition… I don’t need to be schizophrenic, but nothing else encompasses all of my “symptoms”.
It’s a documented fact that many people with sz cope and function without meds. Many others must have meds to cope and function. One is not greater or lesser than the other, and one doesn’t discount the other. The symptoms present create the diagnosis, while the treatment varies.
I think you’re incredibly brave to be on meds. Even before I was diagnosed with sz, I was recommended medication and refused. I often wonder if I could have achieved more in my life had I gotten treatment…
I was both sheltered and neglected growing up. Sheltered from the outside world, I could spend hours and hours alone, literally in a closet…Neglected, my “unusual” behavior and isolation was ignored.
I literally grew up not even considering that there could be any other reality for me. Because all of my hallucinations and delusions were religious, I was just a fanatic and not visibly psychotic in the extreme churches I attended…
I was lucky to have what was the perfect combination to hide and protect me. But if I had been paid attention to and treated with medication maybe I could have had a shot at normal? Who knows.
I learned coping skills, and CBT literally changed my life…
Anyway, I am both sorry and admiring that you have to take medication.
