My first three years after my first psychotic episode I was unmedicated while studying at university, it was a time of general psychotic unrest and thinking back on it I was a mess, after those three years I moved back to my hometown became psychotic repeatedly. At university the local medical facility that was supposed to help me thought I was feigning symptoms (I found this out as one member of staff told me).
They did however prescribe quetiapine at 200mg for sleep issues. My initial psychosis was treated with amisulpride and sodium valproate which made me dumb as hell so I stopped it as soon as I could. Back in my hometown risperidone was tried and failed then I got quetiapine, but quetiapine didn’t work so well on its own, I was on doses of up to 450mg quetiapine but that didn’t work, aripiprazole had been tried to no avail and eventually after another three years I got 400mg Zuclopenthixol injection in conjunction with 150mg quetiapine, I had been tried on 600mg Zuclopenthixol only but found the side effects harsh, I managed to get on two antipsychotics, Zuclopenthixol and quetiapine which is almost a silver bullet to my schizophrenia.
I still have issues but am 99% better than without, I take procyclidine also for side effects but overall it’s a godsend, I am back to mental health. I think it’s unusual to have two antipsychotics but my psych seemed to want to do something I would stick to and each one addresses separate issues, either alone is not enough. I think the worst part about medication is accepting you need it, the second bit is finding the right medication which for me took three years.
The Zuclopenthixol works more on the psychotic thoughts while the quetiapine works on extreme anxiety. I get the clopixol depot injection and the seroquel tablets. It’s really freeing to be in the state I am now, apart from oversleeping alot I function very well, now and again I take modafinil and stay awake for two days in a row and as long as I take my other meds I have not a hint of psychosis. If you feel the meds are poisoning you it’s just the psychosis talking, it doesn’t want to loose it’s hold on you, it knows the meds mean it can’t manipulate you anymore, as the psychosis does it gets to get you to be non compliant, it’s almost as if the psychosis has a life of its own, some might say it’s demonic.
Antipsychotics sober up the mind and put it back into everyday reality, you may think it’s better to under psychotic thinking but it wears you out in the end and you can’t use your own mind, instead medication make people stable, alot of initial side effects are just the psychosis trying to convince you that someone is trying to kill or poison you, I bet a psychotic would reject placebos as side effect ridden if told they were an actual medication, I have always had massive side effects when coming down from a psychotic episode, haloperidol as needed would send my mind spinning but later it wouldn’t be noticeable that I had took it. I believe it is definitely a sign of psychosis to reject medication but you should report any side effects, I found 450mg of quetiapine to be way too much, 600mg Zuclopenthixol to be too much but a lower dose of both to be a sweet spot.
I can even drink coffee and be relatively ok, even take modafinil and stay awake two days, the last thing is to avoid internet material or otherwise that makes the mind think psychotically such as material on aliens, conspiracies, magick and whatever else may make a person fall into a false reality setup by reading such material. I think to be as mundane as possible and take your meds is the only way to improve, you have to leave behind anything that sends you off into a fantasy world where psychosis can take a grip.
I occasionally think “what if I could get off my meds”, then I think of the psych ward and all the stupid stuff I’ve believed and what I’ve acted out and think better of it, why ruin a good thing, I hate the psych ward and never want to go back, If there is something that makes psychosis worse it’s being carted off by the men in white and being surround by psychotics and other mentally ill people and having you freedom taken away.
Overall I’d like to say, find the right meds for you and don’t look back, meds are nothing compared to the ■■■■that can happen when you are psychotic, and psych wards are like mild eternal punishment, with others trying to influence you and temperamental staff, to be honest some staff members can be worse than the patients for you as I have found out, although truly nasty ones don’t stay in one place for too long, something about the lunatics running the asylum comes to mind.
Avoid the psych ward and take your meds, be patient to see the meds benefit you and ignore that voice that thinks it knows better, it’s never helped you in the past, why trust it now.
