I need hope. 
I have been spending a hideous time with pills.
Iād rather be dull on meds, than psychotic off them. Easy choice.
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Not with me. I get extremely paranoid and delusional off meds and am probably hallucinating. Iāve tried reducing my med to no avail.
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Iām off APs, but it took me thirty years of taking meds and doing therapy to get to this point. I also did it at my doctorās recommendation and with her supervision. I have ongoing symptoms that Iām able to manage through routine and techniques I learned in therapy.
Before you jump all over this and try to apply it to yourself, please know that Iām about 1% of 1% of schizophrenics who have been able to do this. Iām essentially an outlier. The odds of what worked for me working for you are close to zero.
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Quitting success stories? Unlikely its better to just adapt and be patient it took me 3 years on invega before i started feeling ok again
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I sort of feel that there is this myth of a schizophrenic person who has fully recovered and there are different stories where some of these people make full recoveries. I think self filtering is also relevant in the context of the forum community.
Ergo if schizophrenia does not define you as a person then simply you donāt feel defined by it. The attachment and need to relate with others around it as a space and place of discussion is therefore reduced. There are probably a under representation of people who make full recovery since after that point they cease to care about that experience. Since they have moved beyond it because of the stigma associated they donāt necessarily want to talk about. I think that people who make a full recovery distance themselves from the label. So if you are able to make a full recovery then youāre probably also less likely to come forward and say you have schizophrenia. If you are fully functional you essentially have the choice to say whether or not the label applies to you or not. Still rare but I think there are more people out there who make full recoveries then it would appear on the surface.
Personally I know of 2 people one on 12.5mg seroquel and using a holistic approach including the ketogenic diet and one that has recently come off antipsychotics. Time will tell if they can remain stable long term however
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I disagree with you a bit. I DO believe those that make a full recovery are very rare. By full recovery I assume you are meaning no meds with no symptoms. I believe this is a very rare occurrence. There ARE those that can get by without medication, but almost all of those that truly have schizophrenia still have symptoms but have learned to manage them. @ozymandias is a good example of this. There are others here I could mention as well, but I dont want to get into calling out a bunch of people.
I donāt want to dash anyones hopes here, but I have to be frank about this. I had the same hopes of a full recovery and tried reducing meds. Upon reaching a certain level I had paranoia, anxiety and sleeplessness creep back in. I think a lot of the wish that full recovery is common is wishful thinking, unfortunately.
Also, some of those that claim a āFUll recoveryā have only been off antipsychotics for a short time. After a few years, I think the vast majority of those with true schizophrenia will see some symptoms return.
Anyway, those are my thoughts at the current time.
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Yeah this isnāt necessarily true and could entirely be a biased way of thinking about it as there is no way to reality test the idea. I agree with everything you said and likewise I agree that it is somewhat wishful thinking to believe so. I think a lot of the claims made by people saying they have made a full recovery are fringe at the best of times. Equally I also wonder about their levels of inight, they might have made a full functional recovery and then just not longer be able to recognise the subtlety of the residual symptoms.
At the same time I also think that a lot more gains can be made in terms of recovery then the current pejorative which is perpetuated by the mental health system. I donāt think relegation to taking antipsychotics forever is necessarily the full and correct narrative. This is commonly the dogma of the mental health system. I think it can be helpful to people experiencing mental health issues to hear a different message.
It is wrong to encourage people to quit their medication cold turkey. Equally I think the scientific community would probably believe it is unlikely to find a generalised cure in our life time that is the reality of what you are up against. Still individual response is huge and all you need to do is find a working solution. There is a law of diminishing returns and an opportunity cost in terms of how much time and effort you spend on your recovery. There are other things in life but Iām yet to hit the ceiling interms of the level of interest in my own recovery.
End point being if you never have hope and never actively pursue a full and holistic recovery approach then you will indeed never make a full recovery. I think it is rare but not impossible and it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy when you say it canāt be done. I think it more important to stay motivated towards recovery in however you find inspiration and if nothing else the idea is inspirational. Itās not delusional thinking to say it can be done just unlikely. I donāt think people are statistics and I for one refuse to be a statistic. I have always taken this approach in my recovery and personally it has done wonders for me. It is a journey and not a destination.
Personally I know I will always have schizotypy style thinking. You canāt cure a thinking style, I fully accept that, but ultimately everyone has their eccentricities. Everything else is still open for question and in that regard an active area of research and debate
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I am by no means recovered. I have ongoing positive and negative symptoms. The positives I mostly manage okay, but the negatives have been kicking my arse lately. Iām trying to get back on top of them. APs donāt really seem to make a difference with my negs unless itās the sedating ones making them so much worse.
My illness remains, but it is well-managed and I am high-functioning in most respects even going by neurotypical standards.
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Depends on how you define recovery the fact that you can manage without antipsychotics is to me evidence that you have recovered. Recovery is a journey but it is okay to say you have recovered. When you are 1% of 1%, give yourself some credit.
Jonny Benjamin is another good example of what a realistic functional recovery looks like.
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No, it means I have found other means of managing symptoms. Recovering means you return to a normal state of health. Having aliens in your head threatening you and ordering you around 24/7 is not a normal state of health, at least not on this planet. Maybe yours is different.
Maybe I have selective hearing when I read what you write. When you have made ~95% of the recovery gains that you will in your recovery journey then I think it is safe to call it at some point and say you have made a full recovery. After 30 year you would think that you would have traversed most of the recovery journey. Still I regard recovery as a personal journey, what the end point/goal looks like is different to each
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Yup.
BTW, the longest I have gone without a relapse before is six months. Iām not at six months with this attempt yet, so letās not start counting the chickens before they are hatched. My cheese can still slide off my cracker.
I think itās possible to quit the meds, sometimes. Has to be the right dosage before you can quit though. Not a good idea to go cold turkey from 800mg quetiapine or 5mg Risperidone etc.
Only do it if you have had a sustained period of stability though
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Ive been on 4m risperdal for 8 years. I can tell you that ive lowered my medication last december. Now i take is 2mg. Ive been feeling better. The symptoms is probably going to come back.
I came off my meds successfully in 2007 but five years later my sza came back in full force with severe depression, mood swings and paranoid delusions so I had to go back on meds
Iāve tried over the years many times but could never again be successful. All that happened was Iād land up in hospital
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Iām at about 2 years off APs. I still take an AD and a mood stabilizer for my bipolar part of sza.
I manage symptoms well, most of the time. Recently I had a very bad night, but Iāve been under massive stress. Lately, Iāve been more irritable than usual. Am trying to get that under control again with self care.
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Has anyone here really tried the keto diet, if so how did it effect u ?
I have tried many times to stop taking them. In whatever brief or long moments of clarity I used to form coping mechanisms and self-care. Learning to connect your senses and grounding them really helps or listening to meditation music.
I am constantly having to re-affirm my reality because stress causes me to disconnect. I used to think I would never be able to go to college or anything, but I was able to do that and learn to drive etc. despite having schizophrenia since the age of fourteen.
I have had a fun rewarding life, despite this illness and medication has been helpful to me as well. I dont know that I could have come back to earth without it. Although there is a part of me that measures up each spectrum of my life story and thinks i would have been ok either way, some things were meant to happen. I was meant to take medication in this life until a better option came along.
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The only reason I want to stop my medication is to lose weight and perform better at bicycle racing. I gained 75 pounds with my meds. I asked my psychiatrist three months ago to switch me to Prozac or something to see if I lose weight. She told me that I was the best and most responsive she has ever seen me and at the moment did not feel comfortable making big changes, as I was the most stable that she has seen me.
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