Thanks I will be. I mean I have been on full dose for a year now and am weaning off across over half a year…my first doctor did say that I need to stay on it for a minimum of one year in my condition
That is some expensive abilify! For us it’s £ 8:90 per month if you are not on disability benefits in the UK
I often hear good things about seroquel I might consider going on that if my psychosis comes back would u say there were any bad side effercts at all from seroquel or is it difficult to tell cos u were on other meds too?
Due to a strong religious upbringing that had no knowledge and is against psych meds. I never ended up on aps. Oh I suffered a few lengthy psychosis episodes. First one my parents almost took me to the psychward but I soon "realised my voices were demons and I wasn’t Jesus anymore so that was good enough for them"
I still ocassionaly hear voices, sometimes stuff looks warped and other odd things. But I deal with it.
Getting to the point.
After each psychosis I have felt more brain dead and more difficult to bounce back from.
For first couple years I was having bad flat affect. That finally went away.
But my motivation and avolition is generally pretty bad these days. Takes a boat load of coffee to get moving.
I use CBT actively but sometimes it’s just so challenging to get going. I just try to break down tasks into as small as possible.
So sometimes I wonder if I had at least bee better off trying aps initially. But now that my psychosis is minimal I don’t see any point in trying.
My doc basically just tells me if I’m not coping the way I’m doing things then we go back to the psychiatrist and re-evaluate.
it’s both…
unfortunately tranquilizing the voices requires tranquilizing the mind.
There are a lot of breakthroughs under way though… I mean it takes a lot of patience to be excited, but within 10 years or so the world will probably handle treatment in a totally different fashion.
What sucks is that doctors can’t give schizophrenia the attention it really requires, because it’s just one condition among many.
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Hm that makes it sound like motivation is lost either way but I wonder who of us feels motivated the least ,medicated or non medicated? I can’t help but wonder cos I hate being this slodggy. But yea I’m not recommending people come off if they have been told to stay on they can do an amazing job at removing positive symptoms
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I get scared that they don’t find anything with less side effects… Well not significantly any ways cos the mind is just so complex but I guess u never know .
The only way things are going to improve with medications that are based on the same approach as all these current ones is if they figure out how to target the distribution of the drugs in the brain.
It’s a very cerebral disease… so basically it’s about targeting only certain systems… more in perception…
I mean there are a lot of alternative chemical strategies that haven’t hit marketable status.
CBD pills being one of them…
For a while I thought the GABA approach was promising and it probably still is…
I’m talking more about actual therapeutic processes that can alter one’s internal experience. Not so much pills… that’s where the real change is going to occur.
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Never heard of cbd pills or gaba approach I’ll look into that thanks 
learning the mechanisms is more important than expecting meds that work on the premise…
GABA = Gamma aburylic acid on something like that… and it’s the minds natural neural inhibitor… it’s pretty easy to speculate this has a significant role in the overactivity of psychosis. Some research has been done on the subject.
CBD is a secondary chemical in marijuana. Canabibiol… it promotes relaxation.
The real key in psychosis is the hyper vigilance and sensitivity to stimulus… and that actually deals more with fight-or-flight and autonomous CNS activity…
Nicotine is actually horrible regarding its capacity to be highly addictive and leave the CNS strung out due to it messing with the bodies natural relaxation/alertness balance.
dopamine restriction is what leads to all the negatives… I don’t take anti-psychotic meds because they don’t make sense to me.
recognizing the other systems that might be at work have given me a whole lot more ground to naturally medicate myself upon… and I have indeed made it this far. It’s been about 3 years I think since I got off meds.
I supplemented GABA and serotonin for a while… but I no longer need to do that it seems.
My delusions really did just finally pass only a number of days ago… but positve symptoms stilll exist… however really just willing myself to trust that they aren’t real has brought me a lot of peace in the face of them… and that took forever and a day to become so easy.
Oh yes Ive heard of cbd actually it sounds quite promising from what I’ve just read on the internet too its just scary that it comes from marijuana lol but I know they extract it so yea but still tiny bit scared
that element of marijuana is actually pretty harmonious and does occur in trace amounts in our natural body…
or cannabinols…
Yes I do also read that it is similar to our ECS system so the cbd and our body may actually be quite in tune but it’s just trials for now
And I’ve read but it’s just anecdotal so far… As far as I’m aware … That there are less side effects or no side effects with cbd it all sounds quite intriguing
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I’m not on antipsychotic medication. It’s a struggle though.
If you try to come off aps just make sure to stay in contact with your doctor
oh yeah CBD has a very lightweight impact regarding long term use.
it helped me a lot just reading about all of it. Settled a lot of confusions…
Yes I’m definitely staying in contact with my doctor otherwise I wouldn’t do it. Can I ask is the struggle positive or negative symptoms ?
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But GABA isn’t that involved in several processes in the body so there could be side effects like maybe in the long term?
GABA promotes relaxation in the muscles…
I think it would play a role in neurological modulation… as the restrictive agent that shuts down neural clusters more quickly when they aren’t needed.
The problem is that GABA can’t be fed into the brain without a carrier molecule… to raise brain gaba you have to trick the bodies homeostasis to train it to make more… there is process that has been shown to work… but it’s a wonky schedule.
It’s not dangerous as the body has its natural management agents that would kick in to reduce it’s levels if they are too high and trigger the response.
You’re waking up a bunch of stuff… Potassium, taurine, serotonin… those are some of the primary active agents of cognition… GABA and adenine are usually players in the fatigue and relaxation system.
You might want to look into potassium… it’s got some very enlightening truths to it.