I suspect that I have drug induced psychosis and not schizphrenia, maybe if I stop my meds I will know? If I stay away from drugs and don’t get psychosis then I can confirm it?
I only have positive symptoms when I smoke cannabis
I have negative symptoms when I do any drug nowadays
after 2 years my negatives dissappeared and now I only have them cause Im doing some drugs.
First and foremost you need to quit using drugs. After a while of being off drugs, reevaluate. If you still think it’s due to drugs, and not sz, tell your pdoc. Ask if you can be slowly weaned off your meds.
Not many can take illegals and do well here. I’d concur. Stop the street drugs and see how you go. Made my life easy giving up the reefer. That was just a smart move way back when.
yea discuss it with your pdoc. Maybe you can try to taper down the meds if you don’t use drugs anymore. But i would take it slow though… don’t rush it.
I have schizophrenia but because I fell into addictive behaviors it made everything more complicated for treatment. I’m pretty sure I have schizo-affective, which is depression and schizophrenia. But since I told people at rehab I had Bipolar and got a new psychiatrist I assumed I had Bipolar, and it would be ok to stop taking anti-psychotics. Then I became increasingly more manic and started self-medicating with drugs. So I think what came first is the mental illness that caused me to use drugs. Not the other way around. There are plenty of people who have “Schizophrenia” and use drugs that mask their symptoms. It’s a slippery slope and I wouldn’t recommend it.
It’s hard to accept that you have a mental illness. But it’s better to consult a professional before experimenting on your own, or stopping medications. One thing about both Bipolar and Schizophrenia is that when symptoms go away people think they don’t need meds anymore. But that just means the meds are working.
Sorry you have to go through this, I would recommend not using any sort of street drugs because it can cause irreversible damage and make everything worse. Also I quit smoking weed because it triggers my impulsiveness and is psychoactive. So now I am working on being completely sober and sticking to a routine that won’t derail my health and wellbeing.