I think what a doc said to me is useful. He helps people get off meds a lot… but he doesn’t want “getting off meds” to be the ultimate goal, but “having the best possible quality of life”. Both more or less meds can be a road to that, but you have to keep your eye on the life quality, not the amount of meds.
1 Like
I’ve been thinking on that and the best I can tell you is that any severe illness will warp your mental health. We tend to develop poor habits around our health conditions. Alcoholics do it. Heart patients do it. No reason why those with SZ can’t do it (a good example being the “learned helplessness” that so many of us are or have been afflicted with).
12 Step programs are pretty powerful at helping people find bad behaviours and replace them with more positive behaviours. In my own case I’ve found that lowering my stress levels through working my AA program pays off with having lower SZ symptoms because they get worse as my own stress load worsens. The program putting me in a healthier head space returns dividends elsewhere. I think we are prone to getting caught in positive feedback loops that screw the heck out of the SZ and make us much more ill than we need to be. My feeling is that this is where the benefits of 12 Step programs come in. They may not fix the SZ, but they lessen the baggage we carry around because of it.
I hope I made sense?
1 Like
I am not one of those schizophrenia patients that can cope without medication. I would be a danger to the general public if I were not on anti-psychotic medication.
2 Likes
Yes it makes perfect sense to me. I think that is really important. For this reason, I’ve thought about joining a kind of recovery group that might be similar to 12 steps in this respect, even if I have no substance abuse problem. In this particular group they take in all sorts of people, for example with bad relationship patterns or internet addiction or any lifestyle issue. I don’t know much about 12 steps, but I believe you that this helps a lot.
1 Like
There’s a wide range of programs to choose from. I have not been to Emotions Anonymous, but I know people who have found their version of the 12 Steps to be helpful.
1 Like
Thank you! 151515
1 Like
Perhaps you are right. I hope so at least. 
1 Like
I can say absolutely nothing useful about your possibilities to get medfree/psychosisfree.
But it doesn’t say a thing about you being valuable as a person, this I am sure of. Some of the kindest, most sensitive people I know, who are very valuable to me, are on psychosis-meds for life and still have symptoms off and on. It says nothing about your worth as a person.
3 Likes
Yes, schizophrenics are still people. Citizens of a country that can still contribute to society and the nation’s economy. Employers don’t turn down a job to a cancer recovery patient do they?
2 Likes
O can cope wothout APs now but I need ADs because 9 have severe depression, even though it’s supposed to be bipolar. I do get hypomania on occasion.
I have sone positice symptoms on in a while. Nothing major. My worst symptoms come from anxiety/social anxiety which my therapist says could happen to anyone, not just sz/sza folks.
She’s said I am a rarity. She said before me she had heard of people recovering but never saw it on her 30 years on the job.
3 Likes
I would love to be meds free because I know I have a lot more of determination without meds.
But that comes at a big cost for me. I get angry a lot. And I loose touch with reality.
I was able to go 6 months without meds. But at the last 2 months I was really not well. I was crying randomly. I was hurting myself. I did bad things. So I had to start taking my meds again.
Does someone think Lion’s mane Hericium erinaceus can help ? I don’t know if people recover with it. I also take Omega 3 and meds
2 Likes
How long have you been without meds??
What schizophrenic on this forum wouldn’t love to be free of anti-psychotic medication?
2 Likes
I’m not “without meds”. I am on an AD and have an AP prn just in case, but haven’t used it.
Its been about 18 months.
3 Likes
It’s a grey area with mental health professionals divided as to how useful it is re treating SZ . However no one can deny you’re doing very well. That leads me to believe that its success or failure may depend on the personality of the person receiving it.
1 Like
Did your keyboard come from Ireland?
1 Like
Yes it’s like saying I would love not to be sick 
Too bad you can’t undo being sick 
1 Like
Sh111111t.
It must have.
2 Likes
Schizophrenia is an illness in which majority of patients will need medication for for the rest of their lives. Unfortunate that one cannot undo being born a schizophrenic.
After 5 years since my sza started I came off meds and for another 5 years I coped ok but it came back. That was 10years ago and I’m on meds ever since. Now when I try to stop meds I get very ill and need hospital.
1 Like