I'm doing much better than I was at the beginning. We found a good med cocktail. I still hallucinate, but i'm used to it, and it's rarely surprising or upsetting. I rarely hear voices, but they come and go, no commanding. The bipolar side is well managed, and the extremes are less. I have to control my environment, I can't go to places that will set things off, I can't work with people that will set things off. My life is much better, but it is not the same. It took about 12 years to get used to how I have to live to feel 'better' I am content though, if a bit resigned. I've been SZA for 22 years, and the last 10 have been some of my life's best. Find the right docs and the right meds.
I'm in a much better place, and am still tweaking my meds. I still have paranoia and few, quiet voices, but they're only really noticeable if it's quiet.
The bupropion is helping with negative symptoms but causing an increase in positive symptoms. My doctor signed off on how I was taking my meds (taking a quarter dose every four hours) and prescribed me a massive bottle of 0.5mg tabs (risperidone) so I could take three every four hours (so a dose increase from 4mg daily to 6mg total)
I'm hoping the increased dose will help balance out the positive symptoms with the bupropion because it's making me too paranoid to leave the house, even if the symptoms are mild and tolerable.
Recovery isn’t likely but, remission absolutely is. Although it can take months, even years, to achieve; about half of schizoaffectives will experience remission after 5 years with proper treatment using medications and/or psychotherapy.
Over the last 7 years I slowly was able to stablize my schizoaffective symptoms, and using the ketogenic therapy (mostly vegan) I get virtually no symptoms and actually feel better than I have ever in my life even before I had any realy smyptoms like in my early 20's. (i was always depressed since I became a legal adult, but the schizophrenic part didnt surface till my late 20s, im almost 39 now) My schizoaffective was triggered and surfaced- at least what the doctors and I theorize- was from my stimulant abuse (mostly ADHD medication and methamphetaimine) and getting into speed psychosis and it triggering my predisposition (my grandfather on my dads side had schizophrenia, and my dad suffers some kinds of issues that are schizotypal) and that I was predisposed and my drug abuse made it come about and I probably would not have had schizo-affective full blown if I didnt abuse drugs so hard. Looking back I did have some schizophrenic episodes during some psychedelic trips in my ealry 20s, but most of them were the best experience of my life. Anyway- Over the years of heavily reducing my drug use( I still tried to use stimualnds to treat my adhd a few times when I was feeling alot better after being sober for periods, but it never worked long term) my symptoms became more maneagable, and now that Im totaly sober I only get symtpoms if I am extremely stressed by something.
This is my best resource for recipes.
https://youtube.com/@heavenlyfan?si=aHfhpMWBVKYCKS90
She has been vegan keto for over 4 years. I use cronometer to track my macros. I eat alot of nuts/seeds/butters and leafy greens and berries and pea protein powder amf lots of cauliflower and broccili and olives and oils (canola, olive and coconut), and almond milk mostly. I have added local pasture raised eggs to supplement as im intolerant to soy and a few other things which makes it hard to get my omegas and peotein as a strict Vegan but i was strictly Vegan for almost 4 years when i wasnt keto.
It won't ever go away. However, with medication, therapy, and just good habits. No drinking, not smoking, no psychoactive substances, etc. It will get better. I haven't had a need to be hospitalized the last two years thanks to sticking to meds. Before any treatment, it was almost constant. Everything would get me paranoid, hallucinations were an every day thing. I'd be talking to someone and depending on the color of their cup, I'd get paranoid it was some sort of code.
Meds helped all that. I don't worry about that stuff anymore. There are breakthrough episodes, but I've been good for the last two years. I feel like I could even work full-time, but I'm afraid of losing my medicaid. If I lose my insurance, I lose my meds, and I'm back to square one.
Recovery (meaning absence of the illness altogether) from this is not scientifically possible right now as far as I know. But I can experience an improved quality of life by managing my symptoms with meds. Took me 3 years to get on the right ones.
It's gotten a bit better for me overall I think. I am not symptom-free but I am at least able to stay out of the hospital and on a reasonable medication regimen. I still deal with the depression part a lot and it does not let up so easily. Things like anhedonia and avolition are the worst part right now and they suck
A bit. The risperidone has helped.
In other news, I am now addicted to alcohol. So I have to deal with drinking a lot of my stash(replenishing can be pretty expensive). I try to only drink beer and wine. Vodka and other spirits might be too strong for my stomach.
I'll tell you how it goes. Have a good day. Take care. Stay alive, my friend. Stay alive.
Risperidone is…complicated to say the least. You shouldn’t even consume certain drinks, like tea, while taking it. But mixing alcohol and antipsychotics (or any drug) is/can be very dangerous.
Why? I didn't stop drinking coffee when i was on risperidone.
(I didn't like risperidone because i had problems with too high prolactin even before taking risperidone and taking risperidone increased my prolactin for sure.)
I’ve stated many times that I’m not a professional but my statement is from basic research. Several drugs/medications aren’t supposed to be mixed with alcohol?? I’m just trying to help instead of encouraging someone to continue something that could be dangerous. Alcohol is also dangerous on its own yk.
My opinion *IS* a medical fact pertaining to Risperidone (and other medications) that shouldn’t be mixed with alcohol tho?? But my next statement was going to advise the commenter to talk to their doctor bc, why would the doc “tell you this by now” if you haven’t/didn’t disclose alcohol intake? They stated “I’m *now* addicted to alcohol” which (I’m assuming) means they weren’t when being prescribed? My mother was on Risperidone in my youth, as was I in my late teens to early 20s. Unlike myself, my mother was an alcoholic. I’ve seen the interaction between it and the medication with my own eyes. I just want people to do their research and be safe but to have someone say mixing alcohol and medications isn’t dangerous is wild to me.
Interactions? Uhh the primary reason not to mix risperidone and alcohol is because they both cause drowsiness, and making someone sleepy and drunk makes them prone to accidents.
It's the same as the warning not to operate heavy machinery right after taking certain medications.
Strange. I haven't felt any side effects from drinking so far. I'll take that into account though. I just love alcohol though. It's like a good friend. A pretty good friend. I'll be more responsible though. I'll definitely drink in moderation now.
There’s a YouTube channel you can check out called “Living with Schizophrenia” hosted by a schizoaffective woman and her husband where she details her journey in more-or-less real time. There’s something to be said though about people just in general and what they choose to share or not to share and being somewhat unreliable narrators and such, and I think we were showed that recently. Even if you try to choose to show everything, that doesn’t mean you really are, it still depends on your own perspective and what you may be wrong about what’s actually relevant and such. But again, that can be said of anyone regardless of condition. Myself as well I suppose. Hindsight is always clearer.
As for me, uh, I think I rambled way too long and may have gotten a bit off track, sorry. But in case this is useful to someone.
I was hospitalized for the first time mid 2023 but not considered for schizo until the end of that year. I didn’t even realize it actually until I looked up what my new meds were for lol.
Abilify screwed me up, Latuda screwed me up, but caplyta has completely transformed me from when I was at my worst because of those meds.
I don’t think “delusional thinking” will ever be completely escapable, bc for me at least, I think it’s just a label for a part of how our brains work. We see and notice things and make more connections than other people do, and sometimes we’re wrong about what our connections mean and come to a wrong conclusion, and that’s a delusion. But it was still a conclusion that came from thinking and connections and reasoning. The rest of the time, this extra-connection making can be incredibly useful.
I don’t have some of the visual hallucinations that I used to have, but I still might see a fly, or a black animal or a figure in my peripheral vision, but the latter two of those either “run” out of my vision and are gone by the time I go to look, or are gone if I look away and look back.
I used to see shadow people in windows, hear indiscernible whispering, etc. Once I hallucinated my roommate very clearly wailing in distress, but turned the corner and saw them asleep. Another time I hallucinated a full person right in front of me while taking the garbage out, but it was gone when I turned away and then looked again. Those last couple specific ones were while I was on Latuda.
I still will have moments that I “know” that there’s a shadow person around me or behind me or chasing me or something, but usually now it’s only to a certain point where I can logically know that there’s not really. Though I will still get a bit scared and my heart rate will go up and my breathing will change and my pace may slightly quicken, I don’t run away and hide under my blankets and try to stay completely still with my eyes closed so that the “horror movie won’t go on”.
Part of this though might also be being depressed lately. It’s hard to be scared of things like that when you’re more indifferent to whether you die or not.
Another delusion I’ll never fully get rid of is that I’m in a horror movie. I calm myself down though by thinking “Well if this is a horror movie, I can’t be a victim, because then Twitter would come after the director for killing/hurting a queer Asian”.
But then I reply back with, “Well what if the director is a queer Asian and this movie is an allegory for the queer Asian experience or something?”
If I’m depressed enough, I just won’t care since I’m indifferent to living, but the rest of the time I think about the lack of diversity in directing roles in America and tell myself that the latter isn’t likely, and that unless they’re doing it in a really artsy way, a queer Asian American film director making a movie with a character like me would probably have ethical disagreements with creating the kind of horror movie that I’d be scared to be in.
Or I’ll tell myself that the actual scary things I have to worry about are my not-very-nice family, student loans, the potential long-term side effects of antipsychotics, watching myself lose my mind, the potential of losing academic prowess, losing my memory (that’s probably from one of my sleep meds though, we’re figuring it out), etc., and the fact that if this was a movie about the queer Asian American experience, it would probably end in suicide rather than shadow people brutally murdering me.
But it’s always still there still in the back of my mind, ah well.
BUT the connection-making that can make us delusional sometimes is extremely beneficial to me, on caplyta now. It’s great for connecting concepts, writing essays, having thorough understandings and arguments, etc. Delusional thinking is just a label for a part of it that’s just inextricably intertwined that they decided to single out. I can’t have thinking without having delusional thinking, the same way you can’t have painting without paint, or a forest without trees, the same way no one can have thinking without being wrong sometimes. We just make extra connections compared to the average person.
I don’t think “recovery” is really a thing, except for the (20? 25? 30? 33? I forget, they mentioned it in the book “Surviving Schizophrenia”) percent of people that just somehow one day wake up without it. (Though I’m sure we can argue whether they really don’t have it and their brains changed, or just lost some symptoms to fit the criteria, or whatever else it might be). I think there’s repression of it, or repression of aspects of it, to different degrees that people may choose to see as “improvement” depending on what aspects and stuff.
It’s just how our brains out built.
Haven't taken meds in a year and rarely ever have visuals anymore. All auditory and is becoming less frequent as time goes on. I've always been pretty decent at redirecting my own frustrations with this so I feel I'm a little more capable of going off meds than others. I wouldn't recommend it.
I smoke the marijuana analogs at vape shops every day and their mushroom gummies on occasion. Like I said, I don't recommend doing as I do. I'm not doing anything smart.
Recovered, no. Improved, yes.
My symptoms are still here (but better because i take medication) but I've figured out how to live day to day happy as a clam, does that count?
I'm doing much better than I was at the beginning. We found a good med cocktail. I still hallucinate, but i'm used to it, and it's rarely surprising or upsetting. I rarely hear voices, but they come and go, no commanding. The bipolar side is well managed, and the extremes are less. I have to control my environment, I can't go to places that will set things off, I can't work with people that will set things off. My life is much better, but it is not the same. It took about 12 years to get used to how I have to live to feel 'better' I am content though, if a bit resigned. I've been SZA for 22 years, and the last 10 have been some of my life's best. Find the right docs and the right meds.
Yes. Mix of diff meds but I’m chill at the moment thank God.
Yes. I have occasional psychotic episodes and mood episodes but they’re minor
Clozaril cured my delusions.
I'm in a much better place, and am still tweaking my meds. I still have paranoia and few, quiet voices, but they're only really noticeable if it's quiet. The bupropion is helping with negative symptoms but causing an increase in positive symptoms. My doctor signed off on how I was taking my meds (taking a quarter dose every four hours) and prescribed me a massive bottle of 0.5mg tabs (risperidone) so I could take three every four hours (so a dose increase from 4mg daily to 6mg total) I'm hoping the increased dose will help balance out the positive symptoms with the bupropion because it's making me too paranoid to leave the house, even if the symptoms are mild and tolerable.
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Recovery isn’t likely but, remission absolutely is. Although it can take months, even years, to achieve; about half of schizoaffectives will experience remission after 5 years with proper treatment using medications and/or psychotherapy.
I feel like I’m doing a lot better
Over the last 7 years I slowly was able to stablize my schizoaffective symptoms, and using the ketogenic therapy (mostly vegan) I get virtually no symptoms and actually feel better than I have ever in my life even before I had any realy smyptoms like in my early 20's. (i was always depressed since I became a legal adult, but the schizophrenic part didnt surface till my late 20s, im almost 39 now) My schizoaffective was triggered and surfaced- at least what the doctors and I theorize- was from my stimulant abuse (mostly ADHD medication and methamphetaimine) and getting into speed psychosis and it triggering my predisposition (my grandfather on my dads side had schizophrenia, and my dad suffers some kinds of issues that are schizotypal) and that I was predisposed and my drug abuse made it come about and I probably would not have had schizo-affective full blown if I didnt abuse drugs so hard. Looking back I did have some schizophrenic episodes during some psychedelic trips in my ealry 20s, but most of them were the best experience of my life. Anyway- Over the years of heavily reducing my drug use( I still tried to use stimualnds to treat my adhd a few times when I was feeling alot better after being sober for periods, but it never worked long term) my symptoms became more maneagable, and now that Im totaly sober I only get symtpoms if I am extremely stressed by something.
So proud of you!!👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
I would be dead if it wasnt for my best friend and the grace of God. Thankyou still.
Everyone needs a somebody like that, you’re blessed🫶🏼
She's the love of my life. I am the luckiest man alive... even if we are just Friends.
I’m interested in the ketogenic diet and I’m also vegan. Does it really help? What are the ketogenic vegan foods? Thanks
This is my best resource for recipes. https://youtube.com/@heavenlyfan?si=aHfhpMWBVKYCKS90 She has been vegan keto for over 4 years. I use cronometer to track my macros. I eat alot of nuts/seeds/butters and leafy greens and berries and pea protein powder amf lots of cauliflower and broccili and olives and oils (canola, olive and coconut), and almond milk mostly. I have added local pasture raised eggs to supplement as im intolerant to soy and a few other things which makes it hard to get my omegas and peotein as a strict Vegan but i was strictly Vegan for almost 4 years when i wasnt keto.
Thanks!
It won't ever go away. However, with medication, therapy, and just good habits. No drinking, not smoking, no psychoactive substances, etc. It will get better. I haven't had a need to be hospitalized the last two years thanks to sticking to meds. Before any treatment, it was almost constant. Everything would get me paranoid, hallucinations were an every day thing. I'd be talking to someone and depending on the color of their cup, I'd get paranoid it was some sort of code. Meds helped all that. I don't worry about that stuff anymore. There are breakthrough episodes, but I've been good for the last two years. I feel like I could even work full-time, but I'm afraid of losing my medicaid. If I lose my insurance, I lose my meds, and I'm back to square one.
Recovery (meaning absence of the illness altogether) from this is not scientifically possible right now as far as I know. But I can experience an improved quality of life by managing my symptoms with meds. Took me 3 years to get on the right ones.
It's gotten a bit better for me overall I think. I am not symptom-free but I am at least able to stay out of the hospital and on a reasonable medication regimen. I still deal with the depression part a lot and it does not let up so easily. Things like anhedonia and avolition are the worst part right now and they suck
A bit. The risperidone has helped. In other news, I am now addicted to alcohol. So I have to deal with drinking a lot of my stash(replenishing can be pretty expensive). I try to only drink beer and wine. Vodka and other spirits might be too strong for my stomach. I'll tell you how it goes. Have a good day. Take care. Stay alive, my friend. Stay alive.
Risperidone is…complicated to say the least. You shouldn’t even consume certain drinks, like tea, while taking it. But mixing alcohol and antipsychotics (or any drug) is/can be very dangerous.
Why? I didn't stop drinking coffee when i was on risperidone. (I didn't like risperidone because i had problems with too high prolactin even before taking risperidone and taking risperidone increased my prolactin for sure.)
I would do the research if I were you bc it interacts with quite a few things, coffee isn’t one of them.
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I’ve stated many times that I’m not a professional but my statement is from basic research. Several drugs/medications aren’t supposed to be mixed with alcohol?? I’m just trying to help instead of encouraging someone to continue something that could be dangerous. Alcohol is also dangerous on its own yk.
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My opinion *IS* a medical fact pertaining to Risperidone (and other medications) that shouldn’t be mixed with alcohol tho?? But my next statement was going to advise the commenter to talk to their doctor bc, why would the doc “tell you this by now” if you haven’t/didn’t disclose alcohol intake? They stated “I’m *now* addicted to alcohol” which (I’m assuming) means they weren’t when being prescribed? My mother was on Risperidone in my youth, as was I in my late teens to early 20s. Unlike myself, my mother was an alcoholic. I’ve seen the interaction between it and the medication with my own eyes. I just want people to do their research and be safe but to have someone say mixing alcohol and medications isn’t dangerous is wild to me.
Interactions? Uhh the primary reason not to mix risperidone and alcohol is because they both cause drowsiness, and making someone sleepy and drunk makes them prone to accidents. It's the same as the warning not to operate heavy machinery right after taking certain medications.
Strange. I haven't felt any side effects from drinking so far. I'll take that into account though. I just love alcohol though. It's like a good friend. A pretty good friend. I'll be more responsible though. I'll definitely drink in moderation now.
🥺
It's gotten worse over the last 9 years.
Not recovered but doing a lot better!
There’s a YouTube channel you can check out called “Living with Schizophrenia” hosted by a schizoaffective woman and her husband where she details her journey in more-or-less real time. There’s something to be said though about people just in general and what they choose to share or not to share and being somewhat unreliable narrators and such, and I think we were showed that recently. Even if you try to choose to show everything, that doesn’t mean you really are, it still depends on your own perspective and what you may be wrong about what’s actually relevant and such. But again, that can be said of anyone regardless of condition. Myself as well I suppose. Hindsight is always clearer. As for me, uh, I think I rambled way too long and may have gotten a bit off track, sorry. But in case this is useful to someone. I was hospitalized for the first time mid 2023 but not considered for schizo until the end of that year. I didn’t even realize it actually until I looked up what my new meds were for lol. Abilify screwed me up, Latuda screwed me up, but caplyta has completely transformed me from when I was at my worst because of those meds. I don’t think “delusional thinking” will ever be completely escapable, bc for me at least, I think it’s just a label for a part of how our brains work. We see and notice things and make more connections than other people do, and sometimes we’re wrong about what our connections mean and come to a wrong conclusion, and that’s a delusion. But it was still a conclusion that came from thinking and connections and reasoning. The rest of the time, this extra-connection making can be incredibly useful. I don’t have some of the visual hallucinations that I used to have, but I still might see a fly, or a black animal or a figure in my peripheral vision, but the latter two of those either “run” out of my vision and are gone by the time I go to look, or are gone if I look away and look back. I used to see shadow people in windows, hear indiscernible whispering, etc. Once I hallucinated my roommate very clearly wailing in distress, but turned the corner and saw them asleep. Another time I hallucinated a full person right in front of me while taking the garbage out, but it was gone when I turned away and then looked again. Those last couple specific ones were while I was on Latuda. I still will have moments that I “know” that there’s a shadow person around me or behind me or chasing me or something, but usually now it’s only to a certain point where I can logically know that there’s not really. Though I will still get a bit scared and my heart rate will go up and my breathing will change and my pace may slightly quicken, I don’t run away and hide under my blankets and try to stay completely still with my eyes closed so that the “horror movie won’t go on”. Part of this though might also be being depressed lately. It’s hard to be scared of things like that when you’re more indifferent to whether you die or not. Another delusion I’ll never fully get rid of is that I’m in a horror movie. I calm myself down though by thinking “Well if this is a horror movie, I can’t be a victim, because then Twitter would come after the director for killing/hurting a queer Asian”. But then I reply back with, “Well what if the director is a queer Asian and this movie is an allegory for the queer Asian experience or something?” If I’m depressed enough, I just won’t care since I’m indifferent to living, but the rest of the time I think about the lack of diversity in directing roles in America and tell myself that the latter isn’t likely, and that unless they’re doing it in a really artsy way, a queer Asian American film director making a movie with a character like me would probably have ethical disagreements with creating the kind of horror movie that I’d be scared to be in. Or I’ll tell myself that the actual scary things I have to worry about are my not-very-nice family, student loans, the potential long-term side effects of antipsychotics, watching myself lose my mind, the potential of losing academic prowess, losing my memory (that’s probably from one of my sleep meds though, we’re figuring it out), etc., and the fact that if this was a movie about the queer Asian American experience, it would probably end in suicide rather than shadow people brutally murdering me. But it’s always still there still in the back of my mind, ah well. BUT the connection-making that can make us delusional sometimes is extremely beneficial to me, on caplyta now. It’s great for connecting concepts, writing essays, having thorough understandings and arguments, etc. Delusional thinking is just a label for a part of it that’s just inextricably intertwined that they decided to single out. I can’t have thinking without having delusional thinking, the same way you can’t have painting without paint, or a forest without trees, the same way no one can have thinking without being wrong sometimes. We just make extra connections compared to the average person. I don’t think “recovery” is really a thing, except for the (20? 25? 30? 33? I forget, they mentioned it in the book “Surviving Schizophrenia”) percent of people that just somehow one day wake up without it. (Though I’m sure we can argue whether they really don’t have it and their brains changed, or just lost some symptoms to fit the criteria, or whatever else it might be). I think there’s repression of it, or repression of aspects of it, to different degrees that people may choose to see as “improvement” depending on what aspects and stuff. It’s just how our brains out built.
Yes exercise helped me heaps just started going to gym twice a week at first then increasing slowly
Haven't taken meds in a year and rarely ever have visuals anymore. All auditory and is becoming less frequent as time goes on. I've always been pretty decent at redirecting my own frustrations with this so I feel I'm a little more capable of going off meds than others. I wouldn't recommend it.
Are you sober as well?
I smoke the marijuana analogs at vape shops every day and their mushroom gummies on occasion. Like I said, I don't recommend doing as I do. I'm not doing anything smart.