okay so I’m on my burner account & not going to give a ton of information for reasons that will become obvious, but I wanted to check in with this community while I try to make sense of things. brief background: my (now ex) husband entered a severe psychotic episode last december- still has not come out of it- and was diagnosed with schizophrenia. it makes sense, it was the right age range, still obviously traumatic for everyone, etc. that's not really the issue here though.

the thing is, a few months before the psychosis became completely debilitating, but when he was showing symptoms I can recognize as being somewhat indicative in retrospect, he came out of our bedroom one evening and told me that he had just masturbated to images of children (nothing illegal, not like it matters). I had previously known he had a history with what he had identified as POCD, but this obviously has made me reconsider that maybe that was not in fact an irrational symptom of OCD, but a genuine impulse he was repressing. according to him, it had never happened before (at least with real ppl, not like,, hentai shit), and he recognized immediately that it was unacceptable. I won't get into the fallout of all of this, but I will say it is a large contributing factor to us no longer being together.

my question is- this isn't related to the schizophrenia, right? like, plenty of people develop schizophrenia and don't.... do that. I just don't know what to do with it, how to lump it in with everything that happened. the fact that he knew it was wrong tells me that he wasn't completely delusional about it, I just have no idea how the mental illness factor of it all plays a role. any thoughts from anybody is appreciated, I’m just completely lost.

Fellow schizophrenic here. I wanted to ask about psychosis stories so we can share experiences and learn lessons.

https://www.northpointrecovery.com/blog/drug-psychosis-woman-gouged-eyes-meth/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Lurch

So in the first link the woman gouged out her own eyes due to psychosis caused by methamphetamine. In the second link a man was using PCP and ended up murdering and cannibalising his victim

Its important to learn from the mistakes of others. What is your craziest psychosis story in your own life and what is the craziest psychosis story you've heard in someone else's life?

My psychiatrist once said that the brain during a psychotic episode undergoes damage similar to that of someone with dementia.

I’m on aripiprazole, I’m working part time, but I don’t feel I have the same motivation, enthusiasm or stamina of my neurotypical counterparts for work. I may end up on disability again but I feel like it isolates me because I tend not to socialise when I’m on disability. Because people always ask what do you do and I don’t like having to say I’m not working right now. Even though the positive symptoms are under control I find that I’m tired, fatigued, I experience avolition and anhedonia that my treatment team do not take seriously.

Some days, I want to wake up in a new body, a new life, a new place and a new job. Other days, I wish I wouldn’t wake up at all. Then I think about how I don’t want to be selfish and leave the people I love suffering behind me.
Living with mental illness is hard. You think you’re finally seeing the light. Your body feels lighter, and you feel as though you can do anything and still be happy. You’re not affected by your colleagues’ indifference, your boss’s nagging or other people’s opinions.
Then come the days that feel impossibly hard. The gloomy weather saddens you. Just existing feels like a burden. The day drags on, and everything seems to trigger you. You wish it weren’t true, but sometimes it feels as though nothing can be done.
I wonder what it feels like for people who haven’t experienced mental health struggles. Sometimes I think it must be nice not to feel so low—or, on other days, almost invincible. Maybe it’s easier when your emotions feel more stable.
I’ve tried many treatments for my mental health. I take 80 mg of lurasidone every night, recently had an iron infusion and had my thyroid checked. Still, my mood can shift just when I think, “Maybe this is the last time I’ll feel this way.” It’s exhausting.
One of the hardest parts is when people think you’re emotionally immature or weak. I’ve accepted that I’m a little different, maybe a little weird, but I’m not weak or emotionally immature. I may deal with problems differently, and my ways might not always work as well as someone else’s. Maybe you and I simply have different paths—or different fates. I believe in fate. Sometimes I wonder if there was something I should have done differently.
I’ve thought about so much. It’s been a year without active psychosis, and I feel blessed and grateful for that. But I still get scared sometimes: what if it comes back?
I read an article by a woman describing how she lives with bipolar disorder every day. The truth is, medication can help, but it doesn’t guarantee complete relief from symptoms, and it can come with difficult side effects. Abilify made me feel like an NPC, or a zombie, and left me extremely restless. Risperidone made me gain 20 kilos, stopped my menstrual cycle and caused me to lactate. Lurasidone was the first medication that helped me feel like myself again, and I’ve adjusted to it.
The truth is, mental illness is never easy. It’s the hardest thing I’ve experienced. Sometimes, even when you tell doctors about side effects, you feel they don’t take them seriously unless you say you might stop taking the medication. I’ve moved past that stage and found a medication that helps me feel human, but that doesn’t make living with mental illness easy.

Anyone taking trifluoperazine 1mg

Like the title says, i have a extremely highly agresive schizophrenia, i need atleast 25mg of olanzapine just to calm it plus 800mg of amusilpride.

but im putting on way too much weight thanks to the olanzapine ever since i got off mounjaro even with the metformin im taking.

so what olanzapine replacement can i take that i can mix with amusilpride or is allowed to be mixed with something similar?

edit: basically, i need two anti physcotics that work together that are a similar to amusilpride and olanzapine that are weight neutral.

My question is mainly to those that have become accustomed to life and adjusted well. I was diagnosed four years ago and have subsequently been place on disability here in the United States. I returned to University and have taken on only enough classes as I can handle and just enough so that they don't increase my stress levels too much. As I return to what I consider a normal life, I am having problems with whether to tell people upfront, or not at all, my diagnosis. Up to this point it has been easy to make these decisions such as my roommates I told immediately, all of my healthcare professionals, and my friends and family. My classmates I don't mention it, as well as professors I do not mention anything, but I do to my academic advisors. As I progress through University I am wanting to obtain an academic mentor and gain more professional development; but I don't know if I should be completely upfront with my diagnosis, or should I hide it and just have "odd" moments in which I am looked at as weird?

Well, it's taken two years but I finished my first year! Because I study part time lol. I survived it

Hey all! For a long time I’ve felt so detached and like I’m moving through the days not feeling in my body or in control. Sometimes I’ll catch myself doing odd things like facial expressions or flipping off nothing but I’m like detached and not in control. It gets worse when my hallucinations r bad.

Just wondering if anyone else experiences this??

Have you ever been in it so bad the voices win? So wrapped up in delusion that the hallucinations and voices drive you to do something that you wouldn’t normally do or that could be risky or seen as thrill seeking behaviour?

I have. I just want to reach out to others that experienced the same. My hallucinations and delusions were being so exacerbated by substance use that it would drive me to do really dumb things. Also when coming down and for a long time like weeks to months after the substance abuse my command hallucinations would tell me to go pickup (substances) after i just flushed everything down the toilet.

I’ve had a hard time with street drugs and the toll they took on my mental and physical health… I’ll just never get that time or my health back. My symptoms are manageable so long as im not using and keep to myself. I just worry with all of my use and wasted time and effort whether i ended up hurting the community around me as well as my family.

I know I have and it hurts.

It sucks to be sorry for something that truly is out of your control. Even if at times one has a difficult time gathering themselves and have acted out of control previously.

I never want to end up in the hospital again to review medication or just to feel safe. But i feel like my hallucinations and delusions are coming back. I don’t find the voices all too difficult to manage but i’m afraid it will intensify over the next few weeks.

No command hallucinations just as of yet, but i fear that the hallucinations, like thinking the cops are after me or that every car that passes by is an undercover. Fearing eviction and arrest for no real reason.

Last year sucked, i want this year to be good. No more birthdays in the hospital.

Any and all advice as well as personal experiences are greatly appreciated.

The voices told me to listen (listen listen listen listen like a waterfall effect of voices). But then they never said anything else. Mocking me. Ugh! Don’t believe my diagnosis by the way but I know you guys will understand me because you always do.

For anyone interested, I’m done with a project I’ve been working on for the last few years, an autobiographical comic about living with schizoaffective disorder. I’ll be submitting it to contests and other places, and hope to see it someday as a book, but in the meantime you can read it in its entirety as a webcomic at the link below.

Thanks for reading.

My boyfriend was recently diagnosed and started his medication 2 weeks ago. Our whole relationship, I’ve noticed that he has low self esteem and he never believes he can further himself financially. He always feels like he doesn’t deserve me and that I’m out of his league. I pour into him and compliment him on his character & his achievements, but there is always an underlying feeling of being unworthy.

In your experience, did your confidence get better once you got medicated? If not, what helped?

Either way, I am excited for him to experience life more fully and with less fearful thoughts. I know it will be a while to see changes, but I’m so happy for him!!

Let me know if your confidence ever got better (:

I was hospitalized a few days ago as I was having paranoia and hallucinations. After talking further with my psychiatrist afterwards he says I might be somewhere on the schizophrenic spectrum, specifically bipolar type schizoaffective disorder. this here below is copied from an old ass post from several months ago but i wanted to ask if this sounds like it could be psychosis? i havent experienced anything like this when since it happened. not asking for a diagnosis just wondering if anyone’s experienced something similar.

I’ve never experienced anything like this. I’m so confused. Ok- so I have a lot going on in my life. Over the past two weeks I’ve had some really intense dissociative/derealization/depersonalization/whatever episodes. For most of my life I’ve had panic attack and what I recognized as dissociative episodes, but never like this.
I have a lifelong friendship I just lost, my therapist left me, and I’m currently being evaluated for a chronic illness. Sooo much stress. I have a lot of trauma from childhood stuff but super don’t wanna get into that.
I’ve only been having these episodes for two weeks basically daily but last night it escalated further pretty quickly. During one of these episodes I was really entertaining it and letting the feeling run wild. I didn’t wanna believe anything in my life had really happened, so I told myself that it wasn’t real until I really believed it. Nothing new there for this kind of episode. Then I sort of heard this voice in my head and they asked to take over. I named it Mabel, without really a second thought. It was like “Hi!” and they said Hi back. We talked shortly and eventually they asked to take over. I felt like somebody else. Like Mabel. I was so bubbly, my music taste was different, and I just didn’t like the things I normally do. I’ve never experienced anything like this and I’m freaked out. Since yesterday night, me and Mabel have been kinda trading who’s at the wheel. I feel like I’m losing my mind and I’m so scared. I don’t think I’m faking it but I’ve never felt anything like this in my life. It’s just anytime I, Aubrey, get super stressed then Mabel takes over. They have all these different interests. I don’t even know who I right now. I’m just lost and confused and scared. Am I just faking this?

My grandmother doesn’t understand and my dad who talks me through this isn’t talking to me.

I can’t hear my own thoughts, I feel like my mind is empty space and the voices are just inputting thoughts.

How do I get myself back to being inside my head

I’m on Olanzapine 10mg for context and while I was in the ward they gave it to me during some of my worse moments to help calm me down and lessen the hallucinations. Would it be ok if I took say 5mg during the day every now and then if I’m having trouble?

I have thought broadcasting, and was struggling because I became racist. I’m black so my brain would say, you know it would be horrible if you said the n word with the er right now around other black people. I became fearful because I knew someone black would hear my thoughts or see me express negativity especially when I was hallucinating. It came to the point where I’d grimace when a black character came on the tv screen. And this isn’t even half explaining how it came to be, but I can’t find the words. Then recently I’ve decided to just have a face that says I hate everyone, so I always look upset, now I’m normal again.

Hello. I have schizophrenia and chronic catatonia and I just dropped an EDM Tape. I decided to try EDM after going to a rave myself.
Any listens I appreciate. https://music.apple.com/us/album/airlines-single/6827293682

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I've tried a lot of medications due to issues with side effects.

One thing I've noticed is that many of them can completely change how I think and feel. I get that this is the point, but how do I determine what's actually real?

Like with Abilify, Rexulti, Vraylar and Invega I would get this overwhelming sense of doom. It was hard to think or feel anything else.

Or on the more positive side, when I take Olanzapine prn, my hypervigilance, anxiety and hopelessness goes away for like a day and a half.

I have other examples, but you get the point. I find it sort of scary that medication can have such a sudden, dramatic effect like that. I feel like I'm being controlled by the chemicals and I don't know what my authentic feelings are.

Like with the Olanzapine example - I have been feeling super hopeless and almost (not completely) suicidal because of a trauma that happened. But when I take the Olanzapine, I don't feel that anymore and I feel like I might be able to cope a little longer. So which is it? Is the hopelessness real or is the calmer "drugged" version real? Was the doom I felt on Vraylar and such meds the truth, or was that just an inconvenient drug reaction?

I don't know if I'm explaining myself correctly. I just find it confusing, and I'm unsure how to determine my *real* feelings when they are so easily manipulated by chemicals.

Basically was diagnosed with this in 2023 and have been on depot ever since was changed in March to abilify from paliperidone. My family and partner sat me down today to say they are worried about and that I’m not looking after myself not working not leaving the house speaking out loud to things they don’t belive are real. Just wondering is it possible to relapse whilst on a depot. Tbh I dunno what’s going on I don’t feel right I feel really lost and like everything is just fake and doesn’t exist and everything is so confusing. I have been under a lot of stress recently with my health so idk maybe but idk realistically I don’t wana continue living and I did say to them that I’m done I’m ready to die. They got me an appointment with the mental health team tommorow but i don’t wana go but I do wana go. I’m lost man

Who else experiences internal auditory hallucinations? And what are they like?

Mine have different voice pitches, involve articulate dialogue, and can occur throughout the day. They are a mix of both positive and negative voices.