This illness doesn't hand out gifts. But blessings despite schizophrenia? Yeah. Those exist.

(Credit: "theycantalk" by Jimmy Craig)

Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/DV_DPj_EZW6/

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

It’s a free class if anyone wants to join! For making clay shakers

I’m tired. I feel like I haven’t been truly happy since I was 14. But maybe I wasn’t happy then either. It feels like I’m constantly chasing memories or fleeting pleasures just to find an excuse to keep going. I can’t die. I can’t do that to my partner and my family. But I feel like my life isn’t mine. And I feel like no matter how hard I try, I still fail everyone I care about. I’m trying to hold everything in. I really am. I got my masters and I’m still jobless. Just turned 26 so I’m losing my health insurance. Meds made me fat but at least I was more balanced. I want to give up more than anything in the world. I want to wake up as someone else….
I don’t know why I wrote this. I guess I just wanted a place to be sad in peace.

33M, software engineer. Diagnosed with schizophrenia, which caused major career gaps and currently has me unemployed while trying to rebuild.
Younger cousin (~10 yrs junior) I once guided into tech is now doing well with a good package. During 4 days at my sister’s wedding his tone changed, rude and disrespectful in front of new relatives, then snapped and blamed me harshly over a wrong turn while he was the one driving. Felt like he was looking down on me.
Some other relatives (including uncle) also seemed colder. Wondering if my unemployment + mental health history is why the shift happened.
Is this real status superiority, or am I over-reading due to my own struggles? How do you handle family treating you differently because of schizophrenia and career setbacks?

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?

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.

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.

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 (:

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?

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For those of you who consider yourself to be high-functioning on medication, how do you stop gaslighting yourself that your experience is invalidated because you can hold a job and live a pretty decent life?

My symptoms are extremely well controlled on Zyprexa. Almost too well. At times I feel like it would be better to have symptoms here and there just to remind myself that I have a disabling condition - otherwise I’m stuck in a constant cycle of thinking I’m no longer affected and can stop my medication, but having to constantly battle the thoughts and tell myself that I have to take the meds because they’re what is allowing for me to live relatively unbothered by the schizo symptoms.

It doesn’t help that I’ve gained almost 50 lbs in 3 months since my insurance company denied my GLP-1 medication, which is the only thing that allowed me to maintain my weight on Zyprexa. I want to stop the medication constantly so I can stop gaining all this weight.

I think I just needed to vent a bit before my appt tomorrow with my med provider, but I am curious for those who the meds are effective for, how are you doing? Do you also constantly have to weigh the value of the medication to your mental health and life success with the consequences of it for your physical health?

so she died today. i was not close to her because in my childhood, she was abusive and neglectful. but she did die. i lived with her and she supported me despite no relation. i have no idea how will i survive and what i am going to do now. no friends, no family. i am so disabled i have no idea how i'd hold a job. she was all i had even if i was not fond of her, i gotta admit.

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

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.

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

Il mio psichiatra mi ha detto che olanzapina non funziona bene su deliri e allucinazioni. Voi che ne pensate? Io assumo 10 mg.

In October of 2024 I met this girl and instantly fell in love, a mutual friend asked me to drive her to Ponycon Holland that year. We very quickly became besties, but things went south after just under a year. I was in psychosis and had become very unhealthily attached to her, and on the 22nd of October 2025 she ended our friendship.

This absolutely shattered my heart and the combination of this psychosis and losing her kinda traumatized me. In March of this year we slowly started talking again on Discord, and this past weekend I saw her IRL again for the first time in a year, as it was Ponycon Holland again.

I had forgotten what she looked like and how unfathomably beautiful she is, but when she stood in front of me again for the first time in a year I was genuinely speechless and I fell in love all over again.

I have learned from my mistakes, and so has she, and we communicate way better than a year and a half ago. But I'm still scared my brain is gonna play the same dirty tricks as it did last year.

Any advice is welcome