unless your masochistic tendencies make you enjoy the position you find yourself in
TPG stated: source post
i dunno but it seems like you're attaching happiness to getting rid of schizophrenia rather than just making do i think
^^^^^
TPG stated: source post
i dunno but it seems like you're attaching happiness to getting rid of schizophrenia rather than just making do i think, so maybe a change if mindset maybe neccessary, unless your masochistic tendencies make you enjoy the position you find yourself in.
It's kind of hard to be schizophrenic while also being both happy and functional at the same time. Most are usually stuck with picking one... or possessing neither. I don't think I've ever really met a happy schizophrenic that wasn't completely lost to their own world, and even those worlds tend more often lean towards scary themes than not.
As much as it sucks, a certain degree of pessimism is required for self control. At this point it's been a requirement for so long that it's what comes naturally (plus OCD/OCPD comorbidity gave additional incentive). Self-control is the most important focus, as it's so easy to lose myself without it. I've seen what the costs are when I lose myself, it's not worth it.
haart stated: source post
What sort of symptoms do you experience?
I tried explaining this and it came out as a garbled mess of words, so I'm going to try it again as a checklist of symptoms instead. Some aspects only appear when episodic, but others stick around even when I'm relatively functional:
Behavioral: social isolation, disorganized behavior (other than impulse control), aggression, agitation, compulsive behavior, excitability, hostility, repetitive movements, self-harm, or lack of restraint.
Cognitive: thought disorder, delusion, amnesia, belief that an ordinary event has special and personal meaning (Nihilism likely was a defensive measure against this), belief that thoughts aren't one's own, disorientation, memory loss, mental confusion, slowness in activity, or false belief of superiority.
Mood: anger, anxiety, apathy, feeling detached from self, general discontent, loss of interest or pleasure in activities, elevated mood, or inappropriate emotional response.
Psychological: hallucination, paranoia, hearing voices, depression, fear, persecutory delusion, or religious delusion (I got over this one... mostly, I think).
Speech: circumstantial speech, incoherent speech, rapid and frenzied speaking, or speech disorder (only when nervous, theater helped me stop stuttering otherwise).
Also common: fatigue, impaired motor coordination (dance and martial arts helped fix this), or lack of emotional response.
If you want any elaborations or want to ask about stuff that wasn't on here, it'd probably be easier for me to do it in the form of answering a question than guessing what those questions might be in advance.
​Edit: A link for the others that does a general description of schizophrenia, and here's a brief one on paranoid schizophrenia.
What medications do you/have you taken?
I refuse to go towards medications (for anything other than recreational experimentation). I've seen what that shit does to schizophrenics (and other disorders) and I won't have it. I don't need to become the next Gabrielle Chana or Elora Snow. I recognize that, as much as where I am might suck, there's A LOT of room for it to be hundreds of times worse.
I'm quite lucky.
Do you think your discontent with life is purely due to a clinical anhedonia, or is it more multi-factorial?
I still feel pleasure, it's just fleeting, less intense, and less common than it ought to be. It's like having a tolerance against feeling good that, when paired next to amped up feelings of fear or displeasure, makes it difficult typically to enjoy myself.
Despite the above I'd say it's more likely to be multiple factors. I have a need to keep my guard up so that I won't deteriorate that's been reinforced by past times that said guard was down, and the symptoms across my disorders (including OCD/OCPD and Insomnia) as a whole makes it difficult to be even just content with life. That in itself is already an uphill effort, and I can't imagine being able to be all that happy if I am uncomfortable prior. My mind's also hypercritical and sensitive, so small things can easily disturb even the basic comforts.
I'm not even sure what happiness feels like beyond guessing that it's like being stimulated to a lesser degree over a longer span of time. My time experimenting with adderall's the closest that I can imagine to feeling something like that, and that time was very frightening and unstable.
Turncoat stated: source post
TPG stated: source post
i dunno but it seems like you're attaching happiness to getting rid of schizophrenia rather than just making do i think, so maybe a change if mindset maybe neccessary, unless your masochistic tendencies make you enjoy the position you find yourself in.
It's kind of hard to be schizophrenic while also being both happy and functional at the same time. Most are usually stuck with picking one... or possessing neither. I don't think I've ever really met a happy schizophrenic that wasn't completely lost to their own world, and even those worlds tend more often lean towards scary themes than not.
I've met quite a few contented schizophrenics, actually. Episodically very distressed, but plenty who lead rich, full lives most of the time.
haart stated: source post
What sort of symptoms do you experience?
I tried explaining this and it came out as a garbled mess of words, so I'm going to try it again as a checklist of symptoms instead. Some aspects only appear when episodic, but others stick around even when I'm relatively functional:
Behavioral: social isolation, disorganized behavior (other than impulse control),aggression, agitation, compulsive behavior, excitability,hostility, repetitive movements, self-harm,or lack of restraint.
Cognitive: thought disorder, delusion,amnesia,belief that an ordinary event has special and personal meaning(Nihilism likely was a defensive measure against this), belief that thoughts aren't one's own, disorientation, memory loss, mental confusion, slowness in activity,or false belief of superiority.
Mood:anger, anxiety, apathy, feeling detached from self, general discontent, loss of interest or pleasure in activities,elevated mood, or inappropriate emotional response.
Psychological: hallucination, paranoia, hearing voices, depression, fear, persecutory delusion,or religious delusion(I got over this one... mostly, I think).
Speech: circumstantial speech, incoherent speech, rapid and frenzied speaking, or speech disorder (only when nervous, theater helped me stop stuttering otherwise).
Also common: fatigue,impaired motor coordination(dance and martial arts helped fix this), or lack of emotional response.
If you want any elaborations or want to ask about stuff that wasn't on here, it'd probably be easier for me to do it in the form of answering a question than guessing what those questions might be in advance.
No, that's more than enough :P When were you diagnosed? By whom? How long did it take you to develop this degree of insight?
What medications do you/have you taken?
I refuse to go towards medications (for anything other than recreational experimentation). I've seen what that shit does to schizophrenics (and other disorders) and I won't have it. I don't need to become the next Gabrielle Chana or Elora Snow. I recognize that, as much as where I am might suck, there's A LOT of room for it to be hundreds of times worse.
I'm quite lucky.
Didn't quite answer my question but I get the idea XD Is it mainly the extra-pyramidal side effects that concern you, or something else? I'm afraid I'm not familiar with either Ms. Chana or Snow.
Do you think your discontent with life is purely due to a clinical anhedonia, or is it more multi-factorial?
I still feel pleasure, it's just fleeting, less intense, and less common than it ought to be. It's like having a tolerance against feeling good that, when paired next to amped up feelings of fear or displeasure, makes it difficult typically to enjoy myself.
I can imagine it feels rather muted when contrasted with the intensity of the obverse. How common do you think it ought to be?
Despite the above I'd say it's more likely to be multiple factors. I have a need to keep my guard up so that I won't deteriorate that's been reinforced by past times that said guard was down, and the symptoms across my disorders (including OCD/OCPD and Insomnia) as a whole makes it difficult to be even just content with life. That in itself is already an uphill effort, and I can't imagine being able to be all that happy if I am uncomfortable prior. My mind's also hypercritical and sensitive, so small things can easily disturb even the basic comforts.
What's an example of "keeping your guard up"? How does that practically manifest?
I'm not even sure what happiness feels like beyond guessing that it's like being stimulated to a lesser degree over a longer span of time. My time experimenting with adderall's the closest that I can imagine to feeling something like that, and that time was very frightening and unstable.
Happiness feels like a burst of warmth that fades to an echoing contentment, a feeling of confidence, safety etc. To me. Ask anyone else and you'll get a very different answer. There's not necessarily a true definition or single experience that you're missing out on.
haart stated: source post
Turncoat stated: source post
TPG stated: source post
i dunno but it seems like you're attaching happiness to getting rid of schizophrenia rather than just making do i think, so maybe a change if mindset maybe neccessary, unless your masochistic tendencies make you enjoy the position you find yourself in.
It's kind of hard to be schizophrenic while also being both happy and functional at the same time. Most are usually stuck with picking one... or possessing neither. I don't think I've ever really met a happy schizophrenic that wasn't completely lost to their own world, and even those worlds tend more often lean towards scary themes than not.
I've met quite a few contented schizophrenics, actually. Episodically very distressed, but plenty who lead rich, full lives most of the time.
How can they be happy when dealing with this crap? Are they magical thinkers?
When were you diagnosed? By whom? How long did it take you to develop this degree of insight?
While I was still in college, by a team of people after my therapist finally decided that it'd be worth testing, and this degree of "insight" came from excessive introspection without knowing the labels in advance. My original means of trying to figure myself out without a DSM came from studying others and comparing them to myself, figuring that using other people's similarities and striking differences would be the best way to learn about myself through comparison beyond my own range for self-appraisal error, that learning about people would help me finally figure out the mystery that was myself if I just kept digging. None of them quite fit beyond my father, a victim of a false diagnosis, so I kept looking until I found a few diagnosed schizophrenics that scared the shit out of me through being too relatable. If it wasn't for them and my eventual interest in conventional psych, half of the shit that's crazy I might not have even noticed prior to my brief departures off the deep end.
Basically, by studying others I found it easier to study myself. As I mentioned in some other topic, I'm comparing puzzle pieces with other people's puzzles to help assemble and solve my own. I can't trust myself and never really felt like I fully could (beyond moments of delusion, which usually gave me a clue that I wasn't acting right), so I tried to make it more objective. My mind wants what's best for me as often as it doesn't, so I really have to comb through it to see what I can follow instead of just trusting my twisted gut.
It helps that one of my symptoms is a feeling of "something being wrong". That near-chronic discomfort gave me a reason to keep asking "why" instead of being able to relax enough to just accept it as strange quirks. If I saw it as nothing being wrong I'd probably be acting on the worst parts of me without worry. I also had a series of misdiagnosis as I was growing up that inspired me to keep looking. When it finally came to being tested, I basically knew my diagnosis before they did, but wanted a second opinion that wouldn't be too infected by my own prior bias.
Is it mainly the extra-pyramidal side effects that concern you, or something else?
I don't know what you're meaning by pyramidal, but what concerns me is the increase in the rate of deterioration overtime. As the articles love to re-emphasize, there is no cure.
Generally, meds imitate functions of the body and are prescribed to work on that area when it's lacking, similarly to an anemic taking iron supplements. Overtime however the body either has the receptors burn out or the body stops what little production of the chemical that it was naturally doing from something else doing the job for it, and from that the problems grow in severity. While antidepressants can make a person more suicidal for instance, antipsychotics I've seen make people go from crazy to batshit loco when given enough time with them, especially if they begin jumping across different brands overtime, and unlike many cases where a gradual stairstepping can fix it... the damage tends to be permanent when it comes to medicating psychosis.
Basically, it's hard enough already to keep myself in line, so I don't need to slap a bandage onto it just to uncover it later and find festering wounds where the minor cuts once were. I don't like that side of me, so the last thing I want to do is make it stronger.
I'm afraid I'm not familiar with either Ms. Chana or Snow.
I brought them up from being online examples, as the schizophrenics I've met in my lifetime weren't exactly cases that gave much hope or optimism either.
Gail/Gabrielle is a mess. She's shown differences in her behaviors based on different med balances, but otherwise on-and-off wears a legitimate tinfoil hat unironically, thinks that she has psychic sex with Data from Star Trek (as well as Vladimir Putin and a few others), thinks that those who don't conform to her vision of life are "Jesuit Clones", and otherwise goes on huge rants about absolute crazy nonsense. While I do enjoy this sort of material, a part of me knows that it's also vaguely relatable, a warning of potential things to come if I let myself go.
Elora Snow, the Oracle of Saturn, believes herself to be a sleeper agent of Walt Disney. She is very paranoid, expresses losses of memory as if something else caused it, discusses how thought infiltration makes her do things, and otherwise spouts barely connected points between persecution fears and other strange delusions related to Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Astral Command. I relate more to her case than Gail's... and that shit really scares me sometimes.
I find others' expressions of schizophrenia fascinating, they go in so many different directions from one another from their creativity overlaying the real world, but I know that how much better off than them that I am is likely temporary, likely less deteriorated from not sharing their med histories.
Do you think your discontent with life is purely due to a clinical anhedonia, or is it more multi-factorial?
I still feel pleasure, it's just fleeting, less intense, and less common than it ought to be. It's like having a tolerance against feeling good that, when paired next to amped up feelings of fear or displeasure, makes it difficult typically to enjoy myself.
I can imagine it feels rather muted when contrasted with the intensity of the obverse. How common do you think it ought to be?
It ought to be as common as it seems to be for normally functional individuals.
Despite the above I'd say it's more likely to be multiple factors. I have a need to keep my guard up so that I won't deteriorate that's been reinforced by past times that said guard was down, and the symptoms across my disorders (including OCD/OCPD and Insomnia) as a whole makes it difficult to be even just content with life. That in itself is already an uphill effort, and I can't imagine being able to be all that happy if I am uncomfortable prior. My mind's also hypercritical and sensitive, so small things can easily disturb even the basic comforts.
What's an example of "keeping your guard up"? How does that practically manifest?
Keeping my guard up involves keeping the crazy internal while I force myself externally to continue functioning. Since my OCD/OCPD has been around as far back as I can remember, I have a history with keeping that in check that crosstrained fairly well into keeping myself appearing functional while episodic. Better to be awkward looking than yelling at someone for being asymmetrical, or going into the fetal position and muttering to myself aloud over the volume being WRONG.
I feel fine honestly discussing with people what my problems are, but the last thing that I want to do is show it to them. With how thin those walls can be some days, applied effort is necessary.
TC,
How open are you to experimenting on yourself?
This won't hurt, and it might help....there is a great deal of interesting research supporting the use of B3.
Successful Treatment of Schizophrenia Requires Optimal Daily
Doses of Vitamin B3
Niacin-respondent subset of schizophrenia – a therapeutic review
Niacin and Schizophrenia: History and Opportunity
At the risk of sounding like Mr.Omega.....there is no money in B3 for big pharma, there will not be much in the way of research on it as a result....nor will it be promoted....doesn't mean it doesn't work.....so....
Turncoat stated: source post
haart stated: source post
Turncoat stated: source post
TPG stated: source post
i dunno but it seems like you're attaching happiness to getting rid of schizophrenia rather than just making do i think, so maybe a change if mindset maybe neccessary, unless your masochistic tendencies make you enjoy the position you find yourself in.
It's kind of hard to be schizophrenic while also being both happy and functional at the same time. Most are usually stuck with picking one... or possessing neither. I don't think I've ever really met a happy schizophrenic that wasn't completely lost to their own world, and even those worlds tend more often lean towards scary themes than not.
I've met quite a few contented schizophrenics, actually. Episodically very distressed, but plenty who lead rich, full lives most of the time.
How can they be happy when dealing with this crap? Are they magical thinkers?
I'd suggest it's because they found passion and joy in life, in their careers, families etc. Same as anyone else, just with steeper hurdles to clear.
When were you diagnosed? By whom? How long did it take you to develop this degree of insight?
While I was still in college, by a team of people after my therapist finally decided that it'd be worth testing, and this degree of "insight" came from excessive introspection without knowing the labels in advance.
An inpatient setting?
Is it mainly the extra-pyramidal side effects that concern you, or something else?
I don't know what you're meaning by pyramidal, but what concerns me is the increase in the rate of deterioration overtime. As the articles love to re-emphasize, there is no cure.
I'm surprised you have such a distaste for anti-psychotics without being aware of extra-pyramidal side effects.
Generally, meds imitate functions of the body and are prescribed to work on that area when it's lacking, similarly to an anemic taking iron supplements. Overtime however the body either has the receptors burn out or the body stops what little production of the chemical that it was naturally doing from something else doing the job for it, and from that the problems grow in severity.
Okay, I'll approach this from the angle that you're not convinced I have any medical training (which is fine, not really the point anyhow) :P
While antidepressants can make a person more suicidal for instance, antipsychotics I've seen make people go from crazy to batshit loco when given enough time with them, especially if they begin jumping across different brands overtime, and unlike many cases where a gradual stairstepping can fix it... the damage tends to be permanent when it comes to medicating psychosis.
I'm not saying this is entirely untrue, but it's also not entirely true. 2+2 is at least 3, right? Pharmacodynamics and pharmacokinetics are extremely complicated, and more so in psychiatry. Yada yada... My question would be, do you distrust the wealth of evidence that atypical antipsychotics are actually quite effective in managing psychotic symptoms in some (not all) patients? Above, you've referred to paradoxical side effects, which are not the norm.
In the same vein, although admittedly less common than paradoxical antipsychotic reactions, many common medications can produce horrifying reactions. Drugs I dare say you've taken. Ibuprofen and other NSAID's, penicillins etc. Stevens-Johnson syndrome/TEN is the most dramatic example I can think of right now (think: your skin falls off).
I'm guessing you'd take vancomycin (antibiotic) if it were prescribed. Lots of drugs can all do insane things to you. All drugs have that potential. The risk is generally low, the benefit is generally high.
If there was any chance you'd benefit from antipsychotic usage (and statistically, that's more likely than not), is it rational to hold such an ardent refusal when you wouldn't for an antibiotic? Is there another bias at play?
What's an example of "keeping your guard up"? How does that practically manifest?
Keeping my guard up involves keeping the crazy internal while I force myself externally to continue functioning. Better to be awkward looking than yelling at someone for being asymmetrical, or going into the fetal position and muttering to myself aloud over the volume being WRONG.
I feel fine honestly discussing with people what my problems are, but the last thing that I want to do is show it to them.
Hmm, not sure I follow how you're able to internalise the "crazy" sometimes and not others.
This is basically how I was with Zinc. I thought it was helping, but what it was really doing was decreasing my sharpness while managing my stress. I realized later on that some crazy was beginning to seep through without my knowledge, but I assumed that I was better from both the reduction of symptoms and the reduction of the perception of them. Stress is a definite trigger, so in a way it was helping with Harm Reduction, but I also noticed an increase in how often that I'd dissociate. Still, it helps to have some on-hand to make an episodic day more manageable.
Vitamin B3 (as well as B6, B12, and Potassium) is in Vitamin Water Revive. This drink helps me more than being without it, but it's hardly a cure.
Turncoat stated: source post
Vitamin B3 (as well as B6, B12, and Potassium) is in Vitamin Water Revive. This drink helps me more than being without it, but it's hardly a cure.
You need to be using the correct amt TC....how much is present in the Vitamin Water?
We could deduce that based on the recommended amounts, but that would be inaccurate.
Take a look at the bottle....does it give you a number with XX mg?
Dont know about you...but this is pretty damn decent and compelling;
The study, which began in 1952 but was not published until 1957, involved 30 acute schizophrenic patients who were each randomized to placebo, niacinamide, or niacin.1,2 They were given 1 g three times daily for 30 days, and then followed for one year. After one year, the patients given vitamin B3 with the standard treatments at that time had more than double the recovery rate (80%) compared to patients in the placebo group (33%).
It has since been refined in practice.....certainly worth a shot TC...and it is NOT harmful...no long term side effects at all. B3 is also really cheap.