This forum is dying and that's a shame. I have little to no interest in daily conversations that loop around to the same endless series of question that have already been answered, but I'll drop a recovery story to give passerby's what has been revealed to us.
Recovery story
@Kaatrina
Hi all,
It's been one year and 5 months since I've been off the invega shot. This forum used to help me a lot, but now I have little motivation to come here because I just dont think about invega anymore.
I consider myself fully recovered. Things change when you go through something hard like this and I'm a different person than I was before, but as far as abilities go, I feel able to achieve everything that I could prior to invega.
I was doing really well at my internship with the state and at spring quarter in school. Around February, a little over a year off, I slowly started to fall back into delusions of reference. I was able to suppress these delusions until the end of March, when I ended up being involuntarily committed. I told them that I was allergic to the invega shot. They put me on the Invega pill for 8 days, and it blasted all the delusions out of my head. I started to develop a familiar lack of enjoyment and akathisia at the end of the 8 days. However, within three weeks or so of leaving the institution and being off the pill I feel no more detrimental effects from it.
I lost my internship and missed one final. However, my grades were so high that I still passed that class. I decided to keep some invega pills on hand. I am going to try to live most of my life at 100% and try to blast my brain out with the pills if I feel delusions coming on. I would rather live life to its fullest and crash when I have to than commit to living the rest of my life on a soul sucking medication.
I have a psych who is on board with this. I guess she had no choice, as the ultimatum was that I would keep the pills in my drawer in case of emergency or I would not see her...interestingly enough, she tried to convince me to be constantly on APs by saying that the only thing that stopped me from relapsing for a year was the invega shot in my system, because it takes that long to get out. The only time we will ever get a psych to admit that. I wonder if she tells that to the people she prescribes the shot to. That being said, I'm trying some talk therapy as well and it is helping.
I'm really just hoping that the psychotic relapse was related to the AP recovery. The label "schizophrenia" is just on too wide of a spectrum for me to accept with just two episodes. I feel like madness could have many causes. And that medication gives more problems than it solves.
Anyway, I am beyond a doubt fully recovered. It is absolutely possible.
Consider muting the naysayers on this forum who want to make themselves feel better by trying to make others despair. Reading their posts would make anyone question their own happiness. Have faith.
