Coming off Invega/Xeplion (paliperidone) injections v 12

[InnerReturn]

I feel ya, I'm on 17 months & counting, two frickin' injections, I've lost everything, I'm me but not me anymore, totally destroyed, suffering horrifically, every second of every day, no joke, I can't take much more either & am also afraid of trying to kill myself & not succeeding. I don't truly want to be dead, my faith is completely gone too, but I can't live this miserable life much longer...

What the hell are we supposed to do?!

Everything you're describing feels very familiar to me. I also find myself thinking about death very often, wondering whether all of this is hopeless and whether I even have a future. Whenever that happens, I go back and read recovery stories. They give me a tiny bit of hope, but it never seems to last for long. I try to stay positive, but my thoughts won't leave me alone, and sometimes it feels as though there's only one possible outcome to all of this. I was misdiagnosed as well, even though I tried to talk about it. They didn't want to discharge me until they had given me the third injection. My life feels ruined. I keep trying to tell myself that this is only temporary, but sometimes I'm really scared. I don't know what will happen next...

What doses were your injections? I feel like that might also affect the speed of recovery

 

[InnerReturn]

It put you in a horrible place. But please remember you have people on your side who care about you and want to help you. There are medicines and practices that can help you, and even if they don't we're still here for you.

My life has been a kaleidoscope of deeply painful and traumatic experiences. In 2020, I sought psychiatric help for the first time because I hoped I would finally be diagnosed with borderline personality disorder and receive the right treatment. All the criteria seemed to point in that direction. I had a very different idea of what psychiatry would be like. I thought psychiatrists were like any other doctors—people whose goal was to help their patients recover and make their lives as comfortable as possible. I imagined I'd receive psychotherapy and spend time working with a psychologist. Instead, I discovered that psychiatric care in my country is still stuck in the past. Hardly anyone seemed familiar with borderline personality disorder, and they mostly focused on common diagnoses like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, and so on. Like many others, I was treated with antipsychotics. They didn't help me at all—in fact, they only made things worse by turning me into an emotionless robot. After that, I tried to treat myself, but it led nowhere, and eventually I found myself back in my psychiatrist's office. Now, I dream of only one thing—to wake up one day and feel like myself again, the person I was before all the hospitalizations. Right now, that future still feels very distant. I'm sorry for writing all of this. I just needed to get it off my chest

 

[InnerReturn]

Tonight at 10 p.m., I'll be taking another cabergoline tablet. It'll be my fourth one. My doctor told me I'll probably need to take it for about three months. I've started having vivid, memorable dreams with actual storylines. For example, last night I dreamed I was standing next to one of those claw machines—the ones with a glass front that you often see at amusement parks, where you insert a coin and try to grab a prize with the claw. But in my dream, instead of stuffed toys, the machine was filled with chemical elements, each one placed inside a small cube and labeled. I was trying to grab radium, but my hand suddenly went numb for a while. After that, my friend and I were pooling our money to buy a chemistry book. It was incredibly expensive, and she was willing to pay more than half of the cost. Honestly, I have no idea what any of it means. It isn't even the first time I've dreamed about chemistry, and considering that I never liked the subject in school, it's pretty surprising to me. Has anyone else noticed more vivid dreams after starting cabergoline or during recovery?