How long ago did you completely stop meds? What were you taking?

Small, frequent meals might be helpful. Like 5-6 a day vs. the 'usual' 3 meals. Bananas, lemon water, gingerale, plain crackers, toast. You know all those things, and I'm just reminding you Maintaining self-care during a period of less than optimal functioning is incredible difficult. It is possible though. It may seem you are not able to generate the forces to do so, but you still can. And right now, really need to.

There are some crappy doctors, but I honestly haven't met many and I work in healthcare. They are programmed to pass pills and move along. It's a messed up system. But generally they are incredible people of remarkable intellect and often, character. If you need medication as a short-term treatment, it's totally cool and OK to go to any general practitioner, say you have nausea, and other interventions you already tried didn't work, and you want a pill.

I want you to recognize something in that though. Right now, you need a pill to help with a physical complaint (nausea). That is totally cool and fine. It also may be equally fine that if you, in fact, have schizoaffective d/o, the diagnosis generally requires medication as a treatment intervention to maximize functioning and quality of life. Which medication is up for debate. But what is not up for debate is the healthy option is to take the smallest, and I mean smallest, theurapeutic dose, of a pill or two, that collude to keep you in a good place.

I can't say I'm in tip-top shape right now, but I'm doing pretty well, big picture. I tried to stop one of my meds recently. It didn't work. I started it back on it, but at a smaller dose. At one point I was taking like 10X of what I'm taking now about 6 months ago. THAT, messed me up. I'm totally with you on how docs throwing pills out left and right. I experienced it and it really, really was not good for me. But we sometimes forget that the docs are trying to correct, or bring into better alignment, the neuro-chemical environment in our brains. There's a lot of guesswork in it, but they do use science and knowledge to make those recommendations. I seriously question the dosing directions that a lot of doctors use.

Exercise and nutrition have proven science behind them as treatments for basically any health condition, certainly including psychiatric conditions. And I think if we work at it enough, we can combine those with other healthy behaviors and structure, to treat the illness. We might, for most people, still then require and likely benefit from some amount of medication. In the smallest theurapeutic dose. And that's all we need because we have, via the behavioral interventions I mentioned, done a certain amount of neuro-chemical modification on our own. So we don't need the giant doses of meds.

I'm rambling at this point, but I hope it helped you to post, and I think you can get through this difficult time, and get to a better place over time. Do not discount that medication might be helpful at some stage of the illness. Doesn't mean you always have to take it. And that's another reason to take the smallest dose possible, because if and when you stop taking it, it's much much easier on your system.

Take care and don't give up. Ever.