My son has made the last step of his medication

It sounds really hopefully if you've been off successfully before. Don't let the negative people get you down. I had to look hard to find my son's pdoc. He's open to new ideas and trying things. But even he hasn't had a patient go off meds successfully, so that's something to keep in mind. I hope my son's the first, but if he's not, at least he tried, and he knows he can have a successful life on a low dose.

It's been a week. I believe his last dose was last Tuesday (12/9). So far, so good.

Glad to hear your son is making good progress Costello.

I'm feeling more nervous about this med-free experiment, although I don't want to say so to my son. He was irritated with his coworkers and clients to the point of being enraged when he called me two days ago. He was able to calm down and talk rationally about it - with nothing that sounded delusional or paranoid. So that's good anyway. But his level of anger was way out of proportion to the things that were irritating him IMO.

Some of the people he works with may be very irritating. He's either going to have to deal with it or quit the job. He was actually talking about quitting. I would be so sad, if he did that. I don't want to pressure him, but this job could be very healing for him.

Anyway I just wanted to check in and express some of the anxiety I'm feeling right now. Thanks for listening.

sorry to hear that costello. besides the psychiatric meds he was on - was/is he on anything herbal like vitamins or anything non-prescribed?

No, he's not taking anything else.

Sigh! My son rents from my sister. His living room light is broken. She told him she'd come over and fix it, but she sent her son instead. My son really, really, really doesn't like her son.

He just has too much on his hands right now, dealing with going off the meds, to have to deal with the discomfort of having someone in the house that he hates.

Oh man! I hate when things pile up one after another. Has your son reconsidered going back on that small dose of zyprexa?

Sending calming chickens your way

Well, he took half a pill a couple of nights ago at my suggestion.

Thank you!

I told my sister I wasn't happy with her for sending her son over to my son's house. I explained about the meds. She got all huffy with me.

She seems to think the broken cord is for the ceiling fan, but actually it's the light fixture. And the light fixture in the dining room isn't working either (they're kind of one big room), so it's pretty dark in there even though he went out and bought a lamp.

Anyway I asked a friend to go over and fix it tomorrow. Hopefully that won't freak my son out as much. The friend is a pretty laid back guy.

Btw, I have some Golden Laced Wyandottes (which is what this is). A rooster and four pullets. I wonder if they're good broodies and mothers, or if this photo is staged.

Back after doing a bit of research: Yes, they're prone to going broody. Maybe I'll isolate those four together and see if I can hatch some chicks from them.

It's been 23 days. Things are still going well. He doesn't call or text as often, which concerns me a little. But when I do hear from him, he seems fine, no change. He's had some more irritability, but I think that's to be expected.

Yay, glad to hear he's still doing okay. It's good that you are keeping an eye out though. I wasn't able to clearly see how bad things had gotten mentally for me until I was hospitalized again.

Thanks for this insight. How long were you off the meds before you were hospitalized?

A few days short of three months. But I'm pretty sure within one month I was having mild hallucinations again and by 2 1/2 mths things were getting really bad for me mentally, and I should have been more proactive in getting help then.

Do you know why you weren't more proactive?

It sounds like your motivation for going off the meds was different than my son's. He was doing fine on the small dose he was taking. He just wants to be off them altogether if possible. And he had it in his mind to be off by his 30th birthday next March.

That makes me worried that he'll be more likely to ignore signs that he's not doing well. On the other hand, he told me firmly that he doesn't want his life to go to h3ll again. But on the third hand, people do sometimes lose insight when they begin to deteriorate.

I think I was too concerned with keeping up the façade that I was fine. I convinced myself the hallucinations were mild so they really weren't important. I kept telling myself the depression would pass and get better on it's own, and focused a lot on hiding it from my family and husband and support team. I convinced myself that the constant suicidal thoughts weren't "that bad" and I could suck it up and take them. When I was hospitalized I still felt I could probably have tolerated them on the outside and not acted on the thoughts/plan, but the dr wasn't convinced that I wouldn't act on them, especially if I became even more unstable from the med changes they felt were necessary. I had been having constant thoughts of suicide with plan (but lacking intent) for over two weeks and was being slowly broken down by them, and now accept the doctors could have very well been right, that I wouldn't have been able to fight the urges for much longer.

wow sounds quite a bit like me right now...scary

I hope my son's not trying to keep up a facade. It doesn't work. I keep telling him, "What you resist persists." I'd rather he be open and let the chips fall where they may - even if he ends up back on the medication. He does much better when he talks things over with me. The fact that he's not calling as often worries me. But he does have this job, and I think he gets some support there. He also gets irritation and stress too, however. At least they understand if he acts odd.

When we met to talk to the pdoc about going off the medication, he mentioned he'd tried this with a few other patients. I asked if anyone had succeeded. He had to think about it, but then he said 'no.' But then he added, almost more like he was muttering to himself than talking to us, that maybe if they (he and the patient evidently) had made more of an effort, they'd have succeeded.

So, I guess it's hard to know. You don't want to fall completely apart, but at what point do you throw in the towel?

It's hard sometimes to accept that hallucinations are a big deal since I have dealt with them the majority of my life. My husband was very upset when I got hospitalized again because he had no idea what was going on and I had thus put a lot of effort into appearing normal to him. I hadn't even realized the amount of effort I put towards making myself appear happy until after the fact, and since he had never asked specific questions I felt that it wasn't like I was lying to him. Now that I'm out, we have a calendar where I write what meds I've taken and have to write numbers indicating how depressed I am, my anxiety level, and consistency of suicidal thoughts, all on a scale of 1 to 10. Depression, 1 being not depressed at all, 10 being I'm not sure I can get out of under the blankets today except to feed my son; Anxiety, 1 being none, 10 my heart is pounding and I'm shaking and covering my ears because I can't take any more input; Suicidal thoughts, 1 none, 6 I think about it a lot, 9 I've got a plan and I need to be monitored/tools actively taken away, 10 you better not take your eyes off me, we should probably head to ER.

And obviously I had to promise to not lie to my husband, when specifically asked questions, which does tend to work with me because I believe honesty is very important and am strongly against direct lies.

I really hate that there's so little data out there on all of this...the best that can be found are forum posts like this and then long term data where people have gone off but there's so little data about the process. It's frustrating trying to figure out when to restart meds.....I always wonder if I gave up too easily....but I will try again....

forum posts can serve as long term data in itself.