laziness, apathy , lack of motivation. Please help.

I'm finding the apathy the worst symptom of sz. The psychosis completely goes away on the meds. but the apathy is chronic. It's so hard to do anything. while most people have to be occupied I spend hours and hours just sleeping or doing absolutely nothing but gaze into space smoking cigarettes. I'm surprised there's not more help with this symptom. I'm studying massage therapy and it's so hard to sit down and study. this afternoon I've taken the night off work just because I'm squashed for exams tomporrow and monday and I'm still procrastinatin doing nothing. The meds aggravate it and make me so lazy. The sex dysfucnction from the meds hasn't helped one bit I've had that for 6 years now and one of my prime motivations in life- romance went with it. I'm awaiting a new med that doesn't do this to me. so at the moment there's no choice of meds for the sex drive thing. And people don't understand you can't understand female impotence unless you've experienced it - it's really distressing. It's a rare side effect of medication and I get it. I used to like sex on my old meds but they made me sleep for 17 hours a day without fail and then started giving me heart problems so I can't have it. It's been so good to be able to get up, but lately I've been sleepy again for various reasons. However I did get a hormone supplement testosterone which is helping a bit with sex and maybe just maybe I can date again. I'm still not feeling as interested as I should though. It seems unfortunate that half my problems seem to come down to side effects. Like the sex and emotion thing are the meds, I haven't been able to cry on this depot of haloperidol and I'm not passionate. Normally I have quite strong emotions so it's wierd. Anyway has anyone got any ideas on what to do to get more motivated. Is there a self help book that really addresses laziness and apathy in sz just normally that helps. I've been working on it for years. My main obsession has been motivation and you'd thing I would have improved but i'm worse than ever. also feeling unoriginal and just generally down and problematic as opposed to postive and upbeat. I'm sick of finding myself doing absolutely nothing and even enjoying it. All the mainstream stuff on motivation and I've really been through books and stuff on the net with a sieve is either meaningless to me or passe or it's an unresearched area. I've even been interested in researching this myself. I'm just so obsessed with the answer. I've always felt sure there's something I could do some way of finding insiration but I'm beginning to get scared that with sz you just get apathy and it's biological and I can't change afterall even though I've been obsessed with changing. My auntie has sz too and she's suffering from lassitude she called it the same thing. Mind you there are people without sz who are lazy too, so I don't know how much of it is me, how much is the sz or even how much of it is side affects form being trraquilised at times. I really genuinely want some hlep with motivation. So if anyone is willing to talk with me about it, I'd make an interesting subject. I'm pretty stubborn though. I'm also feeling I'm lacking in creativity and originality - I just feel so medicated and normalised sometimes. Essentially I embrace diversity but I haven't been feeling very arty lately. I'm only on a 40mg depot of haloaridol monthly though.

Unfortunately medication for Schizophrenia tends to have all the side effects you mentioned.

Have you talked to the person that prescribes your medication to see if any of them have sedative effects?

I know Haliperidol does. But since you only take that monthly it is probbaly not the cause of your apathy and sleepiness.

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Hello purrin:
It's possible you could find some pertinent info in the Resources area. In particular, I'm thinking there are a few self-help resources that might be helpful.

If you identify medication as something that's beneficial to you, you could also consider speaking with your doctor and trying an alternate med.

Best of luck.