The medication change is going.

Not well, not bad, not great, just going.

I don’t know what I expected to feel besides something different.

I decided to cut my antipsychotic in half on top of everything else.

I know what you’re thinking.

Let me explain.

I was sitting at a friend’s house this week and yet again wasn’t talking as much as I used to.

I didn’t feel like I had anything to say, even though I felt like being out and about and social.

I sat there wondering that maybe I don’t feel myself because I’m over medicated in general.

And coming off Buspirone, Trazodone, and then the change from Prozac to Lexapro will help.

But maybe the stagnation, avolition, and frustrations I’m having with feeling like my personality is gone, is because I’m on too much medication.

I don’t want to get off of it all together.

I do need them.

Especially my arthritis medications.

I need those for sure.

But the dosing is too high on the others.

And I’m talking about mainly my mental illness prescriptions.

So, just my antipsychotic, Paliperidone, really.

That’s the one I feel zombiefied with.

And if it doesn’t work, if I start having psychotic symptoms by going down on my dose to 3mg, I’ll go back up to the 6mg a day again immediately.

Or maybe I’ll try the Haloperidol first.

Then go back up to 6mg if that doesn’t work. 

But I want to try to cut it down.

It may not work.

And I’m okay with that.

But it doesn’t hurt to try.

And I just keep thinking that I’m stable now, and once I get stable – with normal psychiatrists, I then have the ability to try to come down on some of my meds.

If my psych NP wasn’t such a joke, I’d clue him in on this.

But he isn’t helpful.

So here I am.

And I think I’m being reasonable.

My freaking out and skin crawling that happened this last week was from needing a fucking change.

Something big.

But I didn’t know what I needed at the time.

And the more I think about it, the clearer it becomes.

I’ve got to be the one looking out for myself.

In everyway, but especially in ways where no one else can.

No one else can tell me how I’m feeling.

How the medications are affecting me.

How much better I feel.

What side effects are okay.

What side effects feel like they’re taking over.

Yet how muted I am because of my antipsychotic.

And I hope none of this throws me into an episode.

That is not my goal.

But I’m so, so, so, so tired of feeling stagnant and full of lead.

I feel like I can’t move around most days.

Physically and mentally.

I can barely emote.

I don’t cry.

I don’t laugh.

Everything’s a fucking chore.

Everything.

Even things I like.

I don’t even know what I like anymore.

I need more time to myself and that’s all I ever get.

Somehow it’s still not enough.

I don’t know myself because I’m so fucking muted.

I don’t want the psychosis, at all, but I want my personality back.

I want to be goofy and funny again and I’m just not able to feel like that right now.

And it’s getting old.

I’ve been a super dulled version of myself since being put on antipsychotics.

Some sort of masked variety of self.

I have just been so off.

I know I’ve been getting used to the medications over the last few years.

I know I’ve been trying to stay out of psychosis.

But it’s been a while now of not having a lot of psychotic symptoms.

It’s time to scale back my meds a bit and see if I can get along with less of them.

I’m tired of being tired from them too.

And I’m so fucking tired.

I easily sleep 10 hours a day.

Easily.

Most days/nights I get 10-12 hours.

Half of the time I’m sleeping because I have nowhere to be, nowhere to go, nothing to do.

If I lay down on the couch, I fall asleep.

If I sit on the couch, I fall asleep.

If I sit on my bed, I fall asleep.

It doesn’t matter what I do, I sleep half the fucking day.

And if I try to stay up later, and get up earlier, but then I just sleep through the alarm across the room.

And I did sleep through my phone alarm on Sunday morning.

And sleeping through my alarm is a guaranteed way to instantly ruin my day.

I started taking less Paliperidone this morning – it’s Wednesday.

We’ll see what happens.

I hope I can feel more like myself and less dulled soon.

This is the only thing I could really think of to help my exhausted antsiness.

If it’s a mistake, I’ll go back up and get back on medications.

But I hope it’s not.

My vision is getting much clearer from coming off the Prozac.

I noticed it this weekend.

I can focus a bit better, which is awesome.

But I’m so fucking sick of feeling muted.

I needed to do something different.

Sometimes change is the only thing that works.

– Keren