At the end of my vacation, I was feeling so good that I tried to come off my meds again. It’s the fourth time this year I’ve tried — and failed. I’m sure this is because I’ve tried to taper off of them too quickly — usually my decision to stop taking my meds comes suddenly, with absolute conviction, (i.e. “I just don’t want to be controlled by these substances anymore! I want to feel like myself, feel the full range of my soul’s true expression”) meaning that I don’t want to mess around with slow, deliberate tapering. I’m on the lowest possible dose of Invega (my doctor would prefer that I was on double the dose I take, but 3 mg seems to work just fine for me), so tapering in this case would mean going immediately to every other day, which is almost like coming off the Invega every other day. No Invega, however, does terrible things (so much so that it causes me to abandon my dream of being med-free — i.e. “forget it, if this is the way I feel without meds, then I don’t want to be without meds”, thus the reason why I fail each time I have tried to come off of them). It’s as if my brain goes into sensory overload — there’s too much stimulation, so much so that I can’t do anything. I thought I could manage the simple task of driving home from vacation in Florida (to NC) without the Invega, but alas, I felt so physically ill and mentally overloaded without it that I broke down about 1/4 of the way home and had to resume my usual dose. Either the Invega causes this pendulum effect, where I feel way more mentally ill than I would at my “normal” baseline, no med state, or my mental health has deteriorated a whole lot since I’ve been on Invega, unbeknownst to me because the Invega has successfully prevented this worsening of symptoms from manifesting.

I relayed my latest adventure in coming off meds to my roommate, who said that many people call their antipsychotics the “glue” that holds them together. That sounds like the best and most succinct way of describing the difference between being on medications and not being on medications. I’m rather loosely put together now, as a result of my illness, I believe, or natural personality changes over time — whichever way you prefer to look at it — and I don’t like to take too high of a dose, because it feels so unnatural to be too tightly put together, too tightly strung. My current low dose is enough to give my days a shape, to keep me engaged in constructive activity, and for me to care enough about details, things and people to have a semblance of a life.