I've been hallucinating more....

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I've been hallucinating more frequently than I originally thought.... I have diagnosed schizophrenia NOS (previously paranoid schizophrenia but now I'm NOS).

Today I talked to someone that didn't exist; my neighbour asked me this evening if I was ok as he saw me talking to myself outside my house :/ what I experienced was someone banging at my door, and then me answering it, two identical kids asking for me to let their friend "Sam" out of my house, me saying "Sam" wasn't in my house, them insisting, and then me slamming the door in their face. What the neighbour saw was me talking to the air. I was wondering why the kids were completely identical and why they were talking such nonsense...

In a lecture at university, I saw the same person walk into the lecture hall (during the lecture, not before or after) five times and sit down in different places, despite the fact that this "same person" did not leave the lecture hall during that lecture.

I keep hearing inanimate objects talking to me. A couple of hours ago, my empty mug on my desk told me that the Spies were going to steal my thoughts and the mug would only shut up when I told it to f*** off.

The problem is that these hallucinations feel so real at the time for me, that I only realise they're hallucinations when I think about them carefully a few hours later, or when someone tells me I was talking to myself.

I don't really know what to do. I am taking my medication as prescribed and I am compliant with all my treatment.

Advice?

Gluten and dairy free diet has helped my schizophrenia tremendously. I find that when I eat wheat, the voices come back. Right now I'm trying the Paleo Diet, google "paleo diet". The idea is to limit your food intake to what our distant caveman ancestors ate, with a few exceptions. Basically, meats (the fatter the better, err on the side of beef and pork), green leafy veggies, eggs, the version I have says cheese is ok so I eat goat milk cheese to get the fat content in my diet where it should be, nuts and seeds, and the occasional piece of fruit. No carbohydrates at all, no sweets, no wheat, very little rice. I have diabetes and high blood pressure from not taking care of myself, so I'm hoping this diet will help. But yeah, try cutting out wheat and dairy from your diet.

I'm vegetarian so can't eat meat. But my diet is a bit rubbish so changing what I eat is a good point. Although I don't believe it will take the voices etc away as even when I ate very healthily, I was still psychotic.

Talk to your psychiatrist? Maybe he/she can change or tweak your medication to take care of these hallucinations. I have bipolar and experienced hallucinations for the first few months of my first year of university. But my psychiatrist helped me get a hold on it again and a combination of changing my med cocktail and therapy got me to the point where I was(and am) hallucination free.

This is the problem. I've tried 7 different antipsychotics in the past 8 years. I am now on two antipsychotics at the same time: Olanzapine and Amisulpride. I could get my Amisulpride increased I suppose, but I'm running out of options. I tried Clozapine but I got horrendous side-effects on it, and nearly had total agranulocytosis and was approaching liver failure.

I'm a psychopharmacologist-in-training. I know a lot about antipsychotics. They are bad for your teeth, yes (I have recently had three teeth removed), and yes they can be bad to the liver (liver failure can occasionally occur). But they wouldn't have been approved as a class by the FDA in the US (and equivalent in other countries like the UK) if they didn't help people overall. Last time I was off my antipsychotics, I was trying to set myself and a policeman on fire, and then I was being pinned down to the ground by four officers and being handcuffed in Wimbledon Common. A couple of months of having my olanzapine reinstated and I was looking at going back to university. Antipsychotics don't work for everyone of course, no drug has 100% efficacy, but they generally (I know there are some occasional research studies that disagree) fare better than placebo in clinical trials. Antipsychiatry is a foolish movement overall (although they do point out wisely that unfair behaviour goes on in psychiatric wards....).

True. Ok. Thanks.

I cannot bring myself to eat meat due to ethical reasons. HOWEVER I can try eating less wheat products. I'd have to research this extensively first.

Asenapine and haloperidol. Interesting. What side-effects do you get? What doses are you on? I used to be on 20mg haloperdiol for my psychotic symptoms and I had to come off it due to muscle stiffness, bradykinesia and new onset of depression, but it worked quite well for my psychosis. I do not know a huge amount about asenapine, it is marketed in the UK but only recently.

Sorry if my post came across the wrong way.

I take abilify, buspar, and cymbalta.

I'll see what I can do then about the wheat. Although my psychosis is a hell of a lot more stabilised than a year ago.

I've had a similar increase in hallucinations, lately. I saw the room breathing and random insects crawling on the walls that weren't there last night. I think I might have a mild case of hallucinogen persisting perception disorder regarding the visual stuff.

I have chronic major depression and used to have psychotic depression. I am on meds for that. I used to hear things but I haven't in quite a while.

I'm just glad I'm not currently psychotic. Even when I get auditory hallucinations, I can dismiss them easily (I don't hear voices). It was the paranoia that really go to me when I was psychotic. I hope I don't have latent paranoid schizophrenia. I try to minimise how much stress I'm under and that really helps.

I don't really have any advice but I hope you find something that helps with the hallucinations. They sound quite annoying.