Most of the time I think I have a pretty good grasp on what is happening but sometimes I have to acknowledge that I can be wrong. Yes I can do that ;) Yesterday my son asked me if I had seen his vaporizer as he thought someone had stolen it. I told him that I had it and why. He had a good explanation. During our last grocery shop I bought him a light wave speaker. He is using the charged vaporizer to power the speaker so that he can move it around with him. He pointed out that he can't use the vaporizer for weed as he would have to make it into liquid first. Yes I know but I couldn't rule out him doing this. So for now the use of the vaporizer has been explained.
My son is struggling right now and I'm not to sure how to help him. He told me yesterday that he has been asked to not attend the YMCA for schooling as he is not progressing. I will have to call or email them on Monday as I'm thinking there is a little more to it then that. I remember when he had his first appointment with them to sign up, being told that they have some who have been there for a long time as they can work at their own pace, so I'm not to sure I understand what is happening. Perhaps he is being nudged into applying himself more? He said that he can't do it so he will have to start looking for a job. If he can't apply himself to 6 hours a week schooling then chances are he can't apply himself to learn a job. He seems to think that working is easy and takes no mental effort. Delusion or immature thinking? Since he doesn't have much personal experience to draw from on this then I'm thinking lack of experience or immature thinking. We both agreed that he will have to learn for himself that it does take mental effort to do a job.
He said that he can't put into words the 'stress' that he is currently experiencing that maybe one day he could explain it to me so that I can understand. Personally I don't think that he even understands the stress that he is feeling as he doesn't want to or can't understand the negative impact of symptoms. It's times like this that I myself have to re-evaluate my opinion on whether or not my son has schizophrenia. I explained to him that there is more to schizophrenia then positive symptoms like hallucinations and voices. There is also negative symptoms which get in the way of people's ability to cope with normal life stresses. On the surface his life can not, in my opinion, get much easier. I pointed out that he was doing great up until the Adderall and nothing else has changed so it's his inability to cope that needs to be looked at. I took a leap and suggested that maybe we need to look at upping his anti-psychotics for a little bit until things can get under control again. He doesn't want to be on pills for the rest of his life. 'I would rather die...' My heart hurt when I told him that he may need to be on pills for the rest of his life if he does in fact have schizophrenia.
He seems to understand that he needs help however he wants to be prescribed benzodiazepines even though he knows that he will not have an easy time getting them. He also doesn't want anti-depressants. I know that he doesn't like being on the Clozapine and doesn't want to be on another anti-psychotic since in his eyes he doesn't need them. I don't know how to help him come to terms with this and I am afraid to push and cause his ODD to flare up. I don't know if it's his ADHD or schizophrenia symptoms but for the past couple of days he has been pretty jittery. Not really hyper like I have seen where he is punching his bed or hitting walls or jumping like a 5 year old but like a muted undertone of something not right. Maybe it's time to look into another medication. I know that he has been tried on a lot of them but they were during times of chronic high marijuana use and nothing seemed to help except the Clozapine. I have heard of some good results with Latuda. It's an atypical or new generation AP that seems to work on blocking or antagonizing dopamine D2 receptors. No I don't really understand exactly what this means except that it helps to limit the amount of dopamine my son's brain has to work with. Clozapine is also one. I look at these things as I believe my son's brain produces too much dopamine and especially after the Adderall certain types of medications will do him more harm then good.
Because of his legs going pretty non-stop I asked him last night if he wanted a Neurontin. The last time I gave him one he didn't take it so I'm never to sure if I should be giving it to him or not however I do know that despite his tendency to try and abuse it that it does help with his anxiety and it does seem to help keep his mood more stable. It works on the central nervous system. I'm hoping that he took the one that I gave him last night. He was up this morning when I got up just before 6 stating that he had been asleep for a couple of hours but woke up and was just having a smoke. He seemed too alert to have already been asleep. His pill dish was empty and he is sleeping sound now so I'm guessing he took them shortly before I got up. One of the benefits to my insomnia is that being up and down all night allowed me to keep a closer eye on him so that I could nicely nag him into taking his pills and going to bed. Maybe knowing that my daughter is around and can get me up if needed is allowing me to sleep better.
I almost feel like we are on a precipice or the edge of a cliff and I don't know if we are going to go over or manage to shuffle ourselves out of harms way. I don't know how to move us forward and away from this edge without causing harm yet I also feel that if we don't move forward then we will inevitably succumb to gravity and fall of the edge anyways. We can not stay teetering as we are. Perhaps I can but for my son it is not a good place.
Mom
BarbieBF
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