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Taking an antipsychotic is not easy. People who lack firsthand or secondhand knowledge of this invariably will not understand it. It may seem as though mentally ill people are just sick people, and any differences from what is accepted as normal are just because we are sick. However, when someone has a psychotic disorder and must take antipsychotics, many of the problems we face, and the externally observable differences, are due to the medication and not just the psychiatric condition. 

Antipsychotics cause side effects. Some side effects may be unbearable. The stiff, restless, drugged out, numbed out, shut down feeling we may get is caused by the antipsychotics. This sensation, which I've just described as well as I'm able, can cause some mentally ill people to resort to street drugs or alcohol in a vain attempt to get relief. 

When someone in treatment for psychosis takes the step of resorting to substance abuse, they are making a big mistake. Rather than solving the problem, they are adding an additional problem on top of the first problem. When side effects of medication arise, there are some things that can help. We may, after a while, become acclimated to the effects of the medication such that we won't notice them as much. We can also use mindfulness. 

Antipsychotics can cause depression, yet in some cases they are used to treat depression. They seem to limit brain activity. If a person is psychotic or manic, we may need this limiting effect. It does not mean that we are made stupid. Yet many people incorrectly perceive us that way. 

When overmedicated, faculties may be excessively shut down such that we can't use mindfulness, can't focus, and can barely function. The mental capacity that medication sometimes blocks may be the very same capacity that we need if we are to get well. Overmedicating is a problem. There are strategies for dealing with this other than going too low on medication. 

If we are bothered by medication side effects or if a treatment professional says we are doing well, cutting down on dosages of antipsychotics is sometimes a bad idea. It is a commonly made error in treatment, and it can ultimately trigger a relapse. If we are doing well, it means that something was done right. If so, it implies that we shouldn't change what we're doing. 

An individual in treatment who is on too low of a dosage could manifest this in numerous ways. The faculty of "judgment" may be the first thing to go. We may start to go into a delusional system because of not being medicated enough. This delusional system often sneaks up on us, and it has the potential to fool us on a repeat basis--that's the nature of psychosis. It can take several repetitions of a scenario of relapse and recovery for us to learn some hard lessons in our treatment. Some do not survive this. If we can get through a few repeat episodes alive, and if we've had enough time in recovery in the course of this, we should have what is needed to create a good level of insight about ourselves. 

"Anosognosia" is the state of mind in which the psychotic condition prevents us from having insight about the fact of the psychotic condition. Some patients are simply unable to gain much insight and must live in supervised settings. 

When we are overmedicated, life can be hellish. The side effects may be at an unbearable level, some of them irreversible. There can be medical complications. Being overmedicated will block concentration. It will block freedom of physical movement. It will cause weight gain. It will cause us many problems that we did not create and that nobody deserves. Yet to choose between the two, being just a bit overmedicated may be a better situation than being undermedicated and slipping back into partial psychosis, leading eventually to relapse. 

Having a psychotic disorder is not an easy life, and often it is not a long or healthy life. We need better medications and better treatments. This is a segment of the population being tortured for our entire lives not only by the illness, but also by the treatment. 

If a particular antipsychotic doesn't work or has unbearable side effects, a different drug may work better. There are at least a dozen different ones commonly prescribed, and if one of them is bad for us, it doesn't mean we or our family members should give up hope.