Three years ago, I was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. I've been trying various meds using trial and error approach as well as pharmacology. In fact, I've been telling my doctor what to prescribe for the last two years, because he's not willing to take the time to study my illness more closely.
The first year, I've been on Olanzapine which among other things caused difficulty speaking. I later diagnosed this as cortical dysarthria, because my doctor doesn't know how to diagnose this.
After trying almost all atypical antipsychotics, I came up with the following combination which sorta works: 400mg of Sulpiride and 25mg of Quetiapine. Sulpiride is a selective dopamine antagonist, while Quetiapine works as a histamine and alpha blocker at low doses such as 25mg. Sulpiride causes mild insomnia, and that's all. Quetiapine causes difficulty speaking as well though.
Being on a low dose of Sulpiride for a few years caused some cognitive (memory) problems. I had to increase the dose to 600mg to fix them, but I still struggle with them sometimes.
My theory was that I could replace Quetiapine by an alpha blocker to prevent my other symptoms like a tremor and watery eyes. My doc didn't want to prescribe an alpha blocker, because it would be an off-label use, and he's not much into experimentation. I am.
I then contacted about 60 doctors, and two of them agreed that they would prescribe it. Victory? Not really, because it didn't work.
My latest theory was that I could replace Quetiapine by an antihistamine. To my great surprise, you can get an antihistamine without prescription, and there are even second generation antihistamines which don't cause sedation. Nice! One of them also caused difficulty speaking, so that means that blocking H1 receptor causes this.
To sum it up, I'm now on 600mg of Sulpiride (dopamine blocker) and 5mg of Loratadine (antihistamine).
My remaining symptoms: slightly burning eyes, and mild cognitive problems
My side effects: nothing worth mentioning!
All in all, a great success in treating schizophrenia.
Sorry if this was too technical, but I didn't even talk about pharmacology behind this.
Mirage