My 30 year old niece, and loved one has been diagnosis with schizoaffective disorder with bipolar features. Of all of the research I have done in regards to drug abuse- we are talking 15 years of anything she can get her hands on, I feel that her psychosis is induced by substance abuse. I was finally able to get her into an acute care facility in December 2023, after she spent 6 weeks in jail for possession of a controlled substance ( for the 8th arrest in 2023 alone.) I presented evidence to a social worker at the crisis stabilization unit, and SOMEONE finally listened. He instructed me to present even more overwhelming evidence to the acute care facility, which I did. She was like a wild animal in those first days, had not showered in over a year, was homeless for 15 months, and covered in lice. She refused to cooperate, shower, get de-loused until she was heavily medicated. She had to be Riesed ( a hearing which forces people to take medications against their will) and was found to be incompetent and incapcitated. She was started on anti-psychotics when her 3 day hold was extended to 14 days. She insisted that she had been kidnapped multiple times, and had no idea why she was in a hospital, and demanded to be released. After her 14 day hold, she was placed on a 30 day hold, and then another 30 day hold while her social worker applied to the Public Guardian for a temporary LPS Conservatorship. At the end of the 2nd 30 days a court hearing was held, and I was appointed her conservator. I make all of her medical decisons, including where she will live and what medications she can be given. It is daunting at best. She was released one day after this court hearing, into my custody. I moved her into a new environment 500 miles from her home, but all she wanted to do was go to the clinic to get methadone. Which I would not allow. I sent her back to her county and placed her in a sober living home, which was her request. She did really well for about 7 weeks. Then I got the phone call that every parent dreads in the middle of the night, that she had overdosed. She was blue and not breathing, no heartbeat. With 3 doses of Narcan, she was revived and remembers only being wheeled away on a stretcher. I let her know long before this if she used again, she will go back in to a lockdown psychiatric hospital, and she is there now. She calls every day begging me to let her out, but I most certainly will not. She is on a waiting list for a Residential Treatment Center (RTC) lockdown facility which can take months for a bed to be available. What I would like to propose is a medication wash to determine her baseline. Have any of you ever asked for a medication wash? And if so, were the results significant? I feel that this would show that her psychosis is due to drug use, as opposed to true schizophrenia. It can be safely done in a hospital setting. I am not trying to prove that I am right and others involved are wrong, I just want to see what her baseline is, so going forward we can see the "real" her, free of illegal substances for the first time in her adult life. I mostly don't want her to be institutionalized for the rest of her life, unless she is truly schizophrenic, or schizoaffective. She has no insight into her illness, whether it be schizoaffective, or the disease of addiction. Has anyone on these boards ever done a medication wash for their loved one?