I'm a paranoid schizophrenic, so I can help to answer questions based on shared symptoms and such.
So, unless you're tapping your fingers raw, I take it the side effects aren't horrendous?
Abilify stopped me from being able to eat.
Risperidone stopped my dick from working.
Olanzipine made me drowsy to such a point that it was outweighing the little positive effect it had (read: no positive effect)
I sometimes wonder if I have something similar to schizophrenia. What sort of symptoms should I look for?
Hairs on the palms of your hands is one. Looking for them is another
But seriously, symptoms to look for are: paranoid thoughts (i.e. if I'm out walking as I often do, I think that people who I walk past might want to attack me, despite having no reason to believe this other than the sheer fact thatv it is a possibility) the more delusionary the "better" in terms of helping to identify (I often believe people around me are seeing my thoughts; I often believe that there are cameras all around my house watching me, but I don't know who would be doing it [could be a government or a company doing some in-depth research or scientists or such - anyone!], I often believe many of my friends aren't actually my friends they're just acting friendly to be polite), hallucinations (particularly audio hallucinations like voices in your head, though in the past couple of years I've had hallucinations with a more visual element). I had a period of about half a year or a bit longer when I had regular voices, but they haven't returned since.
My train of thought often stops point blank midway through and I don't even remember what I was thinking about even if it was important and should be able to remember. Apparently that's a common symptom.
I you have these symptoms, I'd go to a doctor. I would also stop smoking weed completely (you've said you do so multiple times before. It really exaspirates the symptoms, sometimes a few days down the line. Seriously not worth it).
Do you hear them from other people in the same room?
When I had voices regularly, they weren't coming from anywhere in particular, just kinda there. That's how I differentiated them from actual people when other people where nearby though there'd often be noone anywhere nearby. Visual have a fixed place, like once I walked around some floating apples on the middle of a pavement next to a busy road. Othertimes reality kinda shifts and I'm just kinda standing there like a deer in headlights before I know what has happened.
Have they ruled out that you do not have an onset of Alzheimers?
Alzheimers and psychosis illness are usually opposite ends of the spectrum, the vast majority of sufferers of either will not ever suffer the other. Medication can reverse that though (antipsychotics can give people alzheimers-like symptoms, anti alzheimer drugs can give people psychosis). So in short, I doubt it.
(Though sanabas had this covered!)
