Okay, I was doing horrible at the beginning and I had an extremely poor prognosis. I had given up hope (well, medical professionals took my hope from me), and I was very suicidal. Came close to snuffing myself on a few occasions. What saved me was AA. I had joined AA because of my alcoholism shortly before the SZ hit. Now the thing about AA members, they don’t care what other problems you have. If you’re a drunk, they’re there for you. And they’ll drag you out and make you keep doing things.
They kept me going when I would have completely shut down. Most importantly, it was AA that gave me hope again. From Alcoholics Anonymous, Chapter Five: How it works:
“There are those, too, who suffer from grave emotional and mental disorders, but many of them do recover if they have the capacity to be honest.”
That sounded pretty good. I decided I would try and see how much I could recover. I mean I couldn’t read more than a paragraph at that point and being in a room full of people for an hour was pretty triggering. Showering? Not without help.
I committed to getting better. I didn’t know how much better was possible, but it had to be a step up from where I was at that time. I stopped screwing around with my meds. I stuck with meds I didn’t like through the side-effects and kept taking them anyhow. I stopped lying to my doctors out of fear of being hospitalized (odd thing, they are actually LESS likely to hospitalize you when they can tell you’re being honest). I tried all of the things the doctors told me to do. I tried pushing myself as well. I set very small goals and when I hit them I tried for a tiny bit bigger goal. I eventually became organized enough to keep a journal again and I have been ever since.
Over time I started to stabilize and they dialed back my meds. I was in this community and people were mentioning CBT. I couldn’t find it where I lived, but I was able to buy books on it and try it out on my own. It helped. I mean it really helped and my meds got dialed back more. I also got put on better meds. As the fog from the meds cleared I was able to do even more therapy and more self-improvement.
The person I am here now is the result of three decades of pushing myself with self-improvement. I don’t stop because as I keep telling others, schizophrenia is relentless. You won’t win unless you’re even more relentless.
Fight. Back. Every. Day.
It wasn’t any one thing so much as a lot of things, sticking with anything I found that gave me an edge (being faithful about meds, diet, exercise, sarcosine, Amyloban, CBT, conventional therapy, etc.), keeping my recovery journals and – most importantly – working towards a positive, recovery centric attitude. Even if I fail today I trust that what I learn takes me a step forward towards my next success and that’s OK. Failure is progress and progress is good. With that fear and anxiety gone it’s easier to take the risks I need to push my recovery forward.
Hope this helps.
