A little bit about myself. It all started about 7 years ago when I started hearing the faint whisperings of voices. I was smoking crystal meth at the time, and didn’t think anything of the voices until they turned on me and started shouting and calling me names and berating me and such. Immediately, I became a Christian, and I believed that I was demon possessed (I still do to this day, but if everyone in the world including Christians quack one way, it doesn’t make a difference if I call this thing Schizophrenia or Demonic Possession).
I was hospitalized once, and thought “everyone in here is batshit crazy and the doctors are out to get me”, so I lied my way out of my hospital stay by telling them that I was fine; no voices or any delusions, thanks bye.
After that, at 30, I moved back in with my mom in Calgary and pretended to have a normal life, delivering food for a food delivery app, all the while thinking everyone around me was a fallen angel sent to mess with me, and that they could read my mind and that they were always one step ahead of everything I was doing. I pulled this off for about 5 years until I hit a brick wall where I was basically shouting and screaming at the sky, similar to what you see of homeless people downtown doing from time to time.
I reluctantly went through the dreaded mental health system here in Canada, found a psychiatrist after a 7 month wait who then put me on 15mg of Olanzapine and an antidepressant. He diagnosed me with drug induced psychosis, because of the meth I was smoking so he is reluctant to classify me as fully schizophrenic (although I meet all of the criteria for a schizophrenia diagnosis). I started taking the meds, and that’s when the negative symptoms started to set in. Before the meds I had never had these negative symptoms of Apathy, inability to perform basic functions like cleaning and self care. I was always high functioning but completely out of my mind.
One thing that changed dramatically though is that I managed to work through a lot of my delusions. I no longer believe that people are fallen angels, I dont think people are reading my mind, and I am very non conspiratorial. I like to think the medicine in conjunction with faith helped me overcome these hurdles. Lately though I have been having odd thoughts about people of other races that I have never experienced before. For example, one of the voices will yell out racial slurs that sound like thoughts in my head, and it is extremely annoying to say the least. Another thing is a fear of being around children. I have no idea why I have this now, but I wish it would go away.
I am hoping to finally overcome these and lead a normal life like I have dreamed of since the start of this “Psychosis”.
Thanks for reading.
