Life as a schiz

hey guys, just wondering what you guys think about life is a schizophrenic.

for me it feels bleak, that at age 21, i’m on disability, can’t find a job, because I can’t seem to go give my resume out, and now i haven’t had a job since 2011. whatever. no girlfriend either… lonely…
depressed because of this situation, and just life in general and how meaningless it is. every activity seems worthless…
also, the medication if i choose to take it can give me long term side effects. such as shrinking the brain or muscle spasms… and if i don’t, the voices or paranoia will kill me… its all lose lose.

“…polishing the brass on the titanic, it’s all going down man”

:confused:

I can relate to you. I personally struggle with living because of the fact that I have a mega ■■■■■■■ of a voice in my mind that pisses me off all day long. Meds don’t work. There are times when I hate being alive due to the voice.

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My worst years were when I first got diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia in 1980 at age 19 and the two 1/2 years immediately after that. I’m doing pretty well now at age 52. But when I first got diagnosed I suffered horribly. For 2 1/2 years I did not have a minutes relief from terrible, frightening symptoms. I spent 8 months locked up in a psychiatric hospital. Not fun. For those first couple years I had no friends, no girlfriends, no money, no job, no school, no car, no life, no sanity, no peace of mind. But now I live independently in my own studio apartment, I own and drive a car, I work part-time, I take online college classes, I’m extremely glad I stuck around to enjoy these things. Is life easy for me? Not even close. But it’s tolerable, and I am still able to learn. I can’t predict the future but I have hope and faith that more good things will happen to me.

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One of the things that helps me is finding ways to cope and then using those skills on sites like this to help as many people as I can. Also crochet really helps me, so I bought some yarn and crochet hooks to teach people at my local schizophrenia group. I am also going to go up to the hospital where they keep the schizophrenia and mental health in patients and find people to teach there. It is so boring in the hospital I would have been so happy if I knew how to crochet while I was there. I did a lot of drawing. I bought two balls of yarn and two hooks today to give away and teach two people. We are making super easy winter hats.

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When I was 21 my life was drug and alcohol filled, I had been in hospital more then I had been out, I was in my anger phase and my cycle of drugs, no meds and relapse had become a habit. I was either psychotic and manic and having a lot of problems… Or I was horribly depressed and psychotic and tried leave this life. This was also my stint of homelessness. That really turned me around a bit.

It sucked back then. It was bleak, and hopeless and I had no skills, no ambition, I really felt like a waste of humanity. But it has gotten better. As I’ve gotten older, gotten a med combo that really works for me, worked on getting that negativity away from me… got help finding a job through a vocational training at the day hospital and little by little I’ve got to this point were I am.

It’s hard, and it hurst, but hang in there and don’t be afraid to ask for help.

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thanks for the kind words. hopefully i’ll make it out of this. stuck in the marijuana addiction, but i can let that go, i know. i just need something else to put my time into. the gym isn’t enough. na is not enough, need to do more.

i feel you about the meds. i won’t take those for the rest of my life. no way.

I think there are two sides to life,
and as a schizophrenic
we specialize on one side,
the more rare side,
the side that talks to the spirits,
swims in mystery and wonder.
often we are so good at that side
that we can’t do that well on the other side,
consensual reality, the worldly minded camarilla,
scientists and their test tubes,
we just drop them on the floor and make a mess,
some civilizations prize their shamans, support them, utilize their dreams.
some societies brand them as schizophrenics and recommend drug treatment and incarceration.
they don’t have our best interest in mind,
better to abandon their world,
drop their values all over the floor with their test tubes,
be the wild animals we are,
pursue innner nature and destiny and search for mystery and wonder.

onderdonk

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i agree with some of that.
dont know about the spirit world, but i saw this video on youtube saying that we experience too much, see too many possibilities, and just don’t know what to pick. our minds are always racing…

contrasting it to the depressive who sees no possibilities. no future, no hope.

now, i go between those two all the time. sometimes i think i’m bi polar… idk

My life was rather shitty until I got on meds, and ive only been on my newest med regiment for a couple months. I was struggling to perform and even just go to class, and I was very angry and restless due to the constant voices and delusions. I was highly functioning throughout my psychosis, but that made it harder and caused me more suffering- I played normal and it was so hard to sit still and listen when I just wanted to grab my head and scream at any given moment.

Now I am in remission and I do very well in school, have kept my scholarship, and have dated a couple girls since I entered remission. I lift weights alot (also did this when I was psychotic) and school eats up the rest of my time. I am on a month-long break from school right now, I have two more weeks until school starts. I just workout and watch anime, thats what I did last summer too.

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life is not one photograph, it is many series of photographs.
you have one photo and are judging your life from it,
many magical things can happen in some ones life , things we can not predict , nor should we want to.
there are many who are disabled, in wheel chairs their are worst fates than sz.
i hope things get better for you, always look on the bright side.
take care

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You need to redirect your life into something more worth living. That means getting the right med combo that works for you. that is the first priority on the road to recovery.then after you are stable on that for a good amount of time.you will find out that life is easier on you.no psychoses no symptoms to bother you.I smoke marijuana when I was psychotic and it was no good but when I got stable I found a way to enjoy it more. Good luck to you in fighting way the bleak in life and hope you find a brighter day thank you

There is a lot to complain about when it comes to my symptoms and the disease. But there are more things to complain about when it comes to the quality of the medications supposedly helping to alleviate the crippling symptoms of sz. I am truly tired of playing chase the right medication game. the truth is although some of these meds help some people deal with their symptoms better, they are not a cure and these meds in my opinion can do just as much damage as the illness itself. Its a bleak and dismal trade off - soften the psychosis some on one side - gain tons of weight, get diabetes, dull down your senses, damage your liver and heart, shrink your brain on the other side.
There has got to be a better way. Being a lab rat is no way to go.

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thats the depressing part, its a lose-lose situation. sadly
■■■■ the medication cocktails, i’ll die before i take those.

I don’t know where I stand on medication. I’ve been on rispiridone, gave me rd, zyprexa, gained 3 stone and slept, abilify, made me paranoid as ■■■■, seroquel, another two stone and zombie like and finally depixol, gives me muscle spasms low blood pressure and blurred vision so I have to wear glasses. The voices have been there throughout all meds at whatever dose. Right now I don’t want to try clozapine as I’m worried about the side effects. But if things get worse I will, if it lasts longer than 3 months. I’m notdiagnosed as sschiz’ as I don’t fit all the criteria but I have a lot of the symptoms. Life isn’t so bad f ucan find the right meds. Ur at rock bottom now aaren’t u? What have u got to lose? U can always come off them again if they don’t suit u. Good luck. Xxx

Listen, I don’t want to give out the impression that I’m anti meds. My survival on this planet depends on psych meds.
They do keep me stitched together - enough to get by. The reason for me sounding so down on meds lately is I am going to take my 6th or 7th antipsychotic another one - latuda in a week or so. It will probably more of the same thing as far as side effects go. But if you flat out ask me do I take the meds? or leave them alone - I choose take the meds.