So in 2001 I had my first psychotic break at the age of 24. Since that time I have been hospitalized maybe a half a dozen times with more psychotic breaks been on every medication under the sun.
Went to programs made friends lost friends got hooked on drugs spent months in rehabs been to jail twice and even had a two year period off of meds and clean from drugs worked and had a girlfriend.
I finally found a doctor that I trusted last year and I’ve been working with her ever since. She said it would take many months to ge better and so far has been right about everything every step of the way.
She told me that I don’t have schizophrenia or even schizoaffective disorder but major bipolar 2 depression that has never been treated.
Anyway after a year of seeing this doctor she is finally tapering me off the antipsychotics and every day I am getting better and better. It has been 16 years that I have been in and out of institutions labeled stigmatized drugged and you know the rest.
I guess you could say that I’m recovering and finally I get treated like a real person. Something that I never thought would happen again.
To be honest it’s not that great and I feel like killing myself. I just can’t believe how sick I get and how terrible psychosis is. I don’t know if it’s the depression or the ptsd I have or what but I have to take little tiny baby steps to get back to some semblance of a normal life. It’s very painful and difficult and sometimes I would rather be sick.
Hats off to all the survivors on this site who struggle with this every day. My entire adult life has been a major struggle for survival and I’m tired. My body feels like it’s breaking down and my heart has been broke countless times. I’m just a tough old son of a gun on two legs with a head and shoulders that slump from bearing the weight of the world.
I’m sure that you guys can relate to some of this.
I think the worst thing for you must have been going from happy, well-adjusted, high functioning and normal to this. At 24 you have had enough time to develop yourself and your life to the point where it must have felt like someone swept the rug from under you. I hate what the drugging does to our morale, taking these pills constantly makes us feel like freaks. Have you ever heard someone jokingly use the expression “maybe you need to take your meds” or something along those lines. I have and hearing that hurt me to no end. The stigma is real, and possibly the only worse thing is the suffering of not knowing what your mind is going to do next to torture you, It is no surprise so few of us go on to achieve great things in lilfe, we are basically living zombies.
I’m so sorry to hear of your troubles. It must be hard for you to trust a dr again. I’m glad you finally do have someone to help lead you on this journey back to wellness. I’m concerned, however, that you say you feel like killing yourself. You may feel like a broken record saying it, but you should definitely tell your dr about this. If you are having those feelings now then now would be a good time to reach out for help. I truly wish the best for you and hope you get to feeling better soon.
Hang in there @MeghillaGorilla1
Continue to listen to your doctor.
Life does get better.
Yes @eduvigis. You said it best,The meds are not good for our morale. Every night before bed we take medication that blocks us from knowing our true selves. Not just the antipsychotics are bad although they are the worst. Even Prozac is tough to take.
Before I got sick I was popular well liked and reasonably well adjusted but I had a problem with drugs. I spent my late teens and early twenties in rehab for substance abuse down in Florida and eventually California where I went psychotic.
The drugs the lack of coping skills and the stress and pressure of life sober drove me mad. The doctor told me that if I had not done drugs I would most likely not have experienced psychosis. But I had OCD really bad, a disorder called trichotillomania(hair pulling)
Tat lead me to self medicate with drugs because it was so embarrassing and unbearable. Compared to psychosis it is a minor nuisance though.
I wrote the above because I feel that we should never give up hope. My spent years on the internet looking for novel treatments back in early 2000’s before laptops. I tried ect, I attempted suicide, eventually I began to inject heroin because I couldn’t handle the pain. Then one day this doctor told me that depression was my problem, and that lamictal was not enough and Prozac was not enough either.
I followed her direction and she has gotten me so much better. The local people in my town have seen me struggle. The girls who work at dunkin doughnuts the people in Alcoholics Anonymous. I always knew that I was under there but could never be myself because of my illness and I got treated like ■■■■ or babied by people. Now I’m coming back and it is noticeable. Recovery is real and if you can do whatever it is that you are doing now then you might just be able to recover too.
I spent many holidays weekends birthdays New Years eves alone in the couch by myself.
I never thought I would be a “real guy” again as my doctor calls it.
I pray that they will come out with better medications in case I need to take antipsychotics again. Or mood stabilizer which I will be on for the rest of my life. Even Prozac can be improved drastically.
If the meds we have now have gotten us this far then imagine how much further we will go one day with meds that are proven to work precisely.
I am a survivor of 16 years of serious mental illness. I am 40 years old and I had given up on ever having a life again. Now that I have most of my brain back I still don’t know what I want to do with it. I missed my twenties and thirties. I feel like I just got released from a life sentence but I am very cautious that it could come back. I don’t think I will ever rest easy again
Damn, all I can say is you have lived most of your life but not all of it. For someone with milder mental illness which was made worse by illicit drugs can you say you have ever thought “what if I hadn’t messed my brain up, where would I be today”.
It is clear to me that the problem exists on many levels, within our brains, within society, in the pharmaceutical industry. Those are just a few of the places where the problem lies.
We are driven by mental illness to self medication, drug culture in the us as well as all over the world is definitely a huge influence on people falling into this trap.
Would you consider yourself a survivor or someone who has fallen through the cracks?
I can’t wait to outdo some losers I went to highschool with who must have loved to talk shot about me going crazy and are still doing the same things they were doing back in 1995.
Life’s not a sprint it’s a marathon bitches!
I’m a survivor. I sat in hospitals and day programs with people that had all types of mental illness.
I’m not proud of myself I’m actually disgusted that I let this happen to myself.
I didn’t know that the mind could do this type of stuff.
I guess I consider myself a visitor but I’ll always be a VIP. I’m mentally ill. When I’m psychotic I’m just as craZy as the craziest street person. But I can hobestly say that I am completely sane now and have been for a year and I still have my mind. I have major insecurities though and low self esteem or confidence from being on this journey.
It’s far from over I’m sure I will need to be under the care of a psychiatrist for the rest of my life.
They must have laughed and praised god when I fell from graces. That way the didn’t have to look at themselves and what they were doing.
Well now they’re just scraping by and im ready for round 7. There ain’t nuthin I can’t handle now!
A year is not a long time with this illness… If our minds are sort of the stronghold of our self confidence losing them is definitely very disempowering. I know how it feel to feel that sense of insecurity of not knowing what your mind is about to come up with next. It is agony.
I have no self esteem, I am too cowardly to even show my face in public. But for me there was never a before. Never a before paranoia, disordered thinking and just generally everything you could imagine going wrong in the thought process going wrong. I was just a kid back then. In many ways I still am one, completely dependent on others for everything.
Sorry I’m being vague, I don’t like to tell too much about myself, all I know is I have felt the worst of what mental ilness has to offer I believe, and if there is anything worse then I am not strong enough to handle that.
Yes but you have insight and I can understand and make sense of what you say. I have a good sense of what’s right and wrong. What’s customary what acceptable and ynbaceptable from my childhood I went to good schools had normal interactions etc.
But we are all on a continuoum. What I thought was normal may have been perceived as abnormal by other kids. I always had some level of illness although it wasn’t psychosis.
You don’t seem far off the mark at all. In fact there are so many different types of people out there that I have observed while sick that there really is no right or wrong as long as you are within the laws of society.
Just pick a point and start with it. You have to have some norm. If mental illness is your norm then start there and build a persona on top of that. At night when you are by yourself you get comfortable with your suffering I’ve found. I don’t have any way to validate myself. I a not a lawyer or a doctor I am a former druggy who became mentally ill. But I will use that as part of my foundation and grow from there.
I can’t deny or ignore it, or else I would not be authentic and people would spot that. I also do not embrace it. I compartmentalize it and let it make me a more compassionate person.
I could become puchptic tomorrow morning. But I’m learning to live for the day. Even with psychosis and disorder thoughts we have no choice but to go about our business. I used to think everything had to be perfect. Like a rockstar everywhere I went.
Good looks, girls, money, brains, parties etc.
I had to give that up and now I’m slowly seeing that god has left me just enough room to exist here in earth. I am not less then others I am a real person with feelings and thoughts if my own.
The key now is to do something productive
I’m glad you have a good doctor now @MeghillaGorilla1. It seems to be making all the difference. Keep up the baby steps, and the best approach is what you’re doing: slow cautious optimism.