Schizophrenia off?

(Skip this paragraph if you want, tl;dr at bottom)The past few years, I’ve had a life of more work and less sleep. Working most of every day, then ~4 hours of sleep, then right back to work. Even then not wanting to sleep in fulfilling my crave to work. I’m one of those people who think they’re invincible if they just try hard enough. And I tried, very hard. Maybe a bit too much. But I was driven by a 3 things, one of which I would imagine being an overflow of dopamine(with pretty bad insomnia).

A few days ago, one night, I decided to get off the computer, stop work… try and reset my sleep schedule by just going to bed, sleep or not. Somehow I had fallen right to sleep…

That night I dreamed about one of my delusions. Note: I don’t dream ever, unless I nap in the day. Well I dreamed, and in it, I thought about the delusion, then I thought “Hey maybe it’s not real after all”, and it was gone. Not even a worry.

The next morning I woke to a very strange land…a non-sz land. It was NOTHING like I had felt since 17. I laid in bed thinking “I’m not szfrenic” Nothing bothered me. I felt nothing really would. Atleast not in that analytical, warp-speculative kind of way. I knew that something in my brain had switched like a light switch. Turned around? Flipped? Or just off.

So I continued laying in bed thinking about it, but decided to do something strange. You might think it’s strange. But I decided to try and flip the switch back on. “BUT WHY??” Because I wanted to know it was real. I wanted to know it was a switch. I wanted to be able to know how it feels to go in between one and the other because I knew I would probably be sz again. And I wanted to be able to tell other people about it.

It was very early in the morning(but I had slept ~10 hours because of the time I feel asleep). So I watched some YouTubes about sz…Found some useful info…1.2.skip a few, I’m outside. It’s 9am, and I’m wondering where on the beautiful green earth I’m at. I look, I turn. It’s the most peace I’ve felt in a long long time. It’s not just the season change. it’s not just the weather. It’s me, as a non-sz.

Later that day, I had went into town, taking care of business, like getting my MS tag, liscense, insurance…all good stuff to keep me from getting another multi-hundred dollar ticket.
I stopped by mcds to get a couple large fries(I don’t eat their scum burgers because of reactions). But then did something stupid, with reason, but stupid nonetheless. I got a coke. Drank it all. 30 minutes later I feel the psychosis creeping in. Which is scary because I thought it would be a switch like 1 and 0 right? This was more like 0 … 0.1 … 0.2 … 0.5 … And I’m pretty much on the border of sz land. It IS like a switch, but more like a dimmer switch with only 3 dimmer options, but the middle one can never be used for more than 30 seconds. Once it’s off it’s pretty much off. Once it’s on, you can feel 100% and it doesn’t go away. There is a small transition tho.

The next few days I’m an idiot and swamp myself with work. I’m pretty much sz… we had some visitors, and I freaked the ■■■■ out and went to a motel, where I drink more caffeine to try and psych myself into finishing more work. In short, I’m supplementing caffeine today, and trying to calm my brain down. So far so good. I wrote this didn’t I?

TL;DR

  • sz seems to be a switch, atleast for me
  • sleep is a very good thing
  • caffeine is a very bad bad thing…atleast for me
  • non-sz seems to be a very peaceful thing
  • YouTube actually has some good sz info now
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congratulations in finding some peace, and kicking down another brick in the wall.

Very cool. It’s a great day when you get that surge of knowledge that you can have some control over this and not the other way around. It sounds like you had a great night. I hope you get more of them.

My dimmer switch is always on… just sometimes it’s bright and sometimes is so low I can go without noticing it.

Sleep is my best friend… in moderation. Too much and I’m stuck

Caffeine is a bad thing… but I love it so much. I’m working on kicking that soon.

Those moments of symptom free are amazing and hopeful gems in my life.

I do like some of the YouTube vids, it’s nice to see more accurate information being put up.

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Thanks J. :smile: I really feel that the future is bright.
I hoping that if I get out of this, the experience can help other people on the forum. I feel like it’s actually something that can be controled mentally in more situations than thought. Like the guy who runs on snow in the arctic for hours without getting frostbite by controlling the “temperature guage” in his brain.

Caffeine is very bad if you’re SZ, it pumps up the dopamine levels instantly. Some of my hospitalisations and pretty much all of my crisis are the result of caffeine intake.

Youtube does have some good SZ info nowadays, I noticed it too.

If you can dream in your sleep, that seems to be a good thing, because your brain ‘cleans up’ the mess you it did out of itself during the day. Especially if you’re SZ. A doctor once told me that the only difference between me and him is that he never skipped a night’s rest, while I tended to lack sleep. I wouldn’t go so far as that, but I’m far better off when I sleep well and am rested than I am when I lack sleep.

A sz switch? Interesting thought… I’ll give it a try!

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I am truly starting to understand the importance of a good night’s sleep - When I get 5 hours of sleep or so, I especially do not feel like doing anything the following day - and my moods will be more vulnerable to rapid fluctuations - more irrtable so on and so forth

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Maybe I just had years of mess in my brain. :smile:

What is your experience with coffee vs other caffeinated beverages? It seems that coffee causes less psychosis, however it still ups adrenaline, which in turn can. It seems to also up seratonin though. It seems best to avoid all of the stuff.

I’m getting 10 hours a night now? Sometimes 8, but 10 seems to be the healing factor for me.

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That is really good @bear371 I struggle to get 8 hours a night, usually it is 7 hours or less - 8 hours is my healing factor - I like that description

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i tried going caffiene free for a month…my symptoms didn’t change one iota. i love my sleep too but i also am very wary of sleeping at night after being attacked in my own home whilst sleeping. i tend to sleep better during the day. i’ve never looked at sleep hours versus symptoms. it tends to be the symptoms that keep me awake rather than the other way around and i don’t know what triggers those. stress doesn’t seem to be a factor either as in one of the most stressful times of my life the voices went quiet for four months. xxx

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Well, coffee is better because I can approximate how much caffeine I’ve taken in. However, right after drinking it, I feel (or my friends and family notice) my symptoms going up like mad, it takes me one week after two days of coffee intake to start speaking normally again and looking people in the eye, not have weird thoughts etc.

Coffeinated drinks…well, apart from the fact that you can never tell how much caffeine they’ve put there (sometimes the formula is not followed and a drowsy employee in the late shift might drop a few extra compounds there, increasing the caffeine in the beverage) I discovered that there is a second problem there…most of them have artificial sweetners in them. After coffee, the second bad thing for my mental health is artificial sweetners, be it in drinks or in my mother in-law cookies. She has a tendency to bake using all kinds of shortcuts she finds on the market, which means her cookies are full of artificial sweetners all the time. I sometimes eat out of politeness and can’t recover from the damage for a few days in the row.

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I’m getting 8 hours of sleep, I’ve been tracking that on moodtracker. But that’s only because my son is an early bird and I have to tend to him every morning. Otherwise, my best amount of sleep would be 10 hours. I’ve been watching my mood graphic depending on sleep and it’s pretty clear to me that 10 hours is the best choice for me, if it’s possible. Less than 8 however (I tried getting up to run in the mornings) and I’m back in SZ land for a looong time.

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