To be or not to be

hey guys.

diagnosed almost 2 years ago now, and life has really changed. after the psychosis i will never be the same. about a year before i was diagnosed, i started smoking pot. still smoking, have become an addict. smoking up all day, from the time i wake up to when i go to sleep.
i receive disability, and with this i afford to live on my own. i’m turning 22 this year.

i have dreams, aspirations, to be a great model/actor. the only positive is that i am quite handsome and maybe have the ability to act, because of course, i’m crazy… but i can easily play it off and no one would be able to tell that i have this problem. only my closer friends know.

but sometimes life seems to pathetic, so boring, so pointless…
we live, and we die. we do a bunch of stuff in between.

what is your guys’ opinion on life, and the hand you were dealt. how do you deal with this “mediocrity” so to speak. it feels less than that for me.

I know, life can feel so arbitrary at times. I have developed a healthy fear of death that keeps me in line. Too many unknowns about death for me to jump right in to it.

There are people with and without mental illness that aspire to greatness.

There are people with out mental illness who do nothing but sit on the sofa and people with mental illness who fight it back.

There are all walks of life every where. It’s constant shoots and ladders. Some times your up and sometimes your down. So with that said I guess life is how you see it.

I’ve seen life as pointless in my past. I tried to leave life. Then when I nearly did clock out I found, that I’m really sort of attached to the concept of living after all.

Sunshine and flowers everyday? NO. No one gets that. People with mental illness and with out all have periods of light or dark. So for me it doesn’t matter what side of the club door we’re on, we’re all human.

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right. i totally agree. and i guess i’m curious what i can make of this life, where i’ll be in 5-10 years.

Well said, J! I do sometimes feel down about being schizophrenic, but I am doing awesome in psychology in college and my psychologists have told me that with my IQ and insight, I should become a psychologist and be able to master schizophrenia, from a clinical and personal standing simultaneously. I am making schizophrenia my bitch.

less than six months ago I got on a meds combo that has me in full remission, 99% symptom free and very highly functioning. I have gotten into powerlifting, and I will be joining my gym’s team this summer and will compete in the fall. I can squat twice my weight and deadlift nearly three times my weight, but I need to work on bench, I can only bench one and a half times my weight.

I am lucky. If medication worked like it does for me for everyone, all we would see on this site would be rainbows and sunshine. I am still in recovery, I have only recently woken up from the nightmare that we here have all experienced or are experiencing.

But to be and to be schizophrenic at the same time means that you are strong. I am literally strong and it means nothing to me compared to when I dragged myself through my first year of college, hallucinating constantly and coming up with new delusions every few minutes.

Don’t lose hope and seek help, there is lots of it out there for us. It’s not weak to need help, it’s weak to not have the strength to reach out for it, which I didn’t have for over a year; I was non-compliant with medication for a year after my onset.

I think you should stop smoking pot and get on medication. I don’t mean to preach but I was a high-functioning alcoholic schizophrenic at this moment a year ago, and now I am a different person. I didn’t want to change, I was getting by, but a few nights without liquor passed and I decided that my life needed to change.

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I will just do what I can. I kind of think that smoking pot all day, every day might be a problem in your life. Or may BECOME a problem. I guess it depends on the person. How do you afford it? Anyway, I was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia in1980 at age 19. I’m 52 now. My symptoms have measurably diminished. People tell me I’m doing good. I don’t feel like it but my philosophy about my life now is to maintain my position in my life. That means keeping my part-time job, keep chipping away at my AA degree, and leaving room in my life for a friend, female or male. I think at my age women have baggage that would make a relationship hard. Because I have my own baggage too. The obvious ones of being a paranoid schizophrenia and a recovering addict. Last girl I had a shot at I didn’t pursue it. She was a little crazy but not diagnosable. I met her through a friend and I said two sentences to her and she pestered my friend for a month about how much she liked me and wanted to be my lover. You think i would jump at the chance but I didn’t want to put in the nessacary footwork to have sex. She eventually gave up. But If I had to do it over again I would go after her. She was involved in illegal stuff. Probably would have been a problem. Anyway, like Surprised alluded to, even people with no mental illness and no discernible problems get bored with life and feel it’s hopeless, futile, and pointless. Us schizophrenics didn’t corner the market on suffering. I live one day at a time. I go up. And down. And sideways. Acting and modeling take more then just good looks. There’s a million good looking people who didn’t cut it as models. The successful ones have the “it” factor, that indefinable spark that makes them stand out in the crowd. But that would be cool if you became a model. It would be quite an accomplishment, even if you kept your diagnosis a secret.

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Through losing so much in my life I have learned that it is better not to ask, “Why?” but what can I do with what I have left? Yeh. I’ve been dealt a crappy hand, but I have a lot to be thankful for.

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i will try to. :slight_smile: my agent feels good. i have a great look. we’ll see what happens. i’ll get over my marijuana addiction soon, but i won’t take medication. i hate that stuff.

People always think they’re in their own lonely place diagnosed… chastised. Accepting fate… They always think they’re the only ones.

I think that’s a very good idea. Planning a future for yourself sounds very healthy.

I feel that life is just something to endure until we die and are reunited with God. I’m an emo because my entire family had carbon monoxide poisoning when I was about 10-11 years old, and since then I have been psychotic, but I think I have always had psychotic depression…

That is so sad. Is the rest of the family alright?

thanks guys. nothing has really changed, i mean, woke up feeling pretty good i guess.
gonna finish my stash. hopefully the 1st will be my first day clean.

we all have brain damage from it, and it altered my personality a lot. I became more violent as did my father, but he is not violent anymore. My mom and dad and older sister have clinical depression, one of my kid sisses has anxiety and depression, and my littlest kid sister has anxiety, and possibly depression. My brothers weren’t as bad as the rest of us, though, but my older brothers have more violent tendencies. We all got pretty damn messed up from that…

I’m glad you all survived. What a horrid thing to have happen.

If you want to tell us how it happened, please do. I know it can help to get things in print and share.

So we used to live in Salt Lake City in this pretty old house. For a year being there, we all thought we were getting the flu back and forth, and one night my mom tried to get up but she couldn’t and she woke my dad up and said she had a migraine on the top of her head, which is not a normal migraine spot. My dad had the same thing, and we all hoped it was food poisoning when my dad woke us at two am. He made us get upstairs and into our living room, where he turned on the fans and ac and stuff to chase away the Carbon monoxide. About eight in the morning we all went to the hospital where it was confirmed that we had Carbon monoxide poisoning.

We all got treatment except my older brother who had ear problems. Since then I had been psychotic, paranoid and depressed.

Oh my gosh… It is amazingly lucky that you guys didn’t fall back asleep. I’m glad you all got out. I’m sorry this had to happen to your whole family.

My dad thinks satan has something to do with it, and I believe him, satsan has tried to hurt us since I was little and saw him the first time. And we all are doing somewhat better on meds except for my dad who doesnt need meds…

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that’s ■■■■■■ up. i only needed meds to get me out of the psychosis. now i have positive symptoms but i just deal with them. hate medication.

why doesnt ur dad need meds?