When I first got sick at age 19. I was living in a world famous, experimental group home called Soteria House. Some of you may have heard of it, it was big in the 1970’s and early 80’s.
Basically a couple psychiatrists got together and figured that they could treat schizophrenics better without using medication and without hospitalizations. They rented houses around the world in the middle of suburban neighborhoods and staffed them with counselors who had no psychiatric training but were hired for being tolerant, open minded, empathetic, likable and good with people, and accepting. Most counselors were younger, in their 20’s or 30’s. Their job was to mingle with us clients and listen to whatever we had to say and just listen to our delusions or psychotic ramblings and just accept us and try to empathize with what we said without being judgmental or critical without talking to us like we were crazy. And they were available 24 hours a day. They called this “normalizing” the schizophrenic experience. There was a little medication locked upstairs in a closet for emergencies but in the year I was there I only saw it used twice.
There were 7 of us clients living there and a typical day was getting up around 9:00 am, eating breakfast and then people usually hung out in the kitchen playing backgammon or watched TV or hung out with each other. There was a head psychiatrist who visited several days a week but there was no therapy going on. In fact, none of us were in formal outside therapy.
People would take walks downtown or some people made friends and went places. Some people hung out in their rooms or sat in the living room. I used to take walks downtown and hang out in the used book store or walk to the park.But for a long time I would just sit by myself in an old, dirty chair for hours fighting to keep my sanity. And it was a real fight. I always felt like I would go stark, raving mad at any second and start screaming and become so withdrawn that ai wouldn’t be aware of my surroundings. I just felt like I would disappear inside myself. And the mental agony was like torture. I couldn’t relax or let my guard down for a second. My mind was always racing and I was psychotic and delusional.
Interestingly enough my disease was a lot different than most people on this site that I’ve read. I was paranoid but I didn’t have delusions about the FBI or the government or aliens or religious delusions. I didn’t think anyone was out to get me and I didn’t talk or act “crazy”. Anywhere I went I looked and sounded normal. But my mind was going a mile a minute and inside I was probably legally insane but if I didn’t tell anyone no one knew. I read you guys stories all these years and I’ve never heard a story like mine. But believe me I was crazy enough to need to be locked up for 8 months straight in the hospital- but that came later.
At Soteria I was often suicidal and felt like giving up on a daily basis. In fact if it wasn’t for my dad I probably would have done both those things. He used to visit me often and we would have long talks, like for an hour or two. We would talk about life in general and my life, and he told me a bunch of things from his life. I would tell him life was too hard and I felt like giving up and he would tell me how hard his life had gotten at certain points and how he struggled and how he overcame troubles and obstacles. He was inspirational and gave me hope. He had a hard life of drinking and fighting but he also did a bunch of cool stuff like travel and have a lot of girlfriends. He just wouldn’t let me give up. He pulled me through the worst time of my life with just his sheer will. He listened to all my delusions and tried to understand them. And with his help I survived for a year at Soteria House. It was a close call though, I felt hopeless much of the time.
Now it’s 40 years later. I don’t feel like giving up and I’m not suicidal. I give myself hope. And I’m looking back at being employed for most of the last 40 years and I just finished college three days ago. If I would have given up 40 years ago I would have missed out on:
Traveling across the country
Living independently for 20 years
Dating a little and having a girlfriend
Being the best worker at a couple of jobs
Having good friends who I hung out with and did fun things with
Going to a dozen or more concerts
Going waterskiing
Going camping
Going jet skiing
Being best man at my dads wedding
Going to comedy clubs
Going to too many movies and restaurants to count
Having cars
Taking the train for three hours to visit my dad
Etc, etc
I did all those things just because I didn’t give up.
This is why you don’t give up. I was really, really sick in the beginning, I had nothing for years: no money, no car, no friends, no college, no job, no girlfriend, no hope. But I persevered and my life hasn’t been half bad. Sure I got problems but a lot of them are solvable, life is a struggle for sure but you can still accomplish something, have a little fun and get something out of life. Your situation may look bleak now but bad times are often temporary. I was bad off as anyone else but I now have some good memories and at age 61 I haven’t given up by a long shot, I wish you all good luck and maybe you got something from all this.