You ever just feel in disbelief that you are less than 1% of the population?

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Title is pretty self explanatory. You can read my rant or just answer the question.

I was looking at my new haircut in the mirror last night and I just thought “Me? I am schizophrenic? This is permanent, its been almost three years now.” I am “as good as it gets” according to my doctors, and I truly do feel normal for the most part except for stressful periods. Remarkably normal. Like I sometimes have to remind myself that finding the right medications was hell and that life before medication was a deeper level of hell.

My doctors say that the rest of my life will be just an effort to forget about psychosis as long as I keep taking my meds and dont let stress overwhelm me. I had a rough few days in school this week, today is my last day for the week, I have big plans this weekend and feel at ease and comfortable with my classes now. But I was vomiting in my mouth and having to swallow it because my meds were in the vomit just the other day. I am hanging out with my schizophrenic friend who goes to my school tonight, I saw him in between classes yesterday and we had similar things to report- rough adjustment period. He was in disbelief that I had quit smoking, as he and I usually sit and talk for hours and each smoke like a pack on weekend nights. I would go out to a party with my friends with my cigarette case full and by like 4am it would have just a few cigarettes left in it.

But life was peachy, I was fine and happy before schizophrenia- save for my childhood trauma, which I had put behind me by the age of 16. Now life is stable aside from school, school is not a stable occupation, but my therapist tells me that that 1. My education is free 2. I am too smart to not go to school and should apply to grad school, he points out that people in my IQ range typically get graduate degrees. I work hard and then take a load off and be lazy between semesters, life is remarkably stable and basically it is a dream come true at moments but there are still moments where it is a waking nightmare, when I get too stressed my symptoms crop up a little bit and I gag and sometimes vomit.

TLDR do you ever feel in disbelief that you have such a rare illness?

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With the mental illness in my family… the people from my Sz support group, the pockets that gather around the university because of the studies they run… the fact that one other guy on my crew has Sz too… I don’t feel that rare.

Then add bipolar and schizoaffective in the mix… I feel less rare.

As far as not believing I have this illness? Too much circus music says other wise. I keep it in balance, but I don’t often take my eye off the fulcrum.

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I’ve been in my local mental health community for decades. I’m not surprised because I’ve seen so many others with the same or similar illnesses. It may be less than 1% but you wouldn’t know it from the circles I run in.

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For me and others diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, it’s 0.5% of the population

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That’s interesting. I only have one friend in person who is schizophrenic, and we met through a colleague, we are both students at the same university. I was talking to a classmate who has epilepsy and she was describing the side effects of her medications and I told her that I was schizophrenic and had an energy drink before class to fight the sedation from my meds. She was like “Holy crap, one of my best friends has paranoid schizophrenia too! He takes Geodon, what do you take?”

“Geodon, lol”

and so she connected me with her friend and we really hit it off. We’re hanging out tonight after class actually, it was our first week back.

But yeah, I went to a NAMI meeting and there was only one other schizophrenic in the room, everyone was bipolar or major depression. The schizophrenic guy was very quiet and just exchanged eye contact with me when I introduced myself and my diagnosis. The leader of the group talked to me after the meeting and told me that the guy hardly speaks. I quit going to those meetings after incorporating visiting a lady friend three nights a week which was at the same time as the meetings.

But my schizophrenic friend from school is UNCANNILY similar to me. The only difference is that I am into lifting weights and he is not into exercise at all. I mean down to our favorite album, we both agree that Slipknots “Subliminal Verses” album is the best album that money can buy.

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I don’t feel like 1 in 100 is rare

i feel like it is fairly common for such an unbelievably all encompassing illness.

I don’t know anyone who is schizophrenic, but my sister was, she was hit by a car age 25

I’m 21 yrs diagnosed, 8 yrs out of hospital and doing my best to have a normal life.

my problem is my expectations of myself. if i exercise i.e. swimming twice a week i don’t go around saying i do quite a lot of swimming. i feel like if i did that and run or bike 5 days a week i’d be almost there. which is unachievable for me i’m just not that sporty.

i wanted to run a marathon and ran half marathons every weekend for 6 weeks in (or 10 mi sometimes) and ran in the week 4 x and did official half marathons every 3 months for almost a year. still feel like such a` failure.

I gave up smoking in hospital 8 yrs ago just as i was leaving. I smoked 60 drum roll ups a` day for a bit so i had to quit.

I write plays. i have a mentor from a disability theatre company who helps me, and i’ve had readings in front of invited audience , and one with a paid audience coming up and one short 5 minute monologue performed and written a full lenght play which will be ready to show to some theatre pro’s to see if it is worth persevering with trying to get it performed in feb - that is 2 yrs after starting to write it.

my problem now is summer is just over - or the summer workshops are now coming up in advance of autumn term and i’ve signed up for 3 courses 2 evenings and a morning for the term. I don’t know if i will be too stressed - also travelling an hour to therapy. I don’t know if this is too much for me.

yes i can pull out of things but i really wouldn’t want to this time.

the 2 weeks of courses i want to do are mon - fri for 2 weeks 3 h a day

and after that the normal term starts.

i would only have 15 free days a month for 2 months or more and i really don’t know if that is enough

i’m going to post a quick poll for anyone with schiz to answer how long out of hospital they are and how many days a` month they do an official activity with the public i.e. study

Thanks for your post - interesting to see another perspective

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100% man. I was born perfectly fine, I’m tall, handsome, yet with a terribly broken mind. I can’t work, go to school, nothing motivates me, I’m very depressed and life seems like a chore. I know I will never achieve anything worth of note. So what’s the ■■■■■■■ point?
Why don’t I just kill myself now, and save the gov’t some money?

I ■■■■■■■ hate it, I think about it all the time. Guess it’s the cross we must carry.

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My pick would be Operation: Mindcrime by Queensryche, but I’m old.

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please get yourself on to anti depressants if you aren’t already taking them Amplitude

i was started on them for the simple reason of ‘lack of joy’

i couldn’t be without them - they have turned my life around - i didn’t want to be on a cocktail of meds lol
but now i really really have a good life. i get anxiety sometimes still but nothing like it was

Depression and schizophrenia go together - they just do - fact of life - doctors now recognise this - you will get them if you ask for them

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hounds of love Kate Bush

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I’ve tried them, they made me more suicidal. I keep going on/off meds, not on any med right now, I do have schizophrenia… Was walking for lunch at work, saw these 2 blacks guys walking in front of me across the street, thought I was going to get robbed. :frowning: Was ready to fight for my life there.

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You do need stable meds, amplitude - the right ones for you are out there.

Bless you

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I am .000000014% of the population… That’s 1 in 7 billion.

Though, if sz is 1% of 7 billion, that’s 70,000,000 people on the planet. That’s enough to make our own well-populated country.

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wouldn’t that be a fun place to live?

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Yeah that would mean twice the population of Canada with every single person being schizo. Wow that would be a nutty country lol

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The prevalence of my current dx is supposedly 2.3- 4.4%. However IRL over 40 years I have never come across someone with the dx.
Online I’ve encountered a few but far more with bipolar,schizoaffective and schizophrenia.
Maybe it’s because most people don’t highlight they have the dx as the descriptors of those with it are extremely negative .
Quite frankly I’d rather still be diagnosed schizoaffective( with maybe a personality disorder.) Probably would be still if I hadn’t come under a pdoc who was into personality disorders

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we are all going to take over eventually anyway and then we can stigmatize the normies :stuck_out_tongue: hahaha

because we all know that they are a lot more mental in the head than us, you just need to look at the statistics lol

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Such a wonderful idea for a book right there.

A schizophrenic nation of 70,000,000.

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No. nor did I when I was in the navy.

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It at times is a daunting statistic yes.