Delusional

When I was younger I was delusional and believed that everything – the whole world and everyone in it – was just a creation of my mind. Hence I felt unable to trust people; including my friends and family.

I believed myself to be in some kind of coma and making up this world as one would a dream. I knew that there were scientists watching me, and they were doing so via a TV that was hooked up to my brain, providing them with a live feed of the world I was creating inside my head.

The thing was, although they could see my world, they were not privy to what I was thinking to myself. I therefore spent every hour of every day trying to act in such a way that they wouldn’t be able to tell that I knew what they were up to.

I never knew why such a need for secrecy though..

Heaven, I'm in heaven

I used to have the idea that everyone who was ever alive now, then and in the future is able to see everything you are doing (including what you are thinking). 

This is because, once dead, a person will go to heaven and, once there, be free to pick any point in the whole of history that they fancy and watch it. 

No wonder I developed paranoid delusions! 

Retrospective

A hundred years ago someone said that everything that we ever needed had already been invented. Do you ever wonder what people in the future will think when they look back at the world as it is today (in the event that a clean alternative is found for fossil fuel, so that the world doesn’t tear itself apart when supplies run low – oh and don’t forget someone discovering how to undo climate change)?

One of the things that strikes me personally is medication. I am taking the a-typical antipsychotic called Olanzapine. As far as my understanding goes antipsychotics were discovered to be effective treatments for psychosis by accident and it is not fully known why they work.

While taking it I have noticed significant changes in my emotional spectrum AS well as a reduction in psychotic thinking. Now that the dose has been lower slightly I am beginning to rediscover (sometimes overwhelmingly) my original emotional range. Unfortunately the positive symptoms appear to have grown slightly stronger too.

But is the medication a good thing? Does it treat the condition or the symptoms?

Apparently advances in genetics will have a big part to play in the future of how Schizophrenic disorders are treated and even cured. Also, the medication - such as the one that I am on - whilst alleviating the symptoms may be causing long term damage to the patient’s physiology.

Is it so difficult to picture a medical professor lecturing his pupils in the future on the archaic medicines that used to be prescribed so readily; in the same way that people now think about prefrontal lobotomies? Of course a lot of people are finding they are better off on medication as there is no alternative treatment at the moment beside psycho-socio therapy……or is there?

You could call it a conspiracy theory (and don’t worry, I’m keeping a close watch on this one) but I recently heard of a ruse by the pharmaceutical companies in America to suppress information about natural medicines that are equally effective as their counterparts – but without the unpleasant side effects – simply because they aren’t patentable and so wouldn’t make any money for their companies.

Is it true? Why would so many people testify that they are getting better naturally? And what is in it for them? Is it just me or isn’t it easier to believe that the pharmaceutical companies would choose to deny the efficacy of natural treatment because they have such a high stake in the game?

I don’t know what damage the Olanzapine is doing to my body. I read on the leaflet that comes in every box that tardive dyskinesia and diabetes can await the long term user so I’m slightly worried and eager to get my dose lowered as quickly as possible.

I’ve been on a dose of 17.5mg down from 20mg for over four months now and things are definitely better but it was not an easy period. It’s been four months of disruption and frustration and pain for me and my loved ones. Finally though things seem to have levelled out and I can start wondering how the months following the next drop will pan out?

There is nothing wrong with you – get over it!

Things began to go pear shaped around the age of fifteen. That was when I started to struggle going to school. I had no idea what was preventing me from doing so at the time so I found myself having to make up fake excuses not to go in. I remember being perplexed because I assumed that my school mates were all having the same difficulties as me but were coping with them just fine. I must be weak.

I am very pleased now to have the diagnosis of Schizophrenia. However I still live in fear that someone is going to come up with a test that determines whether or not you are ill and prove once and for all that there is nothing at all wrong with me and that I AM just weak.

But then I remind myself that I do hear intrusive voices and see intrusive images and I speak in a fractured way and often completely lose the train of what I’m going on about. I have also experienced hallucinations and deluded thinking in the past so I think that there is definitely something going on.

It would be nice not to have Schizophrenia; to be able to work and not get exhausted all the time by being ‘on the go’. However I do perversely find myself becoming very defensive when I imagine being told that there is nothing wrong with me. Surely I’d welcome that evidence. Why on earth do I hold on to my diagnosis so tightly?

What would happen if it was proven once and for all that I was as able as any other person to hold down a job? In the past it has been panic attacks that have prevented me from being able to do so. Now that my antipsychotic dose has been lowered a bit I have found that the anxiety too has lessened.

I used to believe that everyone was against me and that they were all seeing into my head. Classic paranoia I guess. One day a while after starting the medication I realised that I no longer entertained that psychotic idea. Now I was faced with the challenge of living in a world where everyone ISN’T conspiring against me. It probably sounds like this new world should be a lot easier to exist in. It is certainly a lot more comfortable, but it is taking a bit of getting used to.

Apparently only around 12% of Schizophrenics in the UK are in employment. Of course this isn’t surprising as Schizophrenia is associated with poor executive functioning. When I first started dating my now fiancée I told her that I was a lot better than I had been. At that time I assumed that I would continue to improve as time went by. I thought it was a matter of taking small steps such as beginning by doing voluntary work for a couple of hours a week and then gradually increasing it, eventually moving on to paid employment. But as Jack Nicolson puts it, “Is this as good as it gets?” - have I reached the pinnacle? I’d like to think that I can get even better than this.

So far things aren’t looking promising. But maybe I’m just going to have to accept that I will need to tread a different path.

I learned recently that emotional numbness can be a symptom of Schizophrenia. Does this mean that I am damaged goods? Am I not able to love my fiancée as much as another could? Or is it all relative? The first thing I noticed when I had my dose lowered was the heightened emotional range. They say you have to find a happy medium with the medication but maybe that means finding a mid-ground between the emotional numbness of the Schizophrenia and the emotional numbness of the medication.

It’s difficult as me to certify that there is something wrong with me. I have not experienced what it feels like to be someone who doesn’t have Schizophrenia. I am told that this thought is deluded and this is paranoid; that the thoughts are all mine and I don’t have to agree with them. But how can I know that they are deluded or paranoid? The fact is that they occur inside me and are so are very tangible.

Again, what if it was proven that I didn’t have Schizophrenia? What would this mean when it comes to these disturbing thoughts? The fact is that it hasn’t been proven that I have Schizophrenia. I have simply taken the leap of faith of trusting in the doctor’s diagnosis. You have to believe in something after all, don’t you? You can’t just sit on the fence.