Originally Posted Aug 30 2007, 03:53 AM by malachite with no comments
I started experiencing psychotic symptoms in 2004. One day in spring I though I had forgotten to take my antidepressants. In actuality I experienced my first psychotic episode, my thoughts raced incoherently, I heard internal voices (I think) and certainly commentaries on my thoughts. I got drunk, it worked.
I passed my degree and returned home without a clear idea of what I intended to do. Mostly I read. I became more and more concerned about the intentions of those in power (I did not, and indeed do not, consider those elected official to be those in power). I came to believe not without reason that dictatorship was soon to be instituted. I became paranoid the GCHQ were listening to my conversations, they almost certainly were putting telephone and email conversations through their computer, whether a real human ever read them I do not know. Anyway I absorbed information intensely and became terrified by our (that is, Western) governments’ disregard for life and their ability to murder their own citizens and get away with it. Two incidents concerned me greatly at the time: the September 11th 2001 attacks and the murder of Dr David Kelly. I shall not go into these events in detail but in both cases I am sure (to the point I would bet large amounts of money) that American and British state involvement was required for a “successful” operation. I was disturbed not merely by these events but by the mass media’s lack of questions and apparent collaboration, and people in general’s apathy and refusal to take these issues seriously.
The summer ended by me seeing two psychiatric nurses. I thought they worked for MI5. Needless to say this was an unproductive meeting; they thought nothing or little was wrong with me. In desperation I continued reading and came to believe there was a Luciferian conspiracy to institute a global dictatorship (that may be the case –certainly it’s hardly the preserve of the mentally ill, but I am now inclined to say that I do not know rather than there is such a conspiracy). I chanced upon Christian web sites that described such a conspiracy and I slowly came to believe in God and approximately a week later, in Jesus as Christ.
I have not tried LSD but I often describe my experience of psychosis as like a year on acid when you do not know that you have taken it. If this was a “trip” my Christian period was most certainly the high. The illusion of God’s love, moral certainty stronger than rock, and a feeling of redemption left me comparing Jesus favourably to the drug Ecstasy. I joined a church and attended a befriending course (to help the socially disadvantaged) and enrolled on a Victim Support training day. I stopped drinking heavily, then I stopped entirely. Apparently very few fundamentalist Christians are able to not practice physical self-love but I proved the rule.
I became more and more confident that I was to become Elijah who was prophesised return in the book Micah. I had the most joyous experience picking up litter for hours. I sang and picked up litter. Having previously “cast myself out” for falling for one Satan’s tricks I sang in praise of the trinity, one by one. For a minute there I lost myself. Thom Yorke’s refrain (played on the juke box of the local pub) made me realise that in the simple activity of picking up litter, I was at one with Jesus. This was profoundly beautiful.
In October 2004, after I had been a Christian for a month or so, I heard voice describing itself as Satan. Satan later added some more of his cohorts. I was to love him, as one is to love one’s enemies in the Christian faith. Funnily enough he was having a crisis of faith and received well my affections. Anyway I developed a very complicated belief system surrounding such spirits. Two irresolvable intellectual dilemmas for me (the existence of unnecessary suffering i.e. disease, natural disasters, and the existence of hell) and the belief that everyone I knew was a Satanist came to a head, my head, at the beginning of January 2005. I had two terrible nightmares and realised only a cruel, that is to say evil God such as Satan would inflict such upon anyone.
After an hour of two of horrible withdrawal symptoms from “God’s love”, the realisation that I was in hell was confirmed by a phone call.
“Hello”
Silence. “Welcome to Hell” a voice in my head said. It was like being in a horror film.
I cannot remember clearly all of the things or the chronological order of them that I came to believe during the next two months but they included: Believing Satan was God, believing God was evil, believing I was a robot –specifically a command-operated machine, believing I was in heaven, and believing everything was an illusion á la Matrix. That bit where I believed I was in heaven was the main light relief from a couple of months of terror. Eating and sleeping were my only pleasures. Then, briefly, because I believed the food was conscious and I was the food I lost my appetite. My mum finally convinced me to go to see a psychiatrist on a walk (I thought “to go to the psychiatrist” was to go to hell proper). I heard a voice in my head I attributed to God commenting on my thoughts and suggesting horrible things nearly all the time.
The psychiatrist prescribed respiridone, an antipsychotic whose initial effects were like the unpleasant effects of alcohol. It did however, slowly reduce the frequency of the voice I was hearing. Eventually it dawned on me that I was suffering from a mental illness and I was not to live my life in perpetual fear of being whisked off to hell proper.
At some point in the summer I snapped out of the attendant depression. I went to a creative writing course in September and wrote some short stories. I started playing football again (I’d given up as a Christian). I put on lots of weight due to the medication I was on, and eating being my primary pleasure.
As respiridone was causing me to wake up every morning with a hangover minus the headache I changed my antipsychotic to amisulpride. This did not cause a hangover but left me feeling and being sick regularly. My main problem became an inability to concentrate and very poor motivation. The voice in my head still occurred and the paranoia was still present but bolstered by my successful application to university to do another, more vocational course I began to smile more frequently.
I tried in vane to do a computer programming course to help prepare me for my degree. Mostly however I was bored and scared (I still had intensely unpleasant thoughts). I couldn’t work –I did try but it was too horrible. The people at work however were nice about my mental illness (I told them I’d been suffering from depression, which was true) but then we had to work on a cathedral spire. I couldn’t deal with the heights. In the summer of 2006 I started on a new antipsychotic, abilify or aripiprazole. I always say aripiprazole as it amuses me that the doctors can’t say it. This made me throw up a lot until I took a different anti-sickness drug. Otherwise it’s been the best one I’ve tried… so far.
It was dreary year, 2006, until the end of the summer which was quite fun. In September I started my degree which began well. By December I had fallen into a habit of smoking cannabis heavily. This did not cause me to return to psychosis but by February of 2007 my motivation had fallen drastically low. It has not returned except for occasional nights of activity like this one.
Presently (August 2007) I take 15mg of aripiprazole (up from 10mg), 60mg of citalopram, and I’ve just stopped bothering with domperidone the anti-sickness drug as I no longer throw up without it. I am about to start a course of omega-3 fatty acids and order L-deprenyl from the internet as the NHS will not prescribe it, or any other dopaminergic drug to help my motivation.