Schizophrenia Diaries

In March 2009 I was diagnosed with Delusional Disorder- a relatively new classification subsumed under the general classification of Paranoid Schizophrenia until the advent of DSMIII-r in 1987.

I am afflicted by delusions and hallucinations. I believe that some kind of a device or power opens up my thoughts to the public so that everyone can know what I’m thinking or feeling. This is particularly problematic in crowds, when everyone is staring at me and whispering about me. Frustratingly, while the crowd all know what I’m thinking, I have no idea what they are thinking or saying.

I hear strange voices, especially in crowds, directing derogatory expletives at me.

I am also bothered by the appearance of shadowy bugs crawling all over my walls. But when I jump after them to squash them they are always gone, or they were never there to begin with.

Bizarre and obnoxious odors plague me often. One smell I can best describe as the stench of an old man’s dirty dentures. Another is like burning rat excrement. Another is a sweet chemical smell.

Some times there is a very frightening sound in my house. When my family is not home I hear what sounds like soldiers marching in the upper story. When I go up to investigate I can never find them.

All of this came upon me gradually from early adulthood. It all escaped diagnosis until I was 52 years old. I had always just thought I was different and strange. I have never liked crowds. I have never had close friends. I crave silence and isolation. I pretty much stay in my home and listen to music, which masks and covers the voices and sounds. I am on Risperidone. citalopram, and bupropion. These medications have helped significantly, but not cured the problem.

Things started to go wrong on Saturday the 13th of June. I had worked the Friday and every Monday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday since I returned from my 3 month vacation in Europe in the August of last year.
However, this Saturday was different. I started to get a headache around 16:30 thinking it was diet related since I hadn’t eaten since breakfast (Another bad habit). I was craving a nice meal, but since the cook (my mum) had the day off, toast was on the menu.
I waited for my break at 17:30 but became nauseous. Suddenly these voices appeared shouting in the back of my head “They’re coming to get you” and “They are after you”.
At this stage I had no visual hallucinations and I was lucid enough to recognise I could no longer fulfill my working duties in a responsible capacity.
Promptly I spoke to the Nurse-In-Charge; Mary and voiced my concerns that I should go home since “I had just had an epileptic seizure”. Only my Nurse-Unit-Manager knows of my condition and as it was the week-end she was not around. Neither was my colleague, another Nurse-In-Charge who I had confided in. I chose to keep my disorder a bit on the quiet side as I had encountered discrimination from my previous job making working conditions stressful and unbearable.
After speaking to my Mum about my hallucinations at work, we decided that I drive home as I only live 10 minutes away. Terrified, I drove slowly and got home to a frantic mother who wanted to call the Crisis Intervention or CAT team. Stupidly, I took extra Largactil (Chlorpromazine) 200mg which my Psychiatrist had advised me to use under my discression. Fortunately I fell asleep until 04:00 the following morning aggitated and still hallucinating of which many cigarettes and cups of coffee (other bad habits), did nothing for. Clearly I was psychotic.
It wasn’t until the evening that the visual hallucinations started. Hearing repetativly and loud “They’re coming to get you”, “They will kill you”, and “They are after you”, I also had to contend with seeing dark shadows roaming around my room with knives weaving in and out of my doors and windows and around my bed. I was glad when mum offered to sleep with me to try and calm me. I was even more happier when I spoke to my Psychiatrist who felt that the 500mg of Largactil (Chlorpromazine) in addition to my other medication would have some relief on this terrifying nightmare I was experiencing. Whilst my psychiatrst could not admit me that night due to bed capacity, I was admitted the following day. Still hallucinating as severely as the previous night, the nursing staff decided to put me into high dependancy where I would not be in any danger to anyone including myself.
The next couple of days in hospital are a blur. I was so doped up on 300mg Chlorpromazine, 1400mg Quetiapine (Seroquel), 4000mg Sodium Valporate (Epilim), and 40mg Paroxetine that I slept most of the day. I only ventured out to have cigarettes and dinner. The paranoia was still high as I sat alone for dinner thinking everyone was talking about me or plotting to attack and even kill me. I took no action on these thoughts due to my limited but present insight.
Each day I saw my Psychiatrist and expressed my difficulties. By day 4 we decided to change anti-psychotics as I was on the maximum dose of the Quetiapine (Seroquel).
I was devistated. This was going to be the 7th anti-psychotic I had changed to. Whilst the Chlorpromazine works well as a supplement, the high doses I would required would cause the side-effects to be totally debilitating. I had no choice.
My Psychiatrist felt it best that we change the Quetiapine (Seroquel) for Ziprasidone (Zeldox) in one hit rather than weaning and stop/starting dosages. So, I stopped the Quetiapine (Seroquel) straight away and went straight onto the maximum dose of Ziprasidone (Zeldox) which is 160mg which I now take all at night although it recommends you split the dose.
Within 3 days I was feeling my old self again. I had day leave with my Mum and went and saw the Salvador Dali exhibition. The following day I went home.
All was going well until the hallucinations began to reappear in the evenings. Mum was at work and my Nanna has no idea of what is wrong with me so we argue.
Around 4pm every evening since being home my auditory hallucinations flare up again and I am always up and about between 04:00 and 06:00 much to my mother’s disgust.
Hearing repetativly and loud “They’re coming to get you”, “They will kill you”, and “They are after you” I cannot go out anywhere unaccompanied. I cannot drive my car. And I am even scared to walk my dog as I am frightened to leave the house.
These symptoms have all but gone now since seeing my Psychiatrist again last Thursday. She added an extra 40mg of Ziprasidone (Zeldox) to take at 16:00 to stop the hallucinations and started me on som Clonazepam to help with the anxiety and insomnia. Yesterday and today have been the quietest days in a very long time.

I am 16 years old. A diagnosed schizophrenic. I have been to the hospital 3 times already for suicidal thoughts. The second time I went was when i found out that i had the disease. When I ususually have gone, the doctors have all tried hurting me to help me. Pills are gross. I slept a lot there. Everybody laughed at me. Theire help did not help much yet. I wish it had. This stinks being a schizo. Scary.

Sometimes the room im in will turn all red and blood slowly will drip from ceiling and floor. Sometimes I’ll feel crawling centipedes all over me. People will touch me and not be there. The smells are disgusting. Vomit. Burning rubber. Pee. Poop. Sometimes every stinky smell in the world all at once.

I can see the future. Think something and it happens. The voices screech at me trying to wreck me. Make me miserable. I dont know where those demon voices come from. The people voices, either. All kinds of voices at once. Its a nightmare. They tell me everyone hates me. Everyone in the world is coming together and poisoning me.

Thats why i dont take drinks. Because the poision is in there. Somewhere. At the top. At the bottom. People think us schizophrenics are just crazy. We’re not crazy. We just dee things differenly than them. We arre suffering. Suffering. Suffering….

I new something was wrong when the voice I was talking to for about two weeks straight turned on me. At the time I thought I had super powers of some sort and could talk to a girl that I liked without even saying a word. It was strange and I had planed on not telling anyone about these powers I spoke to two girls that came to me as a voice. They told me everything about them selves and I told them things about me. Till one day the voices told me that in order to become a psychic I would have to sell my soul. Of course this spooked me out because i’m a Christian. The voice went from a whisper to loud. Now I stay on the third floor and I heard the voices from downstairs in the yard. They chanted demonic things like sale your soul sale your soul at me and I sat there for hours listening to what I thought was demons. Even to this day I feel there a witch that follows me around waiting for me to sell my soul. Now tell me if this isn’t creepy reader. The voice I hear is the voice of a girl that lives on the first floor. I had a crush on her and the moment I first saw her I said TO MYSEELF and I quote” I would stop taking baths and drinking water to get with that girl” I know it sounds dumb but I said it and laughed to myself. That night is the first night I heard her voice and to this day she narrates every thought I have. I believe God tested me to see if lust would drive me to hell. I’ll be haunted by that voice from now on.

I was diagnosed officially when I was 19 years old. For many years I had suspected…something…I come from a family of mental illness so I knew it was there possibly. When I was younger, round 8 or 9, teachers in my school suspected something was askew. I seen therapist and doctors because of this suspicion but something inside me told me to, “put the mask on” to say. I almost always had this other side that guided me through a lot of things…at first I thought it was just really good instincts.

Over the years I had began to identify certain aspects of my disorder. I learned to identify the sounds, and hallucinations I had. I never have been medicated nor do I want to be. I think that if I medicate myself I will lose a part of my own self control…even though it seems to me I am trying to control that which cannot be controlled. The sounds I hear are usually one word commands or short phrases, and most the time they are being screamed at me. At night, before I try to sleep, they tend to be worse. Usually I hear voices yelling, “NO!” or “STOP!” or I will hear someone yelling for me or a familiar voice it seems saying something to me but I never can make it out. When I try to sleep I hear this whispering sound, like a room full of people, sometimes seeming like 20-30 voices all whispering, and I can never make it out, other than a couple of words here and there. This makes it almost impossible for me to sleep, and sometimes I go days without sleeping. I am
currently advised to see a doctor because my blood pressure is so high because my body does not sleep. Not only that my appearance has changed from lack of sleep, my eyes always give me away.

I see things, but they are almost always quick and sudden. I see something in front me and when it registers in my head of what I saw, when I turn to look again, it’s gone. Sometimes I see things though that don’t go away so easily. I was once in Tampa, and I was at a party that I was dragged to and this neighborhood was backed next to a swamp. I had decided to take a walk out by the swamp just to get away from the people mainly because they were not the kind of people I wanted to even try to associate with. I was standing next to this small pond, it was dark, and very little light, but I could see pretty well. I stood looking at the water, and then I noticed a face in the water, looking at me. Then I noticed another one, and another one. Then about 10 or so faces were slowly rising out of the water and coming towards me. I was gripped with fear to be honest, and I do not fear many things. I began to notice these faces were not alive. They had frozen eyes staring at
me, and their faces were drawn tight. Their skin was decayed and I began to notice a smell in the air. They rose their heads only about half way out of the water and stared at me. I began to back away and then they went back under very slowly. I took a few moments to calm myself down and collect what I had seen. I later went home and realized I was hallucinating in a very bad way.

Many times I fight with a voice in my head that tells me stupid shit. I get this overwhelming urge to act on what is being thought or said and it’s like I am there for a ride that I can not control. Most the time this voice leads me in a right direction, but sometimes when I get to the point of no going back and that voice has lead me to look, or say, or do something completely fucking stupid, it’s like that voice just bails on me and I am left there confused and stunned trying to figure out a way to back out of what I did, or said. In this I am I think of myself as never truly alone…even though I am…no relationship has ever worked positive for me. My friends have bailed on me, or I have pushed them away. I am truly alone, but its like when I am sitting at home, in the dark, all alone…I feel a hand on my shoulder and sometimes if I look to see the person who is there, I get a quick glimpse of a familiar face that almost looks like me, but it’s not…the eyes are
different and the face is weathered…it’s not me, but I feel connected…then it’s gone.