Schizophrenia Diaries

name: chelsie

select: My Own Story

email:ceplaughlin@gmail.com

news of the strange

june of 2006

i went fucking insane.

i was down in new orleans, chain sawing down dead trees and sifting through debris.  my sleep schedule got fucked up, i guess due to the round the clock lights of the FEMA camp. that\’s all it took.

first i couldn\’t read. then i couldn’t watch movies. i never ate or slept. the only things i did well were chain smoke, manual labor and entertain.

i thought i was psychic.  i heard voices. my psychiatrist asked me if i heard the voice of wisdom.

i did.

when the lady came to take me to the hospital, it was raining in the middle of a sunny texan afternoon. i thought it was raining for me. i thought i was the messiah. sunshine rain is special, you must agree.

for a time, i did nothing but lay in bed, twitch and listen to classical music. every now and again, i’d create mediocre art.

i was loaded with drugs. several times a day i collapsed on the ground and flopped around like a fish out of water. or a cockroach under the influence of RAID.

my coworkers were curious to know what the voices said. i told them they say motherfucker a lot. like when someone took my favorite seat on the bus. later, riding back from whatever nature preserve we were chainsawing at, my boss said ‘motherfucker’ real low. i had to check around to make sure everyone else heard it. they did. noone else thought it was funny. later, i through a chewed up apple at him. i can do those sorts of things now.

balance of a new, hyperaware sort has been achieved. i spend a lot of time riding my bike. yesterday, unsolicited, an old man at a bus stop gave me a tin of Beach Cliff fish steaks (in soybean oil with hot green chilis). in case i get hungry. but that’s just america.

i drive a tiny train meant for the amusement of toddlers and their grandparents. i wear the appropriate hat. it looks good. when my dad heard i got the job, he started singing, ‘high on cocaine, drivin’ that train, casey jones you’d better watch your speed. ‘i’m vigilant.’ right now i’m sitting in my small apartment, wearing my silk kimono, chain smoking and listening to the shirelles. i’m very sensitive to music now and require a constant drip of old country, blues, jazz and a few selective hits from the sixties.

july of 2007

my name is chelsie and i am a recovering schizophrenic. its been over a year since my hallucinations started…and i finally found a medication that works. i’m starting a new job (a real job) in a couple of weeks, have made a new friend (not an easy acquisition for a schizophrenic) and am in the negotiations of creating something special with, well, someone special. i no longer need a constant drip of alcohol, music and the compulsive arrangement and rearrangement of objects (think silverware and cigarette butts). things are looking up and i don’t miss the chaos whatsoever. i’ll always have the memories to, um, cherish.

i drive a tiny train meant for the amusement of toddlers and their grandparents. i wear the appropriate hat. it looks good. when my dad heard i got the job, he started singing, ‘high on cocaine, drivin’ that train, casey jones you’d better watch your speed. i’m vigilant.

right now i’m sitting in my small apartment, wearing my silk kimono, chain smoking and listening to the shirelles. i’m very sensitive to music now and require a constant drip of old country, blues, jazz and a few selective hits from the sixties.

july of 2007

my name is chelsie andi am a recovering schizophrenic. its been over a year since my hallucinations started…and i finally found a medication that works. i’m starting a new job (a real job) in a couple of weeks, have made a new friend (not an easy acquisition for a schizophrenic) and am in the negotiations of creating something special with, well, someone special. i no longer need a constant drip of alcohol, music and the compulsive arrangement and rearrangement of objects (think silverware and cigarette butts). things are looking up and i don’t miss the chaos whatsoever. i’ll always have the memories to, um, cherish.

Cathy Paxton’s Story

My journey from hopelessness to hope started 15 years ago.

Circumstances beyond my control led to my mental break. We were living in a 600-square-foot house with our three kids, who were five, two and four months. My husband, Chris, had been told he was losing his job. I went on an overnight driving trip with the kids, which ended with the police taking me to the hospital. I was admitted to the psychiatric ward, diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.

The situation seemed hopeless. I was told I couldn’t work; I was also told that I couldn’t have the baby in the hospital. How was I to feed him? That’s when the church community and God took control. Marion, our priest ’s wife, helped Chris wean the baby. Wow! I couldn’t even feed my children. How would I get well with these major problems?

Offers of babysitting came; casseroles appeared at our front door. I was released near Christmas. Chris and I decided I wasn’t well enough to purchase Christmas presents.

Just before Christmas, a knock came at our door. It was Bill and Mary, owners of a Montessori School my son attended. They came in with five boxes filled with food, including a turkey, as well as diapers and toys. We would have a real Christmas after all. We tearfully accepted what was given to us and had a fantastic Christmas.

How did I get better? I began to work with a professional fitness coach, who showed me how to lift weights and increase my walking. I found that this exercise program increased my mental wellness.

Now I am working! Yes, hopes and dreams do come true!

Cathy Paxton

name: Bev
select: My Own Story
email: bev195000@yahoo.co.uk

My Name is Bev and i live in England i have been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia feel like i am on my own in this world.
I have two sons from a previous marriage and i am married for the second time.
I feel my partner is conspiring against me and everybody in this world is judging me.
I am under a psychiatrist who is currently trying to get me on the right meds but to no avail as i feel she is temping to sedate me.
My parents are both dead i use to total re lie on my mum for help but now she is gone i have to try and carry on in this world but it is very difficult.
I sometimes feel like i just want to climb into a big hole and see no one, the voices in my head tells me things i do not want to hear i try and ignore them but they never go away.
I have been offered electric treatment but i refuse this.
I ask is the only way to treat this having to take med to make you so tired you cannot live a normal life.
I do try and control my way of thinking but it is so difficult with this voices that never go away. I have been told it is not me but my mind is ill but i cannot believe and never will.

Wow…7 years gone and not a day goes by that I don’t hear something…I have it pretty managed now, if I was walking down the street you wouldn’t even know I have a label..for I am Schizophrenic…actually for I AM ME!!.

I suffered a drug induced moment that somehow followed me 7 years later…only because I should have stopped the pills and thrills, so it eventually went from an episode to a full on, life long illness.

My first episode involved me thinking I was the star of a movie..thinking I could see cameras..A STAR IS BORN…and not in the "normal" sense…it was a dream from when I was little that I would be a movie star and somehow as a 23 year old young women it came smacking back into my life..the thought of being a movie star.

Then it went from that to me not knowing what the hell was going on and I remember this over whelming feeling of wanting to crawl under a rock and hide. I did run…right into my Dad’s arms and my step mums embrace made me feel safe…not secure, for I was about to get a whole lot deeper and hear a whole lot more.

I walked around thru that city for days, trying to get the signs, trying to fight the spirits that the voice..let’s call him The Jim was telling me. He said you hear those noises in the roof, they are spirits and I am gonna help you fight them, good golly gosh and fight I did.

Seriously we would probably need months for me to tell the whole story but in a short version…I went thru religion, God, life, movies, reincarnation, every little kind of spiritual awakening I experienced made me who I am today. A happy and healthy Schizophrenic..God bless my life..he does everyday!

Written for Internet Mental Health, August 1995

My illness became apparent when I was about 19 years old. I was depressed as a teenager but didn’t have any really psychotic symptoms until I was in my second year university and then I stopped going to classes and started daydreaming all the time and sleeping all day just waking up for meals. I was living in a fantasy world where I was a super special person and yet I was depressed because I couldn’t fulfill this role as a super special person.

One of my girlfriends suggested that, since I was missing classes, I go speak to the women’s counselor so I spoke to her and told her my symptoms and she told me to go see a psychiatrist at the university. I went to see him and I told him all my symptoms: I felt like people started looking like robots to me, my body seemed to be alien matter to myself, I seemed to be like from outer space somehow. He gave me some pills, some antidepressant pills and some antipsychotic pills but he didn’t give me any diagnosis at the time. He just wanted to see how my illness went on.

This lasted about two years and I was quite suicidal for that period of two years because I didn’t know what was going on and I was becoming more and more depressed as I could see my career slipping away from myself and living in this world that I had created and not having any idea what I was supposed to do with my life at that time and I was very discouraged because nobody gave me any hope.

I ended up in hospital twice while I was actively suicidal and I finally decided that some of the medications weren’t working and I thought I would try another approach so I went to an orthomolecular psychiatrist. He started me on niacin and vitamin C and it’s either coincidence or it really worked but for some reason or other I got better within about a month or two and I was no longer depressed. I stayed on the vitamins for about five years and at that time I wasn’t taking any medication at all. I either had a wonderful remission or the vitamins were working. I don’t know to this day if they work but I still take them.

I graduated in 1988 and then the year following I started noticing my depression coming back slowly but surely as I couldn’t find a job and I was hanging around my apartment all day. I did find a job and started working at it part-time but then I started hearing screaming and becoming very agitated for no apparent reason while I was getting ready for work to the point where I couldn’t go to work any longer. I had to leave my job at that point and I went back to a psychiatrist and he started me on Prozac and that helped me a little bit but it didn’t help the psychosis part until I ended up in the hospital another time after I was in a day program, I sort of became catatonic and they started me on haldol.

I was on haldol for several months but I had several bad side-effects from that so I started on loxapine after that and that seemed to work but I was still a little bit suicidal and not really depressed at being suicidal but it was more of an elated feeling where I wanted to become an angel or something very special again, so the doctor said, "Are you depressed?" and I said, "Not really but I still want to die and I wish God would let me die by some natural cause."

I went to another day program and that helped me quite a bit. I was in that for four months and they taught me how to live on a budget and banking techniques and social assertiveness techniques and I found that very helpful because that gave me a reason to get up in the morning, even though I couldn’t work I could go to this day program. I was in the hospital a few more times because I was suicidal again, but then one of my doctors left and I had to find another doctor, so I found my present doctor and continued taking the loxapine but then tried risperidone for a few months.

That seemed to work but I seemed to be a bit flat on that so I went back on the loxapine and vitamins and I feel fairly good today. I’m not ready for looking for a job but I may start looking for volunteer work. At least I have the hope element in my life. I know that all my suffering was for a reason and I have tremendous hope for the future. In the limiting condition that I have I still feel very optimistic about things and I found out through one of my doctors about financial aid, or GAIN, and that made a tremendous difference because I was not able to work at the time and having the money coming in allowed me to keep my apartment and I found that very helpful. I have since moved home with my parents because I became too lonely but I look forward to moving out again when I feel a lot better.