Schizophrenia Diaries

I have been living with diagnosed schizophrenia for 4 years. Undiagnosed I suspect for quite a bit longer.
I started to become “weird” at 16 years old, I would spend hours on end just listening to music imagining scenarios in my head where I was a hero, or sometimes just being a violent maniac. This was always with me being much better than I really was. I would do this every day to heavy metal music.
Sometimes I would get paranoid and think people were peeping through the cracks in the blinds, and would see what a freak I was.
While I was doing this I was a loner and had no friends, although I would sometimes hang around my sisters friends. This was because I did school from home.

Sometime around 16 and a half, I got bored one day while playing an online game and decided to have a small toke of some low potency marijuana my sister had. I REALLY enjoyed it. This was strange for me because I had used high potency marijuana in the past and absolutely hated it.
After that I started to smoke marijuana regularly. Slowly my tolerance increased and I was smoking about 3 grams a week.

Things were the same when I turned 17, but then I made a friend (B) who also smoked marijuana. We would do stuff together and basically just smoked bongs and got drunk together.
As I was nearing 18 I got a job at the local supermarket and saw this as a hope for the future, I would be able to buy gym equipment and make friends.
With that job came money to buy more pot. I was smoking marijuana every day listening to music, dreaming of all the things I could potentially do, all this while stoned out of my mind.
While at work for a few months I made another friend, (E). We would just smoke bongs together and find stuff to steal so we could get more pot. I seemed pretty normal to my friends at that time.
Then just days before my 18th birthday, I got into a serious physical fight with me and another of my friends (K) (who was much older) against 3 skinheads. I was badly beaten to the point all I saw was white.
After this I slowly stopped seeing my friends all except for (K) who I used to get pot from and do workouts together, I had turned into a loner again, without me even realising it.

Sometime about halfway into 18 years old, I got REALLY paranoid about people, started to split words up in my head and couldn’t stop blurting offensive and embarrassing words out, I used to clench my jaw or do whatever it took to hide these words from people. I was especially scared people would hear “I’m a virgin”. This all came very sudden and I had no idea what the illness was, all I knew is that it was permanent.
I also though people at my work were all conspiring against me and would sometimes walk the streets at night with a knife trying to catch them.
Eventually I stopped even seeing anyone except my family, this was all while working at the supermarket.
I stopped pot use because it started to amplify all my negative thoughts and would make me play offensive tunes in my head.
Things continued like this until I was 19, then I decided maybe I could make myself normal again by smoking pot again and listing to lots of music. So I did it and did start to feel normal, except for the blurting things out. I also decided not to try to hide the things I was trying not to say, BIG MISTAKE. While I was leaving my shift for the day I managed to say “I want to suck (insert name) cock”. A whole room of people heard me, and the next day everyone was laughing. This triggered some kind of psychotic episode in me. I decided I would physically seriously assault someone at work and that would get me the help I needed. I stayed up for about 3 days without drugs, but in the end decided not to do it.
After that everyone pretty much left me alone.

A couple of months later my old friend (B) said hello to me at work, so we started hanging around each other again.
He reintroduced me to the skinheads I had the fight with. I started to shoot up speed with them. Little did I know they were lacing my speed with things like ajax and ratsack. I was in too much of a sub human state from all the pot use that I didn’t even notice. Until I got some high potency speed of my sister one night, and wanted more. She said she was going to get it off the skinheads, I told her not to. I injected the second lot of speed and it was a hot shot, after staying awake for 4 days I was admitted to hospital with damaged lungs from the hotshot.
I later found out from my sister months afterwards that she got the speed from the skinheads.

After I got out of the hospital. The skinheads sold me some laced marijuana. I smoked the whole bag while listening to music. Then when I went out to the doctor I felt REALLY stupid, almost retarded. I couldn’t remember I single word that went into my head. I immediately freaked out shouting and screaming.
It was then that I had my first and only extreme psychotic episode.
I thought that the Australian federal police had put a camera in my television and I was being broadcast live on every channel of national TV. That every advert was being made for me. That the whole laced drugs thing was a setup from society. If I waved at the people on TV they would wave back.
After the psychotic episode ended, something was really bothering me, words were sounding all muddled up. I couldn’t even watch TV it was that bad. This put me in a state of extreme depression, I took up alcohol, drinking every day. Then I started to just try to sleep my life away. Every day I would just drink and sleep. It got to the stage where I couldn’t even get out of bed to drink.
Then one night my sister and I were having an argument and I threw a beer bottle at her head. It almost killed her.
After that I started to see a psychiatrist, who then put me on Risperdal and Avanza. I figured “what the hell, may as well take them” expecting them to do nothing. After a few days, words started to sound normal again. My depression was getting much better. I knew I could live a happy life.
I stopped sleeping in bed all the time and started to play games instead.
I lived like this for a couple of years. My psychotic symptoms were better but not completely gone, I had also developed severe anxiety, which I drank to stop.

When I turned 22 I moved in with my sister, she did not like me taking medications, so I stopped taking them.
Slowly the jumbled up words all came back, also with my poor outlook on life. I continued like this for 3 months until one day I almost murdered my sister. The police were called and I was taken to hospital where I stayed for 1 night.
I went back home to live with my mum and she was appalled at my psychotic state. I would often say things to her like “I’m going to be remembered for ever” or “I’m going to kill people one day”. For weeks I just fantasized about killing people and the day I would finally be remembered for murder.

I started taking my medication again and improved, but this time something wasn’t right. I felt really dumb and thought my sisters ex partner and father of my niece had injected me with a death pill. This really played on my mind and I was planning various ways to murder him by poison. Then while I was visiting my sister with my mum, I asked “do I seem different to you”? They said yes and I lost it and smashed up her house.
Mum then made me an appointment to see the psychiatrist who then put me on Abilify. This made the “death pill” delusion go away and my mind was clear again. I also started taking Lexapro for anxiety which worked well.

About a year later I got drunk while staying at my sisters friends house. While upstairs I heard lots of laughing and a voice say “he’s lost the plot”. I got angry thinking they were talking about me and laughing at my schizophrenia. I started to punch things in the house and when they came in to calm me down I stabbed one of them in the neck before being restrained by them. The police came and charged me. I was released on bail.
After getting two psychiatrists reports I was found not guilty by mental incompetence.

My antipsychotic has since been changed to geodon and I am doing well. I don’t drink or smoke and am doing great considering what I’ve been through.

I only wish I had gone on medication as soon as it started. Things would have been much better.