Schizophrenia Diaries

In my teenage years and early 20’s I used drugs quite frequently. Then I was diagnosed with Paranoid Schizophrenia in 2004. For the first four years, It was absolutely terrifying. The Voices were the worst part, praising me one minute then degrading me the next. Then the ideas of reference. I couldn’t read a book, or watch TV, or listen to music without hearing some message specifically meant for me. Every conceivable situation resulted in me being set up for murder, or killed, or at the centre of some vast conspiracy, or the subject of some bizarre experiment. I lived in total fear. There just seemed to be no escape from this paranoid World. I still used Cannabis and was in denial about my illness until 2007. Now, in 2009, things are better. I have stabilised on risperdal, the voices are distant and mostly inaudible, and sometimes I can even indulge in Media without being too affected. I don’t take any drugs other than the prescribed ones. I turned 30 last year, I was 24 when I was
diagnosed, and feel I have lost some years to this illness. But I have started back at university, and live on my own in the city on a pension. It is still hard to hold down a job. But I feel that a year or two ago I reached a turning point, where I could continue to live in fear or be brave and see through the delusions, see the reality that was mine to make. I use cognitive exercises, the medication, vitamins ( I have still yet to try Zophitin and liquid white mono-atomic gold powder, though I still might one day) prayer mantras, and when the voices start to crowd around, I concentrate as hard as I can on external sounds, even the hum of a refrigerator if I have to. With me, when I do this, the voices tend to fade away. I have plans for the future, and a full recovery from schizophrenia is part of those plans, though I would never have thought that in the beginning, when I was too full of despair over what I considered the ruination of my life. Positive thinking is a must. I look
forward to a future of happiness and security, despite having one of the most debilitating mental illness that can be had. I have also been blessed with a very supportive family. The darkest hour is passed. My person applauds my joyous comeback, and my full recovery, I am sure, is only a short time away. The Upward Spiral has begun.

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.

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.

hi i’m a 22 year old medical student. when i was 10 i first saw a lady in a veil at my school she was walkin across the playground and she suddenly vanished.

when i was 18 i saw a lady’s head all scarred up floating in front of me and growling like a wolf or dog, and next to me a veiled lady was standing. after a few seconds they dissapeared. a few nights later i kept thinkin that someone is tryin to wake me up and i kept feeling the sensation that someone is touching my shoulder.

when i was 20 i was in my bed, one night i could hear scratching at my door, i checked and it was nother. the next night i hear knocking at my door and i opened it and i again saw nothing. i went to wake my parents up and they said they ehard nothing and it was probibily a dream. but the thing is i didnt fall asleep. on the following night i a child crying. now this really scarred me. i thought my house was haunted and i refused to sleep in my room. i told my family about it and they told me i was probabily dreaming. i thougt i was bein rediculous so i went to sleep in my room the following night and i saw a little boy walk out of the cupboard mirror towards me and he stopped at the side of me and dissapeared.

last year during july it was about 12 noon, it was a warm surrny day and the sky was clear. i looked out of my window and i saw a 7foot “creature” slying across the sky, its was glistning gold, i could clearly see the wings flapping.

now i find myself like im not sure how to explain it, but basically im always imagining things i could be doing and i talk to the people in my imagination and i have noticed a few times that i am actually physically whispering whilst im interacting to these people in my imagination. n people have began to notice it aswell.

during the past 3 weeks i have felt so paranoid and anxious, but the difference is that i am aware that these feeling are unjustified and i have no reson to feel this way.

i dont know what i have, as a child i thought i was psychic btu now in med school i have realised i have a serious problem.

im to ashamed to speak to our teachers about it and i was wondering if there are any psychiatrists who may have a clue to whats wrong with me can help…or if anyone has had any similar experiances…

plz i would really appreciate it if u contacted me on dr_alle@live.co.uk

My name is Roberta and I am 25 years old. I have schizophrenia and I am coping with it very well. I have been taking  my medication for a year now and I have been functioning normally. A few years ago, I felt my whole world was falling apart. I had just remembered that my father went to prison when i was two years old. I had hallucinations and thought that people were out to get me. I also struggled with voices from my past. However I am living a full life and I am coping well. I always wondered what it was like to live with schizophrenia and when i was diagnosed I did not want to accept it, but the medication made all my symptoms go away. I look forward to living my life.