Question On My Condition: Am I Still Schizophrenic?

When I was telling my story to the healer two days ago, an interesting point was raised. Although I was attempting to say that my schizophrenic symptoms had gone away, I still had that second full breakdown  two years ago. Unfortunately, my memories of it now are fading. This is what I think happened.

1. I remember thinking two months in advance that I had a special connection with someone and was 'channeling' information. I think a lot of that was 'woolly', now.
2. On the day the breakdown started, I went to the bank and had a personal meeting with a manager, during which I laughed and laughed and laughed, for no apparent reason; I was just undergoing some kind of hysteria. I then went home and collapsed, more or less, lying on the floor in my living room, before going to bed.
3. I stayed in bed for about two weeks, during which time I stopped taking my medicine; since I  felt very well., I was happy and thought I didn't need my medicine. However I soon started to have perceptual disturbances (thinking my body very small/large), and hallucinating, thinking an apocalypse was going on outside.
4. I then turned into the full breakdown, frightening fears and hallucinations and delusions.

The point is, that retelling my story, I had missed out the first step listed above. My version of the story in my mind had always been that I had a breakdown from stress, then stopped taking my medicine by happenstance, felt fine, stayed off it, and got ill without realising. But why was I already showing signs of being ill? I remember feeling kind of light-headed, like a type of mania - why was that happening? I was going through a lot of stress, to do with work; somehow this must have broken through the capability of the medicine I was on - yet I also feel that the medicine was ceasing to work for me, like a kind of toxic reaction? I don't know. Why did I start to get 'unhinged' a few months before I collapsed from mental exhaustion?

Although I have been otherwise stable and without symptoms except for apparent paranormal sensitivity and mental disturbance, it seems I am still susceptible to full schizophrenic symptoms, given sufficient stress. That complicates matters. Rather than being someone who has come through schizophrenia, I am someone who will always be at risk of a schizophrenic breakdown.

PS This is a big deal for me, that I apparently could be subject to further breakdowns. I had looked on the second break I have had as a freak occurrence, forgetting that I was already "going off the rails" a little... I need to think about this, and analyse it to find the truth of it. It's unsettling to realise that I was wrong and am potentially still in danger of further illness, and should remain on medication (contrary to my preferences). It may be that I can live a normal life without medicine, but will always be in danger of another breakdown from stress - but that's true on medicine or off it, stress is a universal danger for people who have schizophrenia.

Thanks for reading.

Imagination And Schizophrenia: Ideas and Reflections

Hallucinations are like the dreaming self impressing itself on the waking self. Or like the unconscious self trying to be born through the waking self all at once, becoming a tragic failed birth.

Delusions are like the logical mind being unravelled by the unconscious' power of imagination. Again, interference from the unconscious places the waking self in a world of magic, though one for which it is 'ill-fitted', unsuitable. 'Creative thinking' and 'creative thinking gone wrong' are here associated like genius and madness. (Creative thinking - thinking that is different, imaginative, daring, accepting of errors, and yet ordered; creative thinking gone wrong is similar but misses errors on a grand scale, for all its pretensions of genius and confidence.)

Strange behaviours in public occur through a displacement, the waking mind being forced out and breaking its boundaries, so that it shows itself naked, and frightening in its strangeness - the irrationality and lost consciousness of propriety are apparent. The subject's mind has 'gone to seed', run wild, lost all sense of reality as governed by responsibility and social learning: the subject is a free agent and the boundaries are broken so that behaviour is governed mostly by will alone. A kind of expression of withdrawal, these behaviours represent overt individuality and individuation; if there was more 'space' for the person's mind, the behaviours would never come to light, would pass by as unnoticed dreams; a manifestation of stress, therefore?, of the brain part of the organism not having enough 'space' to rest and relax and reorganise?
[My strange behaviours were done without awareness that they were strange, and they were based on delusion. I know what it's like to act strangely; I think that it is especially frightening to other people; it is madness very much on display, a seeming powerful, unpredictable and unlimited force.]

My Story

Intensive cannabis use was my downfall - I mean it brought on psychosis in me; there is some debate in the public realm over whether this is possible, but for me it was unquestionably the case. I began to imagine that my then-girlfriend was benig unfaithful, to a horrible extent, which was heart-breaking and led to much conflict and turbulence between us. Breaking up with this innocent individual on the grounds of her causing me excessive stress, I went to university, where most of the people I socialised with in the halls of residence made up a group who smoked cannabis regularly; I took to smoking cannabis intenseively alone, as well as with the others. By this time I was using cannabis as a means to get closer to God, as I had had a spiritual awakening and a number of unusual experiences apparently of a mystical nature. It is very important to note as a constituent in my story that I entered a new stage of personal development through a spiritual awakening, ('spiritual awakening' simply means a combination of new and vital fervour in seeking God and probably also key personal experiences of a mystical nature). By and large the cannabis smoking brought me not the union with God that I desired, but truly hellish hallucinations; these hallucinations were of a nightmarish reality, experienced as real, wherein friends and family were subjected to all manner of the worst assaults, mutilation, and grisly and treacherous deaths. I myself was also the focus of horror in the guise of supposed persecution by mind-reading and merciless terrorists.

I stopped smoking cannabis when I moved away from my associates in the second year of university. A counsellor had identified that I had problems of a mental nature, which led to a diagnosis of depression. Although I was no longer experiencing such grand hallucinations, as mentioned above, my mental perception was compromised to the extent that it felt as if a protective shell had been damaged and removed and anyone in my presence could be aware, if spiritually sensitive, of my inner thoughts; secondly, since my breakdown I had many delusions of grandeur of a messianic variety, extending to prophethood and sainthood; thirdly, I experienced what seemed to be spiritual intrusion into my mind of acute frequency, with sensing an intention of injuring me by causing 'psychological' pain .
Briefly, my situation today is that the sense of openness remains, the symptoms of delusional grandeur have eroded over time, and the sense of intrusion has been an integral and painful part of my experience since my breakdown ten years ago.
P.S.: My speech capability was largely knocked out by the breakdown, though this has recovered; I still quite often feel awkward speaking though I am articulate in my writing. I also developed social phobia along with the first breakdown, which means I feel uncomfortable around others, except for my very closest family, and this remains unchanged.


One more thing: last year, I had a breakdown from stress; a regular breakdown, things got too much for me on the career front, I went to bed for two weeks, was kind of feverish, not eating and not taking my medicine... After two weeks I felt fine, in fact I felt very good, so I decided I didn't need my small daily dose of medication. Because I had stopped taking the medicine suddenly (instead of tapering off), I jacknifed into a full-blown episode of hallucination, similar to the one I had experienced many years ago, and I mostly lacked insight that I was not well. Once again the frightening hallucinations and beliefs occurred - but this time I was detached, and the misperceptions were easier to handle. I was taken to hospital, given a new kind of medicine and now I am back to the previous status quo - having an experience of openness and frequent 'intrusion'. For me, medicine does not block out such symptoms.

This brings me full circle. The first eighteen years of my life were totally free of psychosis. I have had an unusual coming of age charctersied by an alternative perspective on Life and much solitude, and now I am well enough to consider coming off the medicine I take. The psychiatrist who supervises me grudgingly agrees to me attempting Life unmedicated, for which I am grateful. I believe that since my condition is stable, I won't experience any adverse effects, and I am habituated to handling my difficult symptoms. I intended to write a blog charting my decrease in medication and any changes that occur afterwards, but I couldn't wait!, since I also intended to write putting forward my argument for the inclusion of a spiritual perspective alongside the rational perspective that dominates current Western mainstream psychiatric thinking. I hope to write about coming off medicine too, next year (2010).