Psychosis!

**This psychosis article was accepted into the 15th International Schizophrenia and Other Psychoses Congress on June 12-16 2006! I would like to thank the congress for accepting my article, but unfortunately I had to have to rejected because I couldn't afford the trip to Spain in order to present it. Anyway, the article is below the notice, and I really hope you will have a true insight into my real life battle that I had with psychosis :).

My Personal Psychosis Story - A View from the Patient Themselves

Just in case you were wondering, panic disorder was not the only major mental illness to happen to me. Nearly 6 months to the day after I was admitted into the psychiatric ward the first time for panic disorder, I was admitted again for my first ever episode of psychosis. However, I will have to fill in the gaps from the first admission to the second admission. I will endeavour to tell you the symptoms, experiences and feelings that I got in these six months, as well as inside the psychiatric ward and as an outpatient.

After my first ward admission (October 2002), the first male patient to talk to me became my first ever serious boyfriend. Anyway, after about 3 months (Start of February) of the relationship, things went really bad (I do not want to do into details). Anyway, at the end of the relationship, I was so distraught by what had happened that one day, I just suddenly out of nowhere, started to cry. Cry and cry I did – it was uncontrollable and I didn't stop crying for the next 2 days. On the third day, I started to wonder if I should disappear from this town and either go north or south of where I was in my car. I did not want to stay anywhere in the vicinity of my (now ex) boyfriend. Because it is natural for a person like me (who has atypical autism - also called PDD-NOS), to go into thinking mode and zone everything else out, I just sat there for hours deciding if I should leave or not. After a long while, I had not yet made up my mind when someone came out and wanted to talk to me. In the end, I did not make a decision and I just stayed in this city after all.

Well, you do not probably know this, but I have a twin sister! Anyway, in the typical twin fashion, we both broke up with our boyfriends on the same day! This occurred on a Monday. Anyway, I was living with my sister, her boyfriend, and some other guy. Anyway, after the breakups and money rent problems, we all decided to move out of this house. A week later, I move out and so do the other people. On the Saturday night, there were still a few bits of clothes and a watch or something because we had not moved every single item out. Anyway, on the Saturday night (this house was privately rented out), the house decided to go on FIRE! It saved us from cleaning the house to get the bond back on the Sunday! Anyway, I moved back to my father's house after this happened. However, because I did not lose anything in this fire, it did not affect me psychologically much at all.

Because at times, I am quite the impulsive thinker, I took a suggestion from the first boyfriend that I should defer my Mechanical Engineering course for a year (I had just completed 2 years of it). I deferred, but after my breakup, I had no idea what I wanted to do in my life. My oldest sister decided to help me out. We bought new clothes and we saw a G.P. The G.P. Told me that from my first ward visit, they had diagnosed me with Autistic Spectrum Disorder. Perhaps they should have diagnosed me as a child because I couldn't speak until I was six, I had to attend a special preschool, I got kept down in preschool, I attended the Endeavour Foundation, I went to the Child and Youth Mental Health Place where I learned how to talk by phonetics (syllables and pictures on cards), and I had to go to speech therapy. And yet, after I attended all these special places when I was a child, surely they could have diagnosed me then, not when I was 20 years old! Anyway, I started to see another counsellor, who suggested that I have a go at the Music Degree. I somehow managed to get into the course 3 days before it started!

This was where my problems started up again and deteriorated. After I just moved into my father's house again, I started to cry uncontrollably again. The only medication the ward gave me at this period was Zoloft (antidepressant). All this did was make my highs higher, and my lows lower. I only lasted at my father's house for 6 weeks before I decided to move back to my mother's house. At some point here, I started the music degree, as well as going back to KFC part-time (I had taken some time off due to the first ward visit). The combination of starting a completely new uni degree where it was mainly theory based (I had never done any music theory in my life - and the course started on Grade 5 music theory!), restarting KFC again when I was emotionally fragile and confused easily, just moved house again and had to deal with my mother nagging me everyday, caused me to go into depression and start getting some really weird symptoms.

From the start of my Music Degree until my second ward admission (around 6 to 7 weeks), I started to get sick. I stopped crying everyday, and instead started to become withdrawn. Slowly, I started to get paranoid, have delusions and have a few hallucinations as well. I thought my brother was trying to steal my tax file number - and I was on the verge of changing it. I got suspicious of anything electronic. I thought the radio was talking directly to me, I thought that the powerpole lines were tracking my every movement, I thought that I was being tracked through anything showing an electronic time (ie. the microwave and the alarm clock). One day, I went for a walk on the Strand (our beach), and I saw the exact make and model of my car - so I assumed it was following me and that some people at uni plotted the car to follow me on that day. I then assumed that every single emergency vehicle (police, ambulance, fire brigade) was also following me - so I became quite scared of these. A friend of mine also had this problem in the past and he told me that you should not be scared of these vehicles because they can save your life one day. This statement deprogrammed my delusion about the emergency vehicles. If noone had told me that, I would most likely still be scared to this day.

The thoughts that I will mention now are probably the worst symptoms I have ever experienced with psychosis. Just after the crying started and stopped again, my mind was racing with thoughts. However, because I was so depressed, my thoughts turned into suicidal ones. Just about every minute of the day, every knife I saw, every cotton bud I saw, every power point I saw etc., I wanted to kill myself with them! Sometimes my hand even shot out to grab the killing device, but I had to physically grab my hand and pull it away! The only reason I did no kill myself during my psychosis was the fear of pain! If I didn't have any fear of pain, blood or death, I would not be here talking to you today! I couldn't control these thoughts at all - no wonder I was quite scared and depressed!

As you can tell, stress is a big contributor to psychosis. Because I was doing alot of different activities (refer to the fifth paragraph on this page), I couldn't cope with all the completely new and diverse undertakings I was doing! It was quite strange what happened to me musically during this period! I discovered that when I was psychotic, I was at my creative and imaginative peak! I could suddenly compose piano music, improvise on piano and trumpet, and (this is true), my mindset at this period was very similar to Beethoven's (perhaps he should have been diagnosed with schizophrenia). My piano piece Jazzy Rollin' was written without any mistakes and it only took an hour or so to write! At university, I started to jump onto a piano in my spare time, improvise for a while, and try to write down what I was playing. At this stage, I was thinking so fast and so creatively that anything could be possible! Now you can start to understand why great minds who are put on heavy medications need to stop taking them in order for them to 'think'. I realised at the time that I will not be able to think this creatively again in my entire life - so that was why I was so desperate to write music. I used my psychosis for a good thing, however it is sad that some people turn to other bad and horrible things with their psychotic thoughts.

So, after 6 weeks of trying the Music Degree, I just couldn't cope anymore and stopped attending class. Now I was still scared of using the internet, watching TV, as well as all the other crazy thoughts I had. Sometime during this week, my mother was nagging me about something, so I decided to sleep over my friend's place overnight. I was so protective of my paperwork (tax stuff, car rego etc.) that I put all of my paperwork in my bag and took it to my friend's place (who is still a friend of mine who was in my first year Engineering class). Anyway, I got to my friend's house, and on the tv there, he had turned the channel onto some Arabic channel (there was an arabic/Al Qaeda type symbol in the corner of the tv). From that channel, I assumed that my friend was a terrorist working for Osama Bin Laden, and then I assumed that all the other people I knew at uni who were friends of my friend were also terrorists! Later, my friend showed me a page of a computer magazine he had. This article said that in the future, (I) will only be a number and my identity will be stolen. I couldn't sleep that night because I was more concerned about my friend stealing my bag, finding my tax file number and hacking into my identity and so on. I did not get any sleep that night. Anyway, I left his room and went down the stairs. Suddenly I realised that my car was bombed and that it was going to blow up. I stood there for a good 10 minutes deciding whether I should open my car or ring a taxi. This is the weird part: I went to the carpark, and then I (saw) a couple of cars that had "No War In Iraq" signs on the back of the cars. Also, I (saw) that every single car's windscreen wipers were raised up. I went to my car, put the windscreen wipers down (believe me, these hallucinations look and feel like real objects), and opened the car door. I was so relieved when my car didn't blow up and kill me!

After I went home again, for the next couple of days, I became really withdrawn, didn't talk to anyone, slacked off in the hygiene department, and I really wanted to end my life then. The fear of killing myself was getting smaller and smaller. Around this time, my mother wanted me to go to the hospital to get help. I refused. So on the second night, I suddenly felt like I was in the movie "The Truman Show". I also felt like I was in the movie "Groundhog Day". On this night, I thought that the microwave and alarm clock were still tracking me, so I turned them off and changed the times on them. My mother woke up then, and I then repeated a line out of the Truman movie. This was too weird for me, so the next morning I decided to go to the hospital.

This is quite funny - because I did not know what day it was, I assumed it was a Sunday. On the way to the hospital, I saw a whole bunch of council workers. I remembered that these (exact) workers were in a park where I was just the other day. I thought that the council workers knew I was going to hospital and so they set up their work on my path to the hospital. I assumed that today was a Sunday, and I said to myself that council workers don't work on a Sunday (it was actually a Monday I found out later)! I will briefly describe what happened next because I am quite sick of telling this part - and it should be in the MSN Convo section. One thing I didn't mention there was that when I got to the hospital, there would be hundreds of people in the press and uni students wanting to see me kill myself outside the psychiatric ward. However to my disappoint, noone turned up!

Ok - basically, I went into the normal hospital and waited an hour to get seen by some doctors. I got impatient, walked out, and make it to the nearest bridge about 500m away before I got a free cop car ride back to the hospital (and no, surprisingly I had no intentions of jumping off - I just wanted to walk home which was a good 12km away, and today was a public holiday - ps. my mum rang the cops up). As soon as I got out of the cop car, I threw a childish hissy fit tantrum, then the security guards and cops grabbed me and what a pleasant surprise - I got seen by a doctor straightaway! Wow! Then again, after making a scene and watching all the hospital staff and other people staring at me, they had better get someone to see me. Anyway, I kept trying to run out of the room, so the guards kept grabbing me, then they decided to handcuff me. I then obliged to take some Valium, and then I got super drowsy, and then I was wheelchaired into the psychiatric ward.

The first ward section I went in was quite strange. I felt like it was some kind of setup against me - I thought that the other patient who had a big stitched cut on her neck and the nurses were actors. In every room, I thought that the game was that every time I behaved, I would advance to the next room. In one room I (saw) a urine sample on the bed. Anyway, after a while, all I did was just look at the fire alarm - and suddenly it went off! They immediately assumed that I had set it off (Geez I must have some magical powers considering that I only looked at it!)! Anyway, after a while, I got moved out of that section into the open ward after behaving. I stayed for 5 minutes, took some food out of the fridge, and just walked out (again). This time, I just happened to know someone who lived about 6 or 7 blocks away (in this ward, they have the patient's trust that they will not just walk out - there is no fence surrounding the outside here). I saw my friend, who got her grandmother to talk to me for a good three hours. She said that the doctors are not out to get you, they are trying to help you and that it is not a setup against you. After we got escorted back to the psychiatric ward, I got put into the HDU (highly dependent ward). This ward wasn't very big, the outside had a huge fence surrounding it, and there were twice as many staff as patients. After four days in here, I behaved myself, got moved out into the open ward again, promising the staff that I will not escape again, and got discharged after staying at the psychiatric ward for 12 days.

As is the norm with psychiatric hospitals, they put me on some medication and tried to discharge me as quickly as possible. Anyway, I was put on Risperidone (antipsychotic), and Cipramil (antidepressant). The Risperidone was the first medication that slowed my mind down incredibly to only having the ability to think one line of thought at a time, and also getting rid of the suicidal and other useless thoughts that I had. I had slowed down incredibly - and at first, the medicine made me feel like a zombie. I couldn't really think at all, and perhaps it wouldn't have made much difference if a lobotomy had been performed on me. Anyway, I got used to this medication and all things were looking well.

Ok, so I quit KFC (thank god for that), started volunteer work for 5 months at an op-shop, and then just chilled out after that and didn't do anything until I started the Information Technology (IT) TAFE course in July this year. I completed Cert 2 & 3 in I.T (2004-2005), and in 2006, I quit all of my brass banding (update). Anyway, from the second ward visit, I got diagnosed with schizophreniform disorder (this is schizophrenia for less than 6 months - you have to have it for 6 months or more to be diagnosed with the full schizophrenia). On February 2004, my antipsychotic got changed to Seroquel because I was gaining a heap of weight and my hormones were all over the place. These days, (update***) I am living in a flat by myself now, and I finally got a fulltime job as a storeperson. I am still on the Disability Support Pension, but I will finally be taken off it after September 2007 (**update) .

After dropping out of university twice, I decided that my really active and racy mind is not cut out for a life of uni anymore, and I am taking the easy life by doing a much simpler and more relaxing IT course (did that, now have a storeperson job (update). Last thing I would like to say here, recently a shrink told me that if I go off my current medications and get sick again, I will be officially diagnosed with schizophrenia. I am only on Seroquel these days - I withdrew from antidepressants August 2005 - link). Being on the medication is the only reason why I am not a full schizophrenic.

I must apologise for making this article a good 3056 (or so) words long! If you get down here to the bottom, I will say congratulations for reading my entire psychosis page. Now you will know how I think and what crap I have had to go through just to function like a normal person again. Please navigate the rest of my site, as you are obviously interested in it if you have reached this point. Thank you very much!

Dear Ms. ------,
On behalf of the Scientific Committee of the 15th ISPS INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS FOR THE PSYCHOTHERAPY OF THE SCHIZOPHRENIA AND OTHER PSYCHOSES that will be held in Madrid, June 12-16, 2006, it is our pleasure informing you that your abstract entitled :

Conference Papers
Paper Details
Title: My Personal Psychosis Story - A View from the Patient Themselves
Paper Number: 110.00
Paper Status: Accepted
Presentation Type :Oral Presentation
Authors:  -----

has been accepted as an ORAL PRESENTATION.

Changes of your original presentation should be informed by e-mail to congresos...mad@viajesiberia...com informing the Paper number and title.

It is compulsory that the presenting author will be registered to the Congress.
To attend the 15th ISPS CONGRESS you should complete the On-line Registration & Accommodation form available on the website http://www.ispsmadrid2006......com/fees......html