Harold Anderson3 said:It was simply what needed to happen. Even after those initial six months, I ended up stuck at home for another four because the medication was just too heavy for me to work. To be honest, I didn't really care whether I was recovering at home or in a hospital setting; if anything, being in the hospital felt better because the supervision was more consistent and everything was more organized.
When I finally made it to the hospital—after spending two days wandering around lost in these terrifying hallucinations—they told me they needed to give me an injection, and I honestly convinced myself the police had ordered them to kill me. I actually made my peace with it, thinking, "Well, I guess I'm dying for my country." After that, the paranoia subsided, but a few days later, the hallucinations were still so bad that I couldn't even tell the difference between black and white shapes while playing chess with a roommate. That’s when the depression hit—this massive, crushing low caused by some stupid mistake I made while in a state of psychosis. I ended up breaking a mirror and cutting myself with a shard of glass. At the time, I somehow rationalized that I had to do it because it was what was expected of me. My doctor told me I wasn't doing well because I had somehow embraced my own illness (which I mentioned before). She adjusted my treatment and ramped up the dosage, which meant I spent most of my time sleeping rather than being awake. There were also these compulsive behaviors, a sort of OCD, which added to everything, ultimately stretching my stay out to six months.
Things have been looking up since then, especially since I've been consistently taking my medication for almost four years now.🙂
I am glad you made it through that stretch and that things are looking up for you now. Just stick to the treatment plan, and I am certain everything can be kept under control.
I finally cut myself off from all my medications about a year in, roughly nine months after I was discharged from the hospital.
They threw everything they could at me—OCD, paranoia, hebephrenia, panic disorders—and honestly, who wouldn't be panicking if they lived with the constant certainty that someone was coming to kill them at any given moment? Add psychosis and schizophrenia to that list, along with whatever else they decided to slap on my chart, and you have the full picture of what they diagnosed me with.
Smashing glass and self-harming aren't exactly winning strategies, and honestly, those behaviors basically guarantee you'll be stuck in a facility for the long haul. I was lucky enough to avoid destroying property or getting into physical altercations—well, mostly—but I noticed pretty quickly that anyone tearing doors off their hinges becomes a permanent resident in a straightjacket. Even though I kept things calm and acted completely rational, it didn't do much to stop me from pulling a three-month stint.
I always knew they were out to kill me. I understood that the medications and the injections were designed to erode my mind, but I hadn't quite come to terms with the fact that they intended to take my life entirely; I was simply waiting for the moment to defend myself against whoever came for me—which, looking back, clearly makes me a dangerous person since I was just sitting there waiting for someone to attack.
I am fairly dissatisfied with my treatment plan. As I have previously noted, much more could have been accomplished—perhaps everything—had we simply sat down for a meaningful conversation at the start. It was only after two months of ineffective medication and zero progress that my psychiatrist finally acknowledged something I had already brought to his attention, suggesting we verify it together before deciding if it held any merit. We did exactly that, but only after wasting two full months on drugs that offered no relief.
If someone had just sat me down and explained everything during those first couple of days, I probably wouldn't be spiraling further into this mess. I arrived at that small town in the Midwest with one single symptom to my name, yet I walked out a month later carrying thirty different, disconnected delusions that make absolutely no sense. Most of them were clearly hallucinations, though there’s a handful I still can't quite wrap my head around today. 😁).
To wrap this up, my lead psychiatrist once looked me dead in the eye and asked if I was pulling his leg or if I just wasn't sane. I never quite understood what prompted the question, but I took the opportunity every single time to tell him I was definitely messing with him, because I certainly wasn't going to admit to being anything else. I never actually figured out what I had done or said to trigger that reaction, but honestly, it was all just a bit of fun. I couldn't exactly ask him what the issue was without confirming his suspicions about my mental state, and I had no intention of blowing the few positive points I managed to scrape together.