I wrote this some time ago. Nothing has changed. I am dealing with an incredibly difficult breakup right now and I just wanted to share this with people because my natural instinct is to be sad. Maybe you have anything I wrote about and I can help? Looking to distract myself as I push through.

And so as I sit here some years later from this happening on June 4, 2013 at a Starbucks and begin to write this prior to going to work, I ask myself questions. I question if this will help anyone or simply help me close a chapter on my life that I am both glad that happened and embarrassed about at the same time. Four years ago at this very time I was struggling with alcoholism and a nasty Adderall addiction that left me empty and void of everything. I could blame my addictions for my divorce; I could blame them for my suicide attempts. I could blame them for the place I am about to describe to you in the next few pages. But I wont. I oft use the following quote when talking to other people when they are going through hard times. “ Sometimes it rains on the just, sometimes it rains on the unjust. Sometimes it just rains”. For me, it just rained.

It is hard for me to pinpoint the exact moment of descent. When dealing with psychosis or schizophrenia the tearing of the walls between reality and the other place as I refer too it now catches you by surprise because you don’t realize it is not real. Oddly, I find myself now trying to figure out how I could believe what I believed with so many missing pieces to the puzzle, but that’s what makes schizophrenia so powerful to the person enduring it. You can make illogical leaps in everything. That’s what this takes away from you. Everything. I want to go into some detail about the breaking down of the human psyche during this transition into madness because I can clearly remember everything that happened to me. Sometimes I wish that I didn’t. It’s an embarrassing and painful time. I wished that I could have simply gotten better without remembering. But then what worth would I actually place on where I am today?

It started with two voices but ended with four. Two distinct and unique personalities that were good guy bad guy or in my case good guy and bad girl. Brian and Kelly. That’s where this all began. Almost two years of running scared for my life and my loved ones. Running from imaginary people in at the end an imaginary world. In the end, when I finally took control of my life there were Sara and Tony. Honestly I never had what other people experience at times of friendly voices. I did have sympathetic voices. Tony and Kelly were as close to friends in my psychosis as I could have. Tony was incredibly laid back and at times informative and in the end as weird as it may sound, I struggled with saying goodbye to all of them because I realized just how incredibly alone I had become due to the isolation of schizophrenia.

When I meet therapists and counselors and describe what I went through. What I endured and that I call it schizophrenia; I am often greeted with the tilted head. This went on for almost two years. Usually around 6 months schizophrenia becomes a lifetime sentence with an official diagnosis. Something inside of me refused to give up on a regular life. I feel most sorry for my Golden Retriever, Buddy. He stood by my side during all of this and I believe that he was put in my life for this sole purpose. I will never forget the day I needed to escape from Rochester because the voices told me that they were going to kill me. I packed up Buddy and we drove 6 hours down to Reading P.A to see friends that are like family to me. The psychosis did not go away down there. Instead I became suspicious of everyone. During this period everyone that you meet is suspect. You trust no one because you can’t even trust yourself. People you love, people you have known your entire life become the enemy because the voices feed into it. The voices correlate seemingly innocent interactions into evil dastardly plans and the voices bridge the reality gap.

When this first started I am sure that I seemed to think it was just my inner voice. At some point I gave the voices power. There are a few schools of thought on drug-induced psychosis and how it happens. I am of the school of thought that it simply amplifies what is already underlying and waiting. I had given up Adderall hoping to make this go away. When it didn’t in the time period it should have, I stopped drinking. I should add that I drank every night and with the psychosis I drank even more to escape. When I stopped drinking and started to attend A.A meetings. The voices taunted me. I remember walking down the hall at an A.A meeting and hearing Brian tell the other voices that I wasn’t really stopping drinking and that it was only so that they didn’t kill me. I spent most of my time during this in a fight or flight mode. Almost everyday I was at that point, everyday I was in my mind fighting to survive and live. There were two points during this that I attempted suicide because the voices and what life had become were too much. I am sure the damage that I did to my heart is irreparably done due to both the Adderall abuse and also this heightened sense of awareness that kept my heart rate elevated almost all of the time.

Brian was the cynic of the voices. The one that would push and push. I was most afraid of that voice. The things that I did and went through due to Brian are immeasurable and the personal horror that anyone is dealing with while going through schizophrenia or any kind of psychosis is a level of Hell that you cant fathom. I would respond to the other voices verbally but never to Brian. With his voice if I responded, I could never say the correct thing. It would lead to a storm of insults and threats. I must note that once I got to the point where I wanted to die and I told the voices I was done and that they could come and kill me and even went to a public park and sat and waited to be killed. The threats shifted to family and loved ones, even my dog became part of the mix. Again, all rationale for pieces missing from the puzzle to complete the picture did not matter.

Kelly. Kelly was the calming voice. Actually she sounded like an angel compared to Brian or Sarah. I am not going to say exactly how emotionally attached I began to get with this voice but I did experience some sort of feeling/affection for it. It was like some sort of psychosis oasis. I found safety and shelter in her voice. I almost began to trust this manifestation. But I never did. The reason I never did and I see this now and not then was that even through it all, her promises made never came true.
Sarah. Just as bad as Brian. This voice was pretty stressing on me. I would rejoice when I was having an episode that she was not present. I could handle one out of control voice but not two. She would often talk with Brian about who would get to kill me. Who would get to pull the trigger. I at a certain point would try and talk to Kelly and Tony the most; I would try to avoid at any cost Brian or Sarah.

Tony. I am still not sure how I got lucky with this voice. Tony was the voice that would always be kind. Would slip up and tell me things that he wasn’t supposed too. Things that would set Brian off on a tirade that would end in my trying to escape either this city or life. Tony was level. Months after I beat this I would often sit back and try to dissect this. Like who was Tony in my life. What part of me was he? I know now and fully believe that all of these voice manifestations were part of my subconscious mind, the part that hates, the part that loves the part that cares and the part that wants me to die.

I miss the soothing voice of Kelly sometimes. It really was the voice of an angel during this mess. I have read about how some people that are schizophrenic have voices that are kind and gentle and help them. Those are people dealing with in my opinion schizophrenia with a clear conscious. I feel that what manifests in people with schizophrenia are things that are deep inside of your mind, things you don’t share. I was not in a good place when this happened. I had spent a good 6-7 years abusing amphetamines and alcohol. I was not a good person. What manifested in me was that person. When people have “good” schizophrenic episodes or voices, well, I like to chalk that up with good clean living. The voices are simply just you, what is inside.

After 6 months of psychosis I told everyone that it went away. I did not want to be labeled this for the rest of my life. I am still unaware of how others viewed me. For part of the time I had a full time job and although I am told my first year was pretty sketchy I was never “off” enough to get fired. I remember events. I remember then with a great clarity that is painful at times as it would be easier to forget. I would spend days awake fearful for my life and in the beginning fueled by Adderall.

I became skeptical of everyone around me. A schizophrenic is able to almost seamlessly take happen chance and situations and string them together. Schizophrenia turns everyone into part of your manifestation. I believed my closest friends were in on this and eventually my family. I truly believed that there was something in my ear that allowed the voices to hear what I was hearing and something implanted in my eye that allowed them to see what I saw. And I believed this 100%. I did not share that detail with anyone up until now. It seems so foolish in hindsight. Even when I was hospitalized, I never told them that. I lived in a perpetual state of fear and I did not want to tell anyone else about all of the details for fear I would put them and their life at risk. To them there is nothing you can say or do that will change what they think they know.

How I beat it was just a freak occurrence of the desire to find some hole somehow in what was happening to me. Inside I knew that there had to be a better life. I had tried to kill myself no less than two times during the psychosis. I couldn’t even do that correctly. Something the voices would often remind me of. Then it happened. I was in the bathroom at my townhouse. The grounds crew for our neighborhood was mowing the lawn and I thought to myself “ I want to mow the lawn” but what happened next changed my life. Kelly repeated what I just thought to myself in her voice. In that instance, that very moment I found a way out. I remember turning around looking in the mirror and saying out loud “ I own this”. I was so proud and happy and I felt like I was on top of the world. The voices stopped almost instantly. This was of course short lived and the hour I had with no voices, for the first time in years, felt like it was. Days. It was so quiet. I had tears running down my face just enjoying the silence.

It wasn’t over. I still endured the psychosis. I still had moments where I lost touch with reality. I would ground myself by simply thinking something bizarre and then getting a voice to repeat it. It took a solid year of responding to a voice this way to finally get to the point where I controlled it. Reality was simply a word or phrase away. It was never out of grasp like before. I could ground myself by a word. I felt incredibly powerful. I simply trained myself to respond using this method and the quiet periods would grow and grow and grow and grow. First hours, then days then weeks and then months would go by. I became so cocky with it in the end that when I would hear a voice I would laugh. I took the power back. I silenced my persecuting critics. I would never hear them again. I became stronger mentally than the voices and the only thing I carry with me now is the desire to help people. I don’t know if this would work with everyone, I don’t know if everyone can do it. But I know that I want people to understand that I was schizophrenic. I lived that life for two years, I made it back. I think others can too. The one thing that I gained from this experience is that it fundamentally changed who I am and what I am. I am better from this. I came out better than I went in.