Psychosis (Part 1)

[days_unfolding]

Last year, I suffered a psychotic break that lasted 5.5 months long. This series of entries describe the psychotic break in the (possibly vain) hope that people will learn a little about what it's like to experience a psychotic illness from the inside. I hope that it helps people understand Andrea Yates and others who have psychotic illnesses better. The entries both take and are an enormous leap of faith, and I hope that readers respect that fact. This description is going to be long, so I'm going to post installments over the next couple of days.

Up until May of last year, when I was 38, I had never had a psychotic illness. In hindsight, I had mental health symptoms of increasing severity for a few years before the psychotic break, but didn't have any overt psychotic symptoms, such as hearing voices or obvious delusions. No one in my family (to my knowledge) has experienced psychotic symptoms either.

Near the end of May, I stayed up really late one night (I forget why) and took No-Doz in the morning to stay awake. When I arrived at work, I discovered that I couldn't concentrate at all. It seemed that whatever filters that I normally used to filter extraneous stuff out weren't working at all. Any and all sounds were distracting me. My mind wouldn't stay on topic, but instead went off on topics of its own. Really went off on topics of its own; it was busy deciding that a colleague about whom (I swear) I hadn't thought twice was really attractive. I was wondering where the hell that came from? My mind was repeating words again and again, and also coming up with words that were similar, but not quite right. For example, the name of the suddenly attractive colleague came up as the code name of a project on which I had worked 7 years ago and the name of a fictional character, both of which shared a syllable with the last name of the colleague. I felt some headache and dizziness.

I recognized some of the thought patterns as being "like" classic schizophrenic thought patterns, which terrified me. (I topped the curve in an abnormal psych class that I took a couple of years ago, never realizing how useful that it was going to be.) I told myself I couldn't possibly be becoming schizophrenic because of my age. The age of first onset is usually during the teenage years or early 20's. (John Nash ("A Beautiful Mind") had a really late onset at 30.) Anyway, I went outside to calm down and was struggling with the possible implications, when the suddenly attractive colleague (the last person whom I wanted to see) came outside to ride his motorcycle, and sat there for a while watching me for reasons of his own. I wondered if and how he knew what I was thinking? I finally packed it in and left. Over dinner, I had a really tough time reading the paper. I had to struggle through it slowly (and I'm usually almost a page-a-glance reader, at least with books).

I rested a lot over the weekend. I felt a lot better, and vowed never to get as tired again. (I've never touched No-Doz again to this day.) I thought everything was okay.

However, one evening, when I was thinking some thoughts that I wouldn't want to make public, I suddenly "realized" that my colleagues could hear my thoughts, that I was broadcasting my thoughts to them. I was appalled, and wondered which of my thoughts they had heard. I wasn't sure what to make of the fact that I was broadcasting my thoughts, and knew that some people would think that it was crazy, so had dinner with Erik (my ex-husband) and told him about it. He said that he has one friend who has precognitive dreams, so he didn't see why I couldn't be a broadcast telepath. He talked to me about grounding and shielding, and pointed me to some references. I suppose that I would have better off if he had told me to go see a psychiatrist, but I love his blind faith in me.

I began a struggle during work to filter and censor every thought I had, which made my already deteriorating concentration even worse. Later, I realized that some of the people could read my thoughts even when I was at home, so the struggle extended to home.

Furthermore, I realized that an even smaller group of people could see through my eyes, and were able to watch me in the shower. I became really good at washing and dressing without looking at myself, but invariably, I would slip up, look at myself, and get upset. Eventually, I gave up and started showering and dressing normally again, figuring that people saw what they saw, but it took a while to get there. I remember breaking down several times.

To be continued....

Comments

No-Doz....

[allisonway.livejournal.com]

Although I know that there is more to your story than simply having gone through sleep deprivation, and then taking No-Doz, I have had a similar experience. I have had panic attacks since I was a child, but it wasn't diagnosed until I was 28, when I had 2 panic attacks back-to-back while taking a psych exam. Ahem.

But, the experience happened about 5 years earlier. I hadn't had much sleep, for a few days, and was leaving my husband (at the time), and moving far away. During the trip, I took some No-Doz (or something like it) to stay away, all the while drinking caffeinated drinks, little sleep.... Then I had the WORST panic attack ever.

Years later, into my 30s, it was discovered that it was related to my being diabetic. Caffeine, lack of sleep, and stress can really bring it all on, but the diabetes meds helps to keep it from getting so strong.

Whew. I wrote a novel, here!

I am waiting to read the rest of your story.... :)

Re: No-Doz....

[days-unfolding.livejournal.com]

I've occasionally had panic attacks. I can imagine that combo of NoDoz, lack of sleep, and stress could trigger a doozy of an attack. Hopefully you weren't driving at the time? That would be really scary.

Your story of having had panic attacks during a psych exam makes me chuckle. Hmm, maybe some of my symptoms are a delayed lab for my abnormal psych class!

[papoose.livejournal.com]

I'm glad your sharing. I have been watching your journal for over a year and this really sheds light onto some things I wasn't quite 'getting' at the time.

[days-unfolding.livejournal.com]

I'm glad that you said that. I've been having an image of people really wishing that I wouldn't write about such disturbing stuff.

Yeah, at the time, I alluded to some of this stuff in a very, very oblique manner on purpose. One weird thing about psychosis is that you can know that others would think a perception is weird or crazy--but still be utterly convinced that the perception is correct. I felt way too vulnerable at the time to even think about writing what was going on.

I'm also glad that I'm thinking and writing about this now because I'm seeing connections between things that I haven't seen before.