Thoughts on psychosis

Culmination

Psychosis is a culmination of a series of events, thoughts and experiences. In my case, it was also an explosion of anger, hidden feelings and despair against the rest of the world. All this culminated in an episode that came and went. People that drift into madness have often made the wrong moves in life, and they have taken the wrong decisions to get them in a bad situation. Psychosis can often stem from intense solitude; it can stem from forced and concentrated impositions of self-imposed rules. I had an underlying psychosis building up within me for years and years. I hallucinated when I was about 5 years old, affecting my perceptions of reality. After school ended at the age of 16, I slowly withdrew myself from others. By doing this, I expanded my outlook on life considerably. Consequently, these dark tendencies were brought out into the open and gradually became more and more extreme and intense. My angry outbursts became very frequent, and I developed an assortment of 'unhealthy' habits. This kept developing for about a year until I restrained myself, and then came a smorgasbord of racing thoughts and delusional beliefs culminating in my episode.

Natural distortion of reality

An episode is a natural distortion of reality, rather than one induced via chemical means. An episode, or an experience derived from schizophrenia, is often preceded by a build-up of events and issues whereas a drug 'trip' is done instantly. A person with a mental illness is often rather complex, having several layers to themselves and prone to introspection. People who take drugs, who are looking to 'distort' reality, are often merely looking for a 'good' time and a way of spending a good time - often a more refined way of going out and getting drunk. Mental illness is far from a jolly experience and, consequently, a more painful one. It is a far more different and natural distortion of reality than drug-taking. Drugs also disorientate one after having taken the drug; you become more complacent and will often be "at one with the universe". You have trouble between distinguishing what's beautiful and what's not. Mental illness is closer to one's self than "been at one with the universe". It is, therefore, a more natural distortion of reality.

Delusional thoughts

My episode's main drive was delusional thoughts. In the mind of the individual, everything he perceives is the truth. When this interior truth gets out of hand and doesn't correspond with normal, everyday life there is a clash between interior and exterior worlds... Before my episode, an assortment of delusional thoughts crossed my mind. To start off with, I thought I'd caused a controversy with my writing and that I a documentary about me and an old MSN contact had been made where we played games and tricks on one another. I thought also that by using the basis of Julio Cortázar's Rayuela, a psychologist had arranged together a whole crop of young teenagers who were confronting the education system by playing child-like games on each other on an intellectual level. These thoughts got out of hand after staying up for three days, and they got even more extreme. I thought that ininity had arrived and that I'd live forever by reading every single book on earth, and that I'd kill my English teacher with my 'terrorist novel'. This all came to me after having a conversation with my mother who rather miracolously got me to sleep through a strong dose of medication that got me to sleep after staying up for 3 nights. The day after, I wrote out all my delusional thoughts which alluled to several artists I liked as god. This day I got taken to a psychiatric ward where I thought I'd sleep for years until 2156, the year derived from the chapter where I thought I'd appeared in Cortázar's Rayuela. When I woke up in the psychiatric ward where I kept doing inexplicable, odd things and I kept having these delusional thoughts. My behaviour alarmed people so much that I got taken to an intensive care unit in Derby. I remember been driven there: I was at the back of the van, looking out into the motorway not only thinking it was 2156, but getting numerous other delusional thoughts as well. Before getting into the main part of the unit, I was locked in a 'de-escalation room', where I thought would be some sort of contact with Jorge Luis Borges. Throughout my stay in the unit and later in other wards, my delusional thoughts slowly diminished their potency.... They are very difficult to articulate.

Repression of thoughts

An episde can often emerge from repression of thoughts. There are many disturbing parts of our nature that we do not want to acknowledge, and these often surface out in the episode. Many niggling worries we may have during our childhood may surface again and haunt us. The fact that I had an hallucination at a young age shows how something can be ingrained deep within the subconscious and emerge more than a decade later.

Racing thoughts

In the three nights I stayed up, my thoughts were racing constantly. They prompted me to walk in all directions of the house, constantly thinking over and over and over. When thoughts are bombard at you at this speed, it is diffcult to keep control and this results in the culmination I mentioned before.

Loss of control

Psychosis is characterised by how little control the person has over his actions. Consequently, there is a loss of time too. Like dreams and LSD hallucinations, one doesn't seem to be within a discerinble beginning, middle or end. I had no idea of the dates or the month for the first couple of weeks I was in the intensive care unit. One can often find onself acting with no real motive, and one can find oneself screaming or acting out strange behaviour without any conscious self-awareness.

Outer appearance

A lot of deception and ignorance about mental illness stems from the outer appearance of a person victim of the illness. Before been transferred to a psychiatric ward to Chesterfield I was placed in one in Derby, and I found that the patients were often left to their own resources and ignored. These people were, it seemed to me, worse off than in the intensive care unit, a place where the level of attention is far more intense and concentrated. Most psychiatrists are often so filled with prejudices that they will apply mentally ill people with a label due to their outer appearance, and they will take for granted the underlying personality of the individual. Mentally ill people can often seem threatening, but people choose to ignore what kind of sheer incredible workings go on in the inside of the mind that is far more interesting than the workings of the mind of the vast amount of the rest of the population.

The Aftermath No. 1: Psychiatric wards/Intensive care units

After an episode, a person will often inevitably find themselves in a ward or, worse, an intensive care unit. Often, these places can seem as an expansion of one's own imagination - as if it's part of the episode itself. Sooner or later, this is shattered and you must come face to face with reality. An intensive care unit, in particular, is extremely hard work; you spend every single minute craving for some sort of space - it's restrictive as hell. Yet at the same time, you develop a strange kind of affinity for it and attempt to adapt to new, constraining environments.

The aftermath No. 2: Medication

While I was at the intensive care unit, I consumed a lot of medication which caused me to shake, slur my speech, avoid concentration (I couldn't read at all while I was at the unit), and I couldn't get erections. The doctors have all told me that they did a fantastic job, but I think that the reason for why I sorted myself out was a conscious decision to start and look at things logically. After getting discharged, I was prescribed with olanzapine which made me life considerably more mundane... In a way, two years after my episode, I find that I've got to fight against this medication in order to obtain greater things. With these meds I found my creativity wane, I often felt drowsy and found it difficult to stay up at nights.

Encounters with idiosyncratic people

Before I found myself at the wards, I felt a great deal of contempt against the rest of the world... This contempt could often veer towards misanthropy. However, when entering the wards I found an assortment of idiosyncratic people. It was enlightening to come across people who thought in their own peculiar way... I remember the fat black man who stank of shit, Dennis, keeping an eye on me and conjuring up remarks charged with wisdom... When getting discharged, I was disappointed by the mentality of other people...

A good or bad experience?

I think it was a good experience to have had an episode, as it expanded my outlook considerably: it both expanded my outlook considerably, acquainted myself with a variety of thoughts and exposed me to visions no-one else has seen. The bad experiences are these 'aftermaths' and consequences of an episode. Ultimately, all psychotic episodes are singular so it is an incredible privilege to have come across visions and perception no-one has seen or known about.