Fact and Fantasies…

Fact: My life gets progressively much more “interesting” without my medications.

Fantasy: I could will schizophrenia away just by changing my thinking and thought patterns. I could turn to some new age, metaphysical bullshit to cure myself. It is all in my head. I’ve got some ocean front property in Arizona I want to sell you as well.

I’ve tried a lot of medications over the years. Zyprexa made me sleep all the time so I quit taking it. I would rather deal with the crazy symptoms of schizophrenia and actually be awake for once, long enough to experience life even if it was hell. Haldol made me feel even crazier. It was as if I was going to jump out of my skin and I would sit in my yard in my swing reading all day afraid to go inside. I also hated having to deal with the constant blood tests with Clozaril.

“I have something I want you to try,” My doctor finally said one day after we had tried countless combinations of medications. “Risperdal.”

I will never forget that moment in time. My life changed in one short day. Within days I felt better and my life became more organized. There were no side effects that I had grown accustomed to with most of the other psychiatric medications. I started to get out of the house and was not so paranoid. My father remarked that I was almost gregarious (for me) and that truly was remarkable. I thought I had been cured so I quit taking the medications (which is common in patients with schiz). My life once again devolved into chaos. It is a vicious cycle and one that a damaged mind has a hard time grasping the finer points of. It wasn’t until I started taking Risperdal in a long lasting injection that I started to have a more normal and maintained lifestyle. I no longer had to worry about taking that life sustaining pill every morning.

My mother was just bat shiat crazy when I was growing up. She would get up at 3 AM in the morning and clean the house from stem to stern on a school night keeping all of us awake. My father would plead with her to come back to bed which usually resulted in World War III as far as their relationship was concerned. My mother was also constantly reading books on how to clean better. She was neurotic, paranoid, and uncontrollable. It is amazing my father stayed with her and saw about her all those years.

I also remember being very afraid of my mother as a child. One moment she was hugging me and the next she was screaming at me for something that really didn’t matter such as a toy left on the floor of my room. Life was constantly chaotic growing up. I wrote the other day that I had a pretty normal childhood and realize now that it wasn’t. This was normal for me so I guess I wasn’t lying.

My mother started taking Zyprexa and she was a different person. Yes, she slept all the time, but you could actually live with her. Her finances got straightened out. She no longer went one hundred miles an hour all day and night. The constant cycle of love, then anger and screaming stopped. It was like getting to know a different person. I think that little life changing pill is the only reason her and my father are still married. I also think it is the only reason I and her are able to have a true mother and son relationship these days.

The history of mental illness is clear to see on my mother’s side of the family. That whole family is screwed up mentally and emotionally with weird notions of what should be considered normal and rational behavior. My grandmother spent most of her mothering years slamming kitchen cabinets and doors in the house constantly angry and resentful of her children and husband for the duty she had to bear. Her mother was detached from everything and didn’t express emotion normally. My great grandmother’s home in her later years was filled with bullet holes as she constantly shot with a pistol at her hallucinations she saw and the voices in her head.

I strongly believe a very abnormal chemical imbalance of the brain is passed down from that side of the family hereditarily that can only be helped through medications and effective therapy. I have been getting vibes from some of my readers that it can be cured by “reprogramming” or “changing your thinking.” I disagree. I also don’t see most people running forward to help take care of my mother, her family, and I un-medicated. Believe me. You don’t want to go there unless you like to live in a fucked up mess. I’ve been there. I have lived it for most of my life.

I have been seeing my same psychiatrist for over a decade. We have worked hard to find a combination of medications that gives me a comfortable life and a way to live it. It took over ten years to find. The proof is in the pudding I like to say.

Fact: I live a somewhat normal life on medications.

Fantasy: I can quit taking the often demonized psychiatric medications and spend the rest of my days running through fields of flowers laughing and playing and enjoying life. It is all in my head.

Reality: Change the above fantasy with death and suicide as my reality would be the polar opposite without my meds. I would rather die than go back to the hell I lived in before finding Risperdal and regaining much of my life back. This is a life or death situation that shouldn't be toyed with lightly trying to cure it with some new age bullshit or thinking. You don't just tell a cancer patient to just pray and to forget the chemo therapy. You shouldn't do the same with people with mental illness.