I was diagnosed with schizophrenia when I was 33. This is when I began to hear voices. Prior to that I was always wondering what was wrong with me. I just couldn’t follow through on anything. I started lots of things, but quit them when I became fatiqued, frustrated or because I didn’t feel like I fit in where I was. I was schizophrenic from a young age, but the symptoms didn’t peak into intense hallucinations until I was 33. I was in the worste range. I was schizo-effective and homeless for ten years, because I refused medication. I took a few in the hospital and I had bad side effects, such as insomnia and more intense hallucinations. It is much worse than the video. I did before getting medication at age 43 hear other peoples voices in my head insulting me constantly, and I also heard encouraging voices, maybe Angels defending me against the insults. I described it to the hospital as a battle in my head for my soul between good and evil. I lived this way for ten years before agreeing to accept medication. It took me 2 tries to find the right medication for me. I still hear voices, they are just quieter, and kinder. I hallucinate frequently whispers in public, or taking a walk by myself without music to block out the “silence”. I used to talk back to these voices in public. Nobody paid any attention to me because I am told I am very attractive. People that drink and abuse drugs with schizophrenia get much more abuse from the public, than a clean, attractive, woman who just keeps to herself. If I ever asked anybody for money, the answer was always “yes”, and most people were very kind to me. People felt sorry for me, so I wasn’t traumatized by society at all. What traumatizes is the news media and dramatic television portraying schizophrenics as criminals and pedophiles. I won’t tell anybody I have schizophrenia, now that I have been on medication for a few years. People are too cruel and misinformed about mental illness. This film does not hurt, nor help schizophrenics. It does not inform people how to treat a schizophrenic. Most of us appreciate soft spoken kindness, so as to not spook us off. Thanks, goodness bless, and bye. Grace

I’m studying Communication Design and I’d like to write (and a draw) a Comic Book/Graphic Novel about the experience of Schizophrenia as part of the course.

I studied Biomedical Science before and my dissertation was about schizophrenia susceptibility genes. I felt quite uncomfortable approaching this highly emotive subject in such a rational and clinical way, and without the consideration of the subjective experience or the social factors that affect it.

I’d really like to bridge some of the gaps between the scientific explanations, the subjective and emotional experiences and the economic, social political and perhaps even anthropological dimensions of the disease.

I was wondering if it would be possible to interview you over email?

My website is http://www.jessicaleach.co.uk and my email is .

Please get in touch!

Many thanks,

Jessica

Her story goes like this. She was a beautiful woman and 11 years ago started to behave abnormal. She called her wedding off 2 weeks before she was to wed. She started giving away all her things and decided she was going to move away. Before she moved away we knew something was going on but she would just say im ok i just need to get away. to ease our minds she agreed for us to bring her to the hospital.

The doctors talked to us without her and than talked to her alone and she walked out of there with this grin on her face saying i told you theres nothing wrong.

There was a time she called me and said I dont feel right I need to go to the hospital. I go and pick her up and we go to the hospital and again she convinces the drs shes ok. So she moved away for 2 years and did some really terrible things to people. She was hospitalized for a short time and than released. Thats when she moved back here. She isolated herself from the world.

I talked to her 2 weeks ago on her birthday and she told me how she is tired of Jack controlling her. He had a microchip inserted in her gumline and thats how he controls everything she does. She said he has ruined her life, friends and relationships. She wanted her life back but didnt know how because jack wouldnt let her get help or he would hurt people.

She said jack abuses her physically and emotionally and that her mind races constantly and that she couldnt take it anymore. I told her that i would do anything to help her if she told me what to do. she just kept saying that i understood what was going on and i was the only one that understood.

I tried to understand for 11 years…i never shut her out i was the only friend she kept in contact with. she never wanted to see me but we talked on the phone often. But that was the first time she was able to give me an idea of what was going on. She wrote in a journal everyday and has 4 different hand writings and talks about 4-5 different characters that control her. Jack is the dominant one. he sounds evil.

Her last entry was on oct 31 and Nov 5 she walked out of her apt and jumped off a bridge onto the qew and the demons got the best of her that day. I forgot to mention that she told me that she wasnt taking her meds because they werent helping. i need to understand that was it my friend that made that desicion or did the voices make her jump. She had an open casket as she was in 1 peice and no sctratches or anything on her. it was like she fell peaceful. i just need more answers on understanding what goes on in ones mind. please help me

In fact during the experience I knew I was going to die, I died, and then waited for three hours outside my car at a rest stop because I thought I was in purgatory waiting to be reincarnated (and I don’t even believe in reincarnation). I found death only mildly frightening, and the whole experience was extremely positive and meaningful. I felt very spiritually refreshed afterwards (and emotionally numb for a day or two, of course).

I am not suggesting you take LSD, many people find it very unpleasant. Equally, though, some people do genuinely enjoy it.

Also, I don’t know how LSD compares to Schizophrenia.

Thank you

P.S. Because stories seem to be the motif of this comments section, if you’re curious, here are some more details on the voices, death, and purgatory which you can compare with your own experiences. John P, please feel free to remove this post script if you think it is too long-winded and unrelated to Schizophrenia.

I was in the passenger seat of my car and my friend Ryan was driving. Another friend of mine, Jim, who was not there, kept asking me from the backseat where we were going and when we were going to get there. As I had no idea where I was or where we were going I just kept answering “I don’t know”. It didn’t bother me, and I only found the questions mildly annoying.

I will point out, though, that the only reason I know Jim wasn’t there is because he told me himself two days later. At the time I never thought to turn around and look, and I never suspected that he wasn’t real, even though he kept asking me the same question again and again. Looking back I probably should have realized that he wasn’t real when he got out of the car while we were driving down the highway, only to later get back into the car while we were still driving down the highway :)

Later that night I had the delusion that I was about to die in a car crash like some PSA about teenagers and drugs and that there was nothing I could do. I heard my non-existent friend Jim in the backseat drinking, with glasses clinking and everything. Jim was also talking to a non-existent girl about how we were going to party hard.

The entire car became a cliche, you see, and I was a part of the cliche. I knew this cliche ended with all of us dying in a car crash, but there was nothing I could do except ride it out. I kept looking over at my real friend Ryan like, “aw, man, we’re about to die, bummer.” I wasn’t scared, only mildly disappointed that I hadn’t done more with my life.

We never did crash, but instead parked at a rest stop. Unfortunately Ryan forgot to turn the head lights off, so I thought that we had just crashed and were now dying by the side of the road. I was afraid of what would happen after I died, and I was unsure that I would go to Heaven. The level of fear, however, was on par with crossing a deep stream on a log and being afraid of falling into the water because then you’ll get wet. I literally got bored waiting for the “blinding white light” of death, which never came.

After a while Ryan left with, ironically, the real Jim, who was driving his truck and spotted my car at the rest stop. Jim had been with us before I took the acid but had left. Once I was alone I got out of the car and thought that I had died and was now in purgatory awaiting reincarnation. I thought the empty rest stop was purgatory and that nothing existed beyond that rest stop. I was very happy that I hadn’t gone to Hell and waited patiently for about three hours just staring at the asphalt and the electric light shining on the brick wall next to me and my car’s blue paint job.

Once the acid began to wear off I felt that I had been reincarnated as myself but in a different life (don’t ask me how that makes sense). I got back into my car and felt that I could do anything with my new life and I decided instantly that I would travel to New York City and start my new life in Greenwich Village (several hundred miles away). Before heading for NYC I decided (Thank God) that I would go home and pack some things. By the time I got home the acid had mostly worn off and I knew enough to stay put.

I remember driving home and turning on the stereo and thinking “Whipping Post” by the Allman Brothers was the most emotionally moving song I had ever heard in my life. The whole experience, in fact, had a feeling of being moving and meaningful. Even dying was meaningful because I truly believed that I was dying. There were times when I was afraid (not overwhelmingly), and times when I was disappointed, but also times when I was grateful and even ecstatic.

I vividly remember the experience to this day, several years later, and I don’t regret it for a second. I am very lucky that no cop stopped by that rest stop that night as it would have soured things immensely. As it happened no one stopped by and I had an incredible time.

LSD is definitely not something I would do two days in a row or even two weeks in a row, because of how intense the experience is. If I had the opportunity today, though, I would swallow that blotter without hesitating.

Thank you again.

(I have left out the first half of the trip and many of the more minor sensory effects like the rippling surfaces and twinkling street lights. For the best description of an LSD trip I have ever found read Alan Watts’ essay “The New Alchemy” (1960) which will tell you exactly what it feels and looks like)