Posted on October 15, 2024 View all news
April 4, 2024
The person in psychosis is a very sensitive person. It’s like they’re waking up to a whole new world. Into a new world of heightened awareness and the knowing of new things. For me this was quite an experience.
I’d say the first big change that happened in my life was after taking a drug like LSD. I woke up after a long night, and it was like I had a fresh pair of eyes. Everything looked brighter. Things sounded differently. I was in the same world but it looked all different. A whole radical shift in my perspective on life happened overnight. And I was amazed.
Of course, there was some fear accompanying me. But there was the intrigue of going deeper into it and finding a whole new world. So I kept taking the drugs and the weed.
When I smoked weed, it would add to this sense of what I thought was heightened awareness. I thought it was making me smarter and able to think up all these great ideas and plans. So I kept on doing it. As things crippled in my life, I continued smoking, thinking I would eventually rise above all my problems. The weed, the awareness, the ideas, and the grandiosity it gave me was something that would help me to rise above my problems. I thought I’d exit my problems, like living at my parents’ house and depending on them for shelter, food, etc. And I would make plenty of money and survive out there in the real world.
A little bit before the time I went to the mental hospital, I was fascinated with the stock market. I could put in some money, learn some trading tactics, and make a lot more money back. I thought of it like a cash printer. I had found the secret to life! I was a pretty bright kid and found tricks like this to make money. Me and a friend would talk about the stock market and tactics to make a lot of money.
But everything else in my life was going wrong. Turmoil in the house, no friends, not making sense to people, doing things other people thought were irrational. Things which seemed completely rational in my mind. Like going out to skate in the middle of the night and coming back a few hours later. Stuff like that to get alone and be with my own thoughts. I was even pushing my drug dealer’s away. They thought I was the weird guy and some crazy person.
But everything was making sense in my mind. Like I was smarter than everybody else, somehow they were the wrong ones. I think a lot of the problem has to do with ignorance.
I’m not gonna say the person in psychosis is the only problem. We have a world that’s not set up for people to win or enjoy life. It’s a system set up to make them go through school and then work a job they hate for the rest of their life. We’re starting to get out of this system. Plenty of people find jobs they love and enjoy their lives. But when a young person is confronted with a lose-lose world, they are gonna turn to drugs and they’re gonna seek out ways to numb themselves.
Psychosis is just a manifestation of a sick world. Some people get depression or anxiety. Some people get psychosis or schizophrenia. It’s a symptom of a sick world. And it’s how people cope. Like someone with depression copes by sitting in a dark room all day watching netflix. That’s the person with depression. Someone with psychosis might frantically research how to find the secrets of the universe. Or they may go about searching through all the world’s religions to find answers. We all find different ways to cope. It’s not necessarily a bad thing. But understanding is the key to helping someone with psychosis.
We can’t treat them like some crazy person. We have plenty of homeless people, like in Houston, where I’m from. They just litter the streets. And they don’t have any help because people gave up on them. And, of course, they gave up on themselves too.
But, understanding definitely helps someone who’s going through psychosis. Don’t just look at the person like they’re crazy and then shut yourself off to them. That’s hurtful.
I don’t have all the answers for someone to recover from psychosis. I mean, it’s just a diagnosis. But do your own research and find what works for you. It’s really different for everybody. What I did was, I went to a rehab, then an outpatient program for a while. That kind of put me in the recovery world. And then I just stayed there. A world where people talk openly about their feelings and their problems. We help one another and offer advice and such. People would let me stay at their house for many days. But I entered a new world that I hadn’t known. And this world brought understanding.
Nowadays, the only thing a person really has for information is the internet. So, people might be glued to their phones looking for answers. That’s how I was—glued to the phone and looking for answers. But I found myself in a recovery community with understanding people.
I also started to do inner work. I’m not going to say that a community does all the work for you—it’s just a support network with like-minded people. But inner work is key. It’s the inner work that transforms a person. When I started working on myself and acting my part in society, that’s when my life changed.
K.
