A few things I’ve learned surviving schizophrenia
Here’s the thing. That dishevelled person on the sidewalk muttering to themselves? That could easily be you a week from now. But here’s the other thing. If you’re that unfortunate person, you might be back on your feet in a year’s time, going back to school, doing volunteer work, smiling, and maybe living to see your friends and family breathe a sigh of relief even if they are still chronic worriers sometimes. To that end, I thought I’d share some of the things I’ve learned as a survivor of schizophrenia.
- Schizophrenia is real. I’m not clear on the science, but apparently my thinking the apocalypse was coming every night has to do with the misfiring of neurotransmitters. It is not caused by an unwillingness to work, or any sudden need to plea away criminal charges. Nor is it the result of being a misunderstood genius who just needs the love of a good woman to set him on the right path. It is a disease, not a trope, boring stuff if not for the un-boring nature of the symptoms. Name a sense, there’s a hallucination for that, sometimes even painful. These delusions get woven together into a dream narrative that overwhelms your critical faculties. Whenever I see somebody so afflicted in public, I feel a great sense of woe for the battle they are fighting of which others may never know.
- You are not morally responsible for the illness, only for your recovery. Schizophrenia is tricky to beat as it is an illness that, by way of paranoid delusions, prevents its host from getting treatment. When I was first admitted, they had to call a code white that found me under a pile of hospital attendants getting a needle in the butt because I refused my meds on the grounds that I didn’t want to end up like Judy Garland or Elvis Presley. Now I know they were only trying to help, but that’s because I wriggled my way into the magical state psychiatrists call, insight. As alluringly truthful/messianic as my delusions were, I also knew from a sense of moral duty that I was not meant to suffer this way if I had a choice.
- Medication is about all we got right now. The age-old debate between biological vs. psychological causes for this disease has taken psychiatry to some dark places on both sides of the divide. Meanwhile, the public has inured itself to Hollywood storylines of a traumatic experience unearthed by a caring doctor that brings about the patient’s miraculous recovery. In my case, and in full possession of my faculties, I volunteered for a drug study. By doing that, I de-stigmatized the pills and made them something I would be proud to take. That should tell you something about the disease. I was interested in retaliating against it, whatever the cost. So naturally somebody else’s idea of pharmaceutical company tentacles circling the globe is not enough of a moral argument for me to refuse medication that works. I’ve also pursued talk therapy over the years, but would never do so in absence of the drug, probably because I’d have just wandered off. Schizophrenia is a biological disease, and poking around for a theoretical trauma isn’t going to help much if you’re not treating the very non-theoretical trauma of the disease. I believe what we’re asking of the medical community is what we’re with-holding in the wider community. That is, compassion, respect, and the abstaining from moral judgement we would afford anybody struggling with a potentially killer disease and how it will be treated. Like most decisions we make, I made mine in complete ignorance of what would happen. But it was an informed decision nonetheless, given what I had experienced. Not to say talk therapy is useless. In fact, the real problem is not everybody gets a shrink in a book-lined study. All we have is each other.
- Don’t mention your mental illness in a job interview. Just draw that line for yourself right there, however open you are about your psychiatric status because you rightly don’t give a damn what other people think. Even if they hire you, it’ll get around, and there’s always the chance others will project their misapprehensions about mental illness on you while you’re innocently freaking out under the stress of work exactly like everybody else! Of course that tendency isn’t confined to work. Which leads us to…
- Don’t not talk about it. You’re allowed to talk about it. Don’t let the over-used victim tag silence you. Surviving a mental illness may not be climbing Mt. Everest, but it nevertheless defines you. It does not restrict you, so you don’t need to surrender your life to social work either.
And finally, don’t let it go to your head. Your suffering doesn’t trump anybody else’s. There are as many broken hearts out there as broken minds, and just because others haven’t experienced the same thing as you, doesn’t mean they can understand how it feels any less.