Transfer #17 (biggie)

Subject: psychotic episode Posted Date: Friday, February 03, 2006 - 10:37 AM

it was about time. I did not sleep but a few hours Saturday night, then Sunday was 4 hours, 3 Monday, none Tuesday, and since then I have been hurting. Just hurting. My heart is racing, and pouting like it wants to get out. My guts are tied in a knot and there is physical pain everywhere. My hands shake. Its been so hard.

Then today I had my first set back since back a while ago.

Psychotic episode

I thought I wrote about it before, earlier, but I get really confused. I stood before the water cooler with my keys in my hand for a couple of minutes. I was really scared, because I could not figure out what I was doing nad whether the water or keys were out of place.

My Brian feels bald, and my event horizon is but a few seconds long. There is no past or future and the present is a frightening strobing picture show. I cant think and my face is part paralyzed. If I smile really big, its not that noticeable. Except I don't feel like smiling today.

I am doing better now. Earlier I could not read. Well, I could, but not well enough to get past one sentence. I gave up. I am at home. I am tired and angry and hurt, and nervous, and nauseous, and now I am crazy too.


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Subject: the effects of heartbreak Posted Date: Thursday, February 02, 2006 - 11:37 PM

What a rotten trick that my first solid week without any symptoms at all corresonds with so much pain. And futhermore, my poor performance under the symptoms may have caused it. There is an irony there, but I will leave it to the playwrights.

Disorganized schizophrenia. You get so lost in your own head. Emotions are magnified as you cannot determine the relevant from the irrelevant. Life is very acute. At the same time, it is hard to get the big picture. They say there is no associative function, the ability to abstraction. It makes these schizos non-tangential, as they cannot see over the crest of each new emotion/idea to what is past it or to make sense of the landscape. They tend to cling, and then push away. I have read that disorganized schizos tend to prefer strong partners, and when the schizophrenia recovers, they do not maintain this tendency. They depend on that partner to keep them safe from the world which looms massive and frightening .

You feel lost all the time. You know there is a pattern, but you cannot get to it. I always told people it felt like there was cotton in my head. I think they thought that was meant to mean there was pressure of some sort. But that wasn't it. It was like there was a fog, and I could kid of hear movement in other parts of my brain, but everything because so focused on the immediate. There was no ability to recognize the irrelevant, yet I could not contact two thoughts at once. It was hard.

I got in a relationship, and I probably had no right to do so, but I was so amazingly touched by it that I thought that I could hold on while I was healing. Apparently I was wrong, but not by much. Given two months faster, I would not have been in that place where I needed to suffocate her. But I did and now I think it might be over.

But again, its that old tale of heartache and there is nothing new under the sun. I thought there was something epic there, but sometimes legendary is not enough. So I wont bore you.

In other news, I am almost completely recovered. The symptoms recede daily. I have twinges, but those are fading fast. I know that I am not there yet, but now it is more a pleasure watching these thigns fade. I can, for the first time, be patient. It will come. It is rolling in. I suspect in a month or two my mind will be healed to where it was when these symtoms began. Shortly after that, it will likely get to a better place. This is such a relief. I can do my job now. I don't need to worry I will be discovered at work. I am not the best lawyer in the world, but I can be as good as I can be.

When your mind changes every day, improves, you can see more clearly how far down you were. Oh boy. I am accepting the fact that the scars that time left might take a long time to heal, and that I will never be "normal". But I never wanted to be normal really, or at least accepted a long time ago that I would not be. I am well enough to talk to someone again about this, and what I can do. I will begin at once.

that's all. Kind of a hodge podge. Frankly, I have not been sleeping and I have lost a lot of weight. Food is just nauseating right now. My heart is beating out of my chest. There is nothing I can control now, I just get the feeling that she and I will be saying goodbye to each other soon, and I doubt I will ever feel this strongly about anyone ever again. I am not sure I would want to. Oh, who am I kidding, I want this again. I just cant see there right now.



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Subject: Faith Crisis Posted Date: Sunday, January 29, 2006 - 9:26 AM

Yesterday was a total breakdown.

I often avoid literature surrounding schizophrenia because it tend to make me anxious, frightened and depressed about my prognosis and chance for a normal-ish life. Yesterday, on the heels of many weeks of success, I thought I could go down that road. I spent yesterday panicked and terrified by my reading.

Indeed the horrible flat statement on Merck that killed me was that the suicide rate is highest in the most highly functioning patietns, because they alone retain the ability to feel grief and despair that the realities of their disability.

Thanks for that.

So I wallowed and I panicked. There is noone out there to tlel me for sure I wil get well. My mode of recovery is at best relatively unknown and at worst, considered naked worthless quakery. I am getting better, but I must recover, not just improve. This is essential. Nothing else will do. If I were to slip back down that darkened way again, I would surely know that it was time to leave. This sucks. A lot.

What I want is a man or a woman in a starched white coat to tell me I will get well...That they have seen a case like mine before, and that my outlook is good. Instead there are reams and reams cataloguing the silent crazy underbelly of America, crying for recovery, or if not that, then release. I did not ask to go crazy. I was young, in shape, ate well, said prayers, didn't drinks or do drugs. I had every expectation to be a totally normal fucked up kid at this point. Now, I may spend the rest of my life getting to tomorrow.

Bleh.

Such thought breed melancholy and worse.

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Subject: Mother of God Posted Date: Tuesday, January 31, 2006 - 9:15 PM

I am crushed and utterly devestated. On the day I feel my best since onset, I feel the worst. It is fitting that the person who has made me feel the best in my life, has just made me feel the worst.

I don't know what I am to do.

really.

I am just so fucking hurt.

How could she do this to me?

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Subject: woah Posted Date: Thursday, February 02, 2006 - 5:23 AM

OK, shit is still rainig down in my life. All the same I had a talk with the clinic today and this left me pondering recovery again, and I realize I have another decision to make that you do not and never, it is to be hoped, will.

Who do I want to be. Not in the metaphysical couch sense. Biologically. The Pfeiffer Center treats Schizophrenia by adjusting the Methyl/folate ratio. They measure this with histamine. A person with low histamine tends to be paranoid, have taught disorde, low metabolim, low libido, plentiful hair, racing mind, grandiosity, religiosity, extreme immunity to colds, intolerance for chemicals, problems with abstraction, problrems with ideas of reference, needs a lot of sleep, hallucinations etc. High histamine: tends to OCD, competiiveness, perfectionism, high metabolism, high libido, strengths in math and sciecne, blank mind, catatonia, high energy, needs little sleep, insomnia, suicidal depression, compulsive...etc.

But you see there is an axs we are all standing on. At some poitn the preferences become tendencies, and at some point those tendencies become psychosis, and at some point you are schizo. But I am changing where I stand on that axis. I change that every day. I can feel my mind changing, getting better at certain things. My metabolism is much higher, my heart rate was in the 30s, now in the 40s, my body temp is higher, I need to eat more. I had no libido, now it is low, and sometimes it is teenaged. I can cut out some more of the extraneous material in life. As these chages happen, I move from 20 on the serum histamine scale, toward normal at 40-70. Above 70 and you are schizo the other way. So...What happens when I hit 40? Do I stop? Do I stop at 50? 55? I am a lawyer. It would be useful to be more analystical. I could push myself to 70 and be driven, motivated, full of energy, high libido, thin. Doesn't sound bad right? There will be sacrifices though. My emotions, now out of check, will shrink, my abilities with art and literature will recede. I will become less dependantof the love of others.

Noone is going to tell me when I get to normal, because there is no normal. There is a range. And I have to ability to change within that range. Weird.

Where should I stop?

Where would you stop?