I have been in prodromal psychosis for about thirteen years, only to suffer from acute psychosis for a decade or so. In other words, I was as good as dead for about twenty-three years, only realizing this eight months or so ago. AMA

Greetings, all!

The title is true, sadly. It still blows my mind that I lost more than half of my life to a cruel condition known as psychosis, a central symptom of schizophrenia. When you’re psychotic, your brain basically lives for you, impacting thusly how you think, feel and behave.

Prodromal psychosis is the initial stage of psychosis. About eighty percent of schizophrenics will go through it. Essentially, in prodromal psychosis, the manifestation does a pretty good job passing as you, meaning its destructiveness and bizarreness are relatively low, not causing people to be overly alarmed at first.

My experience with prodromal psychosis are detailed in two letters to my psychiatrist, which can be found here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CWwZsCWFb_7OjwkauUut1Zz3tHEniULo/view?usp=drivesdk

I did an AMA about four months ago. I thoroughly enjoyed it. To expand your understanding, it can be found here: https://www.reddit.com/r/AMA/s/WudKmny1dq

The main reason why I am doing this AMA is to open up to the world about going through such suffering. My psychologist supports me opening up this way. Another reason why I am doing this AMA because I want to raise awareness on an issue that impacts about three percent of the general population. Also, in this AMA, I have given out more information about myself and my experiences with psychosis, so I am hoping to get more granular questions so as to be distinct from the more general questions I got in the last AMA, preventing it from being a repetition of last time.

Also, I would like to give more information in the following that was actually from a Reddit post on r/buddhism I made not too long ago that I took down soon after. You might find it helpful in your understanding of psychosis and myself:

“My name is Neil. I am a forty-one-year-old and, notably, a survivor of a psychotic episode that lasted at least twenty-three years.

I was born and raised in Canada. To be honest, I grew up in a toxic household, and because of that, I was interested at a young age in what is human suffering and how it can be alleviated. Sadly, the stress of being in such a household was enough to short-circuit my genetically predisposed brain at the age of fifteen to make me become psychotic, a manifestation of a mental health condition that impacts how one thinks, feels and behaves (essentially, the sufferer is as good as dead).

My psychotic self discovered Buddhism at the age of twenty-one. He had a very limited grasp on the teachings. He only really superficially understood the first two Four Noble Truths. If you were to ask him about the last two truths, he wouldn’t be able to provide an answer, unfortunately. In particular, he was fixated on the second truth, and because of that, his flimsy moral system was influenced positively to a large extent, I firmly believe.

Interestingly, my psychotic self was able to complete an undergraduate degree from a top-20 university (a major in economics and minors in English, mathematics, professional writing and psychology), complete teacher’s college and complete a sabbatical major in speech-language pathology. Mind you, my psychotic self was quite fortunate because he had some really kind professors who gave him special treatment.

I had what I like to call ‘heroic psychosis,’ a manifestation of psychosis where the sufferer thinks they are vastly morally superior to basically everyone else and, as a consequence, do prosocial things often. Think Don Quixote but much milder (in the first half of the episode at least). Having had heroic psychosis can explain why my psychotic self got special treatment because his prosocial behaviours made him likeable and even endearing. 

Drawing off that likability that extended vocationally, my psychotic self was quite remarkable because he was able to get a job at the government, a job that eventually paid just over six figures. However, it was in that job when the psychosis became much more extreme, to put it mildly. Managers had to advise my psychotic self to go on the employer’s employee disability program, a generous program that, in effect, compensates at 80% of his salary, and a generous program that I currently am on, fortunately.

There are five main reasons why I can’t work or why I will never be able to work again. Each reason alone can justify why I cannot work. They are: hypersomnia (I sleep about thirty hours at a time), insomnia (I am up for at least thirty-six hours at a time), OCD (an insidious mental health condition where your brain shoots deeply disturbing intrusive thoughts at you that make you want to do extra behaviours (rituals) to undo those thoughts), avolition (low energy and drive) and concentration difficulties.

I came out of psychosis around three and a half years ago. I fully realized what it did to me about six months ago, an outcome that I call ‘the Great Realization.’ When you come out of psychosis, you automatically enter what I call ‘uninformed sanity,’ a state of mind where the nascent survivor of psychosis does not fully know what their condition did to them in terms of duration and understanding deeply what psychosis really is. So, I lived in uniformed sanity for about three years. Oppositely, there is ‘informed sanity,’ a state of mind where the survivor of psychosis has a virtually perfect understanding of what their condition did to them in terms of duration and understanding deeply what psychosis really is. I can safely say that life in informed sanity is exponentially better than life in uninformed sanity, as not knowing the true landscape of such an invasive mental suffering is like a blindness in itself.

It’s pretty surreal to know that more than two decades of my life were taken from me. In a way, I am starting life from scratch.

My current interests include practising mindfulness, reflecting on the teachings of the Buddha, watching YouTube, reading the news, scrolling through Reddit, listening to podcasts, reading and helping out my younger brother, who also has schizoaffective disorder.”

Thanks for taking the time to process all that information from the above. I totally get that dumping so much information in a post is not a common practice, but there is a part of me that feels that including such information is essential to providing a more impactful experience for all involved in this MMA.

So, knowing the above, what question or questions would you like to ask?

Take care.