Serious I'm in a bad predicament

[Andrew]

First of all I want to thank anyone stupid enough to read to the end of this - your stupidity is actually a boon in this situation as the sincerity of your reaction and response will help kick myself and others into action.

First.5 of all, I want to throw out my one and only (well, one of my one and only) get out of jail free cards - I was diagnosed with schizophrenia about a year and a half ago, but i don't think i'm sick or that anything is wrong with me. I have stopped taking my medicines which are Venlofaxine, Haloperidol, and Lamotrigine about 2 weeks ago. I went to the doc today earlier at 11:40 and she said "ok, throw those others away im giving u new ones" The problem is, i forgot what they are called, but I will pick them up tomorrow so i can update with that later. So that's not a problem.

Second: I am hopelessly addicted to cigarettes for the past year and a half. My doctor says "well, it's actually ok, most schizophrenics find that nicotine helps calm their nerves and certain things that they here from other ppl" - well i know this is probably bs, but nevertheless i smoke a pack a day of Marlboro Reds, the Cowboy Killers. I have attempted and tried pretty extensively a couple variants of E-Cigs - most notable Njoy Kings Bold and a neat little recharcheable from Bedford Slims with Menthol, Coffee, and Nat. Tobacco flavorings (ordered from the internet). Also I am going to buy some Nicotine gum for the first time tomorrow to see how it helps/what happens. However I have stopped buying these (the ecigs) for whatever reason..probably bc it is just so much easier and immediately satisfying to drop by the store and buy a pack of reds. There is nothing like the immediate hit u get from smoking real cigarettes, especially hand rolled with good tobacco, and I don't have access to weed/meth/crack or anything, so I'm stuck with what ive got, which is a half bottle of jim beam, a razor blade and my face staring back at me. and like 3 marlboro NXT and an unopened pack of reds. and some guacamole. which brings me to...

3: I have a h u g e eating disorder. I am by no means classically fat - i am 5'8'', 140 lbs, however 1 yr ago i was hovering around 120 lbs, going a day or several days w/o eating while working full time in a butter factory/add to that full time in a chicken factory + max 4 hrs sleep per night. After i got out of that i had a bough of inactivity but then began working in a lumber yard that i had worked at for about 6 months before going to school/college in Arkansas (beautiful country) for wildlife, which may or may not have been the best decision because i was kicked out, and in the confusion that ensued taken to a rehab house for 6 months, which led to my eating disorder and returning to the lumber factory where i then worked for another 6 months before trying to go back to college again, this time at the college in Denton Texas where I had first gone to in 2006 majoring in *Jazz* hands, which may or may not have been right, but when i went back i was eating ok, sleeping ok, but after a week a lot of idiotic misfortunes in my mind occured and i ended up leaving to go back to my parents house, where i have been since.

4. "ridiculous you say, you are a disgrace, mentally, physically weak" ---and to that I say - Every day I go as long as possible without eating something...when i get hungry, i just smoke more cigarettes and drink more coffee until i have sped up so fast that i can't get a grasp of control on anything anymore, or maybe i am controlling too much...anyway this happens and several things make me not want to eat:
1. I don't like being around ppl, or even thinking about ppl, when i eat

2. I want to accomplish things, but I feel if i eat food, then I won't be able to accomplish anything
3. I have been taught (mostly by myself) to shun food, as most ppl have evil thoughts when they are trying to get you to eat, which was taught to me by fasting for a month and even going 3 days without water. Then, when I finished fasting (these things are neither here nor there really) I was in a place where the food was...simply abundant...how can u stop a starving man from eating? exhausted as i was, which is not as bad as the poorest most desperate ppl in the world so to speak, I began to gorge myself on the abundance of food and had no one to help me "transition" from nothing to building myself. This led to extreme anxiety, paranoia, and general bad thoughts and feelings about myself and my surroundings. It also happened that during this time I barely spoke to anyone, however I was constantly being preached to in a siminar/teaching setting by ~Extreme Evangelical Baptist previous Drug Addicts.

This led me to believe that my desire for food is bad, and that I should suppress it at all costs. Even now, I have a bag of chips next to me, however I am writing this instead to hold of as long as I can. As it is, I haven't eaten ~24 hours except for 1/2 of a chip to try out the guacomole my dad had made to prove a point that i was making about looking at somebody while eating to imagine that you were eating their face.
​

ANYWAYS

I am trying to get better I promise (I'm not), and the first step my dad and doctor tell me is to take my medicine, which I believe is faulty because I believe the first step is to actually say what is on your mind and communicate soul to soul with another human being.
However, that can be kind of difficult when u can barely look another person in the face due to shame and trust/mistrusting everything they say.
Yea, so at this point, I'm just waiting until I can have another cigarette/cup of coffee to try to stave off my hunger until I get so exhausted that I simply can't think anymore, at which point i will try to sleep. And how do I spend my time doing this?

#5. By constantly browsing the Smogon Forums, occasionally participating, but 9/10h's of the time writing lenghty explanations and arguments and then deleting them out of some sense of shame or impropriety/misplacement. I have tried so hard to realize what it is to make quality posts in the OU forum, however I have given up and given 2 shits to the wind on that regard as I realize I may never be as quality a player/poster as [insert big/prominent names you all know] I don't want this to be about my "misplaced" feelings toward the forums tho...I feel there is just in general a HUGE AMOUNT OF HATRED/SARCASM/NO TOLERANCE FOR ANYTHING BUT SHITTING GOLD that takes place there, and while I love arguments, I dislike being insulted, however it is good for me, so, i will rise from the ashes.

#5.5 As u can see from the drivel that #5 resulted in, u can tell that my emotional attachement to the OU forum, and my previous attachement to the Smeargle's Studio thread, where I actually managed to mostly act decent and suppress my tendencies for buggery, may be somewhat disgusting. After reading RandomSpanishGuy thread about quitting pokemon, i would have to say, i am in a similar situation, except instead of quitting pokemon, which I absolutlely love thinking about new teams and the thrill of playing, I would replace "quitting pokemon" with "quitting eating". Thus, I would go as long as it takes until I am on the brink of death from malnutrition, in order to see what is good and what is bad.

#5.75
HOWEVER, THERE IS NO WAY I WILL EVER BE ABLE TO DO THIS




...why? first, every1 i talk to is like "no don't starve urself, thats unhealthy blahblah, don't fast for more than a day etc" and whenever I hear somebody say this kind of crap I immediately don't trust them, because I know they are wrong and I am right.


However, even though I know I'm right (and this is like my 10th use of "however"), i don't really, really know I'm right enough to do it, because i feel the willpower it takes to fast for a lenghty period of time is beyond me...and I know it's not..God has given me the ability to funciton compitently with no food whatsoever. I even feel better after I spend 3+ days w/o food....
but then always, the influence of other people wins over me and takes control and I give in to trying to make them happy. ANd it always results in frustration. Every time one of these situations occurs, I eat something to try to make the person I'm talking with happy, and it immediately results in an overwhelming sense of shame that is incredibly difficult to overcome, or hard to pull myself out of the whole that I become thrown into, or the hell that I create for all involved.

I know this may be harsh, inconsistent, or ridiculous(ly) retar ted to most all of you, but for some of you, a select one or two, this might reach out to you, and maybe..................................you could help me?

#6 I have told many of my past "problems" to other guys, and due to the sensitive nature, I felt shunned and outcast from this group of ppl that I talked to and was in close quarters with for extended time. The funny thing is, I was leading a relatively normal life i.e. going to school, getting good grades, traveling, working, going back to school, making new friends and getting involved with onschool activities such as music and communion groups, when I told people ----what

it actually was that I i i i saw in my minnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnd . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . .

and it scared them so much (it wasn't that bad, honestly)
that they, a supposedly Christian group of people, brought me to the police, so that they would interrogate me and search my room like a criminal, and spend hours being diagnosed in a hospital then taken to a legit mental ward an hour away in buttfuck Arkansas, then being taken to a more different "mental word institution house place hospital" where Me and several other ppl where place in....the GERieatric ward hahaha when we suppoed to be under "faith healing" I was, 23 at the time, and the rest of the ppl w/ me were under 50...then we were moved to the 'younger more active section' hehe, where a couple days later I was released for some reason? bc my uncle had come and said "I know of another place he can go, it's a place called Denton Freedom House, and it is for Battered Broken Men who have reached the "end of the ropes bottom of the barrel depths darkest times of hell and drugs criminal minds have yet to saw" sry for that. THat's what happens when your words that should be memorized turn into radio signals.

#7

I am fucked, legitimately. There is literally no way out. The only way is making myself vulnerable, yet again, to people I absolutely do not trust. So what can I do besides talk to them?

the answer is, i dont really, really, really want answers from most of you, and you that don't have answers will know. I know, and hope, that there is one person reading this that will realize something from it. However, that person I am thinking of has absolutley no reason for ever visiting this site and if he did, it would be a miracle.

 

[Yeti]

You should take your medication. One of the biggest true problems with mental illnesses like this is justifying to yourself you don't have a problem or your medication/therapy/what have you won't cure/fix/help it. Stop making excuses for your condition and refusal to do things and just do it. You will never get better until you stop hiding behind your 'reasons' to avoid getting better. And that has to come from within you, unfortunately nobody can justly chain you down and make you take your meds.

You should also try to find healthy foods to eat on a regular cycle and make sure they are nutritious and good for you. Don't overeat, don't undereat, just form the habits of taking your meds and eating right.

 

[Andrew]

You should take your medication. One of the biggest true problems with mental illnesses like this is justifying to yourself you don't have a problem or your medication/therapy/what have you won't cure/fix/help it. Stop making excuses for your condition and refusal to do things and just do it. You will never get better until you stop hiding behind your 'reasons' to avoid getting better. And that has to come from within you, unfortunately nobody can justly chain you down and make you take your meds.

You should also try to find healthy foods to eat on a regular cycle and make sure they are nutritious and good for you. Don't overeat, don't undereat, just form the habits of taking your meds and eating right.

fuk u man, im going to take my new meds, and if i feel good enough to eat right then i will....

 

[mattj]

Holy crap take your medicine.

 

[v]

I want to accomplish things, but I feel if i eat food, then I won't be able to accomplish anything

3. I have been taught (mostly by myself) to shun food, as most ppl have evil thoughts when they are trying to get you to eat,​

​

this is delusional thinking, you need to get back on your medication ASAP. if this thread is serious, then you need to speak to your psychiatrist and get back on whatever you have been prescribed. schizophrenia is a serious diagnosis, one that you should not take lightly, and being off your medication for two weeks is obviously taking its toll.

and EAT. fasting is terrible for you, going for water without three days is terrible for you. you are suffering from paranoia, delusions, and magical thinking as a consequence of your disorder and if you don't seek out help through the proper channels you could hurt yourself or others. dehydration can have lasting consequences. please eat. please drink some water.

 

[SteelEdges]

Andrew, I don't know what schizophrenia is like, but I have numerous other mental disabilities which severely affect my life and ability to function. This isn't about me, though. Not going into detail.

About going off medicine...I went off my medicine in college - I think there's some kind of subconscious shame - and I ended up flunking out, and not taking it currently has resulted in a lot of angry outbursts and has even gone to my "escape place" - that is to say, Smogon, where as a PS sim mod I have not been performing optimally. There really is nothing else comparable to medicine.

I don't want to say I know how you feel, Andrew, because I don't. I'm taking my medicine now, slowly, getting back into it. Please do the same...you're not alone, in the end. Let's talk sometime. We should keep in touch.

 

[-Nitro-]

I do not have the same mental condition as you, so my situation is a bit different. However, every. single. word. you said about the eating disorder. It may be slightly different, but here's what I went through.

I... hated food, I hated eating. It wasn't a body image thing with me, because I'm skinny as all hell. It was an actual aversion to food. I would try to avoid it as long as possible until my body just couldn't take it. With me, it also applied to liquids. Flavour in general just made me uncomfortable.

Right now, you feel a lot better having not eaten because:

1. That is what your body is used to.
2. That is what your mind is telling you.

And I know if I were to just say 'Well you should eat, it's better for you to not fast', you wouldn't believe me. If it were as easy as 'just eating food', there wouldn't be any problem here. If you are capable of forcing yourself to do small steps, MOST IMPORTANTLY, drink water. Dehydration is a bigger risk than anything else.

Make sure you keep in discussion with any doctors you are seeing. THEY will be the biggest option for help, confidentiality, and 'trust'. It isn't easy. No one will say it's easy. But if you have to talk to anyone, professionals are the best ones to talk to about this.

 

[elcheeso]

Don't kill yourself, Andrew. You're a cool guy, and I would hate to see that happen to you.

 

[Ununhexium]

If you want to get better, you need to feel good about yourself try some of these

1) find something you like/are good at and do it. For example, I love your art. People find out one way or another and you will feel much better about yourself.
2) help others. This may sound really cliche but it works. Volunteer at a soup kitchen or help out at a homeless shelter.

I hope I helped. Seriously though, take your medications. Your doctor usually know what's best so you need to trust them.

 

[Prankster.]

After reading your story, I cannot even begin to fathom the difficulties you must endure on a daily basis. However, for your own well being, I recommend taking your medication. You really need to start thinking about what's going to help you long term. The old saying goes "you need to help yourself." I completely understand not wanting to trust doctors because medically, wrong diagnoses and things of that nature happen all the time. However, having a little confidence will truly go a long way. I would also recommend finding a hobby or two, and something you're good at. This will ease a little stress off your mind and help you move forward. I sincerely wish you the best of luck and hope things get better. I know my username seems a little suggestive for your story, but it's just a username. Best of luck.

 

[meteor64]

...why? first, every1 i talk to is like "no don't starve urself, thats unhealthy blahblah, don't fast for more than a day etc" and whenever I hear somebody say this kind of crap I immediately don't trust them, because I know they are wrong and I am right.

Are you willing to hedge your own wellbeing and mortality on that assumption? Do you seriously believe the probability of you being incorrect on this matter is low enough to justify the risk? And do you believe truly that every person who gives you this kind of response is out to intentionally cause you harm?

I ask these questions not with the intention of necessarily hearing your responses, but rather in the hopes that you'll ask yourself these questions. Because I (and I think everyone else you'll ever talk to about this) would strongly advise against this course of action, for your own wellbeing. If there were an international force of people intentionally trying to make your life worse in particular by saying so, that'd be a pretty high calibre conspiracy indeed. People can give bad (and quite frankly terrible) advice as often as good, but the intention is far more likely than not positive. And when you have person after person giving you the same advice over and over, its most likely worth considering. Majority opinions can often be debatable, but I think you'll be hard pressed to find someone who will agree that starving yourself will be beneficial to you. I can understand why you'd be unwilling to trust people given what you've explained, but here you've just gotta believe the masses. People are saying these things because ultimately, as humans we're engineered to not want other humans to suffer or die, especially when we sympathise/empathise with each other. I don't know who you are and I've never spoken to you, but I know enough people with similar problems (myself too, i have severe anxiety and ASD, can't even play mons sometimes without shaking fits) and the only way they've ever improved are by listening to the people around them. It wasn't easy for them either, it took time, it took a change in beliefs. But you won't get better by being hard on yourself. And you won't get better by letting people be hard on you.

My advice for right now? Forget about dealing the cigarettes and the eating disorder for the time being, your mental health is more important, and I guarantee that will screw you over quicker than the other two. But don't beat yourself up over it. And don't beat yourself up over beating yourself up. I seriously hope for the best for you.

 

[Jorgen]

I have no idea how to convince you that I'm not just another stooge or if that's even possible, but it is critically important for anyone to take medication prescribed to them by their doctor. Forget what needs to come first. Connecting with others and taking medication are both critical steps toward resolving this that can be taken simultaneously.

 

[Andrew]

thank you guys for your replies and concerns -

I have been prescribed the classic Abilifiy as well as Amitriptyline HCL to take daily. I hope I will be able to make a bit more effort in taking these, as one of the main reasons I didn't take my last meds was because I felt "in my personal opinion" that they weren't doing much in the long run, however I have been wrong so much...
My doctor has assured me that these medications are geared more towards a debilitating depression that I have beeen experiencing lately, as well as nerve pain in my face that could be a symptom of Trigeminal Neuralgia - this is mostly unrelated however and I have an upcoming MRI to assess anything happening in that regard.

My past medications were for "delusions, hallucinations and 'voices' " , which for the most part of I have been having less trouble with as I try p hard sometimes to ignore this kind of input, however I was not expecting recent outburst of manic behavior that I have been experiencing in the name of "discovery" i.e. trying to assess the underlying causes in my life that has resulted in my acting the way I do, mostly manifesting itself in me becoming very angry and trying to put my finger on past events and perceived problems of other people as triggers that cause me to feel the way I do. I realize this kind of behavior is bad and it shames me thinking of the things I have said, but I try to forget. Anyway

I don't want to get lost in another essay after not having time to adjust to my new meds etc, so for now I'd like to say again, thank you guys so much so far for your kind support I really honestly wasn't expecting this -

 

[Prankster.]

You're very welcome Andrew. Life does throw us curve balls. Sometimes support is the only way to get through it. I'm glad you're starting to realize that taking the medication can positively impact you and your situation. I truly wish you the best and hope everything works out. Please keep us all updated.

 

[Stratos]

It's very good to see you appear more level-headed than you were yesterday. I hope this upward trend continues! I didn't post earlier because vader's post basically said everything I would have wanted to but rest assured that far more than the people who replied were worried about you, and I'm sure a lot of people will be very relieved today.

 

[Calm_Mind_Latias]

I guess this posts illustrates the fragility of the human psyche and how the human mind is vulnerable to various physical insults.

Psychiatry is not an exact science, and thus psychiatric pharmacology is largely guesswork, since the human mind is not well-understood and pharmaceuticals will be, at best, blunt instruments. I read recently in Engine of Reason, the Seat of the Soul by Paul Churchland (I found it online, the relevant information is pg 165-172) that he described schizophrenia as serious maladaptive defects in the global neural networks with many incorrect synpatic weights assigned to various connections and circuits, causing one to be unable to distinguish between external sensory input and their internal imagination, resulting in the boundaries of perception and imagination becoming blurred. Perhaps the most depressing aspect of it was Churchland's explanation and analogy for the efficacy of antipsychotics:

There is a different and slightly deflationary explanation of why chloropromazine and its dopamine-antagnostic cousins are so useful. A massive reduction in the brain's dopamine levels may compensate for deeper cognitive disorders in something like the way in reducing an automobile's speed from sixty miles per hour to twenty may compensate for an unbalanced rear wheel, misaligned steering system, loose kingpins, and a worn roller bearing in all four wheels. Dynamical deficits that set the car oscillating dangerously and veering unpredictably at normal highway speeds can cease to be so evident at lower speeds, even though the defects remain. A slower speed simply reduces the dynamical impact of the background defects. It doesn't cure them. Still, if you drive in drive in an unstable car, speed suppression is a well-advised compensation. And if you are schizophrenic, dopamine suppression is a well-advised compensation, for similar reasons. As the analogy suggests, the real neurochemical locus of the disorder is likely to lie elsewhere.

Antipsychotics do not "correct" a putative surfeit of dopamine, in the way that exogenous insulin corrects for a deficit in endogenous insulin in diabetics. It does not directly address the underlying problem. Even drugs in the pipeline, such as phosphodiestase 10a inhibitors are unlikely to be revolutionary, since they merely work downstream of the dopamine receptor (by inhibiting the breakdown of cAMP during the stimulation of the D2 class of dopamine receptors), but they offer the potential of a new drug with an improved side-effect/efficacy profile over existing antipsychotics.

Unfortunately, the best course of action is to take antipsychotics, which is not consoling advice, given their well known side-effects.
---
I would highly recommend that you find a group of friends who can support and sympathize with you. This seems to be challenging for a schizophrenic due to the amount of stigmatization it has, but it is quite valuable for me an autistic who has some Christian fellowship as it assuages some of my isolation.

All I could do is pray to Saint Dymphna for you.
---
I am basing this off of this article.

As a bit of very controversial advice, I would suggest that if your symptoms subside, you should try to lower your medication doses under the supervision of your psychiatrist. Of course, you should do more research on this and approach it prudently, but this is different paradigm from the widespread orthodoxy that schizophrenic patients should be on antipsychotics for the rest of the lives. This is something that psychiatrists should regard worth considering given the significant long-term side-effects of antipsychotics, such as brain shrinkage and tardive dyskineia.

But this is a long-term consideration and you should certainly not act immediately on this.

 

[Jorgen]

The biggest problem in schizophrenia patients is not sticking to their medication. One's psychiatrist has the years of training needed to prescribe the appropriate treatment, which should be followed rigorously. There's far from a consensus on the severity of the long-term side-effects of antipsychotic medication, certainly not enough of one to allow Joe patient to legitimately doubt his doctor's competence in prescribing them.

 

[rachet67]

I had really bad OCD up to my high school Sophmore year, which although is completely unrelated to schizophrenia, is similar in that it had altered my perception of what was real and what really mattered. I had like 30 different rituals that took up so much time, and although I really believed I needed them, I grew incredibly frustrated and angry with myself. I even had a ritual that I had to tap something 8 times if I did a ritual. Basically, like most people with OCD, I believed something terrible (or subtle) would happen if I didn't do the rituals. That year I got a psychiatrist and started taking medicine for it. The medicine really didn't seem to be helping that much, but through the guidance of my psychiatrist, I worked slowly (and I mean slowly) and reducing 1 ritual per week. I think it was about 2 months, and I suddenly realized that whatever terrible thing would happen by not doing a ritual, was bound to be better than the hell I'd put myself in. This really should've been obvious a while ago, but that's not how OCD works, and it's really difficult to even rationalize things in that state. Pretty much after this, I dropped most of my rituals within a weak, and although I still had urges sometimes, I realized it wasn't worth it to go back to that place. I'm still free of OCD to this day.

The point of my story is, that taking super small steps in the right direction (trying to eliminate the influences of my mental condition), along with the help of my doctor and drugs helped eventually come to that conclusion by myself. The drugs and the doctors couldn't take me there all the way, in the end I really had to make an effort with them and for myself to make the change. It seems like you are doing that, but even if the doctors weren't trustworthy, it's still probably better than the hell you're in now.

 

[dkkc19]

Holy shit dude, are you me? I'm about 5'8, around 140lbs, smoke a pack every day, drink a minimum of 2 coffees a day and go days without eating and needless to say, I don't sleep very often.

I don't know how I can help you, but I found that my appetite is improved when I'm around my friends. If I'm alone I don't have much desire to eat, but if I'm with friends I'm actually excited about making and eating food with them.
Try to hang out with people you like and enjoy their company, you'll find yourself happier.

 

[BenTheDemon]

I'm sorry for my previous post. (I deleted it after actually reading.)
I want you to know that you are not alone.
My brother suffered from schizophrenia, and I have personally suffered from anxiety to the point where I went to the ER and had to have therapy.
I've also suffered from depression to the point of contemplating suicide. Depression, anger, and anxiety are often linked together. I called everyone in my phone seeking happiness.

Just know that you are never alone. And here's something I tell myself when I feel trapped:
"If they make medicine to knock me out, they can make medicine to chill me the fuck out."

Also, if you consume caffeine, ween yourself off of it. That helped me so much with my anxiety. It's the easiest thing to do.
And don't be afraid to take medicine. Medicines made for mental illness may take a little longer to work than traditional medicines. I'd also recommend therapy.

Finding something in life that makes you euphoric may be a challenge, but worth it. Venture out to find what you love. I find bliss in Mario games.

Bottom line, suicide is not the answer. There's so much to live for. Please take your medicine. I take some every day and it helps greatly!