%203d.jpg)
Discovery of the New World
Discovery of the New World
A Head-Full of Cannabis
Recently, in a telephone survey on cannabis, I vehemently stated my position disagreeing with its use. However, I refrained from telling my life to the lady who was doing the survey. Since, in my own experience, our society seems ill-informed about schizophrenia, I prefer to remain anonymous. This is my story.
I went to English elementary school and we learned to spell. In preparation for a spelling contest, I first heard the word "schizophrenia." Unfortunately, the course did not explain this disease. The teacher's goal was simply to teach how to spell the word, not to understand it.
I was part of a very functional family, had a lot of talent and all the chances on my side for a very bright future. My mother was a nurse and worked for a few years at the Douglas Institute. She had a patient with schizophrenia. When I was diagnosed myself, she didn't believe it. This is how, slyly, this disease can seep into our lives.
I was finishing high school in one of the most exclusive middle schools in my area when a teacher asked us to give an oral presentation in which we had to express our position on a topic of our choice. I chose "Legalization of Pot in Canada" and made my case for legalization. I don't remember my arguments so much, but I know today that they motivated a mistake that turned my life upside down.
My mother, who loved her two sons and naturally cared about our future, had made us aware about drugs and their consequences. However, I did not hesitate when friends, at 17, offered me some. My period of cannabis use spans about 10 years (between 1993 and 2003). My first hospitalization was in 1999 and, despite contraindications, I continued to entertain myself with this drug for 4 more years.
When I was in university in 1997, I made my mother cry by telling her that I was giving up everything to pursue a dream. In a psychosis, I had experienced an epiphany and had committed myself to follow an "angel," as in the Bible. To summarize the story, I found myself in a situation similar to that of Neo, the main character of the film The Matrix (1999). There is a scene in which he has to choose between two pills; one blue and one red.
My psychosis had presented me to a dilemma, forcing me to choose between two paths: one that led me to a perilous but extremely honorable and spiritually prestigious mission, while the other led to a very ordinary life in unconsciousness and ignorance of several precious facts at the foundations of life. In such a dilemma and because of the influence of schizophrenia, I believe it is normal to swallow the wrong pill... And that's what I did.
I consider that during a "normal" life without this disease, people travel on rails, like a train. They go to school and then work, get married and buy a house and a vehicle, like everyone else. These stages of life follow one another if a realistic effort is made. The dilemma created by the disease pushes those affected to get off the rails. We thus fork into a new world from which it is very difficult to get out.
My brother is very close to my age. I have always compared myself to him. He has completed two bachelor's degrees and a master's degree, he has two properties, two dogs and the whole shebang of a person blessed by health.
For my part, I lived nearly ten years on government disability payments, while I was in the prime of my life. Fortunately, in 2009, life revealed to me that I needed to start collaborating seriously with psychiatry while clinging firmly to prescribed care.
I only understood the link between my use and my illness in 2009, when Télé-Québec broadcast the documentary Du cannabis plein la tête. It featured people with schizophrenia explaining their experiences with cannabis and this disease.
Starting in 2009, I finally met someone (after 10 years of celibacy!), I started therapy, visited community centers, enrolled in an employment help service for people with disabilities, and consulted a guidance counsellor. I went back to school, graduated and bought my first car.
Today, thanks to medication and my family and professional entourage, as a person with the disease, I have a stable life and have been working full-time since February 2013. I have been happily married and a home owner since 2017.
If my writings have helped you in any way, please let me know here and tell me how. It would be greatly appreciated.
Episode 1: Epiphany or Delirium?
In 1984, from the age of 8, my parents enrolled me in a summer camp that lasted 2 weeks each year. It was a Christian camp. My parents wanted me to benefit from this religious supervision since my mother was a practicing Christian herself.
I was one of the youngest children in the camp that year. The camp authorities initiated us into a Christian ritual in which we "accepted Jesus into our hearts."
During my stay in this camp, the children had the opportunity to testify of the presence of Jesus in their lives. Some of them had a lot to say, especially about the positive change that Jesus had contributed to their lives. For some, this ritual had changed their lives profoundly and very positively.
For my part, I did not particularly see any change in my life. I asked my instructor because I wanted to go to heaven: Will I go to heaven when I die? The answer was clear; if I had truly accepted Jesus into my heart, then, yes, I could go to heaven after I die.
Back then I thought this is how life works. If an adult tells you that, it must be true. Nevertheless, I could not testify to the presence of Jesus in my life.
In 1992, almost 8 years later, I was about 16 years old, I was going to high school, I made friends who played the spiritist game called Ouija. I was told that this type of activity was forbidden by Christianity. It is nevertheless a game sold in toy stores. My friends had not bought the accessories of the game but, with a simple sheet of paper, a pencil and a penny, they could reconstruct this game in a "homemade" way.
And it worked! To my surprise, we were able to distinguish the participation of an invisible third party when we engaged in this game. I found it extremely fascinating. It added some living substance to the emptiness in my experience of a certain presence that I expected to find by inviting Jesus into my heart. The Christian ritual had touched the lives of the children who testified at the camp, and for my part I had finally found something to testify with Ouija.
Afterwards, I tried to play alone, but it didn't work. I was still very fascinated by spirituality. During this time, at that time, I began to use illegal drugs, including cannabis.
In 1997, almost 5 years later, I was 21 years old. I was coming home from work after drinking two beers. I was riding my bike through a park and thinking about Ouija. I tried to play this game without accessories... by the mere use of my thoughts. Not wanting to interact with a random or mischievous spirit and not knowing the legitimacy of Christianity, I decided to initiate the ritual by calling upon the Spirit of Goodness. I thought I was doing the right thing.
I noticed at that moment a presence, an external stimulus, an invisible telepathic interlocutor... in my thoughts. At the beginning of a long conversation with it, I asked the question: Who are you?
The answer redirected me to the formula I had borrowed to initiate the conversation. It seemed to indicate the name Spirit of Goodness.
For me, it was an epiphany. I was finally in direct communication with a spirit and I was living the relationship I had been seeking since childhood.
Following this epiphany, I set out to redefine my values and, some time later, I determined that it was "wrong" to use drugs. I had made a promise to the Spirit of Goodness that I would no longer consume drugs. Despite this promise, I found myself one evening among school colleagues who were using and I still easily gave in when I was offered some.
I was sitting at a table at the university coffee bar among my friends chatting with each other. I was not participating in the discussion at the moment and I was contemplating inwardly the special effect of my joint. It was at this point that the spirit manifested itself again. Something certainly seemed to want to catch my attention by firmly banging a knock-knock on the inner wall of my chest, prompting me to realize that I had just made a serious blunder and that it was not going to go unnoticed at all.
I was forced to leave immediately and quietly because I had neither the means nor the time to explain to my friends that I had to leave because "the Spirit of Goodness intended to punish me for my error of judgment." The rest of my evening was therefore dedicated to one of the occasions of my experience that contributed the most to my certainty in the authenticity of my telepathic interlocutor.
This revelation was so decisive for my definition of existence, spirituality and death. It had a major impact on the rest of my life. From that night on, I set out on a search for my identity, trying to define who I really am and what I would really like to make of this life. I gave up work and school in order to withdraw into myself to have the peace necessary to be able to analyze closely this new world that had opened up to me. I've always been a curious person who questions just about everything. However, with this new contact who seemed to answer almost all my questions in his own way, I was well and truly served.
Through this new world, I discovered realities unknown to the people of today's most advanced societies. I have crossed the moral boundaries that encircle the vast territories of our civilization. I drank from a spring, water that has never flowed into the rivers of this planet. I had been granted the privilege of reading the Book of Life, a document written by the ancestor of nature. I had discovered a key that opened a door to a world unknown to the living, yet so real and suddenly so palpable.
Another night, shortly before I was hospitalized for the first time, I was sitting and again under the influence of a certain drug; This time it was magic mushrooms. I felt its gaze grip me. I tasted at that moment the essence of the being that bewitches me since its manifestation in my life. It exuded a prestige of biblical proportions, epic depth, and terrifying and extremely disconcerting solemnity.
It was only about thirty days later, on February 9, 1999, that I was taken to the hospital... in psychiatry. Following a psychiatric evaluation, I was informed that I was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia.
My First Hospitalization
After dropping out of university in 1997, I eventually exhausted my money reserves. I did not feel capable of submitting to an employer again and I stubbornly worked on my business project which brought me no income. I asked my parents if I could come back and live with them, and they happily agreed.
At my parents’ house, the atmosphere quickly became tense. I was a man in my early twenties, and I was not supporting myself. Above all, I was strongly opposed to returning to work and my ego was too big to accept a request for financial assistance from the government.
My parents therefore gave me an ultimatum: I had to find an income or leave the house. Not being ready to provide for myself, and since it was the middle of winter, I couldn't just leave, I sat on a couch at my parents' house and waited for what was to happen next.
My parents called a clinic to get recommendations. They were advised to call the police and that is what they did.
Before long, two police officers showed up at our house and my parents greeted them and let them inside. We gathered in the family room of the house, all sitting on the couches, to talk.
They quickly realized that I was not normal. I compared submitting to employment to prostitution, in the sense that I considered that for me, submitting to employment would be a disgrace, an exchange of a part of myself that I did not want to offer, for money.
One of the police officers objected, pointing out that his daughter, who supported herself by working, was not a disgrace. The other agent repeated a few times that “one cannot live on love and fresh water”.
They handcuffed me and I drove with them towards the police station.
One of the two officers lectured me a bit and I objected verbally by saying nonsense. The officer did some research, and I was taken downtown to a homeless shelter. The agents spoke with the center management and left me there with one of the center representatives.
The center representative welcomed me into his office. He explained the rules to me. In summary, clients of the center had to agree to do small tasks in the center and otherwise, they had to spend the day outside after lunch until the evening for supper. They could only be inside to eat and sleep.
Since it was daytime, I had to leave, with the freedom to return for supper provided I agreed to comply with the rules. So, I walked out the door. Looking in my pockets, I found a ticket to take the metro and some change; enough to pay for the bus home.
I returned to my parents’ home. My parents were away. There was a boarder, a man who rented a room at my parents' house, who had left the door unlocked. So I entered and found something to eat in the refrigerator, since I was very hungry.
As soon as my parents returned home, they contacted the police. This time two other officers came. They took me back to the police station and this time, in order to keep me in the cell, they had to issue official charges: Mischief and Obstruction of justice.
So I spent a night in a cell.
The next day, I was served fast food, a burger of some kind and I was taken to the City Hall where I appeared in court. I was in handcuffs when I was led into the room in front of a judge.
When my turn came, when it was time to deal with my case, I was asked to stand in front of the judge. I expressed my wish to defend myself without the help of a lawyer. I was unable to defend myself because the decision was made for me to go and be evaluated by a psychiatrist. So, on February 9, 1999, two police officers escorted me to the emergency room of the hospital.
The waiting room was overflowing with patients. I only had to wait a few minutes before being received. The psychiatrist on duty appeared rather disheveled, as if he had just been disturbed from a deep sleep. He looked at me for a few seconds and with a stressed and unmotivated look, he told the police that he agreed to see me in his office.
In the waiting room of the psychiatrist's office, I tried to mentally prepare myself. In the recent past, I had seen a film in which the heroine had found herself in my chair and, under the charge of psychiatry, she had been lobotomized with a chisel under the forehead, a procedure which had served in recent history.
I was not going to treat the situation lightly and therefore opted to remain transparent.
The interview seemed to be progressing well. I was very nervous, even terrified, but the psychiatrist was alone and he listened to me. So I put my cards on the table; I put fourth what seemed relevant to me. I told the psychiatrist the story of my first telepathic interactions with spirits. He was taking notes.
When I stopped talking, he seemed sort of satisfied. He informed me that I would have to start taking medication starting that evening and that he would put me upstairs in Ward 2.
The shock was overwhelming. I felt a panic, then a few minutes later I had to bend over to let the blood go down to my head because I was losing consciousness.
The first attendant I saw, a huge fellow in uniform, gave me an impression of the kind of management that would administer my new home.
That night, I faced my obligation to ingest chemical tablets designed to chase away ghosts by altering brain function. I had to cooperate with a stranger who wishes to purify my mind, under the recommendations of a science which maintains that communication with the beyond is the result of a failure in the biochemical components of the brain.
The next day, I got to know my new home: Ward 2. I had been blessed with an indefinite admission in an aquarium full of serious cases. I was going to have to adhere to a schedule centered on the well-being of the employees who would manage us on a daily basis.
There were 2 TVs, a radio and two telephones for my new family of 21 psychiatric patients. I was going to have to share my room with people who were different, some more questionable than others, some with chronic snoring problems, others with a strong body odor due to a lack of hygiene. I was going to have to make do with walking around in a powder blue jacket and under close surveillance for a while.
The fact that some patients told me that they had been there for years did not reassure me at all. It was not uncommon that in the middle of the night, as often during the day, we were subjected to a distressing scene of a patient who went to the nurse station to complain.
Day after day, I had to follow the psychiatrist into his office to try to clarify things. He crossed his arms and, with a haughty, confident and amused air, he tried to stimulate the conversation with clichéd questions for what seemed to me only to serve his personal entertainment, a little game which bordered on perversion. One day, I expressed my disapproval of the treatments, and he replied, “We will take care of you. »
When I saw this dead end of humiliating absurdity, I decided to stop cooperating. I stopped taking the antipsychotics and following the psychiatrist to his office. In this context, I believed that such a decision condemned me to stay. I was nailing my own coffin.
The days passed and one day I was lying on my bed in a little ball and I was in pain. Psychologically, the impasse was very difficult for me to bear. But this day finally, the psychiatrist came to get me; this time not by offering to follow him, but rather by asking me to. This told me he had something important to tell me. So, I followed him into an office.
The Examination Commission, an administrative tribunal, was to come after 3 months to evaluate my case and to see if it would be admissible to let me out. Given the circumstances, given my diagnosis "schizophreniform psychosis" and my refusal to collaborate with the care plan, the psychiatrist told me that he could not reassure me about the probable decision of the court, but he assured me also that he would, when that day came, recommend my release.
So I stayed the course, and fortunately, after 3 months of hospitalization, I was given my final discharge from the hospital.
Episode 2: Paranoia and Truman Syndrome
During my second big episode, around 2007 (I was about 31 years old), I had taken steps to clear myself of what I considered to be a false diagnosis that undermined my dignity; According to the professionals, I didn't have my whole head! I was, in my opinion, "stigmatized" and persecuted. The diagnosis was, for me, a defamation. I was no longer taking my medication.
I sent a formal notice to my psychiatrist's department. I demanded that he prove that my communications with spirits were not authentic, otherwise he had to retract by withdrawing his diagnosis in writing.
Time passed and my ultimatum remained unanswered. So I wrote to the Minister of Health and that email also went unanswered. I then complained to the Prime Minister and received a response from the Office of the Minister of Health redirecting me to the Complaints Department of my psychiatrist's hospital.
So I filed a complaint with the hospital and went unanswered. I contacted Legal Aid and they refused to process my file.
I persisted with the government. I was not getting the answers I wanted. My messages had gone from peaceful to aggressive, and I expected retaliation. This expectation gave rise to my misinterpretations that fueled paranoia and a new psychosis.
I thought that agents who worked with my psychiatrist and the government were spying on me and entering my home when I was not there. I thought that agents were present in the dwellings surrounding mine, in order to spy on me through the walls and ceiling, with special systems and devices. I thought that things captured in my intimacy were broadcast.
I thought I was picking up messages through the Internet, TV and radio; reactions to what was being broadcast. When I left my house, I thought the agents were spying on me from taxis and cessnas. When I got home, it was like walking on a stage. There was no rest.
I set out to burn documents among my writings, which for me represented my collaboration with the Spirit of Goodness. I burned a symbol of this collaboration, a coat of arms that I had created to represent the Spirit of Goodness, wishing to free myself from my situation that was intensifying, that was beginning to spiral out of control.
I requested exorcism from my mother's religious community, since I believed I was possessed by spirits, but since this community was of a Christian denomination that does not believe in exorcism, they wanted to offer me prayer instead. I quickly found myself in a virtual rivalry that I could no longer bear... So much so that I surrendered.
I returned by my own volition to the psychiatric hospital where I had been diagnosed. I saw it as resignation, capitulation, but also as a decision to confront my demon. I went by myself to the heart of my enemy terrain, to the dragon's lair.
During my hospitalization, I undertook to verify one of my main interpretations. I thought there were agents housed beyond the ceiling of the psychiatric ward just like in my apartment. During a recess trip from the ward, I inspected the surroundings and I found, I could see with my own eyes that it was impossible. It was then that I realized that I was wrong; Not only were there no agents spying on me in the hospital, but it was now likely, in my own eyes, that there had never been any around my home.
Gradually, thanks to the medical care and prayers of those around me, all this knitting of interpretations unraveled and I had to let go of my virtual troubles and start explaining myself, apologizing.
Hearing voices
I have been diagnosed for 20 years. So it's been about 20 years that I have been living with symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia.
Hearing voices is nothing new to me. I still hear them.
My disease is controlled but, still, I still hear them.
I repeat, to those who want to know, that these voices are not like those of the people around me; They don't make my eardrums vibrate. They do not travel as a wave through space. Their appearance is more like an interlocutor in my thoughts.
Their message takes the form of a reflection that is formulated in sentences.
At times, these voices are much more present. I see them, without hearing them, I perceive them.
Their tone, intensity and subject matter are not uniform. They vary from moment to moment; sometimes intense and sometimes almost invisible or difficult to perceive.
Sometimes they seem light, positive, warm, encouraging and beneficial. Like the voice of an angel, they soothe me. They bring hope, they make me find confidence in myself.
However, sometimes they challenge me. Sometimes they are tricky and misleading. They can prevent sleep and push to act, make mistakes. Like an drill sergeant yelling at me, they are impossible to ignore, sometimes even imposing or intimidating.
Sometimes they play with my feelings, they shed light on bad memories, shameful moments of my present or my past, they force me to face fears, dilemmas, controversial ideas that dwell in the recesses of my secret garden. Sometimes they stage me, in my imagination, in sin, crime, perversion, abuse or violence. They can sometimes be dark.
They can manifest themselves as a violent gust of wind that distracts me, that prevents me from concentrating on what I am doing.
Sometimes the sky is overcast and the storm rages. Strong winds push the branches of the tree in all directions.
I think that what ensures that the trunk of the tree will not break, in addition to medical care, are several ingredients, several fortifying agents. As a person with this illness, what allowed me to face the wind was the feeling of belonging to a healthy and present entourage that supports me well in difficult times, and that gives me happiness when the wind subsides.
I needed tools and resources to help me get back on my feet, to help me regain confidence after the tornado.
As someone with this illness, my journey was comparable to having to learn on the fly to pilot a plane that is missing a wing and is already in the sky. No one can do this alone.
The Window
As I consumed the banned molecule, I looked through the window. Like a pair of glasses, this molecule allowed me to see the living move behind the glass. I was astounded by this. This astounding stunned me. Some speak of hallucinations and I speak of a revelation.
I can always see the frame of that window very clearly; I know very well where to find it. The living that comes alive beyond, however, is not as clearly visible but I do not think so... I know there is life beyond that.
The prescribed molecule turns the window into a porthole and allows me to take an interest in the things of the waking world; the world of the "living" not deceased. It allows me to ensure my profitability.
Thanks to the prescribed care, I am less distracted by this window. Thanks to psychiatry I have recovered, I have a "normal" life.
My recovery from paranoid schizophrenia
I have been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia since the turn of the century. I believe that as long as I maintain collaboration with professionals and their recommendations, I am recovered. I understand that among the many factors that helped me get back on my feet were:
- Admitting and understanding that I really have this disease;
- My appreciation of health and discipline (respecting treatments and professionals, and staying away from triggers);
- Having loving parents who supported me to a reasonable extent;
- Have a psychiatrist I can trust to help me;
- Live in an area that offers affordable health care (including effective medications);
- My wish to live a healthy life and be able to support myself;
- My respect for the law;
- My will to do good.