Psychosis and Self-Discovery (Part 4)
A Mental Health Journey In and Out of Reality —
Non compos mentis is a Latin phrase meaning “of unsound mind”. It is a term that was used legally to refer to those who were not born ‘mad’, but were instead driven to madness, an insanity defense, sending individuals off to the asylum. In 2013, after 4 years of drug use, multiple concussions, and a stressful home life, I was slipping out of reality, becoming non compos mentis. My mental illness, which had previously manifested in myself as an angsty, depressed teenager, unfolded into a more serious condition. I was beginning to lose my mind.
My psychosis began with delusions, which are fixed false beliefs about external reality, held even despite evidence to the contrary. Delusions are different from hallucinations, which involve seeing, hearing, or feeling things that aren’t really there. My hallucinations would come later.
This time period is jumbled together in my memory, understandably so. It is hard for me to tell when the delusions started, and how many of them were caused by my mental illness, versus which thoughts are really just my true view the world.
For example, in my current healthy mindset, I firmly believe in aliens, UFOs, government cover-ups, and spiritual mysticism. These may be fringe topics, but there is nothing delusional in my attitude towards them. I enjoy reading about ancient religions, science fiction, and breakthroughs in consciousness. You are not necessarily delusional just because you entertain or support minority-held beliefs. There are countless questions that humans do not yet have the answer to, and we are free to answer those questions as we please.
My delusions were more specific than these thoughts. They were causing me to talk to my friends with strange sentences, or make decisions that seemed out of my normal behavior. Early on, my main delusion was that I could read minds and broadcast my thoughts to others. I would often not answer my friends questions, or I would sit quietly listening, as I answered my friends with my thoughts. It wasn’t that noticeable to anyone, because we were usually all pretty high. I also felt an impending sense of doom, like the world was going to fall apart around me, this thought process was fueled by my anxiety, but it was becoming worse. For example, the conspiracy theory that the world was going to end in December of 2012 was very real to me. I was waiting for a catastrophe, part of me still is.
Being unable to tell what is real and what is a symptom is extremely difficult when experiencing psychosis. This is a constant challenge for anyone living with a psychotic illness, although I’ve gotten much better with therapy and medication. I’m happy to say I experience little to no psychotic symptoms, currently.
For me, hallucinations were easy to recognize as symptoms of my mental illness, but the delusions were nearly impossible to tell apart from reality.
Reality itself often defies logic. I still can’t wrap my head around human existence. I’m constantly questioning, “why am I here?” and since I’ve gotten more mentally healthy, I’ve only become more in tune with this question and my spiritual side, meditating, praying, exercising, and writing. At my lowest point though, it was impossible to see the delusions for what they were, and looking back in my memory, I have trouble describing where these delusions began and where they end.
In my memory, they started sometime between experimenting with DMT and the major car accident that I was in. In between these events, I came across a New Age spiritual book called The Celestine Prophecy. I was around 16 or 17 years old. Up until this point I had been raised Catholic, but not strictly, never really going to church. In high school I had decided that I was an Atheist but my perspective would change greatly after my psychedelic experiences. I had become curious about my place in the universe, questioning my place in existence.
The Celestine Prophecy is a novel about a man travelling through Peru, learning spiritual wisdom through a recently translated manuscript. The man learns 9 insights which are described throughout the book, but never directly quoted. This book was my introduction to New Age spirituality and ancient Eastern Traditions. The lessons the narrator learns deal with meaningful coincidences, subtle energies, energy abundance, using our intuition, and evolving our consciousness. I have not read this book since I was a teenager, but I’ve grown to learn more about these psychological and spiritual thoughts in a more healthy way. At this age, in my vulnerable mental state, the book seemed to spark my delusions. I had a paperback version and an audiobook version. The book and its esoteric lessons became ever present in my mind.
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I began experiencing the lessons of this book around me, feeling lighter, witnessing brighter colors, and experiencing a vast number of coincidences. I later came to understand these coincidences as synchronicities, my mother calls them God-winks. These synchronicities appeared to be giving me direct messages, a song would come on the radio speaking directly to me or the news caster on television would give me a direct message. These delusions gradually increased until I had my full psychotic episode. My hallucinations and delusions were always spiritual in nature.
Two times I tried to bring my friends into my delusions, to attempt to get them to see what I was seeing and spread my spiritual message. The first time I was with a friend of mine, smoking weed and talking about the universe. I was trying to explain that we were all connected through energy, and we could learn to combine our consciousness if we practiced. I tried to look into my friends eyes and trade thoughts with him, he began laughing and walked away.
The second time, I was with a group of friends, attempting to explain the same thing. We smoked weed and then I tried to explain my thoughts. I don’t remember what I was saying or even what my point was, but a friend in the group gave me some push back, he told me I wasn’t making any sense.
In the moment, I thought his energies were clashing with mine, that he was trying to prevent my message from spreading, when in reality, I probably was making very little sense. I got mad at this friend, feeling judged by him. I left the group. Looking back I’m thankful for the pushback, thankful he told me I wasn’t making any sense, because I had other experiences while high or tripping with friends that only seemed to confirm everything I was thinking. I’m glad someone saw that I wasn’t making sense, even though it was hard to notice.
During this time I was also constantly narrowly escaping trouble with my parents. Essentially I was always stoned and on high alert. I believe this constant drug induces and real-life paranoia also filtered into my mental state. I constantly felt I was doing something wrong spiritually, that I was going to go to hell.
With all this slowly building in my mind, my brain faced another physical challenge. I had an episode of Lyme Disease.
Lyme is extremely prevalent in the area of Massachusetts that I grew up in. My brother had an episode, as well as two of my friends down the street, and two of my cousins. These are stories worth telling in their own right, that of misdiagnosis and dealing with an invisible illness. The strangest part of Lyme is the variety of symptoms and the variety of damage that it can cause. My Lyme Disease story comes at the end of high school, after the car accident, already with delusions slowly appearing in my life.
A friend of mine and I had spent all 4 years of high school talking shit to one another, telling each other that we would beat each other in a fight. It was the normal banter of teenagers. One day we decided to put our money where our mouth is and put the argument to rest. We started wrestling. My friend had the better of me, surprising me with a strong headlock. Eventually I got him in an armbar, which was honestly an unfair move because we didn’t establish any ground rules, but the fight was over. We dusted ourselves off and shook hands. I think if punches were thrown he would have kicked my ass.
The next morning, my shoulder was killing me. It was the same shoulder that I had broken my collar bone skiing, the previous winter. I thought I had reinjured it, wrestling the night before. I didn’t want to tell my parents I had been fighting, so once again I kept my pain to myself. This was a strange pain, deep in my shoulder. It didn’t feel like the broken collar bone, I could still lift my arm, but it felt stiff, like I had done 1000 pull-ups with just that arm. A week went by and it only got worse. I had to tell my mom.
I went upstairs after a shower to ask for a ride to the doctor, explaining that I may have broken my collar bone again. My mom took one look at me and said “get your things, we’re going to the hospital”. She had immediately saw the bulls eye around my shoulder. It was so big that I couldn’t see it in the mirror, my chest was red, but the edges of the bulls eye went around my back, and under my armpit. My brother had already had his experience with Lyme Disease, so my mother recognized it instantly.
This led to 4 days in the hospital on IV antibiotics and a discharge with a big bottle of pills, with a large warning label on the side DO NOT MIX WITH ALCOHOL. It was my senior year summer before I was supposed to go off to college. I was going to be drinking, smoking, continuing my bad decisions, all while on a large dose of antibiotics.
This was the summer my delusions would go from guiding me subtly, to demanding my full attention, determining my every move. The hallucinations became all consuming, leading me to my first hospitalization.
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That ends part 4. I will pick up with my hallucinatory journey in Part 5. Hopefully I can describe the symptoms and paint a picture of what it is like to experience psychosis. Thank you for joining me and listening to my story.
