Thursday 18 September 2014

A Day in the Life of a Paranoid Schizophrenic

It's 9:45 am when my mum comes into my room to wake me up. This is early for me. Despite my medication being quite sedating, I'm rarely asleep before 1 am. And because of the sedation, I need at least 10 hours sleep to be able to function properly all day. So I'm quite tired this morning. But I need to be up 'early' today, it's the day I go to the drop-in. I switch on my phone to check my emails. Nothing of interest. I manage to drag myself out of bed and go for a shower.

Whilst I'm in the shower, Dorothy starts talking to me. Dorothy is the voice I currently hear. Thankfully, she's also the only voice I hear at the moment. I've only been hearing her for a few months but she's very similar to other voices I've heard in the past - nasty. Dorothy tells me that satellites are watching me whilst I shower. It's not a pleasant thought, being watched in the shower, but I try and rationalise what she says by telling myself that even if satellites were watching me, they wouldn't be able to see me through the blind over the window.

Wednesday 10 September 2014

Has Antipsychotic Medication Made Me Worse?

The first time I took psychotropic medication was when I was 18. I had been suffering with depression for about two years and I was finally given help in the form of a prescription for fluoxetine (Prozac). I was put on 20 mg and I found that it did nothing to me. It had no benefits and fortunately, I had no side effects. After a few months on it, I decided to stop taking it as I felt like I was wasting NHS resources taking something that did nothing to me.