The Seeker

If I don’t put more effort, this will soon turn into a blog about my loneliness. I think it all started towards the end of high-school when I alienated a couple of my best friends as they didn’t share the same taste in movies that I did.


Over through my university years, I managed to make the nerdiest of friends, who in the end left for MIT and Stanford, while my grades kept me in Lebanon.

And then I was stuck in sort of a loop. The schizophrenia happened and I recovered, but I never managed to create for myself a new circle of friends. And here I am whenever I meet someone new, they wonder why I don’t have a circle of friends. They find it odd and then stay away.
Plus my interests are a bit nerdy and not for everyone.

In a way I blog and write online to fill the social gap and maybe to meet new people. But so far, nothing came out of it. Mainly probably cause I am in the wrong country. I have met a few girls through Facebook and online dating, but they were not for me.

And so here I am seeking friendship. Seeking companionship. I have always fought the idea or label that I am somewhat inferior or less competent than anyone else. But a book I read about human evolution suggests that growth of the human brain is in large part attributed to man ability to form social bonds. The brain is very well attuned for us to create a social connection with 150 people. These are the friends and people in our lives. Maybe my brain is not good for that. It doesn’t explain how schizophrenia has not been culled out by evolution. Or maybe it will in this day and age, as more and more schizophrenics die alone with no one to propagate their condition.

But I am optimistic. I am the seeker, I will search high and low, to find that special someone.

The big taboo - A small technical explanation

“Ow this guy has schizophrenia. He is crazy. He is not normal. Don’t go out with him, he is a nut. “
This is the stigma that someone like me has to face if I were to go public with my condition. In the age of gay rights the only remaining taboo is mental health. So I am inspired by some conversations I had with former friends to explain a bit about my condition and in general what is schizophrenia. (I will use some technical information, but it might not be 100 percent accurate)

It all starts towards the end of puberty or early adulthood, the brain will shed some connections to become an adult brain. In this process some neurotransmitters will stop functioning the way they used to. Now this is very technical and one has to be a psychiatrist or neurologist to understand it, but basically the brain is controlled by two things:
- 
Electricity: These are the electric signals between neurons
- Chemistry: These are known as neurotransmitters like dopamine, serotonin, adrenaline etc… These chemicals also relay information in the brain and between the brain and body.

The problem for people with schizophrenia is mainly a chemical one. The brain produces too much dopamine. This chemical has a lot to do with the feelings of pleasure or to use a technical term: Reward motivated behavior. With too much dopamine in my brain, I become over excited about everything and become prone to delusional thinking.

Realizing this, doctors have created medication to regulate the dopamine in the brain. They work for some people like me. The medication is supposed to reduce the amount of dopamine that gets into some receptors. This means less messages about reward motivated behavior.

Too much of medication and a patient will not be able to function normally and will be tired and sleepy all the time. Too little or no medication and he will be in hyper mode and insane. Therefore with the right dose, one can be normal.

Today many doctors are encouraging society to look at schizophrenia the same way they look at diabetes. It is a chronic condition that has to be managed for a lifetime. But a highly manageable one.

Indeed, unless you had seen me during the brief periods where I was off meds and psychotic, you wouldn’t know that I suffered from anything. And now that you understand that it is a biological thing you should look at it as you do any other chronic illness.

Desperation possibly medication induced

So I ended up going out with a girl that I met online, and despite in the end it didn't quite work out, I realize that I have no reason for desperation.

So I am now more positive about my life. I will just make myself more open to opportunities that might come along in the future.

The thing is that my latest desperation started when I switched to Abilify. I think it is a side effect of this med that it makes one slightly depressive.

What is the appropriate level of medication?

So I visited this other psychiatrist the other day. I was referred to her as part of my immigration application to Canada. She was impressed with how highly functional I was. She told me that it is extremely rare for schizophrenics to be so functional and normal.

Indeed, you wouldn’t know that I was a schizophrenic from the way I act or from my life. I work. I study as part of a graduate program and online. I interact with friends (although I could use a wider social circle). And I don’t have symptoms. I don’t hear voices or see things. I do have this mild tactile hallucination that I have lived with for years. I sometimes feel like a drop of rain fall on my body and sometimes hear a tick in my head, but I ignore them and go on about my life. Psychiatrists call my condition “insight”. In other words, I know something is wrong with me and I overcome it. If I were to stop my medication, I would lose the insight and then I would lose this insight and plunge into delusion. So medication is great? Right?

Well not so fast. Indeed, I can’t live without medication. But I have fought a lot to keep this medication at the lowest possible dose. Indeed, one of the psychiatrists I had seen wanted me to take twice the dose I currently take. And if that had happened, I would have never had a career in computer programming or would have never studied anything or done anything aside from sleep.  And indeed, at the time my symptoms were a lot more severe. In addition to the tactile hallucinations I had sleep paralysis where I would have vocal hallucinations. I resisted upping the med and as a result the sleep paralysis and vocal hallucinations went away by themselves.

Now, maybe my condition is not as severe as others. Maybe. But I think keeping my medication low had something to do with my getting better.

Losing Friends

One of the worse aspects of psychosis was how I have lost friends. I had built relationships with people during three different occasions and lost them when they saw me psychotic.

Recently I have told two former friends about the condition through online chat. They seemed understanding, but then later when I have tried to reconnect and meet with them, they didn’t want to. I had lost them.

But I am reminded of a say by a french poet: “It is better to be hated for something that you are than loved for something you are not”. I suppose those were not real friends.

I do have one friend that I have told about my condition years ago and I still see him. The illness has helped to figure out who are real friends and who are fake friends.

Delusions are not errors in thinking

I was reading a post on reddit about someone who had a psychotic experience very similar to mine and this got me thinking back about my psychosis. My psychoses have mostly been delusions of references fed by slight tactile hallucinations. What am I talking about?

Well I would be talking to people online or offline, and start thinking that when they say something they mean something else. That they are lying to me even in simple language. Then I start thinking that TV presenters are sending me special messages. It will then be by tactile hallucinations where I would feel like a drop of water fall on my hand or head and think it is a signal from God. Then a coincidence happen and I start thinking that it is another message.

Now once it was over when I take medication or through itself, I would be back to normal thinking. I would then start thinking that I made a mistake in thought when I was hallucinating, that maybe I didn’t interpret the world around me correctly. I don’t hear voices telling me to do this and that. And I don’t see visions or hallucinations (that will be left for another post). So I think, well it was just some mistake in thought. And that’s dangerous. Because then I would think that I don’t need to take medication. That in fact I can beat this on my own just by focusing more.

Indeed, it is not a matter of focus. A delusion has the same underlying cause as a hallucination. This neurotransmitter Dopamine that is being secreted in large quantities in a region of the brain. In fact psychotic, I am hyper active. I talk fast. Walk a lot. Feel all this energy and get excited about everything. Meanwhile my brain is in overdrive.

Yes some people manage symptoms on their own without medication. But understanding that medication can have a big effect and solve and stop delusions from happening has been key to my recovery.

Indeed, for the five years I have taken medication steady I didn’t have another psychotic episode. And for the past two years since I got back on medication, I didn’t have a psychotic episode. So if you had psychosis, don’t think you will beat this just by focus and stopping mistakes in thought from happening. Get help. It helps.

Pondering God's existence

So a lot of my delusions had to do with God. A common joke here in Lebanon is to refer to the epiphany that people have about some ideas as when the Holy Spirit descends upon them. Well, in my case I have thought that the Holy Spirit descended on me 4 times. It was of course not the Holy Spirt but insanity. This is when I have had psychotic breaks.

During those breaks, I have sought the help and advice of clergy. I was encouraged by my mother (a religious zealot) who at the time would think that I had a vocation to become a priest. Well, the clergy deferred on their views. The reasonable ones recognized that something was wrong with me, but just said to ignore this and focus on working and finding a wife. One cleric actually encouraged me and said that I was having a divine revelation. As it later turns out, he had impregnated a woman and left the clergy.

We are born on this earth and we have to deal with some strange things. Some people are born with two X chromosomes and one Y. They are neither male nor female. Some people are born with less developed brains. Some people are born with a genetic disposition for schizophrenia. Where is God is all of this? 

I think to myself, that my problems are my cross to bear and I should carry it just like our Lord carried his cross. But then I think to myself what’s exactly the point of bearing a cross. In my second psychosis, I thought that the world was coming to an end and that Jesus was going to return. And you know what? This thought scared the hell out of me. What will happen to the all the progress that humanity is going to make. What will happen to life on earth? From that I started thinking about what would be the point of this life, if it is just a test to see whether you get to go to the second life.

This life has meaning and we have to live it. Yet, what if one’s life is not so great? Mine certainly isn’t. Yes, I am a survivor of mental illness. Yes, I have a job. Yes, I am smart. But am I achieving any of the goals I wanted to achieve when I was a kid? No! Am I achieving any of the goals a 33 year old man should achieve? No again! I am not married and haven’t had a girlfriend in years (and that’s being generous about those who I can call girlfriends in the past). So what if it doesn’t get much better than this in the future. What if this is as good as it is going to get?

Well Jesus offers hope in that there is another world to come. So I can just wait till the end of this life to get to a good life? That’s a mentality that I have accepted for years. But not anymore. I want to align my life with my goals. This is a reason I am investing more of my time to be sociable, to make new friends and meet new people. This is why I have enrolled in an MBA program this year so that I will move closer to a better career.

Now of course it is all small steps. But radical steps will lead down the path to insanity again. If I don’t achieve my goals so what? In the end we are all going to the same place. Religion be damned.

Delusions of Reference

A patient is telling you about a dream she had with a beetle in it. You look through your window and you see an insect that seems like a beetle or in the same family of insects. Is this the subconscious of the universe talking to you? Is it God sending you a message about this woman?
The psychologist Carl Gustav Jung believed that this and other coincidences were a manifestation of the collective consciousness. He coined the term Synchronicity to describe these coincidences which are a sort of meaningful coincidence.

Knowing that others experience these kinds of coincidences and reasoning that though they exist they mean nothing was a big part in my recovery. While psychotic, I gave these coincidences supernatural explanation. God, the creator of the universe had implanted these coincidences all through my life to prove to me that he exists. Normal people don’t reason this way. I did when I was psychotic and it was a surprise when the dream world ended and I came back to reality.

How do you explain it? How do you describe it? It is an experience that is hard to share unless you really live it. People think of schizophrenia as hearing voices. A voice in your head starts talking and tormenting you. This is certainly true for some people. But not for all people. For people like me the delusion of reference and the coincidences were the most prominent feature. A good example of this type of delusion was in the movie “A Beautiful Mind”. John Nash started cutting magazines trying to decipher a pattern which he associated to soviet spies talking to each other. “The Pattern” is Synchronicity. It is a pattern that exists in the fabric of the world. Coincidences like shit just happen. Or maybe our brains seeks them and feeds on them. But that doesn’t mean that they mean something more than what they are.




References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideas_of_reference_and_delusions_of_reference
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronicity