The Other side of Schizophrenia

“Dear Professor,
Woodrow and Bernstein. I got a great story for you about how the American government is spying on me”

Along those lines was the email that I sent to one of my old university professor whom I hadn’t seen in a decade and beyond a single course. He was an American professor at the my old American University and his American nationality was the reason I was contacting him. I wanted someone from the inside to expose the CIA/NSA/Whatever spying mechanism.

He didn’t answer my email. So I went to the university looking for someone who would help me out. On the way, I went to my old faculty of engineering and got into a conversation with an old professor about the randomness of the number PI. I was on to something. The number PI was not random and a former boss whose company was developing an encryption algorithm using the digits of PI was actually endangering Lebanese national security.

I made videos about how a smart phone could be hacked and turned on while you thought that it was off. Indeed, a modern day cell phone can appear to be off while being fully on. This was one of the revelations of Edward Snowden.

Now why the CIA was listening in on me you might ask. Why was I such an important guy? Well for the past few months I have been experiencing a miraculous healing of my pre-diabetes. This I knew for sure, for how else would I explain the energy and what I was feeling. I certainly didn’t need a blood test.

As you might have guessed, I am explaining the symptoms of a psychotic break. This break would last for more than a month during which I made an utter fool of myself, got labeled as a stalker by my former alma mantra. Got my own special file at the American Embassy. And got even picked up and interrogated by police.

This is the side of schizophrenia that everyone knows and expects. This is what people think when they hear the word schizophrenia.

Well here’s the other side:

For the past two years i have been working full time designing a GIS based system that has some of functionalities of Google Street view. A year before that I had worked on a project for two years for government solutions. Before that I designed a system for pharmaceutical companies. And all through those I have earned a decent living, which today even though I am in Lebanon compares well with a lower end salary in the states.

I take a shower every day. I keep a beard because I am bald, but other than that my hygiene is perfect.

for the past 9 months I have been pursuing a part time MBA and I have been excelling in it. I have read over 120 books in the past decade. Mostly business, technical and other non fiction books.

And guess what I don’t think the CIA/NSA whatever is out to get me. I don’t hallucinate, hear voices or have other types of strange thoughts.

This is the other side of schizophrenia. The side that you don’t hear about. The side that lets people like me lead normal lives.

How do I do it? I take medication, every day. Medication that I will have to take every day of my life.

Now I still have daily struggles, but they have nothing to do with schizophrenia. I am looking for a life partner, but can’t seem to find her. This gets me frustrated. A girl I went out with a few months ago seemed interesting, so I told her about my schizophrenia. She reacted with the same prejudice as someone who knew about the first side of schizophrenia, even though I only showed her the other side.

A priest I have talked to about my condition years ago, told me that I will never get married because of it. I am applying to immigration to Canada and think that I will probably get refused because of the condition (even though the psychiatrist reports I presented gave a very positive prognosis of my condition).

What is important for someone like me is not special access to medical care. I can pay for it myself. It is not special housing or special working conditions. I do fine with what is available to everyone else. What is important is equality. I want to be treated like anyone else. Anyone who has to take a medication to be normal. A lot of people do. Heart medication. Liver medication. Diabetes medication. They are not treated differently and neither should I.

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.