What Developing Acute Schizophrenia Feels Like

i had this same experience in mountain view just two years ago; i think it was caused in part by my startup collapsing and my mind trying to make sense of what happened.<p>i had the same problem with being unable to sleep; the same sense of conversations and thoughts being unfocused. it was like tripping 24&#x2F;7. i felt imbued with purpose and meaning; this life was a dream.<p>i was working at game closure (now weeby) at the time, and i thought the whole company was a front - what we were REALLY doing was putting together a team that was going to mars together. that explained why everything changed and the plans were always in flux - it wasn&#x27;t really about building games; it was to see if we could work together and still get along while constantly being frustrated by plans that would be started and then dropped.<p>things were made worse by the fact that this was late 2012 and i really believed the whole &quot;mayan apocalypse thing&quot; was actually going to happen. something internal took over in early december - around the time things were &quot;supposed&quot; to go down, and it felt like i was living in a combination of snow crash, anathem, and &quot;city at the end of time&quot; - another sci-fi novel.<p>my mind was interpretting everything that happened around me as having meaning at 300 different layers. i could see contrails around people as they moved, as if i were able to see the multiverse unfolding around me. it was exciting and terrifying at the same time.<p>i tried telling people that i sensed something was wrong, but nobody was sure what to do. i kept telling people around me that there was an &#x27;cacophany of mental imagery&#x27; - but i guess my ability to hold it together convinced people i was fine, until i wasn&#x27;t.

It&#x27;s interesting that both the author&#x27;s story and one other in this thread so far both mention their significant marijuana usage.<p>While the &quot;marijuana causes schizophrenia&quot; hype is statistically exaggerated (and the opposite causality may actually be the case), it&#x27;s still a good reminder to perhaps avoid or severely restrict usage if you have a family history of the condition.

Watching my brother go through something similar has been one of the hardest things I&#x27;ve ever watched. He&#x27;s pretty heavily medicated now and has struggles to maintain &quot;normal&quot; relationships or a work life... After years of taking care of him, though (and him actually graduating college and getting a job), I had to start focusing on my own life again. I still feel overwhelming guilt for moving away.<p>He&#x27;s a veteran (did not go to war, though, discharged with the health issues) so it&#x27;s been even harder watching him try to make sense of it all with a system like the VA.

Good thing he lived in a country with a sane healthcare system. Imagine getting this in the US and having poor or no health insurance and having no family nearby.

Its interesting, his descriptions of some of the early signs--inability to sleep with thoughts moving in odd directions, slow uptake of speech, disconnected situational awareness--are very similar to the sensations I get when (as a diabetic) I misjudge my insulin and my blood sugar drops dangerously low. I&#x27;m sure there in no relation, but I can sympathize. The first few time it happened to me were all in the space of a few days and I was convinced that I had a brain tumor or similar.

Another really good read covering what it&#x27;s like going through psychosis is &quot;And Then I Thought I Was A Fish&quot; by Peter Welch, covering a three year long psychotic break he had after taking LSD. (He&#x27;s the writer of <a href="http://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.stilldrinking.org&#x2F;programming-sucks</a>, a hilarious blogpost I saw linked on HN a few months ago).

This kind of information is really good to know. I&#x27;m so glad some victims of schizophrenia have the courage to discuss what happened.

He really needs to lay off the illegal drugs and the constant TV, concentrate on his real life, and get a nice quite place of his own. As someone who hears voices occasionally (not that odd considering studies show auditory hallucinations can come from caffeine and lack of sleep), just a TV going somewhere in the house three rooms away can make it a lot worse. I can&#x27;t even image what it is like for someone &quot;with plenty of hash&quot;, diagnosed schizophrenic, and who mentions so many TV shows constantly being watched in the article and even by his parents. Marijuana and constant TV might be fine for some people, but if you are hearing imaginary voices, maybe you should lay off. The situations in TV and particularly the shows he mentions, like Breaking Bad, are really not the sort of things you want a paranoid schizophrenic mind to seize upon. You may wake up thinking the cops are after you just like your favorite TV show.

Hmm... lately I&#x27;ve had the &quot;things falling over&quot; sensation a lot. I&#x27;ll jump and move towards an object because I think it&#x27;s falling, but it&#x27;s not. Does this happen to normal people too?

It&#x27;s weird they have disabled voting of this story and it also disappeared from the front page(s) had to use history to find it..

Similar story happened to a friend of mine, all of a sudden she starting seeing eastern-style patterns everywhere, on people like tattoos and so on. Too much pot.

I have noticed several posts related to mental illness recently. What is this in relation to? Deep learning? Productivity via mental health? Fill me in.

I really wonder if his Mom making him go for a walk every day did more than the drugs. For me exercising EVERY day has more impact than all drugs.

OP: if you&#x27;re reading, thank you for your courage.