(TW: I will be talking at length and in detail about psychosis, including hallucinations, delusions, warped thinking, supernatural elements, etc.. If any of these are sensitive topics for you, please skip this post. No hard feelings; keep your mental health safe!)

Hey everyone!

It’s been forever since I posted, I know. I’ve been going through it with some new diagnoses to manage and some life stuff that has been getting in the way of my free time. I’ll post a life update post soon to catch y’all up on all the things.

But today, I felt like it’s time to describe some of my experience with psychosis. Psychosis is a very taboo topic, and it can make a lot of people uncomfortable or even scared. I think a lot of this comes from the stigma of being “crazy” and the inherent inability of some people to accept and feel compassion for something they don’t entirely understand.

I firmly believe the only way to combat this is to be open and honest about my experiences in hopes that others will find the courage to do so as well. The best way to avoid ignorance is to increase understanding.

The following is what it’s like for me when I miss a dose of my antipsychotic before I go to bed. My delusions are much, much different if I’m off medication entirely, but that hasn’t happened for over a year, thank God.

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So, Psychosis Purgatory begins with me going to sleep normally. Then I wake up maybe an hour or two later. How odd, I usually sleep like a rock. I start dozing again, but I keep getting woken up by my own brain; not like a jolt or a feeling, just… I’m almost asleep then suddenly I’m wide awake again, but insanely drowsy. Still, not cause for alarm, everyone has trouble sleeping sometimes. Then the world starts to shift. Things start to feel tactilely different in a way that’s hard to describe… it’s too vivid, too smooth, too impossibly liquidy.

Everything I touch feels like it’s flowing on my skin like water in a lazy river. It’s not unpleasant, it honestly feels good. Calming. It sucks me in. I fall asleep again. The next time I wake up, things are different. I start seeing things. Slowly, at first. Out of the corner of my eye. Bats on the ceiling. Spiders and beetles running over me. Larger, unidentified humanoid creatures scuttling across my ceiling and walls. My door opens, then I blink and it’s shut again. It happens again, only when my head turns just right.

My mom comes in and I feel hopeful, but her eyes are wrong. The way she walks isn’t right. Her voice is just a bit too high or low, and syrupy sweet. She makes it halfway across the room and she’s gone in a blink, just to appear at the door again, eyes yellow and shining. I think turning the overhead light on will help but it doesn’t. The fear sets in. I try to sleep but every time I fall asleep I wake back up in the middle of Purgatory. It happens over and over until I believe I’m in a time loop, that I’ve been sent to Purgatory and this is my penance. Forty, fifty, sixty times I feel I fall asleep to wake back up at the beginning.

I never think to check the time. I never think to text someone, or call, because what if it’s another trick of Purgatory? I can’t trust anything or anyone. I’m so terrified I can’t move, like I’m a young child again having a nightmare, too afraid to even yell for his parents, FAR too afraid to get out of bed and go to their room.

It lasts an eternity, all sense of time is warped until all that exists is a terrified demoralized husk trying to convince himself that eventually the loop will be stopped, not through death, but by some force that takes pity on him.

Around 5:30am I get the courage to check my phone and realise it’s morning. Usually that’s enough to start bringing me back toward reality. The hallucinations stop first, then the paranoia and fear subside. I’m usually shaking and disoriented/confused, and pretty much useless except for a thousand yard stare and vague ramblings about what I saw. I take my morning meds and about an hour or so later I’m back to normal, usually with more energy and pep in my step than a regular morning. Most of the night becomes fuzzy, and then disappears from memory altogether within a few days. All I remember are the highlights (lowlights?) and that I never want to go through it again.

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*For context, I have Unspecified Psychotic Disorder. I am not schizophrenic. I am treated and medicated appropriately; this example is not a reflection of my daily life.