“I have a hard time describing my experiences as mere hallucinations. Everything was just so incredibly real– essentially indistinguishable from reality”
On Ash Wednesday, 2019, I walked out of my job because I was the Second Coming of Jesus Christ and it was my mission to save the Earth, not write Java code.
This might sound like the beginning of a bad joke or a funky dream, but for a few of us, this is reality. Schizophrenia is a highly stigmatized mental illness characterized by delusions, hallucinations, and erratic behavior. Psychosis, a period of high symptom activity, can be described as a virtual reality where your worst nightmares come to life, a surreal dreamlike landscape where the nonsense suddenly makes perfect sense. For many of us, we don’t ever wake up.
Later that day, I drove out to the Californian desert where I deliberately crashed my brand new car to “pay for my sins” and set out to begin my forty-day fast which would culminate in my becoming the perfect Messiah on Easter. But just an hour or so later, I was picked up crying by a police officer. After questioning me about my drug use- just marijuana- he dropped me off at the nearest town, El Centro.
I spent the next three days roaming about, talking to Satan, trying to cut off my penis with broken bottles in “atonement for my sins,” and getting strange looks from people. But mostly, I tried figuring out how to save mankind from the imminent Apocalypse.
I was an atheist all my life. This newfound interest in religion came out of nowhere, fueled by “prophecies” I read online. Mostly, I never questioned any of it- it all made perfect sense at the time. Yet, I was fully conscious and aware of everything. I was still very much myself. I still remember all my thought processes and feelings, however bizarre they were. Being psychotic is not like being intoxicated, where you wake up the next morning and forget what you did the previous night. This is why it’s such a painful experience. Psychosis is like a dream, but unlike a dream, you don’t get to wake up and get on with your life. If you’re lucky to escape alive, the symptoms may fade with time, but the trauma and confusion remains.
The third night out in El Centro, “God” called me a coward because I had failed my mission to save mankind. I believed “God” had ordered me to kill myself as punishment- or else my mother would be killed. I took off all my clothes and started running naked in the streets. I threw myself in front of an oncoming pickup truck, but I only hit the passenger’s door. I was picked up by the police, only this time they were not letting me go. I was taken to the ER.
Whereas my psychosis up until now had been pretty much confined to the realms of my imagination, my living nightmare now began seeping out into reality. I could tell that the strange men keeping watch over me at the ER were agents of the secret organization that had been spying on me. When the doctors left, these strange men began talking out loud about what a “coward” I was- just like “God” had called me earlier that night. They threatened me telepathically, warning me to remain quiet and cooperate or else they would kill my mother.
As I lay there, all of a sudden I heard my mother’s screams coming out of their cellphone. They giggled; it was as if they were watching her being tortured on live feed. And all I could do was lay there, shell-shocked. The strange men stared at me with a diabolical smirk on their faces, as if meaning to say, “What? You thought this wasn’t real?”
Those screams- her actual voice in Portuguese and all- were the most painful experience of my life. Calling it a hallucination does not do it justice to the soul-crushing realness of it.
I have a hard time describing my experiences as mere hallucinations. Everything was just so incredibly real- essentially indistinguishable from reality. My only explanation back then was that I had died after my suicide attempt and was now in hell, purgatory, or some sort of afterlife. And that’s how I spent the next ten days, which felt like an eternity, locked up in a psychiatric hospital, all the while believing I was a prisoner to some secret organization. “Paranoid, suspicious, and uncooperative” is the recurring theme on my medical records.
I moved back in with my mother (who I suspected of being an impostor because I was convinced my real mother had been killed) in New York at the end of March. During the first few weeks I was on the look-out for any suspicious people around the house. I believed any day now those strange men would come and kill us. A powerful anxiety consumed me and my mind was constantly spinning. I had vivid and painful nightmares every night.
I never got over those screams. It wasn’t even my worst “hallucination”- one time, before I landed at the hospital, I heard guns, bombs, and warplanes outside my apartment and was convinced that North Korea was attacking. But this particular “hallucination” (the screams) really got to me. And I kept it all inside, not talking to anyone about any of it out of fear that this secret organization would kidnap me again.
I struggled a lot over the next six months, trying to make sense of all that had happened. I saw a psychiatrist only once during this period, but I was really disappointed because she didn’t want to listen to my experiences. Instead, she opted to just talk about medication, which I did not take as prescribed.
I strongly believed I would find healing in my home country, so I moved back to Brazil in October that year after living in the US for seventeen years. In January 2020, I felt somewhat better so I decided to look for a job. Despite having a lot of success, one thing still stood in the way: the trauma from those screams. That was the cherry on top of my psychosis. In February it all resurfaced again, as I begged God to tell me if my real mother was okay.
I never understood how reality can just fall apart like that. How can “hallucinations” be so real? What even is reality anymore? Maybe I really was in hell, purgatory, or traveling through parallel universes. Those explanations sounded more dignified than just chalking it up to hallucinations. So, in an effort to understand my insanity, I drove myself insane again. And I was drinking again to cope with it, despite my family constantly expressing their wish for me to stop.
One day, after a few intense sleepless nights, I finally broke down and cried at my grandmother’s house. It was the most I had ever cried in my life. All my trauma came out, but it felt quite cathartic. I felt like I was getting back in touch with my long-lost soul. I desperately wanted my life back- my mother back. So I promised God I would never drink again.
I also began taking medication that day, which I had not been taking for many months. That same night, I went to church for the first time in Brazil. Through what I believe to be a miracle, God ended once and for all my trauma. Just like that- it was all over. This is the day that I truly recovered, a little over a year after it all began.
This illness stripped everything away from me; it took away my grasp of reality itself, something we’re so used to taking for granted, and with it went my soul, sucked into a black hole. Outside I seemed fine, but inside I was still running naked in the streets. Faith was my last resort, the dim candle that led me out of that darkness.
This newfound faith obliterated all my worries. I began trusting the power of God, trusting that love and only love can overcome evil and suffering. I was no longer afraid. Evil, whether real or a product of my imagination, no longer had power over me. It could not intimidate or threaten me like it once did. This is essential for recovery because fear is at the heart of this dreaded disease; indeed, paranoid schizophrenia is a subtype of this illness. But fear can be conquered with faith.
I am still on medication and happy to say that I have remained symptom-free for the past eight months. I have also kept my promise to God and remained sober. I do not believe I will relapse. By the unerring and merciful hand of God, I feel stronger than ever today. In fact, I have never been happier! There is hope- not only for a full recovery, but for an even better life if we channel our suffering towards the Greater Good.
My advice to anyone who may be reading this and experiencing similar symptoms is to be humble and seek medical help. Do not try to conquer this monster on your own- believe me, we can’t. Or, as Einstein once said, “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.” There’s a good reason why the first step of Alcoholics Anonymous is to admit we are powerless.
