It Has Been A Balancing Act Walking An Iron Fence Through

The Mental Health System For 23 Years

No system is ever totally fair and I always walked the spikes of a iron fence through the mental health system, if I had constantly listened to Psychiatrists, I would probably still be a walking medicated zombie as they have made me on several occasions over the years. Grant you, I did go into semi psychotic states over my apparitions/hallucinations when I was younger, due to the isolation caused by speaking of the subject matter. The medication never changed my thinking process nor my approach to the subject matter I had to deal with, it just numbed me out so I could not function like other people. Apparently, having visual hallucinations as Psychiatrists call them, is one of the rarest forms of schizophrenia. When hospitalized as an inpatient, I was pretty well on my own as I was out of hospital. The Nurses never really had the time to sit down and discuss my schizophrenia with me, you would only see them at medication time or tending to other patient's needs. If I complied with taking my medication in Hospital, I got discharged after three months observation. During the first seven years of my treatment I was put on inter-muscular injects for being a non conformist and tried to hold down a job. In twenty three years I have never had a intelligent conversation about my apparitions/hallucinations with hospital staff, the limited conversation revolved around taking medication and side effects of the drugs I was consuming. It was like I was not allowed to be my happy go lucky intelligent self, the hospital staff preferred me heavily sedated so I could not function to my full ability. Perhaps their own ignorance of what my schizophrenia was all about, led them to over medicating me, if only they could have taken the time to talk to me about my situation. A lot of the time when not an inpatient and taking pills, I self medicated at lower dosages and got a job in my field of expertise. When working, I consumed my fair bit of alcohol and marijuana thus pissing out the limited medication that I was taking or caused a difference when on injections and found my conversation around my apparitions/hallucinations in bars and at parties. Over the years I have heard all sides to the subject matter of visual hallucinations and have personally grown by discussing them. Continuing my education at night in the engineering field while working, kept my mind trying to attain a higher level of self understanding with my condition through principles of logic from the engineering discipline. With the passing of the years, I have come to a conclusion that there is a logical discourse to my apparitions/hallucinations, my theological foundations evolved out of it, thus my shaman antics with my ritual of prayer and belief system came into being. My apparitions/hallucinations are a guiding force that keeps me faithful to my Gods and Goddess', I have seen many a ghost and ghostly things over the years and have learned not to put excessive meaning into them but use them for reflective meditation about life in general. They serve me well as does my limited amount of medication that I now consume, even although I detest it sometimes! At the present time, I take my perscription of 3mg of risperdal and it can take the edge off my anger with how my life turned out. My Psychiatrist seems to believeI should be on more medication but people that know me say I am my old self again, especially my parents! I still have my apparitions/hallucinations on different occasions, as they do have a way of guiding my faith in something greater than us humans, the Lord speaks in mysterious ways!

My Port Hole In Life Was Certainly No Setting Sun

This image was taken when I was young and a seafaring man with nothing but dreams for my future, how I now know nothing but shattered dreams. As a young man I thought I would build my fortune as a seafaring man then go on to meet a woman and have a relationship that led to a Church wedding to settle down to have a family. Instead I ended up in the bowels of the Canadian psychiatric system in Newfoundland , Canada and returned to Montreal diagnosed with schizophrenia. OK, I worked hard at being a functional "schizo", took my medication and got a job and returned to school at night to build a life for myself on land, still dreaming of meeting a special woman and getting married in a Church. It did not exactly happen that way, three relationships later and spending most of my adult life by myself, I feel lost at turning 47 years old with only a state subsidy with a disability pension along with a Quebec Government welfare payment to bring me to a minimum allowance as a bit of a starving artist. What woman would want me now? With parshly being stricken with extra pyramidal side effects (EPSE), I am not fit to work as a trades person full time any more. Last time I worked a full summer as a trades person, I found myself up a 20 foot ladder being stricken with EPSE with a plastering tool in my hand, it did not make me feel exactly comfortable, it was like it was time to retire as a trades person and plug away trying to earn a living at a desk job as a full time artist. Now I can only fantasize of having a woman in my life, ideally she would be a career woman that would not mind using me as a tax write off. Fat chance of that happening! Then on the lighter side of things, Mom & Dad are planning to re-write their will to accommodate my situation. At present they are looking for a way to put my limited inheritance into a trust fund to facilitate my financial situation, I can get cut off part of my Government income if I inherit any amount of money, thus I would have to live off my inheritance too soon until it runs out and ending up back on a welfare plan with my disability pension until the day I die. Sure I am happy having the apartment I now acquired with my little art studio, with the intent of returning to school in September in the arts at University level. Once again trying to make something of myself again, except this time a bit late in life. My heart stills pangs to have a decent woman part of my life so I do not go to my grave totally sexually frustrated in my old age, Psychiatrists were always good at making me impetant or taking away my orgasm with medication, until I fought back for my own dignity. I am not young any more and I notice the difference in my manly blessing from its youthful desiring abilities, what a way to put it but it is part of growing old that I have to accept, along with spending most of my adult life single and only fantasizing about having a woman. The dumb life I carved out for myself, first standing up and applying the Canadian Shipping Act in the offshore oil industry which led me ending up in psychiatry to get diagnosed with schizophrenia, then standing up for the Canadian National Building Code regarding bad renovation practice as a "Schizo" Engineering Technician and getting Court Ordered Injections administred on me along with long term ensueing EPSE out of it. OK I am no longer on Court Ordered Injections and take pills again but I still have the the EPSE that put a damper on my life. I can look like a bit of a freak in public when stricken with them, but still plug away and call Psychiatrists assholes for pumping full of drugs instead of spending time talking to me about my apparitions/hallucinations, oh I forgot, that is a Psychologist's job at $60/hour which I never had! After 23 years in psychiatry, my file is so thick my Psychiatrist gets lost and has a lack of insight regarding me with reading it and I end up paying the price tag with bullshit, with no setting sun in my port hole of life!

Glowing Light Appeared In My Hand With A Witness At My Side

Persons with schizophrenia are usually alone with their manifestations that they witness, on two occasions I had a person beside me that saw my "hallucination" with me, both times it was the woman that I was dating. Grant you it was two different women that witnessed my "hallucinations" with me, my two last girl friends. So here I am alone as a single man thinking a lot about my life and how schizophrenia has made a mess of it by dragging down the tubes of poverty. It has left me thinking about the manifestations that occur to me that can not be totally explained other than a Psychiatrist saying I have irrational hallucinations. I put my own type of personal meaning to the manifestations and ignore what the Psychiatrist says about them, it helps me cope better and be more of a mystic rather than just a "schizo" as determined by modern medicine. I did the sketch in chaulk pastel of the manifestation last week, that I had with my ex, in preparing for my blog posting.

When I met my last girl friend, she accepted me as a intelligent mystic/schizo, for I told her my medical condition when we were just starting to get to know each other. As the relationship progressed, I was soon spending all nighters with her and sleeping along side her in her bed. It was very early in the relationship and I was spending a lot of time with her, sometimes more than I should have, any way we had retired to the master bedroom for the evening and were laying in bed together having our evening talk in bed like we usually did over a cigarette. Sometime during these moments in the dimly light room, my hand ended face up above the bed sheets. Then a warm whitish yellow light started to glow in the palm of my hand. I spoke up to my girl friend at the time and asked her if she could see the light in my hand that I was seeing. She responded that indeed she could see it and it left us both speechless and amazed. I then reached with my left hand to try and pick up the light between my thumb and finger, when my left hand reached the glowing light in the palm of my right hand, it seemed to disappear from our sight. We were left speechless and amazed but had each other to reflect on the experience to keep our nerves steady. Years later, talking to my ex about the manifestation we both witnessed together, with what seems like so long ago, she still finds words to describe the experience like awesome, unbelievable and mystifying. It is funny how when I am lone and have these type of experiences, I am brushed off as a delusional "schizo" most of the time, when I try relating the experiences to a fellow human. Having a witness to such an experience leaves one with a very powerful feeling, like I am not alone with it all and more than just a "schizo that needs medication for hallucinations. What ever the case may be, this posting is about just one of many manifestations I have witnessed, that I am not alone with, I have my ex girl friend as a witness to the event. I take a minimal amount of medication and still have what my Psychiatrist calls delusional hallucinations. The mystical experiences I go through did not ruin my life, it was the the Psychiatrists pumping me full of drugs to stop the experiences instead of trying to talk to me about it. It is kind of like an atheist trying to stop God, it does not work to good, so I keep my mystical experiences to myself and only share them with people I really trust or through my blog.