Abductee

In 1976 I was taken aboard a spaceship.
It was a strange experience, as you can imagine, and it has stayed with me for all these years.
While aboard the ship I was given an implant in my brain (via a tube inserted into my nose) which has caused various phenomena that affect my life.
Various entities and organisations communicate with me via the implant and I have to put up with their chattering and commands on a daily basis.

On the night I was abducted I was walking my girlfriend home when we saw a broken street lamp. As we drew closer it became obvious that we looking not at a lamp but at some sort of ball of energy. This has since been identified to me as Ball Lightning but at the time I had no name for it.
My friend passed out unconcious on the ground and I was left alone as the energy field took me up into the waiting craft.

My abductors were very handsome creatures and were all male.
They had blond hair and piercing blue eyes and were approx 7 feet tall but in perfect proportion.
They communicated with me by telepathy and told me that they came from the direction of the constellation of Taurus.

They were very kind to me and I drew a great strength from them.
Even when I was in great pain from their medical procedures, they were kind and did all they could to ease my pain and fear.

Since then I have never known such intense love and devotion as I felt for these wonderful beings.

Recently I have become aware that I am being followed by a network of people posing as taxi drivers. They have fake passengers with them who are obviously actors paid by the hour.
My feeling is that they wish to investigate my implant and will kill me in the process.
I am very frightened and I've tried to get help but THEY just want to give me more and more tablets.
What use are tablets against the forces of evil??

I long for that happy time aboard the craft and hope that one day they will come back to rescue their faithful son and take him home with them.

I hope you can understand.

Befrienders Group

Over the last wee while I've been going to coffee mornings with a local mental health befrienders group.
It's ok and passes the time but it can be an odd experience being lumped together with other people on the grounds that we all have the same diagnosis.
I can't imagine that everyone with diabetes gets along or wants to socialise.
Quite often I have no connection with others in the group except my schizophrenia.
Support groups can be like that; put everyone with the same illness together in the same room with an 18 year old social work student to 'look after' us and job done - that's another box ticked.

After a while the conversation can become very boring;
'Who's your psychiatrist?'
'What meds are you on?'
'I was on 5 other meds before they found one that suited me'
'Do you use an MP3 player to block out the voices?'
etc etc etc.....

Sometimes I would like to talk about what was on Radio 4 last night or ask if anyone can help with my crossword clue but the worker directs the conversation in the same limited, well-worn patterns.

I guess the answer would be to join some kind of group for normal people but I get nervous that i will be 'discovered' and then rejected.

The Return...

Sorry I've been away for a while.
Things were getting on top of me and it was a bit of a struggle but I'm doing a bit better at the moment.
Thanks to everyone who's read this blog and especially to those who've been kind enough to leave a comment.

I feel that the earlier entries were very negative in tone and so I may delete one or two as I'd like this blog to reflect a more positive attitude towards this illness and its treatment.


The anorexia is back with me again and I'm not too sure what to do about it.
I've never had it officially diagnosed but I obviously have an eating disorder and it pretty much seems to fit the bill as anorexia.
The thing is that I'm currently very happy with my treatment for schizophrenia, the medication is working fine and I just don't want things to change.

Mostly the situation arose because my new meds have caused me to put on quite a lot of weight (4 stone or so) and this has resulted in an anorexic backlash of laxatives, fasting and all the usual good stuff.

I'm worried that if I try to discuss this with my doctors they may try to change the meds (which I'm basically very happy with) or else re-diagnose me altogether.

I hear that they could change the label to borderline personality disorder (the usual diagnosis for earting disorders) or else I could be changed to schizo-affective disorder etc with a resultant unwelcome change in meds.

Agoraphobia

I've been plagued with agoraphobia for years.
After my last hospital admission and they did all the damage to me with their drugs, I was hallucinating all the time and very paranoid.
I became very reclusive and eventually stopped going out.
It's now been almost 4 years that I've been struggling to beat this thing but I get so little help that I don't see how it can ever get any better.
The problem is really to find a word to accurately describe what's happening to me.
Agoraphobia covers some of it but it's far more about schizophrenia than an actual fear of open spaces.
It's really about my fear of buildings looking weird, places changing, places not being quite where I thought they were, shops changing from one thing to another, just general weirdness in the world.
Aberdeen uses the medical model and because there isn't a pill that directly addresses this, then it's seen as unimportant.
The part I find so hard to bear is that if I get a hundred yards further along the road, everyone tells me that I've done so well but I know that I haven't - I know that I haven't seen the sea for 4 years and may never do so again.

A Poem

I wrote this poem in my head while I was at a hearing voices group.
The staff member asked us to describe how we felt in a simple word or phrase.
My reply was considered 'inappropriate' which I've always felt is a very hostile word to use to someone - far more powerful, aggressive and snide than the F word could ever be.


Inappropriate

You ask me how I feel
'Fucked up'
I reply
'We don't condone the use of inappropriate language here at the drop in centre'
You say
Ok
'I'm cheesed off'
'Gosh I'm unhappy'
'I got the blues'
'Oh woe is me'
But mostly
'I'm fucked up'

The poem changes each time I write it down because I have a poor memory for words.
I have a good memory for events so I guess that I write it each time from scratch

Anorexia

My CPN has mentioned 'anorexic thinking', although I'm not too clear where she's going with this.
I'm a cutter and have always controlled my diet in one way or another - I like to be thin - but I think that she maybe in the process of medicalising parts of my life which up til now have been private.
I would say that what and where and when I eat is no concern of anyone's but I've found that once the diagnosis of schizophrenia is attache to a person, that any idea of privacy or dignity is rapidly dispensed with.
Volunteers at the drop in centre feel perfectly entitled to say;
'So, what's your diagnosis then?'
or;
'What medication are you on?'

I don't mind my psychiatrist, CPN or other professional staff asking me these questions if they are for a reason, but a volunteer or day centre helper?
It's as if there's a kind of nosiness that infects the whole of the mental health world.

I've read up on anorexia on the net and to be honest, I don't think that I'm a sufferer.
I don't make myself sick or use laxatives etc.
I eat 3 meals a day and eat in front of others.
It's true that I am very controling about myself but that's a different issue entirely.

Perceptions Magazine

Perceptions is the magazine of the Nation Voices Forum.
It carries a selection of artwork, cartoons, poetry and serious articles.
They encourage all voice hearers to submit work.

Here's a poem that I enjoyed from the Winter edition;


A Poem About Life
by Wendy Bell.


I've learned that making a living is not the same as
making a life

Life gives you a second chance - it might seem bad today
But it will get better tomorrow

I still have a lot to learn and a path to follow
God gives direction and I just step out in faith and do it.
I'm not frightened anymore

I've learned that people will forget what you said.
People will forget what you did but people will never forget
How you made them feel.

I'm sending this poem to all mentally ill people
I just wanted you to know you are not alone.

The end
Na........Just the beginning.

You can get in touch with the magazine by email;
perceptions@voicesforum.org.uk

or by phone;
020 8547 9226

Tired

Without the groups and drop-in centres to go to, my week is very long. I just walk around all day but the winter is becoming very cold.
I do some photography and also come to the internet cafe for an hour but that still leaves hundreds of hours to kill.
I really want to feel useful again- like I'm not just trying to waste years of my life because I'm too scared to end it all now.

Long Nights

I'm struggling with the meds just now.
I take a bare minimum dose because I start becoming very ill if I go higher - being found unconcious - throwing up blood etc.
I'm getting some really bad nights with the voices just lately and I'm feeling very agitated at being between a rock and a hard place.

Conspiracy

Not a 'secret goverment' or anything - I'm talking about how the psychiatric industry collude in the bullying, mis-diagnosis and death of many thousands of psychiatric patients around the world.
Except that, because of my diagnosis, everything I say is seen as being delusional so my opinions about anything are a part of my illness.
I've been told that ( along with many other people diagnosed with schizophrenis ) I suffer with Somatoform Disorder. ( more specifically, Conversion Disorder )
This is an 'illness' that is seen by many as Hypochondria in another guise.
The great thing about Somatoform Disorder from the perspective of the health care professional is that it can account for any of the dreadful side-effects of neuroleptic medication.
In simple terms - if I feel better - that's the medication working.
- if I feel worse - that's the Somatoform Disorder.
Clever stuff indeed.

Change

I'm going through a real time of change at present.
I've really seen through the mental health services and their bizzare games.
I guess that the whole problem relates to the word schizophrenia and how it totally changes a person's perception of you.
Even people who would class themselves as open etc become very different towards you when they know about your diagnosis.
Unfortunately, this is just as true for so called professionals as it is for ordinary people.

1st Post

Hello to you and thanks for reading.
I started this blog because my thoughts and feelings about my schizophrenia were spilling over into my art blog and it wasn't a happy mix.
I tend to find my experience with this illness, or more precisely, my treatment for it, a very unhappy part of my life wheras the art side of things is one of the few things I have that I get some positive feedback from.