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01-10-2016, 06:11 PM
(This post was last modified: 01-10-2016, 06:15 PM by Coelacanth. Edited 1 time in total.)
A late, great friend of mine was paranoid schizophrenic. He had it bad. He loved to take xtc as often as he could, daily at times. Said it made him feel better, more like a normal person. It allowed him to see his friends and hang out, and keep his illness from totally controlling him. It was no miracle treatment in my eyes, maybe just enough to feel slightly better for a short part of the day. God knows what the comedowns must have done to him.
We all advised against this regular use but he carried on anyway. I would sometimes join him in getting high as he was doing it regardless of whether I did or not. It meant I could spend time with him and try to help him. I spent years trying to help him without much success. It's really hard to stop someone from feeling good when the alternative is to suffer from a terrible condition.
Anyway, my point in bringing it up is that he spent most of his adult life in mental hospitals. (for much longer durations after the xtc taking) He used to get arrested on purpose so that they would admit him again when he was badly ill. He was never seen around for very long and when he was seen he was on so much prescribed meds that he was a completely different person.
My thoughts are that if he kept off the illegals (no rc's back then) maybe he could have spent more time outside of the homes. No way of knowing for sure.
Was a lovely guy too, never a danger to anyone no matter how ill he got. I wish I had gotten more time to spend with him. The medications he tried never worked for long, or he'd stop taking them as he'd hate becoming like a zombie, hence why he chose xtc.
I don't know much about the illness or the meds beyond what he would tell me, but I kept hoping/expecting that someday the doctors would find a combination that would let him function in the outside world.
It never happened as he died far too early. (Not from anything i've written about here) Wish I'd had the chance to spend more quality time with him. It would sometimes be years before I heard from him again, and those times were usually about some delusion he needed to tell me about.
Sorry for going all personal. I'm not trying to scare you or anything. I just wanted to say how a quick fix that doesn't seem to do much damage at the time could have negative repurcussions as you get older. You're still young and could live a healthy and happy life, as many schizophrenia sufferers no doubt do. I'm not saying you're like my friend at all. I just think it would be good to properly think of the future, and how you'd like that to be. Mental illness can change over time, and what we do now could effect us later in life. (I suffer from depression and anxiety and believe it's in some small part from what I've done to myself over the years, but far from the only reason)
You could always take a break to evaluate what and why you do what you do. Make plans for the future you want to have, like exploring whether your diagnosis is correct or not, and what you need to do about it. eg Okay, i've seen specialists and they all agree I have ..... condition so how do I go about managing it so that I can work my dream job, have a family and be at this place in my life in 10 years time or whatever. I may be able to keep it completely under control with certain meds etc, so am I jeapordizing things by my current actions.
You get the idea. I think it's important to make a plan if you're diagnosed with a possible life changing condition, whether it's diabetes, cancer, depression or anything else.
Think what you want to happen in your life and whether something is a real help or a possible hinderance. You don't want to look back at your life in years to come and have major regrets. We all have enough regrets to deal with, you can trust me on that. It's the really big ones that matter most.
I wish you luck.