Psychosis is a strange, terrifying experience. Once I realized I was (or had been?) psychotic, I questioned absolutely everything that I experienced, unable to tell the difference between reality and whatever was going on in my head. I’m going to start where I think the psychosis began, although I honestly have no way of knowing what was real and what wasn’t, because I was alone for most of the events that occurred so I have no one to fact check with. These events took place in June 2013.

When my symptoms first started, I was working in the office of a day care during the day, and using every night. I can’t remember exactly what I was using, but I know I was sleeping so it probably wasn’t DXM. I think it may have been benzos (anti-anxiety medication).

Anyways, I was working in the office one day, and I overheard two coworkers talking about a girl who had a mental breakdown, in detail. I remember thinking that they were rude and uneducated on the subject. Looking back I am not entirely sure that conversation ever really took place. It seems a bit peculiar that they would be discussing a mental breakdown in such detail when I was on the brink of one myself.

I went home that night and “saw” what I believed to be a cyst on my leg. Logically, I tried to cut it out. Repeatedly. But it kept moving around. I finally realized, with my hands covered in blood and countless incisions on my leg, that I would not be able to stop this behaviour on my own, so I called an ambulance. I went to the hospital, where they informed me that I simply had anxiety. So being an addict, I convinced them to send me home with a prescription for more benzos.

The next day I went to work as usual. It was a Friday. After work I bought some DXM and sleeping pills and stopped at a bar on the way home. Big mistake. I took the pills in the bathroom, came out and ordered a drink. I meant to finish my drink and then go straight home, but for some reason I stayed. The mix of drugs and alcohol hit me hard. There was a man sitting beside me on a stool, who never said a word to anyone for the duration if my time there. In hindsight I’m not sure if he was a hallucination. I talked to the bartender for about 20 minutes before things got strange. I remember looking at the bartender when the drugs kicked in. I couldn’t talk at this point. I remember him asking me if I was okay, and me nodding. I remember my thought process. I was sure he was actually a woman disguised as a man. Paranoia. Okay.I knew that I needed to go home right now, but I knew that I wouldn’t be able to stand, let alone walk, if I got off the stool at that point.

The bartender said he was going to call me a taxi. I nodded. I threw up. Then he was calling me an ambulance. Fuck. “I’m fine!” I thought, but I couldn’t speak, so that didn’t help my case. The ambulance showed up. I remember trying to stand up at their request, and my legs shaking like crazy. Then I was at the hospital. I was so confused. They kept asking me what I had taken, and as the words would leave my mouth, I would forget the question. I wanted to cry. They were absurdly rude to me, basically yelling at me to try harder, but I was doing the best I could. It wasn’t good enough.

They needed a urine sample. I went into the bathroom. It took me an absurdly long time to get the sample because the drugs I was on stop urine output. I finally got the sample, then promptly spilled it all over the bathroom floor. I cleaned it up the best I could, all the while hooked onto an IV stand. So I left the bathroom without the sample, trying to explain to the nurses that I had HAD it, but I spilled it. They called me a liar. I went back to the hospital bed and spent hours lying there, listening to them talk to each other about me, calling me a liar over and over again (I don’t know if this really happened).

I had almost killed myself with the combination of substances I had ingested, so they sent me to mental health services. There I sat by myself for hours, watching to the nurses behind the glass, listening intently. They talked about how the bartender was asked if he wanted to press charges, but he had said no because I was a “nice girl” (pretty sure this didn’t really happen).

I talked to the crisis staff. They had a student sitting in on our conversations, who never said a word. To this day I don’t know if she existed or not. It was decided that I would stay the night in the crisis unit. I was given a room. This is where things started to get bad, fast. As I was lying in the bed with my eyes closed, I was sure that I could hear an entire Mexican family in the hallway, here to visit a patient with balloons and presents (yes, I could HEAR the balloons and presents).

Then the nursing students began to taunt me. They started making fun of me to one another in the hallway. A nurse came in to check on me. At this point I was in tears. I asked her to make them stop. She told me that they weren’t doing anything wrong. She left. The “taunting” got worse, and they started laughing at me. I left my room and approached the nursing station, and yelled at the nurse to make them stop. Instead she called security (which I supported because I thought they would be able to help save me from the evil nurse and her cruel students). Security arrived and I told them about how the staff were mocking me. They were very compassionate, but there was nothing they could do. They said I could file a complaint in the morning. But I no longer wanted to stay the night, because I didn’t feel safe in the care of the staff. So they let me leave! I had no idea that I was in a psychotic state and that I was making all of the taunting up in my head. I have no idea what the nurse thought was going on, but she obviously didn’t recognize that I was psychotic either, because she sent me on my merry way.

The next day I woke up and realized that what I thought had happened the night before probably didn’t actually occur. I went to see my family doctor. He prescribed me some sort of medication, and while I was waiting for it to be filled, I heard him whispering to the pharmacist about giving it to me in a blister pack. I never actually saw him and they never did give me a blister pack, so I think this was a hallucination.

Then I went to Walmart with my mother and Dan. Because that’s the perfect place to go when you’re having a psychotic breakdown and you’re questioning reality! Finally, I went home. At this point I was questioning everything I was seeing or hearing. I sat looking out the window of my apartment, asking Dan over and over: “Do you see that person? That dog? That car?”. I’m sure it was exhausting for him. But the good thing was he saw everything that I saw! The psychosis had broken.