Schizophrenia and life

it is really hard to say because I have trouble concentrating sometimes, eventhough I try to make a normal life whenever people hear schizophrenia they panic and feel themselves inside of a horror movie or picture you as someone that will harm them in any moment. So I feel that I have to hide part of who I am all the time not to be considered a total nuts or dangerous. The medicine is ok, but I've gained weight

I've had schizophrenia for ten years and it started with hearing three voices who are still with me now. They talk around me and they can also see me all the time. It's a battle every day and depression is a uphill struggle to. They cause me severe pain when they want from bad migrains to projectile vomiting. I'm on olanzapine 15mg and resperidone 100mg veniflaxine 375mg but it never goes away. I'm in hell and don't know what to do now i'm saving up my olanzapine to commit suicide i'm at my wits end. I have no job no social life and no relationship it's all gone and i feel like im just existing from one day to the next. I can't tell my nurse as she might hospitalize me. I rarely sleep they see to that and my weight has went up dramatically also my face changes when i look in the mirror looking back is a stranger. I am an alcolhic but not had a drink in three years. I'm an empty shell of my former self i've had enough i can't do another ten years of this living hell xx

My step-son had the diagnosis of Schizophrenia now changed to Schizoaffective Disorder.  He also has severe Paranoia and has suffered from Depression and Suicidal Tendancy at times.  He is an Alcoholic, having self medicated with alcohol before being diagnosed and medicated.

I think one of the worst thing is the way the media portray Schizophrenia - they always love the opportunity to say the perpetrator of a crime was a Schizophrenic, particularly if it was a violent crime.  I know from dealing with my step-son in the height of one of his paranoid delusions that he is frightened of others, and would not be a threat to them in the ordinary course of events.  I think only if in his paranoia he thought he was at risk from someone and thought he needed to hit out to protect himself.  I do wonder if this is often the case when Schizophrenics are accused of murder or violence in the media, but that wouldn't make a good headline story would it?

I recall one occasion when my step-son, who was sectioned at the time, escaped from hospital in the early hours of the morning.  We got the dreaded telephone call and went out to look for him in the dark and rain - a hopeless task really.  After a couple of hours driving around the town we realised how futile this was and returned home.  Our dog who had accompanied us in the car and was now on a lead, started to bark and pull towards a gap down the side of a shed between it and a wall.  We restrained her, shone our torch and there was our son, cowering in the very back of the gap in shorts and T-shirt, wet to the skin, with his arms up in front of his face in the foetal position, begging 'Don't hurt me, please don't hurt me'.  His father went to put his arm around him and he flinched as if he had been struck.  Had he been in possession of a weapon, would he have lashed out in his delusion and terror?  That is the only time other than in films, I have seen abject on a person's face.  It has lived with me ever since.

We got him into the house, into dry clothes, got some hot food and hot drink into him, but hardest of all, as he was on a section we were obliged to ring the police to pick him up.  You can perhaps imagine how hard that is  - calling the police on your son who is ill, confused, frightened and cold.  While we waited, it transpired that he believed the hospital was not really a hospital, that it was a facility full of actors pretending to be doctors and nurses working for THEM, his voices.  When he was in the shower and not able to hear, he believed they were going to evacuate the place and set fire to it to kill him by burning.  He had stopped showering, but that night a staff member had told him he would have to shower in the morning and a male nurse was going to make sure he did.  This is why he had planned a time when he could abscond while the night staff were busy with their take away food!

The police duly arrived, and to our horror, handcuffed him and took him back to hospital handcuffed in the back of a riot van!  Back to the place he believed was going to burn him to death, handcuffed!  Given the chance and a weapon to hand, would he have tried to prevent this - quite possibly!  The media would have had another sensational headline about a murdering Schizophrenic, without knowing the facts, and I believe without actually caring that these are people's lives they are sensationalising. 

Suncatcher2015