The say I'm ill

Everyone keeps saying i'm ill, but i'm not sure if I am. Admittedly I find life unusually hard compared to others and apparently I experience things other people don't, I think they're lying truth be told.

I hear voices without owners and have done since I was 8 years old, so over 11 years now, i'm 19. Though either i'm special and god like or everyone's lying to me and they can hear them too or hear voices of their own. But I think everyone just pretends not to hear them, after all they do exist as I certainly didn't create them.
I also "hallucinate" nor so they say. I see things that aren't quite real, melting walls, rooms of fire, rivers of purple lava, strange people. No one else is bothered by them, so perhaps only I can see them. Still they're damn real so why peoeple say they're part of my imagination is stupid. Yesterday I was shot by one of my old psychiatrist's snipers, in the arm, it really hurt and blood gushed everywhere, that was definately real. But fortunately it healed quickly though my arm still hurts.

My old psychiatrist is the main reason for my problems, she has cameras everywhere and microphones, usually hidden in places like plug sockets and cracks in the wall and light fittings. She's also in control of the news stations and tries to deliver messages through them though I try not to notice, I certainly don't want to be brainwashed and become a robot. All the students in my college are robots, somewhat scary really. So I no longer go to college very often.

I've been to hospital a few times, and I did think perhaps there was something wrong with me, after all no one else used to try and cut their leg off because of the maggots. But now I realise it's all lies. My doctor, my psychiatrist (not the evil one) and my psychologist all say i'm ill with a psychotic affliction of some kind or dissociative phenomena, posibly schizophrenia, but they won't say.
All this time from when I was 15 i've been pumped with a coctail of drugs to try and combat this supposed illness, but the drugs don't work so there is obviously no illness in the first place. I'm currently on a low dose of aripiprizole (sp?) to test for side effects. I think it's just a placebo as nothing's happened, not that I need medication. Though now my psychiatrist has resigned and my psychologist retired, convenient eh? So i'll never find out what they were thinking until I get new ones which won't be for a while.

So i'm brought here, to people who know about these illnesses or experience them themselves, with a queston; i've given a brief snapshot of me, now would you say i'm 'ill'? ie psychotic, dellusional, paranoid, dissociating, all those words that have been applied to me in the past or am I perfectly fine like I think and everyone else is wrong?

As long as people with opposite views stay polarised on their side there is actually no such thing as 'right or wrong'. You would have to meet somewhere halfway to figure it out for yourself.

Since the medication you're getting is a placebo that should show you that nobody wants to do you any harm.

Good luck

holy crap, your psychiatrist has a sniper?
Im also 19, and ive also been pumped with a cocktail of drugs since 15...although I dont think many people would see psychedelics as medicine...
Well..hallucinating isnt foreign to me, although I know when something is or isnt real. It just takes a bit of logic. Although, after thousands spent on psychedelic drugs, Ive never seen purple rivers, or walls of fire...I have seen melting walls, and melting just about everything..And what Ive learnt from this is when your wasted, you know your wasted, but when your totally tripping balls, your not so sure. You sound like your tripping balls. All I can say is embrace the moment. An increased sensitivity to reality can make the world beautiful, or hellish. Just promise me you'll never buy a gun.

You have absolitely no idea how angry that post made me. Drugs? For ****'s sake, I can't stand people who take drugs, to induce what I have to suffer every single day of my life for a laugh? It's pathetic. I'm not tripping, this happens to me every day without any drug inducing it, otherwise I wouldn't have been facing hospitalistaion several times.
And a bit of logic to differenciate between reality and hallucination, well I can't tell the difference between reality and my so called hallucinations, as far as I'm concerned I don't hallucinate, I'm only told I do because apparently no one else sees or hears all the **** I see and hear logic doesn't come into it all, I have no logic apparently, I have twisted logic.
Embrace the moment? 11 years I've had of this, thsi isn't some one time thing . Christ, you're off your head, you'll all flipping crazy, I am the only sane one. Why on earth I came onto this forum I don't know.

What you call reality is just a perception. All anyone views of the outside world and knows within themselves is subjective.Perceptions can be altered permanently (by a personal choice (sort of a 'self brainwashing'), with foreign chemicals, or even personal experiences). Since your perception of 'reality' differs so greatly from the collective norm you are viewed as ill by society, especially due to the fact that your current perception seems to cause you distress.
I have heard voices and hallucinated people, or more accurately spirits of some sort, while on no drugs of any kind (including pharmaceutical). This was before I had even touched a joint, before I was ever diagnosed with anything. Granted they were not as prominent as you describe yours to be, but I realize now that they have been gone for a couple years that no, most people don't hear or see them. Most don't have the paranoid 'delusions' that you have or I used to. I believe mine were a product of clinical depression, which I still have, and posibly an overactive imagination- at the time I had "magical thinking" as it's called. If your state of mind were not interfering in such a negative manner I would say screw what they say to be normal and enjoy your life, but from your post I would say that staying in treatment is a better option.
The mind is capable of all sorts of things, it wouldn't be too very unlikely that we were just unanimate brains fabricating a body and reality of our own, but would that make our experience any less valid? Everything you are experiencing feels very real to you, to others what they experience may even feel rather fake to them (dissociation), but each differing perception only becomes a problem when it causes harm to yourself or others. My aunt is diagnosed schizophrenic, it was scary driving with her but aside from times my life was in her hands in a moving hunk of metal she was rather harmless. I would see her doing herself in before anyone else, but her reality was so overwhelmingly negative that I did genuinely want to help her reason a way out of it. Perceptions can and do change, mine has a time or two, so good luck if you are looking to alter yours.

that sounds like acid hallucinations...!!!!!!! when i was hallucinating from psychosis, walls never melted...I could see people dancing, and groups of people calling me over, but never walls melting..i guess we could just be different. Also writing on the walls lol....but it'd change into nazi signs more i moved closer...and dogs chasing me!!! in circles. I must've looked really strange!

Also it is obvious to me you're mentally ill and not a psychic....you have paranoia and confused thinking. Trouble is if you're anything like i was, any logic and fact standing in the way of your paranoid thought, is easily thought to be a lie by "them" to make me think "this" and "that" makes me think "this" because "that" previous "that" means a new "this"

I hope you continue to visit the board, as it does seem as if you have a problem and maybe people here could help you and share experiences.

There's no need to be offended by the talk of recreational drugs.

When scientists in research laboratories test for new drugs to treat schizophrenia, they often use hallucinogenic drugs such as pcp and lsd and then they try to find a drug that will stop the effects of these drugs, which hopefully therefore has potential to treat the illness.

Most people don't hear voices - however there is their own sort of voice of consciousness - perhaps some people misinterpret this as a voice not of their own.

Actually a huge number of people hear voices. And relatively few of those actually have schizophrenia; most are people with anxiety, BPD, depressive illnesses, OCD; the list goes on.

One of the most common reasons people hear voices is simply that they cannot deal with thoughts they feel have no part of them; those thoughts *are* their own, but in order to justify them, they create voices. It is also the case that the vast majority of those with no mental issues also hear 'inner voices' - the internal dialogue that most people have with themselves most of the time. Normal stuff. When thoughts feel alien to a person for some reason, the brain then creates an outside voice for those thoughts; it's the personality's way of dealing with thoughts it cannot reconcile with it's own view of itself.

Unfortunately voice-hearers have become inseperable from schizophrenics over the years; but the reality is that hearing voices certainly doesn't indicate schizophrenia alone, and may not even indicate any disorder at all. There are millions of people who hear voices who do not have mental health issues, do not find the voices a problem, and never enter the system at all.

It's all about how you define your voices, and deal with them.

Had to add; true psychosis (and certainly schizophrenia) results in an inability to use logic or follow arguments. Organic Twiglet's posts are very lucid, in spite of their content; if OT was truly schizophrenic you'd expect to see a relative posting what she has about her, rather than a first person account.

Logic is an odd thing; when I was last ill, I wrote down my arguments - yeh, right. I know what I meant. But the content?? Jeez. none of it makes sense. It's random, senseless... It is the destruction of personality. Schizophrenia results in a fragmentation of personality that makes communication of things like OT is talking about impossible. OT's account reads like someone's observations of schizophrenia; not actual experiences told in the first person.

Hun, whatever your problem is, or isn't, if you were schizophrenic, you couldn't have posted that. Maybe you're ill; maybe not. i don't know. But trust me; there are more ways of dealing with voices and delusions than just popping pills because some psych takes the easy way out and slaps a label on you.

Voices suck. I hate them. But you can learn to live with them, whatever is causing them (same with the visuals... been there too.) As for are you nuts? who cares?? You're you. Unique. We're all unique. Embrace that... and stuff the rest.