Public Comment

Many of my readers probably know what it is like to go through a psychotic episode. It is hell. It is not only hell on the psychotic person, but also on family and anyone else who is trying to help a psychotic person get into treatment.

People probably wish they could wave a magic wand and get a relative or close person into treatment, whether voluntary or not. Just get meds into the person, any method that works. People have put medication into a relative's food. There are probably odder methods that can be thought up.

A psychotic person's belief system is usually fully out of sync with reality when their illness is in the severe stages. I'm aware of all of this because I have been psychotic.

I've been hospitalized four or five times in psych wards, and all but the first were relapses due to going off medication against medical advice--wherein I needed to be medicated to get a grasp of reality and get the psychosis under control.

Coming back to reality was good. The extreme disconnection from normal mental function had prevented me from interacting with anyone and it had made me exceedingly disabled. In some instances, I posed a danger--caused by disconnection from reality. How would it be if you believed that you could fly at will and you planned to get into a ten-thousand-pound speeding truck to prove it? Not to mention, psychosis is a harrowing thing to go through--and that's a vast understatement. 

When ill, I anticipated a major change for the better because I believed I was going to get something on which I was fixated. Upon returning to truth, I had the realization that it wasn't going to happen. This was disappointing. But the disappointment and facing the emotional pain inherent in my situation, included a release. And it included reaching acceptance. This doesn't encapsulate the problem. 

The deeper problem is where my brain has a biochemical malfunction that is about ninety percent responsible for me getting sick. But part of coming back is where I've accepted that what I'd hoped for wasn't going to happen--whatever it was at the time. The realization is important. 

Part of getting well on a long-term basis includes learning mindfulness in which you don't "cling" as heavily. The Four Noble Truths of Buddha: Number 2: "Suffering is caused by clinging." If you can't let go of something that life refuses to give you, you're stuck. If your mind refuses to release an unrealistic pipe dream, most likely you are headed the wrong way. 

You can pay now, or you can pay later. If you hang on too tightly to a person place or thing that you can't have, you will get sick. "Normal people" not subject to mental illness, find other ways to create problems for themselves and other people. Normal people could be just as insistent on getting something they can't have, but it doesn't cause a relapse of psychosis or mood swings. Non mentally ill people are just as capable of creating a nuisance, but it will be an "appropriate" nuisance, one that isn't condemned. 

Mindfulness is therapeutic, along with medication and not instead of it. Mindfulness can be the magic wedge that allows you to voluntarily take prescribed medication. 

I am still susceptible to illusions, and I continue to need medication to maintain a semblance of normal. But my practices of mindfulness have yielded the capacity to let go. Please note this is not the equivalent of giving up. You should never give up on life. And if you're in the middle of trying to accomplish something realistically attainable, maybe postpone getting sick until after you pass the finish line. 

People are very condemnatory. Social norms are narrowing, and we live in a culture of non-permission. Society frowns on people who are after something they can't have. That's not good or evil; that's just how it is. You can say society is unfair, but at the end of the day, we must comply with the applicable part of society (e.g., courts, police, candy stores, doctors) insists that we do. 

You could paint me as a disgruntled "normal, lazy, shameful" person but that's just not accurate. You should have seen me in '96, in '90, or at the beginning of the eighties. It is a biological condition and not a character deficiency. 

This is not to claim that I've had fabulous character. I try to do the right thing, that's all I can say. Bad character doesn't cause mental illness. Good character doesn't cause health. 

Mindfulness also helps combat anosognosia. When I emotionally reached acceptance of my illness and became emotionally okay that I have a condition requiring treatment, this greatly reduces susceptibility to lack of insight about the condition. This accepting attitude comes from years of practicing mindfulness.  

Jack Bragen writes and lives in Martinez, California.