I had government insurance last year, and lost it. It’s been a year without meds now. I was doing alright for a while, managed the symptoms through routine and physical activity, but I’m really struggling this month. The catatonic phase lasted for so fucking long I barely even recognized it was starting. But I’m seeing the altars again, the shadow people, social interaction is starting to become unbearably anxious, I feel like the person in my brain watching me fry the egg. The lines going between everything. One of them is watching me.
And this psychosis wave is fucking terrible compared to my last one. When shit started popping off for me, it was this dream like euphoric mania, where I’d see things like tree leaves on a color gradient, or start hearing full songs just start playing out of nowhere. The only way I can describe it is feeling like a main character of a play. Not in the sense that I’m particularly important or unique, more in the way that it felt like whoever was watching wasn’t a stalker but like a film director, picking when to play songs. I used to hallucinate friends I hadn’t spoken to in years, and would occasionally get to have chats with “them”. This all was extremely unhealthy, but at least it was pretty easy to cope with.
It felt infinitely funnier back then. As time has gone on, the thought irregularities have become darker and more disruptive. First episode lasted really long before the mania crash, but this just feels like already being in the mania crash and it only has lower to go
I know I need to be on meds, but I haven’t had money or insurance for it. America wants schizophrenic people in psychosis and homeless.
This sounds really hard. I admire the humor and perseverance you’ve used to get this far, and I hope things get easier.
Are there any addiction clinics around you? Usually the income cutoff for their help isn’t much better than the cutoff for government help, but sometimes they are more flexible. The place I go for my ADHD meds markets itself as an addiction clinic for opiates and has a wider income range they help than other offices in the area. Their clinicians are psychiatric nurse practitioners who can prescribe controlled substances, though, which means they work just fine for my needs.