A Life Interrupted Nothing Is As It Appears

June 15, 2015

Langley, B.C.: Policemen Aren’t Your Friends Part 7

city of langely sign

To recap the tale so far, I, being a homeless, untreated schizophrenic living on the street at the time, was set upon without provocation by Constable Shithead in Langley, B.C. late one night after I exited a bar at closing time.  The ever charming Constable Shithead laid a beating on me at the side of the street, loaded me into his cruiser, and carted my sorry ass about 15 kms out of town where he hauled me out of the cruiser and abandoned me at the side of the road with the instruction to not return too Langley. Outraged and full of righteousness, and with a sizeable chip on my shoulder, I made my way on foot back to the city to seek retribution for my mistreatment. Arriving at the police station, I was turned away by an officer manning the front desk with the flimsy excuse that he could not formally lodge a complaint against Constable Shithead because he lacked a supply of forms upon which to take my statement.  Fully convinced that I was being deflected by the officer in an effort to protect Constable Shithead, I got quite pissy with the officer. Having kicked the beehive so to speak, I left in a fit of impotent rage to go and sleep the night away and fight the battle another day, unaware that the police, like a swarm of angry bees, had plans of their own.  The opening of this, the seventh part in the series, sees me confronted by two people in front of a strip plaza just outside the city center three or four days after my attendance at the police station.
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May 21, 2015

Langley, B.C.: Policemen Aren’t Your Friends Part 6

city of langely sign

Hello folks.  I’m back. I must apologize profusely for the abject neglect of my blog these last six or seven months and ask your forgiveness. As events were, I experienced a schizophrenic episode and was temporarily disabled. My doctor instructed me to cease my usual endeavors and prescribed a period of rest and relaxation until I recovered.  I have just now begun picking up again my usual commitments and obligations and have only recently returned to work. Going forward, my attention to my blog will again be more regular. read more

October 12, 2014

Schizophrenia Simulator

Anderson Cooper, from CNN, tries life as a schizophrenia using a simulator.

Anderson Cooper, from CNN, tries life as a schizophrenia using a simulator.

This is just a little teaser of interest I found to hold you over until the next installment of Langley, B.C.: Policemen Aren’t Your Friends, as I have fallen behind. The next installment should appear in the next two or three days.  In the meantime, follow the link below to watch Anderson Cooper experience a simulation of hearing voices. This video shows in simulation what would take a thousand words to describe and still not convey the experience as pointedly. Watch the following video as posted on Youtube: read more

August 20, 2014

Langley, B.C.: Policemen Aren’t Your Friends Part 4

After a five minute pow-wow the two officers split up. The second officer went back to his cruiser, pulled away from the curb and disappeared into the night.  Constable Shithead entered into the driver’s seat of our cruiser and started the engine.

“What’s happening?” I asked anxiously through the plexi-glass divider on the back of his seat that stood between us.

“Shut up!” he barked with what I had come to recognize as his usual charm. He accelerated the cruiser away from the curb and drove off down the road heading to the outskirts of town with the dash cluster casting a dim blue light upon his visage the side of which I could see over his right shoulder. read more

August 9, 2014

Langley, B.C.: Policemen Aren’t Your Friends Part 3

Seeing that I was no longer any risk of resisting the policeman stood up.  Towering over me, he reached with his right hand across his upper torso to the mic of his radio located on his left shoulder and called for back-up, not that I was in a position too pose any threat. Pulling a set of cuffs from his belt, the policeman knelt down, rolled me over on my stomach, and cuffed my hands behind my back. He then angrily told me to get up lifting me by my bound hands at the same time. He walked me over to the cruiser, opened the back door, and roughly shoved me inside. I had caught my breath and, not daunted by my wounded pride and rough treatment, anger burned in my gut. read more

June 29, 2014

Medicated For Your Protection

In my post, “Coping With Hearing Voices,” I mentioned that one of my coping strategies was the use of prescription drugs.  In this post I am going to discuss in more detail my use of prescription drugs to treat schizophrenia and some of my thoughts around the use of drugs to treat this supposed disease, briefly discuss the medications I take, and finishing off by noting a  couple of the side effects of taking the medication.

As it was explained to me some time after my diagnosis of schizophrenia and the beginning of medical treatment for that disease, in the simplest sense, my condition was brought on by a chemical imbalance in my brain. The use of anti-psychotics then was meant to correct that chemical imbalance. This view takes almost no interest in what has happened to you in life and focuses solely on treating the disease. The prognosis indicated that my affliction would last a lifetime and therefore the use of medication would necessarily last a lifetime as well. Without medication I would be unable to function and further, I could be construed a danger to myself or others. So sayeth the medical model. Halleluiah. Amen. read more

June 14, 2014

Don’t Kid yourself. There Is Always Another Voice Telling Me What To Do.

My analytics on the blog indicate that the most popular of my posts to date is the Die!Die!Die! post in which I discussed the die command, a pernicious voice in my head that persistently and over the years periodically commands me to die. As the discussion of the experience of being in the head of someone who hears voices seems to be a popular one, I would like to return to it and discuss further the experience of voice commands in an effort to give my readership more of what they seem to find interesting. read more

March 15, 2014

Coping With Hearing Voices Part 3 of 3

In this third and final part of a three part series of posts on strategies for coping with hearing voices  I share a final four strategies that I employ to keep functioning at a high level.
7. Keeping occupied.  While I am a strong proponent of having down time to think and reflect or pursue pleasing hobbies, I am a firm believer that a person needs meaningful occupation to be well balanced. I know I do. Consequently, I have chosen to remain employed instead of going on disability when it was offered and having nothing purposeful to apply myself too. It is my belief that without something purposeful to apply oneself to on a regular basis one goes into decline and the condition that caused the disability worsens. This has been true for me. And for me, much of my sense of self-worth comes from the fact that I work full time and am financially independent, especially of the state. My experience has taught me that I do better with my condition when I am working than when I am unemployed and left with nothing but time on my hands. While I do believe that there are times when it is necessary to take a step back from employment when one is in crisis because of a condition, it is essential to return to steady employment, or, as an alternative, possibly volunteer work, on a full time basis as soon as possible. In my last episode 2.5 years ago I was back to work in 6 weeks after persuading my doctor(a general practitioner) that I was ready even though she prescribed at least a four month recovery period. The mind that is occupied with a worthy undertaking has no time to occupy itself with lesser things, particularly the unending chatter of idle voices in my head. read more

March 11, 2014

Coping With Hearing Voices Part 2 of 3

Last week I shared three strategies for coping with hearing voices: detachment, acceptance, and self-restraint. In this the second part of a series of three I discuss three more strategies I employ to cope with hearing voices.

4. Support Network. Having people who I trust and respect to talk too about what goes on inside with the voices and other matters is a more recent strategy.  After some failed attempts to communicate my experiences to professionals and some friends leading up too 1994 and beyond, because of the negative responses I learned to keep my troubles to myself. However, in recent years I have discovered, or rediscovered, a psychological benefit in being able to enter into open discussions with select trusted peoples I can create an environment of emotional safety and support where I am not judged, medicated, or ‘fixed.’ When the voices are at their worst I find a release in talking with trusted people instead of bottling it up inside and becoming overwhelmed. I attend a weekly men’s support group and have a small group of trusted confidants of which one is a licensed therapist.  These exchanges help me stay grounded and keep life in perspective, which lessens the impact of the voices. As well, I keep in regular contact with friends and family on a daily basis, which helps me avoid becoming isolated with the voices and my issues. In my experience, psychiatrists have proven untrustworthy and my exchanges with them have been largely unproductive if not injurious. Beyond writing prescriptions they seem to have little else to offer.  Besides target practice I have little use for them.  I use a General Practitioner to prescribe any medications I might need and help me manage the condition from a medical perspective. At present, there are no psychiatrists in my support network and I figure that I do just fine without them. read more

March 4, 2014

Coping With Hearing Voices Part 1 of 3

Voices in my head never go away.  They just fade in and out, which is to say that some days they are less active than others.  I have been hearing voices in my head in some shape or fashion for over twenty years, and so I have devised some coping strategies that allow me to function in the outer world and attend to my day to day. In this post I would like to share some of the coping strategies for living with voices in my head that I have used to varying degrees of success through the years and continue to employ in the present. read more

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