Lukas Allen

            When I started to hear voices and was labeled with the illness of schizophrenia, I felt completely and totally alone. It wasn’t the sort of “alone” that comes from having something I believed no one else could identify with, even though that was much closer to what it was, it was an alone against many. It was the diagnosis of schizophrenia and the symptom of hallucinations.

            The reason for my voices was magical thinking tied to reality around me, even if unseen. I tried to understand what I was going through, and the only thought that made sense was something perhaps impossible but unproven. My explanation for my voices was telepathy, a telepathic hive mind that actually everyone experiences. I was terrified, as everyone seemed to be in on the joke and I had arrived late. And I was the joke. These telepathic bullies harassed me for so long, and I was afraid to tell anyone about them. There was nothing I could hide from them, unless I actually didn’t know it. Still, they would make judgements and conclusions foreign to me, and spoke in ways I never heard before. The worst bit was that they could see through me, to my unspoken thoughts, and talked in this telepathy like it was something normal and common, able to spread my secrets and play on my trauma.

            Although, the very notion that there are other explanations given by voice hearers as to what the voices are already seems to dispute my delusional theory. People believe in ghosts, aliens, all sorts of phenomena that could actually be the voices but that none can agree on. In fact, it is actually common for people in a bereavement state to have a hallucination or some other “supernatural” occurrence while they are in the grieving state. The commonality of the occurrence of hearing voices in a way disproves my own fears regarding hearing them.

            I often feel alone with the word “schizophrenia” almost physically attached to me. If anything, it’s a heavy mental weight to carry along. The notion that I actually am alone compare to the many is what the label of schizophrenia produces, practically all it produces. It seems to purposefully create shame, guilt, isolation, and doubt to one who has the word invisibly branded on them. A lot of the times it is used in that way, and is only used as a slur instead of as a medical term.

            I learned, slowly but utterly, that there are other people who can understand my illness, and even have varying degrees of it themselves. I learned, even though it is a heavy task, that I do not have to use the word given to me by doctors themselves. I don’t have to use the word “schizophrenia” in any event. I can speak to others who also have similar diseases or occurrences, and perhaps we can all shrug the word off eventually.

            I am alone against the voices, no one can change that. I am the only one who can hear them and react to them. I do not need to fight the entire battle alone, though. I can change my thinking, if not the voices, I can react positively rather than negatively, and I can find allies, no matter how insignificant they may seem.

            I was alone, with a curse word label and legion of hallucinations.

            I am not alone today.

Lukas Allen

            I went for my routine blood test for the medication I am taking. I want to get off this certain medication, Clozaril, as the blood tests are quite annoying. Every week, I have to get blood drawn to make sure my white blood cell count isn’t lower, because of that medication.

            It was routine, I talked with the nurse a bit about my predicament, hearing voices, about what medication I’m taking and the like, and that she had a niece who heard voices too. That, hearing voices, is the main symptom which I want to get rid of. The medication kind of gets rid of it, but I want to be on Abilify now and maybe something else, instead of Clozaril. Even other hallucinations are at bay because of my current medication, but the Clozaril does make things uncomfortable.

            Clozaril side effects for me include sleeping 14 hours or so, unpleasant weight gain, and the feeling like my body is shutting down when I first take another dose. I can’t tell if it helped with the symptoms of my illness, but I think it has stopped a lot of them. I just dislike all the side effects, with the weekly blood draw. They are all very irritating.

            I got my blood drawn, said bye to the nurses, and waited around for my dad to pick me up.

            The guard asked me if I worked here, and I said no I was a patient, just waiting. I was waiting inside because it was warmer.

            I went up to him, to bullshit. I thought about it, and wondered if I could learn something about medicine, especially about my illness. I could take some classes or something, and asked him if he knew of any place I could learn from.

            I told the guard that I had schizophrenia, which was a mistake.

            He asked me other questions, how long until my ride would be here, but I went to the front desk woman and asked her for sources of learning I could find. She was very receptive, and we talked like civilized people.

            She called for more sources, including the “fourth floor” which worked a lot on people with mental illnesses. She got me their number if I needed to call, as well as a pamphlet for NAMI. I said I didn’t have a primary, a doctor which is the regular one to go.

            The people she called asked her if I needed to go the emergency room.

            I talked with her some more, and she said to them it sounded like I did not need to go the emergency room, based on how we were speaking. It made me frustrated that once I say what my illness is, SCHIZOPHRENIA, that everyone instantly freaks out and thinks I need to be strapped down or something.

            The guard was waiting to ask more questions, but I was talking with the front desk and I suppose he was satisfied. Damned badge must’ve thought I was an escaped lunatic.

            Once I told the woman I was seeing a psychiatrist, and who it was, she seemed much more relieved. She sympathized with me about the prejudice given towards me because of my illness, SCHIZOPHRENIA.

            I walked outside quickly when her and I finished the conversation, and I waited outside, asking my dad by phone to please come and pick me up quickly, as I had to get out of here. I didn’t want to be “detained” for having my illness.

            Even as a straight white man, I get prejudice regarding my illness of schizophrenia. People immediately think I might be violent, or am about to do something crazy. It frustrates the fuck out of me. My dad joked with me about it on the car ride back, and that made me feel a bit better. People who know and care for me understand, while most people, unless they know someone in a similar position, do not. From cops, guards, nurses, doctors, random acquaintances, or other, does schizophrenia immediately scream DANGER.

            I will learn in spite of their prejudice, and figure out my illness on my own front.

            But just in case, I learned not to bullshit with a badge, something my dad told me on the car ride home. They are not your friend, buddy, or best pal. They are authorized to use force against what they see as dangerous, even lethal force.

I hate being labeled as a criminal for my illness. I am not a criminal, nor do I deserve special unorthodox treatment for having a disease that ruins my life in ways. I am the victim and not the perpetrator of whatever schizophrenia means to people.

I got a Philly cheesesteak at a gyro spot, and went home, happy that I could.

Lukas Allen

            In this segment I will try to relieve myself of trauma by writing it in a different light, something empowering to me. A friend told me that this will help me get past this creative block which is my trauma. I keep getting stuck thinking about the past, and I just want to move forward.

            And I lived happily ever after. I fought for so long, the scars eternally on my fist. I stood up against horror and adversity. I succeeded, in the end. I unjustly went to jail, but escaped with nothing on my record. I am free.

            My fist sometimes has phantom pains. But it is not a memory of horror, the scar is instead a symbol of victory. I for so long believed it was one of my own mistakes, but in the end I got out of it all with only a scar on my fist, a reminder of hope, my will, and my inevitable victory. The scars even can look like jc, and remind me of faith where I have an eternal ally on my side as well, Jesus.

            I survive, from flipping coins of life and death to facing a brutal and unfair justice system. I live on! I beat that cop, even though he threw all he could at me. I BEAT HIM! Lukas Allen lives again. That is one traumatic hallucination that can be put to rest. I beat you, cop. Fuck you, cop! Go to Hell, JK

            The other hallucination, a past person I knew. M. I survived against her hallucination, and found instead she is a nice person for real. This person I attributed so much trauma to, but really they are unattached to my horrors. They’re just a nice person on their own. Ha… Stupid hallucinations. At the end of all the delusions, there was just a friend. I won over a friend, even though my illness was fighting against me for so long. But M is not the worst hallucination.

            J and K are. K… was nothing but a liar. She blatantly told cops bullshit to try and get me in trouble. “Sending a dick pic…” I would never do that. She turned out to be worse than I thought, and is partially the reason she was in my head for so many long years. Her catch phrase is “stop it.” She is incredibly annoying and pointless. There is no reason for her to speak, and the more she does the more it feels like someone’s throwing a rock in my brain. Stop yourself, stupid K. She misled me and abused me, as a voice in my head, and was no better in real life. I will never take her evils again. She has failed against me.

            J… You are the worst voice I ever had. You have no basis in reality, only in my self doubt, paranoia, and anxiety. You do not matter in my real life, and even though you tried your hardest to get me to kill myself, you will never win. Your hate enforces my will to live. I live despite your hate, and I use my wit, humor, or anger to put you in place. You will never take my life and mind.

            The four hallucinations, people who are traumatic to me, have been put to rest.

            I have won.

            And the hero can finally start his story.

            I begin.

Lukas Allen

               Just think of them as puppets, puppets held up by a-

            I suppose by a monster.

            I don’t know what is at the other end of the voices. I don’t know, and nobody seems to know. They don’t sound like me. They don’t act like me. Where do they get their personality?

            I put on my favorite blue hat. Had this hat since forever, since I was a child. I hear something loud far away in the distance, which is probably a gun shot.

            The hat is comfortable, feels lucky. It is a cherished valuable to me.

            I am an author and artist. I am in a better position than I ever have been. I’ve been approved for disability income, I am safe, I have medication. I am not always depressed, and I am making great strides for my wellbeing.

            Some creators make their best work when they do not have the privilege of being in a good position. Sometimes, when a creator is scared, hungry, lonely, or depressed, they have the ability to create masterpieces. At least for themselves. When a creator has nothing, what they make may be what is saving their life. Art keeps the artist alive, maybe not with necessities for life, but with drive and purpose that is unmatched.

            I understand the need to create, the drive to write, to work on the book. It was the only way to keep the monsters back, the voices of my illness which cause me so much harm.

            Work on the book.

            That phrase was once commonly repeated by myself, written on the wall once in madness as well. It was my reminder. Perhaps a reminder to live.

WORK ON THE BOOK.

I would tell myself this, when I needed to get back to work. It sometimes seeped into some of my characters, as I would write fictional accounts of myself. One character said that’s all I cared about, the book, and she was probably right, just as I had written her.

The work wasn’t its own reward. The work was my need to survive. I’d often tell myself I’d kill myself, after I finish this book, this series, my next project… It was an ultimatum accidentally produced. Work on the book, or kill myself.

Thus, in order to belay that inevitable outcome, I would continue to write, to create, to build galaxies out of words spewing from my fingers like rushing rivers.

Writing was the only way I could actually think to myself… It was the only safe sanctum I had. The voices would yammer on, insulting me, hating me, hurting me. They could not do that in the worlds I created. They simply had no purpose there, and didn’t belong in my world. Still, I’d say they don’t belong here as well, but the only way I can enforce that is in my written words.

The other defense is music. Blasted into my ears, cranking up the volume, smashing my eardrums with the beat of percussion. I am not as experienced in creating beautiful music, and only ever have created a bit for myself for fun. Sometimes I only sing to myself, no one around, but mostly I am content as the listener.

The voices are quieted when concentrating on the music. I lose focus of them, and they eventually fall back. In my writing I would sometimes challenge the voices, sometimes try to portray my struggle to a viewing eye, whoever that would be. There were certain villains of absolute evil I brought in, specifically to defeat my worry about them, despite knowing they were fiction.

I only knew they were fiction when I am sane enough, and able to resist the voices. Still, sometimes I do not understand how my characters, especially evil characters, come from my mind. It is some illusion, that even I do not understand. I’m like a magician who believes in his own tricks.

I can always chop the writing to pieces, vivisect it until I find all I need to explain. In the moment of writing, even if I know my intentions for the characters I am producing, the story can sometimes twist and turn unbeknownst, as every encounter feels so real and in the moment. When I look back on what I’ve written, it is sometimes like looking back at an old family recording. I remember why I wrote that, how it felt to have this happen, as I know how the story has ended already written.

Some characters I have lived with even before their written form. Some characters. My villains. Let me flourish the blade once more, and step back from the curtain to allow the monsters to show their faces.

Are they the monsters? Or are they puppets themselves?

2.

In my illness I can often feel them on and under my skin, taking over my action as I am lucid they are there.

The first, although my second villain in my second series… Satan.

I grew up Catholic, and Satan is more real for some than others. I was always a strong skeptic, and even drifted away at the ridiculousness of my religion, believing in demons and devils when I know none are there.

I still know that Satan isn’t here… but it is strange that my own reclaimed belief believes in this form of evil. There is even a sort of oath, repeated in every Catholic mass, to deny Satan.

Are the words only rote repetition of tradition? Or do they mean something symbolically and analogous to real life? OR… Are there demons and devils in the night?

I worked on Satan as a villain as I was beginning to accept all the knowledge I had sponged up learning about my faith, and decided to put it to some sort of use. I thought Satan a classic villain that I could use in a broader sense. Satan to me means a few hard things. The first being suicide. I hate suicide, and I have wrestled for a long time with suicidal ideation and tendencies. I hate that I was in that pit, yet know that pit still has maws agape, for me and many others. The other characterization of Satan I battled was forgiveness.

I believe that anyone is redeemable, even though many hardcore Christians also believe in Hell, where strangely enough our all powerful, forgiving God cannot muster the powerful act of forgiveness, as Hell is the place where only the sinners go, for all the rest of their eternity.

I decided to use a little place not known to many of Christianity, even though it is doctrine somewhere, at some times. I used Purgatory, inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy wherein Purgatory was the second place Dante traversed, after he got out of the Inferno.

I brought Purgatory into my religious fiction stories, in order to give forgiveness to ultimate evil. Now, anyone can have forgiveness, we all have the power to give it, even if some do not ask for it.

Satan is one such character that can be forgiven, but it may never be taken. Satan was the hard baseline of ultimate evil. Satan was also the character who inspired my most hated of sins… suicide. Satan in my stories often whispers to the character, mocking them and their will to live. I believe that suicide is perhaps the worst sin, because when one commits suicide they are denying themselves life. In a way forgiveness and suicide are tied together, as forgiveness allows someone to change for the better, while suicide denies them any chance of life or change.

I don’t believe Satan is there… even if I have heard his whispered words myself, as hallucinations of my illness, and even had a hallucinatory shot in the head by Satan.

My illness makes impossibilities possible. It can change my perceptions, make monsters in the dark. They run rampant in my reality, and I often wish for saviors from my own Hell.

And strangely enough… saviors appear.

The first were my book characters, all fictitious, and then later on there was my Messiah, as well as a long dead uncle.

Do you believe in miracles?

I don’t. I have lived them firsthand, I have spoken to Jesus Christ and brought back the dead, but I do not believe in miracles.

I could easily classify Jesus and resurrection as hallucinations, and in a sane world, where I believe God is quiet to allow us to think for ourselves, I am prone to category them as such. I believe that a silent God is the best God, as I never want to hear another disembodied voice commenting on my life and giving me commands. In a sane world, God should be so good at his job that he is even blamed for not being there.

Jesus was a real, actual being to me in my absolute worst. He was right beside me, actually felt and heard, and I listened as he kept the ultimate evil back from my life. I first arose against God to fight him, but instead he saved me from even myself.

3.

I have another character that is more personal to me, a villain. He arose in my mind as a fascination, then as an obsession. His fractured skull was everywhere, bringing in horror I never knew existed. This being, the Lich, is symbolic to me as well, a being of madness.

Madness, to one who is sane, can seem like there is no rhyme or reason to any of it. The problem with having madness is that it is sane to the experiencer. Madness is the only way someone who’s crazy can organize their life. Madness can happen from stress, drugs and alcohol, loneliness, or even genetic disposition. There are many ways to be mad, what matters is what one can consider sane.

If there were no changes in the world, if everything was absolutely the same, we would all be sane as well. There is an unseen code to sanity, given by society and one’s own beliefs. There are vast learnings of what makes one insane, medical studies and studies done on a societal scale. I will, instead of damning another with a term of madness like I have been damned, instead speak about madness and sanity on a more personal scope.

The Lich to me was just a picture. A character, created by me and accidentally given more and more purpose in my life. Just a picture… sometimes thought of as a spirit as well. This skeletal monster continued to grow and grow and grow. It terrified me but I could not look away. In some very early writings of mine the character grew too much, feeding off my own thoughts and somehow being poised against me.

I tried to reckon with this madness, I tried to make my mind clear again, but I fell more and more into suicidal thoughts, and once crazy thoughts became more real, the Lich only grew and grew. I was obsessed with it at a point, and as I drew and redrew the creature, the less I could get rid of it.

They were horrible times for me, and the Lich was only another character amidst the madness. The unholy trinity we were… Satan, the Lich, and I. Satan was sometimes my dead “granddad” based off a real person I am related to, smoking a cigar in the shadows beside my hospital bed, as I lay petrified that he was right there. The Lich, being many different characters, like an imagined serial killer dead in the basement, to even me, was horrifying me as I tried to make sense of my crazy surroundings, that every horrible, little thing there was another secret meaning to, that of course I somehow knew.

I spoke of truth, believing I could see the lies. The reality was that they were all lies… every little thing. But who was the liar? Partially me, and partially the hallucinations.

I do blame my madness on the hallucinations, despite not knowing exactly how they manifest. I just also blame myself for not being able to pull myself out of it.

I forgive myself for my madness… Sometimes forgiveness of self can be the hardest part. I only can pray that I will not fall down that horrible pit again.

4.

So why do these hallucinations appear as they do? That is my biggest question, that nobody seems to know the correct answer to. It infuriates me that I can be so close to being where I want to mentally be, and then as I lay in bed in the dark and quiet, I hear them mocking me and taunting me. They particularly like to hate whatever I like. They are just so… antagonistic! Nobody needs this sort of battle, especially when I can hate myself all on my own as well.

You can say that they don’t know anything I don’t know, but that won’t stop the torture. Imagine eating a sandwich, an awesome sandwich you made because you are really hungry, there’s someone whispering to you about how you suck and are pitiful.

            Words can hurt.

            What if I told you, “Why are you reading this? Are you really trying to get something out of this? Just go fuck off, find some other way to waste your time, you idiotic, retarded imbecile.”

            That’s a little taste of how words can be unpleasant. They are only words. They are silent symbols that only are given their meaning by the reader.

            To explain my little jest, I particularly hate the word “retard.” I have been called that for my illness, probably behind my back as well as from the voices I hear. It is a damning sort of word, which basically is used to say someone is worth nothing, and that whoever they are they do not matter.

            Retard is an outdated word, no longer meaning its intended medical definition. The same goes for schizophrenia, which unfortunately I carry as a sort of invisible brand, given to me by the medical examiners I have met.

            I will say I dislike the word schizophrenia, even though it is used to categorize specific needs for me. Popular culture tends to use the word schizophrenia very wrong. The ignorance doesn’t only come from kids who don’t know better, it can go far into society, from incorrect media to even the most successful people today. The word schizophrenia is pretty much at the same point as retard, similar to psychotic and psychopathic. The words do not mean anything medical. They all have the same meaning: worthless.

            I’d honestly probably prefer the term mad. A mad hatter, in a blue hat.

            Where do my monsters come from? I do not control them.

            They’re puppets held up by puppets, that somehow come back to me, as they are pitted against me.

Lukas Allen

               It’s so hard to believe the little voice in your head, the voice you know is coming from yourself, the voice that believes the best will work out and positivity will reign supreme, that sounds like it should be right, but are just not so certain it is.

            The human mind likes to make mountains out of molehills, embiggening the problem more and more in an anxious cycle. I find it difficult to listen to myself, because the “evidence” of that little voice of my own being wrong seems so overwhelming.

            As someone who hears voices with a diagnosis of chronic schizophrenia, I do not only have my own fears to fight, but seemingly some disembodied being that, for all I know, is a ghost haunting my life. This other voice I speak of comes out of the shadows when I know I have to do something or even just want to do something. They, the voices of my illness, will mock and berate me for wanting or having to do a task, and sometimes I halfway find myself listening to them.

            I have my own doubt voice, and also an auditory hallucination doubt voice. Where would I be without them? Probably feeling very positive and fulfilled with my life.

            The voice of doubt, whether they come from yourself, others, or even hallucinations, is a very tricky being to fight. There is no way to peacefully bypass them. Can’t move around them, can’t give into them, can only go through them.

            Doubt uses half imagined truths and flimsy supports to prove its claim. The evidence of doubt can be a muffled passing word, or a bad history with something, but altogether, mostly, doubt’s evidence is fear. The fear can be a big thing, or a minor thing, whatever its origin it is there because of fear.

            Some good ways to fight this doubt and fear is to actually face it head on. You will probably feel a little better not listening to them, and feel like a load has been taken off your shoulders. If you cannot face doubt and fear right away, ease yourself up to it. Do something kind for yourself. An example is making a healthy meal just for yourself. Enjoy the task, be contented with it, and you’ll see that doubt and fear are only simple hurdles to overcome.

            My spaghetti with sauce was very good, and I’m glad I overcame the voices and did that nice action for myself. That’s all I wanted to do, make some food. It’s hard to be kind to yourself.

            Listen to the little, correct voice, for this voice is the voice of hope. It may seem small, in comparison to doubt and fear, but hope can improve your life if you allow it to flourish.

Lukas Allen

This was written back when I was still new to having schizophrenia.

  My heart beats like a drum. My skin feels tight. What is it? Am I approaching my end looking for a beginning? I feel paranoid, manic, have shortness of breath.

All of these are side effects of a medication I am taking, an antidepressant. These side effects are accentuated when drinking alcohol, which I relapsed on yesterday. I have to wonder if the pluses are worth the negatives. Perhaps I am simply getting happier, more comfortable and at ease, and am getting the desired effect? Perhaps I am living life more fully, more openly than when I did before?

The drumming in my chest is distracting.

I wrestle with a monster, a monster named paranoia. It is a subtle beast, playing on my fears and doubts. My insecurities and my own self perceived flaws. Are they out to get me? Are you out to get me? To destroy me and my life completely and utterly, as soon as I let my guard down? Despite appearances, I am improving against it, as now I have the ability to wrestle it, rather than let it control and dominate my life. There was no fight before, it pressed down on me like a heavy fog, no matter what I did to try to see the rays of hope and goodness. At least now I have a fighting chance.

The mania is the worst, I believe. You feel so terribly happy, but not in a good way. You feel like your dreams have come true, despite doing nothing to achieve them. You feel so terribly and utterly alone, when you are so manic.

And when I feel these feelings, I just lay on the bed, letting my blood pulse through my body, at my overworking heart.

I believe I don’t always do the right thing when trying to get better. I blatantly hinder myself and take risks. Drinking is a risk I should never take, I drink too much coffee, increasing my paranoia at times, I smoke tobacco, even though the antidepressant is supposed to be for smoking cessation. I am not always the best person to be in charge of my health.

But perhaps the joy of it is worth it? The gradual fading of the fog? The ability, the wish, to live life to the fullest again? I have been feeling heavy of late, heavy in feelings. I wish to let those feelings fly away, or let them drop to the earth and let me fly instead. So I’ve been writing.

Tapping to the rhythm, bump bump bump, and the beating of the heart keeps going, delivering the drug throughout my system.

Perhaps the feeling is synthetic, or perhaps I’ve discovered something new. I’ll figure it out eventually.

Thump thump, like a knocking on my door.

Lukas Allen

               I’ve lived with the diagnosis of schizophrenia for around six years now. Early on during the initial onset of my disease I wrote a tactics list of how to deal with voices. I can say now that some of the ideas I wrote about and tried did not hold up in the long run. I was very confused and scared during the initial onslaught of hallucinations. It was probably the worst point of my life, having all this extra negative stimuli but no reason or purpose behind them. I made lists and tactics for myself to get me out of them, talked with other people about hallucinations too who could understand. I wish to write an updated version of what one can do if they are struggling through schizophrenia like I have and am.

1. Be open. When someone is hearing voices telling them what to do, how to do it, of suggestions of the worst kind, a person doesn’t really want to let anyone know about them. The stigma alone regarding hearing voices is enough for one to shut their trap, lock it, and throw away the key. But this is the most important step to getting help. If you must cry for help, do it loud and often. Someone, anyone, will hear and may be able to help. Trust loved ones openly, let them know your fears as best as you can explain. If you are going through symptoms of schizophrenia like hearing voices, it is paramount that you find some sort of relief as soon as possible. Your loved ones don’t want you to suffer.
2. Ignore stereotypes. Disregard the ill informed masses who believe schizophrenia is only a movie illness or reserved for those who are unimportant. If you are facing harassment from people who believe crazier things about schizophrenia than the craziness schizophrenia is, know this… you don’t have to paint a target on your chest for them. It is liberating to be a self advocate for people who have schizophrenia, but you don’t have to take on the entire world at once. Some people will understand, the others are too close minded to do so. You may remain quiet when they are calling each other schizos and psychos, or you can tell them all off and remain firm in your being. Each choice is acceptable. Know it is best to be able to inform people who can and will help you of your disease rather than the random hatemonger.
3. Treat your body well. Mental wellbeing is whole body well being, you can’t be doing drugs and treating your body badly if you want your brain to get better as well. Even just the minor good treatment of you and your surroundings can do wonders for mental illness of all types. Take a walk, get the blood moving, your body will thank you. Stay away from unprescribed drugs, especially something you don’t know how you might react with. For example, I cannot smoke weed anymore ever since I started hearing voices, as it feels like I am having a thirty minute psychotic relapse when I am. The working theory by my doctors is that I have too much dopamine misfiring and that creates these hallucinations, so the extra dopamine release from marijuana doesn’t work well with my body and mind at all. Try to keep a pure intake for your body.

These three things can be useful for anyone of any mental illness, not only schizophrenia. I will continue with specific tactics that have helped me regain mastery of my mind against hallucinations of all types.

1. Be in the light and sound. Visually hallucinating in the dark? Turn on the lights. Hearing awful voices? Play some upbeat music. You don’t know how much this has helped me when the only other voices I heard were ones that originate in my head. I practically have music playing twenty four seven just because hearing these voices is so unwanted.
2. Be with people you love and trust. A “loved” one is usually someone you can be yourself around, who will also understand if you hear someone who isn’t there calling your name and telling you to kill yourself. A loved one’s real presences alone can do an extraordinarily good deal for someone hallucinating. Even just a cherished pet can tip the scales in your favor! Cuddle that cat, hang out with the family, and the hallucinations won’t feel so much like they’re the only thing in your senses.
3. Have a “mentor.” You most definitely are not the only person with schizophrenia, and in fact there are a lot who are more experienced of the disease than yourself. You can find people all over, especially in dedicated meetings like for example NAMI. I don’t think I would’ve been able to face most of the hallucinations without a friend of my mother’s who also has schizophrenia. She’s been such a godsend, whenever I am paranoid and scared because of my illness.
4. Learn about your disease. It is liberating finding out how your mind works and how to use it for your full advantage. Sadly, there isn’t a lot of good answers for schizophrenia, or even just hallucinations and how they manifest. Even though learning about schizophrenia and hallucinations can seem bleak, it will do you a world of good to learn how to fight with your own knowledge. Learn even things just about yourself, what works and what doesn’t, because everyone is different and so is schizophrenia. Some things that work for others won’t work for you, so it is up to you to figure out what works best.
5. Fight hard, fight true. Use any foothold to your advantage. If you find something that is helpful, say hallucinating Jesus Christ in a positive light, allow it to help. That’s one hallucination that’s specifically helped me, as I had been dissociating and hallucinating with Jesus by my side. Jesus wasn’t unwanted and menacing, on the contrary, he inspired me with strength and will, a friend by my side as I desperately needed one. Things like this are purely up to the person if they want this kind of help. There are stranger helpers than Jesus for hallucinations, trust me, but if you can find any foothold to keep strong, use it as much as you like. Talk about it if it worries you, but know that help can come from many unexpected places.

These are just about the most important tactics one should keep when faced with schizophrenia, hearing voices, or other mental illness. To any who need to hear this, I believe in you, and I hope my list offered some sort of guidance in your fight.

Lukas Allen

               This is my story of suffering and redemption. I haven’t always been lucid enough to share it, and sometimes didn’t event want to, as the memories were still so vivid and were still actively taking a huge part of my life.

            I had been on and off depressed in high school. It escalated to a point when I felt I should just jump off a cliff, because nothing mattered anymore. It wasn’t depression from a crushing tragic event that happened to me, it was just a wearing over time, mixed with teenage confusion and no direction where to go.

            I went to that quarry cliffside, located directly next to the high school, the exact events still stuck in my mind, but I assure you, have been dulled thanks to therapy, religion, and self recognition of trauma. Lately, then, I had been deciding things by the flip of a coin, just because I didn’t care anymore and none of my actions really mattered.

            I knew I could slightly sometimes change the outcome of the coin flip if I flipped it into my palm, so I flipped it to the ground beside me instead. I flipped the coin, heads I would jump, tails I would not. Staring off the cliff, down to my death, I got tails. I said, eh, best two out of three. I flipped the coin again. I got tails. I looked at the coin. I wanted to die! I wanted it just to be done!! I flipped the coin. I got tails.

            I flipped the coin off the edge of the cliff, and went home, bleeding from my palm after a confusing segment before the event of wandering around that cliff and wondering what to do, and I had slashed my palm with my knife. I went home, shambling back to my car in despair, bleeding on the wheel of my car.

            I only then, when I had looked back at the cliff, shuddered at the height of it and what I nearly did.

            2.

            Time passed, I graduated high school in a daze. I still didn’t care, I was still depressed, nothing mattered. I sought to let drugs guide me, and perhaps have a revelation of something great that could guide me through this faulty life I had inadvertently spared myself the ending of.

            I took Hawaiian baby woodrose seeds, with the chemical LSA naturally inside of them that my friends and I had recently been experimenting with. I was alone in my room, on a hot day, and drank a sip of my dad’s vodka to down the crushed in my mouth seven seeds. Three I had taken the night before in a test, and I thought it had promising effects as I hallucinated my skull necklace around my neck exploding.

            I had stolen the skull necklace from a shop, the necklace eventually becoming a symbol of a creature I previously created, the Lich, a symbol and being of obsession, madness, insanity, and sometimes evil. After I took the seeds the curtains started breathing. I felt inhibited from my shirt, and took it off. I threw up on my carpet, uninhibited like a cat.

            Despite what you may think, throwing up after taking a hallucinogen doesn’t purge it from your system, it in fact makes the trip only more intense.

            I could explain every crazy thing I did, saw, and thought, every meaning that had more meaning intertwined and jammed between the meaning’s meaning. But there were two events that really had main importance. The feeling of being accepted by God and being God, and the breaking of a window.

            The seeds acted pretty quickly, as I started to shamble through town shirtless and scary looking, with a skull necklace hanging down to my hairy chest. I was very strong in these days, I worked out constantly and dabbled in fighting sports, learning them long when growing up.

            And there was a feeling… outside of me, that was the feeling of everything, everywhere, always. I looked up at it, and then I became it. I was this omnipotent, omniscient feeling, and it was amazing, and would last always, but always only lasted for a few seconds in reality.

            I tried to grasp onto this feeling, trying to divine some meaning from it, as the trip continued and meaning overflowed my mind.

            I eventually came to a conclusion, I would change my name and become who I desired not hindered by naming rituals of the past, naming myself Balthazar from a Blue Oyster Cult song (E.T.I.) I was listening to on the trip, and that the truth was always a lie. A very confusing notion, because if the truth is a lie, then where does the reality of anything lie? It ended up to be whatever the first thought was in my head.

            I stared at the window of a shop. I always kind of wanted to break a window by punching one, and I thought since the truth was a lie, then I would smash this window like the truth, with my own fist.

            Smash.

            It was actually very easy, and satisfying too, but I knew I should run, as the glass scattered the ground and my fist bled. I bled through the streets, trying to go home and then warn my close friend of the truth.

            I heard my sister scream as she saw me shamble up to the house, my fist bloody, dripping to the pavement, drenched on my shorts. My dad immediately came up to me inside the house and washed my fist with a wet rag.

            I saw cops come down the road, and I thought they would do something horrible. I ran out the backdoor, and basically ran to my friend’s house. I had to warn him of the truth, something like a genie, don’t open the bottle. He and his girlfriend weren’t home, and I sat at the back as the local children stared at me, I believing I was like Cain, cursed on Earth.

            An ambulance and cops came by, and got me into the back. I believe I lied stating I was so depressed and angry because I broke up with my girlfriend, who I didn’t have. I don’t remember what happened next, only being in the hospital and allowing the nurse to stitch up my hand. “No drugs!!” I stated, when she said she could give me something to numb the pain. I didn’t even really feel the stitches, probably from blood loss and adrenalin still coursing. She stitched it pretty well, and it would leave a scar that lasted to this day on me, probably will until I die.

            I went back home with my parents, the bells of the church stating it was ten o’clock as the thunder boomed. I got back to my puked in room, colored pencils scattered everywhere from also drawing on my walls from the trip, and wrote the lasting revelation on my wall, “The truth is a lie.” Then I fell into my bed, falling asleep instantly.

            3.

            Time passed. Not very much time. I was still a tad touched by insanity after that whole trip, and still believed there was nothing to believe in anywhere. I had been messaging this one girl, becoming obsessed with infatuation over her, and she wouldn’t text back after a while, which only cemented my obsession more. She’s a fond friend to me nowadays, as I tried to reckon with the past and found out she wasn’t so bad.

            But, then, I only wondered what was so wrong with me that she would not message back. She had seen the messages (a bad habit of opening the messages and not reading them) but would not answer. I thought something must be deeply wrong with me, to repulse people so much.

            I came to the wrong conclusion that something must’ve happened to me as I was younger, that I was somehow “marked” by an event, which I thought then to be abuse by my father. None of the horrible things I envisioned happened, and I think I only used him as a scapegoat for my hate, even though we had been increasingly estranged from each other as I fell further into the pits of insanity and despair.

            I came home after a walk, pale at the thoughts running through my mind, and went to my father sleeping in his bed. I wanted to scream and shout, accusing him and asking him why, which I partially did. I woke him up, and after he got up, I punched him in the face. I was still calling myself Balthazar at the time, and shouted and screamed horrible things as my dad tried to subdue me, and my crying siblings soon came in trying to subdue me as well. I only pushed myself up from under them, stronger than all of them, laughing.

            My mom had called the cops to defuse the situation, and they came in and my dad and I froze from our fighting, my dad trying to pin me on the bed.

            Wish I could paste songs into my writing, instead of just telling them as I do. I’m right now listening to another Blue Oyster Cult song, the Siege and Investiture of Baron von Frankenstein’s Castle at Weisseria, and I can only make up my own lyrics as I listen to the powerful guest singer, “Drunk by the name of BAL THA ZAR.”

            As you can see, I am now very relaxed as I write about this day, which I can only compare it as the worst day of my life. Perhaps I am just trying to delay what comes next.

             The cops took me outside, as I spit all around the “horrid” place I lived at. I thanked them, but instead of defusing the situation calmly and peacefully, they arrested me, claiming, “No, you’re going to jail.”

            I was flustered and angry, and tried to get into the cop car, but they threw me back down onto the ground, later claiming I was trying to push against the cop car. I was only trying to get into the fucking car!!

            The cop who held me down as I started screaming and shouting again I blame as an agent of my folly, and no protector of the peace or noble soul. He saw someone he thought was mad and deranged, and he intended to put him away. There was some sort of changing of the shifts before I was arrested, and it perhaps caused some sort of confusion, but still I blame that cop, who appears later in my story again. I learned from my eldest younger brother, far later in my life, they even taunted him as he was walking around town, claiming that I was going to stay locked up, as he felt sad about the whole thing. My brother, who was only two years younger than me, was very bold and even went up to me as I was on the ground, saying, “Nobody likes cops, but nobody likes it when you do these things either.”

            They hauled me away in an ambulance, strapped down and handcuffed, and tried to drug test me in the hospital as I was strapped to the stretcher, expecting me to piss in a cup with the cop and doctor watching. Just held by them cup against my penis, and expected to go.

            Eventually they gave me some privacy, but I believed they would try to poison the results, and filled the cup with water, which worked. There were no drugs in my system anyway, so it was only a very minor thing to happen.

            Then, as I was taken back to the cop car, I saw a neighbor kid from my block walk past, who is now dead by a heroine overdose. I claimed, “They just love arresting me!” to him, which he laughed at. I was taken to jail intake, and I could not understand what was happening or why it was. I resisted, in a peacefulish way, and then was put in a small box room to cooldown.

            I immediately pissed in the small grate, and roamed around the room in a circle, shouting and roaring.

            I was soon taken to a cell, with one way mirrors on the door so they could watch me. Those stupid mirrors don’t work. You can see through them if you put any sort of shadow over them, like from your arm. I shouted and taunted the workers right in front of me, and they just ignored me, either used to this sort of thing or believing they couldn’t be seen. I think I got to a few of them in my time there.

            Three days I was in that cell, not eating the food and only drinking tap water because I thought the food was poisoned, until my family posted bail for me.

            4.

            I was picked up at the dead of night. I rather would prefer to skip over some of these events, as it would take a long time to tell and only really had importance to me at the time, so I will keep it brief. I jumped out of my mother’s car and ran down the street, as they stopped at a traffic light. I had shouted to my mother, “Don’t you see?!” thinking she was only seeing the lies and not the truth, especially with glasses on which I believed to be “obstructing” her vision.

            I spent the night hiding under someone’s porch in the county’s main city. In the morning I wandered around, eating flowers. A lady cop stopped and asked me if I was ok, saying it looked like I fell. I had certainly fallen from my ways, but not literally fallen. She drove past as I told her I was alright. Eventually I got to the train tracks, thinking I could go east and go back to my hometown, or go north. I went north, thinking I’d go to Canada. I asked for water from a house I passed next to, and the person gave me a cup of water, which I thanked them for. After, for so long walking barefoot on the railroad tracks, I stopped to rest by a tree opposite someone’s house, a cop picked me up.

            I was traded off to my mother, which the cop didn’t ask many questions to and my mother acting calm and cool, and was taken back home. Her and my youngest brother were driving around all night screaming out for me.

            I eventually was fit with a GPS bracelet, probably even more out of my mind after all that happened, and cut the bracelet after my friend came to visit, exactly after he gave me a knife he picked up as a gift. He was shocked, of course, and I began my escape.

            With only my dad’s guitar and my friend eventually leaving, after following me a good ways, I escaped down through the marshes of Wisconsin and trying to get to my drug dealer friend’s house so he could help me. It was a long walk, barefoot with a guitar, but I eventually got there. His dad offered me some old shoes of his, and they felt comfortable.

            After we did some things, visited some of his friends and went to his girlfriend’s house, she also now dead by an overdose, him and his girlfriend took me back to my hometown the next day. I assured them it would be ok if they dropped me off at my friend’s house, so they did.

            I knocked on my friend’s door, he opened, and said, “Why are you here? Go home.” Then he shut the door.

            I knocked a little longer, but sighed and played some of my crazy guitar that really I didn’t even know how to play, and then went to walk home.

            But that same cop drove up to me and began putting on these plastic gloves. I told him I just wanted to go home! And I continued walking, guitar over my shoulder. I had thrown the knife after I had seen him approaching, and he retrieved it and also charged me with carrying a concealed weapon, with my previous charge of assaulting an officer (spitting… Not even trying directly at him, but changed in his report) and now felony bail jumping.

            A different cop, a sergeant, stopped me in my path, and the other cop arrested me. I had to beg him not to leave my dad’s guitar on the side of the road, so he took it with him. The guitar had been vandalized by myself, scratched with the word “Death,” and had wild string ends coming out of it, as I constantly replaced them from breaking the strings from playing so hard.

            I was taken to jail again, with a much higher bail, and would stay there for around six months.

            5.

            Jail is… it’s just awful, especially if you’re not used to it. The food is bad, there’s not enough of it, and you’re constantly trying to fight for yourself, in any way possible, with the damnation of the courts ever at your neck. The people aren’t always very friendly, and I got into some harsh verbal fights there. I was still very strong, and continued to work out in jail, as that was what kept the cobwebs out of my head. I was nuts when going in, even more insane, but I sort of gradually lost my insanity, along with my smoking habit. The smoking habit I picked up again outside of jail, bored. I always will thank my grandma and my youngest brother for talking with me on the phone in my time there, always having to punch in my long, memorized jail ID and waiting for the jail exchange on the phone to be finished.

            It was a tough time, and perhaps you can find the exact details of those events in some of my other works. But I won’t get into them right now. Six months is a long time, especially in jail, waiting for the clock to change hours and my hour to begin, just so I could take a shower and call my family. The rest of my family wasn’t very happy to receive me, but my grandma and my youngest brother always obliged. I learned to say my prayers in jail, as my grandma told me to. I only got books around the end of my time there, but there is nothing so good as books in jail, no matter the subject. I enjoyed the cooking book I had traded two of my breakfasts for. The writer, who I don’t exactly remember who is, stated that stolen food always tastes better, and I remember that I do agree with her on that.

            Eventually, my bail was posted, a $5000 bail, and was taken home by my dad and grandma. I was so happy to see the sun, blinding me outside, which most of the time in jail was unavailable to us prisoners. Actually, only in the detention place, the hold, I saw the sunlight through windows. Strange, that, giving me what I desired only after I was more accidentally than purposefully brought to that place.

            I loved the sound of the radio, jazz players and reggae music, Bob Marley singing Iron Lion Zion. I loved the homemade peanut butter sandwiches my dad and grandma gave me to eat, so good, with an apple as well. Better than anything I ever ate in jail.

            I was brought by my dad to a psychiatric hospital, and after I explained I was a vegetarian again, they said I didn’t need to be there. I went home, seeing a sculpture one of my brothers made of a wooden man put together by logs, and I hugged everybody, so happy I was with the people I loved. I went to my cleaned room, not even any crazy drawings on the painted walls anymore, and went to bed where my mom’s cat, Paws, was sitting on.

            A long time passed, as I and my family fought for my case. My dad got a lawyer which even more money was sucked up by, but without her I would’ve been sent to a hospital for the criminally insane, to be there until I was 25 or longer. I was still only 18 at the time.

            Three years passed, as I tried to woo and persuade my case managers to my side. One was very easy, the actual probation officer who was very easy to get along with, the other was not, the mood and more psychiatric probation officer, who I think just didn’t like me, perhaps because I was a “criminal.” She was actually the one to deny me going to Stout University, as she stated my case couldn’t leave the county.

            Eventually, though, trying to be the absolute kindest I could and following their rules, the psychiatric case manager approved, after three years of gut wrenching court and probation, saying with the rest that I could be let off the leash, and be freed. The opposing side, the state, did not accept this, but the judge said I had been under probation for long enough, under court mandated therapy, and also said I could be done. That therapist I had to see… He was such a good guy. We just bullshitted most of the time, and he allowed my trauma to show its head when I felt like it. Went on to be an army therapist, as he had also served in the military.

            The only time I really broke the rules was when I smoked marijuana with my friend that I reconnected with, after my eldest younger brother had tried to kill himself. We watched Cheech and Chong. I was smart, and knew when they would drug test me, so it was never found.

            The entire, grueling, three year long case was summed up to be “drug induced psychosis,” and my crimes were wiped cleaned from me. I felt so good, I felt golden. I hugged my family and my lawyer, and I went home with my family a free man.

            6.

            I had a little bit of drama at my friend’s wedding, who was marrying his girlfriend who actually called the cops on me at their front door way back when. She hit me after I was slightly rude, I blocked the next and accidentally hit her back with a raised arm in defense, and I went home as she threatened to call the cops on me… again. We had all been drinking, and they were stoned, but after that hit I desired not to fight anymore, and ruin this freedom that I had. I skipped the wedding, who I was a groomsman for.

            We later, my friend and I, reconnected again. I was always surprisingly good at reconnecting with old friends. I later went to Europe with my youngest brother, and we had a good time.

            I was working at a grocery store, trying to get my life back on track after it went to so much shit, and I enjoyed the job despite the boss starting out paying me less than what I deserved, minimum wage like a teen, until that was straightened out. I thought it was sort of a good sanctuary, and thought I performed the job well.

            But I will never work at another grocery store, after the hellish trauma I was put through there.

            I had been dabbling with writing again, and made this whole story with all my trauma jam packed into it. I, under the name of Balthazar once again, served demons in a bar, all the bad thoughts and trauma, and tried to befriend them instead of chase them away. It was surprisingly therapeutic. But then… I desired a more firm companion than my human headed dog, Barcough, and thought I could add someone from my work into the story who I kinda liked.

            The story, Balthazar’s Bar or The Land of Doubt, progressed, and you can find it on my blog, drugsjailandschizophrenia.home.blog. I went on a dark adventure with her and later far into the pits of insanity. Even the Lich, under the name of Evil, appeared again, an omen that further suffering awaited.

            And then later, I felt an itchy anticipation under my skin, as I listened to the last Dio album, Magica. I played a bit of my crazy guitar… and went out for a walk.

            Then, like a wham to the brain, I heard her speak to me in the night. Another voice as well, who I now intensely hate as he has been constantly harassing me for a little over five years since I started hearing voices. I believed, again, I found the hidden nature of truth and thought the entire world must be like this, and that I was just now somehow let in on the grand secret. That these people truly were speaking to me in my head. Telepathy. A horrible belief that has horrible consequences.

            More, and more, and more voices, some with origins impossible, spoke to me constantly. There was no sleep. Only voices. I sent pieces of that writing, jumbled together and the wrong parts, to this woman I worked with. I heard a distinct voice say, that one voice, “He sent it!” but I shrugged it off, thinking it unimportant.

            The once pleasant grocery store turned out to be actual Hell. I quit, before the woman called the cops on me, them finding no reason to arrest me but passing on that I was banned from the store. I just thought so much horror and evil was everywhere, especially in that grocery store, because of voices which told me so and that I believed. I had made accusations to the woman that she was having sex with our boss, and that’s probably the main reason she called the cops on me.

            It was so much horror, and I can’t even remember every little thing that happened. I believe this is called repression. I went into a psychiatric hospital three times, trying to understand and get help for whatever in Hell was happening to me. I was diagnosed with schizophrenia by a nurse practitioner I was seeing, and she gave me some pills she thought could help. “It sounds like schizophrenia.” she said, as I told her I could hear voices telling me to kill myself. The pills made everything worse, and I tried to kill myself with razor slashes because of that.

            I was so paranoid, because the voices told me that something just out of reach and horrible was happening. I constantly asked my mother to help me deny a paranoid thought, and she did for a few minutes, until I had to ask her again. All of this, telepathy, religion, and even more darkness and dark thoughts, enhanced by voices I could hear, sometimes in sounds around me, like a bird calling out in its tweet, “You’re scary.” but also seeming to come from inside my head. Literal, auditory sounds.

            I had more hallucinations, sometimes the feeling of people touching me, visions in the dark, sometimes smells or tastes which were intrusive, or sometimes even that the voices were pushing a form on me that was not mine, and not only auditory but auditory being by far the most common. I’d lay in bed, with my green lava lamp and fan on for protection, trying to sleep as voices mocked me, taunted me, hated me, and told me to kill myself. Only once, on Easter, did I hear Jesus’s muffled voice in the fan tell them off, all of them, in angry hatred of them.

            I screamed and shouted at them in anger at times, roaring, and insulting them with every hateful thought I knew. This actually helped a lot, because I could not punch them nor walk away from them. Only respond in angry hatred, or use wit and humor to fight them. It is very difficult to use wit against something which is already in your head, absolutely no thought private, but like they could surprise me with what they said, I could use the brief millisecond to respond and attack back with my words.

            It hasn’t stopped, this sort of horror, and it has pushed me into a more hermitish life, despite trying to survive and even trying to make a life in Europe with my eldest younger brother, specifically Holland. I found a few meds, through constant trial and error with docs, help a lot, but it still isn’t very easy. If I am off the meds I have a psychotic relapse, with the hallucinations and new dissociations even stronger. I write this, as behind me in the next room over someone just called out my name, but I knowing I’m in the house alone.

            That is the current story so far. I found, after that first writing story that drove me to insanity and thinking I’d never write again, that writing is a great and therapeutic outlet. I can fight my demons, battle my problems and find solutions to them. I can befriend enemies, or cast down and imprison evil. It’s an adventure, a wonderful time sink, that I briefly and prolifically go on. I meet so many awesome people, who somehow originate from inside me. Saviors, like Yule, firm and lasting loves, like Jane, a brother that I never thought to be, like Matt. And all the beautiful rest, starting out my self publishing with Lucy and Lucy’s Looking Glass.

            I found my religion again, even in the darkest abyss of psychotic relapse, with Jesus and my dead friends and relatives by my side, directly there as dissociations and hallucinations, always beside me and always will be. I let out tears for them, and cannot stop the flow. I only wish to continue to remember them, and continue to spend time with my living friends and family.

            I continue, and I’ll continue to be writing, having a grand story of a vampire hunter coming out soon, Hunter Wolf, and working on the sequel. Thank you for your time reading this condensed nonfiction account of my own life. I wish that you also find some relief to horror and trauma, and can continue as well.

Have a good day.

        7/14/2023

        Lukas Allen

I was asked to write report on what troubles me and what I struggle with during the day. The conclusion of this report will show my inability to work in traditional settings and requiring disability income. It is hard for me to admit disability, as I believe it is for most people, but honestly, I should’ve gotten disability income as soon as I first had symptoms of schizophrenia, which I’ve had for five years, starting in 2018. My symptoms include hallucinations of all five senses as well as dissociative episodes, delusions that gain or lose intensity, depression and suicidal ideation, crushing anxiety, and agoraphobia.

I hear one voice the most out of others, a voice that calls himself John who is unintentionally based off of a real person, he just simply picked up this persona as I was losing my mind. It is very troubling to me to continue having to hear this same voice I started hearing five years ago, and this voice seems to be very tenacious despite varying treatments I have gone through. Sometimes he has lots of “friends” around him, who are just as eager to hurt me as he is. The voices would be best labeled as “command voices,” meaning they try to force me to do something or believe in something by straight commands. The most common command I hear from them is “kill yourself.” Other times they try to break what I believe in, destroy any happy sensation, or just try to make me feel bad. There is no way to fight or block out a disembodied voice, so I listen to music constantly, to have some sort of quiet against the voices. This voice alone is horrible for me, as the voices attack me when I am vulnerable or off guard, like when I am taking a shower, when I am eating, when I am trying to sleep, or when I am physically working on something. Whenever I am trying to work, I am having a battle against this voice. It’s irritating to try to fix or build something and I have this voice knocking me down with its abuse.

 The other symptoms besides hearing voices are lesser, but still noticeable, especially if I don’t take my medication, like when I had a psychotic episode which seemed to last for months. Presences, and not only voices, would assault my mind and body, distort my surroundings and make me fear everything. Just walking down the street in those days was a battle of life and death, as God and the Devil battled for my very soul. The presences forced my body to seem to shut down, like closing an eye and making me hunch over. The presences were actively in my body, as I was myself and them. Strange and vile tastes would be on my tongue, even though nothing was there, disgusting smells were all around me that had no source, it felt like people were touching me, even though I was holed up in my room alone, I had vivid imagery in my eyes of horrible creatures and evil people, and of course, the voices were constant, as they were when I first started hearing them. I need medication if I don’t want these symptoms to appear in stronger numbers.

The presences that can appear in my body happens still, but I have to force my mind around them and away from them. Let me explain a dissociative episode, in a way that allows me to speak directly to the reader. You can picture yourself as you read this, right now, right? Your face is as clear as day, even though you are not currently looking at yourself. If you were dissociating, that face would be someone or something else, their personality would be there as well, and you would either cease to exist or be two people in one form. That is how my dissociation works, and these other characters would be around me as well. Most of the time it was intrusive, unwanted characters seeming to be in my body with me, but I found a few helpful characters of mine to ward back the others, characters from my stories as well as figures in my religion, and even a family member who is long gone. Jesus happens to be with me whenever I need him, I can hear his voice and interact with him. Some could call it a miracle, scientifically it is a dissociation.

Delusions are very difficult to struggle with, like believing I am a savior, like there are telepathic hiveminds of people trying to destroy me, like believing the closest to me are really evil and horrible. My delusions stem mostly from what my hallucinations suggest, and it is very difficult trying to convince myself that the delusions are wrong. When the delusions seem the realest, when they somehow appear in the truth of the world, is the most difficult thing to subdue. Delusions come from trying to figure out what is real, and failing to do so accurately. Delusions are usually comprised of what is dangerous to the person, and trying to protect oneself from that danger. It has taken a long time of reality testing just to get rid of my delusion that the voices are real people, telepathic monsters. The problem with delusions is that the stimuli can seem so very real to someone with schizophrenia. The voices I hear aren’t ridiculous and stupid. They are cunning and sharp, able to use my own intelligence against me, and force me into danger if I am not wary.

Depression and anxiety may be a lesser degree for reason of disability, but whenever I have symptoms, or even think about my trauma I have been exposed to from them, then I become very close to wanting to end depression and anxiety in the most sure and brutal method possible. In other words, depression and anxiety for me is so bad that I want to kill myself to relieve myself of the feelings. As hallucinations become lesser, the feeling of hopelessness seems to grow. It’s not that I want to hear voices, it’s just my fight is different against them than as feelings which come from deep inside myself. When I fight the voices, I am fighting for my life. When I fight against depression and anxiety, the war has become a ceasefire, and I cannot live with myself knowing the war will begin again. Anxiety is bad for me, and when I do become anxious, I become depressed, as I pick at myself over and over again. The only way out currently is to take an anxiety med as soon as possible. Like the other symptoms of schizophrenia, anxiety and depression is nothing to trifle with, and can be just as debilitating as other methods of becoming disabled.

All of these symptoms make me want to run and hide from the world. Schizophrenia is a debilitating label, and people are prone to prejudice against me when they do know I have schizophrenia. The delusions and hallucinations make me feel like everyone is actively working against me, and all I can do is run and hide. Agoraphobia is simply something I’ve picked up after being betrayed, attacked, and abandoned. I want to try to cure myself of it, but it will be a long road.

I have found a sort of therapy for myself against these voices. Music and writing are my preferred methods to battle against my symptoms. When I fill my mind up then I don’t hear the voices. Someone who reads this report may find it more literate than what other schizophrenics can come up with, but that is because I have worked on strengthening my writing ever since I started hearing voices and found out that it distracts me from them. Writing is my sanctuary; writing is my relief. I could go so far as saying writing is my purpose in life, as writing gives me such purpose.

I have schizophrenia chronic, meaning I will have schizophrenia forever, with no way out but medication to reduce symptoms. I have no parent who has schizophrenia, and since schizophrenia is a genetic disease, I was the unlucky one who still managed to contract it. I just want to live life again, be somewhat normal, and not have to fight against this illness alone. In the concurrent timeframe I am disabled, but still working to fight against my illness in any way I can. I regret to conclude I am disabled, even though I would like to wish the disability away, I know that is impossible as of yet. I accept that I need aid. I need help, and I’m willing to accept help.

Lukas Allen

            To save time and add concrete history to my life, saving time on all the small talk, I will put together a little report of crucial events in my life that maybe you’d like to know.

            You may or may not remember me from days of ages past. My first memory of you was when I went to a football game with a close friend in middle school. I met you, then left, riding home in the rain. I can’t remember much more than that, even though I strangely felt really happy riding my bike through the rain. It is so strange remembering something like that. I know it exists, I undoubtedly know I did this, but I feel very detached from the memory in a way, like looking down on myself from the third person, as I smiled and laughed on my bike in the rain.

            I remember bits and pieces of meeting or seeing you other times, one time we walked in a group, other times I fleetingly noticed you randomly. These bits and pieces are wholly unimportant and unnecessary for this piece of writing, but I just thought you’d like to know we were scarcely interspersed in each other’s lives, which led up to my own infatuation and fall when I was 18.

            This next bit you had no position in my life and were actually completely unimportant to me, as I had been depressed on and off through high school. Freshman and Junior year I felt super good, strong, and happy. I worked out all the time, I made great friends, I had fun. Sophomore and Senior year I was so depressed that I wanted to “walk out those doors and not come back.” The depression senior year when I was 18 was the worst. I was a burnout, I smoked pot all the time with a mean group of friends, I believed life was horrible, unable to live in, and I planned on taking my own life at the quarry cliffside by the school.

            I snuck through the broken fence part, and went to the quarry cliffside. In that dense fog of depression, I believed I had no reason to live, thus also no reason to die. I would let a coin decide if I should live or die. I flipped the quarter onto the cliffside, heads I would jump, tails I would not.

            I got tails.

            But I was not satisfied, so I said best two out of three, and flipped again.

            I got tails.

            I thought something was fucking with me here, because I wanted to die. I flipped again.

            I got tails.

            Frustrated at this damned chance, I flipped the coin off the ledge and said to myself, well, I said I wouldn’t jump if I got tails, so I didn’t jump. I shambled back to my car in despair, unable to find meaning in life.

            Later, after I had graduated from that sad senior year, I decided to find meaning in my life with a revelation of some sorts. I used a hallucinogen, LSA, (my initials,) or also called Lysergic Acide Amide, commonly found in morning glory seeds or Hawaiian baby woodrose seeds. This is a legal seed to buy, and eat, although if enough is chewed and swallowed, the seeds are strong hallucinogens.

            I had a horrible trip. I hazardously used drugs when I was not in a fit mind state. My body was strong, I worked out constantly, but my mind was still on that cliffside in a way, ready to jump off the ledge.

            The curtains breathed, I threw up on the floor, and maniacally made art all across the walls of my room. I was too hot, I needed to get outside, so I rambled around my hometown shirtless and aimless, epiphanies every few seconds.

            Then I felt it. As I looked up to the blue sky, I was everything, everywhere, always. I felt like how God must feel.

            Then it passed, and I was back on Earth.

            I wandered through the town, trying to cling to the revelations I was experiencing. I inevitably found a truth so awful that it broke my drugged out mind, and subsequently allowed me to smash a window with my fist as I had always felt an urge to do.

            The truth was that it was a lie.

            The truth is a lie. And vice versa.

            Nothing I experienced was true life, but I continued even further than this paradox, and believed in crazy ideas as my reality crumbled.

            I was treated, after I was found at the backdoor of my friend’s apartment, with no criminal allegations against me. My dad had even paid the window owner back.

            I subsequently throughout this time had tried contacting you. You did not ever answer, except for the first few times. I sent a message, it was seen apparently, but no response. This was you, and I remembered your real name, as I called myself Balthazar, a sort of reidentification for myself. Something you told me is that your grandma said that “the eyes are the window to the soul.”

            I tortured myself wondering why you would not respond, as my mind continued to decay. Eventually I wondered why exactly, why you or anyone did not care.

            I came to another truth, which was a random thought that crossed my mind. I thought I must’ve been abused some way, and just couldn’t remember it, by my father. This was not your fault. I just did not know how to cope anymore, and attacked my dad at home, waking him up and punching him in the face with the same hand I broke the window with.

            But, somehow, I held back.

            I continued to shout and yell, all sorts of nonsense. The cops showed up, as my mother had called them, and instead of defusing the situation they charged me with all sorts of crimes against the police. Assault on a police officer being one of them. I HATE that officer, who seemed to have some sort of grudge against me, and also appeared later in my life again. I know his name, I know who he is… and I despise that man.

            They told me they were arresting me, after I thanked them for getting me out of the house.

            They filed false allegations against me, claiming I was spitting at the officers.

            They threw me to the sidewalk, claiming I was pushing against the cop car, when I was just fucking trying to get in the damned car.

            I continued to shout crazily, and they took me to a hospital, then to jail.

            My mind was broken, and continued to break, as my reality unraveled into a realistic hell.

            My parents had bailed me out after a few days, then I was on house arrest. Still with psychosis, I cut the GPS bracelet off my ankle and ran away. I fled to my drug dealer’s house, my friend. He brought me back to town, and I mistakenly believed I was safe at another friend’s house. This other friend’s girlfriend called the cops on me, as I was on my way home after my friend told me to go home.

            The same cop drove up, putting plastic gloves on as he approached me. I had my father’s guitar, resting on my shoulder after I fled with it. I saw the cop, and threw the knife my friend had given me that I cut the bracelet off with. The cop retrieved this knife, and apparently according to his report had a taser pointed at my back. I just told him I wanted to go home, as he followed me. Another officer crossed my path, and arrested me once again. I had to beg them not to leave the guitar, my dad’s guitar, on the curb of the road.

            Then I was transferred to that other cop, and he drove me to the county jail. He told me to be silent, after I said sorry for saying I wanted to kill him in my previous rage and psychosis. I continued to be silent, as the bastard played the worst country music available in his cop car.

            I spent time in jail, about six months, I think. It was horrible, but deserves its own space of words outside of this report.

            When my parents posted bail again, with at least three felonies put against me (assault on an officer, concealed weapon, and bail jumping,) I was so happy to feel the sun, to eat good food, and listen to beautiful, effervescent music. It took three years to be freed of those charges by pleading insanity, drug induced psychosis the court conclusion came to, as I went to college and dropped out because I couldn’t deal with the dual stress of college and court.

            But I was free. I am no felon. The Cubs even won the world series as soon as I was. I was so happy.

            I went to Europe with my brother, I was invited to that friend’s wedding with his girlfriend, but since we had problems before the day of the wedding, I left them and would not talk to my friend in a good long while, even if I was a groomsman. I worked at a grocery store, with my life back on track once more.

            My mind fractured again, as I sent someone I had a crush on some writing of mine which contained trauma and secrets of mine. Then I heard the voices.

            It was horror in real life. I was so scared, confused, and I wanted to end my life again just so my torment could stop.

            They were always there.

            They never gave me a break.

            VOICES.

            I could and have written more about this torment, so check out some of my other work or feel free to ask me questions about them.           

            It is now five years with voices as well as other hallucinations, but my treatment seems to be providing me sanctity from the evil everywhere, that originated from my own mind.

            I talked to you, last year February, as I was having a psychotic relapse from not taking my medication, believing I would be ok.

            Now, we can actually speak once again. I feel like that is a remarkable accomplishment, for you were one of the voices that tormented me as well. Now, I can diverge horror and reality, and debunk the voices with a real person that some of the voices were inspired from, who the voices have impersonated.

            Whatever our relationship, I am content that we can call each other friends at least currently.