Adoniram

My mental health journey is a very long story, best summed up with, “I got very lucky.” I’m frankly lucky I didn’t die from drugs or my own corrupted judgement along the way.

The early days, I had mini psychotic episodes. Paranoia, untethered fear and anxiety ruled those moments. I went to hangout with friends after work once, simultaneously convinced they were gonna murder me and sure that that was a delusion. I battled myself the whole walk there. They didn’t end up killing me, but honestly it felt like it might go either way. I once heard my friends tell me to throw myself in front of traffic. Heard it crystal clear. The early days of psychosis were uncanny and insidious, not outright insane all the time, but working up to it.

I self medicated a lot. The middling days were dominated by LSD, cocaine and bourbon. I tripped the remnants of my sanity away, leaving two equally insane halves left fighting over the carnage that was my mental health in those days. I finally decided I’d had enough one day and walked out the door in skate shoes with a school backpack, determined to walk the length of Vancouver Island. I got to Tofino, lived with anarchists in the woods. I travelled from Tofino to Montreal, then back to Banff all in one week, driven by delusions. I did so much cocaine in Banff that the only person who showed up to my birthday party there was my dealer. That was a wakeup call of sorts, and I came back home after that to get sober.

The last phase is the most tragic: I was actually kind of recovering, getting my life together. Then COVID hit. Locked in alone, I lost track of days. I didn’t sleep and my mind unraveled in the haze and isolation. I completely snapped and that is an even longer story. Eventually, my Mother got the government to intervene and I was put on a form. Stripped of my rights and declared a danger to myself and others. They pumped me full of antipsychotics. It took almost three years for me to get the dosage lowered enough to feel like a human being. Two more years to get back on my feet. I missed so much. It’s like I went to sleep at twenty-five and woke up at thirty sometimes.