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Lately there has been news that even mild covid19 infections can cause neurological conditions like psychosis, cognitive dysfunction, paresthesia's like numbness and tingling, and stroke. To me, these reduce to oxygen deprivation symptoms. The latest BA2 (stealth omicron) variant looks to have a R naught factor of 13ish (meaning every person who catches this subvariant of Omicron will likely spread it to 13 people before realizing they're sick - a rate similar to Measles transmission in an unvaccinated population. Furthermore, there are signs that this new variant might do more damage to the lungs, because it creates clumps of infected cells called Syncytia, which form rings, engulf your red blood cells, and eat them. Omicron didn't have the genetic code to cause syncytia, but Delta did, causing more lung damage, and oxygen deprivation symptoms like stroke in patients. Coronavirus: As BA.2 subvariant of Omicron rises, lab studies point to signs of severity (msn.com) Syncytia formation during SARS-CoV-2 lung infection: a disastrous unity to eliminate lymphocytes (nih.gov) If you have had psychosis already, if you have schizophrenia - especially schizophrenia with anemia, or have had a clot or stroke, or have a condition like Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, If you have bruises that never disappear, if you were a former smoker, or smoke now, you might be prone to clotting, and there are things you can do to help with prevention. Why Won't Your Bruises Disappear? | New Health Advisor A Guide To Preventing And Treating Blood Clots At Home - HealthPrep.com Preventing Blood Clots - American Blood Clot Association I did take the John's Hopkins free contact tracing course (and passed!) on Coursera at the beginning of the pandemic, and I recall they kept comparing the original SARS Covid19 strain to Measles, repeatedly emphasizing that Covid only had a R naught of about 2 - 4, so it was "manageable". The reason health officials freak out when there's a Measles outbreak, and not as much when there's an Ebola outbreak, is because people feel so ill so fast with Ebola, that they naturally go home, and go to bed - and that makes them spread the disease to fewer people before they recover or die. Measles has a long incubation period with few symptoms, and people spread that disease on average to 12 - 18 people, before they realize they should go home, and go to bed. Lots of named variants of covid so far have increased the R naught. The original strain had an R of about 2 - 4 Alpha had an R of about 5 Delta had an R of around 6 or 7 Omicron has an R of around 10 BA2 (Stealth Omicron) seems to have an R of around 13 I am not an epidemiologist, I'm not even that bright, but this seems to be a pattern that isn't going to end. If you have heard news that the "pandemic" will soon become "endemic", and some areas are looking into whether this is happening very soon, you should be aware that this change is based upon many concrete factors - and the most important factor that can't be changed is that the R needs to be below 1. If the R isn't below 1, then you're still in an epidemic (local emergency), or pandemic (global emergency), no matter what your politicians and the news say, and you should act accordingly. Whether or not you're high risk. I'm in the United States, so my go to source for tracking Covid is the CDC. Their "Covid Tracker" shows that the entire United States is a "High Risk" area, and people should continue to take all the standard precautions they have been recommending for over two years. If your nation is in the red, and your state drops restrictions, that doesn't mean that your nation isn't still in the red, and you don't have to take precautions. It probably just means some voters are cranky, and very vocal. Check with CDC or WHO to get the facts. CDC COVID Data Tracker Because I'm high risk, I think I should be even more careful when the general population becomes careless. So! If you have any other links, or your own ideas about preventing blood clots, please let me know! I'm only getting more concerned, as the virus continues to mutate, and spread.

I had a terrible manic/psychotic episode last August, and I'm having a great deal of difficulty letting go of certain elements of the experience. I keep being gripped with the feeling I've made a terrible mistake of some kind that's going to result in something bad, but other times I'm able to reassure myself that's not the case. What's really bad is when i start to argue with myself internally about it, which can make me panicky. I do take Depakote and Zyprexa, so it's not like I'm not taking my meds. Has anyone else had this kind of trouble? I thought about posting this in OCD but it seemed more relevant here.

"Best" as in being effective with fewer side effects. Which ones were the best for you? Which ones did you take? What condition(s) did you treat? What side effects did you get? How did the antipsychotics compare to "conventional" antidepressants? Can antipsychotics be an alternative to "conventional" antidepressants? What are the risks? What are the benefits? Do they make you a tomato with time? Psychiatrists prescribe them more often in recent times, it seems.

Sometimes out of the blue I get this feeling that I did something wrong and people will come to get me, because of this. Then I keep on reviewing what I did throughout the day and see that I did not do anything wrong. What causes this? Is this ocd or paranoia? How to prevent/deal/improve with this?

Hello All, Looking for an opinion on something. I was put on Cogentin (Benztropine) 50mg a day for a neuroleptic crisis some years back. Almost immediately, I had visual hallucinations and even reported them to the nurse, who ignored it. Things spiraled out from there and my bizarre behavior got largely ignored, thanks to being under-insured. Eventually, I developed a heart arrhythmia so I was required to cold-turkey it. I don't wish benzodiazepine withdrawal syndrome on anyone. I had been on the medicine as well as narcotic-vicodin for about a year at that point. However, it made me wonder if having a paradoxical reaction to that specific hypnotic might be related to an underlying diagnosis? My entire nuclear family, save for myself, each has at least three comorbid conditions a peice. They have all gone to years of therapy but I guess for not wanting to throw flame onto a burning trash fire, I was excluded. As a side note, I was also one of the kids who got placed in the drug trial for Ritalin--for adhd which my mother was told I didn't really have. I also ended up in the open market trial for Abilify some ten years ago, unknowingly. Ritalin made me catatonic and depressed. Abilify was a rather similar experience to Ritalin, except I also experienced anhedonia and dissociation. So technically that's three poor responses to frontline medicines... Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Had a tiny fight with my psychiatrist, he seems to be dobuting my diagnosis. In the hospital they tried to say i was bpd with bipolar, but my psychologist says i cant be bpd and even my psychiatrist used to think im not. I dont have any bpd traits other than emotional inestability. Anyways im mad bc people dobut my psychotic symptoms he thinks is just something from my imagination or something "typical" from me. Im mad bc the new medication is not working and now i have panic attacks i didnt had before. The hospital kinda helped kinda made things worse. I feel like my doctor has left me behind, he doesnt care anymore, if he had answered or seen me 15days before when i asked, before i had my big crisis i wouldnt had ended in hospital. Im scheduling an appointment with a new doctor. But i feel so lost, so sad, like no one can help me, not even doctors. Its not fair. This illness is destroying my life. Has anyone ever had this kind of problems with doctors? Have you had a moment where medication made things worse?

Do you ever have ultra-rapid/mixed-type episodes (imagine the flavor of uncontrollable crying, deep despair, hopelessness, with added dash of hysteria and near-psychosis). These episodes repeat each month (3-4x), but only last 1-2 hours...they have become more & more erratic as I've become older. It can be a small trigger, stress builds and it's like a mini-nervous breakdown, feelings overwhelm, before I can pull myself out. It can be quite traumatic, honestly. No one can tell me what this major brain blip is. Most doctors have diagnosed me with major depression, but then I have these rapid "broken circuit" episodes i call them. I have never been manic or hypomanic.... I just usually feel depressed and then each month I have several of these "fits" where I completely lose it. WTH could this be?? My meds work the rest of the time, but I've never found a med that helps with these fits !?#$@%

Hello, I am new and am wondering if anyone else has had their neurotransmitter levels tested. By that I mean things like dopamine, serotonin, nueroepiniphrine, GABA, the ratios of these things and all that jazz. Despite a lifetime of psychosis, I never spoke to a doctor about my mental issues in truth. I did have to sprinkle in a bit of honesty in order to get the test I wanted to measure my neurotransmitter levels, and man was that worth it. I am hoping we can share our levels to see what levels correlate with what symptoms and what things people are using to treat them.

Hello there, my name is Spokety. I"m having trouble dealing with my paranoia. I've been hospitalized way too many times in the past couple of years, especially recently. My symptoms are hard to treat because I'll have 0 paranoia and delusions for months and then all of a sudden I'll believe all these things and next thing I know I'm in a hospital. I've ran down the street naked a couple of times as a "protest" for what I believed was a government that was purposely trying to torture me using anti-psychotics. Another time I tried to go to jail by assaulting a woman in a grocery store. It happens so fast it's so hard for me to control myself and it seems pointless to see a therapist because I'm not paranoid at this moment so I don't know what to talk about. Therapists say that they don't think I can be treated without anti-psychotic medication but I've had some of my worst paranoid thoughts when I was taking medication orally or by injection so clearly that's not a solution. Plus I have side effects of medications that make life a living hell and I'd rather die then live like that. The only medication that doesn't seem to be as damaging is anti-anxiety meds, but I don't know if those will even help with paranoia or delusions. I don't hear voices or have hallucinations which is good, but the other things I have are very bad.

Three days ago I felt like there was mold growing in my brain and it was controlling my thoughts. I am now in a time of feeling a little less crazy, but I know in 30 minutes that might change again. Yesterday, I was waiting for someone to drive me home from church and I started believing the whole church was a cult and all religion is a mind control cult, which some people believe this but its not normal for me. I grew up in church. It made me feel very afraid. Then I started believing that demons were in my brain because of the mold in my brain. I tried to call my old pastor about this and he just reassured me that this is a mental health issue but I cant trust him. I cant trust anybody right now. The only person I trust is my therapist I am seeing tomorrow. I feel like something catachlysmic is coming. The last week every morning I check the news on my phone to see if a nuke hit. I feel like I'm one of the only people going to heaven and I am having a hard time trusting anyone else. I have also been having weird dreams, nightmares. I have lost touch with my normal self. I take geodon and feel less paranoid but that wears off after a few hours. Ativan helps too, but not that much.

hi everyone, its been SO long since I've posted. Last time was in March but I don't know, that just seems worlds away. Anyway, anyone have any ideas on kundalini and psychosis. I'm quite convinced I'm a twin flame and was wondering if anyone has any experience like this that I can relate to. Thanks and I hope this post finds everyone ok

I was diagnosed with schizophrenia in early 2016. Originally I was on five meds but weaned off and just now started on abilify 10mg a day. I’ve been taking ativan since I’ve been diagnosed but only as needed so I don’t build a tolerance to it. Just saying hello! I am a musician, and I make videos as well.

Hi, I don't remember too much about my 2 week stay, but if I wrote it all down, it would be a small book I think. I still feel jangly about it a month and a half later and I guess that the worst part is wondering if/when it will happen again. Normal? They did so many tests on me and I only remember one - the EEG, for some reason. Don't remember visitors, like best friends (2! and lucky to have em), brother, or docs and nurses. They say that I'd been mumbly, unstable on my feet before roommate called 911, then still for the first two days, then talkative and friendly the rest of the time. All of the tests were normal, or "unremarkable", so they worried instead me falling. They still want me to use a cane or walker. Ha - I'm only 54 ffs. I also have a whole set of weird symptoms that no one has been able to explain, and again, lots of Dr's and tests. A smaller set are eye/perceptual problems almost like an acid or mushroom trip, but definitely not fun. Immediately have to be really careful not to hurt myself because my balance goes to hell. Sometimes I have to crawl and even so, I faceplant into the floor and cut and bruise myself all over on a regular basis. Sound familiar to anyone? I've experienced illusions and hallucinations (auditory and visual) on a pretty regular basis, but no delusions. None of any of them are predictable though, with no patterns or common triggers (hate that damn word, except when nothing else works so efficiently!). My pdoc took me off lithium (had been 60mg. I reach toxic pretty easily), upped my lamictal from 200 to 400, upped latuda from 60 to 80 + 40 in the morning, then added requip. The rest of my meds in signature. I don't really know what I'm saying or asking, but I've pretty stable since I've been home. I'm having mood swings but attribute most of it to med changes, but the zoomy mixed and maybe manic states are scary now. I feel like I just really need some conversation about it all, and friends aren't open to any of it. They can't handle it, but I think I barely get it myself, and worse because I remember so little before, during or after. I was conscious and remember a few days, but that's it. Stop! I won't say another word now, period. Thanks for reading, RD

I've had two previous major psychotic episodes while off my medication for long periods. These episodes put me into a manic frenzy that caused legal problems. Once where I isolated and resisted arrest on foot and the other where I resisted / eluded by motor vehicle across 3 counties. One occurred during a heat wave in mid-July and the next during frigid temperatures in mid-January, thus extreme temperatures are one of my triggers. Thankfully there was little damage and no one was hurt either time. My lifestyle pattern involves me taking anti-psychotic medication by court order (usually by injection) for 1 to 2 years for probation before going off and feeling consistently better from the lack of adverse side effects (akathisia, drowsiness, suicide ideation, anxiety, panic attacks, anhedonia, hopelessness, severe weight gain, etc). I do well for about 7 to 8 months but then begin to isolate in my apartment and decompensate and become delusional and manic, thinking I possess special abilities and evolutionary traits and can communicate with a higher power. There is some paranoia involved as well. Sometimes I hallucinate. Then I relapse and become frenetic. There is however, little to no depression when I'm off the anti-psychotics. When I take them I'm severely depressed. I have seen a number of psychiatrists since I developed this illness in 2011 at age 22 and been labeled Paranoid Schizophrenic, Schizoaffective, and Bipolar 1 With Mania. None of them are completely synonymous and my current psych can't make up his mind. I'm very sensitive to anti-psychotics. Only 1.25mg of Zyprexa zapped my delusional thinking and hallucinations in a few hours and Invega Sustenna 39mg (what I'm currently taking) is more than enough for treating my symptoms as well. The same thing with 2mg of Abilify. I'm just saying this because I've heard that some individuals need moderate to higher dosages for the medications to be effective. I'm not one of them. Anyway, I came across one psychiatrist who was part of the justice system (in the beginning of my term) who refused to place me on an anti-psychotic claiming I was too focused during my occurrences with the police for him to diagnose me Schizoaffective. He said that I still retained some sanity based on what he was told and wasn't trying to murder anyone or hurt myself. He refuted Schizoaffective Disorder and labeled me Bipolar 1 With Mania And Temporary Psychosis and said I had one of the most extreme cases of Mania he had ever seen. He recommended a heavy mood-stabilizer instead of an anti-psychotic. He said there may be some delusional thinking but I will remain baseline and wont act upon them. Unfortunately, I was extradited within a few weeks and placed out of his care and the next psych I came across was an AP dispenser and convinced me to take it so probation would accept me. The only mood-stabilizer I've tried is Nuerontin or Gabapentin and I wasn't on it long enough to know if it treated my symptoms effectively. I come off probation in December and don't want to get in trouble with the law once again, but at the same time I despise what these anti-psychotics are currently doing to me. Some things I wouldn't wish upon my worst enemy. Being on the anti-psychotic leads to depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, akathisia, hating every aspect of life, and weight gain and coming off completely means thinking I have 38 girlfriends and can stop missiles in their tracks. Could a mood-stabilizer be the appropriate balance to end this nightmare? Can someone have Bipolar Mania so severe they develop Psychosis but not actually be Schizoaffective?

I have schizoaffective disorder bipolar type but don't have hallucinations and never had. What I have are thoughts like: a family member is answering to another and they answer with a displeasing (I think) voice, for example, say "No" in that tone, and I think it is because of me that they are angry when they answer. Or when my mother sighs or something, I think in a weird way that she's sighing because I am a failure. I think when I am with my family members or when I hear them talk, I tend to feel like I am the cause of all the problems in their lives. What do you make of it?

So I haven't been feeling well lately, not as bad as I felt last time I had to go to the hospital, but not too good either. Lately the suicidal ideation has ramped up a lot, but its not from me its from the psycho-ocd intrusive thoughts. I feel no need to act on them, but for some reason they are extremely comforting (thinking about suicide that is). I just cant stop thinking about killing myself. Ive also heard my name being called a lot at random times, not too sure what that is but it might be a new symptom. I don't feel like a danger to myself yet, but im scared I will be very soon. I haven't talked to my tdoc or pdoc about these issues yet but I have an appointment coming up soon. Do you think a hospital stay is in my future?

So I've been wondering for a while. Wouldn't it be better if I just stopped all meds and let out whatever disorder I have that's waiting to come out? I have attenuated psychosis, so my delusions and hallucinations aren't that bad, but everyday I get worse (such as developing new delusions) and frankly, I'm tired of getting worse slowly everyday. My meds seem to work for a while but then I get worse despite being compliant. Should I just stop all my meds to let out whatever is hiding inside? I would have done this a while ago if it wasn't for my father who doesn't want to see me get worse. I'm just getting so desperate at this point.

In your experience, after a period of feeling good and being relatively symptom free, do you become extremely bad? Like do you need to go to the hospital ever again after the initial stay? Im just sitting here thinking about how my psycho-ocd keeps getting worse and i keep getting new symptoms despite being without too many symptoms for a while. Will i have to go back to the hospital one day?

If you are taking either of these medications and are experiencing suicidal feelings, I want you to hold on, and tell yourself it is the medication and not you. Hold on: you have a precious human life - taper gradually off the drugs, and find other ways of dealing with the symptoms for which the medication was prescribed. After my experience with the world of psychiatry, I have this to say: if you can find a way of functioning without antipsychotics, then don't be pressurised into taking those medications. I found in my case that even when I was largely functional, and not suffering too much, there was some zeal on the part of the psychiatric profession in trying to push antipsychotics at me, simply by virtue of the diagnosis. The diagnosis was an episode of psychosis, or with psychotic elements, and therefore antipsychotics were strongly recommended. This was even after I was experiencing these strong suicidal feelings which were so uncharacteristic of me, and which I hadn't been experiencing before taking the drugs. I decided to try an extremely low dose of Abilify - less than the so-called "effective minimum dose", since I found it hard to function on the dose originally prescribed (something which the prescribing psychiatrist didn't really accept.) On this "below minimum" dose of Abilify, I started to experience strong agitation - one of the side-effects. Therefore I doubled my dose of Clonazepam. As a result, I became very tired - my energy levels plummeted, and I found myself having to limit my sporting activity to about a third of previous levels. My walking became relatively slow. I started to develop symptoms associated with schizophrenia which I hadn't had previously: less mobility in my facial expressions, it started to be a struggle to look after myself, to clean my home, to go shopping - though I forced myself through it all. I started to go to bed early because of extreme tiredness, and stopped going out in the evening, and as a result became socially isolated, and felt myself spiral into a depression. Weeks before becoming depressed, I already started to experience suicidal feelings - disembodied: unlinked to depression. My depression was so severe that I found it hard to eat, and rather than gaining weight as is the tendency on this drug, I rapidly lost weight. I found it hard to write fluently - the drug seemed to affect my muscular ability, and lost my articulateness, finding it relatively hard to express myself (and as you can see, this is something I have no trouble doing without the antipsychotics!). I lost my creative ability, and was unable to engage in the activities that made my life meaningful. These also contributed to my spiralling downwards. Deep inside the depression, I lost interest in all the things that had made my life meaningful up to that time. Instead of accepting my view that the suicidal feelings and depression were linked to the drug Abilify, the psychiatrist described it as "the evolution of an illness". Another psychiatrist decided to transfer me instead to the antipsychotic Seroquel, even though it states in the contra-indications that this drug may intensify existing suicidal feelings, and surely enough, it intensified mine. Since (I presume) I was on such a low dose of Abilify, the psychiatrist didn't instruct me to taper Abilify, but simply to stop it, and start Seroquel. I was taking half a tablet with the minimum dosage. Since I didn't like feeling suicidal, and I guess I didn't want to end up going that way, I decided I wanted to discontinue the antipsychotic medication. I was told that I could simply stop taking the medication: I suppose it wasn't felt necessary to advise me to taper the medication as it was below the minimum effective dose as recognized by the psychiatrists. (As a result of my experience, I would advise anyone to taper when coming off an antipsychotic - however small the dose. If, like me, you are taking half a tablet a day, you could then take it every other day for a while, and then every third day, etc.) I started to experience almost total insomnia which lasted about 6 weeks. At every stage, it was not acknowledged by psychiatrists that the manifestations I was experiencing were caused by medication, or withdrawal from it. Thus, the insomnia was attributed to my depression, rather than to withdrawal from the medication. It was on the internet that I was able to learn that chronic insomnia is a withdrawal effect from Abilify and Seroquel, and since I had only taken Seroquel for a few days while still having Abilify in my system, I must have been withdrawing from both. I was prescribed the highest dose of the sleeping medication Zopiclone (Zimovane) intensified by an extra Clonazepam tablet at night; this provided me with about two hours of sleep a night. While affected by this insomnia, I was still experiencing suicidal feelings, and would be lying awake almost the whole night thinking of the pros and cons of various ways of killing myself. After about 5 or 6 weeks, with the antipsychotics out of my system, the insomnia ended, and by this time, I had started taking an antidepressant, and my suicidal feelings subsided. By now I have come off all medication - including the antidepressant: Citalopram, since it was affecting my memory. If I feel the need, I take the very occasional half a tablet of Clonazepam. I firmly believe, following my experience, that a proportion of psychiatric patients are being misdiagnosed based on the manifestations of the side effects of antipsychotic medication, and the expression of beliefs which have nothing to do with brain chemistry. I further believe that for all the lives that may be saved as a result of the administration of antipsychotics, there is a significant proportion of patients who commit suicide not because of their illness, but because of the side effects of medication which they may be unnecessarily or inappropriately prescribed. These numbers then get lumped together with the numbers who commit suicide as a result of their illness, and is used as further evidence that suicidal action or attempts are symptoms of psychotic illnesses. If you are feeling suicidal, you will not believe that your life is precious. But hold on - because it is.

Does anyone who has psychosis ever struggle to use the correct words when talking, forget the word for something or when reading something see the wrong words from what is actually written down, e.g. the text is "you select" and you read it as "your secret"? I hope that makes sense, I'm not to good at explaining what I mean lately.

So im home alone rn and i just finished watching a tv show. The thing is that after i turned off the tv and went upstairs for a drink i started hearing the tv again. So i went downstairs to turn it off but it wasnt on. Then i heard the upstairs tv on aswell so i went to check that and it wasnt on. Could this be a symptom of psychosis? I have a diagnosis of attenuated psychosis syndrome (finally got a diagnosis) so could it be part of that? Im really scared guys, any answers would help

So this has only happened the last 2 days (not typical for me)... but I was feeling down in the dumps (as usual) on the bus due to an encounter earlier in the day that left me a bit teary-eyed. On the bus, there was an older (mid-50's) woman next to me with a fully shaved head. Prior to noticing her standing close next to me, I was having peculiar thoughts/assumptions that this woman next to me had Cancer and I could "sense" her suffering. I could feel her "pain body" as I looked into her eyes/face. As I initially got on the crowded bus, I thought I was feeling/sensing all people's pain on the bus and felt emotionally overwhelmed with deep sadness, yet also compassion. I was not thinking I was psychic or could read anyone's thoughts necessarily, it was more of this hypersensitivity of feeling...like I was absorbing people's pain and feeling it all, in addition to my mental pain - if this makes sense? It was fleeting (this all stopped as I got off the bus). I'm wondering however, if this is a symptom of psychosis? Like a depressive psychosis? It was NOT a good feeling & I've never had any sort of beliefs that I am psychic, all-sensing or anything of that sort yet this sort of symptom has happened to me before when in a more severe depression.

I notice a lot of people around here with SZA dxes, and I know of some people here with BP1 dxes with psychosis outside of mood episodes, so I am wondering how common is it for you to have started out with what appeared to be an ordinary mood disorder, with psychosis only occurring within mood episodes, but where the psychotic symptoms eventually gained independence from the mood symptoms, so that they now can occur at any time? Bonus points if one has also developed negative symptoms and/or cognitive symptoms separate from depression after having originally developed a mood disorder. (That is what seems to have happened with me; my early psychotic symptoms were all tied to mania, but now seem to be completely independent of mood, and I now seem to have negative symptoms in any mood, when avolition for me was originally tied specifically to depression.)

In the past year, especially the last three and a half months, my psychotic symptoms have been coming out of the woodwork, after having been gone for years, and have especially hit hard in the last three weeks. In the most recent times I have had insight, even though I have lacked insight to some degree at times in the past, but I have definitely observed a pattern in recent times of acting on my delusions as if they very much were real, of that what insight I have has very little impact on my actual behavior, of that what insight I do have is not enough. I am afraid that, at some point in the near future, I will lose insight altogether, and will simply go off the deep end. Recently my pdoc has added a tiny amount of cariprazine (1.5 mg) to my risperidone (6 mg), but I feel she is being overly conservative, as 1.5 mg is indeed a tiny dose of cariprazine. I hope at my next appointment she will increase the cariprazine to 3 mg, rather than, as I suspect she might, waiting until I really lose it before increasing my dosage.

Right, yo, so I have psychosis... in the sense that I hear voices (or "audial hallucinations") of friends and whatnot communicating (in a telepathic, 'extra-sensory' secret kinda way) if you like. Now these voices can be pretty damn convincing and whilst I can keep my wits around me, it's not uncommon for me to occasionally slip into the delusion that the voices my brain produces - which manifest themselves as people I know / might have just spoken to moments before - can seem totally realistic in the sense they posses their own unique personalities/opinions which I (consciously) could not ever THINK of coming up with on my own. Now back to the IRC dreaming shit with my psychosis; I *hear* voices. The other night I had a dream, that eventually turned into a LUCID dream, where I was operating my computer trying to find my giant CLOCK widget to find out what time it was... next minute I end up on this exact IRC window. Before I know it, I'm totally lucid and feel like I'm 100% awake (but dont realise I'm not, just feel 100% in control/conscious/awake) and all of a sudden, these voices I hear which pester and annoy me and give me grief 24/7 to the point of keeping me awake at times (if I dont have any background sound/music/TV) suddenly appear as - what they CLAIM is - how THEY see/communicate with other people "telepathically" - which happens to be a mental - but clearly visible at all times - IRC window where the voices appear purely as text, silently, to one another, as opposed to numerous different intrusive non-stop audial hallucinations - or "voices" coming from inside the brain (distinguishable from actual voices coming from real people which occur outside the brain (at least most of the time, unless I experience what Dr's would call an actual "psychotic break")) - which is how I hear them. Now in this dream, and for quite a long time when I first started hearing voices, I was easily convinced that the rest of the world does in fact communicate telepathically (because I can hear - & talk back to - the voice of ANYONE I know IRL if I actually try and *think* of that person - though a lot of the time they can occur randomly just by thinking a person's name; very confusing/unsettling/invasive), albeit no-one EVER talks about it in real life (that's the real kicker you see, it's like the First Rule of Fight Club). Except, unlike the sound-based voices which "psychotic" / "schizophrenic" people like myself hear, they appear as an easily interpretable text-based chat window - like an IRC client - with each voice occuring as a string of colour-coded & timestamped text-based messages in an easily accessible corner of one's own mind. And this is the way EVERYONE ELSE sees it, whereas it was like *I* was only getting some of the text being read out as Text-To-Speech, and before this dream (and after it) I could never actually *see* the words in an easily organised, interactive IRC client. I just hear them. All the fucking time. There were a few quotes / clearly distinguishable messages which I read during my brief window in this dream where I was - for the first time ever - able to chat with my psychotic "voices" by ONLY visualising the text in my mind. Instead of - like whenever I read/write/type something - "saying" the words in my head. If I try visualising the text, I inevitably read it outloud in my inner-voice anyway, which the voices describe as "shouting". This "shouting" is the ONLY time *they* ever actually hear a voice AUDIBLY instead of visually, just because of the unique way in which my brain works - and as a result is why they are ALL choosing to persecute/abuse/mess with ME for being an inconvenience to everyone else... "everyone else" being basically the majority of people that I know (or have known or met) in real life, all of whom are able to communicate telepathically, and whose voices I *hear* - but whose "voices" (which in their case wouldn't be called "voices") THEY are only able to see IF they CHOOSE to look at their "mental IRC window". The rest of the time they can ignore it, but like with an IRC chat that would "flash", if the end-user is mentioned or highlighted it does in someway notify them. Now I wake up and this BLOWS my mind. I try to put it all together and consider it, at first, to be TRUE. Like I've just discovered the reason why my psychosis is such an inconvenience to me, but to everyone else who's voice I hear, never seems to have any problems with it interfering in their every day life. I had, as the voices often put it, "figured it out". Now whilst I hear like 10 voices all talking at once and am unable to distinguish between them in any way (and just hear a convoluted mass of crowd-talking like in a busy pub) due to the overlap, I realise that to everyone else they just appear like an IRC window which happens to be moving very quickly but all the messages are displayed individually in a list. Plus equally there's also a LOAD of text-only based chat that I'm missing out on - this being where EVERYONE ELSE (but myself who can't see this IRC window during my "waking" hours instead hears the comms as voices) is communicating in with each other in a way I am unable to pick up on, different ways to mess me around. So... that's my story of the crazy IRC based dream I had the other night. Hope you enjoyed reading. Yes it sounds a bit 'mental' but I have managed to convince myself, due to several reasons I won't go into detail on now, why this is in fact a load of horseshit. The "IRC window" and just generally the likelihood of telepathy itself. Of course I could be wrong in dismissing it all as manifestations of my own, crazily-overactive and out-of-control subconscious brain (which, psychologists say, operates AT LEAST five times quicker than the conscious brain, which would explain how the manifestation of psychotic voices can, at times appear so damn convincing and why they're all able to take on so many individual unique personalities and develop so many intricate plots and various ways of "fooling" me) that is smarter than me. I could just adhere to 'occam's razor' which would suggest that the simplest explanation is the most probable. In my case the fact that everyone has telepathic abilities that they keep on the down-low and don't talk to one another about in real life WOULD actually be a far simpler explanation than the various methods of deduction I've used myself to refute this possibility (which has, in all honesty, taken me about a year to do - for some people with psychosis or schizophrenia it can take SEVERAL years and many of them - myself included - can at any time 'relapse' back into a delusional way of thinking).