I’m writing this about 2-3 months since my last injection. I told myself I couldn’t take it anymore. Am I scared that the voices may come back? Yes. Terrified, but the quality of life given to me under the medication isn’t worth it.

I was given Invega Sustenna. I was supposed to take a shot every month to replace the risperidone that i was taking on and off for the past few years. Though to be honest i wasn't very regular with the pills. The Doctors felt that it would be best to switch to an injection to take away the routine that i could easily break.

Immediately, i could tell that something was wrong. In the span of a few months that i was taking it, i gained 40lbs. Nothing like the medication i had taken before which previously had no effect on my weight. I was restless. I couldn't stop flexing my calves. Nothing interested me anymore. I didn't want to do anything. No sex. No video games. No movies. When people would talk to me (any social situation) it would just bring up a cringing irritation that even i was surprised at inside. I became rude and i would yell at myself internally while it was happening. It was like i was becoming a zombie and i was watching myself change.
 
I had to stop. I had to stop because i felt like if this continued then i would become suicidal. 

I feel better, I can tell it’s still in me. I’ve heard that it takes up to a year before it’s completely out of my system. Slowly things are beginning to feel like they did before I was hit with my condition.
 
I have to ask myself where did this even come from. Is it genetic? Possibly, that’s what the physicians seem to think. I think that it has more to do with my lifestyle before. When i was still normal. 

I was drinking, doing drugs, and partying. I was a very social guy. Completely different from how i am now. I was living with my girlfriend in my apartment. 

At first the voices to me were just something that i would describe as mumbling. Just feelings and voices that were more felt rather than heard. Surrounding me and coming from literally different directions. More and more it grew, like becoming the feeling of someone watching you. I had never experienced that, so at first, I thought it was just the normal everyday living of apartment life.

I truly thought it was just other people going about their lives and that the walls were just...thin.

My descent into madness was seamless.
 
Something weird happened. I was by myself in my apartment and I responded to the voices and thoughts with my own thoughts and feelings and noticed that they began to talk back. I was surprised and at first and it even felt interesting. Thinking back on it now it was weird how it didn't freak me out more.

Before long I felt like everyone was connected. That i was opening up to the reality of the world around me. That everyone could hear my thoughts and everyone else’s but that I was failing miserably at controlling this. 

That through my entire life i had missed something that is inherent to everyone living. I felt the whole world was in on it. I could hear the voices of everyone in my life at the time. Family, friends and random people. Talking to me. Eventually judging me. Examining my every move and thought. 

I would lay in bed at night and just be tortured by an onslaught of words and emotions. There was judgement for everything that I had ever done in my life. For every thought i had and was having. Mocking. At rare times, encouragement. Though even that was just myself reaching for anything to bring me relief from the sleepless nights and constant on edge feeling that the world is aware of everything I am doing. 

Odd synchronicity would occur. Like rain when i would cry. Storms when i felt like my body was aching. It just further reinforced my insanity as i began to feel like my energy was toxic to the world.

I was beginning to see things. Like a world overlaid on the physical world, but faster and more electric. Figures moving impossibly fast and shifting colors. Landscapes panning before my eyes. It was taking over my senses and during one episode that i can recall the world was one fire and i could even smell the smoke. That somehow i had caused it.

I was losing my own voice, identity and the ability to clear my mind.

Losing myself to the episodes of insanity that would visit me. 

I had lost the ability to be alone with myself, to be alone in a crowd. I was alone though. To the reality of everyone around me life was moving on normally, but there I was freaking out and having my own little meltdown inside my head. Anyone looking at me from the outside would just see me. Wide eyed and sometimes slightly rocking. Changing my face as each emotion passed through me.
 
I could feel it in my body. The voices would move my focus from area to area changing their narrative throughout the course of the day and through the night with how I physically felt.

I felt like the world was a psychic realm and that what I was hearing was the thoughts of others. That I could influence and feel their emotions. That I could hurt, help, and even fight people with my mind. It seems silly to me now.
 
I wouldn’t say I’m level headed now. I’m not even sure where I am. Sometimes I wonder if it’s coming back or if I’m just imagining things. Sometimes I'm terrified, considering that the voices were my imagination running wild to begin with.

I am somewhere in between the normalcy of who i was in the past and the insanity.

Was it schizophrenia? That’s what it was diagnosed as. Paranoid schizophrenia. More so it felt like delirium brought upon by myself because I wasn’t taking care of my body like I should’ve been.

Now I am more mindful of what it is I intake. I drink more water. I sleep more, i exercise on occasion. 

Though i am more myself than i have been in a while. I can’t help but feel…like something is still missing. The big question being is it out there? Is it in me? How can i get to the place where i was before this all began and continue living my life?

What the hell was it that really happened to me? It took over my life but to the world around me it was nothing perceivable. Yet, i had experienced it with all of my senses. 

In any case I hope it doesn't come back, but who i was under the influence of that medication was something even worse.

If you are taking medication and it is working for you. Do not stop taking it. For me, this is my choice, and i just felt like sharing with someone. Anyone. Cause i don't know if anyone understands when i don't understand it myself.

If you read this thank you.