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In reply to the discussion: A friend had a breakdown [View all]hunter
(38,311 posts)Worse than hallucinations, speaking from my own personal experiences.
Meds are helpful but don't work if you are too paranoid to take them.
It's been my good fortune that even at my very worst I tend to be fairly mild, even amusing.
In the worst decade of my life, between quitting high school and graduating from college, the cops would drive me home, not kill me.
It probably helped that I was white.
I don't honestly know how I accomplished it but I built my own safety net of family and friends.
Otherwise I'd be a crazy homeless guy.
Or dead.
I have maybe two years total life experience as a hard core crazy homeless guy but it's not something I put on my résumé.
My last 72 hour visit to the locked psych ward wasn't all that long ago.
That was a damned expensive vacation, insurance paid only a fraction of it.
Thankfully I've always been more a danger to myself than others, although I'm really good at making the people who love me cry.
I get the autistic stuff from my dad's dad.
I get the absolute crazy shit from my mom's mom, who was functional enough to work her entire adult life, but had to removed from her home as a danger to herself and others when she retired. She was still cussing up a storm and trying to bite the paramedics when they hauled her away in the ambulance.
The rest of my dysfunction I attribute to head injuries and random fae ancestors.