Believe in your own recovery
I was 25 and growing marijuana when one day this voice right beside me said, “You can’t plant here”.
Over the next three weeks the voices just got more incessant. I was physically,mentally and emotionally exhausted and they just kept talking to me 24/7.
I decided to pull the pin on my growing operation, and that same night the voices came to my bedroom window and said, “Okay we’re going to leave you now, but we will be back” and they left.
Two years later I had an intravenous methamphetamine habit and everything was falling apart. I was falling behind in my mortgage and my debts were building up. The voices returned. I was growing pot indoors now, and the whole cycle started again.
Voices commented on everything I did
The voices were commenting on everything I was thinking and doing. I was hearing them from the radio and TV as well.
Sometimes I’d think they’re being supportive, but then just the idea of hearing voices would get on top of me. I was certain I was a victim of some big conspiracy. I insisted on getting a chest X-ray to see what the robotic devices I thought were in me, looked like.
It was obviously a normal X-ray, so I was certain they had showed me someone else’s. It wouldn’t have mattered what you’d done, I would have found some way to explain stuff to make it suit what I thought was happening.
Mum called the crisis team, which led to my first inpatient experience. There was a raft of different labels the doctors gave my psychosis. It just depended on how I was presenting at the time. I was in and out of the psych ward and on regimes of different antipsychotic medication.
I remember a whole lot of just sitting around waiting for the world to change. I remember being in seclusion. That wasn’t necessary, as what I really needed was someone to talk to. It was like being punished when I didn’t need to be punished.
I wanted more out of life
I finally thought, “I want more out of life than this”. So I did a diploma of visual arts,graduated, and the moment they gave me my certificate and shook my hand, the voices stopped for about six months. That’s when I realised I needed to start taking some responsibility - that there was some mechanism in my mind that had flicked the switch.
The more I ignored them, the more they started leaving me alone.
My psychiatrist told me I would need to take meds for the rest of my life, but I thought, “I’m going to prove you wrong”. I started running Tai Chi groups and I was cycling, swimming, and walking, because I noticed the more regular exercise I did, the better I could cope.
Once I started making positive choices I had a lot of support from my mum. She is such a strong person, she’s magic. I know I wouldn’t still be here if it wasn’t for the support my mum’s provided.
I was still doing ‘P’, so I started contracting with myself around having a maximum limit I’d stick to. I hought, “If I’m really going to talk the talk, I need to walk the walk”. I met an ex-’P’ addict who had straightened his life out, and I thought if he could do it then so can I. After three weeks using no ‘P’, I was like a rat climbing up a drainpipe.
I ended up completely psychotic again. I thought there were big robotic mosquitoes flying around the room. I asked to see a psychologist, and revisited some of the traumas of my earlier life. It turned out the death of my sister had been largely driving my whole substance abuse issues for the last 20 years.
Scared that sobriety would be boring
At first it was really painful. I’m actually quite a sensitive guy, but where I grew up, sensitive guys get ‘arseholes’, so I learnt not to be my real self. I was running from myself. It was exciting for me to learn that it’s okay for me to be who I am. I felt a mixture of excitement and fear. What is life going to be like without drugs? Is it going to be boring? Can I do it?
It took me two years to come off ‘P’. For the first year, I was living on a rollercoaster, blindfolded. When you’re using substances you know exactly how you are going to feel, but when you’re not using, you don’t know how you’re going to feel. I also started coming off my meds. I noticed the more I came off medication, the more my emotions and my life got real for me again. I am now medication free, and I haven’t heard voices for about two years.
A huge part of my recovery has been participating in martial arts, drawing, playing guitar, taking up pottery and wood carving - and having a dog.
I’m a Daoist and a Buddhist, so I have a faith and a following and a community I’m involved with. This happened after I came off the drugs and antipsychotics. It seemed like a natural progression, as I’ve always been quite a spiritual person, just not in a formal way before.
My advice to others is to believe in recovery
Life is now exciting and it keeps getting better. I’m exploring the concept of making an income selling my woodcarvings. I make taiha and kowaiwai, traditional weapons, flutes, tokotoko, and talking sticks. It always seemed an unreachable goal before, but now I have the self-belief and faith to do it.
