David T's Page

I had 2 psychotic episodes nearly 2 years ago, about a month apart, each lasted 1-2 weeks.

I was a little depressed before the first one, then I had an emotional shock, nothing massive but was in a vulnerable state, became angry at the shock. Then I came across this poem and that seemed to lead me to be euphoric. I slept less and started having paranoid thoughts.

A lot of thoughts centred around Cornwall, where I am from. I thought the Cornish people were being wiped out in some kind of genocide, in a sense that is true in that economic forces are causing young Cornish people to move away and are replaced by others who buy properties up as holiday homes. At one point I thought I would be killed by the government for being Cornish. The following day I thought the world was about to end, so I sat down on a bench and waited for it to happen. It didn't and after this time the experience subsided.

On the eve of the winter solstice I went to west Cornwall, to the area around Zennor and took some photos of stone circles, and the sunset at Zennor. I was in a fairly normal frame of mind at the time but later on thought it a bit odd.

About a month later I was an usher at the wedding of a couple of friends. The excitement of all this seemed to bring back the mood changes, and this time I thought I was having some kind of spiritual crisis. I also had odd thoughts about Cornwall again. I became extremely disturbed by this rumour that a few years ago a farmer from Lincolnshire had bought a farm in west Cornwall and destroyed the stone hedges. This was a serious issue because the stone hedges in that area are in fact extremely ancient, and preserve field patterns that are thousands of years old, dating back to the Bronze Age. I saw this destruction of the field walls as a symbolic act of cultural genocide, which mirrored the actual genocide of things like the crushing of the 1549 Prayer Book Rebellion.

I went to my GP and I had a hallucination there, I thought I heard her say "I am very worried about you. I think you're losing something." I thought she was talking about me losing my faith, which led me to believe I was having a spiritual crisis of sorts. I got home to find a cutting from the "Western Morning News" in the post, and it had odd prophecies for the new year, it had a couple of articles which also seemed quite prophetic.

I had this odd sense that this sunset was actually not an ending but a turning point, that I had actually witnessed not the metaphorical end of the Cornish people but instead the end of a thousand year long decline, and the beginning of the revival of our fortunes.

I made a couple of symbolic gestures, one was simply to shake the hand of an acquaintance who was from Lincolnshire to forgive them for destroying the walls, and the second was to propose marriage to a friend for unusual reasons.

I ended up with a few friends being worried about me, and had a psychiatric assessment which led me to be hospitalised. My psychosis intensified after going into hospital, and I became very disorientated, and wasn't always sure I was actually in a hospital, or that the world outside the hospital was anything like it was before the episode. I had hallucinations both auditory and visual, and I thought other patients and staff had meanings on the symbolic level, and that some of them could be helpful "spirit guides" for want of a better word, and that some should be avoided because they were evil in intent or even had connections with the devil.

I was put on risperidone, and the psychosis went away within a couple of weeks. I became depressed however about a month later, and this went on for about 6 months. I changed antipsychotic to aripiprazole after a few months.

I have not had any return of the psychosis since, although have had some ups and downs of mood over the past couple of months.