WRITTEN TESTIMONIALS

When you are gradually recovering from psychosis, it is difficult to initially admit that you have gained a little weight, or a lot. It's hard to even realize that we're slowing down, that we need time, a lot of time to recover. At times, we think we are cured instantly. And when we're not in outright denial, we refuse to believe that it's going to come back, that we're going to be able to follow a conversation for hours, read an entire book in a few days or study for an exam and pass with flying colors... things that we used to do so easily. We don't believe it. But after 5 years of remission, without relapse, stability and personal growth, we realize that not only have we recovered all this, but that we are changed, as if we were better. You know yourself much better and you don't make the same mistakes again.  

One of the hardest things for me to accept was not being able to go back "as before". At the beginning I looked and tried to resume the same activities, to hang out with the same friends, to find the same boyfriend that I had left more than a year before. Stubborn, I didn't want to accept anything else. Yet, little by little, I made room for novelty in my life. For 4 years, I let myself discover new interests, a new program of study that I love, new friends... Maybe fewer friends in quantity, but only real friends who have the same values as me. And you end up finding someone who understands you and doesn't put the same pressure on you as before. In my opinion, the key is to keep an open mind.

If I look at myself before and compare myself to now, before I used to act a lot on impulses, I was very impulsive, but now... My decisions are much more thoughtful. Before I embark on something, I'm really going to assess the situation. I'm much calmer than I was. What it does is that before, I would get into things that I couldn't accomplish, I was disappointed and I was down and I lost confidence in myself. Now I take on relatively easier things, but I succeed and it gives me confidence in myself and I undertake new things afterwards. The episode I experienced allowed me to know myself better, yes, but also to develop better habits and have more positive attitudes.

Head above water

"It is not abnormal to feel anger, sadness, fear, shame, the problem is to be overwhelmed by them." -Dr. Christophe André

Yes, I gained close to 60 pounds in 1 year, due to the depression itself and the medication. But I lost them all in a little less than 3 years and I'm now 2x fitter than before, and above all I eat better in general. I have quit smoking and I rarely drink. I developed a strong interest in training and nutrition, and that... "thanks" to psychosis! You have to see all the things that happen to you from a positive point of view and to do that, you have to take a step back. A lot of hindsight, like months or years. And that's when you realize how far we've come.  

When you take a medication that has side effects such as weight loss and problems concentrating and remembering for life, it comes to everyone, at one time or another, to take less or to stop it. We tell ourselves that by going gradually, we will be able to keep control of any symptoms and adjust our focus. And I had to learn it the hard way. Indeed, I gradually started to reduce one of my medications (Seroquel), which was only one of the medications I was taking. What I had not taken into consideration was everything else. I lost a lot of weight at that time, I started exercising a lot and changing my diet. I also went back to school, which was an additional source of stress. I told myself that lithium alone would be enough to protect me. Well, no. A few months later, I went to JAP myself to report on my very high mood, my difficulty sleeping and my ideas that were always going faster and faster in a disordered way. If I have a message to convey, it is not to always accept current doses of medication and never try to change them. On the other hand, doing it by talking to your doctor, as I did later, is ALWAYS a better idea. And what surprised me the most afterwards was the openness of my treatment team to modify the medications, to try different dosages, under supervision.

What is difficult in psychosis is that there is nothing clear, nothing obvious... It has nothing to do with what we see in the movies. It takes time to diagnose, it's very subtle and it takes someone who is very sensitive to small manifestations, very attentive, and I think that's where early intervention and consulting has had a positive effect in my son's case, because the earlier we treat, the more chances we put on our side.