The Voices Don't Mean Anything

That's what they tell me.  The voices don't mean anything.  No matter how much they seem to make sense or strike up a fascinating conversation, no matter how eloquent they are, no matter how nice or how disturbing, they just don't mean anything.  Let me tell you something - that is so hard to grasp when you're hearing them.

The voices in my head always sound like haunting whispers.  They have their own personality.  They tend to be sarcastic.  They do not come across like my conscious personality. And they tend to be pejorative.  I wouldn't pick them to be friends.

Why I'm writing this now is because I'm struggling with a certain kind of hallucination called a command.  It basically means you hear or see something that indicates that you should think or do something. Yep, those are the dangerous ones.

Now, I'm in a peculiar place. I'm hearing commands from time to time. Not all the chatter I here on a regular basis is a command.  However, sometimes in the past few weeks I've been hearing commands to kill myself.  Now, if you're a professional in the field of psychiatry, you may be asking yourself, why am I not back in the hospital already?

The truth is that I'm in a predicament with my meds.  I'm finally back on what seems to be the best formula for me.  It keeps me functional. Daily I take 40mg of Abilify, 80mg of Prozac, 5mg of Haldol and 3mg of Klonapin.  If you know psych meds, you know that means I'm maxed out. About the only thing I could do in an emergency would be to take a bit more Haldol, but you can't stay at that dose because it's not safe.

The other thing is that no one thinks I'm a danger to myself.  The last time this happened it was straight into the hospital, but I'm honestly not intending to harm myself in any way.  Everyone in my support system knows this.  I hear these commands but they are just annoying and unnerving - they don't move me.

So, I keep reporting to everyone in my support system when I hear them and how I feel and I move on. I try to ignore them, but it's admittedly a somewhat tenuous place to be in.  Trying completely new anti-psychotics is not an option because I would most certainly become unstable.  So will they go away? What's bringing them on?  Will I get worse?  Who knows?  In the meantime I'll try to do this blog, because it seems to help.