Tag: paranoid schizophrenia

Turning 44 – How The Hell Did I Make It This Far?

On By Karl GessleinIn Depression, Lifestyle and Health, Love, Self-ImprovementLeave a comment

As I laid in bed meditating this morning in the arms of my beautiful partner staring out into the surreal snow covered landscape I was left with this incredible feeling of gratitude.

How did I get here, how could my life possibly be so good?

Was it luck, hard work, did the universe finally reward me for decades of suffering? It’s really hard to tell.

karl
I’ve decided to take a different path than my father before me. I’ve decided to do what I love to do and nothing else. It has paid off big time in quality of life.

I consider myself a depression survivor. In many ways it’s kind of like being a survivor of something more like cancer, but for people who struggle with depression most of American’s attitude is ‘just get over it’. Not only is this incredibly unfair, it’s also unrealistic to judge others harshly for a condition that they really have little or no control over. I read a statistic online that said 50% of Americans will struggle with mental illness at some point during their life. If so many people suffer from it then why is there so little support and compassion for it?

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Losing His Place In Time – Love, Cancer And A Failing Mind

On By Karl GessleinIn Depression, Fiction, Love1 Comment

I spent 5 months visiting my brother almost every day as he suffered from terminal stage-4 non-small cell lymphatic cancer that was caused by smoking.  Every day I tried to understand how he saw the world and how he viewed what was happening to him through the veil of his Paranoid Schizophrenia. This story is my interpretation how he viewed the world. I am writing this as therapy for myself mostly, but also as a way of showing how terrifying life can be for people with severe mental illness.

George Saves NY
George Saves NY

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They were calling him back again, moving backwards in time was always harder than moving forward.  Near the end there was so much boredom, sitting around waiting for something, never sure what. There was less pain, the nurse would come every few hours and give him another dose of Oxycodone. Near the end he knew he was addicted, but he didn’t care. Normally it was not permissible to dabble in the addictions of men, but for his rank and pay grade no one would really notice. Besides he was so close to retirement anyway.

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How Megadosing On Vitamin B3/Niacin Saved My Life

On By Karl GessleinIn Depression, Lifestyle and Health, Self-Improvement29 Comments

It’s time for people to stop being afraid of being stigmatized and start having a real conversation about mental illness. This article is the first step for me.

hatteras

To say that the last year of my life has been the most challenging year ever would be a drastic understatement. There was 3 months where every single day I wanted to end my life. I constantly fantasized about suicide, I would have done anything to ease the pain. It started like most tragic stories start, with a girl.

Her name was Elise and I was madly in love with her. The courtship lasted a year and it was the most intense set of experiences I’ve had in my life. We were like two reactive chemicals, when we were together something unpredictable would always happen. The energy was insane in every way, and there was no boundaries, nothing was off-limits. Like most passionate romances, after a year it came to an equally spectacular ending. For a month after we separated I was elated, then I unwisely spent time with her again and the turmoil began. Half of me knew I could never have anything remotely functional with this woman, the other half was completely convinced that I could somehow make it work. I became a man at war with myself.

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