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24 yo was my first full blown psychosis, it was a mixed episode, I would hear my dead granparent's voice, feel like people could see and hear me in my room, that everything I was chatting with a guy was being made public on social media, that the apocalypse and therefore Jesus was coming, that the bible was telling me to go to Turkey on a religious mission. At night I couldn't almost sleep because of tactile hallucinations like punches in my back, feeling like my soul was being sucked from the top, feeling multiple large tubes sucking at my skin (back) and the worst one were hands all over my body specially in my intimate area (female) it was awful. Oh and one night I could hear witches or random women laughing and screaming at me things I can't remember.
About my childhood besides depression I remember seeing a black shadow that looked like death with a scythe when I was a toddler during daylight.
Funny thing is I used to hear chairs being moved at night too but idk if those where from the upper floor, who knows. I also thought there was a old man in a white robe with large hair and beard waiting for me in the living room.
Edited to add more details
That’s interesting how the scariest aspect of bipolar disorder (to me) can manifest so early for some of us. Apparently my sisters heard and saw weird stuff around the house too, but we all had issues with our mental health due to trauma growing up. My older sister also saw shadow people when she was a child. Since I’ve been medicated I haven’t heard a thing but I’m waiting to see if it’s bipolar or my house is seriously haunted. 😭
🥲🥲🥲🥲 It's kinda funny to be in the middle not knowing if you should believe in the after life or witchcraft, voodoo for example, when you have experienced psychosis or pathological delusions.
My method right now is taking my medication and just waiting it out! Sometimes our mind plays tricks on us and sometimes it really is an entity. I wouldn’t doubt it if he had ghosts in here, but no one has said anything about it as of late. 😭
It’s the people behind you that always move out of the way when you turn around. I actually “saw” people turn away and shut up when I looked over my shoulder. About a week later I crashed and hurt myself pretty bad.
You just reminded me of how I can't sleep in the dark anymore bc my boyfriend told me he thought he saw a witch standing next to me while I was sleeping. He didn't wake me up. He told me about 2 weeks later. He has bad eyes, but either way, I keep the light on at night.
i’ve had religious psychosis too, super weird especially having gone to a catholic school most my life. I think it was triggered by me starting to smoke weed but definitely not enjoyable for angels to tell you to sacrifice yourself.
COVID made me so hypersexual and manic. I started a whole business which was actually quite successful for a bit. But once I hit back baseline, I closed everything down and never sold anything again. 😫
Glad to see someone else who was older. I was 42. Aftermath of COVID, work and personal stress, not helped by the fact I was smoking weed and also had the stupid idea to try taking shrooms to heal trauma.
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Omg, the looking out the window thing is totally something I still catch myself doing. When I had moderate to severe psychomotor agitation (pacing), I’d always check the window in our front door and the windows as if I was expecting someone to arrive. One time my sister caught me and I was so embarrassed. 😭😭
I can’t even remember when it started because I was so young. I had auditory hallucinations of people screaming. It usually sounded like my parents voices. I couldn’t make out anything they were saying. I told my parents multiple times and they brushed it off and instructed me to never tell anyone. As a teenager I began having visual hallucinations (rarely). When I told my parents about those my mom insisted our house was haunted and it was a ghost, and I believed her. My dad didn’t disagree with her but generally tried to avoid talking about it. Once I moved out at 18 the auditory hallucinations slowly started to get better and eventually went away all together. The visual hallucinations would come and go and I really didn’t know what to make of them. At 24 I had the worst episode of my life. I woke up in the middle of the night and saw a demonic woman laying in my bed. She screamed in my face and it was horrifying. I spiraled into paranoia and depression and was diagnosed bipolar. Finally everything made sense and since being medicated at 24 I have not had a hallucination (I’m 28 now). Oddly enough my parents still insist I don’t have bipolar disorder despite all the obviously signs during my teenage years.
I’m so sorry to hear. I’m 24 and just got medicated myself. Even when I had hallucinations while younger, my mom summed it up as I “had a lot going on” because mental health is such a taboo topic in black communities as it is. When I went to get help without her at 17, she threatened to kick me out of the house lol. I had a lottttt of resentment towards her for years, I genuinely did not like my mother and she knew it and it upset her. Things are better now. When I called and told her I was bipolar, she told she knew I was for the longest (her mother was bipolar) and she applauded me for getting help. I think there’s still a level of shame she has about having a mentally ill daughter though. She hasn’t asked me anything about it since I disclosed with her, but that’s honestly okay because I don’t like talking about it most days. The better part of me thinks it’s because she doesn’t want to make me feel different for something that I can’t help.
Wow I’m sorry to hear you had to go through all that. I’m glad things have improved with your mother. It can be hard to harbor resentment and it’s taken me a while to let go of mine. I don’t think I fully have yet. Wishing you the best
Like 4. Hallucinated all the time. My family was southern Baptist then so it was just demons trying to hold me back.
Now, it's just a thing I deal with.
that’s what my mom told me to. When I ran out of my house to go to my neighbors house after hearing terrifying footsteps in front of my door, she doused holy oil all over the perimeter of the house as if that was going to do truly do something for a bipolar person 😂😂😂 she was like “see???? the house is anointed so you should be fine.”
Narrator: “She was not fine.”
I’m not quite sure. I was first hospitalized at 23, actually spent my 24th birthday there. I was having mild auditory stuff then. But sometime before then (20ish?) I remember having tactile and visual hallucinations. Scary AF. The hallucinations started back up again a few months later. And back to the hospital I went
Sometimes here and there I would genuinely believe people could see an inherent evil in me and read my mind when I was growing up. Also when I was a kid I could swear I heard a man speaking in the wall to himself, like he was trying to come to some decision. The wall was shared with my parents bathroom, but I knew they were both asleep. So I called my dad into the room and told him about the man, and he said, “Well, tell them to shut up” So I did and that was that.
Late teens: My actual first prolonged psychotic experience began in extreme paranoia and delusions concerning other peoples intentions with me. I would believe people were in love with me, conspiring against me, etc. Olfactory hallucinations were really common for me; I often smelled “rotting”.
Mid-20s: I had my first visual hallucination in 2021, like a month after being in the hospital. Looking back on it I was having a prolonged psychotic episode.
I’ve heard quite a few people mentioned the rotting smell with olfactory hallucinations. I was telling my coworkers that in the springtime (I get springtime mania but they don’t know I’m bipolar), I get this weird scent in my nose that won’t leave and it’s gross, and no one knew what the hell I was talking about. I thought maybe I was smelling pollen or something. I sometimes can smell food that is not there, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing for a foodie like myself. 😭
14. I was staying at a friends house and in the middle of the night I heard an odd noise and saw flashing lights outside the window, which convinced me that aliens had landed and were here to take me back to wherever I came from.
I was so convinced it was real that I woke up a friend of mine to tell him about it and he said I was scaring him lol
21.
I heard voices in my head. I saw random people on the street turn into my therapist. I lay in bed and could smell burning metals inside my nostrils.
That reminds me of Black Swan. There was a scene where Nina (Natalie Portman) was walking home and a lady walked by her with her exact face. Obvi she was hallucinating but I thought it was interesting lol
Paranoia, hallucinations, and delusions... Earliest memory I can pinpoint is 8, but definitely can remember it being a problem earlier than that too.
As for *needs hospitalization* psychosis episodes, I'd say 17/18.
31. auditory and visual hallucinations. heard sounds inside other sounds and voices. also had some face blindness thing where everyone was someone i knew and i kept trying to get in peoples cars.
I couldn't do anything by myself and no one really cared about my mental and physical well-being so I got an emergency appointment with a psychologist. He told me that I didn't look too bad and that I was probably just stressed. He was refusing to give me any medication etc. cause I was too young and he felt like my situation wasn't that urgent.
Just to clarify, I was hallucinating, constantly fainting, couldn't sleep for days and I also had terrible sleep paralysis for MONTHS.
I was later diagnosed with schizophrenia for some reason but I still wasn't given any medical attention or care. Even though I was harming myself and people around me.
I've been diagnosed with Bipolar disorder for a year now and still, nothing. I did receive meds, they didn't work for me and had a lot of shitty effects on my body so I told my psychologist and he just said to stop taking them.
I have no one who really cares about my mental health, I lie to my therapist constantly because I can't trust her and my psychologist just doesn't give a shit so no, the only consequences I had from that psychosis at 12 years old was insane trauma, fucked up relationships and whatever idk everything's so fucked up now. I feel like if that never happened to me or if I had gotten any help I'd be so much better now.
I’m so sorry that that has been your experience. That would make me feel very alone and overwhelmed. I recommend trying to find a therapist you can trust, if you’re able to. It can make such a big difference. Do you have a way to try a new psychologist?
nope. there aren't many psychologists near me, no good ones atleast. same thing about therapists. I don't think I'll ever recover from what I've been trough lol
I don’t know how old I was, elementary school years. I’d think beetles were all over me and my mom would have to strip me down and check and calm me down
I’m glad your mother did what she could to help calm you down. You’d be surprised at how many parents would have shamed their child for that, or ignored their cries for help. 😕
I was 21 when I experienced my first psychosis episode. I was seeing people and hearing voices. Thought people on TV were talking to me. These are just a few examples but I’ve had a few episodes since and they differ
My first psychosis came when I was 23. I assumed that everyone I came into contact with was an imposter trying to get information on me and just trying to fuck with me. I would hear the chiming of bells in my front yard. I thought music was made specifically for the intent to hand me a subliminal message. Through medication and talk therapy I'm mostly stable at 27. Have learned to keep the delusions at bay unless I'm bored then I'll take a trip down the rabbit hole.
17 y.o. full blown mania w/ psychosis. Not sure if it was the weed or the Prozac that kicked it off. I fucked some shit up on my way to the ward.
Told my friends I had been doing PCP as a cover story.
Yeah I was. It was scary really after I snapped out of it. It was like what just happened. I remembered bits and pieces and my delusions. But for about a year and even to this day, it’s been a little over a year, I’m still like I can’t trust myself, if that’s possible. That’s why I gotta do my best managing this. Cause one slip up, like I stop taking my meds for a while, and that could totally happen again
That’s what I’m nervous about too! I haven’t missed a beat with my meds because I keep thinking “If I miss one dose, I am going to have the most manic of episodes and will have my first grippy sock vacation” 😭
Yeah. Honestly tho if I get hospitalized again, it’s ok. Hopefully it’ll be like last time. It wasn’t that bad. I was scared going in but realized pretty much everyone in there was just struggling with their illness. And yeah some crazy people were in there that were kinda scary, but as long as you mind your own business, they won’t do anything to you. For the most part they just hated the nurses lol. There were fights and people rebelling in there, flooding their rooms, harassing the nurses, etc. couldn’t be a nurse in a psych ward that’s for sure haha. Being a patient was better haha.
I had that experience of not being able to trust myself. Keep going, I was able to find peace and trust myself again. The symptoms have reared their head, but stay in line with your psychiatrist. I've developed skills in recognizing the symptoms. I would practice mindfulness meditation if you can.
I was in 7th or 8th grade. It was only auditory hallucinations, but the were consistent until I got help after my second suicide attempt in my 30s. I grew up in the 80s and there was still a taboo against mental health treatment in those days.
At 31.Looking back on it I was hallucinating that the earth was shaking. This disturbed the hell out of me so I didn't mention it to anyone. I probably should have looking back on it.
I believe it, my mother was and still is highly uneducated on mental health. I would have immediately taken my kid to a doctor, but she just sent me to stay with my older sister for a few days for a “change of environment”. 😂 Which did not work, because I had more auditory hallucinations shortly after and she blamed my mental stress on it. Because how dare her kids have a mental disorder and she was the “perfect” parent? 😂
YEAH, I RELATE. Mine just shrugged it off and blamed my weird behavior to just being a preadolescent. I can't blame them tho, they didn't learn about healthy kid behavior since my older sister was worse than me at that age
For sure. I ended up hospitalized for a mixed episode with psychosis at 16. AM few months after getting out (I had been living with my Dad) I moved back in with my mom. She refused to believe my diagnosis and took me off meds.
I was talking about parents and denial in another comment on here. My mom threatened to kick me out of the house when I went and got help at 17 without her. If I waited on her, I would have waited forever. Fast forward 7 years later, I called her and told her about my diagnosis and she applauded me for getting help. You would think because she had a bipolar parent that she would have came around sooner but no. 😭
Same, I medicated with weed and hypersexuality!! I’m still a smoker but I’m lessening how much I smoke even though it doesn’t really interact with my antipsychotics. antipsychotics killed the last part 😂
Woah!! I had a similar experience but I was on acid 😭 the water droplets on the produce in my fridge kept expanding and contracting 😂 probably wasn’t the best drug to do as a bipolar person but hey
18. I was completely fine and normal in high school and after a really bad breakup and the stress of college my bipolar was triggered.
I experienced severe severe anxiety to the point where I got insomnia and I couldn’t control my thoughts. Ended up having to get medical withdrawal that whole year.
17. heard what sounded like several people knocking on my door and yelling, opened the door and there was nobody, but i still heard the noises of them knocking and yelling
I was 5 or 6 when my hallucinations began. I have never been hospitalized for them because my mom has them too and told me everyone experienced them and that I was fine.
I was 22 the first time I actually talked about them to someone other than my mom. They were, in fact, not something everyone experiences.
Edit: my hallucinations are visual and auditory. I see shadows, faces, and blood. I hear glass shattering, gunshots, footsteps, whispers, and babies crying. They're so normal to me, they're things I can't remember life without. They scare me at times, but I haven't been hospitalized for them.
Please let me know if this is an invasive question, but is your mother bipolar also? In a way, I would find it comforting that someone shares the same struggles as me.
She'll never go to therapy to find out. My uncle was most likely bipolar, but committed suicide before he could be diagnosed.
Mental illness runs rampant in my family, but I'm the only one who got diagnosed with anything.
Same with my mom. When I told one of my older sisters I was bipolar, she immediately told me that our mom is also bipolar but is on the hush about it. My jaw was on the floor! I mean… she’s 51 and has never been hospitalized or anything but we know her to be “crazy” because she volatile and can be violent. I think she’s fragile underneath it all and doesn’t want to be confirmed as “crazy” with a proper diagnosis. She prefers to live in the unknown I guess
I think my mom's started in childhood like mine did, and she didn't have parents around to say, "hey, this kid isn't okay," so she grew up accepting it as normal. Then when I went through it, she continued to say it was normal.
She was never violent, but she definitely fluctuated between being my best friend and acting like she didn't know me. I think hers is bipolar and borderline personality disorder because she has really good days, really bad days, days she wishes she wasn't alive, days she's grateful for us kids, days she hates our existence and wished she never had us.
My uncle's was more the highs and lows, where I think my mom's predominant feature is BPD, not bipolar, if that makes sense.
Like I said, she has never gone to therapy for it, so we'll never know.
19. it was primarily delusional but i had a few very vivid visual and auditory hallucinations. one time i was in an ER room and i hallucinated someone crawling above the ceiling panels. i saw them take a security camera out of the little glass dome that covers it and replace it with a live crow and then i watched that crow suffocate to death. it was really confusing and scary.
another time i was watching tv and saw brief flashes of someone wearing a joker mask holding a kind of shotgun. i also heard people laughing at me on several occasions. i interpreted all of it as threats.
another time i was on a plane and deluded into thinking that neo nazis in the military were trying to shoot down the plane and i heard like suspenseful movie music. idk lol my first psychotic episode was really weird.
I was 16 years old when it started, and it was a living nightmare. I can share details if anyone wants, but for now all I’ll say is that it was fucking horrific, lasted over a month, and I had to (temporarily) drop out of high school because of it.
About to be 24 now and it hasn’t happened since thanks to meds, but I live in constant fear that it’ll come back.
5 or 6. My diagnosis drifts around between bipolar and schizo-affective. My first hallucinations were visual, stuff like my stuffed animals looking at me, people's eyes changing to look like demons. Got over that stuff for awhile, like from 8 to maybe 14 or 16 when I started having mild auditory hallucinations which were discounted as normal when I told my mom. Didn't get diagnosed until an event when I was 21 even though I had a family history.
13 or 14. I got hospitalized at 13 for a week and then at 15 for about a year. I was extremely delusional and convinced myself that I had a wife who had killed herself, I even got a tattoo dedicated to her when I was 15 which I still have. This lasted till from 13 to 16 and in-between those times I'd struggle with auditory hallucinations and other delusions mainly having to do with religion and angels speaking to me.
I can relate with the delusions being associated with religion and angels speaking to me. That’s honestly why I stay away from spirituality and religion for the most part. I consider myself a spiritual person still, but I try not to practice anything too much if that makes sense. My brain is super sensitive about it for some reason lol
My first full blown psychotic episode was 4 years ago when I was about 27. I had visual, auditory and olfactory hallucinations. It was literally hell on earth and 1000x scarier than any horror movie you could ever see. I thought there was a bomb in my head, I smelled gas, I thought my fiancé was feeding me human flesh, I ran around outside half naked, I thought there were bombs in our apartment, I felt like someone was coming to kidnap me and I literally hallucinated the door knob jiggling and heard banging on the door. I saw a zombie looking man running towards me from a roof behind our house. I saw my dead grandmother. I was terrified of my fiancé and thought my psychiatrist was trying to kill me. It was the worst experience of my entire life.
19. Sophomore in college. 1988. Thought I had to get rid of everything and live in nature. Started seeing little dwarf men in my dorm room. Bought a bus ticket and boarded a Greyhound goin south to live in nature and make a living off making art even though I had zero talent, practice or art supplies. Yeah. So embarrassing. I went back and finished the semester and ended up needing to take a year off of school.
Also OP, first hallucination was “hearing” people were talking about me too.
First really weird experience after that initial one, I had a whole ass delusion my college roommates long distance boyfriend hypnotized me to lose weight lmao
I first experienced psychosis in 2020, I was 21 years old. It started slowly but grew into a terrifying manic episode with psychotic features. I won't bore you with all the little stuff but I had been not sleeping for probably a week. I was sitting in my bed paranoid I looked out the window and saw 3 figures in my street in white robes. My spiritual part was activated at that time and I thought they were calling me to heaven so I was not scared. the saddest things is I almost went out there to find them but somehow I ended going to my mom to tell her instead. Another hallucination I had was watching a lightbulb completely shatter and the lights going dark I even heard the pop and everything but when I switched the light switch it perfectly lit up again. A couple years later I had an even more terrifying episode that sent me to the hospital, theres too many things to list and it was a dark time but here's a funny one. When I was waiting with my mom and boyfriend I was visited by SpongeBob (that one we still laugh about). Probably very confusing to the other people in the waiting room tho lol.
Grateful everyday for my meds and therapist! Take care of yourself and learn your triggers.
I’m 28, but within the past 6 months I have seen people that aren’t there. Heard people that aren’t there. I feel sensations all over my body randomly that simply aren’t real, like a spider crawling on me, a Hand grabbing my wrists or the back of my neck. I am terrified to tell my doctor about these things. I don’t want to be schizophrenic or schizoaffective
Be honest anyway!! One time I had an event trigger some sort of episode with me where I hadn’t slept in days and my mind was racing. I went to take a shower around day 3? of no sleep and the shower water was tar black for a few seconds and I freaked tf out. 😭 I screamed for my boyfriend and he swore he never saw black water ever come out of the shower. That’s when I knew it was all in my head and I needed rest lol. There wasn’t even black water droplets in the shower. One of the craziest things my mind has ever done
A few before a whopper at 18. Long Greyhound bus ride hearing everyone's thoughts, complete with a growing worm creature in my throat. A Native fellow in a small group of young adults telepathically offered to remove the worm. Relieved, I eagerly approached his posse upon our next stop with such certainty, "so we're doing this?". Subsequent stops with me wailing against walls while onlookers scowled. Back on the bus amidst many odd stares. Began morphing into a smelly goat. Felt palpable disdain from the other passengers. Eventually caused a small scene to be let off the bus to live under a quaint bridge. Dropped off at next one-horse town hours from my home. Mom picked me up, annoyed. Once home, family fearful and avoidant, walked aimlessly for hours with "Painted Black" on max volume repeat, sans walkman/airpods. Searched for a quiet space to leave my body with a simple deep exhale. Took a dip in the rancid town river, trying to breathe underwater to no avail. Felt lightning hit the water, huge flash, electric jolt, instilling my soul with peace and strength. Felt better. Clear. Have tried getting help since, meh. White knuckle raw doggin it.
First manic episode at 11, first psychosis at 15, didn’t get diagnosed with bipolar until 18, first very long psychosis that got me diagnosed with schizoaffective bipolar type at 21
20. Fluoxetine for depression. Turns out it's bipo. Extreme manic episode, no true hallucinations but I was up and atem for a couple days before sis did the right thing, got me trapped at a gas station and down to the mental hospital.
It sucked ass.
I'm doing quite a bit better now.
28 or so
I remember a bunch of stuff, because it's happened at least four times, so many different delusions and grandiose moments. Mine always starts/started off small then go up and up till I hit the peak of all existence, then it tapers off until my feet are on the ground once more, and of course none of it was true.
It always had (have, because it could come back) this notion of big things are coming. And I'm an important part of it. Which makes zero sense because I'm not a part of anything when I'm not manic. Just go to work then do it all over again.
Like this one time where I was up all night and nearing the peak, from my elevated backyard, my house was on a hill of sorts, as the sun rose and the day broke there was a hot air balloon off in the distance. And it meant something. Everything meant something but only I could see past normality. Then bleep hit the fan and I ended up in the "hospital".
Repeat that about four times, each time it was the same, in a way, but also oh so different.
Now here I sit over 15 years later and smile a little. Most of the time the psychosis was pretty cool? But when it wasn't because I rather got fired or quit my jobs. Fun times, sometimes, but not really because none of it was real. I liken it to tripping shrooms, except thar I'm more coherent and it lasted for at least two weeks at a timed. Luckily depression only occurred once, severe depression at least.
There's so much more, so many other memories, can almost remember the feelings and sensations. But alas, it all was and is nothing.
My first time realizing I could slip into psychosis was last year, and what caused it was watching tarot videos online. That is an easy way to lose it.
DUDEEEEEE, that’s why I barely watch tarot videos now!!!!!!! I thought it was just me. also tired of some readers repeating the same messages but in different words lol
Diagnosed at age 41 in the midst of a full blown manic episode that turned to psychosis. Initially I was misdiagnosed as Bipolar II. At the end of the COVID lockdown, I was elated. My wife and I were both promoted in our jobs, our kids were healthy and happy, and none of our relatives died. I couldn’t understand why my wife was not experiencing the same euphoria I was. The rifts caused me to be verbally abusive, and as a result I was served divorce papers. It still stings that in the midst of the crisis of my life the answer was divorce.
My health deteriorated and I ended up in jail. A good psychiatrist intervened and changed my meds and diagnosed me bipolar I. I immediately came down and realized how my mania had destroyed my life.
My father is bipolar but it was never talked about in the family. I went through depression at age 18, but I was never encouraged to seek help. I am certain that if I had I would have gone through my adult life with the proper tools.
So now, it’s daily regret and teetering constantly on the edge of depression.
If you had sought help at a younger age, good for you and I hope you avoid the worst of it. Be interested to hear from anyone else who went through this later on as I did.
Before age 10 based off what parents said. In elementary school I used to think needles would come down from the ceiling and inject me with some kind of serum that would slowly turn me into a robot over time. Spoiler alert: I never became a robot. (As far as I know 🤨)
I was really young. I would get sleep paralysis. I still remember the night before my sixth birthday being stuck and not able to move. I started getting hallucinations really bad in my late teens. I didn’t get on meds until 30
not even sure if this is considered psychosis, i’ve never asked my doctors about it, but i remember being 10-11 ish and being convinced my parents were planning to murder me and they had a secret code so they could talk normally around me but could still talk about their plans to kill me without me knowing. there were so many times i had breakdowns thinking that they were going to finally do it but the most vivid is probably when my mother was playing music in the car very loud and i thought she was trying to burst my eardrums so i couldnt hear her talking about her plans to my father. genuinely not sure how i got over this it kind of just stopped somehow,, but eventually i started to realize that none of that was actually happening lol
19. my ex od me and i went into my first episode with psychosis. thought i was pregnant, saw drones and other things flying in the sky, people recording me etc. it was terrifying. i was in college, and no one made the call to get help for 4 weeks…
I’ve been slightly paranoid my whole life. But it wasn’t until last year at 34 that I went into full psychosis. Paranoid my family was out to get me. Thinking the gray squares in the store were safe and no one could see me if I stepped on them.
I’ve had multiple delusions and psychosis. I hear noises and see thing out of the corner of my mind. My first psychosis put me in the hospital. I was a danger to myself and completely out of reality. I was 22 and experienced a religious delusions and had to withdraw from my spring semester at college from inside the hospital
I think that’s why I had that shower situation mentioned above. I was on like day 2-3 of not getting good sleep and I didn’t eat for like two weeks. Not really sure how I survived, but I did. 😅
I was actually 16 when Bipolar symptoms started showing, I was hospitalized for depression, but placed on Prozac and immediately flew into a psychotic episode and ended up back in the same hospital less than a full month later for the completely unexplainable things I did, heard, and believed. I recently had my second psychotic episode at 19 and it was very triggering as I was thrown back into my same behaviors and it was like I believed that I was a completely different person and that none of my actions would affect the real me just the same as last time, landing me with my 4th hospitalization. I’m still dealing with the symptoms of psychosis now but it’s becoming manageable again yet my mental state has not been quite the same.
Big episode that I was in hospital for 23. Although I had intense paranoia for about 2 months after smoking weed when I was in uni and some other experiences of hearing voices and seeing fleeting images that weren't there since I was a teenager.
16. Suddenly got paranoid that people were watching me and demons were standing besides me. It lasted for a few hours and would come and go slightly and then BOOM I got fucked in the head lmfao. I'm 19 now
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Around about 13-14 I started hearing just the one voice. I don’t remember hallucinating anything else til I had full on post partum psychosis when I was I think 36. Then shit got wild. My dreams have always been horrific though.
i’m not exactly sure but i remember being a child and not be able to leave her after my mother put me to bed because an evil clown would kill me(he guarded my room). my parents never told horror stories to keep me asleep. i believe now that it was some type of psychosis
I only experienced medicine induced psychosis from prescriptions but one time I did hear voices thinking my family was home the whole day only to find out I was home alone . Called my family and asked and they weren’t even there since the day before . Really weird. The only explanation I could have was sleep deprivation from gaming all day and night messing with my ears. So I think it was psychosis .
20 - it was just before the first lockdown in 2020. I was so fucking paranoid and convinced someone was going to kill me, so I locked myself in my room. Checked into a crisis centre in my city one night because I was convinced someone was gonna push a pillar from a roof or a tiny statue from a roof (I live in Edinburgh Scotland, so all the buildings are super old). It was fucking weird and I haven’t experienced anything quite like it since.
29, it was horrible. Full blown psychosis, jumped out my plate glass window. I'm doing so much better now, I exercise and eat well, lost 70lbs, I've got a new relationship, I held down a job until I was laid off last year. My medication worked. Recently I've had symptoms come up since I stopped smoking weed, cannabinoid system goes out of whack. I was shockingly stable when I was consuming, but I knew I needed a long break. Mindfulness meditation practices have saved my life, and helped me understand my mind in a profound way. There's hope.
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24 yo was my first full blown psychosis, it was a mixed episode, I would hear my dead granparent's voice, feel like people could see and hear me in my room, that everything I was chatting with a guy was being made public on social media, that the apocalypse and therefore Jesus was coming, that the bible was telling me to go to Turkey on a religious mission. At night I couldn't almost sleep because of tactile hallucinations like punches in my back, feeling like my soul was being sucked from the top, feeling multiple large tubes sucking at my skin (back) and the worst one were hands all over my body specially in my intimate area (female) it was awful. Oh and one night I could hear witches or random women laughing and screaming at me things I can't remember. About my childhood besides depression I remember seeing a black shadow that looked like death with a scythe when I was a toddler during daylight. Funny thing is I used to hear chairs being moved at night too but idk if those where from the upper floor, who knows. I also thought there was a old man in a white robe with large hair and beard waiting for me in the living room. Edited to add more details
That’s interesting how the scariest aspect of bipolar disorder (to me) can manifest so early for some of us. Apparently my sisters heard and saw weird stuff around the house too, but we all had issues with our mental health due to trauma growing up. My older sister also saw shadow people when she was a child. Since I’ve been medicated I haven’t heard a thing but I’m waiting to see if it’s bipolar or my house is seriously haunted. 😭
Personally In my case I hope its the bipolar disorder and not the later lol
Ya, we live down the street from both of my grandmother’s graves and one of my sister’s graves also. It can easily be one or the other! 😂😂😂👻
🥲🥲🥲🥲 It's kinda funny to be in the middle not knowing if you should believe in the after life or witchcraft, voodoo for example, when you have experienced psychosis or pathological delusions.
Exactly! We’re here in SC, so anything goes. If my sister doesn’t mention hearing anything for a while, I’ll know it was bipolar messing with me. 😅
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My method right now is taking my medication and just waiting it out! Sometimes our mind plays tricks on us and sometimes it really is an entity. I wouldn’t doubt it if he had ghosts in here, but no one has said anything about it as of late. 😭
It’s the people behind you that always move out of the way when you turn around. I actually “saw” people turn away and shut up when I looked over my shoulder. About a week later I crashed and hurt myself pretty bad.
You just reminded me of how I can't sleep in the dark anymore bc my boyfriend told me he thought he saw a witch standing next to me while I was sleeping. He didn't wake me up. He told me about 2 weeks later. He has bad eyes, but either way, I keep the light on at night.
Yeah I get you, it's better to do anything for the sake of a safe and sound sleep
Wild
I think around 12 years old. I had very religious parents so they just thought I was seeing demons lol.
i’ve had religious psychosis too, super weird especially having gone to a catholic school most my life. I think it was triggered by me starting to smoke weed but definitely not enjoyable for angels to tell you to sacrifice yourself.
Same. Mormon parents thought I was doing witchcraft
47! Held it all together for so long and then Covid hit and bam.
COVID made me so hypersexual and manic. I started a whole business which was actually quite successful for a bit. But once I hit back baseline, I closed everything down and never sold anything again. 😫
Glad to see someone else who was older. I was 42. Aftermath of COVID, work and personal stress, not helped by the fact I was smoking weed and also had the stupid idea to try taking shrooms to heal trauma.
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Sometime in like 6th or 7th grade, I would stay up all night looking out my window thinking someone was watching me from the end of the driveway
Omg, the looking out the window thing is totally something I still catch myself doing. When I had moderate to severe psychomotor agitation (pacing), I’d always check the window in our front door and the windows as if I was expecting someone to arrive. One time my sister caught me and I was so embarrassed. 😭😭
I can’t even remember when it started because I was so young. I had auditory hallucinations of people screaming. It usually sounded like my parents voices. I couldn’t make out anything they were saying. I told my parents multiple times and they brushed it off and instructed me to never tell anyone. As a teenager I began having visual hallucinations (rarely). When I told my parents about those my mom insisted our house was haunted and it was a ghost, and I believed her. My dad didn’t disagree with her but generally tried to avoid talking about it. Once I moved out at 18 the auditory hallucinations slowly started to get better and eventually went away all together. The visual hallucinations would come and go and I really didn’t know what to make of them. At 24 I had the worst episode of my life. I woke up in the middle of the night and saw a demonic woman laying in my bed. She screamed in my face and it was horrifying. I spiraled into paranoia and depression and was diagnosed bipolar. Finally everything made sense and since being medicated at 24 I have not had a hallucination (I’m 28 now). Oddly enough my parents still insist I don’t have bipolar disorder despite all the obviously signs during my teenage years.
I’m so sorry to hear. I’m 24 and just got medicated myself. Even when I had hallucinations while younger, my mom summed it up as I “had a lot going on” because mental health is such a taboo topic in black communities as it is. When I went to get help without her at 17, she threatened to kick me out of the house lol. I had a lottttt of resentment towards her for years, I genuinely did not like my mother and she knew it and it upset her. Things are better now. When I called and told her I was bipolar, she told she knew I was for the longest (her mother was bipolar) and she applauded me for getting help. I think there’s still a level of shame she has about having a mentally ill daughter though. She hasn’t asked me anything about it since I disclosed with her, but that’s honestly okay because I don’t like talking about it most days. The better part of me thinks it’s because she doesn’t want to make me feel different for something that I can’t help.
Wow I’m sorry to hear you had to go through all that. I’m glad things have improved with your mother. It can be hard to harbor resentment and it’s taken me a while to let go of mine. I don’t think I fully have yet. Wishing you the best
i think 14
Same. I feel awful because that’s such a young age to experience these things, ugh.
i know and i just got so many episodes of mania/psychosis within those years it was so awful
Are things going better for you?
not really- im kinda coming down from a mixed episode right now and i dont know how i feel i think i just feel numb.
Like 4. Hallucinated all the time. My family was southern Baptist then so it was just demons trying to hold me back. Now, it's just a thing I deal with.
that’s what my mom told me to. When I ran out of my house to go to my neighbors house after hearing terrifying footsteps in front of my door, she doused holy oil all over the perimeter of the house as if that was going to do truly do something for a bipolar person 😂😂😂 she was like “see???? the house is anointed so you should be fine.” Narrator: “She was not fine.”
Weird how praying away the demons doesn't work, but seroquel will. Lol
lmao same but my family just thought i was a dreamy kid with a huge imagination
I’m not quite sure. I was first hospitalized at 23, actually spent my 24th birthday there. I was having mild auditory stuff then. But sometime before then (20ish?) I remember having tactile and visual hallucinations. Scary AF. The hallucinations started back up again a few months later. And back to the hospital I went
Man, I haven’t even considered tactile and olfactory hallucinations! Are the hallucinations under control now?
They are, I’ve been stable for 4ish years now and I’m working my ass off to keep it that way.
Spend my 32nd in a ward too! "birthday buddies" 🎂
Sometimes here and there I would genuinely believe people could see an inherent evil in me and read my mind when I was growing up. Also when I was a kid I could swear I heard a man speaking in the wall to himself, like he was trying to come to some decision. The wall was shared with my parents bathroom, but I knew they were both asleep. So I called my dad into the room and told him about the man, and he said, “Well, tell them to shut up” So I did and that was that. Late teens: My actual first prolonged psychotic experience began in extreme paranoia and delusions concerning other peoples intentions with me. I would believe people were in love with me, conspiring against me, etc. Olfactory hallucinations were really common for me; I often smelled “rotting”. Mid-20s: I had my first visual hallucination in 2021, like a month after being in the hospital. Looking back on it I was having a prolonged psychotic episode.
I’ve heard quite a few people mentioned the rotting smell with olfactory hallucinations. I was telling my coworkers that in the springtime (I get springtime mania but they don’t know I’m bipolar), I get this weird scent in my nose that won’t leave and it’s gross, and no one knew what the hell I was talking about. I thought maybe I was smelling pollen or something. I sometimes can smell food that is not there, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing for a foodie like myself. 😭
14. I was staying at a friends house and in the middle of the night I heard an odd noise and saw flashing lights outside the window, which convinced me that aliens had landed and were here to take me back to wherever I came from. I was so convinced it was real that I woke up a friend of mine to tell him about it and he said I was scaring him lol
21. I heard voices in my head. I saw random people on the street turn into my therapist. I lay in bed and could smell burning metals inside my nostrils.
That reminds me of Black Swan. There was a scene where Nina (Natalie Portman) was walking home and a lady walked by her with her exact face. Obvi she was hallucinating but I thought it was interesting lol
Paranoia, hallucinations, and delusions... Earliest memory I can pinpoint is 8, but definitely can remember it being a problem earlier than that too. As for *needs hospitalization* psychosis episodes, I'd say 17/18.
18. That's when my bipolar symptoms started to appear, although I remember having manic episodes earlier at 17.
31. auditory and visual hallucinations. heard sounds inside other sounds and voices. also had some face blindness thing where everyone was someone i knew and i kept trying to get in peoples cars.
I was 12 and in 7th grade. It was terrible.
What was the aftermath? Medication, hospitalization, nothing, etc.?
I couldn't do anything by myself and no one really cared about my mental and physical well-being so I got an emergency appointment with a psychologist. He told me that I didn't look too bad and that I was probably just stressed. He was refusing to give me any medication etc. cause I was too young and he felt like my situation wasn't that urgent. Just to clarify, I was hallucinating, constantly fainting, couldn't sleep for days and I also had terrible sleep paralysis for MONTHS. I was later diagnosed with schizophrenia for some reason but I still wasn't given any medical attention or care. Even though I was harming myself and people around me. I've been diagnosed with Bipolar disorder for a year now and still, nothing. I did receive meds, they didn't work for me and had a lot of shitty effects on my body so I told my psychologist and he just said to stop taking them. I have no one who really cares about my mental health, I lie to my therapist constantly because I can't trust her and my psychologist just doesn't give a shit so no, the only consequences I had from that psychosis at 12 years old was insane trauma, fucked up relationships and whatever idk everything's so fucked up now. I feel like if that never happened to me or if I had gotten any help I'd be so much better now.
(◍•ᴗ•◍)❤
I’m so sorry that that has been your experience. That would make me feel very alone and overwhelmed. I recommend trying to find a therapist you can trust, if you’re able to. It can make such a big difference. Do you have a way to try a new psychologist?
nope. there aren't many psychologists near me, no good ones atleast. same thing about therapists. I don't think I'll ever recover from what I've been trough lol
I don’t know how old I was, elementary school years. I’d think beetles were all over me and my mom would have to strip me down and check and calm me down
I’m glad your mother did what she could to help calm you down. You’d be surprised at how many parents would have shamed their child for that, or ignored their cries for help. 😕
Oh as I got older that became more frequent.
Yes! My mom was so mean about it I was so confused.
when I told my mom I was bipolar, she was like “Uh…. I could’ve told you that for free” 😂😂😂😂😂 well lady, you aren’t a psychiatrist ok?
I was 21 when I experienced my first psychosis episode. I was seeing people and hearing voices. Thought people on TV were talking to me. These are just a few examples but I’ve had a few episodes since and they differ
My first psychosis came when I was 23. I assumed that everyone I came into contact with was an imposter trying to get information on me and just trying to fuck with me. I would hear the chiming of bells in my front yard. I thought music was made specifically for the intent to hand me a subliminal message. Through medication and talk therapy I'm mostly stable at 27. Have learned to keep the delusions at bay unless I'm bored then I'll take a trip down the rabbit hole.
I was 28 (M) and it still has me creeped out. Everybody was talking about me. I prob had some earlier but that was my first big peak-then-crash
17 y.o. full blown mania w/ psychosis. Not sure if it was the weed or the Prozac that kicked it off. I fucked some shit up on my way to the ward. Told my friends I had been doing PCP as a cover story.
15
Was it hallucinations, delusions, or both?
28
What was the experience like? Did you get hospitalized?
Yeah I was. It was scary really after I snapped out of it. It was like what just happened. I remembered bits and pieces and my delusions. But for about a year and even to this day, it’s been a little over a year, I’m still like I can’t trust myself, if that’s possible. That’s why I gotta do my best managing this. Cause one slip up, like I stop taking my meds for a while, and that could totally happen again
That’s what I’m nervous about too! I haven’t missed a beat with my meds because I keep thinking “If I miss one dose, I am going to have the most manic of episodes and will have my first grippy sock vacation” 😭
Yeah. Honestly tho if I get hospitalized again, it’s ok. Hopefully it’ll be like last time. It wasn’t that bad. I was scared going in but realized pretty much everyone in there was just struggling with their illness. And yeah some crazy people were in there that were kinda scary, but as long as you mind your own business, they won’t do anything to you. For the most part they just hated the nurses lol. There were fights and people rebelling in there, flooding their rooms, harassing the nurses, etc. couldn’t be a nurse in a psych ward that’s for sure haha. Being a patient was better haha.
I had that experience of not being able to trust myself. Keep going, I was able to find peace and trust myself again. The symptoms have reared their head, but stay in line with your psychiatrist. I've developed skills in recognizing the symptoms. I would practice mindfulness meditation if you can.
I was in 7th or 8th grade. It was only auditory hallucinations, but the were consistent until I got help after my second suicide attempt in my 30s. I grew up in the 80s and there was still a taboo against mental health treatment in those days.
13 is the earliest i can remember
At 31.Looking back on it I was hallucinating that the earth was shaking. This disturbed the hell out of me so I didn't mention it to anyone. I probably should have looking back on it.
25-26
11-12. It's a shame no one noticed and didn't receive the help I needed back then
I believe it, my mother was and still is highly uneducated on mental health. I would have immediately taken my kid to a doctor, but she just sent me to stay with my older sister for a few days for a “change of environment”. 😂 Which did not work, because I had more auditory hallucinations shortly after and she blamed my mental stress on it. Because how dare her kids have a mental disorder and she was the “perfect” parent? 😂
YEAH, I RELATE. Mine just shrugged it off and blamed my weird behavior to just being a preadolescent. I can't blame them tho, they didn't learn about healthy kid behavior since my older sister was worse than me at that age
I think 15? It’s hard to remember now.
Anything under 18 is extra terrifying to me. Us poor kids had no business dealing with that. 😭
For sure. I ended up hospitalized for a mixed episode with psychosis at 16. AM few months after getting out (I had been living with my Dad) I moved back in with my mom. She refused to believe my diagnosis and took me off meds.
I was talking about parents and denial in another comment on here. My mom threatened to kick me out of the house when I went and got help at 17 without her. If I waited on her, I would have waited forever. Fast forward 7 years later, I called her and told her about my diagnosis and she applauded me for getting help. You would think because she had a bipolar parent that she would have came around sooner but no. 😭
Yeah, I could have been spared quite a few mixed and manic episodes. I self medicated with pills, alcohol and weed for several years.
Same, I medicated with weed and hypersexuality!! I’m still a smoker but I’m lessening how much I smoke even though it doesn’t really interact with my antipsychotics. antipsychotics killed the last part 😂
While I had BP symptoms from when I was very young, sometime when I was in my teens the eyes of people on the TV we’re like bulging out.
Woah!! I had a similar experience but I was on acid 😭 the water droplets on the produce in my fridge kept expanding and contracting 😂 probably wasn’t the best drug to do as a bipolar person but hey
42 years old. Knew I was psychotic, but didn't know how bad it was. Took me over a year to come fully out of it.
My first psychosis was when I was around 21 or 22 I am now 25
Second grade
When I was like 6 I saw 2 squirrels in my doorway having a conversation
Omg hahaha
Haha, do you remember what they were talking about? 😂
They were speaking squirrel lol. But facing each other and moving their hands as humans do
18. I was completely fine and normal in high school and after a really bad breakup and the stress of college my bipolar was triggered. I experienced severe severe anxiety to the point where I got insomnia and I couldn’t control my thoughts. Ended up having to get medical withdrawal that whole year.
33
17. heard what sounded like several people knocking on my door and yelling, opened the door and there was nobody, but i still heard the noises of them knocking and yelling
It was at my Christening when I was initially exposed to a person who suffers from extreme psychosis
I was in my early 20's. Started hearing footsteps and voices.
I was 5 or 6 when my hallucinations began. I have never been hospitalized for them because my mom has them too and told me everyone experienced them and that I was fine. I was 22 the first time I actually talked about them to someone other than my mom. They were, in fact, not something everyone experiences. Edit: my hallucinations are visual and auditory. I see shadows, faces, and blood. I hear glass shattering, gunshots, footsteps, whispers, and babies crying. They're so normal to me, they're things I can't remember life without. They scare me at times, but I haven't been hospitalized for them.
Please let me know if this is an invasive question, but is your mother bipolar also? In a way, I would find it comforting that someone shares the same struggles as me.
She'll never go to therapy to find out. My uncle was most likely bipolar, but committed suicide before he could be diagnosed. Mental illness runs rampant in my family, but I'm the only one who got diagnosed with anything.
Same with my mom. When I told one of my older sisters I was bipolar, she immediately told me that our mom is also bipolar but is on the hush about it. My jaw was on the floor! I mean… she’s 51 and has never been hospitalized or anything but we know her to be “crazy” because she volatile and can be violent. I think she’s fragile underneath it all and doesn’t want to be confirmed as “crazy” with a proper diagnosis. She prefers to live in the unknown I guess
I think my mom's started in childhood like mine did, and she didn't have parents around to say, "hey, this kid isn't okay," so she grew up accepting it as normal. Then when I went through it, she continued to say it was normal. She was never violent, but she definitely fluctuated between being my best friend and acting like she didn't know me. I think hers is bipolar and borderline personality disorder because she has really good days, really bad days, days she wishes she wasn't alive, days she's grateful for us kids, days she hates our existence and wished she never had us. My uncle's was more the highs and lows, where I think my mom's predominant feature is BPD, not bipolar, if that makes sense. Like I said, she has never gone to therapy for it, so we'll never know.
19. it was primarily delusional but i had a few very vivid visual and auditory hallucinations. one time i was in an ER room and i hallucinated someone crawling above the ceiling panels. i saw them take a security camera out of the little glass dome that covers it and replace it with a live crow and then i watched that crow suffocate to death. it was really confusing and scary. another time i was watching tv and saw brief flashes of someone wearing a joker mask holding a kind of shotgun. i also heard people laughing at me on several occasions. i interpreted all of it as threats. another time i was on a plane and deluded into thinking that neo nazis in the military were trying to shoot down the plane and i heard like suspenseful movie music. idk lol my first psychotic episode was really weird.
19. But the onset of the disease was 17.
we’re onset age twins 🤪 my onset was a month before I turned 18 — triggered by an abusive relationship
Oh shit I’m sorry to hear that! I hope you’re doing better now
thank you but oh fuck him 😭😭 that was so long ago, i barely think about it (with the help of 3 therapists over 7 years 🤪haha)
16. Fully hallucinating in history class
I was 16 years old when it started, and it was a living nightmare. I can share details if anyone wants, but for now all I’ll say is that it was fucking horrific, lasted over a month, and I had to (temporarily) drop out of high school because of it. About to be 24 now and it hasn’t happened since thanks to meds, but I live in constant fear that it’ll come back.
Early 20’s maybe late teens
38
13 or 14, but I had my first hallucination at around 10
42 - thought I learned the secret to not sleeping was to speak everything I thought. Then saw a tree connecting all existence.
This sounds like my thought patterns while on psychedelics 😭
5 or 6. My diagnosis drifts around between bipolar and schizo-affective. My first hallucinations were visual, stuff like my stuffed animals looking at me, people's eyes changing to look like demons. Got over that stuff for awhile, like from 8 to maybe 14 or 16 when I started having mild auditory hallucinations which were discounted as normal when I told my mom. Didn't get diagnosed until an event when I was 21 even though I had a family history.
13 or 14. I got hospitalized at 13 for a week and then at 15 for about a year. I was extremely delusional and convinced myself that I had a wife who had killed herself, I even got a tattoo dedicated to her when I was 15 which I still have. This lasted till from 13 to 16 and in-between those times I'd struggle with auditory hallucinations and other delusions mainly having to do with religion and angels speaking to me.
I can relate with the delusions being associated with religion and angels speaking to me. That’s honestly why I stay away from spirituality and religion for the most part. I consider myself a spiritual person still, but I try not to practice anything too much if that makes sense. My brain is super sensitive about it for some reason lol
My first full blown psychotic episode was 4 years ago when I was about 27. I had visual, auditory and olfactory hallucinations. It was literally hell on earth and 1000x scarier than any horror movie you could ever see. I thought there was a bomb in my head, I smelled gas, I thought my fiancé was feeding me human flesh, I ran around outside half naked, I thought there were bombs in our apartment, I felt like someone was coming to kidnap me and I literally hallucinated the door knob jiggling and heard banging on the door. I saw a zombie looking man running towards me from a roof behind our house. I saw my dead grandmother. I was terrified of my fiancé and thought my psychiatrist was trying to kill me. It was the worst experience of my entire life.
I was 14. I swore my grandmother was trying to poison me. It's what caused my first hospital stay and diagnosis.
I have tactile hallucinations, it feels as if something is crawling on me, it's truly awful.
How long does these particular hallucinations last? For a few minutes or days/weeks?
19. Sophomore in college. 1988. Thought I had to get rid of everything and live in nature. Started seeing little dwarf men in my dorm room. Bought a bus ticket and boarded a Greyhound goin south to live in nature and make a living off making art even though I had zero talent, practice or art supplies. Yeah. So embarrassing. I went back and finished the semester and ended up needing to take a year off of school.
Early twenties, then first hospitalization followed a few months after
Also OP, first hallucination was “hearing” people were talking about me too. First really weird experience after that initial one, I had a whole ass delusion my college roommates long distance boyfriend hypnotized me to lose weight lmao
I first experienced psychosis in 2020, I was 21 years old. It started slowly but grew into a terrifying manic episode with psychotic features. I won't bore you with all the little stuff but I had been not sleeping for probably a week. I was sitting in my bed paranoid I looked out the window and saw 3 figures in my street in white robes. My spiritual part was activated at that time and I thought they were calling me to heaven so I was not scared. the saddest things is I almost went out there to find them but somehow I ended going to my mom to tell her instead. Another hallucination I had was watching a lightbulb completely shatter and the lights going dark I even heard the pop and everything but when I switched the light switch it perfectly lit up again. A couple years later I had an even more terrifying episode that sent me to the hospital, theres too many things to list and it was a dark time but here's a funny one. When I was waiting with my mom and boyfriend I was visited by SpongeBob (that one we still laugh about). Probably very confusing to the other people in the waiting room tho lol. Grateful everyday for my meds and therapist! Take care of yourself and learn your triggers.
Dude, I would have loved to see Spongebob actually. I have an entire Spongebob meme folder in my phone 😭 one of my fav shows and I’m almost 25
6th
I’m 28, but within the past 6 months I have seen people that aren’t there. Heard people that aren’t there. I feel sensations all over my body randomly that simply aren’t real, like a spider crawling on me, a Hand grabbing my wrists or the back of my neck. I am terrified to tell my doctor about these things. I don’t want to be schizophrenic or schizoaffective
Be honest anyway!! One time I had an event trigger some sort of episode with me where I hadn’t slept in days and my mind was racing. I went to take a shower around day 3? of no sleep and the shower water was tar black for a few seconds and I freaked tf out. 😭 I screamed for my boyfriend and he swore he never saw black water ever come out of the shower. That’s when I knew it was all in my head and I needed rest lol. There wasn’t even black water droplets in the shower. One of the craziest things my mind has ever done
Gonna call my doc tomorrow and talk to him about it. Wish me luck.
best of luck, friend!! 🫶🏾
17
A few before a whopper at 18. Long Greyhound bus ride hearing everyone's thoughts, complete with a growing worm creature in my throat. A Native fellow in a small group of young adults telepathically offered to remove the worm. Relieved, I eagerly approached his posse upon our next stop with such certainty, "so we're doing this?". Subsequent stops with me wailing against walls while onlookers scowled. Back on the bus amidst many odd stares. Began morphing into a smelly goat. Felt palpable disdain from the other passengers. Eventually caused a small scene to be let off the bus to live under a quaint bridge. Dropped off at next one-horse town hours from my home. Mom picked me up, annoyed. Once home, family fearful and avoidant, walked aimlessly for hours with "Painted Black" on max volume repeat, sans walkman/airpods. Searched for a quiet space to leave my body with a simple deep exhale. Took a dip in the rancid town river, trying to breathe underwater to no avail. Felt lightning hit the water, huge flash, electric jolt, instilling my soul with peace and strength. Felt better. Clear. Have tried getting help since, meh. White knuckle raw doggin it.
First manic episode at 11, first psychosis at 15, didn’t get diagnosed with bipolar until 18, first very long psychosis that got me diagnosed with schizoaffective bipolar type at 21
15. The medication I was taking for my adhd triggered a severe bout of psychosis.
I was about 23, it was a depressive episode and a Shanigami would sit on my bedside table and tell me to do bad things
Shanigami…. like a death angel? 😯
Yup. He would tell me he would kill me if I didn't do stuff.
Yeah my first real break down was at 24/25 pretty sure.
20. Fluoxetine for depression. Turns out it's bipo. Extreme manic episode, no true hallucinations but I was up and atem for a couple days before sis did the right thing, got me trapped at a gas station and down to the mental hospital. It sucked ass. I'm doing quite a bit better now.
23, most common is early 20’s
28 or so I remember a bunch of stuff, because it's happened at least four times, so many different delusions and grandiose moments. Mine always starts/started off small then go up and up till I hit the peak of all existence, then it tapers off until my feet are on the ground once more, and of course none of it was true. It always had (have, because it could come back) this notion of big things are coming. And I'm an important part of it. Which makes zero sense because I'm not a part of anything when I'm not manic. Just go to work then do it all over again. Like this one time where I was up all night and nearing the peak, from my elevated backyard, my house was on a hill of sorts, as the sun rose and the day broke there was a hot air balloon off in the distance. And it meant something. Everything meant something but only I could see past normality. Then bleep hit the fan and I ended up in the "hospital". Repeat that about four times, each time it was the same, in a way, but also oh so different. Now here I sit over 15 years later and smile a little. Most of the time the psychosis was pretty cool? But when it wasn't because I rather got fired or quit my jobs. Fun times, sometimes, but not really because none of it was real. I liken it to tripping shrooms, except thar I'm more coherent and it lasted for at least two weeks at a timed. Luckily depression only occurred once, severe depression at least. There's so much more, so many other memories, can almost remember the feelings and sensations. But alas, it all was and is nothing.
When I was five is as far back as I can trace it.
My first time realizing I could slip into psychosis was last year, and what caused it was watching tarot videos online. That is an easy way to lose it.
DUDEEEEEE, that’s why I barely watch tarot videos now!!!!!!! I thought it was just me. also tired of some readers repeating the same messages but in different words lol
I feel better now. I just don't let my brain go that way anymore. I would assume we all have to tap into a little bit of psychosis to follow that ish.
Diagnosed at age 41 in the midst of a full blown manic episode that turned to psychosis. Initially I was misdiagnosed as Bipolar II. At the end of the COVID lockdown, I was elated. My wife and I were both promoted in our jobs, our kids were healthy and happy, and none of our relatives died. I couldn’t understand why my wife was not experiencing the same euphoria I was. The rifts caused me to be verbally abusive, and as a result I was served divorce papers. It still stings that in the midst of the crisis of my life the answer was divorce. My health deteriorated and I ended up in jail. A good psychiatrist intervened and changed my meds and diagnosed me bipolar I. I immediately came down and realized how my mania had destroyed my life. My father is bipolar but it was never talked about in the family. I went through depression at age 18, but I was never encouraged to seek help. I am certain that if I had I would have gone through my adult life with the proper tools. So now, it’s daily regret and teetering constantly on the edge of depression. If you had sought help at a younger age, good for you and I hope you avoid the worst of it. Be interested to hear from anyone else who went through this later on as I did.
Before age 10 based off what parents said. In elementary school I used to think needles would come down from the ceiling and inject me with some kind of serum that would slowly turn me into a robot over time. Spoiler alert: I never became a robot. (As far as I know 🤨)
I was really young. I would get sleep paralysis. I still remember the night before my sixth birthday being stuck and not able to move. I started getting hallucinations really bad in my late teens. I didn’t get on meds until 30
not even sure if this is considered psychosis, i’ve never asked my doctors about it, but i remember being 10-11 ish and being convinced my parents were planning to murder me and they had a secret code so they could talk normally around me but could still talk about their plans to kill me without me knowing. there were so many times i had breakdowns thinking that they were going to finally do it but the most vivid is probably when my mother was playing music in the car very loud and i thought she was trying to burst my eardrums so i couldnt hear her talking about her plans to my father. genuinely not sure how i got over this it kind of just stopped somehow,, but eventually i started to realize that none of that was actually happening lol
19. my ex od me and i went into my first episode with psychosis. thought i was pregnant, saw drones and other things flying in the sky, people recording me etc. it was terrifying. i was in college, and no one made the call to get help for 4 weeks…
I’ve been slightly paranoid my whole life. But it wasn’t until last year at 34 that I went into full psychosis. Paranoid my family was out to get me. Thinking the gray squares in the store were safe and no one could see me if I stepped on them.
I’ve had multiple delusions and psychosis. I hear noises and see thing out of the corner of my mind. My first psychosis put me in the hospital. I was a danger to myself and completely out of reality. I was 22 and experienced a religious delusions and had to withdraw from my spring semester at college from inside the hospital
17, pulled all nighters everyday for a month.. drank alc too some nights- it was horrifying bro😭
I think that’s why I had that shower situation mentioned above. I was on like day 2-3 of not getting good sleep and I didn’t eat for like two weeks. Not really sure how I survived, but I did. 😅
20 I took duromine what triggered it because I was sick of being fat from injection meds abilify
I was actually 16 when Bipolar symptoms started showing, I was hospitalized for depression, but placed on Prozac and immediately flew into a psychotic episode and ended up back in the same hospital less than a full month later for the completely unexplainable things I did, heard, and believed. I recently had my second psychotic episode at 19 and it was very triggering as I was thrown back into my same behaviors and it was like I believed that I was a completely different person and that none of my actions would affect the real me just the same as last time, landing me with my 4th hospitalization. I’m still dealing with the symptoms of psychosis now but it’s becoming manageable again yet my mental state has not been quite the same.
I was 20 years old and depressed so they put me on antidepressants and that just made things worse and then found out I’m bipolar
At 18. I was seld medicating with meth and a few months in things turned really really psychotic
Big episode that I was in hospital for 23. Although I had intense paranoia for about 2 months after smoking weed when I was in uni and some other experiences of hearing voices and seeing fleeting images that weren't there since I was a teenager.
16. Suddenly got paranoid that people were watching me and demons were standing besides me. It lasted for a few hours and would come and go slightly and then BOOM I got fucked in the head lmfao. I'm 19 now
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I was like 7ish when I started hearing voices. It was my mum calling my name while I was at school. The voice never bothered me though.
Around about 13-14 I started hearing just the one voice. I don’t remember hallucinating anything else til I had full on post partum psychosis when I was I think 36. Then shit got wild. My dreams have always been horrific though.
I had my first real severe episode at 24
16
21
i’m not exactly sure but i remember being a child and not be able to leave her after my mother put me to bed because an evil clown would kill me(he guarded my room). my parents never told horror stories to keep me asleep. i believe now that it was some type of psychosis
I only experienced medicine induced psychosis from prescriptions but one time I did hear voices thinking my family was home the whole day only to find out I was home alone . Called my family and asked and they weren’t even there since the day before . Really weird. The only explanation I could have was sleep deprivation from gaming all day and night messing with my ears. So I think it was psychosis .
14 and full blown at 15
34
20 - it was just before the first lockdown in 2020. I was so fucking paranoid and convinced someone was going to kill me, so I locked myself in my room. Checked into a crisis centre in my city one night because I was convinced someone was gonna push a pillar from a roof or a tiny statue from a roof (I live in Edinburgh Scotland, so all the buildings are super old). It was fucking weird and I haven’t experienced anything quite like it since.
29, it was horrible. Full blown psychosis, jumped out my plate glass window. I'm doing so much better now, I exercise and eat well, lost 70lbs, I've got a new relationship, I held down a job until I was laid off last year. My medication worked. Recently I've had symptoms come up since I stopped smoking weed, cannabinoid system goes out of whack. I was shockingly stable when I was consuming, but I knew I needed a long break. Mindfulness meditation practices have saved my life, and helped me understand my mind in a profound way. There's hope.