Depression With Psychotic Features

"Psychosis" describes a psychological state in which the subject (that's me!) develops "reduced contact with reality." This takes the form of either delusions, which are false beliefs; or hallucinations, which is seeing or hearing things which aren't actually there.

Looking back on the events of 2010, there were several points at which I may have experienced "reduced contact with reality". There was the time last Spring when I felt like the storm outside was trying to pry off the roof of my house to get at me -- but I knew intellectually that it wasn't, so it's all good. Or so I thought.

There was the time when I was visiting my parents, and a helicopter hovered over their home at 1 in the morning, and a part of me felt absolutely terrified that it was after me -- but I knew it wasn't, so I pretended to myself that I wasn't panicking. Wouldn't it be hard, I thought, to be "actually paranoid" and to "really believe" that the helicopter was there for me? Good thing I'm "normal", right?

Last fall, with increasing frequency, I had to turn on all the lights in the house at night. I wasn't scared of shadows or someone breaking in. No, part of me was convinced that having the lights on in the kitchen and not in the living room would cause the house to become unbalanced. The darkness from the living room would pour into the kitchen, and that would be Bad.

Rationally, of course, I know that photons have no mass, and therefore can't weigh enough to overbalance anything. Good thing I'm rational! I turned the lights on anyway, because not having them on scared me.

And then, there was The Episode. The one with the microwave cabinet. That was the one that was finally bad enough for me to alert my doctor.

I'm in my kitchen. It's early December, about 5:30 in the evening. I'm cooking soup, alternating between stirring it and working at my computer. I've been feeling increasingly bad since 4 pm. Like a character in a Bergman film, I start to feel that life is bleak and meaningless, destined to be snuffed out by the all-consuming dark.

I start to cry. I stir the soup, and return to my computer to try and get some Christmas shopping done. I look around at my badly-lit kitchen. I start to cry harder. I feel like I can't handle my life anymore. There are dark shadows everywhere. I imagine them devouring photons until there's nothing but darkness left in the universe. Then, I look at my microwave cabinet and a feeling of dread comes over me.

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Oddly, as my issues with the microwave cabinet are flourishing, my mood is getting better. I start to consider my next move.

For now, I have my computer set up in such a way that I can see the cabinet out of the corner of my eye, but I'm not looking at it directly, and my back isn't turned. I start to wonder what to do next. I know the reasonable thing to do would be to leave the room -- at least, that's the next most reasonable thing to do. The most reasonable thing to do would be to stop being afraid of a damn cabinet. However.

Don't make eye contact, says Ancient Hindbrain. But don't leave the room. You need to stay here where you can to keep an eye on it. Besides, even if you leave, it will still be here ... WAITING.

"We can't stay here all night," I argue. "You don't want to sleep in the same room with it, do you?"

Absolutely not! says Ancient Hindbrain. We need to find a way to contain the threat.

"And how, exactly, do we do that?" I ask.

The answer, when it comes, is as surprising as it is implacable.

You need to cover the cabinet with foil, says Ancient Hindbrain. That will keep it from devouring the light. It will keep it from threatening us.

Really. I was having paranoid delusions about a piece of furniture, and that's where my mind went. Aluminum foil. It looked like I'd be living a cliche for the next little while.

So I covered my cabinet in foil.

And I felt a lot better.

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I suppose I got off lucky. When my doctor said "you're not going to like this", he suggested a low dose of an antipsychotic medication. At least it wasn't electro-convulsive therapy.

The medication my doctor put me on was Abilify. In high doses, it's used as an antipsychotic. In lower doses, it's used for treatment-resistant depression, and depression with psychotic features. My doctor also ordered me to go home and buy a sunlamp that very night.

My memory of that appointment was not terribly clear. I think I was in a certain amount of shock after hearing the word "psychotic" applied to me. I'm still not entirely sure exactly what happened to me, or what I can do to keep it from happening again.