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Diary of a Christian Schizophrenic

£5.00

SKU e-book Category

175 in stock

Description

VOLUME 9
By Christophrenic

ISBN: 978-1-84991-479-6
Published: 2011
Pages: 99
Key Themes: diary, autobiography, schizophrenia, trauma, anxiety

Description

Christophrenic is the pen name of a 43 year old Christian writer, poet and filmmaker who suffers from schizophrenia. He is married and has got two teenage step children and two young daughters. He become ill in 1992 after spending 8 years of his youth in prison for violent and money motivated crimes and had a breakdown because he’d also regularly taken drugs.

His diary writing is often driven by anxiety and fear and is cathartic and therapeutic because writing his thoughts and feelings usually makes him feel better, as it alleviates the pain, and he does also write when he’s feeling happy and positive, so feels its a balance.

Christophrenic strives to lead a noble, Christian life but still struggles with using adult pornography sometimes, but hopes to eventually overcome this habit and also hopes to be completely healed of his illness one day, as he longs to be free of the psychological torment and horrible side effects of medication that he often experiences. He still loves the medication though and is grateful for it as his health would be worse without it and generally it keeps him reasonably well and stable.

About the Author

Christophrenic started becoming mentally ill whilst he was in prison and shortly after he was released in the summer of 1992, aged 24, he had a breakdown and was diagnosed with schizophrenia. He’d become ill partly because of the trauma of having spent eight years in jail since the age of 15 and also because he’d regularly taken drugs including cannabis, heroin, crack and ecstasy, including whilst he was in prison.

In the space of a year he was admitted to Springfield hospital on three occasions, twice under a section. He’s been out of hospital since October 1993 and for most of that time he’s remained on medication. He’s had some relapses since then due to having stopped taking medication or having it reduced to too low an amount, but avoided hospital thanks to early intervention and agreement to continue taking or increasing he’s dose.

Christophrenic’s been a Christian for over 12 years now and during that time he’s studied filmmaking at college and university, has made many short films and wrote many books including three books of poetry and nine diaries. He is married and has got two teenage step children and two daughters, aged six and three.

Book Extract

14/1/10

10.39 pm. I feel so tired and sad. I’m frightened. Frightened that I’ll really commit suicide one day. I’ve had schizophrenia since the age of 24 when I had my first breakdown in 1992, shortly after I was last released from prison, having spent in total about eight years of my youth locked up since the age of 15.

I am often in double minded torment. I believe that I can hear subconscious communication and that I’ve got some kind of psychic power or ability similar to being a medium, although realistically this could actually be my psychosis that I’m being treated for with anti-psychotic medication. The medication doesn’t stop me hearing, though. It relaxes me and stops me from feeling highly tense terror, though as I said I can still hear voices and sometimes I do still often feel extremely tense.

I often hear two things at the same time. For example I heard yesterday the words ‘Pay him’. At the same time though I heard the words ‘Frame him’.
This demonstrates that half of what I hear is positive and uplifting, and half of what I hear is negative and lowering. The words ‘Pay him’ for example, I associate with the fact that I’m a semi-professional film-maker and also a writer and poet and I hope that I’ll get paid more often for the work I occasionally do, which I usually do free of charge. The words ‘Frame him’ I associate with the paranoid delusion I’ve suffered from since I’ve been ill, and that’s the fear that I’ll one day be framed by the police for murder, get a life sentence and kill myself in jail.

With what I’m hearing and feeling I sometimes feel like I’m half in heaven and half in hell. I used to fight back in my mind and try to out-talk in my mind the negative thoughts that I heard, but now I just remain passive and just listen to what I’m hearing. And if I do hear contradictory thoughts I mainly accept and dwell on the positive.

15/1/10

1.01 am. Insomnia again. I often lie awake at night, sometimes feeling fine and blissful, but as it gets later these feelings sometimes turn to anxiety. I then sometimes give up, and if I’m feeling anxious I’ll look at adult porn on the TV or computer. I can’t always manage to resist this as I sleep on a sofa bed in the front room as my snoring used to wake up my wife Tina, so now I don’t sleep in the same bed as her. Because the computer is also in the living room it’s so difficult not to give in to temptation and look at porn. If I’ve been awake most of the night, I’ll sometimes resist it till about five o’clock in the morning and then give in due to sheer boredom, but then afterwards feel like shit again as my soul has been partly eaten by the devil. Porn partly consumes you.

16/1/10

1.37 pm. Schizophrenia is an invisible disability. People can’t see that your ill or how you’re affected. OK, people can see that you’re tense with anxiety and fear sometimes, but on the whole a lot of people with schizophrenia just look normal. And it’s not just mentally that the illness affects you. The illness and side effects of the medication also affect you physically. I’d guess that I’ve got three or four times less mental and physical stamina as what I’d have if I weren’t ill. I am 42 years old but often feel mentally and physically incapacitated to the point were I feel that I’ve got less energy than some pensioners.

The plus point though is that I don’t have to work for a living, and with all the benefits we receive including income support, incapacity benefit, housing benefit, council tax benefit, child benefit, disability living allowance and carer’s allowance for Tina as my carer, we get nearly thirty thousand pounds a year. And this is for me, my wife and four children. And our housing association property rent is about half of what private accommodation would be. Realistically this means that we’ve got about the same amount of disposable income or even more than that which a family on forty thousand pounds a year has.


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