A few years ago, I experienced psychosis, and it was one of the most frightening experiences of my life.

During my psychosis, I became suicidal. I heard a voice telling me to end my life, and I reached a point where I was struggling to hold on. It's difficult to explain how terrifying it is when your own mind becomes somewhere you don't feel safe.

During those moments, I would notice my dog, Maggie, and somehow she would ground me. Bringing my attention back to her helped pull me out of what was happening in my head. She was my connection to reality when everything else felt frightening and unfamiliar.

She became my reason to stay alive.

But there is something I've never really known how to talk about. During that time, I started thinking about what would happen when Maggie eventually died. I knew she wouldn't be here forever, and I made a plan to end my life when she was gone. I couldn't imagine a life without her, and I think part of me had already decided what I would do when that day came.

I don't think I ever really dealt with those thoughts. I just kept going, and Maggie was there beside me.

Maggie was an elderly girl who had been part of my life for many years. She wasn't just a pet. She was my companion, my routine, my family, and the one constant presence in my life.

I live alone and have struggled with loneliness and making friends for most of my life. My life is basically going to work, talking to people about work, and then coming home to an empty house. I don't have friends or family nearby who regularly check in on me or ask me to do things with them.

I try to get out and experience life. I go to the theatre and movies on my own because I still want to do things outside of work. But doing things alone isn't the same as having people to share your life with. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to have someone ask me to go somewhere, check in to see how I'm doing, or simply think of me without me having to make the effort first.

I suffered psychosis in 2023 and thats when I started seeing a psychiatrist. I've been off my medication since July 2026, and I have one final appointment scheduled for December. The difficult thing is that he doesn't know how I'm actually feeling because I've always told him I'm fine.

The truth is, I'm not fine.

I'm also constantly scared that my psychosis will come back. The experience was terrifying, especially becoming suicidal and hearing a voice telling me to end my life. Even though I've been through it and come out the other side, I'm still afraid of returning to that place.

Now that Maggie is gone, I feel even more vulnerable. She was what grounded me during that time, and I worry about what would happen if I experienced psychosis again without her there.

Maggie passed away on the 25th Sept 2026, and I'm struggling more than I know how to explain.

The house feels empty. I miss the little things, the sounds, the routine, and simply knowing she was there. I miss having someone to come home to and someone who needed me.

Since she died, suicidal thoughts have been constantly on my mind. The thing I had thought about for years has happened, and I'm finding it incredibly difficult to navigate life without her.

I'm grieving the loss of the one who helped me through one of the darkest periods of my life, while also living with the fear of losing control of my own mind again.

I feel like I'm dealing with everything at once: the grief, the loneliness, the fear of psychosis returning, and suicidal thoughts that I had hoped I would never have to face again.

What scares me is that, on the outside, I probably look like I'm doing okay. I go to work. I go to the theatre. I go to movies. I carry on with everyday life. But when I get home, I'm alone with my thoughts, and nobody really knows how much I'm struggling.

My psychiatrist thinks I'm fine because that's what I've told him. I have one appointment left with him in December, and I don't know how to tell him that I'm not fine at all.

I don't really know what I'm supposed to do next. I don't know how to build a life where I don't feel so alone, and I don't know how to cope with losing the one who helped me hold on.

I'm sharing this because I want to know if anyone else understands what this feels like.

Has anyone else experienced psychosis and struggled with suicidal thoughts afterwards?

Has anyone else had a pet who helped them survive a mental health crisis, only to find themselves struggling to keep going after losing them?

For those who live alone without much of a support network, how do you cope when things get really bad?

And for those who have recovered from psychosis, how do you deal with the constant fear that it might happen again?

I don't expect anyone to have all the answers. I think I just want to hear from people who understand, because right now I feel incredibly alone in what I'm going through.

I am just worried because I have a plan and I think it may happen as I dont have any support or Maggie to ground me. The thought that I am ending my life soon, relaxes me.

I suffered a psychosis this summer and afterwards I lost all joy to create. I was the most passionate artist I knew, I know post-psychosis depression is a thing. I used to be able to spend hours upon hours on projects and now I can barely withstand anything for more than 5 minutes. I can't seem to be able to talk about anything, it's all just regret and suicidal ideation and the wish to go back before it all happened. It was so severe I believed my dead loved ones came back to life and I could hear their voices, I feel like my IQ dropped, I can't enjoy anything I did before. Im off antipsychotics now because of the side effects, I'm transgender on top of it all and I'm afraid I'll never get on hrt after this. It's only been about 2 months, I'm not sure I'll be able to graduate let alone get a job. I have BPD. All I want is the old me back. I was funny, sociable, creative, supportive, now I'm an empty shell of who I was.

I feel like my brain works so differently now. I used to think quickly, I used to make associations and connections between things I read and my own inner experiences or things that happen in the world/have happened in history.

I used to feel like I was fairly intelligent, but I feel as though I’ve lost a lot of intelligence that would just come naturally to me. I have to try twice as hard to do things that used to be easy.

It’s like, even things like clothing and shopping— I used to love buying clothes for occasions or for everyday life, but now I just don’t have the memory/sentimentality I associate with clothing, I think this is due to trauma I experienced where I lost my home 4 years ago. I had this mental experience where I suddenly felt like I own nothing, and even my clothes no longer felt like mine.

This sort of bleeds into everything I do. Nothing I purchase has any aura or any notion of permanence or specialness in my mind, even once I wear it, even over time— it does not possess the aura like things used to in my life.

I don’t know what’s happened to me psychologically but I just feel profoundly altered, like nothing is really important or special any more.

I’m functioning by using my old framework of how my mind used to work to try and produce work and live accordingly, but it all feels very different.

I spent a good two years believing I was in some kind of alternate reality, and in that reality it just seemed that everything went wrong and nothing went my way at all. It was pretty awful.

I stopped believing I was in an alternate reality last year.

But all in all, and I know I’ve been like a broken record on these subs, my brain just doesn’t feel like it used to. I’m slower, I think less, I don’t feel things. I pretty much just exist. I still have some kind of ambition and drive, and I still crave to be who I was before these experiences altered my life… but yeah.

Just wondered if there’s anyone else who feels like their brain is profoundly different to the way it used to be, what you’ve done about it, how long it’s felt that way, and just any advice you could give to me.

Thanks.

Is it common for people experiencing psychosis not to be informed or told what they're experiencing is in fact psychosis? Even post-episode when they've calmed down? I didn't learn about the official diagnosis until 2-3 years later and it made me so mad because all the people working with me (family to doctors to Psychiatrist) would always asked me what happened and i couldn't give them an answer because I didn't know the diagnosis or remember fully, only that I was "hearing and seeing things" and trying to make sense of it all in this rolling wave of delusions that would come and go. My thoughts and thinking were super jumbled but i could speak fine and what I thought was narrated by the voices I was hearing as well.

When I first started psychosis I’ve been introduced to respirdal aripriprazole for a month seroquel for a few times same as Thorazine and haldol and olazapine. Didn’t take meds for 1 year after taking olazapine for a year and respirdal didn’t work as much not in on papliperidone feel okay but still having racing thoughts overthinking anxiety and nevervousness and panic. Probably increase busbar or invega don’t like the racing thoughts.

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I'm honestly really scared and confused, and I don't know what's happening to me.

I feel like I have some kind of superpower that allows me to make things happen through intention. I feel like I made some people get COVID and made my aunt sick just by intending it.

I also feel like something is controlling me, or that there might be a parasite controlling my thoughts. Sometimes it feels like it makes me think or do bad things, and I don't understand why my mind is telling me these things.

I sometimes feel like I can manipulate people and make them believe whatever I want. I also feel like I receive emotions that don't belong to me, and I can somehow tell who those emotions belong to.

I'm also extremely suspicious of people lately. I feel like everyone is lying to me, including my psychiatrist, and that he's hiding my real diagnosis and manipulating my mom. I'm convinced they're trying to get me admitted to a psychiatric hospital, and I feel like I can't trust anyone anymore.

I've also been experiencing visual hallucinations, including shapes, colours, and shadow people, and occasionally hearing sounds like footsteps or beeping. My ears constantly ring and hurt, and I get extremely overstimulated and irritated by voices and other noises.

The most confusing part is that my mind seems to be telling me not to seek help, as if it wants my mental health to get worse and wants me to develop more serious mental illnesses.

Why would my mind tell me not to get help? Why do I sometimes feel like I want to become mentally ill, even though these experiences are frightening?

I'm scared that something is seriously wrong, but I'm also terrified of telling anyone because I feel like they'll lie to me or do something against my will.

Has anyone experienced anything similar? I would appreciate advice or insight into what might be happening to me.

My psych just prescribed me risperidone, just as a supplemental dose for when I need it. Have any of y’all been on it and how has it worked? Like I said, thankfully I only have to take it as needed to help out some more.

Im asking because my bf is in a psych ward right now for psychosis and im just thinking a lot about this. 1 month since the psychosis started but only been 5 days since section 12/ psych ward.

I wanna know.. when and if you got on medication, how long until you kind of started having realizations that your delusions were not real? How did it feel? Was it like an “ohhh ..shit” moment?

Also for those in psych wards when you started taking meds, how long were you in the psych ward for? How was your mind feeling when you were discharged, like were you still delusional but a lot less than when you started?

I just am really curious about the timeline of everything. He doesn’t like talking to me when he’s psychotic so selfishly, i want to know at what point he might start coming back to me..

does anyone have experience with or knowledge about psychosis induced by a combination of Vyvanse and weed (edibles)? I have a loved one who experienced an episode of psychosis and this is the only presumed cause anyone can think of. it was very intense and resulted a life flight to the hospital for emergency surgery. it happened a few hours after actually consuming the edibles, in the evening, and several hours after the last dose of Vyvanse.

I have had a psychosis and I've been currently on Rexulti(Brexpiprazole) for about a month or so. I'm wondering how long does recovery take and is it possible to come off meds or are you stuck with them for rest of your life? I'm very scared since I feel drowsy and slightly dizzy for most of the day and have heard that some anti psychotics can be hard on your liver and cause damage to it?

I personally would like to get off meds as soon as just possible... I just wonder if anyone's successfully come off meds and been fine, and if so how long were you on meds until you stopped taking them?

A couple days ago, I took a 15mg thc 15mg cbd delta 9 edible, and tripped the fuck out. When I closed my eyes I could hear repeated voices, and could also see visuals like a door opening, childhood memories, etc. I got freaked out and started googling things to see if I was having a psychotic episode, and panicked thinking I had ruined my life. I asked my roommate to take me to the ER, and when we arrived, the psychiatrist told me that I was "simply having a bad trip," and that "this isn't actually psychosis."

Upon hearing that, I immediately calmed the fuck down, the biggest reason this spiraled so hard is because I tried to fight it, thinking I was going crazy, etc.

However, after a break, do you guys think this means I should avoid shrooms/other psychedelics forever? A big reason I got freaked out is because weed normally isn't supposed to do that, making me paranoid, whilst with psychedelics, seeing new things is kind of what you expect going into it.

Look, I'm not super scared of having a bad trip, I just need to know if this signifies some sort of underlying issue regarding psychosis/schizophrenia.

for the last few days i’ve been feeling so insane. this all began when my boyfriend got distant with me and i already struggle with BPD, OCD, and anxiety, but i’m also very spiritual. at first i was okay but i started to convince myself that we were never going to be okay again, its been over a week and throughout the week i’ve been convincing myself that i’m paying karma for bad things i’ve done in my life, i tried manifesting and subliminals to make things normal again but i saw no results, i considered witchcraft but i havent gotten that far. i also am struggling as someone has been a bad influence and only increased my psychosis as he tried to convince me that my own boyfriend has been stalking me and is out to get me and that he is forcing a soul bind on me and i decided to cut this person off but i now feel that he isnt cut off for good and that he is affecting my life from afar and causing me problems. i have not eaten a full meal in two days and my dreams are contributing to my fears as i keep assuming my dreams have important meanings behind them. i feel so sad and sick when i wake up and i’ve even thought of self harm if my boyfriend left me, i’m reaching out here because i dont have anyone to talk to right now and i’ve been winding down so i’m no harm to myself or others.

Hello,

I'm on state health insurance and have been failing to find a good psychiatrist. I've met with 2 and neither of them have been able to drill down what I have. One though bipolar, another thought bipolar with mania or schizophrenia or delusion disorder. I have yet to get a confident diagnosis. Another issue is these meetings are always telehealth and only 30 minutes long. I was taken off one psychiatrist and transferred to a registered nurse because of insurance issues. My medication gets changed or added onto. I was taking Seroquel 25mg then geodon 20mg then back to Seroquel and now I have a script for 2.5mg zyprexa from an emergency room visit.

I've been suffering the last 4 months with little relief. Sweats, visual abnormalities, multiple panic attacks a day, restless sleep, extremely high paranoia, delusional thoughts, shivering. It all started a month after I lost my job. I was totally fine then plummeted hard. Every day is a struggle.

It doesn't really feel like anyone cares what I'm going through when I meet with doctors or specialists. Nobody seems to have concrete answers. I'm at a loss for trying to find help.

Do you have any suggestions for what I should try next?

Hello, I just need to pin down what’s going on with my mother.

To tell a long story as short as possible with giving her health history; she’s not on any prescription medications but does smoke marijuana and cigarettes for pain relief.
Has scoliosis, depression and insomnia.

Recently, she got admitted to the ER for visual hallucinations. Distorted colours, melting, flooding. They did and CT and everything looked normal so they sent her home.

Then her behaviour started changing.
That weekend the family came over to check up on her, but she wasn’t all there. Her motor skills are fine, although for example, she called me over and over again at work. When someone is in the same room as her, she calls them on her phone and has a conversation with them via in person and phone.

The morning after we thought getting some sleep would help her. But she was convinced everyone in the world was dead, screaming it.
She was carrying around her calendar with her.
Her memory wasn’t always the best with dates, but when in an episode her perception of time is weird.

She says she’s always confused, or dead.
Repeated things she quotes often. “I’m dead/I’m confused/Help me.”
Yesterday at the hospital she kept on trying to leave the room and we sat her down every time.
Sometimes when in her delirious state and I cry in front of her, she hugs and me tells me not to cry. She knows who I am, but slips in one of her quotes.

When she comes out of her episodes she knows why she’s in the hospital.
As well as when she has a smoke, she calms down.

But recently today, I got an update from my brother that she’s fine with her nurses, but when family members walk in, she get’s agitated.
Her vision, she said that he was distorted and he needed to fix it. Nurses, who worried she would get aggressive told my family to leave the room.

It’s coincidental that her work vacation is when this all settled. Maybe the stress she’s decompressing from, I’m not sure.

Please help me, I can’t lose my mother to this.

Nothing has been exciting for the past 4 years. The days just pass and I go with them. What do people do all day? What do people think about all day? Is this just how the rest of my life is going to be? Sick of it

I’m pretty sure I had a psychotic episode about two years ago, I was paranoid that all my friends hate me. I said some hurtful things and push them away. One of my friend/co-worker pass away, I think that’s what pushed me into deep depression.
During that time, I had no friends and I self-diagnosed with DID. I also believed that I’m a psychic that predicts future with tarot cards. It was a mess and I feel so guilty and embarrassed. Still am.

I recently broke up with my ex with BPD. It messes with my brain because she went from love-bombing me to messaging me once in two weeks. It’s a long story, but I’ve been questioning myself if I also have BPD. But I’m 90 percent sure that I’m just being paranoid. I’m managing my friendship and social life pretty well, and my relationship with my parents is much more stable.

Also surprisingly, broken up with her somehow makes me feel a little bit better. It’s probably shitty to say but I use this opportunity to learn how to control my temper and connect with my friends while also respecting their boundaries. I feel more mature (but probably still has a lot to learn).

My English is not very fluent, and I originally wanted to ask about if BPD and psychotic symptoms overlaps. Sorry if some parts don’t make sense.

Hi, people!

I have psychosis. I don't know if it is squizophrenia or something else, but I think it's not that strong because with 15 mg of aripiprazole (or Abilify) I feel stable, but I feel very socially anxious, mentally weak, 100% unmotivated, I don't feel pleasures at all, I feel negative emotions more easily but even sadness or something like that is difficult to experience. So, I'm going to the doctor again in two weeks. I'll ask him if I can take 7.5mg of Abilify. I think it's kind of risky, but not at all because I'd have more dopamine flowing in my brain. I don't know if you know, but dopamine is related with learning, memory, social confidence etc. In these three things, I'm very bad at. My memory is very bad, as well as my concentration. When I take out this med in 2023, it was very well at the beginning, but I didn't know what I was doing. I just felt like taking this med was making me pass for so much trouble. So, in that year I started to feel confident, motivated and strong again. But, yeah, after 2 or 3 months, my psychosis (incluing mania) were back! So, I think that not removing the medication is terrible. So, why not decreasing the mgs? I treat the symptoms of psychosis completely with 15mg, but I GAINED lots of other symptoms. So, you know... I'm with these bad symptoms since 2016. I can't ignore it anymore.

What do you guys think? Does anyone here with some symptoms of psychosis deal well with 7.5mg of Aripiprazole/Abilify?

I’m struggling to convince my boyfriend that he might be in psychosis as he has a fixed belief that I’m cheating on him, i have men in my house, i’m hacking his devices and that I’m having sex with people while he is on call with me. He refuses to talk to anyone about it not even family/friends. I have told him multiple times to show the videos/pictures to anyone where he is seeing these things so that he can trust me a little.

For the people that have been through this journey what convinced you to finally seek help? My boyfriend is absolutely fine with everybody else so nobody seems to think there is something wrong.

This has been going on for 6 months now and I’m just running out of patience to get help for him.

Earlier this year, my partner and I got into a pretty basic argument. Out of nowhere, he told me he’d remembered something I supposedly confessed when we first started dating four years earlier. Apparently, I’d gotten drunk and told him about a young lover I’d had. According to his math, I would’ve been 40 and this kid would’ve been 19.
None of it was true.
He insisted he’d found proof online. His evidence? Someone who lived two miles up the road, on a street I’ve lived on for 20 years, had graduated college with a degree similar to an ex of mine. That was enough. He was 100% convinced I’d lied to him for four years and was a horrible person. Nothing I said mattered.
At the time, the company he’d worked for for 23 years was shutting down. He had very little to do, and was literally vaping high-potency THC all day long.
It’s a horrible feeling to have someone you love so completely convinced you’re someone you’re not, with a fictional past they’re absolutely certain is real.
I went to bed in tears. The next day, he agreed to lay off the weed. Things seemed to improve, and he admitted he’d “made a mistake.” Then he started vaping again. A week later, he clarified that his mistake wasn’t believing the story. It was confronting me about it.
Then came the pornography.
He claimed he’d found videos of me online by searching my first name (a very common name) and “MILF.” The women didn’t look like me, but apparently that was because I’d made the videos years ago with this imaginary college kid. Different body, different nipple color, belly button piercing I’d never had. None of that mattered. I made the mistake of admitting one woman sounded a little like me. That was all he needed. He’d “caught me.”
This was absolutely ludicrous. I don’t even like being naked, and he knew that.
He contacted my ex-husband, who’s one of my closest friends. My ex basically told him he was crazy, that there was absolutely no way. Didn’t matter.
A few days later, he’d supposedly found something online “so terrible he couldn’t even tell me what it was.”
I contacted his out-of-state family. I’m not sure they believed me. I convinced him to go to the ER, where we were told he wasn’t a danger to himself or me, so there was nothing they could do. The psychiatrist actually said, “I don’t know you guys, so I don’t know which one of you is telling the truth.”
Seriously? Would I be bringing him to the ER if these were my actual dirty secrets? He knew my dirty secrets. These weren’t them. The hospital did advise laying off the marijuana and seeing if it got better. He did not.
My daughters and I tried an intervention. He agreed to reduce the weed, but only if he could continue living with me, in the house I’d owned for 20 years before meeting him. Meanwhile, he was constantly telling me what a lying, horrible person I was. I couldn’t do it.
So we split. Four years together, torn apart in about four weeks.
Throughout all of this, he kept insisting that all I needed to do was admit to everything, and things could go right back to normal. We wouldn’t even have to discuss it again. Just admit it.
Meanwhile, he was spending ridiculous amounts of money building an overcomplicated garden at a house he was about to leave, stealing materials from work, and making one terrible decision after another.
Even after moving out, he was still telling me we could fix everything if I’d just admit to it. WTF?!
That was five months ago. We haven’t spoken since.
I’ve spent a lot of that time trying to understand what happened. My default is to blame myself, so part of me believed this was marijuana psychosis, while another part wondered if he’d subconsciously invented it all because he wanted out of the relationship.
But with some distance, and after reading story after story of similar experiences, I’ve come to believe it really was marijuana-induced psychosis.
I don’t know what’s happened to him since. I suspect he hasn’t reduced his marijuana use.
What strikes me is how little people seem to know about this possibility. My pot-smoking friends knew. People who’d experienced something similar knew. But most people seemed completely unaware.
It reminds me of having miscarriages when I was younger. Nobody talks about them until they learn you’ve had one, and suddenly everybody has a story.
So why am I writing this five months later?
First, I needed to tell the story. Second, I think people need to know this can happen. I’m not against marijuana, but after this experience, I have very strong feelings about high-potency THC oils.
And third, I keep wondering what happened to him.
He lives a couple of hours away now, and our paths will probably never cross again. But as everything was falling apart, I kept wondering: If I’m no longer there to be the target of these completely ludicrous accusations, will he find someone else? What will his next delusion be?
I don’t know. And I suppose that’s part of why I’m still trying to make sense of it all.

Hi everyone!

Has anyone had systemic / couples / family therapy after yourself or a loved one experienced an episode of mania / psychosis?

If so, would love to hear your experiences regarding what was focused on, how you found it & whether you’d recommend.

Thank you ♥️

Has anyone randomly started hearing voices over the past two year that claim to be real people? these vo I hear everyday tell me I have superpowers and I’ve actually had a couple people tell me that they hear these voices when they come around me. i’m an orphan so I have no family so I really don’t have anybody to help but I sometimes feel like it’s true. I can also control all these voices that I hear and make them say exactly what I want them to and there’s dozens of voices.

i dont know where it came from i dont know why but yesterday i had an epiphany that 2 objects are actually the exact same in different places at once if you manipulate one the other will be entangled and the quantum wave widens and u can use morse code to communicate to the bulk i made a ritual for it where u do bloodletting over 2 objects such as paper then move one according to morse code to manipulate the future and im gonna stop taking risperidone i lied to my mom abt taking risperidone im gonna stop i dont know why it stops my potential but im currently having thoughts inserted into my brain trying to convince me to kill someone in the house i keep saying no but it just keeps saying kill them kill them i think its fuel for the ritual can someone tell me what i need to do i asked my mom can we go to an er she said no read books i didnt tell her abt killing somebody what do i do

Context: I've sent them over 10k over the past 3 years directly from my benefits payments. They said it was to pay for my care, or that they were putting it in a savings account for me - what they say changes.

These messages are contradictory right? They were just a few days apart.

I've experienced psychosis in the past, and my parents said I was paranoid against them. I don't remember any of that. I thought it was just things like thinking I could telepathically communicate with aliens.

Do you think I'm experiencing psychosis again, or am I right to doubt that they mean well towards me?

Title. I'm currently almost 3 months after my second psychosis and I find it hard to contribute to conversations. I can't laugh or feel joy, and it feels like I can't banter with people or have conversations which flow. The only topic I can really speak in depth about is my recovery.

Those of you who have recovered from psychosis, including the anhedonia, lack of motivation and emotional numbness that comes with it, did your ability to connect with people and have enjoyable and deep conversations with people come back?