I just got home. I am sad to say I lost it on Monday and took myself back to the ER. They admitted me to a psych ward. I was released a little earlier today 
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Hope you’re okay mate
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I am joining a gym again so I’m busy in the morning when my head tends to feel the worst. I usually feel much better by mid afternoon.
I don’t have an income however until the disability is approved, so I have reached out to a few friends to try to put together some money for the $10/month plan* at a Vegas globo-gym and am saying it here if anyone has the means to contribute. This is humbling. Oof. The TBI really messed things up.
In the meantime I am also going to run. God I hate running lol
Edit: plus a $150 enrollment fee WTF
I got into martial arts recently and it’s totally awesome. Makes me regret not getting into it earlier.
Not sure if it’s the same for everyone, but it’s a really supportive group of people all working together to make each other better. Do some research and see what works for you for in terms of both the atmosphere of the class and the discipline you choose to learn.
Also, you’ll be a complete physical mess after the first class. Not like beaten up but just tired. It’s a hell of a workout.
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What form are you studying? I did all kinds as a teenager and still keep up with a few each day.
You’re so right about how physically demanding it can be.
Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. In the past, I studied Krav Maga as well but felt that there wasn’t effective pressure testing. With BJJ, you can go 100% and theoretically come out without injury so long as you’re rolling with someone who is respectable and follows the rules.
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Please take care of yourself. I know it’s hard, I have been there. Don’t hurt yourself.
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Sick. Good mindset too. Looking forward to your updates.
Trying my best my friend. I appreciate you.
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Update on my friend having the psychotic break: she’s now cut off all her friends and family and is apparently spending her days watching TV, scrolling TikTok, drinking lightly, fixing up her bedroom and working on little creative projects. We know this because we’re in contact with her roommate. She doesn’t speak to the roommate and basically tries not to acknowledge his presence unless she absolutely has to.
I tried to go visit her a couple weeks ago and she basically shut the door in my face. Although she did say “sorry dude” as the door was closing. I think she quickly processed that I was probably going to try to have some kind of heart to heart with her (I was going to play it by ear), and wanted no part of it.
So where it gets interesting is one of our friends is adamant that we need to find a way to get her committed. She’s talked to her medical director at the fire department she works at and he says she needs to be evaluated physically and mentally, and gotten onto meds ASAP. There is concern this could possibly physical in origin - like a tumor or celiac disease. Also the friend in crisis has expressed suicidal thoughts to the fire department friend, but that was a couple months ago.
The fire department friend’s plan is a) have roommate let us into the house, b) get her to same something suicidal or crazy while we record it on our phones, c) call 911 and have an ambulance come get her and take her to the hospital, presumably forcibly restraining her. The ambulance is key so that we don’t have to wait in the ER, which would not go well. I know from first hand experience that in LA that if you don’t show up in an ambulance, you wait for 8 hours.
I am dubious of this plan actually working. And if by some miracle it did work, I’m terrified that we could do more damage than good, by taking away our friend’s only safe space and forcibly dragging her to the most terrifying place imaginable. While things were going south, but before she went full Howard Hughes mode (minus the urine), our friend had to get a mammogram, which traumatized her really bad. The doctor wasn’t real, it was all part of the big Truman Show that she’s now the star of, etc,.
I don’t think there’s a way to pull this off w/o our friend knowing that her roommate let us in, which could shatter her only safe space right now, and possibly lead her to really run away and wind up on the streets or something. I don’t know if that’s likely, but if we somehow caused that I’d never forgive myself. Right now we have eyes on her, her roommate, who will let us know immediately if anything changes. I feel like as much as it sucks, we need to just wait this out for a bit. My hope is that at some point she’ll get tired of living like this and be more open to seeing a doctor. I get that some other friends feel like they should be doing something.
So anyway that’s where we are. @DrChesspain if you have any advice, or any other pros in this area, I’d love to hear it.
tl;dr - one friend wants to have our psychotic friend forcibly committed. I have reservations on multiple levels.
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I’m so sorry to hear this.
Having just returned from being temporarily committed, I’d say it’s awful to be there for long, but it can be a wonderfully controlled environment for someone to get stabilized. The key though is their consent and cooperation. They can always refuse meds and treatment, and then they’re just a prisoner or kicked out back to whatever situation they just left.
Rather than recording and reporting her, what if you staged a kind of intervention in which the few people you listed meet her at her place and just ask her to listen to everyone’s concerns and suggestion to go get treatment? It’s just so important that the person be on board for whatever might help them.
Otherwise, people can be involuntarily committed if they prove to be a danger to themselves or others. If she goes to the ER for suicidal or homicidal ideation either by consent or because she was enough of a danger for the cops to bring her, she can be committed overnight on a legal hold that ends only with the suggestion of an assigned psychiatrist and/or judge.
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Yeah some kind of intervention but w/o the silly ER plan is probably the next step.
I knew that the fire dept. friend had semi-convinced another friend about the ER thing, but then when I heard the whole plan yesterday I was like, “That’s your plan?”
It reminds me of The Salton Sea, where they act out the meth heads’ plan to rob the hospital and point out all the stuff that makes no sense. “Just call 911, get her in an ambulance to the ER.” Sure.
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My best wishes to everyone involved. It’s hard to know what to do if the person doesn’t want help.
I know that you and her other former friends are worried about her, but aside from her rarely leaving her room and not wanting to see any of you, I’m not really hearing anything that would be close to qualifying her for involuntary commitment.
Since you didn’t say otherwise, I also assume she is keeping herself reasonably clean and nourished. Although you could always contact the authorities and request an at-home welfare check for her, you’ll have to explain why you think she either is at imminent risk of self-harm or is so out-of-it she can’t provide for her basic needs. You might also have to explain why her own roommate isn’t concerned enough to call for a welfare check.
Whatever is happening with her, it’s her life, and you have to let her go. Continuing to contact her (or even her roommate) could be construed as harassment.
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Thanks, this basically aligns with my instincts on how to deal with the situation right now. But my instincts have been very wrong in the past.
I guess my main worry is that the longer this goes on, her chances to eventually pull out of it will diminish. But that risk seems far outweighed by the risk that we cause more harm than good with some kind of drastic attempt to get her to a medical facility against her will.
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Trying to record someone who is paranoid about being recorded seems…fraught.
I would offer to meet with her for a meal with a strong promise to not talk about any of her issues and I would keep that promise no matter how alarming her appearance or behavior might be.
Yeah that’s one of the many aspects of the plan I am dubious about. The kicker is that when the idea was floated to possibly execute the plan tomorrow, the fire department friend responded, “I can’t tomorrow. But you guys can do it w/out me. Main thing is to call 911 and get her transported by ambulance.” JFC. This is your cockamamie plan.
The psychosis friend isn’t responding to anyone’s texts right now. A friend who hadn’t seen her in a while did stop by today and caught her leaving to get into her car. She said she was on her way to the beach. She was cordial and said she was laying low. Yet more evidence that we need to just give her her space imo.
I think she’s trying to fight this in her own way, and shut out everything that triggers her, which is basically everyone she knows. I don’t think she’s going to overcome it this way. But it may take some time for her to realize that.
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This article really hits home about what my friend is going through with having psychosis but being adamantly opposed to any kind of treatment. Harrowing stuff with seemingly no solution.
Sometimes Sam felt he was wrestling with the disease, trying to haul Andrey back from a remote, dark space. “It’s almost like an entity that defends itself,” he said. “It’s trying to completely take him over.”
This line really hit home. You can see how people believe in possession. It is like getting a demon inside you in a lot of ways.
In my research on this I did find someone online talking about having schizophrenia, taking a while to come to grips with it, but now being on meds and leading a relatively normal life. So that’s the optimistic case. The other cause for potential optimism is that unlike the guy in this article who got hit with it when he was just starting out in life, my friend lived a rich normal adult life for a long time. I hope that some part of her wants to go back to her old life bad enough to face the scary prospect of going to the doctor.
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We did it friends! I am weak AF but am back in a gym. Vaxxed and ready to get used to the feeling of a barbell again. The total cost is wtf $210 to get membership started, then just $10/month.
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