What It’s Like To Go Through A Psychotic Break: A First-Person Account

“I am thinking fast; new fears flood in at the speed of perception. I’m noticing some things you – the interviewing doctors – do not. Yes hallucinations, some of them; fight or flight is also heightening my senses. Paranoid hypotheses are disproved and discarded, others take their place. Some will stay with me for months to come. But I don’t know that there is any future. … The thought, ‘I’m experiencing psychosis’ – terrifying when it comes – is unavailable; it’s all too new for that.”