Visuals are regarded as both the rarest and the most severe type of hallucination by the psychiatric community. If you get visuals but think of yourself as rather high functioning, that’s probably because visual hallucinations are far from being equal to one another. If this surprises you, it’s probably because you’ve never been scrutinized about your visual hallucinations on the same level as you have been about the other types.

Take the most common hallucination of a schizophrenic. Auditory hallucinations. You may get asked if the voices are clear or if they’re chatter. Are they quiet or loud? Are they close or far away? Is it one voice or many? Are they male or female? Do they make statements or give commands? You get me.

Vision, being the sense human beings primarily experience reality with, make hallucinations of such come in forms that one could ask far more questions about. I won’t put you to sleep with an exhaustive list. I’ll just hit on some important points in this post.

You’ll commonly hear people say they see shadow figures. They’re the most common and least severe. On the same level are distorted images of objects that are actually there. Seeing a spider on your skin that turns out to be a mole will doubtfully make it into your psychiatrist’s notes. Seeing bugs crawling all over your arm that you’re scratching away at could land you in the looney bin. Both were visuals of bugs. One was a distortion(not so severe) and one was a manifestation from nowhere(very severe).

The holy grail of visual hallucinations is the vivid image of a person that does not instantly go away. It sticks around. If you’ve unlocked this psychotic achievement, congratulations. You’re likely in for a few awards. Sorry, I mean a few wards. Other symptoms will likely be present when you've reached this level. Word salad. Bat shit crazy ideas. You’ve won the luxury of living in whatever world your brain decides to put you in at this point. That “A Beautiful Mind” reality where everything is normal apart from seeing three real-as-day people yet having no other symptoms just doesn’t happen.

Hardcore visuals send you into lala land

The statistics surrounding the widespread use of tobacco products are constantly fluctuating. The peer reviewed research reports that 80% of those with schizophrenia enjoy nicotine in one form or another. A number far higher than the average population. There must be a reason, right? The conclusions of said studies might surprise you.

The surprise comes from the fact that there are two conflicting reasons given. One, nicotine was shown in some studies to provide relief for the negative symptoms of schizophrenia. Two, nicotine was shown in other studies to lower the blood levels of many APs taken by patients who smoke regularly. This raises an obvious question.

Antipsychotics, the medications supposedly demonstrated to lessen the negative symptoms of schizophrenia, should be providing reduced symptom relief given that the aforementioned studies say that nicotine is lowering AP blood levels. A schizo patient should therefore quit smoking, correct?

Lets not forget the conclusions of the first study mentioned. APs lessen the negative symptoms of schizophrenia. For the uninformed, negative symptoms are all but indistinguishable from the side effects of antipsychotics. Let's simplify this.

Antipsychotics are said to both weaken the effects of medications that help with negative symptoms as well as provide relief for negative symptoms. If that isn't adding up in your head, that's because it doesn't add up. I have a layman's explanation that at least won't contradict.

Schizophrenia causes more stress than anything the normal brain can imagine. Newsflash, Smoking is one hell of a stress reliever.

I mean directly- not due to a delusion or command hallucination. Those are obviously psychotic reasons to cut, but I think the mindset itself can just be psychotic and lead directly to cutting, and this is based on personal experience and knowledge of a similar case in someone else.

How? [TW]

In a certain arguably-psychotic flavor of mindset, there becomes a morbidly fascinating quality to my own mortality. It's a deep sense of enamor, a pull to the dark side of the world and my role within it. I want to feel the mortality by cutting, to have the beast bite into me and show me what it's really got. And that in turn makes me feel alive, and that my life is in my own hands. In those moments, and for as long as the pain lasts, I feel have absorbed the power of mortality itself.

Would you not call this manner of thinking psychotic?

I can think of two glaring examples from my treatment that prove the subject of this threat true.

One, a psychiatrist once took me off of 4 of my 5 anti-psychotics. Upon being asked if this course of action would improve my symptoms, he softly said, "let's hope". Like a compliant patient I did as I was told and saw no reduction in symptoms.

Then there was the time I needed to be put on a stimulant to counteract the effects of all of the sedatives that I was taking. He went forward with prescribing the stimulant. What he didn't tell me was that he removed two sedatives from my medication supply. I didn't die, but I found it very hard to focus while I had to overwhelming urge to run laps.

Get second and third opinions. Psychiatrists are there to improve your quality of life. Don't allow him to ruin it.

Disclaimer: This post is not meant to imply advice; everyone's needs, triggers, and experiences are different.
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Well, it's been 2 or 3 months since I was last in full psychosis. I have ideas as to why, but they are unusual in that they are non-antipsychotic medication reasons:

1. Anxiety medication (benzo broadened from just for panic to for anxiety in general)

• I believe this move, which happened in the hospital when I was last psychotic, helped because I became more capable of lessening the intense stress/distress that usually triggers my psychotic symptoms.
  

• When I was put back on these during that same stay (which particular med has varied since), I came to feel more capable again. You know what that means? I have the feeling of having (more) agency over things in my life; more agency (for me at least) = less delusion fuel. 
  

• I was put on lithium the most recent time in the hospital, which was not for psychosis but for suicidality. The relation: the hospital time before that was for both psychosis and suicidality intertwined. I think that when my delusions (and intermittent internal conversations or arguments with the entities) are intensified by depression and distress, that it tends to spiral quickly into dangerous territory. My entities generally want me to kill myself, so when I agree with them, that's a big problem, especially as the main one has presented itself as an evil double that can take over my agency over my actions. So the upshot here? Less agreement with suicidal-flavored delusions and internal auditory hallucinations (achieved via reduced depression) seems to be helping me not get as immersed in the symptoms with these themes, themes which tend to be central to most of my episodes.
  

Does anyone else experience strongly religious/spiritual-focused delusions or become way more religious/spiritual when experiencing delusions? I'm not a very religious person or anything like that but during some of my episodes I experience religious delusions and often describe myself as very religious. Since going off my meds earlier in the year I've been told by multiple professionals that I'm experiencing psychotic symptoms since I started hearing gods telling me things (and also realized I'm an angel/demi-god from the things they've told me) and have since been way more in-tune with spirituality than usual

I've heard of cases similar to this when reading up on schizophrenia on the internet with very similar themes (hearing gods, being an angel/god, being chosen, etc), but I feel I don't often see delusions of this nature in actual schizo communities. I feel other people seem to have more persecutory/paranoia focused delusions (which is usually the case for me but not always, lately my persecutory/paranoid delusions have been very secondary and have always been directly related to things the gods tell me instead of stemming on their own)

When my anxiety is extremely high, I feel as though I'm being trapped and suffocated even though I have every reason to believe that I can move. It doesn't go away until I start moving and this will sometimes result in me pacing around throughout the entire day and into the night.

Does any other schizophrenic experience this?

What symptoms did you experience during the onset of your schizophrenia? I primarily dissociated.

I don't feel like this issue gets nearly enough attention. They plague psychotic people so much that many fear going to sleep like a child that has watched a scary movie. The only difference is that the movie was played by your mind. Maybe at least awareness that this is a common problem will provide patients some relief. Not being alone is one of the most comforting feelings there is.

Who else has had psychotic nightmares?

i tend to get a lot of delusions around hypnosis or mind control by spirits. i can get sent into a sort of trance that will follow commands. one time it was god telling me to do random things around town like stealing a hoodie and making a cross out of sticks and hang it behind a fast food place. another time there was a certain book i didnt want to read because it would be too triggering, but my body kept seeking it out. i found it in barnes and noble and couldnt put it down because of the trance even though my head was screaming not to.