Personal Accounts: United I Stand: How Improved Perception Transformed My Mental Health

On a snowy day in December 2001, I miraculously and quite unintentionally cured myself of schizophrenia. Some may see that word “miraculously” and jump to the conclusion that I had a delusional religious experience. I’ve selected that word because there is no known cure for schizophrenia, and if “cure” means the permanent elimination of symptoms and that’s what I experienced, then doesn’t “miraculously” apply? My experience was like the scene in Forrest Gump when the young Forrest flees from a truck full of bullies. His metal leg braces mysteriously disintegrate, and he miraculously runs away. But, that, of course, could only happen in a movie.

Let me distinguish between the terms “recovery,” “remission,” and “cure.” Recovery usually refers to a gradual process that involves a person’s progress and relapse; recovery includes learning and acquiring effective coping techniques to improve one’s mental health. Remission is a term associated with cancer, and schizophrenia to some is a bit like a cancer of the brain. Remission also implies that the illness may return at some point. In contrast, cure as an action verb means to eliminate illness and to achieve full restoration to health.

At age 20 I had withdrawn from college because of an emerging disorder that made it hard for me to think and write coherently. Soon afterward I moved to Arizona and spent most of the next seven months in Tucson, where I worked as a dishwasher at a large resort. I also got involved in bioenergetics, a controversial, highly emotional therapy that included Rolfing and primal screaming. The stress and this “therapy” wreaked havoc on me. By the time I moved back to my parents’ home in Massachusetts, I was unstable, both physically and mentally. After being unable to get undressed or out of bed for a few days, I had an argument with my mother, struck a window with my hand, and was sent to the local psychiatric hospital. After spending a few weeks in the intensive care unit, I received a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia.

During my twenties and thirties, I was hospitalized in psychiatric units several times and spent many of those years in a day treatment program. During that 20-year period, I had a variety of symptoms, including once receiving an auditory command prompting me to attempt suicide, which I fortunately survived. I had vivid hallucinations, including once “seeing” a Russian battleship cruising toward America with a sniper aboard to kill me. It seemed so real that I left my apartment through the back window and spent the night in a nearby cemetery—very scary, but a night in the cemetery seemed a less frightening alternative to my hallucination. Into my early forties I had paranoid delusions, including believing that someone I knew had installed cameras in my apartment in order to sell videos of me. I was so convinced of it that I left that person a threatening voice mail message. That got me committed to a hospital for five very miserable months. I gained my release after requesting a court hearing, which determined that I was safe to return to my apartment and community.

In the fall of 2001, I was more dejected than jubilant to be out of the hospital. Because of the serious nature of my actions, I had just about given up hope of ever having a decent job again. But a local Fountain House club, designed specifically to place people with mental illness into meaningful jobs, placed me in a part-time job at a local life insurance agency. I sorted and distributed mail and performed a variety of other clerical tasks in the agency’s billing office.

In 2001, while waiting for a bus to get to work on a bitter cold, December morning, I began doing calisthenics to keep myself warm. I did many jumping jacks and arm circles. But I also did a yoga stretch, despite having learned it from the same bioenergetics therapist who had caused me so much pain and trouble. The stretch consists of planting the feet, firmly placing one hand at the waistline, and, while tilting the torso sideways, stretching the free arm upward until it is fully extended. The bioenergetics teacher had claimed that doing this stretch would “free me of all neuroses.”

I recall that I stopped exercising for a moment and raised my head to gaze ahead. Instantly I sensed something was different. My surroundings—the buildings, trees, cars, everything—appeared more vivid and substantial to me than they ever had before. It was as if a veil had been lifted from my eyes. It’s significant here to point out that one of the primary symptoms of schizophrenia is a detachment from reality. I now sensed a stronger connection to my surroundings than I ever had before. In a sermon that I had recently heard on the radio, the Unitarian Universalist minister described the distinction between being “in” the world and being “of” the world. She described in simple terms the essence of the transformation that had just occurred in me.

And in that very same moment for the first time I could recall, my mind felt right. I no longer had the confusing thoughts, distorted beliefs, and preoccupation with my past that had constantly hindered my self-expression and made my life’s path so hard to negotiate. Rather, I now had a sense of inner clarity and confidence in myself.

Although I don’t know what had happened on a physiological level, I liken it to a chiropractic adjustment of the spinal column. There had been a subtle, barely palpable shift, and as a result of that shift, a component of my brain, or mind, had united with my senses. In the search for a cure for schizophrenia the prevailing focus is on biochemistry, genetics, and neuroscience. However, with my aforementioned experience I strongly feel that there is a physiological, or “macro” approach to understanding and curing schizophrenia that is worth exploring as well. After all, doesn’t the root of the term refer to a schism of some sort, such as may exist between the brain and the senses?

In the book The Brain That Changes Itself (1) one of the pioneers in the field of neuroplasticity, Paul Bach-Y Rita, states simply: “We see with our brains, not with our eyes.” Author Norman Doidge then adds, “This claim runs counter to the commonsensical notion that we see with our eyes, hear with our ears, . . . and feel with our skin. Who would challenge such facts? But for Bach-Y Rita, our eyes merely sense changes in light energy; it is our brains that perceive and hence see.” This insight may further explain my suddenly enhanced perception.

While still at the bus stop, after taking a moment to absorb all these changes, I recall thinking with startling clarity that I now had a decision to make: I could approach the mental health experts with my discovery and potentially waste my time since they seem focused on upholding the status quo, or I could focus on leading the kind of normal life that my illness had denied me for so long. Actually, I’ve chosen to do both!

Since 2001, I’ve had no recurrence of psychotic symptoms and thankfully no more hospitalizations. I’ve enjoyed dramatically improved communications and relationships with friends, family, and coworkers. I’ve actively engaged in making art and have had two public exhibitions. [A sample is available online as a data supplement to this column.] I’ve been employed fairly consistently during this period. My jobs include working at a law firm, then at a library, and currently I am an office assistant with a large human services agency. Whereas I’d been given menial tasks in the past, now I’m assigned intellectually challenging and important responsibilities that are a great source of satisfaction and pride.

I’ve also found time to volunteer for several research projects about schizophrenia, and I’ve shared my recovery story with some of the researchers. Most are skeptical, but one, while not disputing my claim, expressed uncertainty that what I did could be duplicated. Last year I participated in a significant study of the memory and perception of people with schizophrenia. I was told I scored the highest number of correct responses of everyone who was tested. One of the researchers expressed disappointment that they couldn’t have tested me prior to my curing myself so they could compare the results and validate my claim.

Perhaps the most telling evidence of how dramatically I’ve changed is a chance encounter I had at a craft fair a few years ago. At the fair I recognized Jeff, a man who had been my community outreach counselor and who had visited me weekly for at least a year. When I said hello, he looked back at me with obvious bewilderment. It was not until I identified myself that he exclaimed, “Aaron, you are totally different!”

Despite my freedom from psychotic symptoms, I still experience profound loneliness and stigma. I take an antidepressant to help snap me out of the malaise I am prone to. It’s true that old habits are hard to change and that one cannot change the past. It’s these habits and bad memories that I believe are the source of my malaise.

I still take antipsychotic medication every day. I wasn’t going to mention that here. Why? I thought it might diminish my claim of being totally cured. My psychiatrist prescribes it as a precaution to prevent a relapse. In addition it seems to keep me from withdrawing into myself too much. I have decided that it is part of my story and therefore must be said.

Since that event in 2001, I have been steadily accruing positive experiences and happier memories. And I’ve tried to practice healthier habits. A new positive sense of myself is emerging to replace the old negative one. The cornerstone of mental health is good self-esteem. I believe that good, lasting self-esteem is earned through effort and achievement. Acquiring good self-esteem that endures appears to be for me the final piece in what, for 30 years, has been an often puzzling existence.

I know of individuals who have fully recovered from schizophrenia. My case may be unique because it occurred in a single, dramatic moment, whereas for the others recovery occurred gradually, over a long period. My intention is not to create unrealistic expectations, but rather, to give patients and professionals some fresh insight about schizophrenia, the cause of which is unknown and the cure yet to be discovered.