Overwhelmed to Paralysis

When I was 19 I had my first psychotic break. Before this age, I didn’t know much about mental illness. 

I understood that drugs messed with your mind and could lead you down a dark path. I also understood that depression seemed pretty common and some even commit suicide because of it. Other than this, my awareness of mental illness was very limited. Nobody in my immediate family or friends, that I knew of, were mentally ill so I didn’t have much experience or contact with it.

This really contributed to my confusion and lack of awareness when I became mentally ill myself. I didn’t know that anything like what I had experienced was possible, and most importantly, that it could happen to me.

It’s hard to understand exactly how or why you experience mania. There are different kinds of explanations. Most simply, I have a chemical imbalance in my brain which can lead to occasional episodes of extreme highs and erratic behaviors. But for me, my story can’t be about chemical imbalances. I relate it more closely to risk behaviors.

When most people think of risky behaviors, they think of drugs, violence, or sex. I’m not talking about these kinds of risks. I’m talking about the more mundane, everyday risks of not sleeping well, not eating well, not exercising well, and overworking. 

At age 19 I learned about the risk behavior of overworking, which often leads to not exercising well, not eating well, and not sleeping well. Overworking is an issue many Americans face, but I believe the problem is particularly pervasive in the world of entrepreneurship, where personal identity and startups often get mixed. The second semester of my sophomore year in college, when I fell ill, I was taking 24 credits, leading a team of over 10 teammates, and competing for $20,000 in a school business competition working on a startup called FailUp.

I was led by passion. I was totally immersed in what I was doing and so excited for opportunities ahead. That’s why I worked so much. It felt really good. I was living my dream, but bit by bit I got carried away. 

My excitement turned into hypomania. I had a new kind of energy. I was productive, I was creative, I was inspiring. I spoke in front of classrooms, publicly performing failure experiments, to inspire entrepreneurial action among students. Feeling the applause at the end made me feel like a magician. I was a hype man, encouraging action and competitiveness and eagerness among my team. I painted a vision for the future, communicating great potential for our team and product. 

My hypomania turned into mania. I felt invincible. Nothing or nobody could get in my way. It was just a matter of time before I would evolve into Mark Zuckerberg or Steve Jobs. All I had to do was dream, dream big, and inspire action. I was already doing it. Nothing could stop me. Everything felt so good. The food tasted better than ever before. The air on my face felt amazing. The colors, stimulating. It felt like I was high and drunk at the same time without any of the negative effects. Appreciating everything and being sociable to everyone.

My mania turned into a psychotic break. I was being watched. I was now a person of interest. The government was monitoring my actions. I was making mistakes. They want to use me for their purposes. Strange things are happening. Why are these things happening? What do they want? How can I survive? Will I survive? When will I die? How will I die? Who will die?

My psychosis turned into paralysis. Yes, paralysis. I ended up in Tulane’s hospital paralyzed by fear at the sight of a plastic knife. I never understood the psychological power of fear until it literally immobilized me.

At the news of my hospitalization my parents flew down from Baltimore to New Orleans and were soon by my side. They waited patiently to visit me at the psychiatric hospital, where I was working through a recovery. After 1-2 weeks, I was let out and my official diagnosis was issued. Bipolar type 1. This means I have manic episodes that have psychotic effects. Psychosis means dreamlike. You are psychotic when you are behaving as if you are in a dream. 

And that’s exactly what it was like, a dream. Until it turned into a nightmare. This nightmare was self-designed. A personal hell. I believed the government would eventually coerce me to commit an act of domestic terrorism. Unfortunately I lived in this nightmare for weeks. I struggled to get myself out of it because I had zero awareness that my beliefs were simply untrue. I experienced things, I saw things that could not be explained. Things that nobody but me saw (or thought I saw). They made me strong in my conviction and fear.

I had a few powerful conversations with my brothers which helped clarify a lot of things. My brothers listened to me in a way my parents couldn’t. They showed more consideration of possibility, at least listening and acknowledging my concerns rather than refuting them altogether. So I trusted them with my fears and gave them more access to my concerns. Together they helped me out of it. They gave me alternative ways to think about things, to show me that my reality was just one possible reality of many. Through this, I practiced. 

I eventually escaped my delusional thinking & returned to a state of greater normalcy with the help from these conversations along with unconditional love from my parents and assistance from professional psychiatric care. 

I lived in a different reality for about 6-8 weeks. It was hard to understand how I could have possibly made this all up in my head. It was mind blowing to consider that my imagination alone was responsible for delivering these traumatic experiences. My imagination inspired fear, which paralyzed me. This was a strange kind of illness. My narrative was false. Difficult to acknowledge, but a most welcomed relief. 

My life, and the lives of my loved ones, were no longer threatened like I thought they were. I survived. They survived. We survived. I was given a second shot at life. My reality was too shaken to hop back up. I needed time to heal and recover.