Why I Went to the ER for Psych Things

CW: Involuntary psychiatric hospital commitment, details of hallucinations and delusions

So, I want to update everyone on my psych situation. I don't know if this will be a positive or a negative post. It may be a little disjointed. If I start talking about something and realize that explaining it is putting me in a bad head space, I'm just going to end the paragraph mid-thought and move on to the next part.

I went to the hospital this week because my anti-psychotic, Seroquel wasn't working. I was having simple auditory and visual hallucinations, as well as delusions that were much more immersive than usual. It turns out that Seroquel often doesn't work for autistic people (like me).

At first, the delusions started out disjointed, which is more normal for me. In the first couple of days of the psychotic episode, I thought all of these things (copied from my Tumblr), but not simultaneously:

• That my neighbors were monsters and that there was a monster trapped in my roommate’s room, resulting in the irresistible compulsion to draw a series of 3 x's on the door to keep the monsters in/out.
• That there were demons in the lightbulbs, resulting in fear of turning on/off the lights and the (resisted) compulsion to draw 3 x's on the light switches.
• That there were monsters outside of the building, accompanied by auditory hallucinations of them knocking and laughing (as real and audible as if a person were actually knocking)
• That a dragon was going to swoop down when I took my dog out and take my dog or both of us

Some of these delusions were normal for me. I very frequently think that there are supernatural creatures, like werewolves or vampires, outside when I have to take my dog out, especially at night. It's also pretty common for me to think that my neighbors might be these beings. I have simple auditory hallucinations sometimes, too, and my service dog's reaction/commanded response to the perceived sound lets me know if it was real or not.

This episode didn't settle down after a few days, though. It kept getting worse, even after we increased my Seroquel. These things happened over the next 2 days at home:

• Strong compulsion to write groups of 3 x's on people and things for unknown reasons
• Delusion that we needed series of 3 x’s on our skin and the doors so we wouldn't turn into zombies at 5:38pm “when the evening came.”
• Delusion that I was in a clever replica of my house on an alien ship and interacting with clever replicas of my friends and pets and wondering if I was a clever replica. The need to “see people’s blood” to know if they are real or replicas. 

The delusion about replicas became very immersive. I couldn't tell who was real and who wasn't, and I started wanting to take people apart to see if they were real.

Normally, I'm able to approach delusions evidentially, even if it doesn't totally quell my anxiety. So, if I think my roommate is a werewolf, I say to myself, "You've lived with her for 2 years. Have you seen her on the full moon? What was she like/ what happened?" I use the evidence to try to determine whether the thing I'm thinking is real or whether it might be a delusion.

I was unable to do this with the replica idea much of the time. I eloped a couple of times, trying to get away from my roommate and my autism coach, thinking they were replicas.

I went to the hospital because we were afraid I would try to hurt someone or my service dog not because I wanted to harm them, but because I wanted to know if they were real or perceived that they were an immediate, life-or-death threat.

I'm not ready to re-hash my hospital experience, yet, so I'll try to do that in a later post. 

Information about Autism
Information about Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
Information about PTSD
Note: The hospital I was at considered OCD and C-PTSD to be under the umbrella of anxiety disorders, but NAMI does not. Therefore, NAMI's explanation of anxiety disorders does not explain my symptoms and treatment.