Resources

I am one of the lucky few who rapidly recovered from a serious mental health trauma. Hopefully, others who find themselves in similar waters will reflect on these thoughts and will make it back to shore without needing to be rescued. Similarly, it is also my hope that family and friends of someone who has suffered from a break can use the example of my recovery as a ray of light in the darkness.

It is important to note the circumstances within which such a rare recovery took place. It is safe to say that my recovery may never have happened without the love and support from my family and friends. I believe that this was the single most influential aspect of my recovery and I am blessed that I had people in the world that cared about me enough to make the necessary sacrifices that facilitated my recovery.

I know that many people with similar experiences don't have a similar network of social support. My family, parents in particular, never gave up hope and used all of their available resources to assist me. Likewise, my friends accepted my return to the University of California at Santa Cruz with open minds and hearts. Although I was physically ostracized from them while recovering at home in Hawaii, my most important friendships survived this emergency. I would like to take this sentence to thank everyone who offered or provided help to me or my family.

I think that another major factor in my recovery was my personal desire to achieve. This high achievement drive, and perfectionism in some cases, has been part of my disposition for as long as I can remember. This disposition combined with highly driven people surrounding me as I grew up created a strong personal need to be successful in life. As my experience began in New York, this need was magnified and created a sense of fear and uncertainty as I realized that I was barely an adult. I believe that this identity crisis was the basis for many of the grandiose delusions that I had.

While it was integral to my madness, my desire to achieve also helped me to recover. Being hospitalized and leaving school instantly dissolved all the high expectations that I had for myself or that I thought others had for me. This translated into a new humbleness as I returned to school and redefined my identity. I was no longer certain of my success, but was just happy to be back. This new attitude combined with my existing need for achievement created a newfound sense of interest and intensity in the events in my life. I also felt that there must have been a greater reason for what happened, and I was determined to make the best of my situation .

Once again, I am thankful that this was something that was possible. I imagine that some breaks are much harder (if not impossible) to recover from. For example, I am not suffering from chronic schizophrenia or any organic brain damage. My episode was acute, and this is an important footnote in my recovery. I have not needed any medication or any additional mental health services for nearly three years, and this is not always the case for someone who breaks with reality.

I also believe that the nature of my acute experience ¤ starting off spiritual and progressively becoming psychotic ¤ was an important factor in my recovery. For the first several weeks of my journey, I was seeing auras, communing with nature, understanding the mysteries of the micro and macroscopic universe, and talking with angels (or at least feeling channeled). This became dysfunctional, however, as I tried to explain these experiences to myself. As a result, what I still consider to be positive spiritual growth became intertwined with psychotic thoughts involving paranoia and grandiose beliefs. As the fantasy world that I was constructing grew more elaborate and insane, my connection with the physical world disappeared too. By the 7th week, it is arguable that I experience a total separation of my consciousness from my physical body as I stopped eating and sleeping.

While I had some personal experience with altered states of consciousness from previous drug use, I was not prepared to travel to the dimensions of the mind that I found myself in nor did I have a guide. My suggestion to anyone who is experiencing a spiritual emergence is this: do not hesitate to find help if the experience becomes (or has become) an emergency. But what defines an emergency? When should someone get help or know when to get help? Is this possible?

I firmly believe that moments of spiritual revelation and insight can be similar if not indistinguishable from moments of psychosis. However, the core difference exists in the person's interpretation of these moments. Enlightened understandings do not involve the ego as their basis! I initially understood the spiritual "big picture," but my perception of my role within this picture became progressively inaccurate (and psychotic) as my finite mind tried to make sense of the infinite. The paranoia and grandiosity that resulted from my spiritual awakening was not spiritual. It was dysfunctional and required intervention, but was the intervention that I received appropriate?

The mainstream psychiatric/medical community typically understands and treats such dysfunctionality as a neurological chemical imbalance. This is tough to argue with considering the anti-psychotic medication did bring me back to "reality." Sometimes I wonder whether I would have been able to come back to "reality" without medication. It is debatable and also moot. Whatever I was experiencing had a biological component, and tweaking it brought me out of madness. Despite the few weeks of anguish that resulted from improperly balanced medication, I believe that psychiatric drugs are effective and should be used in many situations involving psychosis.

While many mental illnesses or psychotic episodes are dysfunctional and detrimental to the individual and those around him/her, there is also an over-emphasis on the use of medication and a lack of validation of the experiences in typical treatment programs and facilities. In this society, mental illness and dysfunction is rooted in a pathological model: such abnormality is sick and needs to be made better. As a result, the modern mental health approach is to medicate first and ask questions later. This is the case, regardless of the type of mental illness, and this is unfortunate given the potential for spiritual evolution from altered states of consciousness.

While the positive, symptom-reducing effects that anti-psychotics (and anti-depressant) are well demonstrated, I do not believe that psychiatric medication should be the primary treatment approach in episodes that include spiritual emergencies. These experiences should first be understood and treated therapeutically from a Transpersonal paradigm or spiritually by a holy person. If these methods are unsuccessful or of minimal success, medication should be integrated into the treatment process.

I would love to see professionals trained in Transpersonal psychology be able to treat these particular "psychotic" experiences and delve into the mystical and spiritual side of acute psychosis. Presently, this is logistically impossible given the current medical model. Persons in psychosis are typically first "treated" in an emergency room and immediately medicated. Integration of the Transpersonal with the medical would need to exist in every emergency room. This would require a total paradigm shift in how our society views altered states of consciousness and mental illness and how all doctors, therapists, and EMTs are trained. This certainly won't happen soon, but this conference is a great start. In the meantime, I believe that many insights into humanity, society and our relationship with the spiritual are being ignored, medicated, and lost.

You can contact the author at

Wayne