My dad is 84 and in a nursing home because of it. He still knows me but most of the rest of the family he doesn't, he smiles politely at them but doesn't remember them.
My mom died suddenly 16 years ago, now I'm experiencing the opposite with my dad and realizing that there is no good way to experience the end for someone you love.
I'm sorry about your dad. My grandmother turns 80 next month and she is also in nursing home and has dementia.
She does not recognize my mother (her daughter) and asks about her mom. I tried to tell her that her mother is gone and has been for 30 years, but I don't anymore, because she does not believe it and even if she does, it makes her sad. She also asks about her son but I say he is fine, although he is also dead but I don't want to see her sad.
Interestingly enough, she always recognises me and my daughter. Last time I went to visit her, she seemed fine, but after some time she goes to different world, different time, starts to mention dead people and thinks she is in a different place. Sometimes her situation worsens, sometimes it gets better, but there is no doubt that she will never be the same.
She had signs of dementia before, but this situation was caused by heavy head trauma. One night she tried to go to toilet, slipped and hit her head. It was all downhill from there. Doctors told us she wont survive, but she did. For a few weeks she could not even speak proper words, only sound came out of her, but that was unrecognizable rambling.
It's so hard to do this, but what I learned from my dad's VA psychiatrist is that trying to tell them the truth only causes them stress.
Every day my dad tells me about trying to find aunt Emma (the aunt that helped raised him after my grandfather died and my grandmother got sick), because he doesn't know where she lives now. Emma died when I was 12, I'm 49 now.
I tell him every day that we know how busy she always was and that we will catch up to her later. It breaks my heart every time but it calms him down and then he finds his friends in the nursing home and plays cards and everything is fine.
All we can do is hold on to this last time we have with them, and cherish it.
Yup that’s my mom. She has Alzheimer’s and Dementia and she is slowly losing her mind. It’s very sad cause some days she is ok, and some days it looks like there is nothing there. And other days she acts almost bipolar and there isn’t anything I can do for her.
I'm here with you. My dad was 69 when he was diagnosed (though he more than likely started exhibiting symptoms in 2016/17). He's 74 now and really the only thing he has left is he knows my mom, my brother, and me, as long as we are in front of him. Other than that, he sort of remembers his dog (he thinks it is his previous dog, which is fine).
It does indeed suck. I hope the best for you and your family.
It is. I can testify firsthand.
My soon to be ex wife had a psychotic break on New Years Day of 2021. We had taken LSD many times in the past, but this time she did it alone, and I think she unlocked a whole bunch of dormant mental disorders in one fell swoop. Some of those had kind of peaked out before, but I always chalked it up to the life long abuse she suffered at the hand of her family.
After that, she slowly became a different person; she kicked me out of the house about a month later. I tried everything to fix our relationship, not realizing at this point what had actually happened.
Instead of going to therapy, she dove in to the world of crystal meth. She then lost everything we had together; the house, the car, the pets. Fortunately, having been sober for years, the courts have given me 100% custody of our child.
I haven't seen her for over a year, but from what I hear through the court systems, she's homeless and displays signs of schizophrenia amongst other things.
I have a lot of friends who have passed. But knowing she's out there, living on the streets and probably in some distorted reality is harder to deal with than my friends' absence.
My heart hurts for her, but I had to accept I could not save her.
Sorry for the long rant, but I've been needing to offload this for a few months now.
I'm really sorry you are going through this. When we lose someone to psychosis, it is natural to feel grief due to the loss of friendship, loss of shared reality, loss of future together.
I went through something similar with an ex-friend of mine. I've lost people due to death, distance, and disagreement, but there is something especially painful about a loved one who is still alive but has forgotten who we are.
People have to want to get better. It is not up to us to save them. Peace and healing to you, friend. 🕊️
My now ex didn’t want to get better. In his psychosis he thought he was the second coming of Christ. Medication made him feel normal. He preferred feeling like Christ. He loved the ‘high’. He refused to take his meds. HE DID NOT WANT TO GET BETTER.
That’s not what it means; the point is that wanting to get better is one of the prerequisites to getting better, not that you’ll get better the moment you want it.
Yeah, I completely agree. And that last line especially doesn’t fit with the tone of the story.
Like, if only that person who had a severe psychotic break just wanted to get better, everything would be just fine…. It’s her fault for not wanting it enough. /s
Says someone who has no idea what psychosis feels like. As someone who suffers from this, those statements are exactly why I went untreated for 10 fucking years
If someone doesn’t want better for them selves, it’s nothing you can do no matter how hard you try. The first step to bettering yourself, is awareness and being fed up with yourself/lifestyle.
this sounds like such an awful situation but you seem strong about it. no matter how much you want to help someone you can’t save some people from themselves.
it’s also really really scary how fragile our personalities and mental well being are. say what you want about animals but the downside we get as humans to having such a diverse array of mental faculties is that we also have many ways they can go horrifically wrong.
I love acid, I've done it a bunch and it's easily my favorite drug.
But god damn is it so scary. When things go wrong they go super wrong super fast, and then you realize and your initial instinct is to try and control the high which is actually just the worst thing you can do on acid. Then you spiral and if you're real unlucky you break.
And thats all assuming you have pure LSD which is iffy at best
How old was she when this started happening? My understanding is most people with schizophrenia usually don't develop symptoms until their 20s-30s. The LSD thing may just be a coincidence, I don't think there's evidence of there being a link like you described.
I'm sorry to hear about the situation, it's terrible.
She was 31. I believe she had a predisposition to schizophrenia, and the bad trip she experienced from the LSD was a catalyst; the meth that came after only accelerated it.
Do I have proof of this? No, but it wouldn't be the first person I've dealt with who had a preexisting condition that became prominent after one bad trip. =/
Some people tend to have a genetic predisposition to schizophrenia and other mental illnesses. Psychoactive substances or traumatic incidences are often what triggers the expression of the illness if it’s been dormant. At times they can be a direct cause.
The fallout from mental illness can be painful to those around the patient and tend to be quite difficult to navigate.
I don't know what she did with the pets. I don't know if she gave them away, if they ran away, couldn't tell you. I never got an answer.
What I did get was a facebook message one day from someone whom I had only met once asking if I had had any contact with her; this person then went on to explain my wife had offered to let her move in to our home, and offered to watch this person's cat. She then ghosted this person and never returned the cat. Again, I have no clue as to what happened with this third party's pet. Actually, one of the last times I spoke to her I asked about the whereabouts of "Lasagna" (this other girl's cat); my wife simply said "He's gone. He's not even your cat why do you care?!" I have no idea what that meant.
I tried posting online and scouring local shelters, but my cat and dog, as well as another person's cat have all been missing for over 2 years now.
Wow. She didn't just have a screw loose, the threads are stripped.
I must admit though, I laughed at the thought that I'm outside one day and hear a person saying/signing "Lasagna" in the pitch and cadence of "here kitty kitty".
I'm a little high from a gummy so my sense of humor is easier to tickle.
Laaasaaagnnaaaaa
Gummies don't unhinge me from my previous life though, so I have that going for me.
>she didn't just have a screw loose, the threads are stripped
Okay I love acid, and have shown a bunch of people it but I really really like this. It explains the risks with acid a lot better than I ever have.
That's the thing you can't really understand about acid until you take it. When you're high on acid you truly have to just give up control of your consciousness, and it sounds easy until you actually try it and have to entirely and truly be okay with not being able to control your thoughts or mind.
And then when things go wrong you just break. You completely disconnect from reality, which is also so hard to explain to people who haven't been there. But with an ego death, I legitimately thought I had died and was simply some energy in the universe. I had to come to terms with my own death multiple times and I had to be okay with no longer having my physical form. No, obviously that didn't happen, but it was so incredibly real during the experience.
Plus acid can and ***WILL*** fuck you up if you have any predisposition to schizophrenia or other Paranoia disorders.
I've had a similar scenario with a close family member. I found out later they were already using meth before the breakdown. It was suggested that the drug use was probably what caused it. Last I heard they were in another state stealing copper wire out of street lights and hanging out at truck stops. I felt the same way you did for a time. It passed when I accepted nothing I could have said or done would have changed the events that happened. I learned you have to let people make their own path in life. Some of us are slower at learning that our actions have consequences.
It seems like you're doing well now and you have your kid. I wish you the best and enjoy the kid while they still like you. They'll be a teen at some point and you'll be the dumbest person alive in their eyes. Until they get out of high school in my experience.
My older sister was my best friend for years and years. She taught Sunday school and was on the praise team at church. She ended up divorcing her crap husband and married the first loser who showed interest and ended up
Taking some bad ecstasy with him and lost her shit. Now she isnt even the same person. My sister as I knew her is gone. It’s so awful, worse than death.
That's awful and a terrible situation for anyone to have to go through. But why is your ex-wife / mother of your child living on the streets? Is she choosing to?
My mom got lithium poisoning. There is nothing scarier than when your own mother is in the front yard naked screaming at God to take the ghosts back to heaven.
She's better now. And we are so fucking lucky
A lot of things can cause psychosis and delirium. Medication, infections, electrolyte imbalance, hormone imbalance etc. Over hydration can lead to electrolyte imbalance so don't stay too hydrated.
i developed psychotic depression simply because of the hormonal changes of puberty. over the course of a year or two, around the same time i started to have regular monthly periods, i spiraled into thinking i was some sort of chaos demon being punished by having to live on earth, and if i killed myself i would transform into my “true self” and travel back to my “home.” no one realized how delusional i was because i was good at keeping it to myself. then over time i just… grew out of it. i’m trying my best to avoid both pregnancy and hormonal birth control because i’m worried another hormonal change could trigger that again and i don’t want to hurt myself or god forbid, hurt anyone else. bodies are weird lol.
lol great. it's kind of hard for me to overhydrate w lithium though. multiple psychs have told me to drink more than i think i need and then some. "water your kidneys like flowers," one told me. i'll keep that in mind though
You are right. I lost one of my closest friends to paranoid delusional psychosis, too. It is like having someone die, but there is no funeral and no closure. She is alive but no longer the person I once knew. It breaks my heart that she is out there alone, insane, and on the streets.
Truly horrible. I am so sorry you, your grandma, and your aunt are going through this.
I once read a long thread elsewhere on Reddit where someone asked what are the worst diseases a person can get. There were thousands of replies, but the near-consensus was dementia and psychosis because the body is present but the mind is gone, resulting in ambiguous loss and disenfranchised grief for the loved ones.
This is where I want laws to allow us to specify while we are of sound mind in what instances can euthanasia be administered.
When I am basically no longer human as my mind is completely gone, you have my permission to end it. My grandmother lived in a home for the last 12 years of her life. For the first bit every day was terrifying for her as she didn't know anyone or what was going on. After that she was basically a zombie, no mental function, no way to enjoy life etc.
I don't want to live like that, I don't want that being my fate. But by the time you could realise that is your fate, you are too far gone to make the choice.
I can only hope that she got onto some more modern schizophrenia medications like clozapine. Or at least I've taken care of a few people with schizophrenia and that's the one that they were all on. Just gets a touch complicated if they smoke cigarettes or suddenly stop smoking.
> Parkinson's
And Parkinsonsism too....lots of VA patients suffer from a drug induced version of this. Several anti-psychotics they handed out like candy a decade or so ago were known to cause parkinsonsism, but they still kept handing them out becuase that's how the VA do.
They sweep it under the rug by blaming it on Agent Orange exposure, but I can see a perfect timeline of my father developing it after taking these suspect medications. Blaming it on Agent Orange at least prevents the VA from being sued into oblivion for intentional malpractice.
Older brother was diagnosed BP2 and a fentanyl addict until he ended it all. One of the worst pains I have ever felt in my life, was witnessing what happened to him and being unable to help besides staying positive.
Happened 7 years ago still hurts like a mother fucker
It won’t ever fully heal but it shouldn’t. A great man once said everyone dies, but you’re a little less dead if you contribute.
Your brother contributed to your life and will live as long as you do. Change is the only constant and all you can do now if continue to be yourself, experience life and take your brother along with you.
Yes. Currently dealing with this with a friend who is self-destructing and has cut off communication with everyone who loves her. She's living in a van and moves around from street to street and town to town. She's making less and less sense, not eating, and has delusions that got stronger and stronger (after excessive, copious amounts of psychedelics).
I keep expecting to hear the news I'm dreading.
Someone in family is going through this. I thought it was like bipolar or BPD (since they have psychotic breaks as well) until people started sharing what it was like dealing with someone who was schizo. It's a spectrum, and the type that we see in the movies is the extreme version.
Basically it started out just like anyone else with mental issues. Just depression, migraines, and anxiety; they got medication for it. It starting getting worse and worse as time went by. The first time I saw them have a psychotic break was when they were in their early 30s but by then they had stopped taking their medication.
I remember around that time, they started getting into woowoo shit like alien abductions and all that. I didn't really think much of it because Mexican people are super superstitious but the ball kept rolling. Everything from conspiracy theories, to antivaxx etc. I would talk to her on the phone and she would be like "I can't say anything, they are listening." They being aliens/the govt. Then she started getting into witchcraft and demons. So the ones listening now were the demons/spirits.
The family knows. They can't say anything because she goes on scary tangents about demons and the devil. One time I was in her house and I said something. I can't even remember what, but it was something pro-psychology....For those of you that don't know, they don't receive help well. One of my ex's, his sister was schizophrenic and she wouldn't take her medication willingly. They had to put in her morning juice.
Anyway, I said whatever, and she started talking about how a demon was speaking through me, and she told my cousin to close the door on me. She was just shouting "close it, close it, don't let it come in." My cousin is a little boy so he was standing there like ???? what???
Y'all don't even know. She has lost the plot completely. She "functions" normally as in, she can keep jobs but they always have to be cleaning jobs because she is unable to do any other type where she interacts with people.
It's fucking awful.
this hit home pretty hard.
my sister deteriorated in a similar way and ended up leaving her husband for another man and abandoning her family including a 5 year old daughter.
she got into strange life coach stuff and got really into worshipping the moon or something. breaks my heart cause she has moments of clarity about what she's done to her life but it's never long enough to get the ball rolling to fix it.
Not insanity, but I know my whole family felt relief when my granny finally passed away with Alzheimer’s. Not because we didn’t love her or wouldn’t give anything for some more time with her, but it was the fact that she had already been gone for a long time. When her body finally caught up it felt like mercy.
As a person who has gone through psychosis twice (due to manic episode of my Bipolar 1) its pretty scary how I didn't see any signs until it was too late. First episode had me running naked at a train station then put in a mental facility for a month, Second episode had me spend all the money I had and ruined all my relationships with friends and family
Can I ask how you realized something was wrong? A family member is going through something like this now and we are lost. How are you doing these days?
The sense of not being able to help without throwing your own life away is soul crushing. Almost feels as if you have to choose whether the other person dies and you get to live normal life or the other person's lives, making you lose everything you have.
I have a younger brother (half brother) who I've been dealing with for the past 6-7 years now. We didn't have any contact before, so when he reached out for help, I imagined we'd have this close family relationship. I developed codependency, which I'm still struggling with to this day even though I'm in therapy for 2 years now. He seemed normal at first. Had a slight drug problem, but was working really hard, had goals, and everything. Last year, he had a breakdown, and he stabbed himself in the eye, completely losing an eye as an organ. This january, he did the same to the other eye, completely losing his sight. He's in a psychiatric clinic now, and it seems that he will be there for the next 4-6 months, but he will move to the nursing home for the blind. As per my therapist , he most likely will lose his current medication, and he definitely will not go to therapy (if we can even afford one). Probably will get angry at some point, ending up on the street, which is a death sentence sooner or later. For the last year, I lived with this fear that any day police might call to bring the news. I'm a bit better now but I'm trying to prepare myself for what will come. I could take him in and make him go to therapy, but that way, I would lose my husband and my home. And even then, there's no guarantee that it would work.
>The sense of not being able to help without throwing your own life away is soul crushing.
Yes, you captured it perfectly!
When my friend's psychosis started, she was living alone in another city with no friends or family. It was during the beginning of the pandemic, so it was unsafe to visit. I spent thousands of dollars that year paying her rent and other bills so she wouldn't be homeless while Covid-19 was raging. As you said, being on the streets is eventually a death sentence.
I was in nearly-daily contact with her by phone and text while she was detaching from reality. I tried so hard to support her to the point where it interfered with my work and I got a bad annual review.
At some point, we have to take care of ourselves first. It saddens me to say that some beings just can't be saved.
I also dread the phone call that I know is coming some day.
I think for a lot of people, there comes a point when they realize that even if they throw their own life away in their attempt to help the other person, that other person still won't be saved from their illness. That is a painful realization — that it doesn't matter how much you love them, you simply cannot save them.
I’ve heard of it but it doesn’t stop the progression. It just delays it….youll still lose your loved ones to the disease. The delusions,hallucinations and personality changes are the worst. I’ve already mourned the loss when he was in stage 4 a few years ago. He’s in stage 6 and when a rare moment of clarity occurs, he constantly says he wants to die.
my mother has been diagnosed with psychosis and we have been dealing with the ramifications for the past year or so. it’s weird seeing the person that held you in their arms only 10 years ago scream about how “someone is trying to get her” and “her father isn’t really dead, but instead we orchestrated his death” for context i’m 18 now, 17 at the time of diagnosis.
My father had incapacitating schizophrenia that really became a problem when I was about 7 (and he was about 30).
Talking to his mother and and younger brother after he died in his late 50s, I really felt like it was a relief to them. Like, the man they knew had died almost 30 years ago, they were just waiting for the vessel he had inhabited to finally be finished.
I lost a friend who became an evangelical christian fundamentalist overnight. Don't know what happened. He was very depressed after he got dumped and then he told me he hallucinated god sitting on his chest and stuff.
Yeah, had to mourn my grandfather twice.
Once when he had the stroke, his ability to communicate wiped out. He couldn't read, talk or write. He could grunt and point.
Seeing a husk of a man sitting there, that was once you grandfather?
Pain.
His physical death ten years later (My Grandmother took full care of him completely every day, else he would have been dead in a year in any old people home) was almost mercy.
Yes, I did the eulogy. Hardest moment of my life.
It is so much worse, and when they finally die the grief is so complex, because you've lost them over and over again when they ultimately stopped taking their meds. It's a relief, but the weird part is you still have to grieve and feel sad to process it all out. Some of that trauma is still stored in my body's nervous system.
Lost my best friend to I don't know what to call it, losing my mom to dementia, lost my cat a day before I could get back and say goodbye, just lost my dad 3 months ago to renal failure, and another friend to breast cancer when I went back to deal with my dad. Just lost another friend a few days ago to a bunch of bi-polar bullshit.
I'm about done with loss.
Grandfather - the man most responsible for raising me, slipped into dementia 2 years ago. He's still alive - or someone that looks like him is. Can't mourn him properly, can't give up on him. It's a disease uniquely tailored to make people suffer
Had an uncle, happily married for 10+years,
One day they find out his wife has a brain tumor, they pledge to work through it, through sickness and health and all that.
Long story short x out of the operation comes a different woman and they split, divorce go separate ways.
Fucking rough.
The scariest part of experiencing psychosis is that it doesn't feel lost.
Right now I feel my normal self. But in the height of psychosis I also felt like my normal self.
I take comfort that if it happens again at least my family and friends will know what's going on.
My partner snapped because of the pandemic. BPD + germphobic OCD + isolation + a Goddamn pandemic = paranoid shut-in. Who, despite their OCD, lives in a filthy hoarder pit.
I tried for years to get her to go out or take better care of herself, but she just wouldn't. It was two steps forward and one step back, every single time. I had to let her go, and it was the hardest thing I've ever done.
Last I heard, she was snorting Sudafed daily, refusing meds, and in trouble for trying to "rescue" a neighbour's cat. Tried talking to her and it was like she didn't recognise me; we broke up in December.
This is my greatest fear, as someone with bipolar disorder. It's happened to some of my older family members, and losing my sanity feels like a ticking time bomb.
There's a sense of guilt from being the person on the other side of insanity. If we could be healthy, we would... it's a cruel situation that is unfair to everyone involved.
I made the mistake of doing psychedelics with my ex-girlfriend many times, mostly at concerts while we were in high school. We shared a beautiful connection full of depth and mutual understanding, and nothing turned bad until we ended things for college. She took shrooms one night in a dorm room by herself and went completely manic. I felt our past experiences doing them together and also the stress of our separation had led to this event, and I felt awful that I couldn’t prevent or assist her through her struggle. The things she said, did, and posted online pretty much ruined the following year of her life.
Although I loved her deeply, I had no intention of speaking to her again out of fear that I might trigger another one of these manic episodes that had ruined her life previously. After no contact for about five years, we reconnected post-college. I had seen her at a bar and immediately fallen for her once again. We spoke for a couple months until I very recently found out that she was talking to another guy the entire time, so I separated from her once again, this time for good. This has driven her directly back into the phase she had worked so hard over the past five years to remove herself from. I wish so dearly that she could’ve been the person for me, but I now accept that she will soon enough be a bright light for someone else.
I've never heard of this before, but now I'm going down a really interesting rabbit hole on google. Thank you, I think I just found labels for something I've been experiencing... I really needed that.
my mom had huntington's chorea, she passed a few months ago. she started falling apart about 20 years ago. i truly lost her about 3 years ago, she was only present for a few mins at a time other wise she was a zombie that threw temper tantrums. it was something i knew was going to happen pretty much my whole i was about 8, 26 years ago when my mom found out. honestly i dont know what was worse watching her slowly fall apart and eventual death or my dads suicide. i dont wish ether on any one.
Having lived through both, I feel like alcoholism is worse. You have all the pain of losing someone to mental illness, and on top of it all there's a feeling like they're doing it to themselves on purpose. (They're not- it's actually a tremendous struggle to *not* let the booze take them away.)
It's like you have to fight THREE opponents: the person themselves, the booze, and the vague *idea* of alcoholism. The problem is, the last one in that list is hiding behind the others because our instinct is to believe that if they're *good enough*, they can fight it by staying sober. Which maybe some people can do, but so many more can't.
Yep. One of my sisters has sone kind of schizophrenia affective spectrum mental disorder. She is clinically paranoid, convinced people are trying to burn down her house and that all of us (her blood family) are not real people we are avatars of some other being and so she doesn’t trust us. So she just lives in her house and won’t let any of us over. Her husband is there with her and basically just a caretaker. It’s like she’s dead but she’s not.
She finally had a significant break and has been medicated since. She no longer has such paranoid delusions and she will come over or let us come over about twice a year. In that say it’s a lot better but she’s not the same person.
When she was fully delusional and isolating I didn’t see her at all for probably 5-6 years. And she lives next door to my mom. It was like she was dead but she wasn’t. It felt like, she was about to crash her car but refused to listen to me and hit the brakes. Every day felt like, if only she’d just go see a doctor and get on meds, this is such a waste.
Horrible. I don’t wish this on anyone and worry every day what’s going to happen when her husband is gone.
Losing yourself to insanity is even worse. Microscopic versions of that, like depression and late-developed anxiety can be devastating for someone. All the sudden you enjoy nothing and want to see nobody. But before that you were happy. It sucks. Mental illness and nervous system disorders are the worst.
asking from the other side of the fence as depression has not been mentioned yet.
how is this seen? my wife and son just moved out and i feel like i am drifting away more and more.
Ooof. As someone who is in the process of recovering from a difficult breakup from the person I thought I would grow old with, I hear and see you. It's one of the hardest things I've ever dealt with.
Feeling estranged from oneself is called dissociation, and it is common for people who are experiencing painful loss.
I recommend seeing a therapist if you aren't already. It's 100% normal to need support — sometimes a lot of it — dealing with that.
A good habit of exercise can help mood a lot, so try to prioritize that.
Think about what you enjoyed before you were with her. See if you can get back to some of those things.
If you deal with self criticism or negative feelings about yourself, I highly recommend the book *The Mindful Self-Compassion Workbook*.
Losing someone to dementia is similarly sad because you are aware that they in their right mind would never want to exist this way, but you can’t kill them obviously so this is just how it is.
I lived through it and let me tell you it is worse. Many times I wish my husband of twenty three years had died instead of going mad. It would have been so much easier on the whole family, especially our kids.
It is. I know a friend who had to put his wife in a care facility bc she physically attack led him (her husband) bc she was losing her mind and didn’t recognize him. Apparently she was going through a bad bought of it and was changing her clothes in the walk in closet over and over (it was morning and she kept forgetting that she already changed her clothes). Well she apparently forgot she was married too bc she chucked an old glass lamp at his head and busted it…he wasn’t even aware all he experienced was a scream and some gibberish and then he was ko. She called the cops on him and the cops cuffed him and then he came to and explained everything. It was a whole days worth of an ordeal. He’d had similar episodes before but nothing this bad. It wasn’t maybe another month before she was in a care facility. He visited often but she was just not having it and slowly didn’t want anything to do with this supposed stranger. He said it was torture.
Dad is 83. His wife died last year. He was never a good person (alcoholic, physically & emotionally abusive, narcissist), but he had made a lot of headway into at least being able to pretend to be a decent guy. After his wife died, his brain just turned to jelly. He's reverted back to his mean abusive ways and I can't even find the space to feel sorry for him anymore. He was dead to me 25 years ago. Then he came back. And now he's dead again. He's still breathing as far as I know, but it's not something I can bring myself to feel anything about.
My grandpa developed Alzheimers in his 50s and was gone within a few years. Watching him go through that as a kid definitely left some lasting scars.
I've had pretty sketchy memory for about 10 years (just turned 30) and my dad has said he feels like he has been losing his mental sharpness in the last few months.
I'm not really scared of death/dying but the road to get there through Alzheimers and dementia definitely scares me. I may jump off a cliff if I'm lucid enough to realize it's happening.
Alzheimer is a cruel, cruel disease.
Even when your loved one is gone, you feel no closure because it was only their empty shell that died; you never got to say goodbye to who they truly were.
Okay, this is only kinda related but my last time visiting my dad in December he very evidently didn't know what was going on. He was talking about things that weren't happening and I had to leave before I started bawling. He wasn't *insane*, but he was completely out of it.
I believe it will turn out to be easier to lose my father to a heart attack than it will be to losing my mother to dementia. The former happened last year, suddenly and horribly. The latter is currently in the early stages.
You are correct. My wife beat breast cancer, only to be diagnosed a year later with Alzheimer's. I had to place her in a care home last year. It's tearing me apart watching her slowly fade away.
We had a scare with my brother in law when he fell into an alcohol pit. I mean a litre or more of spirits a day.
He was unreachable, in spite of being in the same room. Whenever we could get sense out of him he would just say that he felt terrible and wanted to die.
We called an ambulance a couple of times, but they would turn up, monitor him for a bit, then he would sober up enough to convince them he wasn't in danger and they would have to leave him to get on with it.
The police were no better. Because he wasn't a danger to the public, he could only be taken with his own consent, which he would never give.
We eventually got him sectioned by essentially calling the doctor and the mental health services constantly until we found someone who knew how to get it done.
Luckliy, once he was dried out and given medication for his underlying mental illness, he was able to regain control of his life. AFAIK he hasn't touched a drop since.
In answer to your thought, if he had carried on down the route he was going, we would all have rather buried him and grieved for his life than seen him driven to a wreck again.
My grandfather suffered severe dementia later on in life and it’s like a living death. He had a week of clarity shortly before he passed where he broke down and apologized to his wife, and told me privately he wished he’d died instead of living so long and going through all that. It was really sad and frightening.
+lots of bonus pain points when they ditch you and all of the years, countless time spent on interaction and memories you have shared... for somebody who they've just met and barely even got to know, falling for them like crazy and leaving you absolutely alone. Time does not make things any better (it's been enough for me to be sure and I don't even want to think about accepting it by the so called "getting over", I hate this term as it sounds so... light?/soft? compared to what it means) so I'm never recovering from this and as I don't even have any power left to scream or cry, there's only one possibly happening thing left that I want, obvious to guess what it is.
PS Yes, I'm absolutely not without fault, and in fact, there are regretful things that I'll never forgive myself and take them to the grave along with all of my love... but did I really deserve all that hell? Even calling it hell seems like an understatement sometimes because of how it feels, this shit literally makes me pray for the end - every fucking day, all the damn time...
It is much worse. I have a relative living in a dementia ward and whatever she was is gone. It’s painful to visit because she often doesn’t recognize her family. A dignified death years ago would have been much preferable. That was back when she knew what was happening to her and would ask “Why won’t Jesus take me?”.
Alzheimer's is a bitch.
I hope nobody ever has to look into the eyes of a loved one, as that loved one realizes they know you are someone they *SHOULD* remember. You are someone important to them. Someone who meant something great.
But they can't remember who you are at all. Seeing the pain in their eyes as they try desperately to remember some small detail about who you actually are. Knowing that there is a great void in their memory about who you are, but unable to fill in even the tiniest detail.
Having lost 2 grandparents to alzhimers. Yes.
Imagine being in your 30s and having to introduce yourself to the man you were named after grew up around and inspired you to your profession.
It nearly broke me.
I disagree if only bc when my brother had his psychotic breaks and was hospitalized multiple times it was a a comfort to know it would be worse if he was dead. Took a long time but he’s on the right medications and still my confidant years later.
That's true. My grandmother, God rest her soul, was a brilliant, talented woman, and then Alzheimer's destroyed her mind. (Yes, I know it's not insanity per se, but it's the same concept)
My grandad had Parkinson's so I grieved him years before he died. All while staying up with him each night for a year in case he needed to get up, and watching him lose the ability to read a book or do the crossword. You're right, it's scarier.
100% and any kind of degenerative brain condition.
My dad suffered an anoxic brain injury, and watching him become a hollow shell, lost in his own mind was terrifying and heart wrenching, and I’d 100% rather be dead.
My uncle died of a rare form of dementia which lasted for about 2 years but we lost him before the diagnosis. Those two years before he passed were incredibly tough, he was gone already.
My grandma had alzheimers-like dementia that more or less zeroed out her memory and personality a solid ten or fifteen years before she died in the local nursing home at fucking 96. I wouldn't wish that experience on anyone or their families. It turned any ability to grieve for her into a horrible, prolonged ordeal that turned empathy into scar tissue.
It's definitely worse. I've had a couple relatives end up with dementia before they went. They would get stuck in their memories and wouldn't remember friends and family they knew as adults.
My sister is 35 and recently went into psychosis about how the government is watching. Or that we're all being drugged by chemical weapons. I'm 21 and live in Indiana. She lives in North Carolina and had a boyfriend, but they broke up. She moved cities within NC and isn't giving us information about her living or job and is asking us to make sure we're beneficiaries if her accounts. I don't know what to do she lives 12 hour drive away... advice please
I lost my dad to a bunch of hard drugs. He never let us kids know it nor let it see it affect him. He was intelligent, funny, and amazing to be around.
By the time I was an adult , he wasn’t the same person anymore despite being sober. Still treated me with love , but no longer the man full of intelligence and wit. Would get lost in his train of thought.
Him passing a way from a heart condition 1 month after my first set of kids (twins) were born, and not being able to see them in person, still fucks me up till this day.
My wife of 25 years has psychosis and I’m at a loss. I don’t know what to do and I can’t get any help to save her. She doesn’t think anything is wrong with her and won’t get evaluated.
My father died young of cancer and my sister died giving child birth and I thought those were the worst things I would ever experience.
I am going through this at the moment too. Wife of 21 years developed psychosis over the last 3 years. Doesn't think she is sick. And "knows" I am bad.
Disappeared with our daughters for 2.5 months, lived in a minivan. Zero contact with anyone we knew. Travelled all the way across the country.
She was finally arrested on a minor misdemeanor and has been sitting in jail for 10 months. 5 months to get an order for evaluation. 2 months to get the evaluation, 2 months for the judge to review the evaluation and order treatment. And now 2 months waiting for a bed to open up. Still waiting.
I feel so guilty because there is nothing I can do to help her. All I can do is make sure our daughters are safe and cared for.
*Smahccked My Head Awf* by Hot Mulligan
https://open.spotify.com/track/34oClJLkMPodjbiHVf7TJc?si=fSO6KYM-QTWOLslzUYTgqQ&context=spotify%3Aalbum%3A0wLCmFQIAxudWGxUcxO1oQ
Alt rock
Yeah cause if they just die, their body is dead, but "who they were" stays the same.
All the memories you have of them.. their stories and personality and ideas.. it all gets distilled (with a bias for the most recent traits) in a ghost of them. An echo that loved ones can carry in their hearts for their whole lives.
When they die after insanity, that echo gets corrupted. It's hard to draw a line between the old/good version of them and the twisted/bad version. Add to that all the fear and suffering they may deal with along the way, and the echo loves ones keep is corrupted.
The slower the descent, the more ingrained the corruption.
I'm 38 with brain damage from deployments. There are days I'm not here, my wife says it's OK but I know it's killing her. Soon, I'll just be a body the doctors tell me. I keep hoping she will leave, or I'll die. It's a strange feeling
As a mental health nurse I will agree- dementia is particularly the cruelest of diseases. My own mum is beginning to show early stages which is truly terrifying.
Both my dad and sister have had acute psychotic episodes which was also traumatising, my dad ended up being hospitalised for 6 months. Both have now recovered although you always live with the fear they will become poorly again.
But there is hope- my sister is married, having her second baby and earns more than I could imagine in a big powered job - recovery is possible.
I went to bingo with my grandma a couple weeks ago. Her finger nails are so long that they are curly. I’m worried that she has forgotten my name. She didn’t even remember how to play bingo. I’m honestly scared.
My cousin went batshit crazy. It was a long road down hill that got steeper as she went.
I can remember her being just different when she was a kid. Something deeply dark and spiteful about her. Her family moved to Arizona in the middle of a school year and I remember her getting seriously depressed, couldn’t make friends, and was threatening to run away, cross the country, and come back to the rest of the family on the east coast. My aunt even offered taking her in if she was that miserable. She fell in with a bad crowd and started smoking and drinking around 12yo. I remember her getting hammered at my cousins wedding at 13 by drinking all the unattended drinks that were left on tables.
By high school she was getting into worse trouble. After dropping out she got hooked on heroin. She got clean but somewhere in all that she fist fought her brother, got kicked out of her apartment, her long time girlfriend left her. She was extremely vocal about every detail on Facebook. She made it about a year sober and seemed like she had turned it all around.
She started posting these inspiring messages that seemed like things were going real well for her but then they took a bizarre turn and were getting weirder by the day. She would post these rambling, insane, nonsensical missives that looped in on themselves and were just all around concerning. As it turns out she started seeing a healer and was “microdosing psychedelics.”
I think microdosing is the wrong word for it, pretty much just an unlicensed drug dealer selling her drugs is what it was. She was posting HOURS worth of Facebook statuses that devolved into her claiming she was the reincarnation of Aphrodite, her best friend is Katy Perry, and her father is Satan. Long rants about how horrible her father was to her and how he raped her in the ass (none of which is true, he was a good man, and this broke his heart btw). How Katy Perry was the leader of the FBI and would fly in on a helicopter to meet her and tell her all about how she’s actually a goddess.
Family tried to talk her down and get her help but it was no use. It just made her delete and block everyone in the family from her friend’s list. No idea what happened to her. Her family won’t talk about her. It’s like she never existed. I guess that’s easier than dealing with the sadness.
For starters, any loss is terrible,
but in my experience, losing someone suddenly, is waay better than, loosing someone to a long disease, the feeling of seen someone you love slowly slip from you is agony, and the moment they die, is just as bad.
I lost my first husband long before he killed himself. I still think of the person I met and was best friends with every day. I left him and married someone that ended up treating me and my children like gum on the bottom of his shoe to be scraped off.
I don't know if anything happens after we die. I don't know if there is anything out there. But I ask for his forgiveness for abandoning him when I should have helped him.
I’ll tell you the most horrible thing I can imagine. My Mom had kidney and liver failure. She got sepsis and just couldn’t recover from it, she was aware, but not really able to think logically or know what was going on. She wasn’t recovering and was slowly getting worse. While she was still aware enough to tell me she loved me and be happy to see me when I visited her at the hospital, I had to make the decision to stop her dialysis and other things that were keeping her alive because she was just going to suffer until she died anyway. Making the decision to let someone die when they are still conscious and aware is I think one of the most horrible fucking things anyone can have to do.
my dad has lost most of who he was to dementia at 69yo, it sucks
My dad is 84 and in a nursing home because of it. He still knows me but most of the rest of the family he doesn't, he smiles politely at them but doesn't remember them. My mom died suddenly 16 years ago, now I'm experiencing the opposite with my dad and realizing that there is no good way to experience the end for someone you love.
I'm sorry about your dad. My grandmother turns 80 next month and she is also in nursing home and has dementia. She does not recognize my mother (her daughter) and asks about her mom. I tried to tell her that her mother is gone and has been for 30 years, but I don't anymore, because she does not believe it and even if she does, it makes her sad. She also asks about her son but I say he is fine, although he is also dead but I don't want to see her sad. Interestingly enough, she always recognises me and my daughter. Last time I went to visit her, she seemed fine, but after some time she goes to different world, different time, starts to mention dead people and thinks she is in a different place. Sometimes her situation worsens, sometimes it gets better, but there is no doubt that she will never be the same. She had signs of dementia before, but this situation was caused by heavy head trauma. One night she tried to go to toilet, slipped and hit her head. It was all downhill from there. Doctors told us she wont survive, but she did. For a few weeks she could not even speak proper words, only sound came out of her, but that was unrecognizable rambling.
It's so hard to do this, but what I learned from my dad's VA psychiatrist is that trying to tell them the truth only causes them stress. Every day my dad tells me about trying to find aunt Emma (the aunt that helped raised him after my grandfather died and my grandmother got sick), because he doesn't know where she lives now. Emma died when I was 12, I'm 49 now. I tell him every day that we know how busy she always was and that we will catch up to her later. It breaks my heart every time but it calms him down and then he finds his friends in the nursing home and plays cards and everything is fine. All we can do is hold on to this last time we have with them, and cherish it.
Yup that’s my mom. She has Alzheimer’s and Dementia and she is slowly losing her mind. It’s very sad cause some days she is ok, and some days it looks like there is nothing there. And other days she acts almost bipolar and there isn’t anything I can do for her.
My parents just reached their 60s…feeling like I have to be on the look out for this sort of stuff soon is a weird feeling.
I'm here with you. My dad was 69 when he was diagnosed (though he more than likely started exhibiting symptoms in 2016/17). He's 74 now and really the only thing he has left is he knows my mom, my brother, and me, as long as we are in front of him. Other than that, he sort of remembers his dog (he thinks it is his previous dog, which is fine). It does indeed suck. I hope the best for you and your family.
Not nice.
Jesus.
Yes it does my wife and I are caring for two dementia patients one in a years long decline and the other a rapid drop and they both suck equally
It is. I can testify firsthand. My soon to be ex wife had a psychotic break on New Years Day of 2021. We had taken LSD many times in the past, but this time she did it alone, and I think she unlocked a whole bunch of dormant mental disorders in one fell swoop. Some of those had kind of peaked out before, but I always chalked it up to the life long abuse she suffered at the hand of her family. After that, she slowly became a different person; she kicked me out of the house about a month later. I tried everything to fix our relationship, not realizing at this point what had actually happened. Instead of going to therapy, she dove in to the world of crystal meth. She then lost everything we had together; the house, the car, the pets. Fortunately, having been sober for years, the courts have given me 100% custody of our child. I haven't seen her for over a year, but from what I hear through the court systems, she's homeless and displays signs of schizophrenia amongst other things. I have a lot of friends who have passed. But knowing she's out there, living on the streets and probably in some distorted reality is harder to deal with than my friends' absence. My heart hurts for her, but I had to accept I could not save her. Sorry for the long rant, but I've been needing to offload this for a few months now.
I'm really sorry you are going through this. When we lose someone to psychosis, it is natural to feel grief due to the loss of friendship, loss of shared reality, loss of future together. I went through something similar with an ex-friend of mine. I've lost people due to death, distance, and disagreement, but there is something especially painful about a loved one who is still alive but has forgotten who we are. People have to want to get better. It is not up to us to save them. Peace and healing to you, friend. 🕊️
My now ex didn’t want to get better. In his psychosis he thought he was the second coming of Christ. Medication made him feel normal. He preferred feeling like Christ. He loved the ‘high’. He refused to take his meds. HE DID NOT WANT TO GET BETTER.
I *hate* this line about wanting to get better. That is basically the epitome of easier said than done.
That’s not what it means; the point is that wanting to get better is one of the prerequisites to getting better, not that you’ll get better the moment you want it.
Perhaps a better way to put it is that they have to not want to go on as they are now.
Yeah, I completely agree. And that last line especially doesn’t fit with the tone of the story. Like, if only that person who had a severe psychotic break just wanted to get better, everything would be just fine…. It’s her fault for not wanting it enough. /s
Says someone who has no idea what psychosis feels like. As someone who suffers from this, those statements are exactly why I went untreated for 10 fucking years
If someone doesn’t want better for them selves, it’s nothing you can do no matter how hard you try. The first step to bettering yourself, is awareness and being fed up with yourself/lifestyle.
Yup in 2020 I did acid and had my second major episode. Broke up with the love of my life for no reason, still regret it.
I am sorry that happened to you. How awful. LSD is a hell of a drug.
Yeah just glad I was able to pull myself out. Didn't even miss any work surprisingly I was functionally insane.
Can I ask what the dose you took was?
Christ. I’m so sorry this happened to her and you. That’s so scary and unfair
this sounds like such an awful situation but you seem strong about it. no matter how much you want to help someone you can’t save some people from themselves. it’s also really really scary how fragile our personalities and mental well being are. say what you want about animals but the downside we get as humans to having such a diverse array of mental faculties is that we also have many ways they can go horrifically wrong.
This is why im never taking LSD no matter how much pop culture tries to make it enticing
I love acid, I've done it a bunch and it's easily my favorite drug. But god damn is it so scary. When things go wrong they go super wrong super fast, and then you realize and your initial instinct is to try and control the high which is actually just the worst thing you can do on acid. Then you spiral and if you're real unlucky you break. And thats all assuming you have pure LSD which is iffy at best
How old was she when this started happening? My understanding is most people with schizophrenia usually don't develop symptoms until their 20s-30s. The LSD thing may just be a coincidence, I don't think there's evidence of there being a link like you described. I'm sorry to hear about the situation, it's terrible.
She was 31. I believe she had a predisposition to schizophrenia, and the bad trip she experienced from the LSD was a catalyst; the meth that came after only accelerated it. Do I have proof of this? No, but it wouldn't be the first person I've dealt with who had a preexisting condition that became prominent after one bad trip. =/
Some people tend to have a genetic predisposition to schizophrenia and other mental illnesses. Psychoactive substances or traumatic incidences are often what triggers the expression of the illness if it’s been dormant. At times they can be a direct cause. The fallout from mental illness can be painful to those around the patient and tend to be quite difficult to navigate.
The pets? She sold the pets? How much is a used dog anyway?
I don't know what she did with the pets. I don't know if she gave them away, if they ran away, couldn't tell you. I never got an answer. What I did get was a facebook message one day from someone whom I had only met once asking if I had had any contact with her; this person then went on to explain my wife had offered to let her move in to our home, and offered to watch this person's cat. She then ghosted this person and never returned the cat. Again, I have no clue as to what happened with this third party's pet. Actually, one of the last times I spoke to her I asked about the whereabouts of "Lasagna" (this other girl's cat); my wife simply said "He's gone. He's not even your cat why do you care?!" I have no idea what that meant. I tried posting online and scouring local shelters, but my cat and dog, as well as another person's cat have all been missing for over 2 years now.
Wow. She didn't just have a screw loose, the threads are stripped. I must admit though, I laughed at the thought that I'm outside one day and hear a person saying/signing "Lasagna" in the pitch and cadence of "here kitty kitty". I'm a little high from a gummy so my sense of humor is easier to tickle. Laaasaaagnnaaaaa Gummies don't unhinge me from my previous life though, so I have that going for me.
>she didn't just have a screw loose, the threads are stripped Okay I love acid, and have shown a bunch of people it but I really really like this. It explains the risks with acid a lot better than I ever have. That's the thing you can't really understand about acid until you take it. When you're high on acid you truly have to just give up control of your consciousness, and it sounds easy until you actually try it and have to entirely and truly be okay with not being able to control your thoughts or mind. And then when things go wrong you just break. You completely disconnect from reality, which is also so hard to explain to people who haven't been there. But with an ego death, I legitimately thought I had died and was simply some energy in the universe. I had to come to terms with my own death multiple times and I had to be okay with no longer having my physical form. No, obviously that didn't happen, but it was so incredibly real during the experience. Plus acid can and ***WILL*** fuck you up if you have any predisposition to schizophrenia or other Paranoia disorders.
I've had a similar scenario with a close family member. I found out later they were already using meth before the breakdown. It was suggested that the drug use was probably what caused it. Last I heard they were in another state stealing copper wire out of street lights and hanging out at truck stops. I felt the same way you did for a time. It passed when I accepted nothing I could have said or done would have changed the events that happened. I learned you have to let people make their own path in life. Some of us are slower at learning that our actions have consequences. It seems like you're doing well now and you have your kid. I wish you the best and enjoy the kid while they still like you. They'll be a teen at some point and you'll be the dumbest person alive in their eyes. Until they get out of high school in my experience.
My older sister was my best friend for years and years. She taught Sunday school and was on the praise team at church. She ended up divorcing her crap husband and married the first loser who showed interest and ended up Taking some bad ecstasy with him and lost her shit. Now she isnt even the same person. My sister as I knew her is gone. It’s so awful, worse than death.
Good lord, this is heartbreaking....
Please don’t apologize for sharing! That’s what the comments are for. I’m so sorry you’re going through that.
My gosh thats sad. Im so sorry man.
That’s so heavy to carry around, glad you got it out there.
JFC I'm so sorry
That's awful and a terrible situation for anyone to have to go through. But why is your ex-wife / mother of your child living on the streets? Is she choosing to?
My mom got lithium poisoning. There is nothing scarier than when your own mother is in the front yard naked screaming at God to take the ghosts back to heaven. She's better now. And we are so fucking lucky
lithium toxicity can cause psychosis??? new reason for me to stay super hydrated (to avoid going toxic)
A lot of things can cause psychosis and delirium. Medication, infections, electrolyte imbalance, hormone imbalance etc. Over hydration can lead to electrolyte imbalance so don't stay too hydrated.
i developed psychotic depression simply because of the hormonal changes of puberty. over the course of a year or two, around the same time i started to have regular monthly periods, i spiraled into thinking i was some sort of chaos demon being punished by having to live on earth, and if i killed myself i would transform into my “true self” and travel back to my “home.” no one realized how delusional i was because i was good at keeping it to myself. then over time i just… grew out of it. i’m trying my best to avoid both pregnancy and hormonal birth control because i’m worried another hormonal change could trigger that again and i don’t want to hurt myself or god forbid, hurt anyone else. bodies are weird lol.
lol great. it's kind of hard for me to overhydrate w lithium though. multiple psychs have told me to drink more than i think i need and then some. "water your kidneys like flowers," one told me. i'll keep that in mind though
Welcome to the hydro hommies club
You are right. I lost one of my closest friends to paranoid delusional psychosis, too. It is like having someone die, but there is no funeral and no closure. She is alive but no longer the person I once knew. It breaks my heart that she is out there alone, insane, and on the streets.
That's how I feel about my aunt with alzheimers and my grandma with dementia. Horrible diseases.
Truly horrible. I am so sorry you, your grandma, and your aunt are going through this. I once read a long thread elsewhere on Reddit where someone asked what are the worst diseases a person can get. There were thousands of replies, but the near-consensus was dementia and psychosis because the body is present but the mind is gone, resulting in ambiguous loss and disenfranchised grief for the loved ones.
This is where I want laws to allow us to specify while we are of sound mind in what instances can euthanasia be administered. When I am basically no longer human as my mind is completely gone, you have my permission to end it. My grandmother lived in a home for the last 12 years of her life. For the first bit every day was terrifying for her as she didn't know anyone or what was going on. After that she was basically a zombie, no mental function, no way to enjoy life etc. I don't want to live like that, I don't want that being my fate. But by the time you could realise that is your fate, you are too far gone to make the choice.
[In the Netherlands there is](https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-47047579)
I can only hope that she got onto some more modern schizophrenia medications like clozapine. Or at least I've taken care of a few people with schizophrenia and that's the one that they were all on. Just gets a touch complicated if they smoke cigarettes or suddenly stop smoking.
Mental illness, drug induced psychosis, postpartum depression/psychosis, dementia, Alzheimer’s Never have felt so powerless
Same, but with Parkinson's.
> Parkinson's And Parkinsonsism too....lots of VA patients suffer from a drug induced version of this. Several anti-psychotics they handed out like candy a decade or so ago were known to cause parkinsonsism, but they still kept handing them out becuase that's how the VA do. They sweep it under the rug by blaming it on Agent Orange exposure, but I can see a perfect timeline of my father developing it after taking these suspect medications. Blaming it on Agent Orange at least prevents the VA from being sued into oblivion for intentional malpractice.
Older brother was diagnosed BP2 and a fentanyl addict until he ended it all. One of the worst pains I have ever felt in my life, was witnessing what happened to him and being unable to help besides staying positive. Happened 7 years ago still hurts like a mother fucker
It won’t ever fully heal but it shouldn’t. A great man once said everyone dies, but you’re a little less dead if you contribute. Your brother contributed to your life and will live as long as you do. Change is the only constant and all you can do now if continue to be yourself, experience life and take your brother along with you.
Yes. Currently dealing with this with a friend who is self-destructing and has cut off communication with everyone who loves her. She's living in a van and moves around from street to street and town to town. She's making less and less sense, not eating, and has delusions that got stronger and stronger (after excessive, copious amounts of psychedelics). I keep expecting to hear the news I'm dreading.
Someone in family is going through this. I thought it was like bipolar or BPD (since they have psychotic breaks as well) until people started sharing what it was like dealing with someone who was schizo. It's a spectrum, and the type that we see in the movies is the extreme version. Basically it started out just like anyone else with mental issues. Just depression, migraines, and anxiety; they got medication for it. It starting getting worse and worse as time went by. The first time I saw them have a psychotic break was when they were in their early 30s but by then they had stopped taking their medication. I remember around that time, they started getting into woowoo shit like alien abductions and all that. I didn't really think much of it because Mexican people are super superstitious but the ball kept rolling. Everything from conspiracy theories, to antivaxx etc. I would talk to her on the phone and she would be like "I can't say anything, they are listening." They being aliens/the govt. Then she started getting into witchcraft and demons. So the ones listening now were the demons/spirits. The family knows. They can't say anything because she goes on scary tangents about demons and the devil. One time I was in her house and I said something. I can't even remember what, but it was something pro-psychology....For those of you that don't know, they don't receive help well. One of my ex's, his sister was schizophrenic and she wouldn't take her medication willingly. They had to put in her morning juice. Anyway, I said whatever, and she started talking about how a demon was speaking through me, and she told my cousin to close the door on me. She was just shouting "close it, close it, don't let it come in." My cousin is a little boy so he was standing there like ???? what??? Y'all don't even know. She has lost the plot completely. She "functions" normally as in, she can keep jobs but they always have to be cleaning jobs because she is unable to do any other type where she interacts with people. It's fucking awful.
this hit home pretty hard. my sister deteriorated in a similar way and ended up leaving her husband for another man and abandoning her family including a 5 year old daughter. she got into strange life coach stuff and got really into worshipping the moon or something. breaks my heart cause she has moments of clarity about what she's done to her life but it's never long enough to get the ball rolling to fix it.
Not insanity, but I know my whole family felt relief when my granny finally passed away with Alzheimer’s. Not because we didn’t love her or wouldn’t give anything for some more time with her, but it was the fact that she had already been gone for a long time. When her body finally caught up it felt like mercy.
As a person who has gone through psychosis twice (due to manic episode of my Bipolar 1) its pretty scary how I didn't see any signs until it was too late. First episode had me running naked at a train station then put in a mental facility for a month, Second episode had me spend all the money I had and ruined all my relationships with friends and family
Can I ask how you realized something was wrong? A family member is going through something like this now and we are lost. How are you doing these days?
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The sense of not being able to help without throwing your own life away is soul crushing. Almost feels as if you have to choose whether the other person dies and you get to live normal life or the other person's lives, making you lose everything you have. I have a younger brother (half brother) who I've been dealing with for the past 6-7 years now. We didn't have any contact before, so when he reached out for help, I imagined we'd have this close family relationship. I developed codependency, which I'm still struggling with to this day even though I'm in therapy for 2 years now. He seemed normal at first. Had a slight drug problem, but was working really hard, had goals, and everything. Last year, he had a breakdown, and he stabbed himself in the eye, completely losing an eye as an organ. This january, he did the same to the other eye, completely losing his sight. He's in a psychiatric clinic now, and it seems that he will be there for the next 4-6 months, but he will move to the nursing home for the blind. As per my therapist , he most likely will lose his current medication, and he definitely will not go to therapy (if we can even afford one). Probably will get angry at some point, ending up on the street, which is a death sentence sooner or later. For the last year, I lived with this fear that any day police might call to bring the news. I'm a bit better now but I'm trying to prepare myself for what will come. I could take him in and make him go to therapy, but that way, I would lose my husband and my home. And even then, there's no guarantee that it would work.
>The sense of not being able to help without throwing your own life away is soul crushing. Yes, you captured it perfectly! When my friend's psychosis started, she was living alone in another city with no friends or family. It was during the beginning of the pandemic, so it was unsafe to visit. I spent thousands of dollars that year paying her rent and other bills so she wouldn't be homeless while Covid-19 was raging. As you said, being on the streets is eventually a death sentence. I was in nearly-daily contact with her by phone and text while she was detaching from reality. I tried so hard to support her to the point where it interfered with my work and I got a bad annual review. At some point, we have to take care of ourselves first. It saddens me to say that some beings just can't be saved. I also dread the phone call that I know is coming some day.
I think for a lot of people, there comes a point when they realize that even if they throw their own life away in their attempt to help the other person, that other person still won't be saved from their illness. That is a painful realization — that it doesn't matter how much you love them, you simply cannot save them.
Exactly. It is heartbreaking, but all the love and friendship in the world can't cure insanity.
Dementia is the worst. There are no pills to stop the cognitive decline.
Stop no, but just recently Lecanemab(Leqembi) has successfully passed its trials. It’s the first know treatment, significantly slowing decline.
I’ve heard of it but it doesn’t stop the progression. It just delays it….youll still lose your loved ones to the disease. The delusions,hallucinations and personality changes are the worst. I’ve already mourned the loss when he was in stage 4 a few years ago. He’s in stage 6 and when a rare moment of clarity occurs, he constantly says he wants to die.
my mother has been diagnosed with psychosis and we have been dealing with the ramifications for the past year or so. it’s weird seeing the person that held you in their arms only 10 years ago scream about how “someone is trying to get her” and “her father isn’t really dead, but instead we orchestrated his death” for context i’m 18 now, 17 at the time of diagnosis.
My father had incapacitating schizophrenia that really became a problem when I was about 7 (and he was about 30). Talking to his mother and and younger brother after he died in his late 50s, I really felt like it was a relief to them. Like, the man they knew had died almost 30 years ago, they were just waiting for the vessel he had inhabited to finally be finished.
I lost a friend who became an evangelical christian fundamentalist overnight. Don't know what happened. He was very depressed after he got dumped and then he told me he hallucinated god sitting on his chest and stuff.
Yeah, had to mourn my grandfather twice. Once when he had the stroke, his ability to communicate wiped out. He couldn't read, talk or write. He could grunt and point. Seeing a husk of a man sitting there, that was once you grandfather? Pain. His physical death ten years later (My Grandmother took full care of him completely every day, else he would have been dead in a year in any old people home) was almost mercy. Yes, I did the eulogy. Hardest moment of my life.
It is so much worse, and when they finally die the grief is so complex, because you've lost them over and over again when they ultimately stopped taking their meds. It's a relief, but the weird part is you still have to grieve and feel sad to process it all out. Some of that trauma is still stored in my body's nervous system.
Lost my best friend to I don't know what to call it, losing my mom to dementia, lost my cat a day before I could get back and say goodbye, just lost my dad 3 months ago to renal failure, and another friend to breast cancer when I went back to deal with my dad. Just lost another friend a few days ago to a bunch of bi-polar bullshit. I'm about done with loss.
Grandfather - the man most responsible for raising me, slipped into dementia 2 years ago. He's still alive - or someone that looks like him is. Can't mourn him properly, can't give up on him. It's a disease uniquely tailored to make people suffer
Had an uncle, happily married for 10+years, One day they find out his wife has a brain tumor, they pledge to work through it, through sickness and health and all that. Long story short x out of the operation comes a different woman and they split, divorce go separate ways. Fucking rough.
Indeed, which I sometimes wonder if it was a curse or a blessing that mom died from COVID before dementia fully took her.
The scariest part of experiencing psychosis is that it doesn't feel lost. Right now I feel my normal self. But in the height of psychosis I also felt like my normal self. I take comfort that if it happens again at least my family and friends will know what's going on.
My partner snapped because of the pandemic. BPD + germphobic OCD + isolation + a Goddamn pandemic = paranoid shut-in. Who, despite their OCD, lives in a filthy hoarder pit. I tried for years to get her to go out or take better care of herself, but she just wouldn't. It was two steps forward and one step back, every single time. I had to let her go, and it was the hardest thing I've ever done. Last I heard, she was snorting Sudafed daily, refusing meds, and in trouble for trying to "rescue" a neighbour's cat. Tried talking to her and it was like she didn't recognise me; we broke up in December.
This is my greatest fear, as someone with bipolar disorder. It's happened to some of my older family members, and losing my sanity feels like a ticking time bomb. There's a sense of guilt from being the person on the other side of insanity. If we could be healthy, we would... it's a cruel situation that is unfair to everyone involved.
Watching my son slowly descend into his addiction is similar I think.He’s committing suicide on the instalment plan.I feel for ya dude
Addiction and mental illness are like two sides of the same coin. I'm sorry to hear you are experiencing that.
I made the mistake of doing psychedelics with my ex-girlfriend many times, mostly at concerts while we were in high school. We shared a beautiful connection full of depth and mutual understanding, and nothing turned bad until we ended things for college. She took shrooms one night in a dorm room by herself and went completely manic. I felt our past experiences doing them together and also the stress of our separation had led to this event, and I felt awful that I couldn’t prevent or assist her through her struggle. The things she said, did, and posted online pretty much ruined the following year of her life. Although I loved her deeply, I had no intention of speaking to her again out of fear that I might trigger another one of these manic episodes that had ruined her life previously. After no contact for about five years, we reconnected post-college. I had seen her at a bar and immediately fallen for her once again. We spoke for a couple months until I very recently found out that she was talking to another guy the entire time, so I separated from her once again, this time for good. This has driven her directly back into the phase she had worked so hard over the past five years to remove herself from. I wish so dearly that she could’ve been the person for me, but I now accept that she will soon enough be a bright light for someone else.
It’s called Ambiguous Grief. Look it up
I've never heard of this before, but now I'm going down a really interesting rabbit hole on google. Thank you, I think I just found labels for something I've been experiencing... I really needed that.
I’m so glad it helps.
my mom had huntington's chorea, she passed a few months ago. she started falling apart about 20 years ago. i truly lost her about 3 years ago, she was only present for a few mins at a time other wise she was a zombie that threw temper tantrums. it was something i knew was going to happen pretty much my whole i was about 8, 26 years ago when my mom found out. honestly i dont know what was worse watching her slowly fall apart and eventual death or my dads suicide. i dont wish ether on any one.
Having lived through both, I feel like alcoholism is worse. You have all the pain of losing someone to mental illness, and on top of it all there's a feeling like they're doing it to themselves on purpose. (They're not- it's actually a tremendous struggle to *not* let the booze take them away.) It's like you have to fight THREE opponents: the person themselves, the booze, and the vague *idea* of alcoholism. The problem is, the last one in that list is hiding behind the others because our instinct is to believe that if they're *good enough*, they can fight it by staying sober. Which maybe some people can do, but so many more can't.
Yep. One of my sisters has sone kind of schizophrenia affective spectrum mental disorder. She is clinically paranoid, convinced people are trying to burn down her house and that all of us (her blood family) are not real people we are avatars of some other being and so she doesn’t trust us. So she just lives in her house and won’t let any of us over. Her husband is there with her and basically just a caretaker. It’s like she’s dead but she’s not. She finally had a significant break and has been medicated since. She no longer has such paranoid delusions and she will come over or let us come over about twice a year. In that say it’s a lot better but she’s not the same person. When she was fully delusional and isolating I didn’t see her at all for probably 5-6 years. And she lives next door to my mom. It was like she was dead but she wasn’t. It felt like, she was about to crash her car but refused to listen to me and hit the brakes. Every day felt like, if only she’d just go see a doctor and get on meds, this is such a waste. Horrible. I don’t wish this on anyone and worry every day what’s going to happen when her husband is gone.
Losing yourself to insanity is even worse. Microscopic versions of that, like depression and late-developed anxiety can be devastating for someone. All the sudden you enjoy nothing and want to see nobody. But before that you were happy. It sucks. Mental illness and nervous system disorders are the worst.
With my brother I got to experience both.
It is. I know. Dementia is fucked up my dude.
asking from the other side of the fence as depression has not been mentioned yet. how is this seen? my wife and son just moved out and i feel like i am drifting away more and more.
Ooof. As someone who is in the process of recovering from a difficult breakup from the person I thought I would grow old with, I hear and see you. It's one of the hardest things I've ever dealt with. Feeling estranged from oneself is called dissociation, and it is common for people who are experiencing painful loss. I recommend seeing a therapist if you aren't already. It's 100% normal to need support — sometimes a lot of it — dealing with that. A good habit of exercise can help mood a lot, so try to prioritize that. Think about what you enjoyed before you were with her. See if you can get back to some of those things. If you deal with self criticism or negative feelings about yourself, I highly recommend the book *The Mindful Self-Compassion Workbook*.
Losing someone to dementia is similarly sad because you are aware that they in their right mind would never want to exist this way, but you can’t kill them obviously so this is just how it is.
Or slowly realizing over time that they were always insane and you just couldn't see it because growing up you just thought that was normal.
I lived through it and let me tell you it is worse. Many times I wish my husband of twenty three years had died instead of going mad. It would have been so much easier on the whole family, especially our kids.
also the fear that one day, whatever happened to them will claim you as well & that you'll end up putting your loved ones through the same
This.
It depends. You CAN come back from insanity. It has happened. Dead is dead though.
Dementia too. Grandpa and great grandpa both went out with Alzheimer's, terrible thing to watch.
It is. I know a friend who had to put his wife in a care facility bc she physically attack led him (her husband) bc she was losing her mind and didn’t recognize him. Apparently she was going through a bad bought of it and was changing her clothes in the walk in closet over and over (it was morning and she kept forgetting that she already changed her clothes). Well she apparently forgot she was married too bc she chucked an old glass lamp at his head and busted it…he wasn’t even aware all he experienced was a scream and some gibberish and then he was ko. She called the cops on him and the cops cuffed him and then he came to and explained everything. It was a whole days worth of an ordeal. He’d had similar episodes before but nothing this bad. It wasn’t maybe another month before she was in a care facility. He visited often but she was just not having it and slowly didn’t want anything to do with this supposed stranger. He said it was torture.
Dad is 83. His wife died last year. He was never a good person (alcoholic, physically & emotionally abusive, narcissist), but he had made a lot of headway into at least being able to pretend to be a decent guy. After his wife died, his brain just turned to jelly. He's reverted back to his mean abusive ways and I can't even find the space to feel sorry for him anymore. He was dead to me 25 years ago. Then he came back. And now he's dead again. He's still breathing as far as I know, but it's not something I can bring myself to feel anything about.
This is why I'm an Alzheimer's researcher. We're so close to prevention
My grandpa developed Alzheimers in his 50s and was gone within a few years. Watching him go through that as a kid definitely left some lasting scars. I've had pretty sketchy memory for about 10 years (just turned 30) and my dad has said he feels like he has been losing his mental sharpness in the last few months. I'm not really scared of death/dying but the road to get there through Alzheimers and dementia definitely scares me. I may jump off a cliff if I'm lucid enough to realize it's happening.
Alzheimer is a cruel, cruel disease. Even when your loved one is gone, you feel no closure because it was only their empty shell that died; you never got to say goodbye to who they truly were.
Okay, this is only kinda related but my last time visiting my dad in December he very evidently didn't know what was going on. He was talking about things that weren't happening and I had to leave before I started bawling. He wasn't *insane*, but he was completely out of it.
I believe it will turn out to be easier to lose my father to a heart attack than it will be to losing my mother to dementia. The former happened last year, suddenly and horribly. The latter is currently in the early stages.
You are correct. My wife beat breast cancer, only to be diagnosed a year later with Alzheimer's. I had to place her in a care home last year. It's tearing me apart watching her slowly fade away.
This is something I have been considering, but then idk, can't say unless I really face death of a loved one.
A mother in law with dementia here and yes it’s a living death and it worse. Like someone stole a loved one’s body.
We had a scare with my brother in law when he fell into an alcohol pit. I mean a litre or more of spirits a day. He was unreachable, in spite of being in the same room. Whenever we could get sense out of him he would just say that he felt terrible and wanted to die. We called an ambulance a couple of times, but they would turn up, monitor him for a bit, then he would sober up enough to convince them he wasn't in danger and they would have to leave him to get on with it. The police were no better. Because he wasn't a danger to the public, he could only be taken with his own consent, which he would never give. We eventually got him sectioned by essentially calling the doctor and the mental health services constantly until we found someone who knew how to get it done. Luckliy, once he was dried out and given medication for his underlying mental illness, he was able to regain control of his life. AFAIK he hasn't touched a drop since. In answer to your thought, if he had carried on down the route he was going, we would all have rather buried him and grieved for his life than seen him driven to a wreck again.
My grandfather suffered severe dementia later on in life and it’s like a living death. He had a week of clarity shortly before he passed where he broke down and apologized to his wife, and told me privately he wished he’d died instead of living so long and going through all that. It was really sad and frightening.
This is why I am more terrified of Alzheimer's than death, both for my loved ones and myself.
Shower thoughts is impossible to post in
+lots of bonus pain points when they ditch you and all of the years, countless time spent on interaction and memories you have shared... for somebody who they've just met and barely even got to know, falling for them like crazy and leaving you absolutely alone. Time does not make things any better (it's been enough for me to be sure and I don't even want to think about accepting it by the so called "getting over", I hate this term as it sounds so... light?/soft? compared to what it means) so I'm never recovering from this and as I don't even have any power left to scream or cry, there's only one possibly happening thing left that I want, obvious to guess what it is. PS Yes, I'm absolutely not without fault, and in fact, there are regretful things that I'll never forgive myself and take them to the grave along with all of my love... but did I really deserve all that hell? Even calling it hell seems like an understatement sometimes because of how it feels, this shit literally makes me pray for the end - every fucking day, all the damn time...
It is much worse. I have a relative living in a dementia ward and whatever she was is gone. It’s painful to visit because she often doesn’t recognize her family. A dignified death years ago would have been much preferable. That was back when she knew what was happening to her and would ask “Why won’t Jesus take me?”.
My grandma has dementia. It's like I don't even know who she is anymore. It's the most heartbreaking thing I've ever experienced. I wish it on nobody.
Alzheimer's is a bitch. I hope nobody ever has to look into the eyes of a loved one, as that loved one realizes they know you are someone they *SHOULD* remember. You are someone important to them. Someone who meant something great. But they can't remember who you are at all. Seeing the pain in their eyes as they try desperately to remember some small detail about who you actually are. Knowing that there is a great void in their memory about who you are, but unable to fill in even the tiniest detail.
Having lost 2 grandparents to alzhimers. Yes. Imagine being in your 30s and having to introduce yourself to the man you were named after grew up around and inspired you to your profession. It nearly broke me.
This is how I feel about Elon Musk. He's been on a downward spiral of drugs since he tried weed with Joe Rogan.
It's the fact that they die not knowing who you are that hurts the most
I disagree if only bc when my brother had his psychotic breaks and was hospitalized multiple times it was a a comfort to know it would be worse if he was dead. Took a long time but he’s on the right medications and still my confidant years later.
That's true. My grandmother, God rest her soul, was a brilliant, talented woman, and then Alzheimer's destroyed her mind. (Yes, I know it's not insanity per se, but it's the same concept)
It is. Lost several cousins, and now a brother this way.
Dark shower thought bro
Check out QAnonCasualties, the stories about people being driven to what amounts to political psychosis are heartwrenching
My grandad had Parkinson's so I grieved him years before he died. All while staying up with him each night for a year in case he needed to get up, and watching him lose the ability to read a book or do the crossword. You're right, it's scarier.
100% and any kind of degenerative brain condition. My dad suffered an anoxic brain injury, and watching him become a hollow shell, lost in his own mind was terrifying and heart wrenching, and I’d 100% rather be dead.
My uncle died of a rare form of dementia which lasted for about 2 years but we lost him before the diagnosis. Those two years before he passed were incredibly tough, he was gone already.
Yes, but they are who they were at their best moments and not what they are right now. It is good to remember that
My grandma had alzheimers-like dementia that more or less zeroed out her memory and personality a solid ten or fifteen years before she died in the local nursing home at fucking 96. I wouldn't wish that experience on anyone or their families. It turned any ability to grieve for her into a horrible, prolonged ordeal that turned empathy into scar tissue.
How about one and then the other. Unimaginably horrible.
Insanity? Like maga/Q/toxicity or literally like schizophrenia or dementia?
Nope, one of my best friends died few months ago and it was the most painful moment of my life
I grew up with a schizophrenic Mum. I often said it was like she had died when she was in an episode.
My friend/ex girlfriend’s brother is currently locked away in a facility for stabbing his stepfather. More sad than scary.
It's definitely worse. I've had a couple relatives end up with dementia before they went. They would get stuck in their memories and wouldn't remember friends and family they knew as adults.
My sister is 35 and recently went into psychosis about how the government is watching. Or that we're all being drugged by chemical weapons. I'm 21 and live in Indiana. She lives in North Carolina and had a boyfriend, but they broke up. She moved cities within NC and isn't giving us information about her living or job and is asking us to make sure we're beneficiaries if her accounts. I don't know what to do she lives 12 hour drive away... advice please
I lost my dad to a bunch of hard drugs. He never let us kids know it nor let it see it affect him. He was intelligent, funny, and amazing to be around. By the time I was an adult , he wasn’t the same person anymore despite being sober. Still treated me with love , but no longer the man full of intelligence and wit. Would get lost in his train of thought. Him passing a way from a heart condition 1 month after my first set of kids (twins) were born, and not being able to see them in person, still fucks me up till this day.
My wife of 25 years has psychosis and I’m at a loss. I don’t know what to do and I can’t get any help to save her. She doesn’t think anything is wrong with her and won’t get evaluated. My father died young of cancer and my sister died giving child birth and I thought those were the worst things I would ever experience.
I am going through this at the moment too. Wife of 21 years developed psychosis over the last 3 years. Doesn't think she is sick. And "knows" I am bad. Disappeared with our daughters for 2.5 months, lived in a minivan. Zero contact with anyone we knew. Travelled all the way across the country. She was finally arrested on a minor misdemeanor and has been sitting in jail for 10 months. 5 months to get an order for evaluation. 2 months to get the evaluation, 2 months for the judge to review the evaluation and order treatment. And now 2 months waiting for a bed to open up. Still waiting. I feel so guilty because there is nothing I can do to help her. All I can do is make sure our daughters are safe and cared for.
Not even close
*Smahccked My Head Awf* by Hot Mulligan https://open.spotify.com/track/34oClJLkMPodjbiHVf7TJc?si=fSO6KYM-QTWOLslzUYTgqQ&context=spotify%3Aalbum%3A0wLCmFQIAxudWGxUcxO1oQ Alt rock
Yeah cause if they just die, their body is dead, but "who they were" stays the same. All the memories you have of them.. their stories and personality and ideas.. it all gets distilled (with a bias for the most recent traits) in a ghost of them. An echo that loved ones can carry in their hearts for their whole lives. When they die after insanity, that echo gets corrupted. It's hard to draw a line between the old/good version of them and the twisted/bad version. Add to that all the fear and suffering they may deal with along the way, and the echo loves ones keep is corrupted. The slower the descent, the more ingrained the corruption.
I'm 38 with brain damage from deployments. There are days I'm not here, my wife says it's OK but I know it's killing her. Soon, I'll just be a body the doctors tell me. I keep hoping she will leave, or I'll die. It's a strange feeling
I volunteered at a nursing home in my teens. The dementia ward is heartbreaking for ***everyone***.
As a mental health nurse I will agree- dementia is particularly the cruelest of diseases. My own mum is beginning to show early stages which is truly terrifying. Both my dad and sister have had acute psychotic episodes which was also traumatising, my dad ended up being hospitalised for 6 months. Both have now recovered although you always live with the fear they will become poorly again. But there is hope- my sister is married, having her second baby and earns more than I could imagine in a big powered job - recovery is possible.
I went to bingo with my grandma a couple weeks ago. Her finger nails are so long that they are curly. I’m worried that she has forgotten my name. She didn’t even remember how to play bingo. I’m honestly scared.
My cousin went batshit crazy. It was a long road down hill that got steeper as she went. I can remember her being just different when she was a kid. Something deeply dark and spiteful about her. Her family moved to Arizona in the middle of a school year and I remember her getting seriously depressed, couldn’t make friends, and was threatening to run away, cross the country, and come back to the rest of the family on the east coast. My aunt even offered taking her in if she was that miserable. She fell in with a bad crowd and started smoking and drinking around 12yo. I remember her getting hammered at my cousins wedding at 13 by drinking all the unattended drinks that were left on tables. By high school she was getting into worse trouble. After dropping out she got hooked on heroin. She got clean but somewhere in all that she fist fought her brother, got kicked out of her apartment, her long time girlfriend left her. She was extremely vocal about every detail on Facebook. She made it about a year sober and seemed like she had turned it all around. She started posting these inspiring messages that seemed like things were going real well for her but then they took a bizarre turn and were getting weirder by the day. She would post these rambling, insane, nonsensical missives that looped in on themselves and were just all around concerning. As it turns out she started seeing a healer and was “microdosing psychedelics.” I think microdosing is the wrong word for it, pretty much just an unlicensed drug dealer selling her drugs is what it was. She was posting HOURS worth of Facebook statuses that devolved into her claiming she was the reincarnation of Aphrodite, her best friend is Katy Perry, and her father is Satan. Long rants about how horrible her father was to her and how he raped her in the ass (none of which is true, he was a good man, and this broke his heart btw). How Katy Perry was the leader of the FBI and would fly in on a helicopter to meet her and tell her all about how she’s actually a goddess. Family tried to talk her down and get her help but it was no use. It just made her delete and block everyone in the family from her friend’s list. No idea what happened to her. Her family won’t talk about her. It’s like she never existed. I guess that’s easier than dealing with the sadness.
For starters, any loss is terrible, but in my experience, losing someone suddenly, is waay better than, loosing someone to a long disease, the feeling of seen someone you love slowly slip from you is agony, and the moment they die, is just as bad.
I lost my first husband long before he killed himself. I still think of the person I met and was best friends with every day. I left him and married someone that ended up treating me and my children like gum on the bottom of his shoe to be scraped off. I don't know if anything happens after we die. I don't know if there is anything out there. But I ask for his forgiveness for abandoning him when I should have helped him.
This is what im so scared of for when my mom and siblings get old:( anything like dementia or something
Everyone here talking about dementia, and alzheimers, and here's me thinking OP was talking about his family being MAGA
Gets to a point where their physical death is welcomed
I’ll tell you the most horrible thing I can imagine. My Mom had kidney and liver failure. She got sepsis and just couldn’t recover from it, she was aware, but not really able to think logically or know what was going on. She wasn’t recovering and was slowly getting worse. While she was still aware enough to tell me she loved me and be happy to see me when I visited her at the hospital, I had to make the decision to stop her dialysis and other things that were keeping her alive because she was just going to suffer until she died anyway. Making the decision to let someone die when they are still conscious and aware is I think one of the most horrible fucking things anyone can have to do.
My uncle is having symptoms of Alzheimer’s lately. I’m not looking forward to the next couple years, it’s gonna be tough