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Caleb Chafe

First and foremost, I want to say that what I have chosen to write about is very hard for me to express and is in fact very painful. I am still unsure how to put it into words as describing psychosis is almost impossible, much like trying to accurately describe a dream.

When I was a child I was described as peculiar, with an overactive imagination. I had many imaginary friends and would often hear my name when the wind blew. This was not considered odd because many children live in fantasy worlds. As an adolescent I was very rebellious and spent most of my days riding skateboards, idolizing musicians and expressing my dissatisfaction with society. I became addicted to heroin at 16 years old. Once I graduated high school, I attended a state college but failed out after one semester.

Around this time I started feeling as though I was being followed. I continued to try and make a life for myself by taking classes at a vocational school and working nights at Stop and Shop. My home life became intolerable and I knew that something had to change. I decided to quit using heroin by getting on Suboxone, and I went back to college in Vermont. This is when things started to get bad.

It started very slowly and then came on very rapidly. Over the course of about nine months, I became increasingly paranoid about cars following me. I felt as though I was being watched through cameras, which resulted in me destroying my electronics. I stopped eating for a few days due to a delusion that I had evolved to the point where I no longer needed food or water in order to live. The voices that I heard began to bother me to the point where I would punch myself in the face as a way to get rid of them. I would take multiple showers a day, turning the water up to maximum heat and then to the coldest setting because it made the voices lessen.

Source: 
Mad in America