This is my first experience with a support group for schizophrenia.
I am reaching out for support to survive this insanity I have been living in.
My 27 year old son has been experiencing paranoid delusions for four years. He believes that law enforcement are trying to set him up for a crime he has not committed. It began when when he was living on his own. He thought his house was bugged and the police were coming in and out of his house. He thought the neighbors were in on it. His boss and co-workers were in on it. He ended up quitting his job and abandoning his house because he felt he was imminently going to be arrested.
He ended up moving in with my husband, my daughter and I. This is when he started believing that his father was helping the police with the set up.
He became very paranoid, suspicious, followed his father around the house watching everything he did. He began to believe that his father/the police were getting chemicals or drugs into his system through his skin. He actually felt his skin burning.
Anything he felt was contaminated was thrown away. Clothing, blankets etc. Then he believed his sister was also helping the police. One late night he took her on a walk in the neighborhood and confronted her, telling her she needed to confess, that he knew she was working with the FBI.
Things continued to decline from there. He wouldn’t sleep inside the house because everything was contaminated with the chemicals/drugs. He slept in a tent in the backyard. He cut off all contact with all friends to protect them from what was happening with him with the police. He could not work because every job he got, the employer and co workers were in on the set up.
He began trying to decontaminate himself and belongings with industrial strength vinegar. I was not allowed to talk about any of this inside the house or the cars because they were all bugged. I was the only one in the family left that he didn’t think was in on the set up. He became increasingly hostile and verbally aggressive especially toward his father. He was threatening his father. Life in our home became unbearable for us. It got to the point that I had to make him leave.
That was January 2015. He lived in the woods about a mile from our home in a tent. He got a job at a restaurant and this lasted 2 weeks. He said one of his co workers sprayed chemicals on him and asked the owner to pull the video tape so he would finally have proof of this conspiracy against him.
The owner didn’t pull the video and my son felt he was imminently going to be arrested so he never went back. Shortly after this he asked me to take him to a local river for him to canoe and camp on the river. So I did. On the river, every helicopter that flew over, every boat that came down the river was part of “them”. The last year has been a cycle of me picking him up from the river, taking him from hotel to hotel (all of them have been bugged or contaminated by the police), taking him back to the river, responding to his frequent calls, bringing supplies, taking him to appointments, etc.
His needs have caused me to neglect the rest of the family. I am the only one that can help him because I am the only one that he doesn’t know for sure is working with the police; however, he has his doubts about me. He recently got so weary of the struggle that he volunteered to be hospitalized, his first hospitalization. He spent 2 1/2 weeks in the hospital which ended up being court ordered to stay and was started on Abilify Maintena. He will not comply with oral meds because he has zero insight into his illness. This is all really happening and he is going to extreme lengths to prove it, videotaping everything. I purchased a house for him to live in. When he got out of the hospital, he refused to go to the house because it didn’t have a surveillance system. He wanted to go back to the river. I took him back to the river.
He has been there now less than a week and I have already had to make two trips to the river to bring supplies to him. He called last night to tell me that the helicopters and the boats were watching him. I am at the end of me. It is affecting my job. I have no personal life. I have custody of my son’s son and my husband is having to provide the majority of care for him due to our son’s constant needs.
The Abilify Maintena has not helped the delusions. He is just as sick now as he was before he went into the hospital. I feel that I cannot continue on this path, I am sinking.
Would appreciate some support from people that have experienced similar problems.
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