I’m so glad he has his sister communicating with him using LEAP and I can see from what you have written, that you are beginning to understand the situation.
We did end up having to share our son’s schizophrenia diagnosis with the rest of our world when he began making his accusations.
Take care, our lives can be so painful.
Sadly, I completely understand the pain and confusion that you and your family are experiencing. I have a very similar story. My daughter was 19 when she first experienced her first psychotic break. She never claimed that my husband hurt her, but would tell everyone that my husband was a pedophile. It was very unexpected since they had always been very close. At the same time she was making wild accusations about a lot of people, including random strangers, so we didn’t have to deal with people questioning my husband. Like your daughter, we found out that she was also smoking a lot of marijuana, taking mushrooms and other synthetic substances.
She ended up getting arrested and spent 9 months in jail. It was awful, but it did give her time to get the illegal substances out of her system and she started taking an antipsychotic. She’s been out of jail for several months now and is stable. She’s different, but we have more good days than bad lately. I tell myself to be grateful for each good day that we have with her. However, I live in constant fear that she will stop taking her meds or start the illegal stuff again.
This forum is full of wonderful people who truly want to offer support and won’t judge you. Please know that you are not alone in this battle.
Indy Mom
I did a little bit of work with a guy called Daniel Johnston, who has sadly passed away now. There is a film about him called “The Devil and Daniel Johnston”. He was capable of writing brilliant songs, but he had encroacing psychosis causing him ever more problems. The first point where his illness got a lot worse was where he started smoking marijuana. The second point was when he took LSD. That was when his mind seems to have completely gone. The story from that point became a lot bleaker for many years, but he eventually did settle down. He needed support from his family for the rest of his life.
You do not know what will have with your son, but you should be glad that he has a sister that is dedicated enough to want to keep in touch. I have seen first hand a sibling take care for their brother in a similar context and I think sometimes it is better than parental care.
The music industry really is terrible for people with mental illness. I know a couple of people that knew Amy Winehouse, and it is just sick how her whole public image was built around her self-destructiveness.
It is one of the reasons I do not want my wife’s arguably superior talent to be recognised on the same level. The cost of exposure to the industry is just too high. You just need to live your life and get by. Too much exposure and praise it not good for people in the best of health. My wife had just started to get a little local exposure and credit for her work right before she became unwell and took off from home, and it probably played a part in it.
There are too many people are the music scene in particular that are idiots that set bad examples to each other. There is a band around here that is probably the best band I have heard in 20 years. They do not seem to be going anywhere, but they are ridiculously good. Their guitarist always looks like he has been living on the streets. I thought that was just his style, but I was walking up the street the other day and he was walking in front of me, and I thought I would say hi. But then I was downwind of him, and he had that smell of alcohol soaking through his skin, and he was drinking from a can, he looked like he had not washed for days, and he also looked like he was in a hurry to get somewhere a bit quick. I was talking to his band mate a couple of weeks ago and he basically said that they know he is in bad shape but they just don’t think they can do anything, he has got to sort himself out. It is such a shame because he is an exceptional guitarist.
Thank you to those who shared support. I am grateful that my daughter has been able to keep communication going with her brother, but it is very painful to know that she is using the LEAP method and is, as the method says, listening, empathizing, agreeing, and partnering with him when he is being torn up by the false delusion that both my husband and I molested him (and his siblings). It’s hard for me to know that she has to make it sound as if she validates this falsehood. It’s even more devastating to put myself in my son’s shoes and think that HE thinks that this horrific thing happened to him. If it weren’t for that particular delusion, I would have some hope. But this has shattered everything. Now we are afraid for our lives. Will he come for us in the night? Even though he has left the area, we still won’t leave our windows open! When this all unfolded, we had an idea of what was going on because our other son had a good friend who lived with us briefly who told us that he had been molested by family members. We were trying to help this young man get a job and then one evening he came to us and said, “I have to tell you, I am having thoughts of harming you while you are in your sleep.” Bless his heart for telling us! I called his mother, and when she came to help him I found out that these were delusions. He has been in psychiatric hospitals - the last one was for two years - but he has such bad side effects from the meds he doesn’t stay on them. His delusions included him working for the CIA, and being followed by agents, etc. His mother spent all of her retirement savings on private care, but it did not help. She finally gave him over to be a ward of the state. That didn’t help. Now the same thing has happened to my own son. If it were simply a delusion about people following him, or him working for the CIA, that we could handle. But false accusations of molestation accompanied by the fact that we found he had an ax to defend himself (against us) in his bed makes this a situation that I believe, especially after reading this thread, could get even worse if we try to insert ourselves into his life in any way (trying to get him help). Anyway, thank you for listening. It really has helped to know that others are going through this too, and to learn from your experiences.
You know, this thing about molestation I think it is really common. Today I started trying to write a book about my experiences with my wife and her condition. I started by recalling the first episode of psychosis I knowingly witnessed. I was out on a delivery run with a guy I used to run a home shopping department with. When we did the last delivery, there were still all these trays of vegetables in the back of the van. I thought we had missed some on one of our stops, but my colleague said it was for a messed up order from earlier in the day. He said he would drop me off at home as I was exhausted. The next day I found out he had stolen all the vegetables whilst in psychosis. Right after dropping me off, he drove to the police station and turned himself in. It was all carrots and broccoli and cabbage and stuff like that. I found out afterwards that he had been telling people that he had been molested by his father. The thing was, he still lived with his father, which made it a bit difficult to believe. I am pretty sure that was a false accusation.
My unmedicated friend didn’t outright say his father molested him, but he suggested on more than one occasion that there had been some strange incidents with him on several occasions in his bedroom, which I took to mean that he believed his father had sexualized thoughts about him.
Since sex is a powerful urge and an emotionally fraught topic in our society, perhaps that explains why it is so often the path the delusion many people suffering from SZ takes. Another factor may be that those with some degree of insight often struggle to find a root cause of their affliction and someone or something to blame, and might read about theories that suggest abuse can trigger it.
@kwillkat Your comment is very insightful! We recognized that our son was trying to deal with his mental health for 3 years - from the time of the first psychotic break to the time of the false accusation against us. He was terribly “altered” after the first, week-long break, and we thought he was struggling with depression. It was a the height of early Covid and everyone was in lock-down. We had no idea it was more than that. We noticed things like he took one to one-and-a-half-hour showers every single day for those 3 years. He had numerous soothing and meditative things in his room, and he never came out of his room until we were in bed. Then, when the false accusation occurred, it unfolded strangely - at first it was “someone tried to attack me when I was driving for Uber,” and then THAT quickly morphed into, “It made me remember that I was raped.” Of course we have racked our brains to think of anything that might have possibly happened to him when he was a child. We wondered if some molestation had truly taken place that we didn’t know about which his brain had repressed, and now it was surfacing. If so, we hoped the memory would straighten itself out. But now it is obvious that this is not going to straighten itself out. It is very likely that in his brilliant mind he is trying to make sense of what has happened to his brain - the brain that was once the smartest one in the University - and out of desperation his subconscious mind is now blaming us because it is the most logical thing his mind can come up with. And to your point, we have wondered if he listened to a podcast that may have suggested that a repressed memory of molestation may be the cause of his issues.
Woow as if you are writing about my son.
So weird , but my son ended saying that we are not his parents 
so heartbreaking
He is in the hospital now taking treatment, hope they work
I hope the treatment works too!