The Paranoid Experience

Posted on February 26, 2011 in Depression

Paranoia burns both as one of the brands of stigma and as a symptom experienced by sufferers of bipolar disorder, major depression, schizoaffective disorder, and schizophrenia. In my experience, the psychosis afflicts me both in mania and in depression, but the feel of it is different in each state of mind.

Manic paranoia is exciting. Roll the tapes for Mission Impossible or The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Imagine me as The Fugitive. The chase is on! The CIA is after me! I’ve got to assume my alias, change my email, check out the window to be sure that no one is watching the house.

One time during the days of the early Gulf War when I was volunteering heavily for PeaceNet, this kind of paranoia had me in its grasp. I was driving with my wife to get my hair cut when I noticed a car in my rear view mirror run a stop light seemingly to avoid losing me. I parked my car, went inside, and sat down. I swear to this day that a man came into the shop after me. He looked at me and then walked out. It had to be the same guy, right? My wife never saw him.

Depressive paranoia is humiliating: It’s a dark, tragic hour. I am all alone and no one wants to hear me while I expose the doom that is about to befall me. Or I think I am radiating a presence that just drives people away so I hide to avoid their soul-crushing gaze.

I can fall into the latter simply by reading the news too much which is dismal enough some days, but in depression I take it a few steps farther and see people specifically out to get me.

I forgot to take my morning meds a couple of days ago — a bad news day — so I was despairing by bedtime. Yesterday, after taking a doubled dose of my antidepressant and getting some treadmill time in at the gym, I feel more realistic about what is happening. But I pay as little attention to the news as possible.

Yet this other feeling — that I have been putting people off and am ultimately responsible for the world’s failures — lingers. Pieces of that may be true, but the depression intensifies the wariness. I may be killing myself — sans gun or knife or poison — with the stress.