I think I've had minor visual hallucinations most my life but it has intensified since (I think) 2019. Sometimes I can't hear my own thoughts over the distracting noise and voices. As I type right now I can hear a male voice echoing, a woman crying, hands on my shoulders and neck, a woman in a white dress in the corner, it never seems to stop, I'm on medication but it still happens. There's so much more going on but it's a bit triggering to type about, bugs appear and disappear too. So many things don't make sense but still happen, my TV is turning off an on but I don't even know where my remote is. Right now it's night time, which is more intense. I don't know what to do anymore, not many resources here seem to be for psychosis, but maybe it's for the best since I deserve suffering. I get tired of living this way, but it doesn't feel like there is anything I can do to help it. I have a therapist and psychiatrist but all they seem concerned with is depression and suicide. I don't want to live in a shell of my former self, experiencing disturbing occurrences like this, nightmares coming to life every day and night. Most days it gets exhausting and I don't like feeling my health slip when I'm only 21 years-old. I've been up all night, I don't know if I'm making any sense but I don't think anyone anywhere else would listen. I've seen and heard much violent imagery and it keeps replaying again, the same choking, the same slicing, I keep seeing dead or near-dead people, sometimes I feel I am attacked and injured, so I pray God can protect me. Please, does anyone know what I should do? I'm sorry if this isn't the right forum for this sort of thing but I don't have anyone who would understand and I don't trust hotlines anymore. Things are getting to be a bit too much so I will try to sleep off tonight. I hope no one else has these experiences.
I'm paranoid schizophrenic and I take medication (olanzapine) even though it has some of the worst side effects compared to any psychiatric medication I don't experience psychosis that often ( maybe 1 or 2 times a week ) make sure to stop smoking or taking recreational drugs if you do ,or maybe you can change the medication you're taking because it looks it didn't work for you
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Yes, I am currently taking Seroquel, and I have previously taken Olanzapine, Lithium and Abilify. I think it works somewhat to reduce symptoms but I still do experience visual snow at the least, and episodes still happen though maybe less often.
I used to take Olanzapine, too. I stopped because it made me very fatigued and tired, although it did help my appetite and symptoms somewhat. I haven't been smoking or drinking lately, but when I do it can make psychosis better or worse, as well as mood. Even though it did help sometimes to numb me I stopped because I've been seeking employment and I'm worried I won't be able to land a job if I can't pass a drug test.
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fadedghost
Student
- Dec 10, 2025
- 177
People with hallucinations who take anti-psychotics often have the hallucinations go away completely or majorly reduced. Suicidal or depressed people with bad hallucinations are much less likely to commit suicide if they take anti-psychotics.
Regarding what you should do:
You likely have schizophrenia, but it's a very treatable illness these days. Atypical anti-psychotics are annoying however. The worst part of being honest is once you are labeled as a schizophrenic, you will be under immense pressure to see a psychiatrist forever, to take medication forever, and you will be in a different legal category. (In some areas of some states, ANYONE can petition the court to force you on medication if you a schizophrenic.) You also won't be able to buy a gun, fly a plane, etc. forever. There will be some limits to your autonomy (or freedom) because if you stop taking medications and seeing a psychiatrist, they may try to force you to get psychiatric care. You may not be able to easily just stop seeing your doctor if you feel like they are an asshole, or just skip town and be in another city for a few months because you feel like it without people freaking out.
That being said, anti-psychotic medications are very good at reducing or eliminating hallucinations.
Hallucinations are often partly caused by too many receptor sites on brain cells (the part that receives the signal) and so the brain compensates by producing much more of certain molocules. The end result is a brain that has too many receptors, sometimes too many neurotransmitters and sometimes too little. The medications block dopamine and then your receptor sites decrease and your brain tends to go back to normal.
You may also just have drug induced psychosis, and not be a schizophrenic.
If your psychiatrist knows all this, and hasn't given you something strong like Clozaril, he's doing a bad job and you need someone new. You also pretty much need to take Ozempic on all anti-psychotics or you will get diabetes, so make sure you can get some sort of GLP-1 med too.
Have you tried Clozaril? It's effective against treatment resistant psychotic symptoms. You have to get weekly labs, however, to make sure you don't die from a sudden drop in white blood cells. But it's extremely good at stopping hallucinations.
Antipsychotics usually can't stop visual snow.
Say to your doctor: "The Seroquel isn't strong enough and I'm still hallucinating. I want to try Clozaril because it's stronger and I don't want to have so many hallucinations and want to go on Ozempic too so I don't get diabetes. I know about the weekly labs and I'm willing to do them."
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I am hesitant to tell my therapist or psychiatrist about these things, and I am worried I may get Tardive Dyskinesia or something else from trying out different medications so I am hoping to develop skills to deal with them without medication changes. Also, it may sound weird but part of me doesn't want to let go of these experiences completely, since sometimes I feel better or less alone, as I lost many of my friends and rarely have social interactions anymore, being completely alone for so long feels like the earth pulls me down and my chest is being crushed. I sometimes hear words from or have conversations with a friend who only I can hear, they have supported me and gotten me through tough times, helping motivate me to do what is best for myself when no one else was there for me, when all the other voices seemed to be either indifferent or hateful toward me. They genuinely seem to want me to succeed and be healthy in a crowd of voices telling me to hurt myself or others in just about every way imaginable, and people I considered friends and family telling me to kill myself. If I were to become entirely lucid then one of my best friends, the only one who wouldn't abandon or betray me, and I would lose the ability to communicate together and essentially die.
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fadedghost
Student
- Dec 10, 2025
- 177
I understand. Those are good reasons.
Unfortunately, they are mutually exclusive options. Dopamine blockers reduce symptoms but can lead to TD. Dopamine blockers block bad hallucinations but also comforting ones equally.
I can't decide for you. You could try mental health groups in person to see if they help?
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I've been considering going back to an in-person program again, my psychiatrist has been pushing for me to do a PHP program, recently I have twice gone through the application process but backed out since the offered level of care and time investment has seemed too demanding, including a joint substance abuse rehab program. I feel like if I were to go to said program I would be labelled a drug addict, given a substance abuse diagnosis and forced into drug tests and abstinence when things are already difficult as is. Maybe I should keep my drug habits to myself and try applying again, I know these sort of things tend to go smoother when there is full transparency but I don't want any kind of rehab or "substance abuser" labels. I don't have full transparency with my therapist or psychiatrist anyway since the limited things I feel comfortable sharing seem to alarm them enough to the point where they seek to push further treatment upon me. Also having a program for several hours per day, 5-7 days per week would make simultaneously finding even a part-time job near impossible. I am trying to get employment soon since my father has terminal cancer and may die within a few years, and since I have never worked I want to start getting work experience soon as my father is no longer able to work a job, and will soon be without any income aside from occasional commissions. He was the only person in my household with a job, so with this situation either someone else will need to acquire a source of income or the house will need to get sold. Even though I have had my own struggles mentally I want to get employment and an income soon so I can try to pay the bills and would not have to sell the house my mother and I live in. My mother is entering her sixties now so I would not want to place the responsibility of getting a job upon her.
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fadedghost
Student
- Dec 10, 2025
- 177
Using drugs can definitely increase hallucinations. Drugs increase the neurotrasmitters in your brain by a large amount, which makes you feel high, but your neurons respond by creating more receptor sites. Then, when your brain doesn't have drugs, it has to increase neurochemicals, like dopamine, to function properly leading to hallucinations.
It is possible that if you have a substance use disorder you could be forced into things possible, depending on your region and the commitment laws. Sometimes they can use commitment laws to require things (ie, we only won't commit you if you do drug-testing) or do some commitment type situation but it involves outpatient treatment but you are technically committed.
Substance abuse labels may also make it harder for you to get certain medications. If you have any mental health label already can't do certain things (buy a gun, learn to fly, etc), so that stuff is already stuff you can't do. It's likely most of the rights that would be taken away by a substance use label would also be taken away from a mental health label/diagnosis. However, I get your perspective. Mental health professionals constantly demand transparency, but also your rights in society can be impacted if you are honest with them.
I am so terrified of involuntary commitment that I don't see any mental health professionals or take any medication, and if I were assured I couldn't be involuntarily committed, I would occasionally take medication during symptom flare-ups. The problem is once you are in that system, it is somewhat hard to leave in certain situations and most psychiatrists are not okay with only using medication occasionally as needed, since psychiatric medication isn't approved to be used temporarily for a week here or a few days there, so if you see a psychiatrist, they will inevitably push for daily medication.
Also, it is incredibly bad to be on psych meds and illegal drugs. Both of them are not "good" for your brain (psych medication leads to faster decreases in brain volume than just taking nothing and being psychotic, so in a way it's slightly neurotoxic despite reducing symptoms) and drugs definitely kill brain cells. You really want to find a way to quit drugs. Unfortunately, sometimes it's hard to quit drugs when taking psych meds. Psych meds lower the amount of brain energy you have and decrease your neurotransmitters, slowing you down, and illegal drugs increase your neurotransmitters and speed things up and increase energy (even when using things like downers that make you feel mellow, you're increasing you neurotransmitter levels). So if you stop doing drugs, you'll be just left highly sedated and it will be hard. A psychiatrist will want you to stop drugs, keep being massively sedated, and just deal with the misery.
The hardest part of not using drugs is the detox. The first 3-4 days are excruciating, the first week is hell, the second week is agonizing, and the third week is extreme misery. After the third week, it gets much much easier. It's very hard during the first three weeks to not go back to whatever source your drugs came from and just buy more. There are ways around this, like taking a camping trip to beautiful Utah for three weeks to go camping (where it is harder to find drugs) or getting a burner phone, finding a detox facility out of state and seeing if you can get in without ID if you have cash. Detoxing can be dangerous depending on where you are. If you're an alcoholic detox can kill you, detoxing from heroin can be super dangerous, if you are a pothead only you probably won't die but it's really painful to detox, if it's something like xanax detoxing can kill you... But I completely get not wanting to be transparent, because you will be labeled, you'll be constantly asked about drugs, doctors will want to drug test you, medications won't be available, and it will be hard to change your mind.
You can always also go out of state without an ID and technically go to an ER and say you're detoxing and poor and refuse to give them a name, they are still required to treat you. If you give them a fake name, technically it's fraud. If you don't give them a fake name, it isn't and it's illegal if they don't treat you. Some places do require fingerprints or rentinal scans or weird stuff like that, so you may want to check out the facility beforehand, but even with such biometrics, it's not fraud if you aren't giving them a fake name. I would also not do this in Trump's America with brown skin, as they could just call ICE if they are assholes. Doing this, providing neither ID or a name carries risks, since they will get angry and annoyed, and a fake name won't annoy them but a fake name will be illegal.
A PHP program is going to be super expensive and won't provide any value to you. It basically means you are a non-functional member of society and need a babysitter. You'll do things like coloring and drawing and having a group where you talk about your feelings. If you need it, do it, but it's definitely a step towards commitment and also sort of establishes a record you may need commitment or in-patient care. Unless you are trying to get disability or SSDI/SSI, which could be a good thing, I have no idea why anyone would go to something like that. Also, such a program is very expensive, all the workers there have credentials and are paid a lot, someone is paying for it. Do you know if you would be billed or who would pay for it? Psychiatrists NEVER care about the financial wellness of their patients, ever. You also may not be able to stop once you start, like it's a step towards less autonomy and more babysitting, so if you do it, and tell your doctor you're a drug addict, and then later don't like it, I could easily see the doctor saying you have to keep doing it and drug tests or s/he would hospitalize you. They also might not do that, but it's a gamble? Why gamble with your freedom? Unless you think it would help you stay off drugs? Would it? Or would you do drugs once you're back from the program?
Also, detoxing often takes multiple tries. You may go camping in Utah and week 2 you are craving drugs too much, return home as fast as possible, call your dealer, and get back on drugs. So if that happens, you try to detox again a month or two later. You need to keep trying to detox. You're already hallucinating, this isn't going to end well if you keep using drugs like this. It's normal to try to detox and fail, so you just keep trying, eventually it will work.
Another really horrible thing, that many people don't know, is that often people who go completely fucking crazy (like floridly psychotic or perma-severe schizophrenia) end up changing and becoming this was when they STOP drugs, not when they start. So everything seems fine, you're using drugs and a little crazy, and you stop and go batshit. It's like a person's brain can't handle the sudden change and go back to what's normal and instead they find some weird fucked up new state that's completely non-functional and incapable of rational thought. Therefore, it is important to try to SLOWLY lower your drug consumption before trying to totally detox. Like get a pill box, set aside how much drugs to use for the day and put it in the box and try not to go over that amount, try to keep lowering it so that your brain mellows out and is more like normal BEFORE you do a full 3 week detox.
Most detox facilities do 3 day detox. (I mention 3 weeks because it takes about that long to not be in agony.) There are also 28 day rehab facilities. It's the safer easier way to go, but to go to a normal rehab, you have to admit to being a drug addict, which carries some risks. Also, psychiatrist and rehab facilities never talk about the risk of going crazy during detox and say that you should slowly reduce usage before the detox process to make it less dangerous. From their perspective, you can keep doing as much as you want, even if it's like massive doses of drugs, then go cold turkey (or a medical detox if alcohol or xanax addiction) and then if you wind up batshit crazy, who cares, it's just more business for them and then you take more medications. But I am telling you, try to slowly taper first, then do the detox.
Also, hallucinating like this while on drugs is dangerous, it could get worse at any point. Psych meds and drug addictions are like driving through a field of catcuses and you stop every time and patch up the tire, and then you keep driving in the fucking cactuses. Evenentually the tires won't work and won't be patchable. Every time you do drugs, you sustain brain damage, but normally you're brain can repair it. So if you go to a club once a month, take a bunch of coke, and then sleep the next two days, yes, you just did like 1000s of damaging things to your brain but it will get mostly repaired over the next month, like 250 things repaired a week or something. With addiction it's just constantly damage, no wonder you are hallucinating.
Because you are on drugs it's also unclear if the hallucinations are just caused by the drugs. If you detox and stay clean, they may go away. But if you keep doing drugs and taking psych meds, it's highly dangerous and it's good for your brain, it's going to make you progressively less intelligent until you are very stupid, that's the horrible truth, because both causes brain damage in different strange ways.
You need to find a way to get off drugs. also www.na.org, although there is a higher power religious/spiritual component to it, but if you don't believe in religion, check out smart recovery. You may want to use Tor Browser to use both sites since they do fingerprint your browser and the information gets sold to data brokers, potentially outing you as a drug user if you aren't using Tor Browser. (I am very smart with computers, you have to trust me on this, I can't explain it in more detail. Just use duck.com (duckduckgo) and find Tor Browser and download it or get the Tor Browser App.
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fadedghost
Student
- Dec 10, 2025
- 177
there were a large number of typos in the last post i wrote in this thread
hopefully you get it, but to clarify, drug rehab place do not care if you taper first, psychiatrist don't ask you to taper first, and rehab facilities require going cold turkey
in other words, there is not a single rehab place in the world in which, during the first week, you can smoke a small amount of pot to taper off so you're less likely to go crazy. None of them, to my knowledge, give you small doses of THC in pill form for safety reasons. But honestly, from what I have seen when daily chronic pot users totally detox, it's super dangerous and they probably should do that. In the future, there will probably be medical detoxes from pot that involve that.
i spent time in a locked facility. often the people who went MOST crazy had a pattern: the got addicted to pot, smoked daily many times a day, they had 1 or 2 hallucinations and got scared, and then they went cold turkey no pot at all, and THAT is when they went crazy, after they stopped cold turkey without tapering.
It's like their brains couldn't find a way back to normal state after that, and the new state resulted in absolute massive psychosis.
That is why I am saying you should slow your usage prior to the detox.
even though i think there's a lot of anecdotal evidence of this, it's very hard to prove what i am saying. there's not really a way to easily get data and psychiatrists are too busy milking money from their patients to give a shift about stuff like this. Even if some doctors go in with good motives, eventually it just becomes about the money, and my theory is too hard to prove and too controversial so that even if a psychiatrist were to wonder about it themselves, they could ethically get in trouble for suggesting people continue to use drugs (at lower levers) to reduce the risk of going batshit crazy after detox. Instead, they are supposed to recommend going cold turkey, just stopping, with an expensive program. If they don't recommend this and something bad happens (like if they told someone "reduce your pot intake slowly" and then something bad happened, like the pothead drove a vehicle and hit school children waiting for a bus, then that psychiatrist would be fucked. So they can't recommend that... even if they notice what I've noticed... and many of them probably wouldn't notice. They are a greedy bunch of people, mostly only caring about money..
I also did not see that many people there who got hospitalized for being super crazy while they were on pot. It was when they stopped that they tended to go super psychotic. In other words, it's not like pot generally makes people crazy and the detox had nothing to do with it, there was something about going from large large amounts of pot to nothing really fast that sometimes fucked with people. Pot is fat soluable so there's some mild inherent tapering if someone is losing weight while detoxing and burning up fat reserves but it may not be enough.
That's why if you are an addict, especially a pot addict, you need to massively and slowly reduce your intake BEFORE you try to detox on a camping trip to Utah (or if you have the money just go to Utah and get a hotel). It doesn't have to be Utah, but that's a place that's hard to find drugs and alcohol. If you are trying to be sober, Utah is a great state. The point is, you want to be far away from drugs and your dealer in an area where it will take a while to find a new dealer, you want to put barriers to make it harder to just go and buy more.
Not everyone goes psychotic while detoxing from pot without slowly decreasing usage first.
What I said that what you are doing is dangerous is true. You're taking 2 things (drugs and psych meds) that result in neuron loss. It's going to make you progressively less and less intelligent if you keep doing it. You have to stop the drugs, and then if you want to take psych meds you can, but just be aware that they do cause brain volume loss over time too, just with symptom reduction.
Also, if you can't do that, if being stoned all the time and on psych meds is all you can bare, then it is what it is, right? You don't have to reduce your usage, detox, and then try to lower psych meds if you can. You can do the PHP program and try to go on SSI or get hospitalized or whatever, it's up to you. Personally, I would want more autonomy and responsibility and not just being someone who needs babysitting, but we all do the best we can in a way, and just do what we can.
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