My Life With Paranoid Schizophrenia

I'm Alice Shapiro, and I was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. When you're in the midst of your illness, you have a lot of fear about going out. I did. Sometimes it would take me three changes of clothes to get out the door. I'd have to push myself to do things that I wanted to do, even if it was just attend a party.

So I went through my entire life feeling very uncomfortable. If you don't recognize your problem and nobody else is recognizing it, you just get more and more internal, which is the disease. You just get into your mind so much so that there's no reality out there. It's all in your head.

I was afraid that I was going to be given shock treatment or hospitalized or something bizarre would happen to me; I'd be living with crazy people. So I would hide my feelings and hide everything that was wrong with me. But this woman, who, for some reason, I trusted, sent me to the psychiatrist, and that was the charm.

Now it's pretty easy because once you get back into a comfortable frame of mind and you're more comfortable in your body or with yourself, then life becomes a joy. You get your joy back, and that was the basic thing that you lose when you have a an illness like that. It's just gone. Nothing is happy anymore, or nothing is beautiful, and that's a sad thing.

So when you start to get that back, you recognize, oh, that's right, I felt that once, and I want it again. And so you work; you do everything in your power to get that back. And then, when you do, it's just beautiful, To keep pushing for your dream. I think that's what helped me, that i knew at the end of the road there was a light, and I was going to make it.