Find a therapist to treat psychosis

Forty-eight hours following my hospital admission, doctors determined I was totally disabled.

For 11 months, I lived in full disability.

Today, I am not cured, but I am fully recovered.

Recently, I received an email from a young man who was angry at me for advocating for schizophrenia recovery. He said schizophrenia cannot be cured (which I agree with) and that I had no understanding of severe schizophrenia.

In this post, I would like to address both of these points. First of all, not only did I have severe schizophrenia, but I also spent four years homeless, including 13 months living outside, suffering from severe paranoia, delusions, and hallucinations. According to my first team of psychiatrists, I was never supposed to get better. During the following year, I had a very poor response to five different atypical (newer) antipsychotics I tried, and it seemed likely that I would be totally disabled forever.

But I did get better. Gradually, thanks to treatment with clozapine (which is not for everyone but has worked wonders for me), I live today in full recovery/full symptom remission. I am very aware that I am recovered, not cured. My highest hope is to continue clozapine as I am now for the rest of my life, and also to share hope for recovery with other people.

In this post, I will also share what I am up to in 2026.

Permanently and totally disabled

When I was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 2007, my prognosis was bleak. Within about 48 hours of my hospital admission, it was determined that I would be permanently and totally disabled. I had no idea at that time that, not only would I recover, but I would also spend the rest of my life advocating for proactive treatment in schizophrenia.

Though I believe it was wrong of my first doctors to say I was totally disabled, and so quickly, I understand where they were coming from. I had come into the hospital against my will after people who lived beside the churchyard where I slept every night called the police on me. I had been screaming at the top of my lungs back at the voices inside my mind.

When I entered the psychiatric observation unit, my clothes were filthy, and I admit I smelled like urine. (In my schizophrenia, I had lost control of myself, urinating when the voices told me to, at the worst and most embarrassing times.) I wanted a bottle of water, but was paranoid of tap water. I’m sure the staff immediately recognized my “response to internal stimuli,” which is when you hear or see things that are not present in reality, and respond to them, often by abruptly looking away in the direction you hear or see them. I used to do this all the time.

My life before my diagnosis

Life had not been rosy before my first hospitalization. I thought I was still that USC scholarship winner who kept great grades and did research, but nothing could have been further from the truth. My cognition (which would return following my recovery) was poor, as I was distracted by voices in my mind. Due to disturbing hallucinations that made strange patterns on pages of books and paper, I could hardly read.

I had lost all my friends. Growing up, life has been filled with friends from church, school, and music programs. I had been very close with my parents, who were proud of my grades and accomplishments and devoted to supporting my passion for playing the violin and my college education so that I could build my future.

Find a therapist to treat psychosis

I did not have a slight case of schizophrenia that I easily recovered from. Mine was severe and brutal.

In my case, recovery took over a year. I spent 11 months trying five different atypical (newer) antipsychotics with very little success. I had side effects that were nearly impossible to live with, including muscle rigidity, a blunt affect, rapid weight gain, and the need to sleep 16-18 hours every night, though I would wake up every morning exhausted.

Following that terrible year on all the different meds, my new doctor, Henry Nasrallah, suggested treatment with an underutilized medication called clozapine. I was told it could cause me to gain more than 50 pounds, and that I would need a weekly blood test to screen for a very rare but potentially fatal side effect. I didn’t care about the side effects or needles, as I was so desperate to regain any semblance of a normal life.

Fortunately, I am a clozapine responder. I have just celebrated 18 years of taking the medication (I have never missed a dose). Thanks to clozapine, I enrolled at the University of Cincinnati to finish the degree I had nearly finished at USC, and graduated with a 3.84 GPA two years later. Today, I work as co-founder and president of the CURESZ Foundation and publicly speak and write about schizophrenia on the side.

As I said before, schizophrenia cannot be cured today, but recovery is possible. Perhaps someday it will be curable! Researchers in Israel have tried deep brain stimulation in green monkeys, which can reverse signs of bizarre behavior similar to the human experience of schizophrenia.(1) With time, medications for schizophrenia are getting better (though we have nothing as good as clozapine yet, which came out in 1990). I do believe there is hope for more people with schizophrenia to achieve higher levels of recovery. That is why I work so hard to educate the public.

What I have learned is to never give up. There is usually a new medication, treatment, or supplement to try.

Today, I am doing better than what I imagined even five years ago. I thought I would never work full time, but I am. I thought I would always be a bit sedated, but with the passing years, I find myself more productive and alert.

I play violin at my church, study Chinese in my free time, have one piano student whom I’m proud of, and love taking long walks on my university campus, which is a block away.

I want to say I’m sorry to the individual who wrote me in anger, accusing me of not understanding schizophrenia. I hope he never gives up until he finds recovery. And, if indicated, I hope he tries clozapine.

Even with schizophrenia, there is always hope.

1. In breakthrough, Israeli scientists use deep-brain stimulation to counter schizophrenia. https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-breakthrough-israeli-scientists-use-de…. Retrieved February 26, 2026.

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