I was the kind of a guy who sits for hours writing about what's going on in my head, always searching, and going deeper and deeper. I thought that I could solve the puzzle of psychosis. I wanted to write a book on the subject.

Now I know my recovery depends on staying out of my head, I also suspect it's my way of healing as well.

I think it was a sort of natural progression, and a slow realization that none of what I thought got me any closer to the life I wanted (just a normal life). I don't really know how to answer your question, or if i've answered it. I suspect that after a long period of trying to make sense of what I am going through I just gave up, because, maybe my last episode just helped me to see (a long with getting sober) that in my head nothing makes sense, and to try to make sense of it takes me to a place where I'm unstable again.

I say that illnesses are empty things, void of meaning, but not because learning about them has nothing to offer. The tools of recovery are important, even if they come down to just common sense. I just think the obsession part of it is what gets to people. Lives dominated by thinking about illnesses. Always conscious of illness, manifested in every interaction with people, and when you're alone.

It took reflection to get away from reflection, in some degree, but to really come to grasp that it took talking to other people, therapist and friends. None of what I write these days is the product of serious self reflection, or perhaps my idea of reflection is seriously schewed by the depth and detail to which I am accustomed.

Friends and people always felt I knew a lot of stuff, and was intelligent, but I didn't feel I was getting anywhere. So I stopped reading and writing, and got a job, and now I'm not totally well but I'm better today then even a year ago.