It was my desire to reduce the fear and sense of isolation associated with diagnosis, increase awareness and reduce stigma sur

Hallucinations

Some of the hallucinations I have had are quite funny. I will go through and give an example of a situation that surrounds each hallucination.

Smell of onions on my hands:

Each time I have been pregnant I have had the smell of onions on my hands. This occurs about four or five times throughout the pregnancy from about the 3^rd or 4^th month and the longest it has occurred for it 8 days.

I got to the point in each pregnancy to stop eating onions; I wouldn’t even eat anything with onions in them. Despite doing this, the smell still lingered, at least to me anyway. I would wash my hands with dish washing detergent, disinfectant, even bleach, and yet, after scrubbing them red raw and sometimes drawing blood, I could still smell the onions. I would go up to friends and shove my hands under their noses and ask them if they could smell onions. Despite them always saying no, I could still smell them, and then after a couple of days it would go away. Luckily I only experienced this one while I was pregnant with my kids.

Smelling Vomit:

I have a real phobia of vomiting and it really sucks when I am pregnant and I get morning sickness. I have only become aware of this hallucination in the last two months. It only occurs just after my menstrual cycle is finished. When I wake up some mornings as I make my coffee, I start to smell vomit. I start to think that it is on me or my clothes and I become irrational about it washing and rewashing myself and my clothes, this smell will stay with me for up to 3 hours and it is disgusting.

Feeling itchy and scratching:

Never would I be a person to ever admit to self-harm, yet when I think about it, I think maybe I do. When I get manic, and I don’t get there very often, but when I do I get so much energy and so many ideas that it feels as if the energy is some how making my skin crawl. Up until recently when my partner pointed it out to me, I would never have admitted that I do self-harm. When my skin crawls I feel like I have to scratch it yet if someone points it out to me, I become more aware of it. I used to scratch myself until I drew blood, I would blame mosquito bites which sometimes they were but mostly I wouldn’t even know why I was scratching and then I feel the pain when I look at what I did to myself and wonder why myself. Since my partner told me about it four months ago, I have only scratched myself twice.

Being able to conquer the world:

Even though I know this is a hallucination, I really enjoy it. Except that those around me look at me as much to say, “Oh my god, here we go again”. When I started painting my entry for the mental illness awareness art competition, I started to believe that my work would be good enough to win an Archibald prize. When I was accepted onto “Who wants to be a millionaire?” in 2004, I was initially talking about winning the million dollars, let alone getting to the hot seat, which as it turned out, I only got to the top ten, but I will keep trying and one day I will get to the hot seat.

When I am in this world-conquering phase, I believe that I am it and everyone should listen to me and do as I say. My latest plight is to take on the media single handedly, which of course I know now that I can’t, but I can certainly help the cause, I am helping by writing this chapter after all. So even though sometimes I try to take it all on at one time, it gives me a positive road to follow and maybe if I can help one person understand the nastiness, and indiscriminate ways of this illness maybe I can help one person accept and learn about this illness.

Some symptoms I have had for years, yet am only noticing now. Having only started to accept my illness, I am only now becoming aware of symptoms that have been there for a long, long time.

Drinking and clubbing

I am sure that many people have, as young adults, gone out drinking and nightclubbing. Though like everything else, I took it to the extreme. When I was working, I would get home at about 5 pm and start drinking at 5:05 pm. I would go out on the Friday night and crawl home on Monday morning still half drunk and somehow make it to work. Other weekends I would just have an open house where up to 50 friends would float through during the weekend. And we would all drink and do silly things. But when I went clubbing it was nothing for me to pick up a bloke go back to his place, f*ck him, and go back out, pick up again and repeat this over the weekend and if anyone tried to stop me I would downright abuse or fight him or her. Then there were the nights I would go out and strip off at the nightclubs and to me it was because I was hot, somehow I didn’t understand that it wasn’t all right to take your top off on the dance floor and would often be asked to leave.

Fighting and being nasty
Other nights I would go out just to cause trouble, I wouldn’t drink all that much but I would want to fight and I would not go home unless I had been in at least 2 fights. I am not proud of these moments at all but it has helped me to understand why I went through a lot of domestic violent relationships as well. Believe me sometimes I gave as good as I got, but when my partner at the time started breaking bones, I started to cool off. I have recently recognized some of the feelings of rage that I used to feel and I am going to seek help through anger management.

Promiscuity

What can I say; I think I used to have a mattress strapped to my back. As I said earlier I would go out, pick up, get laid and return to the pub so I could pick up again. Then I started running away interstate and on one of these trips I met a train driver and he was very nice and I would tell him all about what I did and everything and quite often he would pick me up drunk and let me sleep it off in the drivers cabin. As we got to know each other we also had an affair. I would not think twice to give him oral sex whilst he was driving the train and occasionally I would have sex with him whilst he was driving, despite the fact that people could see what we were doing, I had no shame. I then developed some sort of a fetish for public transport, I did it on the Manly ferry in Sydney, trains in Sydney, buses and taxis in Canberra, there was no stopping me. Even when I got into relationships I would cause arguments so that I could go on the prowl. And then when it caused friction I would blame the person I was with at the time of making me do it.

I must say though, that since finding out about my disorder and having a wonderful supportive partner, I have stopped doing these dangerous things.