Schizophrenia Was the Greatest Adventure of My Life

Among my most prized possessions is a doorbell I ripped off a building during an open house. Nine keys to locks I’ll never see that I stole from an apartment I broke into. A religious pamphlet touting views I disagree with was swiped from an unlocked car outside a gas station. A hospital administration card I grabbed from an admissions desk when its attendant stepped out. Rounding out the collection are 33 pennies, one quarter, one 20-cent Euro piece, a weathered box of matches, a battery, and a Walgreens gift card.

I first showed my treasures to a nurse the day after a long night I spent wandering around San Francisco, picking up objects that spoke to me. I lost my phone, passport, wallet, and Kate Spade handbag that night. But I’d clung tightly to these items.

“I like you. You’re nice,” she told me as she emptied my paper bag of treasures onto a beige table with rounded corners. “A lot of people, they come in here yelling and acting up.”

She cataloged each item in a soothing voice: “One clicker. Seventy-eight cents. Two plastic cards.” Then she cut the underwire out of my bra—“Just in case”—and added it to the collection.

A week later, I showed my treasures to my mother upon my discharge. I explained that a team of psychologists experimenting on me put the objects in my path. Each held a hidden significance.

She smiled thinly, fighting tears.

“Oh, Mom,” I said, rolling my eyes. “It’s really not that beautiful of a story.”

I didn’t show anyone else my treasures for a year and a half, storing them in my closet as I waited to discover their purposes. But after countless psychiatry appointments and medication adjustments, I finally understood they were purposeless.

I forgot about the collection until I came across it eight months after psychosis. I’d lived with my mom ever since my parents realized I was too ill to live independently. While packing up to finally move out of my "sick house," I found the hospital bag buried under sweaters, shoes, and notebooks.

Seeing the nurse’s handwriting, I wondered what she’d thought of my pile of trash. I dug my fingernails into my thumbs until it hurt.

The night culminating in my hospitalization began like many other low-key Friday nights. I was home alone, knitting and listening to National Public Radio (NPR).

Then, the voices on the podcast spoke directly to me.

“Are you ready for your adventure, Sally?” they cajoled.

My phone notified me that an Uber was arriving. I changed into a cute outfit, touched up my makeup, and went downstairs.

Once settled in the car, I opened the app and realized I was en route to the city. We passed a sign that said “Hakkasan," a club I’d been to on spring break. Am I going to Vegas?

The ride concluded outside the Warfield, a large concert venue I’d never been to before. While loitering outside, I swiped self-consciously on my phone. There were no obvious clues, like the NPR voices.

A tall man in a fedora approached me.

“You’re the Chosen One,” he said, like someone might say, “Excuse me,” on a bus. "Follow me.”

We walked past check-in to the venue. As quickly as he appeared, he was gone. I was alone in a sea of retirement-aged people in tie-dye. A glimpse of merchandise stands revealed a Grateful Dead cover band was playing.

When I entered the concert hall, a couple twirled around me. I jumped. So did the lead singer. I spun around. So did she. I pumped my arms above my head. She continued to copy my every move. So it’s true, then. I am the Chosen One.

I set out into the city on foot, guided by the psychologists’ streetlights. I wandered in and out of unlocked doors.

One door led to a Spanish-language church service. Its leader asked me to introduce myself. I drew on four semesters of college Spanish to say my name and thank the congregation for hosting me.

They were paid actors whom the psychologists were feeding lines. But I appreciated their kindness nonetheless.

I sang in Spanish with the congregation. I dug through a small purse until a man told me to stop going through his daughter’s stuff. Then I pulled the mirror off the bathroom wall—just in case there was a secret passage behind it. There wasn’t.

Another door led to house painters who also spoke Spanish. They drank Coronas, my favorite spring break beer. The “Hakkasan” sign from the drive flashed in my mind. Surely, it wasn’t a coincidence.

“¿Puedo tener una cerveza?” I asked the men.

“¡Claro!” the man closer to the cooler replied. He pulled out a beer, popped the cap, and handed me the bottle with a wink.

“Gracias,” I said, smiling and clinking my bottle against his.

If they expected me to stay and flirt, I disappointed them. I walked past them to a room with dropcloths tacked to the walls. I pulled down a dropcloth, wondering if there was a secret passage behind it. There wasn’t.

“Hey!” The same guy who handed me the beer waved his arms above his head.

I apologized, shrugged, and exited the way I came. Finishing my beer, I searched for the next door.

It led to a small, messy apartment. I picked up a framed photo from the bedroom desk. A teenage girl in a forest green graduation cap and gown smiled at me from the frame.

“Oh, I get it. It’s like me in high school,” I said aloud to the psychologists, picturing my forest green graduation garb from 2013.

I put down the frame, borrowed a jacket from the closet, and smoked some weed I found on the nightstand. A man entered the bedroom.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded.

“What are you doing here?” I shot back.

“This is my house!”

I mumbled an apology and left, but not before swiping the mysterious keys from his dresser. Back outside, I jumped from rooftop to rooftop down a line of parked cars.

My spree ended in a San Francisco General Hospital stairwell. I was looking for a message. So I chanted the hook from “The Message” by Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five.

“Don’t push me ‘cause I’m close to the edge. I’m trying not to lose my head. Ha-ha, ha, ha!” I timed the “Ha’s” to my stomps as I marched up and down.

Two cops approached. “Stop,” one commanded.

I stopped rapping and marching but maintained my steady ascent. Reaching the top of the stairs, I continued into a hallway lined with patient rooms.

Then my face hit the floor.

A cop had tackled me to the ground from behind. I cried silently as they handcuffed me and dragged me to the behavioral health unit.

But before cops took me down, before my diagnosis, I was the Chosen One.

I didn’t feel like the Chosen One as I gazed at the objects over a year later. Doctors had forbidden me from working for the past 18 months to prevent stress-induced relapse. My medications made me sleep 10 hours a night and left me groggy during the day.

And I missed the magic of psychosis. How could I go from technicolor Oz back to black-and-white Kansas?

Carefully returning my treasures to their bag, I packed them to move. In my new home, they hang in a shadow box on my wall as souvenirs of my most thrilling, exotic trip.

After the experiment gave way to lucidity, I yearned to rewind somehow and prevent my onset. It didn’t help when my psychiatrist called psychosis “lost time.” I lamented to a friend, “I never got to be 24.”

Now I understand that I became the Chosen One at 24—chosen not by omniscient psychologists but by an imbalance of dopamine in my brain—an imbalance parts of the world regard as divine.

A friend once asked me to describe psychosis. All I could say was, “I f*ck*ng saw God.”