By the Author / Source: abuaram.site
In a state of dissociation, orders echoed relentlessly in my head: Mohammed will go to a specific area; Mohammed wants to leave; Mohammed hesitates to go to his usual spot; Mohammed must not leave the house at all; Mohammed must return home immediately. The voices inside my mind kept repeating: “Go back home.” Driven by these commands, I found myself wandering away from familiar places and heading straight into danger.
I want to clarify that at the onset of my schizophrenia, I did not experience any of its advanced symptoms. Initially, my illness was limited to periods of exhaustion and severe emotional relapses, during which I would isolate myself in my room and house for months on end. No one was there with me; I had no close family nearby. My mother—who was my entire family—worked far away, single-handedly carrying the burden of meeting my financial needs.
Once a week, I would leave the house to wander through the West Bank city of Bethlehem and buy enough alcohol to last me for several days. I truly enjoyed that day out, just as I enjoyed my days at home browsing the internet, studying, reading, and keeping up with social media. I formed connections with people from all over the world through these platforms, conversing and writing. I can no longer recall what I wrote back then; that period of my life is lost forever.
I was addicted to pornography, suffering from the absence of my beautiful girl at the peak of my desire. I spent hours selecting the most beautiful women on adult sites, masturbating around seven times a day while watching them. I desperately missed having my girl beside me—to hold her, kiss every inch of her body, and lovingly savor every single detail. I longed to explore the most intimate parts of her alluring body, kissing her from head to toe, gazing closely at her intimate form, and touching her tenderly while imagining her fully naked beside me in reality. That girl I wished for—I have no idea where she is now. I was indulging my desires excessively, in an unwholesome and absolute manner.
After reaching my twenties—specifically after getting married at twenty-three—a severe form of schizophrenia began to manifest. I started displaying reckless behavior, driven by a deep layer of my subconscious mind that I never realized would become part of my illness. My schizophrenia began compelling me to break out, wander in a haze of delirium, experience hallucinations, drink alcohol outdoors, and head toward IDF checkpoints to cause trouble. Perhaps my objective was to cross the borders illegally and reach my favorite spots inside Israel; that was my goal. I began demonstrating behaviors that completely clashed with the social norms of my community.
This illness brought me numerous harrowing experiences, including repeated arrests by both the Palestinian Police and the Israel Defense Forces and Border Police, summonses for police interrogations, and having bottles of my expensive alcohol smashed and poured out. An Israeli female soldier at the Tunnel Checkpoint in Bethlehem even stole my money and my transit card. Doesn’t that wretched woman get paid a good salary by the IDF? Aren’t her family members in Israel supposed to be wealthy?
I felt as though a spell had been cast over my life after I turned twenty. A form of dissociation took hold of me that I had never known before. I often reproached my wife, speaking to her in delirium: “Ever since I married you, I’ve been doing things I have never done in my entire life. What kind of strange magic has come over me? My mind is sub-consciously driving me, without a care in the world, toward dangerous places and unsafe behaviors among hostile, ignorant people who could harm me!”
Even to this day, whenever I relapse into that schizophrenic state or stop taking my medication, the same cycle repeats itself: I revert to the very behaviors I practiced intermittently over a period of twelve years. I had never even experienced tangible, vivid spiritual encounters with spiritual entities before my twenties as clearly as they manifested afterward. Does schizophrenia evolve with age? Or what was it that changed? A schizophrenic side of my persona emerged—one I had never known or recognized, and never imagined would become part of my mind or life.
For the past four years, I have been living in a stable condition free from schizophrenic symptoms. My mood and life are anchored in calmness and inner peace, thanks to my strict adherence to my medication schedule. This stability has helped me reduce my alcohol consumption by 50 percent; I now drink in moderation, limiting myself to a few quiet evenings at home each week, far away from drinking in the streets or public places. I no longer suffer from those psychological states that used to drive my behavior. My life feels normal, and my mind functions consciously and soundly. I have broken free from the grip of that illness, moving forward as a grounded, self-aware individual.
