DOI: 10.31038/PSYJ.2024624

Schizophrenia is a nasty, vile, pernicious disease that you may hope to survive. Not much good ever came of it. However, with a few handy rules you can learn how to prosper as a mentally ill adult. Be courageous. You may find yourself up against the machinations of hidden enemies, who like Dr Mengele seek to experiment on you for their own amusement. But, having compiled this handy guide to living with schizophrenia, I can teach you how to pass for sane or at the very least fool most people about your aim, goals, and intentions, which are usually just simply a means of escape. Without further introduction, I present my thoughts on How to Understand and Communicate Effectively with Schizophrenia.

1. Learn to read the world through symbols. Nothing means what it says, not magazines, newspapers, or journals. Beneath the text of a thing lies a meaning that you have to decode. It’s best if you begin to learn to draw inferences early in your psychiatric episode as it may take you many months to perfect your ability to draw conclusions from display cases in department stores and the stacking of fruits and vegetables in the produce aisle.
2. Further, ignore the surface meaning of all communication. If someone tells you it’s a nice day be sure to figure out what nice means and if this is a cue for someone else to drop nuclear weapons on your town. Meaning lies in patterns that skim the surface. You will see patterns everywhere. It’s your job to learn as quickly as possible how to read those patterns so you know how to respond adequately and shape your actions accordingly. It’s up to you to decode those patterns and make sense of them so they aren’t just random noise or static of sounds and phenomena. This is why you make a great spy. You’re a breaker of codes! A seer of symbols. An oracle of hidden messages.
3. Regard all means of communication as private signifiers beamed to you and for you only. Listen closely. Even other people having a conversation are words meant just for you to overhear. TV, movies, print, and just plain talk all have something important to impart. Go to movies to receive instructions in the text hidden in the script. Read between the lines of headlines in the newspaper every day so you learn what is really happening in the world. If you learn to read the medium correctly, you’ll soon realize that WWIII is imminent. Isn’t that what authorities are always trying to hide? Either that or aliens rule the planet and always will.
4. To maintain physical safety, communicate as little as possible with other people. This way you will frustrate their attempts to torture you in small, dimly lit rooms. Other people are problematic. Who knows where their loyalties lie and to whom they report? Nefarious leaders always work through flunkies. Silence is golden and doctors may be CIA plants. Why else would they ask you so many inane questions? Isn’t the CIA after you to exploit your incredibly astute brain power anyway?
5. If you can, lie! It’s a safety issue. Your safety.
6. In learning how to understand your world that has just turned upside down and inside out, interpret everything according to rampant paranoia. Assume everyone is against you unless otherwise specified. Be suspicious of all communications. Facts in the paper aren’t real. That war in Ukraine? It’s a plant to help you understand you’re the one at war. Ordinary events are charged with meaning and threat. Even rodents like squirrels are suspect agents looking to gather data on you. The Russians have been known to use Beluga whales as spies. And squirrels are much more agile than whales. We have technology to make cameras pretty tiny now.
7. Also, learn to interpret random events as a directly threatening action taken by enemies against you! This especially holds true for earthquakes, the rising and setting of the moon, and even the pull of gravity itself. People are hunting you. They are able to utilize the earth’s physical properties in their search. Flee while you still can.
8. When you see advertising banners at department stores take them really personally. Sure, the sale is over-hyped. But that’s because store means to get your attention. Enter said store and buy lots of unneeded, unnecessary, but not unappealing or unattractive stuff. It’s about the most fun you’re going to have in a while. The more you buy, the more fun you’ll have and to be perfectly honest, you’ve been given permission by the giant banner to go on a shopping spree. Perhaps you already have a pair of sunglasses? But this pair makes you look really cool and maybe even sexy. So what if you drain your bank account? The shadowy organization for whom you work will magically replenish your finances. It’s best to stay away from your bank at this time.
9. And now, to communicate with your overlords speak quietly in your head. Everyone else can read your mind anyway, though you tend to forget that most of the time. Try to stifle thought around risky individuals so they don’t learn how you plan to finalize your escape. Learn meditating tricks to quiet your brain around others which is churning at breakneck speed through your mental landscape.
10. Finallly, be sly and crafty with all individuals. It just might save your life. Nurses have it out for you and aides are cranky with you for a reason. Never let them know of your interior life if you can help it.

If you follow this comprehensive plan, you too can take a stab at being a successful psychiatric patient. It won’t really be much fun, except for the shopping, but you will probably help save the planet. France will thank you. Germany will fete you. And England will award you an honorary degree. If you want, the US will in all probability dedicate the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade to you. And that’s all the achievement anyone could ever ask for.