My liking of the video game series Street Fighter helped me get out of psychosis. Allow me to explain. Also, feel free to share your thoughts in the comments! Thanks!

*** I originally posted the below on a post on r/streetfighter, but it was taken down due to being, how you say, outside the parameters of the subreddit. I thought you all may find the below interesting if not eye-opening. ***

People can spend a long time in psychosis. Heck, people would spend the remainder of their lives in psychosis were it not for the advent of antipsychotic medication in the early 1950s. And psychosis doesn’t typically strike when you’re a senior. It typically strikes in the earlier years of life, meaning that the condition used to rob people of control of their lives for the rest of their lives since they were young, typically.

Psychosis has to be one of the worst things that can happen to a person, I believe. It’s a cunning brain disease that gets the best of you constantly when it is in effect. Basically, when you’re psychotic, you’re as good as dead. You’re just a silent, powerless victim to your brain living your life for you with its glitchy software, so to speak. Worst of all, when you’re psychotic, you don’t know it!

So, why would I bring up the unlikeliest of topics in this subreddit? It’s, well, remembering Street Fighter at a critical time that helped me to get on the right antipsychotic medication to finally exorcise me of this brain disease.

Allow me to explain.

I have spent a total of twenty-three years in psychosis. The first thirteen years were the prodromal stage, the initial stage of psychosis which is experienced by about 80% of schizophrenics. The prodromal stage is when the ‘manifestation’ does a good job of adapting but you’re still as good as dead. The destructiveness and bizarreness are generally low but it builds up over time.

The next ten years or so were the acute stage. That’s when bizarreness and destructiveness are ratcheted up significantly. I did a lot of regrettable things while in the acute stage, but I feel grateful that I did not torture, rape or murder anyone or any animal. I had bizarre delusions such as the one where I thought I was the archangel Uriel sent to Earth to save mankind. I thought god was moving the world around to give me ‘messages.’ That’s how bad it got in the acute stage, to be utterly honest.

So back to the story, I was about nineteen and a half years into my psychotic episode when my psychiatrist recommended that I go on antipsychotic medication. I was thirty-five. At the time, I had no idea what psychosis really is or what antipsychotic medication is used for. I had been on antipsychotic medication before and, well, it didn’t work too well. In retrospect, the drug did a lot to reduce the overall bizarreness and destructiveness of the delusions, but I was still as good as dead: I still had delusions, but they were subtle, meaning that they were low in bizarreness and destructiveness. The drug was partially effective, but not critically effective.

So, when the psychiatrist recommended that I go on antipsychotic medication, I immediately thought up of the drug Invega and blurted out my recommendation for the drug. (I discovered this drug weeks prior through random scrolling and I thought it was neat because it had ‘Vega’ in the name. You know that tall, blonde Spanish guy with a mask and a set of claws?) My psychiatrist was intrigued by my recommendation, even though I had no clue what anything was about, really.

Interestingly, my psychiatrist agreed to have me trial Invega. And you know what? It did the trick! Mind you, it took a while for the drug to finally get me out of psychosis. More precisely, it took close to three and a half years for the drug to do the trick. The drug was critically effective in that it brought me back to reality. It was the real deal and, if it were not for my liking of Invega’s name because of Street Fighter, I may have been on a ghastly journey of having to go through non-critically effective antipsychotic medications for who knows how long. Who knows? I may have spent the entirety of my life going through antipsychotic medications after another without actually coming out of psychosis! My liking of the name of Invega because of Street Fighter actually helped me out loads! In a way, Street Fighter helped me get on the right medication, and it made all the difference in the world.

You know, the last Street Fighter game I played before I became psychotic was Street Fighter Alpha 2 for the PlayStation. And now that I am at the other end of psychosis, Street Fighter has changed so much, yet stayed remarkably true to its roots.

So, there you have it! Street Fighter made a big difference in the unlikeliest of places. I hope this story lifts you up and makes you think twice about mental health. And yes, this is a true story.