hi mentallyill,
well the first thing you have to keep in mind is that you obviously have a severe anxiety disorder and people with severe anxiety are often afraid of becomming schizophrenic. It's pretty common from what i've seen.
It sounds like you have had a few spurts of delusions, but this could easily be because you were under the influence of drugs at the time. Using drugs, even marijuana has been known to cause psychosis while you are under the influence of them.
BUT, for those who have the schizophrenic gene, using any kind of drug, even weed is a very bad idea because it can trigger the beginning of the illness or worsen it. So it's a good thing you've stopped using pot. If your afraid of psychosis, and like you said you have experienced some delusions, i'd stay far away from all drugs from now on.
When your father was diagnosed with schizophrenia, was he no longer using drugs? If so, i'd say from what you described it does sound like he was schizophrenic.
oh, my symptoms started out with depression and then i started hallucinating mildly: seeing shadows, faces in the walls, etc. About 6 months into it, i developed a bizarre delusion believing trees and objects like chairs, street signs, etc were communicating with me through telepathy. I was paranoid about people reading my mind and watching me. the symptoms continued to get worse and about a year later, i was full-blown paranoid delusional believing the government was after me. They sent spy cars out to follow me. I got signals from their headlights that they were onto me because i knew too much, there were cameras installed along the highways, they were playing mind games with me, etc, etc.
Also around this time i started hearing voices. Mostly inside my head, but sometimes i hear them externally. Mostly it is just mumbling and gibberish that i can't understand. Sometimes they say strange things that make no sense, sometimes they comment on what im doing.
With medication, i don't have any delusions and i only hear voices sometimes and they dont really bother me.
concidering your father may have been schizophrenic and with all the drug use you've done and the few delusions you've had, there is reason for some concern, but still, try not to worry so much about it because it's more likely that you will not develope schizophrenia, and if you do, there are medications that can control the symptoms. Schizophrenia isn't always as bad as it sounds. For me, a lot of it has actually been a facinating experience
My best advice is to stay off drugs and alchohol and if you are extreamly worried about it, you might try asking your pdoc to put you on a low dose of antipsychotic meds.
if you have any more questions, im here.
