[ziles88]

Hi qwertyFish thank you so much for reaching out.

I have a close family member, and close friend who both suffer from Schizophrenia. Although I'd hate to make any type of diagnosis over a medium like this, I feel you've been descriptive enough for me to make an educated guess.

Schizophrenia is a fairly complex disorder with varying levels of severity. What you described sounds very close to what a lot of people describe as their first 'episode', which commonly comes between the ages of 18-30. It includes what you've described, a long period of being awake, with intense thoughts, paranoia, and a inescapable need to 'do something' (such as wipe your devices).

One of the greatest challenges of dealing with this is finding treatment fast enough before the disease progresses. Often once it progresses, the person no longer is able to realize something is wrong. As you've described it, you still have that sinking feeling that something isn't right. Often at this stage general practitioners will not understand the disease enough to make a diagnosis, so it's important you see a trained psychiatrist as soon as possible.

For your question about evaluating your condition objectively, this is part of the core treatment of Schizophrenia and it's related disorders, so it would be best a doctor helps you with this. Adderral is a known to aggravate Schizophrenia as it interferes with Dopamine, I'd advise to cut down or stop taking it until you can speak to a doctor. There is also a very small chance you are experiencing a reaction to long term Adderall use it's self, experiencing a Amphetamine psychosis which has very symptoms to Schizophrenia but is temporary. Do not risk it though, for a lot of people if Schizophrenia advances, they are unable, or refuse to seek treatment.

[qwertyFish]

Thank you for that answer. My "hopeful" theory is that I did get hacked and maybe overreacted too much. However, if I am being honest, regardless I think it is likely amphetamine psychosis. I have been taking it for 3months but as month 4 started I began to take a bit more at times, possibly leading to these symptoms.

I think being somewhat paranoid is positive, but I need to have a better way to assess the underlying concerns rationally and not from a paranoid/worst case view.

Thanks.

[nefitty]

A simple question is, "What value would someone get from intruding on my life?" If you're not a corporate CEO, a politician, a billionaire, etc chances are that the risk someone would target you to upend your life are extremely low. Either way, it's good you are documenting your experience. This could help when describing what you're going through to a physician. Please seek medical help, you sound like you are a bright individual that just needs a helping hand right now.

[qwertyFish]

Thanks. I tried to keep my post somewhat objective but biased towards the more outlandish aspects of my claim.

> what value would someone get

People do it for the lulz. I posted a snarkey advert saying I couldn't find anything outside of Wordpress tweaks on Craigslist and included a bit about security and people asking to hack Facebook. Said it would be cool if someone in security was interested, but doubted it due to their market value, was looking for a wed developer (like me) or a designer to collaborate with.

> got a message with a ridiculously long troll response about being a ms in CS who casually designs machine learning algorithms but does know the basics of building a computer from scratch. Take my word for it, total troll.

> got a message asking to hack Facebook fake arcade slots for points. Really needed "fake coins for this game". Was pushy.

> got a response asking what country I was in because "what they wanted might be better served by someone not in the us for a couple reasons..." Was pushy.

> was told I was a "script kiddie" even though I never claimed I was a hacker and said I was a simple web dev. Link to Metasploit video and other black hat resources

> several other messages

> had upgraded to El Capitan. That day I had 50gb of traffic on my network. Typically 2.5-5 or less.

> couldn't reach cloud flare network.

> during boot to recovery halfway through load my screen would blink and reset the load bar.

> phone was getting killed battery wise drained while off

> tcpdump outgoing requests to random servers. Not sure if I read results correctly but some did not seem like requests that made sense. I have icefloor on and ALF set up. Maybe legit, just seemed weird to go to random servers.

> console showed 4000 errors. Many are related to El Capitan and don't know how to interpret them. Several seemed sketchy but maybe this was me misinterpreting them. I saved some of the logs.

[bcjordan]

From what you've been going through it sounds extremely likely you are experiencing stimulant psychosis, but the best way to approach this objectively is to have your psychiatrist do the assessment.

PLEASE contact your psychiatrist / psychiatrist's office about this RIGHT NOW -- call them and make an appointment or otherwise discuss treatment options over the phone, tell them you're concerned you may be experiencing amphetamine psychosis or something else -- they are trained to make this call and have seen it thousands of times before.

Time is of the essence, it's much more effective to seek treatment before a condition worsens. This can be a dangerous state to be in, and there are treatments that will help you get through this safely.

If there's nothing going on, they will help you confirm that. If not, they may save your life.

It's possible, if not likely, you may need to briefly visit a hospital for supervised treatment -- understand that's a perfectly common thing and the most safe, smart option.

It's also worth noting that there are effective non-stimulant treatment options for ADHD now if that is what you are being treated for. So getting treated for this won't mean you can't still be treated for that -- your psychiatrist will help you find an optimal plan.

If your psychiatrist is unavailable or you do not have one, contact your primary care physician's emergency line. If you have neither of those providers, you can contact me and I can find you the right number to contact for assistance for your state/region -- my username @ gmail.

Also happy to talk through anything with you as well, same email. Wish you the best!

[thomaslkjeldsen]

> had upgraded to El Capitan. That day I had 50gb of traffic on my network. Typically 2.5-5 or less.

After upgrading an iMac to OSX El Capitan the Photos.app decided to upload all photos on the iMac to iCloud. I consider it to be a bug since all photos on the mac originally came via iCloud from my iPhone. Seems unnecessary for Photos.app to upload every single file again, but it did.

Network bandwidth was saturated (high packet loss, almost useless) for a few days until Photos.app was done uploading.

[fishanz]

I agree that you should get some psychiatric help (I can sympathize with your condition), but the 'battery draining while off' gives me pause. How bad was the battery drain, and was the device 'off' or 'sleeping'?

[ziles88]

After reading what you just wrote here, I am now much more convinced you are experiencing a Schizophrenic episode. Please please seek treatment immediately.

[guessbest]

> adrall (40mg)

This is a lot of Adderall. Consider lowering or stopping your dosages. See a primary care physician ASAP, or go to a hospital if you feel in danger, and talk to him/her about stopping your dosage and alternatives to Adderall.

[allworknoplay]

It may be harmful to stop abruptly. Talk to your doctor.

[beeboop]

Over the course of a day, if you've been taking it for years, it doesn't seem like much. I have heard of doctors prescribing 30mg (20 morning, 10 at noon) for people brand new to it.

[qwertyFish]

my doctor prescribed me 40mgs, first time. I have been on it ~4 months. I take 20 in the morning and 20 in the afternoon. I don't think it is a totally massive amount, but I am posting in my own thread about whether or not I am insane. I am going to try and cut my dosage in half though, because that seems like quite a bit.

[keefe]

' I take aderall (40mg) daily, slightly more recently' paranoia is a frequent side effect from amphetamines, which is what adderall is. It's very easy to slip on it and you state yourself that you are taking more than your prescribed dose. I'd recommend getting off this junk as soon as possible, I've watched the side effects first hand. You're not crazy (most likely, based on the evidence so far). If you must take a stimulant, have you talked to your doc about modafinil instead? Please, be aware of the impact a psychostimulant has on your reasoning - it's easy to convince yourself it's not the problem. I wish you well and also please make sure to sleep properly and don't take any late in the day, sleep deprivation leads to paranoia as well.

[bossrat]

What you describe can have many explanations, and is nowhere near an extreme diagnosis such as Schizophrenia.

Anybody's brain can react the way yours did to stress; many brains are less able to handle stress; stress comes in many forms, including PTSD, drugs, alcohol, anxiety, and even lack of sleep.

You shouldn't be taking Adderol without medical supervision and whoever is supervising you taking needs to be qualified to handle this.

[ziles88]

Bossrat, you're speaking in platitudes, and being vague. No there are not many explanations for multi day long psychosis. In fact, psychosis from Adderal and all those other things you mentioned is a more rare side-effect than the percentage of people who will get Schizophrenia to begin with. So please, fully understand a topic before you interject.

Please realize Schizophrenia affects 1.1% of the American population, and that's just the general form, and that which is diagnosed. The real number is likely higher. It is neither an 'extreme diagnosis' nor is it that rare.

[bossrat]

you are simply wrong to run around diagnosing people as having schizophrenia based on your anecdotal experience. As I explained in another reply to you, the symptoms described do not match the criteria for schizophrenia. Call that a vague platitude if you want.

On margin, more people experience brief episodes of psychosis than who experience chronic psychotic illness, so again, you are just plain wrong.

the diagnosis of schizophrenia is a diagnosis of an extreme form of mental illness, regardless of its prevalence; cancer kills a lot of people, but it does so in an extreme form: the prevalence has nothing to do with the extremity.

[qwertyFish]

Thank you for saying this. This account was the first one to respond and continued saying this. Seems a bit strong, I think it is more adderall/sleep/stress related as it was essentially a one-off occurence.

[ziles88]

This is a very dangerous assumption. Often drug use brings out peoples underlying mental health condition. Do not assume they are related just because you started taking Adderal recently. In the case of my friend, he attributed his symptoms to first time cannabis use in college, thinking if he just stopped smoking it would go away. It didn't.

[zamalek]

> see a trained psychiatrist

Always the best advice.