Since Last Year, I’ve Had Some Kind of Hallucinations

Reader’s Question

My name is David, and I’m 16 years old. I’m sending this e-mail to know what kind of mental illness or disorder(s) I have. These are my symptoms:

• I’m disconnected from my emotions; I don’t feel many, but I’m bored by everything around me;
• I feel like I’m somehow better than the others, especially by my way of thinking which I think not many humans possess, even at an age more advanced than mine;
• I don’t have real friends, but I’m trying to make sure that people think I do so they can see me as boring as they are;
• I’m actually not interested in sex, in the opposition of my ‘buddies’ — I don’t mean that I’m gay or something because I’m not. I rather like to talk to girls or just enjoy the view than to do anything else;
• I also have great respect for the female gender that I don’t seem to have for the male one;
• Since last year, I have had some kind of hallucinations and strange dreams. I’m hearing voices from time to time, and some are calling me — but I can’t understand most of them. About the strange dreams, I see myself having a speech in front of a large crowd and then, I’m being shot. I fell on the ground, a woman is running over me, crying, and… that’s it. This dream is frequent;
• About a couple of weeks ago now, I’ve started to imagine that I was living in a dreamlike world and none of the things I’ve ever seen is real.

So, doc, what am I? Am I a psycho or some kind of schizo? Or am I just a regular teenager?

Our Consulting Clinical Psychologist’s Reply

Some of these symptoms are fairly common in teenagers…but hallucinations are not. “Voices” are an indication that your brain chemistry is changing and in the current theory, that the neurotransmitter Dopamine is slowly increasing. When Dopamine starts overproducing in the brain, we first feel somewhat “wired” and agitated. We next become suspicious and seem to find special meaning in patterns or things we experience in the environment — e.g., we feel that certain numbers are appearing on purpose or that people are spreading rumors about us. Then a weird kind of sense develops: while our emotional responsiveness decreases, we get a feeling of grandiosity at the same time — as though we have special skills or a special destiny. It’s a weird sense of “I feel like I’m a genius but I don’t emotionally feel anything special about that fact”.

What slowly emerges next are auditory hallucinations — at first they sound like mumbling. As they continue, the “voices” become clearer and often talk about sex or religion. The voices can be saying good or bad things about you. It’s at about this time that we have difficulty sensing our environment, as though things are unreal. From there we develop some strange ideas in an attempt to explain our situation — that maybe my experience is being controlled by an outside force/agency or that I’m in a computer matrix.

All that said, if you’re experiencing most of what I’ve described, it’s very important that you seek mental health evaluation. These changes in neurotransmitter levels can occur naturally or due to medication we take or other factors. It’s important to seek treatment as early as possible. You can also read more about this on my website at www.drjoecarver.com where I would recommend reading the article on Chemical Imbalance. While many of your symptoms are typically teenager — others are moving in a very serious direction that will require medical and psychiatric attention.