Member-only story
The Voices in my Head
A Deep Exploration of A Nigerian Living with Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia cases are not all the same; what triggers one person’s symptoms might be innocuous to another. Unlike depression and anxiety, which are the Cadillac of mental health issues and are hashtag-worthy, schizophrenia has not been given the attention it deserves. As a result, a lot of sufferers suffer stigma and are therefore less likely to talk about their condition openly.
In my late teens, I began hearing sounds in my right ear and then much later, the left. That was 15 years ago, and the closest diagnosis I have been given up till date is pulsatile tinnitus — a condition that equips me with the ultimate hi-def pleasure of hearing and, oftentimes, dancing to the tune of my own heartbeat (24/7). The sound can be described as a pounding or whooshing noise, which can be very unsettling and debilitating at times.
The most common causes of pulsatile tinnitus are conductive hearing loss and a slew of heart diseases and blood vessel disorders, none of which, according to the battery of sophisticated and…
