Side Quest Stories: Psychosis in Their Own Words - Episode 4: John
Editor's Note
This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity, readability, and flow. Repetitions, filler words, and transcription artefacts have been removed while preserving the speaker's intended meaning and perspective. Based on an interview conducted for Side Quest Stories: Psychosis in Their Own Words.
Introduction
In the fourth episode of Side Quest Stories: Psychosis in Their Own Words, I speak with John, a filmmaker, podcaster, and long-time mental health advocate whose experiences of psychosis have shaped both his creative work and his understanding of human experience.
John reflects on his first episode following university, a period characterised by sleeplessness, intense creativity, unusual artistic experiments, and a profound shift in how he experienced reality. Throughout the conversation, he explores psychosis through the lenses of art, metaphor, culture, and meaning, while questioning simplistic explanations that reduce complex human experiences to biology alone.
Our discussion touches on creativity, recovery, stigma, curiosity, and the importance of listening to people who have lived through psychosis themselves.
Key Themes
Creativity and psychosis
Meaning and metaphor
Recovery and peer support
Stigma and discrimination
Art and altered states
Identity and diagnosis
Lived experience expertise
Mental health narratives
Selected Quotes
"Psychosis is the death of metaphor."
"I would say psychosis is inherently meaningful."
"Listen to people who have experienced it. They'll tell you more than any textbook ever will."
Transcript
Introducing John
Dr Oli: Welcome to Episode Four of Side Quest Stories: Psychosis in Their Own Words, a podcast where I ask every guest the same questions and don't intervene. Not because I agree with everything that's said, but because the aim is to understand how different people make sense of their experiences in their own terms. My role is to hold the conversation, not to resolve or evaluate it.
How would you like to introduce yourself?
John: I suppose the conventional answer is that my name is John and I'm a filmmaker.
Although if I had my way, someone else would introduce me with smoke machines, dramatic lighting, a boxing announcer, and maybe being lowered from the ceiling on a rope.
The introduction would probably be much more impressive than the reality.
But yes, my name is John, I'm a filmmaker, and I've experienced what people call psychosis. That's why I'm here.
Where Did Your Story With Psychosis Begin?
Dr Oli: Where does your story with psychosis begin?
John: That's always a difficult question because, as therapists often say, everything seems to begin somewhere much earlier.
But if I had to identify a clear starting point, it would probably be the first time I was sectioned, around fifteen or sixteen years ago.
At the time, I had just finished my first year of university.
I stopped sleeping.
At the same time, I experienced an enormous surge of energy and ideas.
Over the course of several weeks, I became increasingly manic.
What that looked like was intense creativity. I was constantly making things.
I wasn't just painting with paint. I was painting with coffee.
I wasn't creating conventional artwork. I was arranging cereal across the floor as though it contained hidden messages. I was constructing installations out of found objects, broken glass, and whatever happened to be available.
I was recording myself for hours, talking into a dictaphone about theories of life, existence, and reality.
I would stay awake all night, walk around town barefoot, and film strange experiments that felt deeply significant at the time.
One example I always remember is putting a beef burger into a DVD tray and feeling as though I had created a profound work of art.
Looking back, I can appreciate how unusual that sounds.
But at the time, it felt meaningful.
It felt as though I had broken through into a different way of seeing the world.
For the first time in my life, I felt as though I understood who I was.
I felt as though I had found answers to questions and anxieties that had followed me throughout adolescence.
The experience gave me a powerful sense of meaning.
Eventually, however, other people became concerned, and I was taken to hospital by the police.
That was the first time I heard the word psychosis applied to what I was experiencing.
What Is Psychosis To You?
Dr Oli: What is psychosis to you?
John: That's probably one of my favourite questions.
I host a podcast called Coffee and Psychosis, and I ask almost everyone that question because the answers are always fascinating.
The standard clinical definition never really captures it for me.
One metaphor I like is the image of a volcano.
Something builds beneath the surface for a long time, and eventually it erupts.
But my favourite description comes from the phrase:
"Psychosis is the death of metaphor."
The first time I heard that, it immediately resonated with me.
During psychosis, things that would normally function as metaphors suddenly become literal.
The symbolic becomes real.
That connected deeply with my creative interests.
I studied film production and often felt creatively constrained. Art is usually allowed only in certain places—galleries, cinemas, exhibitions, studios.
Society generally accepts creativity when it's contained.
But if you start living creatively outside those boundaries, people become uncomfortable.
Psychosis felt like a collapse of that distinction.
The imagination stopped being confined to art and started spilling directly into reality.
For me, psychosis is extraordinarily creative.
It's a testament to the brain's capacity to construct meaning, stories, images, and possibilities.
Why it happens is a more difficult question.
Part of me thinks that when reality becomes overwhelming, the mind begins generating something different in order to cope.
What I struggle with is the idea that psychosis is simply a meaningless symptom of an underlying biological disorder.
That explanation feels incomplete.
It feels reductive.
I would say psychosis is inherently meaningful.
What Does Recovery Mean To You?
Dr Oli: What does recovery mean to you?
John: Recovery is a complicated term.
Historically, it emerged from peer-support movements as a way of empowering people to live meaningful and fulfilling lives despite mental health challenges.
I think that original spirit remains valuable.
At the same time, I think the concept has sometimes been absorbed into systems and institutions in ways that change its meaning.
Sometimes recovery becomes linked to productivity, employment, and returning people to socially acceptable roles.
That isn't necessarily wrong, but it isn't the whole picture either.
For me, recovery has to remain centred on the individual.
It's about building a meaningful life.
It's about relationships, creativity, purpose, community, and autonomy.
It's about finding ways to live well after difficult experiences.
I think it's worth maintaining a healthy scepticism about how recovery is defined and who gets to define it.
At its best, recovery empowers people.
At its worst, it risks becoming another way of measuring people against external expectations.
What Does Being Well Mean To You?
Dr Oli: What does being well mean to you?
John: One quote I often return to comes from Jiddu Krishnamurti:
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."
I've always found that idea compelling.
For me, being well isn't necessarily about happiness.
It's not a permanent state.
Life naturally contains highs and lows.
Moments of wellbeing come and go.
What matters more is whether I'm able to function in daily life and engage with the things that matter to me.
Can I make films?
Can I maintain relationships?
Can I pursue the projects and interests that give my life meaning?
Those questions feel more important than whether I can confidently declare myself "well."
I'm also not sure anyone remains permanently well.
Wellbeing seems temporary and fluid.
It's something that moves rather than something you permanently achieve.
What Do People Get Wrong About Psychosis?
Dr Oli: What do people get wrong about psychosis?
John: I think the first mistake is assuming that psychosis is completely incomprehensible.
People often encounter experiences that seem irrational or bizarre and conclude that there is nothing to understand.
They stop being curious.
But if you're willing to listen, there is often meaning beneath the surface.
The content of people's fears, beliefs, and unusual experiences frequently reflects the world around them.
During the Cold War, people worried about spies and nuclear war.
Today people may worry about social media, surveillance, or artificial intelligence.
That tells us something important.
Psychosis doesn't occur in a vacuum.
It reflects culture, history, environment, and personal experience.
At the same time, I think people can go too far in the opposite direction.
There is a temptation to believe that everything can be perfectly understood if we analyse hard enough.
I don't think that's true either.
Psychosis emerges from countless interacting factors.
Some aspects may remain mysterious.
Trying to explain every detail can become exhausting and even harmful.
Another major misunderstanding concerns violence.
The words psychotic and psychosis are often used as shorthand for danger.
That association creates enormous stigma.
People hear the label and assume risk.
They assume threat.
But the reality is that people experiencing mental health difficulties are often far more likely to experience violence than to commit it.
That misunderstanding affects employment, relationships, healthcare, and everyday interactions.
I also think there is a tendency to romanticise psychosis.
Sometimes people portray it as a mystical gift or magical power.
I find that just as problematic as reducing it to pathology.
Both extremes miss the complexity of the experience.
Finally, I think some researchers, professionals, and commentators can end up fetishising psychosis.
The experience becomes fascinating as an idea while the actual human beings living through it are overlooked.
That's something I remain uncomfortable with.
What Advice Would You Give To Others?
Dr Oli: What advice do you have for others about psychosis?
John: My first instinct is to jokingly say:
Read a book.
But underneath the joke, there is a serious point.
Listen to multiple perspectives.
Don't settle for a single explanation.
Read psychology.
Read sociology.
Read neuroscience.
Read philosophy.
But most importantly, listen to people who have actually experienced psychosis.
For much of history, people who experienced madness were assumed to have no insight into their own lives.
I think that's a mistake.
People who have lived through these experiences often have profound knowledge about them.
That doesn't mean every explanation is correct.
But it does mean their perspectives matter.
I also think we need to challenge the assumption that people experiencing psychosis are incapable of reflection, therapy, growth, or recovery.
I've had professionals tell me that I'd never work again and would remain on medication for the rest of my life.
Those predictions turned out to be wrong.
And I don't think it's helpful for people to hear those kinds of messages.
So my advice would be:
Stay curious.
Listen widely.
Treat lived experience as a valuable source of knowledge.
And never assume that someone's future has already been written.
Final Reflections
Dr Oli: I think that's a great place to leave it. Thank you so much for coming on. That's all the questions.
John: Thanks for having me. It was fun.
Dr Oli: That was really interesting. I'll stop the recording and check in with you afterwards, but thanks so much for being here.
John: Thank you.
About Side Quest Stories
Side Quest Stories: Psychosis in Their Own Words is a series of conversations exploring lived experiences of psychosis, recovery, meaning, and mental health in participants' own words.
The series brings together diverse perspectives on psychosis, creating space for reflection, dialogue, and understanding beyond simple explanations or single narratives.
Explore more episodes in the series as they are published.
