I did not know I had bipolar disorder when I moved from Melbourne to Norfolk Island in June 2013 but unfortunately that is when I started to exhibit symptoms at age 24.

I started to get paranoid, emotional, impulsive, irrational. A "friend" of mine in Australia took advantage of my paranoia and convinced me that he was working for the federal government and I needed to fly back to the mainland, for "government protection." So I left all of my stuff on the island except 2 bags with my laptops. Shortly after I arrived in Melbourne my "friend" ditched me and thats when I began to unravel.

I started to talk very fast. I quickly lost touch with reality.

The first time I became very paranoid that I can recall is when I thought my roommate in the hotel i was staying in was an assassin sent to kill me, hired by someone from the "dark web".

Then, I thought everyone I had ever met knew exactly what I was thinking in real time.

Over the next few days I would cycle in and out of different delusions. One hour I thought I was on my way to Hogwarts. The next hour I thought I was in a final fantasy game. And so on, there were dozens of different ones that I can't all remember.

A few days later I worsened and I lost my bag which included my phone, laptop, passport and wallet... so i couldn't pay for a room, food, leave the country, or call anyone (in any case I think I had run out of money by this point). I was wandering the streets for 10-16 days, suffering from hallucinations, delusions, imagining physical people who weren't there.

Got on a train 3 hours out of the city to a place called Aubrey for some reason, and was wandering around the dimly lit street at night thinking the characters in the vampire diaries were at a house nearby hosting a party for me. I could hear the celebration in my head. In the morning I begged the train attendant to give me a ticket so I could travel to Queensland. For what reason I do not know, I have never been to that state.

I ended up on a highway at one point. I must have walked a shit tonne of distance because all I did was walk around, and for some reason most of my memories are at night time only. I got into some weirdo's car at one point and he drove me to a police station where I asked if I could sleep there and they told me to fuck off. My grandmother in NZ rang them because she had no idea where I was and they told her that they recalled me and that I seemed "retarded".

I had no plan or purpose. I completely lose the ability to reason, think, and take care of myself. I could have jumped off the top floor of a building I was standing on, but decided against it. I was vulnerable and not contactable. My family in New Zealand did not hear from me for a month and my grandmother was climbing the walls worrying about my safety, ringing hotels, hospitals and police stations across Melbourne and Norfolk Island. Weirdly, no one thought it might be a good idea to actually file a missing persons report.

I would simply walk from place to place out of my mind for another two weeks or so, but I can't be sure how long it really was.

I kicked off my shoes and socks in the middle of the road because I believed the devil was controlling me through them. Some more cops found me a few days later and put me into a 4x4 sealed room for hours and I literally was under the impression that I would be killed.

They let me go after a while and sometime later I jumped onto a metal skip floating in the Yarra river that collects rubbish. I tried to untie it and sail off into the sea. Someone called the police and they arrived and convinced me to get off. There was a large crowd of people watching me, so it would be interesting to see if any of them are reading this and remember me that day. It was then that finally the coppers actually took me to the psych ward at the Alfred hospital. I was an involuntary patient but was allowed a few hours outside every day to explore the city after I recovered. I was also able to go to a gym for free and they fed me nice meals for 6 weeks. I met some really cool people in there who im still friends with! But I was put on so many antipsychotics I have no memory of my first week there.

I was highly confused the whole time, I had no sense of time, hunger, shelter etc. I just would sleep under churches. Sometimes I would get terrified and run away from people who I thought wanted to harm me, one example I vividly remember being when a man simply walked past me at night while I was trying to make a call on a pay phone. Luckily I don't have a violent nature at all, so even though my psychotic mind was controlling me I never lashed out any innocent people.

I was in Australia as a Special Category Visa holder with no support from family or eligibility through centrelink for social housing, sickness allowance or even the special benefit: "In severe financial hardship due to circumstances beyond your control and are unable to earn enough income to support yourself and your dependants. And not able to receive any other income support payment." New Zealanders are excluded from this payment because of the 2001 law changes that restricted eligibility to most welfare payments and citizenship.

I'm glad the police helped me in the end, but I dealt with at least three officers in those weeks who, as far as I can remember, did nothing to help me. At one point they put me into the boot of a police car and drove me to a hospital that did not treat me and let me walk out the next day. I called for ambulances 4 times via payphones and was taken to hospitals each time but not treated because I was a New Zealand citizen without my Medicare card and they couldn't figure out what to do with me and just released again and again and again. I was billed $3500 for the pleasure of these ambulance rides afterwards (after sending an explanation to Ambulance victoria) and it took me two years to pay it off. When I finally got treatment in a psychiatric unit I had to stay there for 6 weeks because I was ineligible for any government support and they refused to release me back into the community. I was finally allowed to return to New Zealand when my grandmother flew over and collected me. And there I have been ever since, slowly recovering.

A week before leaving Melbourne, the Alfred called an early intervention treatment centre in New Zealand to arrange for my care. Within days of returning I received a call from them to start my treatment. I immediately tried to apply for the sickness benefit but found out it had been removed and instead I would be placed on the Jobseeker support payment. This had no consequence to me since I was able to defer job seeking requirements through a medical certificate.

I have a doctor who I see once a month and a social worker who comes to my house every two weeks.

I was prescribed 20mg of Olanzapine in September 2013 and really wish I hadn't been. Within two weeks I had suddenly developed extreme social anxiety, which was odd for an extrovert to experience. From 2013 to october 15 I avoided almost all people and social situations. The olanzapine had the effect of turning me into a zombie who couldn't string together sentences so I just felt anxious whenever people tried to talk to me, and go quiet. The olanzapine also made me sleep sixteen hours a day, removed my sex drive completely, and my ability to feel pleasure, and made me gain 18kg.

From 2014 to mid-2015 Work and Income (The New Zealand centrelink equivalent) left me alone. The only thing I had to do is fill out and take in a three month medical certificate. I would get letters once and a while claiming I would have to make myself "ready for work" and attend certain seminars but that never happened. The first time I interacted with my current case manager happened when they decided to "bring back" case managers and since August 2015 I have been required to attend appointments with him once per month. In fact I get much more pressure to start full time work from my doctor than my case manager at WINZ. There is a stigma attached to being on a benefit. And it is awkward to tell people I am on the "jobseeker support" benefit so I, like most, just still refer to it as the "sickness benefit". $225 per week doesn't go very far but I appreciate living in a first world country that doesn't just let me starve so I won't complain.

Under pressure from many people to "get a job" I applied for and was accepted as a part time checkout operator at my local New World in November 2015. At first I enjoyed it but after a few weeks I started to notice an increase in my anxiety and would panic a day before and on the day when I was working. I did it for 6 months and slowly reduced my hours in an effort to keep the job but in the end I resigned.

Three months ago I made a decision not to take Olanzapine anymore. I have lost 11 of the 18kg I gained in the two years prior. My anxiety remains but I can talk to people coherently over the phone and via social media again. I am able to experience happiness again and am always finding things to do that are entertaining. I have cut down from smoking 15 cigarettes a day to 5. And most importantly, my view of the future is not bleak so I have been able to make goals. And one of them is to get a degree (I'm 27). So I have applied and been accepted to study at Massey University beginning November for summer school. I plan to major in public policy and am very much looking forward to it.

My time at the early intervention service comes to an end at the three year anniversary of my psychosis which is September 2016. I am looking forward to being "off the books" and getting back into life.

Overall I would say my treatment has been adequate in New Zealand. I understand the fiscal reasons the Australian government has to stop kiwis from claiming payments, but it would have helped me at the time had I been given something. I don't know how police officers in Australia are trained on mental health issues, but they could have stopped me much earlier, and not traumatise me by confining me in a small room without explaining why. I am unsure as to why none of the ambulance staff actually took me to a psychiatric hospital. They just took me to general ones who didn't prescribe me anything and I paid thousands for no help at all.

I would like to thank the police officer who found me and took me to the correct hospital. I have no idea what his or her name is or which police station they work in. I probably would have died somehow left to my own devices as I was becoming more and more psychotic by the day. Also want to point out that the doctors and nurses at the Alfred hospital were absolutely wonderful to me, and a social worker who I had a nice rapport with that hugged me on my last day and told me that I was a wonderful young man, that was nice.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask me anything. The above covers about 30% of what happened. To write any more would require a short story. It is therapeutic for me to talk about what happened after so long, and I would like to provide a rare insight into mental illness that most people hide.