You don’t start out in life dreaming that one day you’ll be schizophrenic. It’s not really part of anyone’s plan. But when mental illness hits you, it’s out of nowhere. Like a 2x4.

I was a happy boy when I was a kid. I grew up in Haiti and moved to Canada at 14. In school I was an athlete. A football player who devoted my life to try and compete at the highest level. I had energy. Drive. Grit. Determination. School wasn't my strong suit but I excelled in sport. Life was good.

I had a solid group of friends. We’d hang out and just do normal things like normal teens. That included smoking weed. My friends and I believed that cannabis was not a drug, it was a plant. We thought it was natural and harmless. We weren’t alone in that belief. I never touched other drugs. Just smoked weed. Still worked hard. still played football. Just smoked weed.

And then one day I snapped.

I was over at my girlfriend's hanging out with a friend. We got high. And then something broke in my head. I started hearing voices. And from there my world started to derail. I remember that night. I tried to jump out of a moving car. I thought everyone was out to get me. I learned later I had what’s called drug-induced psychosis.

This stayed with me for about 2 months. In university which I started the same year. I heard people asking me questions, but when I turned around, no one was there to answer. I started having really negative thoughts. Thoughts I didn’t understand. Thoughts that weren’t my own.

I tried to stay calm. I went through the motions but things started to fall apart. My illness was in my head. Talking down to me. Questioning my plans. Telling me I wasn’t good enough. Instructing me to get out. Because I was confused about what was happening, I started acting out and felt i was out of control. I dropped out of school. I left my family home. I made moves that would push my recovery away even further.

The voices continued. They got louder. Told me to do bad things. Illegal things. Un-Carl things.

Eventually, I entered the justice system as not-criminally responsible, which actually brought me to The Royal. Even when I served my sentence, my mental health was a shifting target. I was diagnosed with schizophrenia and started treatment under The Royal, but it was no match for my illness.

I spent entire days-on-end just lying in bed. It’s not that I didn’t wanna get up and get stuff done, it’s that I couldn’t. It’s impossible to explain to someone what that feels like unless you’ve been through it. My whole world consisted of a messy room and a bottomless jar of peanut butter.

Making music was an important way for me to cope. I latched onto it after my release and it became a contestant in my life. A refuge from the unknown. Music made sense. When I was healthy, the music flowed. When my mental health was bad, the music suffered. I’d go through patterns where I’d stay up making music for three days straight, and then not touch it again for months.

I dealt with life in extremes. It's either I had high hopes I would one day feel better or I did nothing for months. one day I packed up and moved to Toronto. I didn’t have money, I didn’t have a job to go to, no friends, no family, nothing. Just the idea that Toronto would save me.

Toronto didn’t save me. I moved into the Good Shepherd homeless shelter. I tried to manage my illness with zero recovery capital. Eventually I returned home. But my illness followed me there, too.