It started so gradually that for a while I barely noticed anything was wrong. A single event, something I said or did, was being talked about by everyone around me. People knew details about me they could not have known. I was convinced I could hear thoughts, and that friends were speaking without moving their lips.
At the time I could not see this was abnormal; now, when I try to explain it, I say: "You know what a dream or nightmare is like? Imagine that lasting for months."
This psychosis crept up on me when I was 23, but I had had mental health problems since I was 17. I was studying for my Baccalaureate in France when one morning I woke up, started crying and couldn't stop. I spent a month in hospital and after other periods of illness I was eventually diagnosed with manic depression and put on medication.
Despite this I was well enough to spend my gap year teaching in India and then take a degree in Mandarin at the School of Oriental and African studies in London. After graduating it seemed a natural step to take up a teaching post in China.
My first year in Shanghai was wonderful. I settled in quickly, found a flat, and met new friends. We were out socialising almost every night and on my days off, I took kung fu classes, or explored the city on my bike. The children in my school were delightful and I loved teaching.
But by the winter of 2004 I began to feel unnaturally elated. I was too frightened to see a local doctor because suffering from a mental illness is against the Chinese work visa requirements. I became confused about what to take to balance out this elation and in the end I just stopped taking my drugs.
That was when the delusions started; the secret police were after me and were spying on my flat. I became convinced I was a martial arts expert and was being given advice by the white cat on a washing-up liquid bottle. I believed my family had once ruled the world and had all been murdered.
Instead of working I was staring out of the window for hours. I have no idea what my boss thought of my erratic behaviour - but the day after I walked into her office and accused a taxi driver of being a cannibal, she fired me.
Soon I was homeless too. For some reason I decided to travel to Changsha in central China by train and fly back. This used up all the available credit on my card and when my flow of money ran out I stopped paying my rent.
My landlord turned up at the apartment with his mother and daughter, shouted at me, and kicked me out on to the streets. My possessions were stolen after I left a bundle on my front step and went to get a glass of water. Somehow I managed to keep hold of my suitcase on wheels and backpack. I saved my CDs, some clothes and my passport.
It was November and freezing. I walked around the city from one end to the other for days. I was terrified and couldn't eat properly because I thought the meat on sale was human flesh. It could have been as long as two weeks later when I finally ended up shoeless on the steps of my old block of flats. The local women's association found me and gave me some bread. Then the police picked me up. They managed to get the address of an old university friend from me and took me to his flat. He called the British Consulate and they escorted me to the Shanghai No.1 Psychiatric Hospital. One interview with the doctor and I was in.
It wasn't bad after the streets - a private bathroom, a TV (which I unplugged so that it couldn't watch me), and wooden floors. The nurses restrained me to force medicine down my throat and occasionally tied me to the bed, but they were kind too. The auxiliary nurse who slept next to me humoured me by calling me Mao Yilan (I thought I was Mao's great-granddaughter). Another gave me cigarettes.
Back in Europe my parents were frantic with worry. My father, who lives in Norway, flew out to try to take me home, but the hospital refused to release me. He says that the doctors were very gentle, but would not give me the medicines used in Europe because they believed they were too strong.
One chilling morning I was taken from my private room and into another building. I was taken into a room, where electrodes were attached to my head and when the woman turned the dial the pain was excruciating.
I don't know if this was electroshock therapy or I imagined the pain - it doesn't sound like accounts I have heard since about the practice, but I washed my hair every morning after that so it would be wet, and I was never taken back.
A medical evacuation doctor eventually came to accompany me back to Paris, where my mother lives, and I thought I was free.
Instead I was taken to a French clinic. I had been here before in 2001 and it made the Chinese hospital look like a holiday camp.
I was surrounded by people who had been accused of crimes such as arson and rape. We weren't allowed in our rooms during the day and I spent my time trying to avoid other people.
But it was when I saw my mother on the third day in the clinic that I was struck by the realisation of what had really happened to me. In my psychotic state I had been sure she had been murdered. Yet here she was, chatting away about taking her dog to the vet.
The thought was the beginning of the path to recovery, but it was also incredibly painful. I felt as if my brain was being twisted and wrenched as the medicines kicked in. It was hard to adjust to the idea that all the things I believed had happened to me were in my imagination. After this there was just the long trudge back to reality through four months of paralysing depression.
Yet five years later, I know I am very lucky. Not just to have survived my time on the streets, but to be born at a time when my illness can be treated. I am finally taking medicine that suits me - an upper (anti-depressant), a downer (anti-psychotic) and a mood stabiliser (lithium) - and am more attuned to my symptoms. If I start to feel they are not working, I will go straight to a doctor. Most importantly, I know I will never be that ill again.
It is not all plain sailing and I still have days when I am elated and others when I am subdued. But I have learned it is all about riding out the waves, holding on and realising that you are not going to get thrown out of the boat.
After a few directionless years I have become a self-employed translator in Belgium, where I have a lovely flat and am very happy. My family is supportive, and I am excited to wake up in the mornings.
The struggles I face today are with people's attitudes to my past. The reactions from employers, men I date, and (former) friends make me feel as though I have a skeleton to hide. Yet as far as I am concerned there is no difference between psychosis and other illnesses, and I do not see why I should be made to feel ashamed. I feel I have a duty to explain what it is like to be psychotic - to be that person muttering at you in the street. But what I really want to explain is that you can come out the other side.
