After his first psychosis, it took years to sort out what was really happening. At first, he was treated for depression with psychotic features. Then it was a schizoaffective disorder. It took two years to land on the official diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia.
“There are treatments that work,” said Miltich. “It worked for me. It doesn’t mean my symptoms are gone. They’re there. But I can manage them.”
Symptoms can manifest differently, however. In 2018, Miltich woke up one morning having suffered sudden and profound hearing loss in his left ear. There was nothing doctors could do. For a jazz musician, this was a terrible blow, inhibiting his internal sound balance and stage improvisation. The event aggravated his post-traumatic stress disorder and triggered worsening symptoms of his schizophrenia, including visual hallucinations, something he hadn’t experienced before.
Several years later, Miltich retrained his mind to play with one ear, and has now returned to music full time. He grows a big garden, hunts, fishes and plays gigs with some of Minnesota’s best jazz artists.
“When I started to regain wellness, rhythm and structure in my day was really helpful,” said Miltich. “Music is like meditation. It’s mindful and present. It’s how I focus my mind and relate to some cosmic force bigger than myself.”
Miltich now performs a one-man show called “An Improvised Life.” He plays some of his favorite songs, interspersing them with his own story of mental illness and recovery. He talks about Thelonious Monk, an all-time jazz great who also had schizophrenia. Reading about Monk’s life, Miltich said, he most admired the man’s ability to stay married and raise kids during an era with far fewer mental health resources.
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