05/17/2026
Parkinson’s: The Good, The Bad, and the Completely Bizarre
By: Richie Pikunis
People think Parkinson’s is a shaking disorder.
That’s because tremor is easy to see.
What people don’t see is the neurological haunted house happening underneath the skin.
After living with Parkinson’s for decades, I can tell you the weirdest parts of this disease often have absolutely nothing to do with movement. The public sees shaky hands. Patients experience a nervous system slowly rewriting the rules of what it means to be human.
And some of the things people experience are so strange they barely sound real unless you’ve lived them.
Like your body suddenly forgetting how to do automatic things.
Healthy people don’t realize how much of life runs in the background without conscious effort. Walking. Swinging your arms. Swallowing. Blinking. Smiling. Turning around. Standing up from a chair.
Parkinson’s can make all of that feel manual.
Not weak. Manual.
Like your brain suddenly fired half the staff and now you’re personally running every department yourself.
People also don’t understand the bizarre mental lag that can happen. You know exactly what you want to do. Your brain sends the signal. Your body receives the memo three business days later.
It feels less like paralysis and more like terrible neurological WiFi.
Then there’s freezing.
Nothing prepares you for the humiliation of your legs suddenly deciding a doorway is apparently an active crime scene. Open room? Fine. Hallway? Fine. Narrow doorway? Your nervous system acts like you’re trying to cross into Mordor.
And don’t even get me started on how many people with Parkinson’s get mistaken for being drunk.
Slowed speech.
Balance problems.
Blank facial expression.
Delayed reactions.
Meanwhile you’re completely sober just trying to buy toothpaste at CVS while strangers look at you like you pre-gamed in the parking lot.
Ironically, some people with Parkinson’s barely even feel alcohol normally anymore. Others become ultra sensitive to it. Parkinson’s loves inconsistency. It’s basically a neurological practical joke with no punchline.
Then you get into the truly weird stuff nobody talks about publicly.
Internal tremors where your body feels like it’s vibrating even though nothing visible is shaking.
Random sweating like your autonomic nervous system accidentally joined CrossFit.
Temperature regulation that makes absolutely no sense. Freezing in warm rooms. Sweating in cold rooms. One foot feeling like Antarctica while your face feels like Satan’s air fryer.
And the emotional stuff gets misunderstood constantly.
A lot of people with Parkinson’s are still emotional internally but lose facial expressiveness externally. So the world thinks you stopped caring when really your nervous system just unplugged half the visible hardware.
That damages relationships more than people realize.
Then there’s apathy, which people confuse with depression or laziness.
Apathy in Parkinson’s can feel like your brain lost the ignition key for motivation itself. You still intellectually care about things. You just can’t generate the neurological “go” signal consistently.
That’s terrifying when you first experience it.
Sleep becomes its own horror movie.
Vivid dreams.
Acting out dreams.
Punching walls in your sleep.
Screaming.
Waking up confused.
Dreams so intense they feel more emotionally real than your actual day.
Parkinson’s doesn’t politely stay in the movement lane. It barges into:
sleep,
emotion,
motivation,
digestion,
blood pressure,
temperature,
focus,
reward,
personality,
fatigue,
and identity itself.
That’s the part healthy people rarely understand.
This disease doesn’t just affect how you move through the world.
It affects how the world moves through you.
Because one thing I’ve learned after 30+ years with this disease is that Parkinson’s is basically a neurological improv show written by a drunk dopamine molecule.
And half the time the weirdest symptoms are the ones nobody warns you about.
Written by Richie Pikunis
