Quarter Dozen Sticks

This is the tale of a quarter dozen sticks. That’s three, if you’re thick. The first one involves a guy I beat up in school. We used to play this game called Zulu, where I was the Zulu getting hunted by everyone else, and we all threw sticks and stones at each other. Myself and this other guy took it a bit too far and ended up getting into a personal vendetta. I remember staying outside one dinner time and still twatting him as everyone else was settling back into their fourth period. There was only me and him left, and I distinctly remember winning. Went back in, carried on with the day, and thought nothing else of it. Until the next morning. The next morning, as I prepared to leave for school, he was waiting at my front gate with his big brother. His big brother had a big stick. I was trapped in the house. I had no big brother myself, no Dad, and my mum was still in bed. If I had had any sense I would have snuck out the back, but I think I went out to them and faced the music. I don’t remember getting boshed, so I must have talked myself out of it. Still, I was scared.

I recall years later hanging outside an off-license – this is like a scene from Benny Hill, this is. All of a sudden a tall lanky lad runs past us with his top off, wielding a big stick in his hand, chasing a shorter bloke up and and out of sight. Me and my mates just look at each other as to say what the hell? Two minutes later the tall lanky lad comes back the way he had come, pegging it for his life, chased by the shorter bloke, who now had the stick. It was funny as. It was like being on the set of a sketch show. Talk about role reversal. The shorter bloke must have wrestled the stick off him around the corner and took the advantage. One minute the tall lanky lad is doing the chasing and the next he’s been chased himself. You couldn’t make it up. Finally, I remember Wes. Wes was a cockney, staying in a Northwest hostel. One day he came hurrying out of Asda. He wasn’t quite running, but he was walking as if he’d just robbed a bottle of spirits. And that was exactly what he was prone to do. Next thing, this burly security guard comes bursting out after him. This is in a busy Asda carpark. Instead of trying to run away, or simply giving up and handing over the stolen goods, Wes produced a stick (it might have been a kosh), and holds it up, as is to squat the security guard. The security guard stopped in his tracks and Wes continued to walk away. It was like a show of force, a good bluff. I’ll never know if Wes would have used it on him, but he probably knew beforehand that the bluff would be enough. This guy was serious about robbing his booze from Asda. He didn’t mess about. Ok, thanks. These have been the tales of a quarter dozen sticks.

Medication

In my early twenties, I decided to try and get out of working for a living by signing on the sick, so I went to see the doctor for a note. His exact words to me were, “If you’re mad, I’m mad.” Nonetheless, after some arguing, he dispensed to me some anti-depressants. They were known as Dosulepin. I only took them when I was wired, coz all they did was put you in a coma. If you weren’t depressed to begin with, you sure would be when you realised that you couldn’t get up out of bed. I once took five at once, for a buzz. I remember, it was a Tuesday. I woke up on Thursday. The slumber was so seamless, it took me a while to work out that I’d missed an entire day. Far from ‘Happy Pills’, I called them ‘Zombieland Pills’, and that was my first induction into the world of medication. It was made apparent to me from the beginning that something just wasn’t right. Weren’t these things supposed to make you feel better? They became popular with my mates when they wanted to kip after a night on coke. Years later, when I told the psychiatric establishment that I was hearing voices (how stupid), I was introduced to Olanzepine. I remember falling asleep in Wetherspoons on this junk. It was Zombieland with coupons, plus it made you eat like a horse. Again, I only took it when I needed sleep. Next came Quetiapine, which is less sedative and without the appetite increase. They just juggle the meds around as if we are good old guinea pigs, at the end of the day. Trial and error, they call it. They don’t realise how addictive these things can become. You can come to rely and depend on them if you’re not careful. There’s something comforting about settling into an induced coma. That’s all they are, essentially – tranquilizers. Doctors pushing synthetic drugs on a daily basis is no big deal in today’s society, but God forbid you smoke something that grows naturally out of the ground now and again; that would make you a law-breaker and a bad example. Think of the shameful reputation that genuinely feel-good party drugs have, and compare that with the holier-than-thou shite that doctors are pushing. My psychiatrist recently called medication a ‘lifesaver’. Lol. The side-effects of this garbage need two whole pages to list.

Next, when they became aware that I wasn’t taking them (I spat them out in hospital for months and months), they made me, yes, I repeat made me, receive injections. Clopixol, then Depixol, right in the arse. I had no choice in this matter. Otherwise they would have transferred me to a more secure unit and forcibly administered them. I resisted this for some time but in the end agreed just to get the hell out of there. I’d still be there now otherwise, all oiled-up, fighting a goon squad in some lockup like Charles Bronson. Just several side-effects of these injectables, and of anti-psychotic medication in general, is gynecomastia, impotence, and a distended midsection. In layman’s terms for you and I, that equates to man boobs, big belly, and no dick. I think I would rather stick with the mental illness! Not that I have one, but nor that that matters to them. They have drugs to push here. Beds to fill. Money to make. It’s a horrible thing to enforce drugs on unwilling parties. If they worked, I might be able to see their point. But the fact is that they don’t work. They never have and they never will. Of course, I can only speak from personal experience. I know people who’ve been on meds for thirty years and rave about them (I know quite a lot of deluded people, now that I think about it). Knowing you have crap floating about your system that’s doing nothing at all worthwhile is almost like a handicap. A curse. Taking a chemical for hearing voices is like putting a plaster on a broken leg. It’s like giving an aspirin to a burning man. Far from being do-gooders with all the tools to ‘help’; in some more enlightened circles, psychiatrists are labelled criminals. Crooks. At the very least, they are just plain wrong. They invent ‘illnesses’, and then they invent the subsequent drugs to treat them. If that’s not a con, then shoot me now. Plus they deprive you of your liberty for unlimited periods of time, all without a single crime being committed. There’s no science at all behind this powerful profession. What they are peddling isn’t real medicine. It’s all opinion. And it’s got a terrible, torturous history. I could go on, but I’ll save it for another time. The best medication is not toxic. It’s the open air, exercise, fellowship, and talking therapy. It’s a ticket to Disneyland, not Zombieland.