Dreaming My Life

I remember my first admission into a forensic unit after a psychotic break due to cannabis. There was nothing psychotic about it. All I did was set fire to my house with my mum and sister tied up in the cubbyhole after I’d battered them both because my pocket money was late. I wasn’t hallucinating or hearing voices. I was just peed off, irate and exasperated. Anyway, they picked me up from school and whisked me away down the back lanes. I was in there with bog ole scary murderers and everything. One night around chrimbo they plied us with bottles of Port to celebrate. All the patients, including me, were sloshed. Except I was stoned as well, as my mate had smuggled me in some more cannabis. I was throwing up in the crapper and holding onto the floor to stop the room from spinning. One Irish man had a boiling kettle of water, threatening to throw it over the nurses. Another was tossing darts at people. It was rad.

Twenty years later, after a genuine psychotic episode, I ended up back in that same observation room. I thought I’d had a twenty year-long nightmare. I believed that I’d dreamt my whole life. My life was just a deluded fantasy. I woke up after two days of looking at a door and thought what the hell, why here, oh no not here.

I’d arrived strapped into a wheeled cart with a mask on, just like Hannibal Lecter, flanked by a vanguard of nurses and doctors. During my most recent admission, when I was being transported from Clock View to Hollins Park, there was a helicopter present. They obviously think that I’m some dangerous nutter who might go full retard at any moment. The truth is that I’m a big softie, chilled & mellowed out on pregabs!

People say that they wouldn’t hurt a fly. I actually tried to save one from death. It had landed in water and almost drowned. I fished it out and placed Healing Cards in its vision. It responded by talking to me. Its voice sounded like the voice of The Universe. If Deep Space could speak it would sound like that fly. Previously I’d written a short story entitled The Fly That Wouldn’t Die. It’s one of my faves. Unfortunately, this one died. But before it did we had a conversation. It made me both cry and laugh at the same time, what I call the Ultimate Emotion. It’s a wonderful sense, crying and laughing at the same time. I did it one time when I thought my girlfriend had being murdered by hate mobbers (that’s what I call gangstalkers); I was in a despairing heartsick attitude when suddenly I saw Alan Sugar on The Apprentice giving some slick wannabe grief about not selling enough Salt & Vinegar Fudge. He’s some monster enterprising bigwig worth millions and what has he got his wishful up and comers hawking? – Salt & Vinegar Fudge. I burst out laughing. You had to be there.

The psychosis around the second admission, in my early to mid-thirties, was all-consuming. I thought that my nemesis was crafting and fashioning actual matter. I was seeing buildings that weren’t there, and skylines that looked supernatural. I thought he was an omniscient satanic being because he could read my mind and know exactly what I was thinking. Now, by the grace of God, I know that he is just an ordinary guy (be it an evildoer), with access to secret technologies that interfere with the brain. Namely mine. He can’t invent sleek ice palaces on the horizon, and he can’t batter Me. 

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.