from my book, ‘PLAY’

Some people on the ward were real psychos, and I don’t mean the patients. Psych wards attract them, the way police departments attract the best criminal minds. (If you want a good description of the phenom, try Jean Genet’s classic, The Thief’s Journal.)

Mine was Dr. P******* R******* – I wish I could give her full name, because people like her shouldn’t be allowed to practice. Anywhere. She was the head psychiatrist of the unit. She took all the “difficult” cases, the ones with lots of attitude, like those who didn’t want to take their meds. She was what you’d call a… “bronco-buster,” though for some reason, she spared the ladies and only went after the men.

It didn’t matter what you said, she’d just look back at you serenely, seeming to offer her sympathy, but with this big fake grin plastered across her face, a grotesque rictus she either couldn’t control or didn’t bother to.

Like Sri Chinmoy.

Ever hear of him? He was a Hindu spiritual teacher who advocated “selfless service” as the path to inner and outer peace. Instead of lectures, he’d give concerts of recorded “music-to-meditate-by,” usually with lots of flutes. And just sat there on stage, and smiled. Just like my doc. But it wasn’t funny to me at the time. It was the grin of a sadist.

She decided to put me on Lamictal. An anti-convulsant used in the treatment of epilepsy, but also prescribed for members of the Club.

Did I agree?

Yes, I agreed. What choice did I have? Ask if you can refuse and they’ll tell you “Of course. We don’t force people to do anything. If you don’t want to take the medication, just refuse.” What they don’t tell you is that refusing treatment means you DON’T get released. You’ll have to file a complaint with the Mental Hygiene Legal Service advocate, the nice lady who makes the rounds of the ward twice a week, and ask for a hearing before a judge. The average time for a hearing to be scheduled? Two to three weeks. Refuse meds and you’ll be released in about a month, if you’re lucky. Take them and you’ll be out in less than 2 weeks.

But if you’re really wacko, like many street people who wind up as regulars, you’ll be back on the street in 2 or 3 days, because you have NO insurance. Or because the staff is convinced they are only pretending to be insane, in exchange for a bed and 3 square a day, while the rest of us are pretending to be sane so we’ll be let out.

The higher up the chain of command, the more adversarial the relationship. The less authority, the more compassion and decency. A general rule of thumb in all prison systems. (Or maybe any system.)

So of course I took the meds. You’d be crazy not to. But just two days into my new drug regimen, I broke out into a rash on my wrists. My tongue swelled, my neck began to have spasms. I went to the nurse’s station and showed them the rash. They gave me Benadryl to counter the adverse reaction. About a half-hour later the rash began to disappear, the muscle spasms stopped. I was relieved.

I’d been sweating, so I thought I’d take a shower. But as soon as I turn the water on, I become dizzy. So dizzy I can’t stand. So dizzy I can’t get out of the shower. So I sit there and just wait. After about 10 minutes, I’m able to crawl my way out of the bathroom.

Here are some of the side-effects of Lamictal, which I looked up after my release (they won’t tell you beforehand, as they think you’ll use it to get out of taking the pills): fever, swollen glands, body aches, flu symptoms, headache, neck stiffness, increased sensitivity to light; easy bruising or bleeding, severe tingling, numbness, muscle weakness; upper stomach pain, loss of appetite, dark urine, jaundice; chest pain, irregular heart rhythm, shortness of breath; confusion, dizziness, nausea and vomiting, swelling, rapid weight gain, urinating less than usual (or not at all); pale skin, rapid heart rate, difficulty concentrating.

What I reported wasn’t on the list, except the extreme dizziness, because those are just the classic symptoms of a severe allergic reaction to any drug.

The next day, I tell my doc what happened. When I get to the part about how I couldn’t get out of the shower because of the dizziness, she refuses to believe me. “Did anyone… see you in the shower?” “See me? Who would see me? The shower’s the only private place in this whole fucking hospital!”

She smiled. “I’d like you to go back on Lamictal, at a higher dose.”

Of course I said no. She picked up her pad, and wrote it on my chart, repeating the words slowly, out loud, “Patient…. refuses…. medication.” And then she looked up at me, and smiled.

The very next day, I confide in B., the male nurse who did my daily 6 am weigh-in/blood pressure checkup. I trusted B. There are people you meet and just know they’re ok. I tell him I think my doc is trying to screw me over. He asks me who that was. When I answer, he just nods. But after recording my numbers, he leans and whispers in my ear, “R*******-CHOP!” I look at B. “Did you say… Karate Chop?” “No, I didn’t say that.”

He smiled and walked out of the room.

That made all the difference to me. I knew I couldn’t repeat it to anyone on the staff. B. would just deny it. Nothing a patient says is ever taken seriously. We’re nuts. We make stuff up all the time. But he knew, and I knew that he knew. He’d seen (or heard) it all before – perhaps R*******-CHOP was even the staff’s nickname for her… I relaxed, and proceeded to plot my escape. I went to Dr. Chinmoy and abased myself.

I begged her not to make me take any more Lamictal. I’d take anything else she ordered. I’d do whatever she asked. Pleeeze! Again that nasty grimace, laced with venom and satisfaction. Another notch on her gun.

The next day she put me on a monotherapy of Abilify (5 mg, take one tablet q.d. by mouth), which would cost about $10,000 a year, but only half as much if I got Medicare Part D. I thanked her profusely.

That was almost two years ago. After 11 days, they finally let me go, a tiny Jonah, spat out by the Leviathan, cast adrift on the shore, like so many hundreds of other little Jonahs and Joans released each day from penal servitude to Big Pharma. Whether volunteers or forced conscripts, we must all now row our own boat. But at least, we managed to get out. We’re the lucky ones. Thousands of others will be in the system until they die.

The first thing I did was write a check to a local realtor, a down payment on a house in the woods my friend had asked me to take a look at about a month earlier. The moment I walked in the door, I knew it was for me. So I bought it as soon as they let me out, and told my friend I needed somewhere to stay for a few months, and if she really wanted the house for herself, she could reimburse me for the cost and I would find somewhere else.

So now I am typing this on a keyboard in the office of that house. And KiKi is asleep next to me on the couch.

It is the first time I have owned a home. On my own, at last.

Meds? I won’t touch the stuff unless forced. I don’t even take aspirin. Just a Tbs of fish oil a day keeps those nasty doctors away. That and Tibetan Buddhist sitting practice, a little Reiki, some tai chi, and KiKi, who only looks like a dog, but is really a Medicine Buddha. (In fact, most of these appear on my “Safety Plan” – everyone must fill one out and have it witnessed by a staff member as a condition of release – listing “things you will do if your coping resources do not work.”)

Most important of all, I try to get a full 8 hrs. of zzzz’s and stick to a strict schedule of mealtimes – like Rinpoche always said, “90% of life is sheduling.”

I’ve managed to go med-less 872 months out of 873. Chances are I’ll make it to the exit ramp without having to do any more. But don’t get me wrong. I’m not one of those anti-pharmaceutical zealots. I’ve been fortunate. Some people are so far to the right on the BP spectrum that without meds, they’d be dead.

Take lithium, for example. Or maybe don’t. Go online and check out the responses from people who’ve done lithium for more than six months. Half will tell you it’s been a life-saver. But a third say it’s the worst thing they ever did, and wish they’d never heard of lithium. The side-effects can be lethal. The remaining one-sixth can’t make up their minds if the hell they’ve gone through was worth it.

All the so-called “anti-psychotics” are like that – the longer you’re on them, the harder it is to get off them, and the more lasting the side-effects. They shorten your lifespan and your chances for a full recovery. So to my mind, unless it’s a matter of life or death, don’t. But sometimes it is. And who am I to judge?

I’d been married for 22 years, and that was after a 9-year engagement. Which was after two previous, albeit much briefer, tries, going all the way back to 1968, both of which ended in divorce, though not in the legal sense, unlike this one.

Back in 1968, my wife had simply had enough. And married someone else. But after he died in a car accident, she came back. Was it Love? Karma? Perhaps mutual chemical attraction might be a better way to describe it, though I don’t really know how that works. Or if, in the long run, it does. But if you’re a moth, maybe you don’t have a choice.

Suffice it to say we are both better off in our own separate places. To be perfectly honest, I don’t see how anyone could live in the same space with someone like me.

But I am here. And life is good. And I am free.

CODA: NEMESIS

It’s January, 2018, my 900th month, and a letter has arrived from my local hospital letting me know my GP is leaving and I’ll need to find someone to replace him. So I go online to look through the listings and up pops a familiar name: Dr. P******* R******** — the head shrink on the psych ward in Cooperstown, my witch doctor. Could she still be there, drugging her victims, like Circe, and turning them into swine?

So I google her. And at the very top of the search results is a scathing 23-page legal decision. Back in 2005, it seems she was having a fling with her married boss (10+ yrs. her senior) at ********** Med. College and when he told his wife and dumped her, she accused the swine of rape and posted it on the university website, then sued him. He counter-sued for defamation and was awarded $3 million, including punitive damages. Later, the award was reduced to only $520k.

Doctor R. moved to another university, but after she published a research paper, he pursued her like a Fury. So she fled north, and somehow wangled a position as head of our psych ward, though her clinical experience with psychiatric patients appears to consist mostly of using them as… guinea pigs – administering drugs (e.g. meth) and measuring their dopamine levels, etc. then publishing the results in academic journals. I counted 20, including the only one she authored herself, in 2010, about male rape survivors and their “lost sense of manliness” – her special area of expertise.

Apparently her ex-lover was still trying to get his money while I was under her care. A month or so after I was released, she suddenly left town.

Gone. Disappeared. The hospital says her listing in their network is “out of date” – no one even ‘remembers’ who she was. She has listings at several other rural hospitals in New York, but no record of her in their directories either. It’s as if she never existed. Like I made her up. Isn’t that what crazy people do?

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