(All images by The Drifter)

“So you may say, / Greek flower; Greek ecstasy / reclaims forever /

one who died / following intricate song’s / lost measure.” – H.D.

Today’s discussion of medical issues is from a layman’s point of view since I am a Doctor of Philosophy and not a medical doctor. But the medical facts have been garnered and gathered from folks who are medical doctors – in person, not just through reading. So this column offers the best of both worlds: the medical facts filtered through a philosophical perspective, with a touch of Edgar Allan Poe and Franz Kafka, except that THIS IS REALITY.

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The “Mad” Woman

You walk back into your tiny apartment after another trip around the block. The second you enter your one main room, you realize that something is amiss. Someone has been in here again during your 30-minute absence. Not only have they been in here again, they have rearranged some of your items. The difference in placement is very subtle. A hair brush you thought had been over here is now over there. Your coffee cup has been moved three inches away from the place you left it. And the television remote control device is now sitting on the opposite end of the end table from the one you left it upon when you left your apartment thirty minutes ago. Because the people, or beings, who enter your apartment and rearrange your stuff when you are gone are very subtle, very secretive, and very sly. You do not know why they are targeting you and rearranging your stuff; but “they” have been doing this for years. You slowly move around the apartment putting everything back in its right place. Then you notice that the dart board on your wall has also been rearranged. It has been moved exactly three inches to the left. You suddenly realize that the dart board is not a dart board: it is an eye. It is a GIGANTIC EYE through which THEY are watching you. THEY also follow you around on the streets sometimes. You have been incarcerated more than once for accosting these spies on the street. You approach them unannounced and unawares, demanding to know why they are following you, whose orders they are following, and why they don’t feel guilty about being spies. The authorities sometimes show up when you take these interrogation tactics too far. Sometimes that’s when the straight jackets come out and the incarceration thing happens again. You are aware that all of this seems “crazy” to them. But you are being followed, tracked, and surveilled within your apartment. Not just the dartboard but also the bathroom mirror is an EYE watching you. Watching you and reporting your activities to THEM. That’s why sometimes you don’t move for hours. You just sit there alone in your chair in your apartment utterly unmoving, not even daring to get up and go to the bathroom. Some day you will figure out who is doing all of this, why they are doing it, and what the universal ramifications are. You’re pretty sure that most of the spies are human. Others are definitely demons who look like humans. A few are humans you’ve been long familiar with, like your sneaky and wily landlord. That landlord of yours who always acts so friendly on the surface then turns around when you’re not looking and reports all of your activities to the authorities. The ultimate authorities are not human. They are not God, either. Rather they are some kind of currently unknown (to humans) creatures who live on a Planet called the North Star that is not in our galaxy and not even in our universe. One day you will know the reason for all of this, and it will elevate you. In the meantime, you can’t get a job because your life is constantly taken up with dealing with them, fleeing from them, thinking about them, analyzing them, dreaming about them, hiding under the covers from them in the tiny bedroom. (Under the covers is the only place they can’t see you, although they can still sometimes say things to you, like, “You stupid fucking bitch” over and over again.) Maybe some of them are friendly though (you are hoping this is true). Maybe everyone and everything in the world is not your enemy. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe! If you weren’t on medication, things would really start to get bad. You remember that you haven’t taken your medication in a few days, not since the last time you saw your therapist. You go to the medicine cabinet. To retrieve your medication. It should come as no surprise that your medication has disappeared because THEY have stolen it. Later you will locate the medication bottles in a different area of your apartment and realize that the jerks who are following you around and messing with you have moved your medication again. You dump all the many multicolored pills all over the floor and slowly and methodically begin to count them again, over and over and over again…counting the pills in this way also keeps the voices in your head quiet as night comes on, at least for the most part…

…

Welcome to the wonderful world of full-blown schizophrenia. The low moods and crazy highs of bipolar disorder look like a cake walk compared to this. Bipolar disorder is an episodic disorder where the patient is rarely, if ever, psychotic, i.e. totally out of touch with reality. There are a few medications that work really well in helping to control the occasional, extreme moods of bipolar disorder along with all of its daily intensities, mini-nervous-breakdowns, hilariously dangerous outbreaks, and sometimes-constant hyper-irritability. There are no medications that are great, or even very, very good, at controlling schizophrenia, although some med’s can help control the delusions and hallucinations a little. There is not much chance that any of this will change, at least not in the next couple of centuries…

…

The Native Americans, like the ancient Greeks, believed that “crazy” people were in touch with the gods in a special way that made them special people. They weren’t just sad, pointless cases with no reason, no goals, no ambitions, no purpose. Instead, their unusual condition was seen as a thing that was bringing messages to the rest of us. Not clear messages, ambiguous messages. But messages nevertheless. In the modern, secular, capitalistic, warlike, atheistic (or fundamentalist religionist), consumerist, commercialized, monetized, advertised, atomized, and alienated world, your value is the price tag on your head. Special people are not special, they are worthless, pointless junk to be discarded if possible. The medical professionals who do more than anyone else to try and help these people also often do more than anyone else to stigmatize, traumatize, and stereotype these people. There are literally millions of severely mentally ill people in the USA alone, and that doesn’t count the rest of the world. It’s a known fact that schizophrenics in the USA and UK, for instance, usually hear voices that are harshly criticizing them; while schizophrenics in places like Africa or India usually report (instead) hearing the voice of God.

These people really are messengers. It’s us who are not listening.

The next time you see someone standing on the street corner yelling at and kicking a telephone pole as if it were alive, or staring into the sky with a terrified look on their face as if an angry Martian were gazing down at them and scolding them, see if you can get inside their head before you pass on.

The Drifter