Conversations from hell

[P3nT4gR4m]

Heh! He turned out to be one of the mellowest dudes I ever met. Really shy. Kinda disoriented. I think he was finding his Schizophrenia a bit hard to come to terms with.

[Adios]

Thanks. 

[P3nT4gR4m]

I got lucky - I got bipolar. That diagnosis, whilst still coming as a bit of a shock to me (any diagnosis is a bit like a guilty verdict when you were convinced of your innocence), kinda explained a lot when I thought about it. Schizophrenia, on the other hand didn't seem to be quite so well received. Only having third hand experience of it I could only speculate as to why that would be.

[Adios]

I got lucky - I got bipolar. That diagnosis, whilst still coming as a bit of a shock to me (any diagnosis is a bit like a guilty verdict when you were convinced of your innocence), kinda explained a lot when I thought about it. Schizophrenia, on the other hand didn't seem to be quite so well received. Only having third hand experience of it I could only speculate as to why that would be.

Fuck. Sounds like a death camp lottery drawing.

[P3nT4gR4m]

The hardest bit is the stigma and I'm not talking about other people. That paled to insignificance compared to how I felt about it myself. "OFUK I'm a basket case!" Took fucking years to come to terms with that shit. Lot of denial, followed by a lot of fear and a liberal sprinkling of depression and pessimism.

[Hoser McRhizzy]

There was something quiet or subtle that worked wonderfully in the piece on Paddy.  Both Little Sister and Marshall were excellent! 

Really glad you're still writing these.

[P3nT4gR4m]

There was something quiet or subtle that worked wonderfully in the piece on Paddy.

Thanks! What I'm hoping came across, without me actually saying it, is the fact I'm fairly sure he's dead. What I'm undecided about is whether he was best out of his misery sooner, rather than the long lingering death that was waiting for him at the bottom of the bottle. He was a really tortured soul. I think he'd really loved that bitch (she left him for somebody else) and I dunno if living with that pain was better or worse than cashing in his chips early. In the end I guess that was Paddy's call to make, not mine.

[Hoser McRhizzy]

There was something quiet or subtle that worked wonderfully in the piece on Paddy.

Thanks! What I'm hoping came across, without me actually saying it, is the fact I'm fairly sure he's dead. What I'm undecided about is whether he was best out of his misery sooner, rather than the long lingering death that was waiting for him at the bottom of the bottle. He was a really tortured soul. I think he'd really loved that bitch (she left him for somebody else) and I dunno if living with that pain was better or worse than cashing in his chips early. In the end I guess that was Paddy's call to make, not mine.

It absolutely came across!   

At the risk of deconstructing (rarely a good idea while someone's creating), I think the layers you build into these are brilliant.  There's so much silence and stigma built into incarceration, especially the 'mental health' and 'helping industries' (not meaning to reference the BIP here, because I probably don't understand enough about it yet), but these stories are a jailbreak for the reader.  I absolutely couldn't write like this and have mad respect (lolpunny) for those that can.

True/false memory overlapping in the redhead; although it's making everyone nervous – the reader wants Marshall to keep pacing; the seemingly innocuous Esso Lorry obsession carrying a nauseating undertone; that a murderer is simultaneously confidant and warning; knowing Danny's about to do something extreme simply by his Ok-Jack description; and my heart was in my mouth when Julie went quiet.

These stories are subtle powderkegs, if that makes any sense.  At no time do you hit anyone over the head with the typical dramatic 'reveal.'  In the same space, nothing's hidden or kept back from the reader.  The curtain's pulled back right at the start, even in the redhead memories.  The tension (for me) comes from seems/is, which shifts.  What gets me about this is you make this seem natural and easy.

Maybe off-topic, but I've held a lot of hate (for almost a decade) for a drunk I used to live with.  Your story about Paddy made me start rethinking my judgment for the first time, and you have my thanks for it.

Hoping you continue with these.  Apologies for the tl;dr.

[P3nT4gR4m]

Holy shit! Wish I could take credit for all that but none of it was really planned. Maybe the things you are pointing out are the reasons I remember these things so vividly but really, I'm just blurting out memories here. Glad you're enjoying it, tho - good for the ego 

[Captain Utopia]

Incredible writing here - thanks for sharing your experiences.

[P3nT4gR4m]

No.11: Andy and Maggie

Andy was a recovering garbagehead. I'd kinda worked that out before he told me. He was really in touch with his meds. Like some people don't even seem to notice the effect the shit they're being force fed is having where others, like Andy, pay attention to every tiny little nuance. He was used to variety in his chemistry, a real connoisseur. His voracious appetite for new experiences had led him to study in depth the effects of a myriad different chemicals over the years. Andy was a walking RX List. An encyclopaedia of under the counter prescription drugs.

When I first arrived he was one of the first people I noticed. Pacing up and down the ward with a manic stare, complaining loudly to anyone who'd listen about the side effects. In detail. Everything from muscle tension to blurry vision to palpitations. "I need more Procyclidine!" He'd shout at the staff, "This shit is killing me." I had him down as a hypochondriac. Or someone who just liked complaining for the sake of complaining. I'd learn otherwise when the Droperidol kicked in with a vengeance but that's another story. For now I remained blissfully ignorant.

Andy was a good laugh. A fun guy to be around. Even though he complained almost constantly he still kept his sense of humour. He could laugh at himself and he always had some joke or other to cheer you up when the going got tough. We became good friends. In as far as two crazy people can ever really be but Andy was just about to leave. He was getting better and his section was up for review, just as I was riding out the peak of my mania. He'd be gone soon enough and I'd be left here to burn.

Maggie turned up on the ward a couple of days after I did. She was hard as nails but with a heart of gold. Liked her booze, liked her pills. She couldn't have been more than 25 but she looked a lot older. She liked to party real fucking hard and that takes it's toll on a pretty face. Andy and Maggie got on like a house on fire. Lot of common interests, common friends. They were on first name terms with a lot of the same chemicals.

Andy left soon after but he'd come back every other day to visit Maggie. He looked a lot better every time. He was putting on weight. Getting a bit of colour back about him. He really seemed to have put the "unhealthy patterns of behaviour" behind him. He was moving on, one day at a time. Choosing life. Then Maggie got released. She'd been homeless when she'd arrived but Andy had a place she could crash and he'd be a good influence for someone in recovery, a shining example she could follow into the light, right? What's the worst that could happen?

About a week later, at about 3:00am that question was answered when all hell broke loose in the room next door to mine. Maggie was back. Maggie was shitfaced. Maggie was pissed off and smashing up her room and anyone who tried to intervene. Whether she'd led Andy astray, vice versa or a mixture of both one thing was for certain - Andy and Maggie was an accident waiting to happen. And happen it did. Apparently she'd stabbed him with a kitchen knife. I never found out how badly or if he'd survived. I'm not sure if Maggie knew. Or even cared.

[Adios]

Dude, don't you just hate not knowing how things turned out? Great story!

[Pope Pixie Pickle]

I just read all of these, and fucking awesome work, pent! The part about you om nom nomming about an eighth of moroccan mid psychosis was kinda horrormirthy. I know myself that the recreationals just seem to lock you in to the psychosis harder, and that's after a few tokes.

I shudder to think what ingesting would do to the headspace.

I think I can tell you all a little about the diagnosis lottery, especially when there is a psychosis involved.

Depression is the easiest one for them to pull out of the bag, in terms of stigma, dealing with it yourself, everyone gets the blues to one extent or the other.

Then there is bipolar, again, that is a little harder to get around, my mate Dwarf just got diagnosed with that, and is about to play the what meds do I want lottery, well he is already on Olanzapine, an antipsychotic which can make your cognitive processes quite dizzy, and make you gain a fuck ton of weight. That's the thing with meds that fuck with the dopamine receptors in the brain, things like sex and food don't quite hit the same mark as they used to. He has also been told that he has to research a bunch of other meds including Lithium. Lithium is a fucker. You need regular blood tests for toxicity. You need extra salt on everything to help your body retain fluids. It also permanently rewires your brain chemistry. Manic phases can be fun, especially for those along for the ride. I know this from personal experience with the Bigamist.

Schizophrenia is the diagnosis you do not want. It is the one I am most likely to get, with the family history and the pathology of the way I went nuts. It is also the most misunderstood and stigmatised, violent cases of this are rare, but you see this shit in the news all the time. The Yorkshire Ripper called voices in his head once he was caught. Numerous sick fucks have gone with the Voice Of God shit. That's the more acute end of the wedge. This is the public face of the schizophrenic, mostly unwarrented, and most of the dangerous cases are male. Getting an understanding of how it works for the non violent is where the media and general public usually fail. The stigma is hardest on the tapped.

My big sister is schizophrenic. She is always been in denial, tells people she is bipolar, rather than her diagnosis, it came about with post natal depression, and she is now getting a divorce.

Here is the kicker with Our Kid. In her moments of being irrational she can get all invasion of the bodysnatchers with her son, she doesn't believe that he is her son at times, is not doing anything about her divorce that will help her keep joint custody and doesn't understand how my nephew is so upset. My sister has attempted suicide once already.  Her soon to be ex husband has stuck around for years, taking the weight of it mostly solo, and not really communicating to us how bad it gets.

Schizophrenia tears people and families apart. I am the luckier of the two of us, cos for one I do not have a concrete diagnosis yet, and I do not deny that there is a problem. Using logical reasoning and the fact that I referred myself to the longest wait to see a shrink (5 months, in total) means that I have had to figure out my own reality filter without medication, and am being put on a low dose of antipsychotics now, rather than being dragged kicking and screaming to a doctor, not being a danger to myself or others, I can't be sectioned.

I am one of the luckier psychotics. I know this, and since I got back from Scotland to visit Payne I have felt much better. The symptoms are more residual now, I have had time to adjust to them, to put them to occams razor and shred the bullshit.

Hell this could have been its own thread, but I figure it fits here.

[P3nT4gR4m]

I am one of the luckier psychotics. I know this, and since I got back from Scotland to visit Payne I have felt much better. The symptoms are more residual now, I have had time to adjust to them, to put them to occams razor and shred the bullshit.

I wish to hell I'd found this place before I went through it. Phrases like "occams razor" would have saved me months, maybe even years of having to work shit like that out for myself. Good luck - you sound like you're in a really good starting place (comparatively speaking of course)

[Pope Pixie Pickle]

Being able to tell if the shit is real or not helps a fuckton.