Conversations from hell

[Pope Pixie Pickle]

The meds are starting to help. I'm getting less of the day to day general psychosis background noise, but certain stresses will make it worse. Meds are also fucking with my sexual response, and that is the part that SUCKS.

I am going to write moare about the breakdown at some point in the future, when the urge takes me there and my poor sludgy brain is more active.

Right now my energies are taken up by helping Payne find a place to live and being all supportive and stuff, looking for a place to volunteer and trying to stay sober.  And my occaisonal trolling.

[Brotep]

Damn, I totally missed this thread. Until now. Read it all the way through.

This struck a chord. Some of the clients I work with have PTSD from their time in the institution before the state shut it down. Solutions only bring more problems, sometimes. When they finally closed the place, many of the patients ended up on the street.

There's one lady in particular who's been having a hard time lately. She's nonverbal aside from answering "yes" to any question and repeating what you say and do. She rocks back and forth when she's agitated; the faster she rocks, the more upset she is. She works until her fingers bleed, and beyond. Listen closely and you can hear her indistinct vocalizations. Ask her what she's humming and she'll burst into "You Are My Sunshine". She was rocking much faster than usual the other day. Said she was angry when I asked, but it's hard to know if she really meant it. Most people don't get it. The woman next to her is always asking her if she's cold.

[Adios]

I, for one, think this thread defines courage and strength.

[Brotep]

More, please.

[P3nT4gR4m]

"A rolling stone gathers no moss"

It was a question but the intonation, the delivery made it more like a statement. He'd asked me to tell him what that meant to me but he wasn't interested in hearing what I had to say. He wanted to guage my reaction. He wasn't even looking at me when I launched into a diatribe that I don't recall verbatim all these years later but ended up with me ranting about infinity and positive and negative and, in all probability, religion and god and the devil and shit like that. I was being stalked by god, after all. It was kinda figuring highly in my thoughts. He never more than glanced in my direction, focussed as he was, writing stuff I never saw in his notebook.

It made me paranoid. It made me feel like I was being tested. I was. I failed with flying colours. Literally. I was hallucinating by the end of the short meeting. Detained, under whichever section of the mental health act applied. "Emergency! This fucker has no business being at large in the community. Real bad shit could happen. I was held under observation in Bellsdyke psychiartic facility.

I was ushered into what became known to me as "the dayroom" That simple phrase still sends shivers up my spine. There were some sketchy looking punters in here. Some part of me seemed to sense where I was but, for the most part, I was blissfully oblivious to my circumstances. I was motioned over by a fairly serious looking guy with a guage 1 buzzcut and shoulders like a fucking jersey bull. He seemed amiable enough but there was an edge in his eyes that put me straight into "watch what you say" mode. I was, at this time, completely, certifiably insane but I wasn't stupid.

His introduction sent my paranoia into overdrive. I was talking to the older brother of one of the shadiest cunts in my local district, a guy who I only knew by reputation, a reputation which largely consisted of him sticking knifes and machettes in people for the most trivial of reasons. The big brother was ten times worse but fortunately he was banged up at the moment. And here was me, starting to realise that I was banged up with him.

My mind couldn't deal with reality in general right then, hell that was why I was there in the first place but this? Fuck no. This wasn't happening. This was actors and hidden cameras and top secret, MK-ultra governemt experiments and shit. I was some kind of super mutant with latent powers who they were trying to abduct and reprogram with complicated mind control techniques to become the ultimate superweapon and some of the reprogramming shit involved someone pretending to be the fucking antichrist, sitting beside me, trying to bum a rollup and asking how I'd gotten here.

It was time to leave. My superpowers took me about as far as the door to the main corridoor before they got hold of me. I fought my way through the guantlet about half way to the locked security door before they wrestled me to the floor. I felt a sting in my arse. It all went black.

[Adios]

Fuck.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

Holy shit, Pent.

I never doubted you, I guess I just thought that crap went out in the '60's.

Still happens.  It looks less gruesome these days and supposedly isn't as painful, but it has a number of advocates.

They were still doing it in the early 70's http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzjeqXFKFXQ and it doesn't surprise me that it never really went away. One of those things people hush up, I think, because it's brutal and does no good but to maybe make things easier for staff?

[Triple Zero]

I might have written about this earlier in the thread, but "it does no good" is bullshit.

That is, voluntary shock therapy. If it's involuntary, it's of course absolutely barbaric.

I know because a friend of mine who's now a doctor, during her medical internship witnessed shock therapy. The voluntary kind. The man undergoing it suffered from extremely severe depressions of some kind. They put him under complete anaesthetics [so no, it's not painful, you're not even "there"], except for part of one arm. Which would flail about wildly, this was how they could gauge the effect of the electrical shocks.
My friend talked to the man. It wasn't the first time he received the treatment. He said they didn't know exactly why or how, but it worked, and it helped him.

[BabylonHoruv]

It sounds like the shock treatments worked for the young lady in P3nt's recollection as well actually.  She had some adverse effects, but he said she was back, the one that was coherent and interacted with people.

[P3nT4gR4m]

She told us it helped.

[Triple Zero]

It's just a single example, BTW. I don't know anything more about it, nor have I read anything about it, so maybe I shouldn't argue one way or the other.

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

I don't know a lot about it either.

It's possible she said it helped because she wanted to be seen as cooperating with treatment so they'd stop. Might have been worried about what she said getting back to staff.

But I don't know. It just seems barbaric though.

[P3nT4gR4m]

A bunch of fucked up shit happened all at once. I slept off a night worth of industrial-strength, no fucking about tranquillisers. It was anything but tranquil. I woke up dazed and confused and somehow breakfast came and went as I, for some reason that unsettles me to this day, just kinda went with where I was and what was happening. I was in hell. I was fucked. Game was over.

The next thing I know a bunch of chairs are being arranged in a circle. Circle was a significant shape to me, right then. Most of them were. My guess is that if you'd have thrown a triangle or a square or, fuck it, even a rhombus in front me right then I'd have freaked out. I was geometrically paranoid. It wasn't the only aspect of my shattered psyche that was causing me problems but, as soon as the circle was formed, it kicked into high gear. I came close to pointing and screaming "it's a fucking circle - kill it!" but somehow paralytic fear helped me keep it together.

I was somehow convinced to sit down. This was a "meeting". They happened once a week. Did I mention I was meeting-phobic. Next thing I know there's a full blown, shrieking and hollering and hooting, crazy monkeyfest in full swing. For some reason it relaxed me. I became momentarily lucid. I thought for a moment "this is kinda funny but, at the same time, these fuckers are all batshit crazy. "I'm not meant to be here. I don't belong here." I calmly explained to one of the staff sitting nearby.

He disagreed. I calmly asserted a perfectly nonsensical position. He patronised me. I less calmly asserted a position which the description "nonsensical" is not quite adequate to describe. He requested I remain calm. I declined. He had me in an armlock on the floor before I'd even properly decided I was going to attack him. I was led off to a side room which I recognised as the same place I'd spent the previous night. Another guy came in and they attempted to talk me down.

My psychosis was in high gear at this point. I became aware that was possessed by the devil (yeah, that's right, I do insanity with a twist of kitsch) I was sitting in a high backed vinyl chair, with no armrests. My back began to arch uncontrollably. Both the staff guys were trying to hold me down but my back was spazzing out something stupid, the back of my head felt like it was within millimetres of my heels. This was in the days before procycledine. They told me I had to ride it out.

After about half an hour the devil obviously got bored being held down by two guys and left. My neck was sore for fucking days. Good old anti-psychotics and their side effects. I learned to really hate those things.

[Eater of Clowns]

Pent, I'm happy to see this thread back up and running.  It's consistently been one of my favorite reads here.  Your description of psychosis is intense, terrifying, and in a way, refreshing, because of the complete bullshit that surrounds many other accounts.