Losing it All

"Madness comes in many colors. Each as individual as the victim. Schizophrenia is tailored to the individual patient. Some prefer to wear it loosely, others a bit more snugly. When first presented with this suit, all universally recoil. In the nascent state, denial tends to be the initial reaction. Only with time does one resign oneself to his or her fate. There is a mixture of grief over the loss of one’s mind, and a slow coming to terms with one’s new role as a freak. Fifty years ago I would have been locked naked in a cage. Even though I can still walk the streets by taking the correct chemicals, and a body can’t pick me out of a crowd, I am still statistically someone who has more in common with the features in a circus sideshow than with the average guy on the loose. Insanity by nature is pretty humorless."

Schizophrenia had taken everything that ever meant anything to him. His wife, his daughter, his home, his pending career and his sanity. We had no family history up until this point of major mental illness. Everyone was treading in new, murky waters. My grandfather, an emotionally controlled high-ranking Iowa State Patrolman was angry and devastated. He didn't know what to make of Dad’s illness. Back then, I am not even sure he really believed it was an illness. He was more disappointed in Dad than in his diagnosis. My grandmother’s heart ached for her son, as most mothers, she was tortured watching her son writhe around in misery without being able to do a thing to fix it. The delusions crept in slowly, eventually picking up pace and becoming both more vivid and more frequent. He believed that people were watching him, clinging and dissecting every single thought that raced through his brain. He became livid and paranoid at the thought of this. He began to feel that the delusions were references involving every aspect of his private life. Dad was convinced that some organization had access through audio or visual medium to everything he said or did. He believed he was being monitored by satellite and the sound captured was being transmitted to tiny listening devices placed under the ears of “subscribers”. He believed the whole world was in on this…with the exception of China. He didn’t believe them to be interested. These delusions then led to his belief that people were reading his mind and broadcasting his every thought. I simply cannot imagine the tortuous agony one would feel if it felt like you were always “on” with people knowing each and every one of your most inner thoughts. He felt and continued to feel throughout the progression of his disease that his psychosis, his break from reality, was simulated by others and wasn’t psychosis at all. Dad wracked his brain for why this was happening to him. Was it his experimentation with drugs? Was he a bad person? Karma? What should he have done differently? He quickly dismissed these ideas feeling that if skeletons in the closet caused mental illness, we would all be crazy.

 My father and I frequently conversed about the speculation of family and friends that his experimentation with drugs and alcohol during high school and college was the precipitating event to his becoming schizophrenic. He discussed this at length with many doctors who were of the opinion that if drugs did play a part his diagnosis would be different. At that time anyway it would have been labeled something like “organic delusional disorder” and would not have responded to medication. Since he did respond favorably to neuroleptic medication the overwhelming conclusion was that he was a “true” schizophrenic. At the very most, the drugs could have triggered a genetic predisposition for the disorder that might not have otherwise expressed itself. If drugs and alcohol alone caused schizophrenia, there would have been a schizophrenia epidemic in the 70’s. I have always rejected this idea, feeling it was just another way to blame someone for their mental illness. Whether that is right or wrong we will never know. What was known was that alcohol and drugs were far too aggravating for the disorder and his prognosis would be poor if he continued to use. For years after Dad got on medication, and stayed on it, he continued to drink alcohol heavily, smoke pot and occasionally use cocaine. While these activities only work against the mental hygiene of an individual with a major mental illness it is not uncommon that people will attempt to “self-medicate” with alcohol and street drugs. He got away with this, relatively speaking, for about five years until one day in 1989 when the world came crashing down around him. I would have been 10 years old at the time of this particular break. My communication and relationship with Dad for the previous decade had been inconsistent at best. He became psychotic virtually overnight and went inpatient to try and stabilize. He was there for three weeks, totally psychotic the whole time. The doctors at the time made the decision to reduce his medication, one that he wasn’t too supportive of. That is indeed the tricky part of psychiatric medication, too much or too little can have damning effects. Finding the right cocktail can take months or even years. When they let him out of treatment he was still psychotic and remained so for two painfully long years. These are what Dad referred to as the “dark years”. It was during this time that he committed absurd acts of violence; such as beating a police car to a pulp and pulling a gun on his second wife and attempting to take his own life numerous times. He had visions of killing his parents and ex-wives; he felt they were all to blame. They were all in on this sick joke. He was able, very thankfully, to control these impulses reminding himself at every moment that it couldn't be real though it felt excruciatingly real.

 These were the years before Clozaril came out as an experimental medication; with limited release and tight controls. He was lucky to be selected to participate in the trial as this was the medication that would prove to have the best efficacy, but it was to be years before it would become available.

"Once you have lost your mind you realize that you have nothing left to lose. The quest then begins. You take the bad with the good, steadily steering a course through the shoals toward the setting sun. Then the night comes. And it is then, in the dark night of the soul, that you chart your course by the stars. You take it on faith, floating forward, that you will reach your destination."