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Joe Kerrane was
tragically killed in 1994. He drowned he was aged 21. We share an
article he wrote shortly before his death.
This is driving
me crazy,That was totally mad,Tell that to the men in
the white coats.
In todays society people talk often about
madness,but only in a flippant,jokey way. On a serious level the idea of a
person losing the control of their mental faculties is still surrounded in
taboos. It is still a subject that is avoided in polite conversation,and which
frightens many people.
When a student is forced to give up their course
due to a physical misfortune like a broken back or other major ailment then
they become the focus of local sympathy and it is something recognised as
unavoidable and unfortunate. However, when it is due to a mental breakdown or
psychosis then nothing is ever mentioned and in some cases,the true
nature of that persons illness may be kept quiet.
It is,however,
a very common condition. As Breaking Through Breaking Down many as 10% of all
students experience some mental imbalance or emotional or mental breakdown
during their course. I was amazed after my breakdown just how many people came
to me and said that just the same thing had happened to them. Some of them had
managed to resolve their problems without ever becoming involved with the
psychiatric profession,others had been less fortunate than me, and had actually
been sectioned. Most patients in psychiatric wards or hospitals are
there voluntarily. They have recognised that their problems are too acute for
themselves and their families to deal with,and come to seek professional help.
A few, however, are held under section II of the Mental Health Act and may
therefore be detained and given medication against their will. The only grounds
for sectioning someone are that the individual is considered not to be in
control of his or her actions and tries to harm either themselves or other
people. This is the darkest of the psychiatric profession,and it is this which
has made psychiatric into the scary word it now is.
Just as
scary in most peoples minds are the drugs which are prescribed as e voked
by the Dead Kennedys They force-feed you mind-melting
pills,till even the outside world looks great. The main drugs used to
treat psychiatric disorders are major tranquillisers such as Valium and
Largactyl. These are powerful calming drugs which slow the mind down and sedate
you. On high doses,perception of time becomes distorted,so that a week may seem
like a day or two. Sleeping pills are also often prescribed and in many
cases,other drugs may be required to counter the side-effects of the
tranqullisers even though these other drugs may themselves have side-effects or
carry physical risks.
In my opinion,no mental aberration was ever cured
by psychiatric drugs. Mental breakdown is a trap:a locked cage from which only
the sufferer can find the way out. Where drugs can be helpful is in dealing
with the symptoms,not the causes of psychosis. These include lack of
sleep/inability to sleep, voices racing uncontrollably within the conscious
mind,and the random-seeming upwellings of deep and inexplicable feelings from
the subconscious mind. What the causes are is a bone of contention between the
spiritually minded and the clinically minded. For the clinically minded it is
all cut and dried. I took psychoactive drugs and as a result, I suffered from a
drug induced psychosis. Simple. However, this makes as much sense as calling it
a college-induced psychosis. This experience happens just as frequently to
non-drug users.
You cannot pin the blame for this sort of experience on
any one thing,however convenient that maybe for those who campaign against the
use of illegal drugs. My breakdown was caused basically by a combination of
stress and spiritual and psychic expansion and exploration. Stress obviously
has its own causes , which in my case included lack of sleep, pressure of work
and lack of love for myself and from those I was in close contact with
day-to-day. The spiritual and psychic sides to the episode are very
significant,as although they were a positive thing up until the onset of
breakdown/psychosis,they opened me up to the type of experience I had.
What I experienced during the two months that my state of profoundly
altered consciousness lasted was a total regression to childhood and
beyond,right back to the point when I was conceived by my parents. In essence
it was a spiritual death and rebirth of huge proportions. For a week and a half
I could barely speak and when I opened my mouth to speak,collections of
nonsense syllables would come out. My closest friends had to ask whether I
still knew who they were. I entered another world, another dimension,a place so
far away that nobody and nothing could reach me there and from which it was
unbelievably difficult to return.
I lost touch with the first world,the
world we all share:the world of places and things which we all take
more-or-less for granted. The initial experience was one of paranoia:believing
that people were plotting against me or even were imminently about to burst
into my home and shoot me. My fantasies became indistinguishable from reality
and so intense that I could no longer communicate with people I knew. I
didnt really know where I was or what I was doing. I stopped eating and
sleeping,dropping down to 9 stone which for a heavy-boned man of 5ft 10
is positively emaciated. When I was admitted to Halifax General Hospital I was
a total wreck. By the time I worked out where I was and what was going on,it
was a month later and I was ready to leave.
Its now a year later,
and the memories have started to fade at last. I no longer have dreams in which
Im still mad and no longer have any contact with any of the agencies that
were involved in my case. What it has left me with are two strong
beliefs:firstly that my breakdown was the most important and positive thing
that has every happened to me, and secondly that people going through similar
experiences deserve better care than I got.
On the first point, the
hell which I travelled through really burnt a lot of the trash I was carrying
with me. Deeply held insecurities, negative and depressing habits of
thought,and limiting concepts have been blasted out of my life by this
experience and I am freer now than I ever have been before.
Although I
wouldnt wish my experience on anybody else, I think that everyone should
have the opportunity to share in its more positive aspects. Ideally I
would like to see places where people of all ages can go at times of massive
upheaval and spiritual change in their lives and where they can be looked after
and cared for by people who understand the spiritual resonances of such an
experience . In all the time I was in hospital (one month) no-one from the
establishment offered any real counselling or tried to get to the bottom of the
things that were bothering me. At the end of the day what helped me back to
full health was the love and support of my family and friends. Those people
unfortunate to be without that kind of support just didnt seem to get any
better.
If just a part of the money that was spent on chemical
treatment of mental disorders was spent on training various types of therapists
and bringing in spiritual healers Im sure the net result would be a lot
more psychiatric returning to society and leading integrated and positive
lives. Really, though,what is required is more money. Theres no point in
saying to someone Right, well cut your medication by 50% so that we
can afford to get you a therapist,if that medication is vital for their
stability.
These patients are todays shamens and
seers. We should seek to learn from them,not to dope them up and keep them
quiet. If we cannot understand them then perhaps it is because we havent
tried hard enough,not because there is no sense in what they say. Every person
suffering is in itself a metaphor for the suffering of the Mother. We can see
the madness of mans treatment of the planet manifest within them. It is
only a case of raising the group consciousness of the human race to a point
where we recognise that,and then the mental afflictions will dissolve into
light.
One of the most important battles in this fight for reason is
that of self-respect. Many of the people I met while I was on the ward saw
themselves as just worthless crazies. Discarded people. Refuse. Once you can
make people believe that they are good, worthwhile, loving and beloved people,
then the question of ho w crazy they are become purely academic. Once you find
love within yourself then there is nothing it will not overcome. There is
nothing else but God and each of us is a part of it. Love is the law. Love
under will. Creation will endure and seen in its proper perspective our whole
existence passes in the blink of an eye. There is no madness. There are only
different perspectives,each valid in its own right. As you sow, so shall you
reap. There is no more.
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