Withdrawals from a Legal Drug

ISBN: 978-1-84747-570-1
Published: 2008
Pages: 36
Key Themes: autobiography, medical interest, diagnosed schizophrenic, experience of attempting to quit the medication, belief that symptoms wane as the individual reaches a mature age

Description

This essay is the true story of one diagnosed schizophrenic's experience of attempting to quit the medication that has kept him sane for over a decade. Instead of the paranoia and delusions he suspects will surface in his mind when he quits his meds, he becomes at first violently physically ill, and then is almost hospitalized against his will by his family when they find out he is not taking his medication. The author becomes his own test subject in the attempt to prove that schizophrenia is not a life-long debilitating illness, but that the symptoms wane as the individual reaches a mature age.

About the Author

Ben McFadden is a thirty-three year old self-taught poet and writer. He is a graduate of the elite Abraxas Academy in Poway, California. He has lived his entire life in San Diego, California, except for a brief weekend at the college in Northern Californa, where he learned government spies were selling his inner-subconscious to Alien beings in exchange for a future world peace, which, as we can all see in the world around us, has yet to happen.

Book Extract

I got hooked on this shit when I was nineteen. I’ve pretty much been immediately addicted to everything I have done in my life that I enjoy doing. What was weird about this particular addiction that I am talking about is that the substance I was on did not get me high, give me sustenance, or orgasm, or any kind of thrill at all. I often wondered if Huey Lewis had discovered this same substance in his quest to find a new drug.

One time in my twenties I tried to kick it. At that time, I had never felt any kind of withdrawals at all. Other things happened, before the withdrawals could set in. I was feeling the withdrawals now. But those other things were not surfacing. I didn’t quite understand it. Was I really, truly now invincible? It is one thing to believe you are invincible, I’ve been through all that, but when bullets really start bouncing off of you, it makes a man think.

I was addicted to a drug prescribed to me by a doctor. I had never considered it an actual addiction until now. I needed my meds. The world was a safer place if I was on them. These are facts readily available on many websites: Mental Illness, of some form, occurs in over twenty-percent of the human population. A large majority of those people affected by the various forms of illness in industrialized countries, take medication to control their thoughts, moods, and behavior. These kinds of medication are extremely expensive.

There was a time I wanted to be insane. Not mall shooter insane, I mean more like Arthur Rimbaud Illuminations insane. There is a difference.

One leads to pain and death and misery.

The other leads to an awakening of the poetic mind. At least, that’s what I thought it was supposed to be all about.

There are two great myths about Schizophrenia. The first is that it is exactly the same as multiple personality disorder. No, we are not talking to our other personalities. We are talking to you, actually. It’s not my fault I’m here now, and you either died ten years ago, or haven’t been born yet. I have something I had to say to you, right now, in the bread aisle of the grocery store.

The myth about multiple personalities is an easy one to argue against. There have been documented studies separating, and isolating these two illnesses into two completely separate categories. Schizophrenics know who they are. And they have to deal with it in a very singular, solitary way.

The myth that is hard to argue against is the one about hearing voices. That is how psychiatrists describe what is going on. Even the patients themselves refer to it this way. I suspect no one’s ever really taken the time to describe what is really happening when the President of the United States hears the voice of God commanding him to send his troops into war.

It is not really a voice. It is just sound, almost undefined. But what you have to realize, is that every sound sounds the same way. A person who is speaking to you may not realize that the birds chirping, the cars driving by, your footsteps on the pavement, the way your pants ruffle slightly as you walk, a dog barking in the distance, the persistence of wind, and even all the movements associated with all of those sounds, will begin, in the schizophrenic mind, to have a meaning associated with them.

If you say, “Weather.” The schizophrenic will become aware of this:

“Whether or not you are aware of it, the day is passing by at such an accelerated rate of time that when you reach your destination a man you have never met will be waiting there with a package that does not belong to you, and the woman with the red umbrella is the one he is supposed to meet, but she will be five minutes late, and the man with the package will lose his patience and leave before she arrives, and she will stand out in the courtyard for over two hours hoping he comes back. She doesn’t know what is in the package. She wants to find out.”

But you don’t notice anything’s wrong. Because your schizoid friend will turn, and agree the weather is better than expected. Because he heard you, there was no other voice interrupting what you were saying. He didn’t actually hear anything that is written above. He didn’t visualize it either. It transverses time and space. And you may be confused about why it is your friend has suddenly become so deathly quiet, when you finally reach the park to have your picnic.

There is woman with a red umbrella standing in the courtyard. But you don’t notice her. Who cares?

It’s not telepathy, either. It has nothing to do with being psychic. It has to do with being aware of events that are real, linking them in your mind to obscure, coincidental events, and feeling trapped within them. It doesn’t make any sense to someone who has never been through it. It’s almost impossible to explain to other people. So we just say, “I hear voices.”

Why does your friend seem to shrink in a way, on the way home, passing the bus stop, where the man with a package is sitting, tapping his foot impatiently while waiting for the bus?

He could be anyone. Neither of you have ever seen him before. Why does your friend believe the man with the package, and the woman with the red umbrella know each other? Why have these two seemingly unrelated events linked themselves together in such a way that it makes your friend nervous?

Because you have just said the word: “Box.”

And that is exactly what your friend is in. He is inside that package on the bus stop next to that impatient man. And he has no idea where he is being taken. But he does know, on the bus, and we all know how noisy they can be while moving, and starting and stopping, and how confined a person is while traveling on one, that there will be the color red on something, maybe another person’s clothes, and we should immediately assume the man riding the bus carrying the package knows this other person wearing red. Maybe it’s a red hat, the same kind he has inside the box. And when both these passengers get up and leave at separate stops, other people have gotten on at different stops, and there will be signifying events to lead the schizophrenic to believe that all of them coincidentally passing by each other lead to one conclusion: I need help. I need medication. I hear voices.