Mind Over Matter: My Descent Into, and Triumph Over, the Psychiatric Abyss

I have never enjoyed suffering. In fact I think it is safe to say that I’ve come to rather dislike it. I bless the days when I can sit peacefully on a comfortable couch, with a good book in hand, and read to my heart’s content. In spite of my aversion to pain, an aversion that I suspect is not unique to myself, I have come to realize that there is purpose in suffering. In fact, some of the best books that I have ever been written were the product of a soul who had endured something painful.

 

Come to think of it, even the Holy Bible would be meaningless if it did not contain the record of Jesus Christ in Gethsemane, and his subsequent suffering upon the cross. Furthermore, the Bible would be absolutely absurd if did not include a record of the events following the crucifixion. The glorious Resurrection and the empty Garden Tomb witness that through Jesus Christ, both death and suffering have a purpose and an end. Fortunately for all of us, the Gospels did not grind to a halt at Golgotha.

 

I must confess from the outset that my childhood and upbringing were in many ways idyllic. In other words, I couldn’t have imagined for myself a happier context in which to live and grow up. I could not have been welcomed into a more loving family. I could not have asked for greater parents. Not long after I was born in a hospital in Payson, Utah, my parents moved to Boston, Massachusetts, where my dad attended graduate school at Harvard University. Shortly thereafter, our family was blessed with another baby boy, and then another. To say that my mom was busy with three rambunctious little toddlers would be more than an understatement. The five of us then moved to New Hampshire for a year so that my father could work on his dissertation.   After he completed his dissertation, we embarked on a journey to a new home in Michigan, where my dad received his first teaching job in the political science department at Hillsdale College. Hillsdale was a childhood paradise, with woods to explore, frogs to catch, sports to play, and friends to meet. In retrospect, I almost can’t imagine how three little boys with that much freedom did not get into more trouble than we did (although we certainly got into a lot of trouble).

 

Our next stop was Moscow… Idaho, that is. We lived in Northern Idaho for a year before my father obtained a new teaching position in the political science department at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. We moved to Utah in 1987, and soon afterward, my little sister was born. Seven years later, to our surprise and great joy, our family was blessed with another little girl. The seven of us lived joyfully, with our hearts knit together in unity and love.

 

We were a happy family, and I was a happy youth. God blessed me with many gifts and talents, as well as many good friends. There was nothing to prevent me from succeeding in every way. The future was very bright.

 

As was customary for young men of my faith, I was called to serve a mission at the age of 19. I was assigned to labor in what could arguably be described as the most beautiful area of the Lord’s vineyard, namely Southern Italy. I had always wanted to serve the Lord as a full-time missionary. I was excited and determined to do my best to love and serve the Italian people. Life was wonderful and full of hope.

 

One day I promise to compose my entire autobiography for posterity, but for the present moment (and at my young age), my purpose is to share a portion of my life in the desire to be helpful to those who may be suffering. Perhaps my story can prevent others from having to endure the same kind of suffering that I endured. If my story can assist even one person on his or her journey, it will have been well worth the effort.

 

Of course my life wasn’t perfect. There were ups and downs. But preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ in Southern Italy was a wonderful experience. In August of 1996 I arrived in Bari, a fairly large port city on the Eastern coast of Southern Italy. I jumped into missionary work with both feet, and immersed myself in missionary life. I was off to a great start.

 

Then one day I received a letter from my family. It was a letter that would change my life forever. I opened it just before I went to bed one night and read the terrible news that my youngest brother had been admitted to a psychiatric ward near Alexandria, Virginia.

 

A psychiatric ward is a fancy name for a mental hospital, or a place where crazy people are kept. But my brother was not crazy. In fact, he was one of the most brilliant and intellectually gifted people that I knew. He had his quirks, to be sure, but he was certainly not mentally ill. He was also the most musically and mathematically gifted member of our family. He was not merely smart. He was a certified genius. As a freshman in high school, he had already completed the highest level of math that the school had to offer, and subsequently he began taking private tutoring classes with the math teacher. Just before his admittance into the hospital, he was in the running for a national merit scholarship. By the time that I had embarked on my mission, he had read enough great books to fill a library. He was a prodigy, and I loved him.

 

This same brother wrote me a short note from the hospital to tell me that he loved me, and that he was ok. But I could tell from his handwriting that he was not ok. His penmanship had always been unique to him, the penmanship of a perspicacious child genius, but his note bore the characteristics of someone who was suffering. Recently I stopped by the psychiatric ward at the local hospital where I read notes written by patients with similar shaky penmanship. There were a few dozen letters scrawled out on forms that had been printed out so that the patients could express their thanks the psychiatric workers. Not all of the letters were legible, and most of them looked like they had been etched during moments of intense suffering.

On September 30, 1996, just a few days after my twentieth birthday, I recorded in my journal: “My youngest brother is, or was, in the hospital near Washington D.C. He should be out by now, hopefully. He had some sort of a breakdown. He said something about evil spirits. I don’t know what’s going on, but I do know that he will be ok and that he is recuperating. He wrote me a great 3-line letter from the hospital, stating, ‘I can’t wait to go on a mission… I love you… we all miss you.’ The handwriting was a little shaky… more shaky than usual (if that is possible). I love my him, and I miss him.”

 

I have heard various accounts of what actually took place on that dreadful day. Little did I know at the time that I would someday be called upon to endure a similar kind of suffering. I too would experience a depth of anguish that I could not possibly have imagined, an anguish that I would not wish upon anyone.

 

My youngest brother eventually recovered, at least as far as I could tell, and I continued to write to him and to the rest of my family while carrying out my missionary duties. Before long my mission had come to a close, and my father, accompanied by the eldest of younger sisters, came to pick me up in Catania, Italy. We drove together from Sicily, through the length of Italy, and to our final destination in Paris, France. My father was directing the study abroad program for Brigham Young University, and my other younger brother was serving a mission in Paris. My mom and my sisters also came to Paris. I joined about twenty other students for a study abroad experience, and my youngest brother later joined the group as well. Eventually we were all reunited in Paris.

 

At this point, it was easy to assume that my brother had fully recovered, and that life would continue as it always had. God had added blessings upon blessings. To my happy childhood and joyous youth, He added wonderful experiences in some of the most beautiful regions of the earth. There is always much to be grateful for, but this was a time for rejoicing. I still was not aware of what had really happened to my youngest brother.

 

I had enjoyed my experience as a missionary, but it was certainly not without challenges or difficulties. I experienced occasional bouts of depression during my mission, but nothing that I couldn’t handle with a little help from my friends. In any case, I was acclimating to a totally new environment. I was also adjusting to a new diet that included a vast amount of delicious carbohydrates (pasta, focaccia, pizza, calzones, etc.). I visited hospitals with ailing missionaries, including one companion who had developed a painful ingrown toenail. We had many friends who worked in hospitals, and we often visited hospitals to care for the sick and afflicted. In one city there were even hot springs where people came to heal.   In short, I had many experiences with medicinal practices in a foreign country, and I would have similar experiences in different countries. I visited several French hospitals as well. In Italy and in France, the hospitals seemed very primitive compared to those in the United States.

 

During the beautiful road trip to Paris, my dad and I discussed my youngest brother’s condition. He had remained in the United States for a short time before joining us for the study abroad. I recorded in my journal that he was at the temple one day, and also that he had bought all the General Conference Ensign magazines that he could find from a thrift store. Finally he arrived in Paris. In the fall of 1998, I recorded in my journal: “He is home!!! He played soccer with me. He played very well, and had some assists. It was a good soccer day.”

 

Although we were all reunited in Paris, I could tell that something was amiss. I thoroughly enjoyed living and studying in Paris, but something was different about my youngest brother. He just didn’t seem the same. My mother had changed as well. It was as if they had undergone something traumatic that had shaken them.

 

Soon after returning home from Paris, I stayed one night at my uncle’s house (my mother’s youngest brother) in Salt Lake City. In the winter of 1998 I recorded in my journal that, “My aunt advised me to study up on my youngest brother’s condition and to learn about depression, since it is apparently a family ailment. To tell the truth, I have never been happier or more content in my life and I fell like only blessings and joy are ahead, more joy. Of course, this includes trials, but come what may.” I was happy, but soon I discovered that my youngest brother had been hospitalized again in France. The first time he went in to the Parisian hospital for an appendicitis problem. Later he returned to the hospital because something had gone wrong with his first operation, and he developed an infection. Fortunately he was still optimistic. And so was I. I noted in my journal, “I am essentially a happy person, even though I have my ups and downs.” I was anxious to be reunited with my brothers when they returned home from Paris. When they returned home I wrote in my journal: “I am so grateful that my little brother returned safely and is here with me. He is great! I love him.”

 

After the study abroad in Paris, while I was studying again at Brigham Young University and working part-time, I went out of my way to spend time with my youngest brother, and to help him in any way that I could to overcome his struggles. I even accompanied him on visits to a psychiatrist. He had been prescribed a variety of psychotropic drugs, which affected his personality and behavior. Even though I enjoyed the occasional glimpses into his real character, personality, intellect and great sense of humor, he did not seem like the same brother that I knew before my mission to Italy.

 

Early in 1999, I recorded my thoughts on my little brother’s condition in my journal: “He is ok. He went with me to the psychiatrist, Doctor Harris (good man, inspires trust), and he told my little brother to find a balance. When he goes to the temple more than three times a week, then perhaps the balance is tilted to some dangerous extreme. It is hard for me to understand exactly how he feels, but I understand to a certain extent. How does he feel? Yesterday we had a good talk together. I came over after Church to Heritage Halls. Mom called me and she was crying. She told me that my little brother had walked out of a priesthood meeting, and that he hadn’t taken a shower for a week. He had been crying. I went over to his house with a prayer in my heart as I do now. We talked about school, girls, and the mission. He felt like this time is a test to see if he can go on a mission, and he doesn’t like that. I hugged him. I love him so much, but only the Lord can help him. I’ll keep trying, and I am trying to understand what God would have me do to help him more effectively. I also get distracted by school, girls, work, etc. My little brother comes first on my schedule. I need direction from the Holy Ghost… should I stop my Comparative Literature major and find something new? Should I learn about psychiatry? What should I do?”

 

If I had known then what I know now, I would have done everything in my power to prevent my little brother from visiting psychiatrists and doctors, and from taking any antipsychotic drugs. Although I did dedicate time to researching health care and psychiatry, there was not much information readily available that was accurate enough to dissuade my brother or myself from visiting hospitals and trusting in the authority of doctors. I wrote in my journal: “My brother and I are concerned about our youngest brother, his health, his social life, his worries. I know he wants to serve a mission, and I hope that somehow he will be prepared to do so.” Later I wrote, “My youngest brother was struggling today. He told me that he had cried. I need to have a softer heart toward him and show him that I really love him so much. Tomorrow I will go grocery shopping for him.”

 

I escorted my little brother on frequent visits to the psychiatrist. He had many appointments, and to the best of my knowledge, I thought that I was helping him. If only I had been aware of the wisdom of C.S. Lewis’ warning: “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.” (C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology) Only later would I learn that all the good intentions of psychiatry lead to unimaginable suffering. But I loved my little brother, and I wanted to help him to prepare for his mission. In many ways, he was much better prepared to serve the Lord than I was when I left, but his poor health (due to the drugs and the trauma of his first involuntary hospitalization) was becoming more and more of an obstacle. We spent a lot of time together. We went to the planetarium one night. I listened to him play the guitar, and he taught me a few songs. He is still a great guitarist.

 

Not long after our visits to the psychiatrist I wrote in my journal, “My little brother has been acting very spiritual lately. He has been watching old General Conference or fireside videos and studying old Ensign magazines. He needs a balance. I think I will show more love to him and spend more time with him. Maybe he will want to play tennis with my friend and I tomorrow.” One day I noted, “I went to hear my little brother play in Guitar Wars! He was awesome. He played a song he wrote called ‘Country Boy,’ and then he played ‘Lean on Me’ … his was the best performance out there.”

 

Finally his big day came, and my youngest brother received his call to serve a mission in San Diego, California. This was great news indeed, and we were all excited for him. On October 10, 1999, I recorded my feelings at that time in my journal, “Yesterday after the BYU girls’ soccer game, we went to our condo. My little brother picked up the guitar and started to play a few of his songs for us. When I looked at him it suddenly struck me that he would soon be gone, on a mission, and that he would be facing the harsh world… alone. But of course we are never alone.”

 

Before he left for his mission, I noted in my journal, “My little brother and I talked about his condition. I don’t know why he thinks he will die. I was not afraid when he spoke to me about death, but he might be mixed up. I tried to encourage him, and we embraced. He is my brother. “

 

By this time my mother was understandably very distraught by what had happened to my youngest brother. She too seemed very different when I returned home from my mission. When I left she was the most ebullient, loving, carefree, friendly and sociable person that I knew. I had a great relationship with her, and I felt like I could talk to her about anything. For some reason, when I returned home from my mission, she seemed very different. She was hypersensitive to anything about my behavior that could possibly signal the same symptoms that afflicted my little brother.

 

Before I knew it, I had also begun to feel some anxiety about my brother’s situation. I was also dealing with the stresses that are common to ambitious university students. Any emotion or behavior that seemed in the least bit suspicious could be diagnosed: feeling blue, feeling excited… even feeling normal. After one fateful check up with a family physician, I came away with a prescription for Prozac.

 

I didn’t know why I was being prescribed the drug, nor did I want to take it… but I felt obliged to trust the authority of doctors and of my parents. I had no idea, nor was I told anything about the drug or its effects. I took the Prozac for a while, but it made me feel worse, so I discontinued taking it. Shortly thereafter, my family physician began prescribing other drugs. At first I was hesitant to take them. The drugs had terrible effects, but no one could give me any reliable information about the “medication” that I was being offered. I began to worry about it. The first time that I held the little purple Wellbutrin pill in the palm of my hand, I had a very bad feeling about it. But because of the pressure from the authority of a doctor, as well as the constant counsel to take the pills because they were “marvelous gifts from God to help people,” I naively continued to take them.

 

Recently I have learned that it is common for those who begin to take psychotropic drugs to feel such apprehensions. Gradually, however, the drugs begin to have another effect known as “medication spellbinding.” Spellbinding is the effect of drugs on a patient whose mental condition is deteriorating even though he or she believes that the drugs are helping. Under the spell of drugs, the patient may not realize that the drug is actually causing the symptoms with which he or she is suffering, and the patient may develop compulsive, or even destructive behaviors that are caused by the chemical compounds that they are ingesting. (Breggin, Medication Madness, p. 11) I could not have possibly known at the time that my apprehensions were correct, and that I was resisting the spellbinding effects of the drugs.

 

My mom was beginning to worry about me more, as she had done with my youngest brother. My journal entries from this time period reveal gradual changes in how I was feeling… low morale, nervousness, and other agitations. Up until that point in my life I had been mostly in excellent health. Since childhood and throughout high school I was actively involved in a variety sports such as baseball, basketball, soccer, tennis, lacrosse and so forth. During my senior year of high school I experienced some slight depression, but it felt more like an extended sort of melancholy. It was a melancholy that might also be typical of artistically and poetically inclined souls. I did very well in school. I excelled in sports. I felt the love and support of family and friends. But over a period of time I went from feeling confident and excited about life, to feeling downtrodden and despondent.

 

Still, I continued to follow my youngest brother’s progress, ever trying to reassure him. On November 30, 1999 I recorded in my journal: “[My little brother] called. He felt sad… so I assured him that Dad loved him and that he is trying to help him. The best thing I can do is to listen to [him], spend time with him, and be there for him. I know that he will be a great missionary.”

 

Little did I know at the time that most of the bizarre behavior that I observed in my little brother was directly attributable to the so-called “medications” that he had been prescribed. The so-called “antidepressants” and “antipsychotics” had been taking their toll on my brother’s brilliant brain ever since his first involuntary hospitalization. I didn’t fully understand at the time that my brother was battling both the trauma of hospitalization and the crippling effects of pharmaceutical prescriptions. To this day he still battles both of them, even without realizing it.

 

My youngest brother was diagnosed with a strange ailment that the psychiatrist called “bipolar disorder.” Although he had always been on the brilliant end of the spectrum of intelligence, I had never known him to be either “manic” or “depressive,” and I certainly never considered him to be “bipolar.” But once the label was attached, the stigma set it, and everyone, including my youngest brother and myself, simply took the psychiatrist’s word for it. We simply assumed that his illness was a bipolarity caused in part by a genetic predisposition and in part by a chemical imbalance. We assumed this because that is what we were told by doctors who were supposedly the “experts” on such matters. The pills that he was given were described as miracle drugs and blessings from God. The doctors’ main argument was that in former times, manic-depressive patients had no access to the miracles of modern medicine, and therefore we should be grateful for the remedies that now existed. Science had advanced to a point that we could now treat mental illnesses in a way heretofore unheard of.   Thus we trusted in the efficacy of the so-called “remedies” and the scientific authority of doctors and psychiatrists.

In the midst of this confusion, I would sometimes have feelings of nervousness and even sadness, partially because of what was happening to my youngest brother. As I mentioned earlier, after one routine check up with the family doctor, I came away with a prescription of my own. I did not know what the prescription was for, or even why I was given it. I simply trusted a doctor that I had visited for many years, and I naively assumed that he knew what he was doing. If I ever felt nervous or anxious, all I needed to do was to pop a little tablet into my mouth and swallow. Without any instructions about the drug or its effects, without even knowing the reason why I was prescribed the drug, I began taking Prozac.

 

Prozac represented my first personal encounter with the world of pharmaceuticals. I went to the pharmacy to pick up the prescription. The first time that I took Prozac I had a very bad feeling about it, but it was what the doctor considered best for my health at the time. I had no prior experience or reason to distrust him. I even assumed that the drugs that my brother had been given were helping him to maintain a balance. When I later told the doctor that the Prozac made me feel sick, I was given a prescription for Wellbutrin instead. My doctor reasoned that perhaps Wellbutrin would be a better solution to whatever problems I was facing at the time. I felt even worse about this little pill. After taking it for a short time, I expressed my concern to my doctor, only to come away with a new prescription for Paxil. In retrospect, my mother and my doctor may have been concerned that since my brother had been diagnosed as “bipolar,” and since bipolarity is supposedly genetic, I too might be susceptible to the illness. Like any mortal being I had occasions of sadness and occasions of happiness, but this pre-emptive prescription was to help me “maintain a balance” in my life as well. If Prozac didn’t work, then Wellbutrin might. If Wellbutrin didn’t correct the “imbalance,” then perhaps Paxil was the right fit. Thus began my acquaintance with the little pink pill called Paxil.

 

All of these pills were meant to correct a “chemical imbalance” in the brain, one to which I was alleged to be “genetically predisposed,” that caused “bipolar disorder” and depression. I had no way of knowing at the time that the idea of a “chemical imbalance,” conceived in the 1950’s, was mostly a slogan that pharmaceutical companies used to promote their drugs (see Robert Whitaker, Anatomy of an Epidemic, Peter Breggin, Toxic Psychiatry or Irving Kirsch, The Emperor’s New Drugs). While pharmaceutical companies advanced the “chemical imbalance” hypothesis as a scientific fact, there was no conclusive evidence to support it. There is still no scientific proof that a “chemical imbalance” exists in the brains of the mentally ill, much less that there is a “chemical balance” in the brains of healthy individuals. Furthermore, the evidence now shows that chemical imbalances are iatrogenic, that is, that psychotropic drugs actually induce the very chemical imbalances that they are purportedly designed to treat (see Robert Whitaker, Mad in America). In other words, in both my brother’s case and my own, doctors made faulty diagnoses based on flawed hypotheses under the guise of scientific certainty. Unfortunately, like most unsuspecting patients, my brother and I swallowed the doctors’ diagnoses along with the pills that they prescribed.

 

On February 3, 2000 I began a journal entry with the title “Prozac Notes.” As part of this entry I wrote: “I almost regret having ever taken Paxil. I don’t think that I or anyone else who has felt depression, or anxiety, or mood swings should have to find a way to eliminate feeling, but rather learn how to manage the ups and downs, to roll with the punches so to speak. Life never was fair. Can drugs really alter thinking? … I wonder: can Paxil alter my behavior? I refuse to be a victim, and I believe that men are free to act for themselves… People, friends, family are affected (I hate that word) by these chemicals. I want to be the affecter, not the affected, however small of a contribution I may make.”

 

A little later I wrote: “I am still waiting to consume the little pink pill (20 mg of Paxil). I never wanted to take it in the first place. I started to micturate. [My youngest brother] did too. Head pains, sharp pains and inability to concentrate (I’m so happy that I can sit and read and write for more than an hour!) Homework has been difficult lately, not just because classes are hard, but I begin to feel indifferent. This study is empowering.”

 

Even though I began to feel progressively worse on the drugs, these experiences sparked an interest in understanding depression and mental illness. I began studying about related topics, reading articles with titles such as “Pushing Drugs to Doctors” and “Miracle Drugs or Media Drugs.”  But I still wasn’t sure which path to take. Doctors had told me that I needed the drugs to function properly. One psychiatrist, Dr. Griffin, even told me that if I wanted to live a normal life, or to have a family and a career, I would just have to admit that I have a mental illness and rely on the medication to get me through it.

 

“I don’t think doctors, at least in Utah, are trying to make a buck.” I wrote. “I know that most of them are trying to help. I’d like to know about other states, cities, countries and people, how these drugs are being prescribed to patients. I’m NOT A ROBOT, I’m A HUMAN BEING! … How does it affect brain patterns, emotions, thoughts and behaviors? … For me it is hard to say what I feel naturally as a human being and what is onset by the drug. Lately I have had bizarre sleeping patterns and fatigue (sleeping until 10:30 am, when I like to get up before seven) (taking 1 ½ , or 2 hour naps when I just want to lie down for 10-15 minutes. Dr. Stacey called them ‘STRANGE DREAMS’ when I said ‘hallucinations.’ I once had strange dreams in the MTC, once in France (worst one) and once at home after starting on Paxil or Prozac. These drug dreams are more real than normal. Salad speaking to me, people at the foot of my bed, etc., a strange state of mind.”

 

I began to keep track of how I was feeling on a more regular basis in the attempt to assess what sort of affect the drugs were having on me: “Did I take other drugs? I started Prozac and then stopped after two days. I have been taking PAXIL for about 3 ½ weeks to a month. Could a drug be causing this? I chose to obey my parents, my doctors, and to take their advice. I will continue to do so. However, we need to know the adverse effects that these drugs can have. I can choose my attitude. I am positive about life and have much hope in the future. Yesterday I did not feel that way. I felt cornered.”

 

Even though I began to study more about the brain, about depression, anxiety and mental illness, my health began to decline more rapidly. I began to wonder, “Could Paxil, Prozac, etc. cause panic attacks and anxiety disorders? Yesterday I decided not to take the 20 mg Paxil pill. I felt great! I accomplished so much, and once again I enjoyed being around people. I felt like myself again. Was this just a manic reaction to withdrawing from medication? I still feel good. Is there a crash coming soon? Is there a depressive state next? I hope not.”

 

In this state of perplexity I had a lot of questions: “That is the question that frightens me: How do we know when an action is chemically induced and when it is a choice? There should be no way to justify misbehavior or immoral conduct. I don’t believe in victims, so just how do these chemicals affect people’s brains? It all starts with thoughts. We can control our thoughts.”

 

As much as I believed then, and still believe now, that we are responsible for our thoughts, words and actions, I could not have possibly foreseen the trouble that I would encounter while taking the drugs. I took it for granted that I was able to think, reason, read, study, write, work and function as a normal human being should. Up to that point in my life, the idea that a person could actually lose control of his mental faculties to such a degree as to render him helpless had never really crossed my mind. My brain worked just fine, and in fact, it seemed to work better than most brains. I was, for the most part, happy, calm, productive, engaged, and positive.   I was geared for success both then and in the future.

 

But things became increasingly more difficult, and my symptoms only worsened. On July 1, 2000 I recorded in my journal: “Last night after smelling the noxious and toxic chemicals of PINE-SOL, I started from my sweet repose, to slumber no more. I said: ‘AWAKE O MY SOUL’ but my body did not hear me. ‘ARISE,’ I screamed. Then, after praying my heart out and feeling the assuring hand of my Heavenly Friend reaching down to comfort me, I awoke and dried my tears… The chemical smell had infected me, so I went outside to breathe fresh air. Fresh air, a bowl of cereal with milk. Eat it. Eat it. BREATHE! So I giggle, and the new sleeping station on the couch is comfortable. I turn on the movie Awakenings and begin to wonder. My mind wanders and I doze off, the window open. I awake in a cold sweat, paralyzed. Paralyzed by pain. Paralyzed by fear. For anyone who has (and there are many) felt this way, don’t give up. The next day I am at school… I am sitting down in the hall. The nightmare is over for at least a while. Don’t call it a funny dream! Actually there is absolutely no reason to be angry. I wanted to break anything in sight. That little man haranguing me, molesting and torturing my soul. “

 

I began having hallucinations, strange dreams and nightmares more frequently. On January 7, 2000, at 4:00 am I wrote: “There was a little miniature man. The back of my head on the left side hurts. There was a man who tormented me by biting or pinching me. I screamed. I screamed again. It was hell part two, and so I woke up and prayed. I pray, and now I am at home with my parents. I write about it because I want to. Maybe I shouldn’t, but that thing tormented me more than a dream or a nightmare. When I got up, the pillow on the chair was a human head, so I sang a hymn while going to turn on the lights. I love my parents. Chemicals: Pine-Sol? I was sweating when I was saved (awoke).”

 

I was still taking Paxil and keeping meticulous notes about my experience. I called these journal entries related to the drug my “Paxil notes.” “Day one: I still suppress breathing. I read about 17 million people who suffer from depression, more women usually. (Probably because of us men.) But I feel joy. Improvement… Day two: swallow, I took Paxil at 8:30 am after a useless struggle with my mom (who is resting) to take it at 12:00 pm instead. Just the little things. Poor mom’s leg. I had a brief hallucination this morning. I was on the bed, but it looked like there was a man at the foot of the bed lying at my feet. I want to date, go to school and work!”

 

Sometimes my thoughts were so incoherent that I would just try to draw or write poetry to describe how I was feeling. The following entries reveal a little bit about how I was feeling while taking the drug: “The day has come, I’ve seen the sun, although I’ve felt the rain. My mind and I now get along, we don’t care if I’m sometimes wrong, as long as there is PAX.”

 

My “Paxil Notes” continued. “Day three: Paxil – 8 – less side effects. My mind says he wants to rest, my heart and faculty do their best, but without him it is a test… You don’t get it! This is a time in my life when there are important decisions to make. I want to go play basketball. I want to live in the Italian House. I want to be on the ball. I feel like: The tempest is raging, mind caging, flailing thoughts wailing, impaling the only feeling of joy, that is a family and safety, impulse… my salad spoke to me.”

 

On day four I recorded, “First moment of smiling just now, first deep breath, itchy throat cough, sleep = less than satisfactory. Yo soy aqui. Don’t worry, this night has passed in a flurry, a new place filled with song, wrong? Filled with feline, but now the instant of sleep, past present and future, sutured up stitched, eye won’t twitch and dad is home. Confusion and chest pain… after a turbulent day, I am happy to say, Happy to be, just me, soon we.”

 

On day five I recorded: “It is a warm Sabbath morning, without warning, a spasm could happen, open chasm, but I slept soundly! How exciting! I hesitated to take the Paxil, wondering if it were addictive, but then I took it whole-heartedly. It has been a relaxing morning, but I need to plan.”

 

Day six: “I went to bed at 10:35 after talking to dad about school. I woke up at about 5:00 am with my mind running, but still tired. At 6:45 am the alarm went off. I knelt down and prayed, and now I feel energetic.”

 

Day seven: “Back in the Italian house – feeling good. My roommate took Paxil. Nervous breakdown?”

 

Then, on January 15, 2000 I wrote, “Last night I went to bed at 10:40 and in the night I felt this sensation in my chest. The sensation was like a tube being cleaned out, as if a certain part of my heart or lymphatic system were being cleaned or flushed out.”

 

As I write this memoir more than 14 years later, I still struggle with terrible chest pains, something that I never used to struggle with before I started taking the psychotropic drugs. Even though I have managed to withdraw from the drugs, I still struggle with abnormal sleep patterns, and a variety of iatrogenic wounds.

 

On February 2, 2000 I recorded in my journal, “I think that the Paxil drug that I am taking alters my feeling and reasoning, and possibly my happiness. The mood swings I had before came and went, as will this trial, but I want to get to the bottom of this case. If I have refused tobacco, tea, alcohol, drugs and caffeine all of my life, why should I suddenly think that a new chemical is going to bring joy, fulfillment or even balance? … What are the long-term effects of antidepressants? Do they (and why do they) make people do weird things? I believe that we are agents unto ourselves. Why do I feel any different? I don’t feel different after speaking with a customer at work who lent me the book Prozac: Panacea or Pandora.”

 

“I get perturbed,” I wrote on February 3, 2000, “because I lose things, like my wallet, my disk, a coat. Wow! I have Gas. I have stomach pains.” The chemicals were gradually infiltrating my body. Even though I was resisting the pain, and even though I hated taking the pills, the medical authorities, and even my parents and ecclesiastical authorities continued to insist that such “treatments” were for my good.

 

A few days later, on February 7, I wrote, “What a miracle of a day of life on earth is, especially considering what happened to me last night. After a horrible nightmare and fright, what I feel was hallucination, the Lord blessed me to be able to make it to my Book of Mormon class, to my Italian class, and even to work.”

 

Meanwhile, my youngest brother, still taking a variety of psychotropic pharmaceuticals, was ready to leave for his mission. On February 9, 2000, I wrote a journal entry: “Tomorrow we will see him off at the airport. I really want him to feel his family’s love for him, but most of all I want him to know that he is a child of God.”

 

The drugs began to affect my sleep a lot more, and to drain my energy. These weren’t just side effects… they were effects, because as far as I could tell there were no real benefits produced by taking the drugs. Furthermore, I was feeling more pain and gaining weight, but I still clung to the notion that I needed these drugs because the doctors told me to take them, and no one discouraged me from doing so. I just needed to be patient. Soon the drugs would start working, or so I was told. I was encouraged by almost everyone that I knew to keep taking the drugs. I was told that I was getting better, and the spellbinding effect of the drugs sometimes made me think that I was getting better, even though day by day I was getting progressively worse.

 

On Valentine’s Day in 2000, I wrote that, “Program Paxil is the Pink Pill of Peace and Power and Purpose.” The pressures around me had convinced me, at least momentarily, that the psychotropic drugs that I was taking were the best remedy for my problems. As I was often told, these drugs were a blessing and a miracle. They were not perfect, but how could anyone expect perfection when dealing with mental illness.

 

But I wasn’t mentally ill. I never had been. What did it even mean to be mentally ill? How could I be mentally ill? I was a star athlete in high, and I excelled academically. I was sociable, friendly and articulate. I completed a rigorous two-year mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Southern Italy, where I learned to speak the Italian language fluently. I completed a semester of study in France where I also honed my French language skills. I was doing quite well in college, succeeding at work, and I was affable and kind. There was nothing mentally ill about me, accept perhaps that I had naively accepted the label that was thrust upon me by members of the medical community. In hindsight, any mental illness that I was experiencing was directly related to the increasing dosages of drugs.

 

How could this be? The way that some psychotropic drugs are supposed to “work” is by blocking neurotransmitter receptors in the neurons of the brain. Once the chemicals block the passageway where serotonin, or dopamine, are supposed to have a “reuptake,” the amount of the particular neurotransmitter increases in the synapse, or gap, between neurons. SSRI’s are said to “work” by blocking the serotonin receptors of neurons until serotonin levels increase in the synapses. While such drugs certainly block serotonin receptors, there never was any proof, nor is there now any proof, that a lack of serotonin is actually a root cause of depression. As one can imagine, the human brain, that miraculous organ of thought, soon compensates for the blocked serotonin receptors by producing other receptors. In effect, drugs induce a chemical imbalance in the brain that the brain then tries to compensate for in ways that science has yet to explain. Understandably, when such chemical blocks are rapidly removed from a human brain, the equilibrium in that brain is thrown off kilter, and the person may experience a variety of debilitating symptoms, even psychosis. To be clear, psychotropic drugs do nothing to heal chemical imbalances in the brain, rather, they create chemical imbalances, thus producing the mental illnesses that they are allegedly created to treat.

 

The day after Valentine’s day in 2000 I recorded that I was continuing to take Paxil: “This morning I slept in. I took 10 mg of Paxil last night at about 11:00 pm. This is the second night in a row.”

On February 20, 2000 I wrote, “I have taken Paxil for a week now.” Only four days later I wrote, “I forgot to take Paxil so I took it this morning. I woke up late.”   A couple of weeks later I wrote, “No matter how hard I try I CANNOT GET A REGULAR SLEEPING AND EATING PATTERN! I AM SO FRUSTRATED!” On March 28, 2000 I wrote, “My head feels weird and dizzy. I took Wellbutrin in the morning, and Paxil at night. Good sleep, good exercise.”

 

Of course, not everything was bleak. I still enjoyed life as much as I could, and I continued to progress in school and at work. Eventually I got a new job at the frozen foods department at Brigham Young University. I had held several jobs as a full-time student, but this one was particularly well suited to my educational schedule. I also went on a trip to Philadelphia for a conference with an intercollegiate group. After eating a Philly Cheese Steak, I visited the Philadelphia Museum of Art where I saw a few original Van Gogh masterpieces. Although I had never entertained any thoughts of suicide before taking drugs, I felt a kinship to this suffering artist.

 

On July 31, 2000 I wrote, “I had a detailed dream. Since I forgot to take my antidepressant Paxil last night, all the chemicals in my brain are stirring around. It is a feeling like my spirit is out of my body.”

 

On Dec. 26, 2000 I wrote, “I woke up completely sweaty and afraid… even though some of this nightmare may sound silly or even funny, I won’t attempt to describe the nature of the fear that it tried to incite: I took a shower in a little portable shower. The curtains went down to my knees and I could walk with it. There was a trampoline, and we were in the back yard… Some sort of madness possessed me and I ran nude toward a big window. I hid beside the window until my friend was standing there and then I jumped from the trampoline by the window and gave her a full body jumping-jack view of me in my birthday suit.”

 

Needless to say, I recorded a lot of nightmares in my journal, most, if not all of which, were the acute effects (not “side-effects”) of the drugs. I started studying more about homeopathic and naturopathic medicine. I moved into an apartment just south of BYU campus. While my youngest brother was on his mission, still taking psychotropic drugs, my other younger brother and I were busy with school, working and dating. My little sisters were just busy being cute little sisters.

 

On January 6, 2001, I recorded in my journal, “Nightmare. I woke up in a cold sweat, frightened, and now I am going to eat some cereal to make me happy. What are these nightmares for? Oh well, on we go.”

 

I got a new job at the BYU Bookstore in the creative services department. I was busy studying Dante and comparative literature. I also took a trip to Savannah, Georgia for a conference with the intercollegiate group.   My youngest brother got his bike stolen on his mission. Then I prepared to depart for a study abroad in Northern Italy. On June 19, 2001, my youngest sister’s birthday, I left for Italy again. I was still taking Paxil, but I set such concerns aside in order to enjoy the beautiful and exciting adventures in Italy.

 

I continued to take the psychotropic drugs, but I did my best to forget about them. Italy was more amazing than I had even hoped it would be. I spent time with friends in Ferrara, and I lived on the shore of Lake Garda, a beautiful region in Northern Italy. I read Alessandro Manzoni’s I Promessi Sposi and a handful of other Italian books. I thoroughly enjoyed the study aboard program with the University of Milan. The food, the soccer games with locals, trips to Verona, and new friends made this one of the best experiences of my life. I felt truly blessed to be there, and I even got to watch a production of Verdi’s Nabucco in the Arena at Verona. It was simply spectacular.

 

I returned to the United States invigorated by the experience, but still intoxicated by the cocktail of drugs that I was taking. In effect, I was spellbound by the drugs. My body had become somewhat habituated to the drugs, but how was I to understand the long-term effects of these chemicals? I felt like my spirit was battling against the drugs on the inside, growing in strength even as my physical brain and body were being weakened.

 

Soon after my return to the United States, I planned an excursion with a couple of friends. We decided to hike to the peak of Mt. Timpanogos during the night in order to watch the sunset from the summit. This was a rigorous, but manageable climb to an elevation of nearly 12,000 feet above sea level. My friends and I set out on the trek with the requisite food, water, and warm clothing. We even crossed a moose on our path. The view from the summit was spectacular, but one of my friends injured her knee near the summit, making the downward trek much more strenuous. It took us more than seven hours to climb back down the mountain together. I was exhausted and dehydrated. The light of a nearly full moon had served us well during the night, but the morning hike took its toll on all of us.

 

The dehydration and delirium induced from the strenuous hike may have exacerbated the effects of the drugs on my brain, because my condition rapidly worsened. In addition to the problems that I was facing with my health, I recall that one morning at work, while cleaning and waxing the bowling alleys, there was some commotion in the hallway. Students were gathering around a television in the lounge. When I left the game center to find out what was happening, I discovered that a plane had just crashed into one of the Twin Towers in New York City. I stood aghast as we watched a second plane crash into the other tower. We were terrified as the two towers toppled down.

 

Soon after the events of 9/11 there were some aberrations in my behavior that my friends and family members began to notice. As even my medical records note, I did some strange things that were completely out of character for me. Coincidentally, I had paid a visit to my doctor later that day, on September 11, requesting permission, as it were, to withdraw permanently from the drugs.

 

More than a decade afterward, I obtained the medical records that described the events from a doctor’s perspective:

“PRIMARY CARE PHYSICIAN: DARRELL STACEY, M.D.

DATE OF ADMISSION: 10/01/2001 01:06

HISTORY OF PRESENT ILLNESS:

The patient is a 25-year-old gentleman with a history of depression. He has been off Paxil for about a month. They were going to start him on some Effexor. He apparently has a family history of depression. He has a brother who is on a mission who is on lithium. He has never been admitted for depression in the past. His brother said that he will have episodes where he will just start crying, he will have episodes where he laughs and seems okay. Tonight he just became unresponsive so he just stopped talking to everybody and would not open his eyes. He says that he uses no elicit drugs, no ingestion of any type. He says that he has never taken any ingestion, he has not expressed any suicidal or homicidal ideation, but apparently they hiked Timpanogos at night and apparently that has thrown his sleep schedule off. He says that he has had episodes where his brother will wake up, have nightmares and then want to read scriptures with him, but basically he brought him in tonight because of the unresponsiveness.

 

The medications were not discontinued, he stopped taking them about four or five weeks ago. He has no complaint of headache. About five minutes after he came here he answered questions readily and appropriately. He denied headache, vision changes, denied ingesting any illicit over-the-counter prescription or herbal medications. He denied any suicidal or homicidal ideation. He denied any abdominal pain or back pain, shortness of breath, fevers, chills, nausea, vomiting diarrhea.

PHYSICAL EXAMINATION:

The patient is afebrile. The vital signs are stable and oxygen saturation is 99% on room air. The pupils are equal, round and reactive to light. Extra ocular movements are intact. The tympanic membranes are normal. The lungs are clear. The cardiac is regular rate and rhythm. The abdomen is benign. He is alert and oriented times three. The cranial nerves II through XII are intact. Motor strength is 5/5 throughout.

EMERGENCY DEPARTMENT COURSE:

He is medically cleared from our standpoint. If crisis would like us to get a toxicity screen I would be happy to do so. I do not think he needs one for our medical clearance. He is now awake, alert and appropriate.

DIAGNOSIS:

History of depression.

Authored By: ABRAMS, BARBARA J.

Authored For: ABRAMS, BARBARA J.”

 

After re-reading this medical record, a few things stand out to me. The first is that I was diagnosed with a “History of depression.” The second is that I had recently stopped taking Paxil. The third is that the doctor mentions that I had a brother on a mission who was taking lithium. And finally, all of the symptoms that he described are easily traceable to the effects of the drugs that I was taking, as well as the process of detoxifying after withdrawing from the drugs. Dehydration and exhaustion had exacerbated the already debilitating effects of the psychotropic drugs.

 

But I am led to wonder, what kind of a diagnosis is a “History of depression?” What this seems to indicate is that since my brother was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and since there had been other instances of depression in my family, I must have been more genetically prone to such an affliction. This was the doctor’s reasoning. Fortunately the doctor determined that I was ok, and there was no reason to get alarmed. What everyone failed to consider was that perhaps everything that I was experiencing was a completely natural reaction to pharmaceutical poisoning. Could it have been that I was a normal human being, with real feelings, struggling to overcome the effects of the drugs? Was it possible that a person with a “history of depression,” was just a normal person who experiences the sadness, ups and downs of life like everyone else?

 

Just as a side note, one of the most pervasive myths about mental illness is that it runs in families, that it is a genetic inheritance. This is so glaringly false considering that the Nazi’s tried to exterminate all mentally ill people in their eugenics program, but even the gas chambers could not prevent subsequent generations from having to endure the mental or emotional anguish that is often characterized as mental illness. In many cases where families seem prone to a genetic mental disorder, the reality is that such individuals suffer from emotional and mental traumas that were part of a shared environment. This is not to say that mental suffering cannot have physical causes, but that in many cases, those who are labeled as mentally ill are the individuals who, for whatever reason, manifest symptoms resulting from an environmental stress (see Robert Whitaker, Anatomy of an Epidemic). In other words, doctors may have assumed that my youngest brother had inherited a mental illness from some distant ancestor, and that I was susceptible to the same kind of illness, but the truth was that he had endured, as I was about to endure, a psychological trauma that was exacerbated by drugs.

 

To return to my previous question, was it possible that I was just a normal human being who was dealing with a variety of familial and environmental stresses? Could it have been that psychotropic drugs were damaging my brain in ways that I could not see, and causing me to act in ways that were not consistent with my character? Of course the answer is yes, but no one, especially the doctors, could conceive of such a simple answer. I had already targeted by the medical system as one with the potential of receiving the label of “mentally ill.” I couldn’t have known this at the time, because my only prior experience with such problems was to observe my youngest brother as he suffered through psychiatric treatment. Besides the diagnoses and prescriptions that I had been given not too long before this time, there was really nothing in my life that merited a label of anything other than “normal.”

 

Nevertheless, the saga continued…

“ADDENDUM:

This patient has apparently refused to talk to family, friends and staff and ran out of the emergency room at one point so we are going to blue slip him that that we can evaluate him completely.   Essentially other than his initial statements that he is refusing to take any medications, he has refused to cooperate with us at all. We are going to go ahead and admit him so that we can evaluate him properly.

 

BARBARA J. ABRAMS M.D.”

 

In other words, anyone who refused to accept a doctor’s diagnosis and ingest their poisons needed to be “evaluated” “completely” and “properly.” What did that mean? Who was this doctor, and what gave her the right to evaluate anything other than her own mental stability? The answer is simple. She was a doctor. She was an expert. Thus, like an unsuspecting little lab rat, I was summoned for “evaluation.” The rest of the medical records show how an average young man like myself could quickly move from a diagnosis of a “History of depression” to something drastically different, a diagnosis with catastrophic consequences:

 

“HISTORY OF PRESENT ILLNESS:   (10/01/2001   14:37)

This 25-year-old single never-married white male Brigham Young University student was admitted to the Wasatch Mental Health inpatient service after he was brought to the emergency department by a neighbor and his brother. They reported some bizarre behavior and some suicidal ideation with the patient. He reportedly quit his job and mooned his roommates and knocked on all of the neighbors’ doors at midnight. One brother has bipolar disorder and is taking lithium and is doing well. The patient denies any physical complaints at this time.

Authored By: Miner, Joseph K.

Authored For: Miner, Joseph K.”

 

I laughed when I first read this medical record because I had absolutely no recollection of ever having “mooned” my roommates. That was certainly something that I never would have done without some sort of chemical stimulation or the after-effects of drugs. I also laughed because it was simply untrue that I had knocked on all of the neighbors’ doors. The doctors drummed up anything they could to bring me within their diagnostic clutches and subject me to their pseudo-scientific “treatment.”

 

Of course the new doctor was careful to note that I had a brother with bipolar disorder, so they said, and that he was doing “well” on lithium. How could it be otherwise? Doctors had prescribed the lithium, so it must be working! But after a long list of doctor’s notes, the bottom of the document contained the new diagnosis:

“IMPRESSION:

Bipolar affective disorder, chronic, with acute exacerbation off medication

PLAN:

Psychiatric evaluation and treatment as per Dr. Bruce Guernsey and Dr. Richard Spencer. We will review the patient’s admission laboratory work.”

 

Impression? What on earth is an impression? In effect, the doctor seemed to be saying, “Well, I don’t know why anyone would refuse to take medication, and since the notes say that he has a history of depression, and his brother has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, I think that he must have bipolar disorder as well. That is my impression. Now I can pass him into the hands of able psychiatrists for further “evaluation” and “treatment.” Please pay particular attention to the medical euphemisms that were employed, words such as “treatment” and “evaluation.” At least the doctor got one thing right, I was suffering from an “acute exacerbation,” but it was not because I refused to take medication. The exacerbation happened when I was advised to take “medications” against my will and then I tried to withdraw from them. As I now know, the withdrawal process is highly dangerous and produces strange symptoms, such as those that I exhibited on that fateful day.

 

But let me pause to acknowledge that in spite of their ignorance, most doctors and clinicians proceed with their work under the delusion that they are helping people. One of the most insidious problems with modern psychiatry, and with modern medicine in general, is that most medical professionals, and indeed most people, simply assume that the doctors know what is best. Psychiatrists are notoriously ignorant of the harm that they unwittingly cause by prescribing drugs. This is also one of the reasons why they so often fail to provide any warnings about the effects of drugs. Even the doctors and psychiatrists assume that the drugs they prescribe are helping their patients. The representatives who sell the drugs may also be ignorant of the actual effects of the drugs. But if we trace the money back to the source, namely the pharmaceutical companies themselves, we can easily see why these organizations go to such great lengths to hide the overwhelming evidence that their “products” cause irreparable physical and psychological damage.

 

On October 13, 2001 I wrote in my journal, “Two weeks in HELL… you think I am kidding? My brother and some friends ‘escorted’ me to the Emergency section of the hospital, even though I made several attempts to escape. I was forced there against my will, but there must be a reason to this madness… It was a HELL on earth.   Never will I go there again.”

 

Again, my brother and his friends were acting innocently out of the assumption that they were helping me, because they too trusted in the authority and the expertise of doctors. There was no way for them to have known that they were about to throw me into a metaphorical lions’ den. Just as I had escorted my youngest brother on numerous visits to the psychiatrist, I was then being escorted, though not at all willingly, into a system of psychiatric torture that I will attempt to describe in the following pages.

 

A week after my involuntary incarceration in the psychiatric ward, I was forced to drop all of my classes and move to Twin Falls to live under the care of my aunt who was a nurse. I will now attempt to describe that which cannot possibly be described in words. I will do my best to articulate the nature and acuteness of the suffering that I experienced at the hands of the psychiatric torture squad, but human language lacks the vocabulary necessary to communicate the things that took place inside that prison, since the pain that I experienced was beyond anything I could have ever imagined.

 

I remember the night that I was dragged into the UVRMC Hospital. A group of friends had gathered in my parents’ basement living room where my brother and I were living (and where other roommates also lived while my parents were in Indiana). I was feeling very strange, suffering with the effects induced by the psychotropic drugs that I was reluctantly taking at the time. The noise of the socializing and movement downstairs was increasing, and I wanted to get outside. I walked by my friend, who was seated on the coach, and out of the blue, to both her surprise and even my own, I kissed her on the mouth. I walked briskly upstairs and out the door.

 

It was a cool night, and I stood in my parent’s driveway for a moment, then decided to cross the street and walk toward a neighbor’s home. By this time, my brother and a few of his friends had followed me outside, wondering what was wrong. Nothing was really wrong… but I was feeling strange, and momentarily I didn’t feel like socializing. I felt a strange impulse (an impulse that I now understand was caused by the chemical actions of drugs in my brain) to go to my neighbor’s house and to knock on the door. I walked toward the door, and my brother followed me across the street. The home was that of a large and friendly black man who had fought in the Vietnam War. For some reason I felt like I should knock on his door, but before I could do so, my brother confronted me and asked me what I was doing.

 

I was not in the mood for arguing or socializing, and although I was feeling strange, I did not know why. Before I could knock on the door, my brother persuaded me to come back across the street to my parent’s driveway. Before I knew it, I was in a car with my brother and his friends, headed toward the hospital.

 

I was frightened, and I didn’t know what was going on. I hadn’t done anything wrong, although my brother rightly deemed my behavior to be unusual or inconsistent with my character. When we reached the hospital, I was confused and bewildered. Why were we here? What was happening? Police officers approached the car, and I was escorted reluctantly into a room in the hospital. I was terrified. I had no idea what was happening, or why I was there. I was confronted by a police officer, and I tried to escape, but there was no open door. There was another police officer behind me, and eventually they seized me and brought me to a different part of the hospital. What was happening? Why were the police officers abducting me? I don’t remember seeing my brother or his friends after this point, but I do remember that we went up a few levels in the hospital, where I was brought into a room to be interrogated.

 

I was noticeably and understandably agitated by the whole experience, and I wanted to talk to my family. Why was I there? Why did the police officers grab me? Where had they taken me? Why? I hadn’t done anything wrong, so why was I suddenly put into a confined room to be interrogated? I had tried to reason with the police officers, but in my bewilderment, they had interpreted my attempts to reason with them as resistance or defiance, and they promptly thrust me onto a gurney. What were they doing? Who were these people? Why was I in a room with no windows? Why were there doctors and nurses surrounding me and asking me questions?

 

And why was there a nurse approaching me with a needle? Before I could respond or break free, the police officers and doctors strapped me down to a gurney. To say the least, I was not pleased with this arrangement, having been involuntarily admitted to the hospital and forcibly restrained in a room without windows, surrounded my menacing police officers, doctors and strangers. Despite my efforts to free myself, the nurse with the needle approached me, and jammed it into my buttock, injecting a foreign chemical.

 

After obtaining my medical records many years later, I discovered that the chemical that the nurse injected into my buttock was something called Haldol. A more appropriate name would be “Hell-dol.” That chemical was more than potent. It was liquid suffering. And the nurse administered a heavy dose of the liquid suffering.

 

Gradually, the injection took effect, and I began to feel very drowsy. I do not recall if I fell asleep then, but the next thing that I knew, I had been taken to another room to be interrogated by the doctors. I had no idea why I was there, or why they were treating me so harshly. They proceeded to ask me penetrating and menacing questions, questions that I was reluctant to answer, considering the circumstances and their harsh treatment. My resistance to their onslaught was again interpreted as defiance to their authority, and I was placed in solitary confinement. Recently I discovered that psychiatrist have even invented a new diagnosis for such behavior: ODD, or Oppositional Defiance Disorder. Those who supposedly suffer from ODD will resist “medication” or “treatment” from psychiatrists. I really have to hand it to the psychiatrists who came up with that diagnosis: they certainly are creative.

 

Needless to say, and in spite of the drug-induced delirium, I was absolutely livid. Why on earth was I in this insidious dungeon of a hospital? What in the hell did these so-called “doctors” inject into my quivering buttock? I paced the new, but equally confining room, like a raging lion, looking for a means of escape. Eventually I calmed down a bit to evaluate my situation. Although I had been involuntarily and violently abused for no apparent reason, with the door locked and windows shut, it became clear that my only choice was to comply with whatever it was these menacing strangers wanted.

 

After some time, I was taken to another room, and learned that I had been admitted into the psychiatric ward of the hospital. Why? I had done nothing wrong. The new room was a bit bigger, and there was another young man in there with me. He noticed my agitation, and tried to help me calm down.   He too had been dressed in hospital garb, and seemed to be familiar with the premises. He spoke to me calmly, and explained that I had been administered an antipsychotic drug, and would now have to stay in the hospital. “What the hell for?” I thought. (And for those who know me, it was not characteristic of me to use swear words) The young man proceeded to tell me a variety of strange things about the hospital, the doctors, and the procedures. I couldn’t tell if he himself had been injected with psychotropic drugs, but he was perfectly calm and lucid as he described to me what was happening. He told me that there were doctors who were killing people, and that people had even been buried under the hospital. Of course, this all sounded ridiculous to me. Since I had never been inside a mental hospital, nor had I done anything to deserve incarceration in one, I was frightened beyond measure.

 

The young man seemed to have some experience with the hospital, and he told me that it was no use trying to reason with the doctors or the police officers. Not only that, but I was not allowed to contact my family at all. Where was my brother? Where was a phone? “Get me the hell out of this torture chamber!” I thought.

 

Suddenly my strange new roommate told me that he had a plan to escape, and he asked me to help him. I wasn’t sure that it would be a good idea to do so, but before I could do anything, he began ripping the sheets and blankets off of the bed. “What are you doing?” I asked. “Just help me,” he replied. Thus far my roommate was the only human being who had shown me the least bit of compassion, dignity or respect. He wasn’t angry or agitated. He just calmly began to tear the room apart, and invited me to help him. I wasn’t sure if it was such a great idea, but then I began to think that he really had an escape plan, which was all that I cared about. I was not about to be subjected to another round of Haldol shots. We stripped the sheets and blankets from the bed, threw the pillows on the floor, and created a general upheaval in the room. There was a window, with heavy blinds at the back of the room. The window was several stories above ground level. But the ground level was surrounded on all four sides by hospital walls, so even if there had been a way to get out of the thick paned window, we would be trapped in a courtyard. That was not an option.

 

With the room in shambles, my roommate said, “Watch this,” and he turned on the faucet in the sink, with the drain plugged. Before any doctors, nurses or police officers returned, the water filled the sink and began to spill over. He was flooding the room! By this time, I considered that this escape plan was doomed to failure, but it certainly seized the attention of the medical staff. Water was pouring everywhere, and when the first attendant opened the door, we were ready to burst out.

My roommate, with a slight but athletic build, was not able to overpower the combination of muscular staff members and nurses, and was promptly dragged off to an isolation chamber, where he undoubtedly received an ample dose of psychotropic syringe juice, most likely Haldol again. Fortunately, I remained calm and was simply removed to another room. In a way, his escape plan had worked. We escaped that room, and left a mess behind, but now I was in another room. I considered that escape from this involuntary incarceration was nearly hopeless.

 

I had no idea what had happened to my brother or to my friends, and I was still reeling from the poisonous injection. I felt unnaturally sedated, in more of a zombie state than I had ever been, probably not unlike one of the characters from the Walking Dead.

 

Fortunately, I was soon permitted, as the medical staff deemed that I was now submissive to their control, to exit my room and explore the open areas of the psychiatric ward. On one end of the hall there was nothing but a heavy wall. On the other end there was a heavy locked door where nurses and staff members would occasionally pop in and out. After my experience of entering the hospital, and after seeing what had happened to my temporary roommate, I decided that it would be wise to try to comply with the Nazi-like crew instead of trying to break through the heavy door once it was opened.

 

There were rooms on both sides of the hallways, and there was a large commons area with a television and a couch. Zombie-like patients meandered through the rooms and paced back and forth in the hall ways, while hospital workers, “psych-techs” as they’re called, kept watch over their suffering prisoners. I suspect that most, if not all of the “patients” were drugged up even worse than I was, and that many of them were suffering worse than I was. I didn’t see my first roommate for a while, but when he finally emerged, he was sedated beyond recognition. No longer did he address me cordially and explain the intricacies of hospital life. He simply plodded around like a branded calf among so many cattle.

 

The hospital was relatively clean, but there was very little natural light allowed to enter. In the commons area there was a window that looked out to another courtyard. The blinds were partially drawn, but the exterior beckoned to me. I wanted to get out of that torture chamber, out of that prison, and back to freedom. As a college student, I had a lot of work to do, and I was even planning on volunteering for the Winter Olympics that were about to take place in Salt Lake City. Needless to say, this captivity ruined my semester in school and forced me to drop all of my classes. I was not able to assist with the Winter Olympics because, for some reason unbeknownst to me, I was being sequestered in a mental hospital and subjected to inexplicably harsh treatment.

 

I stayed in the commons room for a while, after having familiarized myself with the surroundings. There was a kitchen area adjacent to the commons room, where meals were served. Why was this happening? Why couldn’t I call my parents or my brother? Was this similar to the experience that my youngest brother had had in Washington D.C.? I shuddered to think of it.

 

Soon it was time to sleep, and from what I could gather from the psych-techs and others, I was set to stay in the hospital for a week or so. This infuriated me, because there was nothing wrong with me, but I figured that the only way to be released was to pretend like I was recovering from an illness, and that the doctor’s “treatment” was helping me to improve my behavior. I resigned myself temporarily to my circumstances and went into my bedroom, where I prepared to sleep. The previous night I was safe at home, in my own bed, sleeping (though not always soundly because of the “medications”), and eager to start a new day. That night, I went to sleep with only the hope that someone would come to deliver me, or that I would be able to talk to my family. As I soon discovered, neither of these hopes were realized.

 

The next morning, my first morning in a mental hospital, I awoke feeling uncommonly taxed by the Haldol injection and stress of the previous night. Eventually I found my way to the kitchen area where breakfast was being served. At least I didn’t have to make my own breakfast that morning! But I would have gladly made breakfast for all seven of my housemates at home in exchange for this bitter breakfast.

 

The food was agreeable, but I learned that I was to be administered what the staff called “meds,” something I found more than objectionable. What were these so-called “meds”? And why was I being forced to take them? Wasn’t it enough that I had been diagnosed with an illness that I didn’t really have (and that I would argue, doesn’t really exist, except iatrogenically) and persuaded to ingest pharmaceuticals on a daily basis before that? Now, in addition to the side effects of a chemical shot from the night before, I was to be force fed “meds” in an attempt to “manage” my behavior. This is what the psychiatric world refers to as “treatment,” but it is anything but treatment. It is more akin to torture than to treatment, and does nothing by the way of healing or improving the life of those who are subjected to it. It creates new traumas, and it even creates new symptoms.

 

I reluctantly took the pills, and ate my breakfast, eager to find out if there was a way that I could be released. Slovenly patients gobbled up their “meds” and their breakfast, and then left to meander the halls or sit in the commons area. At one point, after taking the “meds,” I felt so sick and dehydrated that I collapsed on the floor by just outside the kitchen door. I was able to pull myself up to lean against the wall. Why was I here? I was thirsty, tired, and desirous to leave, but I could hardly muster the strength to move around. Patients tromped by, waddled by, or lumbered by, deliriously. Nurses passed by as if I were the battered man who was left by the wayside in Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan, and they were the priests and Levites. Thus far, the only Good Samaritan to succor me had been a fellow “patient” who, because of his efforts to escape, was roughly dragged to the isolation room, or for lack of a better term, the torture chamber. He may have wreaked havoc in our room, but he was a Good Samaritan, and as far as I could tell, the only sane person in this section of the hospital.

 

When I asked for water, nurses told me that I would have to wait while they attended to other patients. By then, I was despairing of ever finding a compassionate person to communicate with… but I did discover that there was a phone, inside a locked box, that patients, under supervision, were sometimes allowed to use. Just when and under what circumstances one was allowed to use the telephone, I did not know, and when I asked about it, I was told that I would have to wait for a doctor’s diagnosis.

 

This was absolutely ridiculous.   One moment I was enjoying an average evening at home with friends and loved ones, and the next moment I had been shoved into a deep psychiatric Hellhole… all because I needed some fresh air and calm. One moment I was a free man, exchanging pleasantries, and the next moment I was under the strict surveillance of police officers and medical monitors. This was not only injustice, it was the essence of absurdity. It was the ironic crust on the bread of adversity.

 

Finally, I received some water, and I forged my way to the commons area to rest. I looked desperately out the window, and studied the faces and interactions of my fellows in the psychiatric ward. Some were watching television, some were eating, some were roaming the halls… but all of them were suffering. Probably all of them had been administered an ungodly amount of chemicals and were subjected to inhumanity under the guise of “treatment.”

 

Not all of the psych-techs were rude. Occasionally there was a friendly worker who took an interest in the patients as real people, but for the most part the workers looked at us as dangerous animals to be corralled and controlled, if not idiots to be mocked and scorned. I secretly wondered if any of these people would have made it through even five minutes of the kind of lectures that I attended at the university, or if they had even read a book other than Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. I also secretly wondered what the reaction of the doctors and the staff would have been if the situation had been reversed. Let the patients monitor the doctors, interrogate them and inject them with Haldol. If they failed to comply, let the patients diagnose them with an even more terrible sounding psychiatric label and then confine them in a windowless room. Keep them there for weeks or months on end, and let’s see if that affects their sanity at all, assuming that they had any to begin with.

 

As for the doctors, I secretly wondered if they had received their training under the tutelage of escaped Gestapo war criminals. How many doctors does it take to interrogate one victim after he has been injected with Haldol anyway? A roomful of doctors and nurses are needed to face one person who is strapped down tight to a gurney? Why? The scenes from “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” are more real than I could have imagined, but fortunately I was not subjected to electroshock, as I later found out others in my extended family had been. For those who are unaware, electroshock is among the most inhumane methods that psychiatry has ever developed, and its use has not yet been completely extirpated.

 

Sometimes, when I would pace back and forth through the halls in order to get my blood pumping again, I would listen to the other patients. I quickly learned to be careful concerning those I chose to interact with, since some patients seemed to cause more trouble than others. My former roommate was relatively benign after his “treatment,” but I encountered others who ranged from nervous to borderline violent. I do not blame them for this, because I was beginning to understand how much of an effect the psychotropic drugs can have on the human brain.

 

One “patient” told me that he was Abraham Lincoln. Another told me that he was a devil. The next moment, this same person was Jehovah. This was not the sort of company that I was used to, and to say that I was uncomfortable there would be a gross understatement. This was not an environment that was conducive to healing or recovery. It was an environment that could render psychotic even the most sane among us. “Get me out of this place!” I constantly screamed within myself.

 

Still, I received no word of a “diagnosis” or any update from the chief captains of the hospital militia. I did what I could to keep my mind off of the suffering and the strange company, but all I could think about was how to call my family or to get out of that place. When I was finally permitted to speak to someone who had authority over me, so he supposed, I was told that I would be hospitalized for a time until I was no longer considered a threat to myself or to others. The absurdity of their claims did not strike me then as much as it does now, nor the irony, since I had done nothing wrong, while they had handled me roughly and treated me as a vermin. When I realized how serious these people were about confining me and keeping me away from my family, I devised ways to break into the phone box to make a phone call. Others had been permitted to do so. Maybe I could get the key. The box was made out of wood. Maybe I could break it when the psych-techs were in another room, and call my family incognito.

 

By this time my brother had probably alerted my parents to my predicament, but that was of little help since they were in Indiana while my father was on sabbatical. Before I could find a way to make a phone call, the patients were assembled and herded off to a room together. The psych-techs were gathering us together for a type of therapy session. Who were all of these people? Who were these psych-techs? These doctors? Nurses? And most of all, who were these poor, miserable patients? Why were they here? What did they do? What cocktail of psychotropic drugs stirred in their veins? Where were their family members? Anger stirred in me as the psych-techs began to teach a class on proper behavior. Who the hell were these people, and what made them think that they knew anything about behaving properly, let alone teaching others how to behave? I was irate, indignant and flabbergasted by the insolence of the whole ordeal.

 

After the idiotic class and exercises, I went back to my room. I was trying to be strong, but I just wanted to break into the phone to call someone to get me out of this mess.   There was a stationary exercise bicycle in the hallway that I rode for a bit. Oh that it had been a motorcycle, and I could ride like Steve McQueen, break through the doors and into freedom!   But the doors were solid, the bike was stationary, and the sentinels of sanity were immovable as great heartless stones.

 

To pass the time, in between disbursements of “medications,” meals, and “behavioral training” I would write or draw. The psych-techs were careful in handing out any sharp objects, thinking that they might be used as weapons of harm, whether to ourselves or to others. It had never come into my mind to harm anyone, and those who know me understand that I would weep at the harming of even the smallest insect, but when the sentinels exercised such caution and dominion, it made me feel like they all deserved a good poke in the eye.

 

Another day passed. Occasional outbursts from patients, visits from doctors, newly arrived patients, and discussions among techs, made the days interesting. Otherwise, there was a television to watch or a stationary bicycle to ride.

 

The next morning, after the usual routine of distributing “meds” for breakfast, and shuffling “patients” (the word is appropriate, considering how patient these people have to be with the hospital Gestapo) to group “therapy” sessions, one of the psych- techs turned on the television with the movie “What About Bob.” Perhaps the psychiatric workers thought it was funny to see an eccentric Bob (Bill Murray) discombobulate the life of his psychiatrist (Richard Dreyfuss) because so many of the patients seemed to make life difficult for the psychiatric workers. Although I had seen the movie before, and enjoyed it, I was not amused by the condescension of the medical staff… as if everyone there were in their right mind to abuse suffering souls in the name of “treatment”. More crusts of irony on the bread of adversity.

 

I was still longing to escape, but to see the psychiatric patients sit docile in front of the television, watching What About Bob, seemingly oblivious to the state that they were in, infuriated me. Here’s a thought experiment. How about taking all of the doctors, psychiatrists, psych-techs, staff and police officers, locking them up in a room, and forcing them to watch “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” or “Girl Interrupted” or “Side Effects”. Better yet, make them watch reruns of “My Little Pony” or “Carebears”… something more suitable for their intellectual level. Why not check their behavior, interrogate them, and question their sanity? Who were the sane ones? The ones being jostled around like livestock, or the ones who believed that psychotropic, mind-altering drugs were good for people? Who was crazy? I knew that I wasn’t crazy, but the fact that there were upwards of 20 people imprisoned in a part of a hospital funded by our taxes… many of whom were kept there against their will… now let me describe crazy to you.

 

There they sat, watching What About Bob while I was boiling inside with the fury of righteous indignation. “Let me out of this dungeon!” I thought. “Let me call my family! This is absolutely ridiculous.” The “medications” had a sedating effect on me, and I felt tired. Couple that with the lack of natural light from sunshine and the inability to move around and exercise (except for the stationary bike… which was a machine that seemed to mock people who would rather be outside riding an actual bike), and that was enough to make any sane person crazy. I guarantee that if you were to take the most outwardly sane doctors and hospital workers and subject them to the kind of treatment that we received, within a few days, they could easily be diagnosed with some condition from the DSM (The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Illness) that they frequently diagnosed in others. In fact, I can think of a new slough of diagnoses that would be appropriate for the psychiatrists and their minions… the entire medical establishment could be properly diagnosed and dealt with accordingly.

 

The movie ended, and both the patients and the psych-techs seemed pleased with their morning entertainment. Then it was time for lunch and “meds” peddling. I didn’t know what sort of chemicals these amateurs were trying to force me to ingest, so naturally I found a way to handle it. Since I knew that the only way that I could get out of that terrible situation was to behave in a compliant manner, I popped the pills in my mouth in front of the nurse and pretended to swallow. After a while, I excused myself from the kitchen area to use the restroom, where at least there was a modicum of privacy. There I expelled the poisonous contents from my mouth into the toilet and eagerly flushed. Somewhere in Asia there might be an underpaid laborer in a factory producing little pills, compounds of strange substances, that are shipped out to pharmacies in America and sold for exorbitant amounts, and force-fed to unwilling psychiatric ward prisoners or unwary consumers. In this case, the pill was created, shipped, bought, force-fed, expectorated, and flushed. This should be the natural life cycle of the majority of toxic pharmaceutical products. Actually, someone at the beginning of this process needs to be stopped and held accountable, especially the pharmaceutical giants that are funding this frenzy. If the compound making masterminds could be exposed and held accountable for their crimes, then these factories and companies could be reassembled into something beneficial for the human race. The pills that I took met their end in the lavatory… but even then the chemicals would ever be found floating in the water and sewage systems.

 

It was on January 5, 2000 that a doctor first diagnosed me with something called “anxiety attacks.” One doctor’s note mentions that I had “episodes of anxiety attacks waxing and waning for 2-3 yrs.” The note continues: “I discussed this with the patient and his mother. Start PAXIL 10 mg daily for 1 week and then 20 mg daily.” In other words, because I had experienced occasional feelings of anxiety (perhaps I was feeling anxious about the doctor’s visit and the circumstances surrounding my brother’s misdiagnosis, it was time to start me on Paroxetine, a dangerous chemical with effects that include suicidal ideation, sexual dysfunction, birth defects, weight gain, nausea, sleepiness, dry mouth, constipation, insomnia, hypomania, headache, dizziness, diarrhea, blurred vision, loss of appetite, inappropriate hugging and touching, change in personality, aggression, anxiety, sweating, and weakness.   No wonder I was trying to get off of the junk! And rather than informing me about any of the effects of the drug, I was told that many good people need to take them, even church leaders, and that they are “gifts from God,” or “miracle” medicines. Some miracle! The drug miraculously transformed me from a conscientious college student with occasional feelings of anxiety or depression into a suicidal maniac bound for hospitalization and psychiatric “treatment.”

 

Had I known anything about the so-called “medicine” that I was given, and had I known anything about the problems in the modern medical system, I would never have taken the drugs in the first place. But there was no information forthcoming about any possible bad results, the kind of bad results that are often euphemistically called “side-effects.” As far as I knew, the doctor had my best interest in mind, and was concerned about helping me to feel better. Thus began a journey of toxicity that took more than a decade to heal from, and which effects still linger painfully in both my body and my mind.

 

Of course, this is not what the doctor took note of. Approximately a week after prescribing the Paxil, considering that the drug was helping, he upped my dosage from 10 mg to 20 mg daily, to be continued indefinitely.   On March 14, 2000 the doctor considered that I was doing so well on Paxil that I had decided to stop taking the drug. He noticed “some flattening of mood,” but that I was “concentrating better.” He noticed “some fatigue,” but that this symptom improved by moving does to the afternoon. These observations come from a doctor who was evidently convinced that Paxil was helping me, and that the so-called “side-effects” were basically negligible. He wrote: “[I am] hesitant to increase PAXIL due to the tiredness that he has had since starting that so will keep him on current dose of PAXIL. Start WELLBUTRIN SR 150 q am. [I had] a long discussion answering his questions and spent nearly an hour with the patient and his mother and will follow up in a month if [he is] doing well [or] get in touch sooner if having problems.”

 

What? One drug was making me sleepy, gain weight, fell nervous, flatten my emotions, and so then it was time to introduce another drug? I did not feel good about this, but before I knew it I was taking both Paxil (20 mg daily) and Wellbutrin (150 mg daily). On April 11, 2000 the same doctor noted: “The patient has no side effects to the meds and overall [is] doing quite a bit better though is not perfect. [He] does have some down time interspersed with his up time though the down times are not as they were and less frequent and [he] thinks that they may just be normal.” You don’t say. You mean, it’s normal for people to have ups and downs, to feel anxious sometimes, or even sad? If it was normal, and I said that it was normal, why drug me?

 

My guess is that this doctor, like many others, was innocently buying into the lies that were taught to him by pharmaceutical distributors. He was basically a good man doing what he thought might help, unaware (as I was also unaware) that the drugs were slowly destroying my life.

 

In October of 2000 I was still taking the 20 mg of Paxil and 150 mg of Wellbutrin, daily. I went in to see the doctor occasionally for problems such as sports injuries, and on November 29, 2000 I was still on the same dosages of Paxil and Wellbutrin. The poison was building up inside of me, even though I continued to function more or less normally.

 

On April 18, 2001 my medical records show that I had complained of “upper respiratory symptoms… itchy eyes and sneezing.” On August 28, 2001 the same records reveal that I had had some trouble with depression for about a week after returning home from a summer in Europe (and who wouldn’t be depressed after leaving Italy!) I was sleeping poorly, my energy was low, and I was irritable. So what was the doctor’s decision at this point? “Continue PAXIL but increase WELLBUTRIN 150 BID.” What? What was the logic behind this?

 

As I later discovered, such diagnoses and prescriptions are not governed by logic, but by whim and fancy. Worse, medical decisions such as these are most often based on misinformation and even lies. The doctor was operating under the false assumption that I had some sort of a chemical imbalance in the brain caused by a biological abnormality that the pharmaceuticals somehow corrected. This hypothesis had been developed before I was born, but it had never been proven to be true. In fact, it had been disproven in many cases. Furthermore, it is a scientific reality that psychotropic drugs actually harm and cause deterioration of the brain.

 

As I mentioned before, I did pay a visit to the doctor on September 11, 2001. I informed the doctor that I did not experience much improvement, but that my energy picked up a bit because of a change in diet. The medical records continue: “He is interested in getting off his meds and seeing how he does with alternative treatment… [we] had quite a long discussion regarding [the] effects of medicine and the reason for prescription… [I] recommended that we taper him off PAXIL, go 10 mg daily for 3 days and then start EFFEXOR 37.5 daily for a week and increase to 75 daily if tolerating well and consider moving to BUSPAR in place of WELLBUTRIN after that.”

 

What on earth?! I told the doctor that I wanted to get off of the drugs, so instead he decided to prescribe other drugs in their place? Wasn’t it obvious that the drugs were having an adverse effect upon my health? The doctor continued, “He took the EFFEXOR samples, voiced understanding but indicated he was still very interested in seeing how he feels drug free, and I believe that is his place as he is leaving. Nevertheless, I encouraged him to be very observant and honest with himself and if he sees worsening of his symptoms to get started on the medication, and if still not doing well follow up with me immediately, otherwise follow up after three weeks of EFFEXOR.”

 

Evidently, the attempt to withdraw from Paxil and Wellbutrin was more dangerous than either I, or the doctor, or anyone else, had anticipated. The next medical records from the same doctor’s office, on October 4, 2001, read: “Dr. Stacey, Dr. Keri Lynn Harmon is working with him. John’s mom would like you to call her and discuss his case with her. They want to get him out of the hospital as soon as possible, and they want someone who knows him to talk to her about him and his meds.”

 

My parents were out of town while I was being reduced to a human vegetable, and a near comatose zombie. I was in the hospital, or more precisely, I was in the torture chamber, for about two weeks. My diagnosis was now bipolar disorder, and I was “out of touch with reality.” For this reason, the new doctors saw fit to flood me with DEPAKOTE, HALDOL and ZYPREXA. The doctor’s notes read: “He says that he feels wiped right out… throat is fiery red and glands are a little tender… bipolar disorder with over sedation.”

 

Bipolar disorder with over sedation? No kidding. I was drugged up, struggling to get off the drugs, forcibly hospitalized, and injected with more powerful antipsychotic drugs. I was “prescribed” (meaning I was forcibly administered) 500 mg of Depakote, 5 mg of Haldol and 1 mg of Benztropine. On October 15, 2001, a new doctor, Robert W. Taylor, suggested that they might want to consider reducing the dosages. “Over sedation” is another wonderful example of medical euphemisms. I felt like I was on death’s doorstep. I felt like I had been run over by a semi truck carrying several tons of lead bricks. I felt like I had been on the life-sucking machine from The Princess Bride, and the dial had been turned all the way up. I felt like Frodo must have felt after he was stung by Shelob or threatened by a Nazgul.

 

After two weeks of this same debilitating, dehumanizing treatment, I was drugged up and drowsy enough to seem submissive to the doctors’ authority, and I was permitted to go home. But I was to be under the supervision of a psychiatrist, who would know how to “adjust my meds” until I was stable again. One of the most maddening things about this whole process is that even after stripping two weeks from my life, injecting chemicals into me and mistreating me for no reason, I was now told that I had a condition that required constant supervision, a disease that I would have for the rest of my life, and that the only way I could be well would be to take the prescribed doses of pharmaceuticals. In other words, the doctors frequently urged, “If you want to have a normal life, to get married, be successful in life, you need these medications. They are a gift from God, and you should be grateful for them.” Later on in my healing journey, a social worker once told me that since I was bipolar, I would never be able to go back to school and study the things that I wanted to study. I just needed to learn to accept my illness and live with it. As I now know, nothing could have been further from the truth. The exact opposite was true. If I wanted to have a successful life, I needed to find a way to get off of the drugs.

 

When I was released from the insane asylum, I was much, much sicker. My semester was ruined, and my hopes of assisting with the Winter Olympics were dashed. A friend of mine accompanied me to some of the sites of the Winter Olympics, and it was good to be in her company, but I was on a more potent combination of psychotropic drugs, and my mind ached in a more painful way. Not only was I suffering from the effects of drugs… I also had to deal with the trauma of hospitalization. Moreover, I was now officially branded and stigmatized as a lunatic, a bipolar patient, and someone who was mentally ill. All this while I was in college, studying Dante in the original Italian, studying Proust in the original French, studying Latin, and working very hard in school as an Honors Student. None of this mattered to anyone, because now society had found another target, relegating me, and many others, to the realm of “mental illness.”. This is a stigma of shame and suffering that I could not shake, no matter what I did. I could graduate from college with honors, work in a steady job, make a difference in the world… but still my family and friends, not to mention the psychiatric overlords, would see me forever as one who was “mentally ill.”

 

Just how this happened, I could not tell… not until later was I able to figure out how the whole system operates, and thus extrapolate myself from the tortuous caverns of psychiatry. One of the most difficult things was removing the stigma from myself, and reminding myself that despite what the entire world thought, I was not mentally ill. Psychiatry tries to pre-empt such verities by claiming that mentally ill people often don’t know that they are mentally ill. For example, in the days of slavery, some black slaves who had escaped to the North were diagnosed with “drapetomania,” an imaginary illness that supposedly caused slaves to desire freedom. The only illness that I had was one that was imposed upon me from the outside. Perhaps I was given this burden because I was strong enough to carry it, and because once having carried it, and laid it down, I could show others the absurdity of what was happening. In some ways, as I mentioned before, I have felt like Frodo of the Shire, a simple person with a quest thrust upon him, not a ring in my case, but something as powerful and insidious as the rings of power… and I feel to take these harmful psychotropic drugs back to the Mordor factories in which they were forged, to be undone, and to conquer the menacing shadows of psychiatry so that people can enjoy their sanity without interruption. But a psychiatrist would diagnose me with mania for saying such a thing, and inject me with Haldol. And Haldol is at least as venomous as an Orc blade, Shelob’s sting, or a wound inflicted by a Nazgul, if not more so.

 

After being release from the dungeons of distress, I was placed under the care of my aunt who lived in Twin Falls, Idaho. She was a nurse, so she could help “monitor” my “medications.” I remember that although my aunt was very kind and helpful, I could hardly function at all. Sleep was next to impossible. Waking up in the morning was even more impossible. I could hardly read more than a sentence in a book. I found some relief by going on a walk outside at the park, because at least I could relish in my newfound freedom. While I was free to walk about, my brain was now in the grips of the psychotropic drugs. I was taking 250 mg of Depakote twice a day along with 20 mg of Zyprexa twice a day. By November 1, 2001 I was also on a new drug, something that was supposed to stabilize my bipolar disorder… lithium. These were the same drugs that my youngest brother had been taking for several years, only I was much less compliant.

 

My recovery was long and tedious. In fact, as I write, I am still recovering. The “side effects” persisted and worsened, especially considering the fact that I was now being administered new drugs. I was given another drug as well, supposedly to help my thyroid… a drug called Synthroid. Listen to these names! They sound like aliens from an episode of Dr. Who. And the menace that they produce in the mind is something akin to a Twilight Zone episode.

 

In spite of this rupture in my life, I continued to write in my journal. I attempted to keep track of what I hoped would be a rapid recovery. If it may be called a recovery, it was certainly anything but rapid. The pain persisted, chemical trauma compounded by psychological trauma: “BI-POLAR DISORDER… I feel chest pains, acids conglomerating near the bottom of my sternum.”

 

But I always knew that I could turn to my Heavenly Father for help. I prayed, and heard a whisper: “It’s ok Johnny. I am your friend forever, and I have you in my hands. When you heal… I have a work for you.” Later I wrote: “The pain is getting worse than I can bear… I must trust in God.” Of course, psychiatrists might diagnose faith in God, a prayerful attitude, and the reality of revelation as some sort of religious disorder. If you believe in God, I’m sure that there is a pill that could relieve you of such fantasies as well.

 

On Tuesday, October 23, 2001 I wrote from Twin Falls, Idaho: “I once heard it said that ‘Pain is weakness leaving the body.’ I am crying. I am feeling emotional, deep, inner pain, and crying is actually helpful. I went outside to shoot baskets – the one thing I feel that I could do for exercise and for maintaining sanity – and when I tried to pump up the ball I accidentally let abundant air escape – the ball was flat! Now I laugh, because it’s just a hilarious thing – my one source of freedom, of liberty, of artistic expression, crushed, in a flat basketball! That assures me that there is a source of comfort in Christ Jesus. I met Attila the Hun, Jehovah, and the devil at the hospital. Each was a unique son or daughter of God, with divine attributes and characteristics, and yet, each was treated with little to no respect. I lay on the floor in the halls for about ½ hour. No one stopped. I begged for food and water – no one stopped – except a woman, one who had been severely abused – a woman who begged to be free, but who knew what awaited her on the outside. She seemed possessed. I’ll call her Elaine. She is the only one who heeded my plea for help… Those two weeks in the hospital were like hell. It was a living nightmare for me. How did I get in there? Why did they put me there? What was happening? I did not know – I resisted all opposition to my freedom. I sought ways to escape. I met another ‘inmate,’ John Jensen was his code name. Who was he? Who is he?”

 

In Idaho I had more nightmares. This mental suffering was compounded by the psychological trauma that I had experienced in the hospital, and the deleterious effects of the so-called “medications.” But one Sunday in Church I remember listening to a brief sermon in which the speaker reminded me that, “They who are whole need no physician.” I would turn to the Lord Jesus Christ for help, for relief, for healing, and for strength.

 

On Monday, October 29, 2001 I wrote in my journal: “Now I am a drug addict… Side effects (at that point I was still not aware that there are no such things as ‘side-effects’ only ‘effects’): dulls sex drive, kills drive, inhibits desire to do good, inhibits, makes me sleepy, dreepy, need to go p-p, zero concentration, increased constipation.” Apparently I was still poetic in my drugged-up state.

 

When I visited the psychiatrist again (by this time I had been transferred from the “care” of family physicians to “experts” in mental health), he again gave me that bad news that I would have to take the psychotropic drugs for the rest of my life. Without them, he said, I would not be able to live a normal life, to function in society, to marry, or to have a family.   He was very matter-of-fact about the whole process, claiming that he had seen many patients in my condition, and that in the long run, the best thing for me to do would be to consistently take my “medication.”

 

For a while this “medication” consisted mainly of Zyprexa, Cogentum, Lithium, and Synthroid. My psychiatrist was Dr. Brent Griffin. My family physician, Dr. Darrel Stacey noted on December 18, 2001, that I was experiencing more “side-effects,” such as decreased coordination and sexual dysfunction. I was placed on a regimen of 300 mg of lithium twice a day. Then I was given yet another new drug called Lamictal. It was a new drug that was supposed to work wonders for people like me, people with “bipolar depression.”   It was also suggested that I try another drug called Serevent. So the doctor and the psychiatrist continued to pour out the drugs. The doctor notes from that day read, “[I] gave [him a] SEREVENT sample with instructions for use BID as needed, however if he is worsening, he’s to start DOXYCYCLINE 100 BID for 10 days and follow up if still worsening in spite of that.”

 

I have begun to wonder what sort of a school doctors and psychiatrists attend in order to come up with such malevolent concoctions. Is medical school a mixture of anatomy, physiology, alchemy and astrology? One thing is certain, these were not people who had any real understanding of healing. Interest in the well being of patients may have been superficially present, but it seemed to be secondary to pushing psychotropic prescriptions.

 

On January 1, 2002 I wrote in my journal, “Hard to wake up. Feeling low, but not in despair. Looking forward to going to Church.”

 

On January 21, 2002 I wrote, “Woke up late – just want to sleep to forget about everything. Constantly battling just to want to live, because I feel horrible and I feel like this is going to last forever, even though I know that it’s not. The hospital was a miniature hell for me, and even the recuperation stages were prison-like. I just cried in the shower this morning. But you know what – something good must be coming – I feel that too.”

 

On January 22, 2002 I wrote, “Overslept – drugs make me too tired. I hate it! I missed my first class and I have no desire to go to school, but something good is on its way!… I am feeling much better, but I feel tired – not physically – but it is as though – my mind has been stretched and pulled like taffy. I don’t want to read – which is normally one of my favorite pastimes. I don’t think I can take this much longer, and it is very detrimental to my academic performance, but it is not up to me to decide. Something good will result from this. Something good.”

 

At 6:00 pm that same day I wrote, “I am watching basketball, after playing basketball. Of course I feel better after exercising, but I know that it is going to be hell again tomorrow morning. My medication needs to be adjusted. So be it.”

 

In spite of the torment that I was undergoing because of the psychotropic drugs, I tried to eat well, sleep well and exercise well. I was trying to stay in shape, even though the drugs made me gain weight and lose motor control. I was particularly alert to my diminishing motor skills because the things that I used to do easily while playing sports became more difficult. I was losing coordination, which made me madder than almost anything else, since I enjoyed (and still enjoy) participating team sports.

 

Worse than this though were the thoughts of suicide that began to overtake me. On January 23, 2002 I wrote in my journal, “I had to pull myself from walking in front of a moving vehicle. I was going to walk to the Health Center, but I am sick of missing class. I saw people in the halls that I know, but I didn’t stop them, even my own brother. I am supposed to write a journal for this Geography class, but I am so far behind. I haven’t done any reading and there is a test already. I have never hated school before, but now I don’t have any desire to be here… I want to die, but I fight that feeling and I will not quit fighting that feeling. I am about to throw-up. It makes me even sadder to observe my own thoughts. So, all of you who study mental illness or depression, I hope this is useful to you. Something good will come of this. I need to believe that, because my only purpose for living is not dying.”

 

Later that same day I wrote, “The pain eased a little as I talked to my geography professor, and then went for a walk in what little sunshine there is. Yes, the pain has eased a bit, thank goodness, but I feel like I am walking on eggshells… I feel better after a nice walk and a stroll through the Bean Museum, but my mind hurts. I don’t know what I am supposed to do except hold on, but I hate living life like that. I’m usually one who grabs life by the antlers. Now life has grabbed my antlers for a little while.”

 

Life continued with the same daily suffering for quite some time. I knew something had to change. Something had to give. I continued studying, and working as hard as I could. With great difficulty, I succeeded in reading Dante’s Divina Commedia (in Italian) during this time, and I was working on an honors thesis for graduation. I wrote in my journal, “Just after visiting the Health Center today I felt a sudden ray of hope shining down on me. Dr. Astle prescribed Effexor. I don’t know why, but just the thought of having some sort of a solution was reassuring.” Little did I know at the time that this hope was ill founded. In fact, Effexor would prove my demise more than any of the previous drugs that had been thrust upon me. But I swallowed the pharmaceutical fraud hook, line and sinker.

 

On February 20, 2002 I was taking 300 mg of Lithobid twice a day, 75 mg of Effexor daily, and .025 mg of Synthroid daily. After the precarious Prozac, the painful Paxil, the wearying Wellbutrin, the hard Haldol, the debilitating Depakote, and the loathsome Lamictal, these pills were like candy. Only, they weren’t candy. On December 16, 2002 I was still taking mostly the same dosages of drugs, but surprisingly my medical records note that, “[He is] off thyroid medication, but never noted improvement on [the] medication.” Really? Shocking! But other symptoms were worsening, “[The patient] is doing well on his medications but needs refills. He feels that his mouth gets dry and has halitosis as a result. [He] has questions about that, but he has no other problems or side effects to the meds. [They] seem to be working well and he is able to go to school and study hard, and [he] reports now that he desires to go to medical school.”

 

I constantly had to go in to get blood drawn to test my Lithium levels, while checking in with the psychiatrist who monitored my symptoms. Months passed as my body and brain adjusted to the new regimen of drugs.

 

On June 10, 2003 I wrote, “I missed one morning of medication yesterday, and I had a normal day until I went to bed. There were some major hallucinations and dreams in the night… I know that as I write this, my mind has been in strange state. I didn’t mean to induce this. I just forgot to take my medication yesterday (1 Effexor Pill).”

 

Gradually my brain and my body adjusted to the drugs. I was fortunate enough to graduate from Brigham Young University with honors, and after graduation I decided to take a trip to Arizona. It had been a great challenge to study while taking the drugs. The Effexor, Lithium and other drugs had ruined my concentration to such an extent that it was very difficult to sit down and read a book.  I felt nervous and fidgety all of the time, and my solar plexus hurt.

 

On June 23, 2003, in Arizona I wrote, “My cousin is helping me to get in shape again, but the medicine, as far as I believe, Lithium and Effexor, do not belong in my body. Push forward.” On June 28, 2003 I wrote in my journal, “My cousin is helping me to get into good physical condition, even with the nasty chemicals Lithium and Effexor that infect my mind and body.”

 

During that hot summer in Arizona, my cousin and I worked at a gym coaching youth in gymnastics and a variety of sports. After some collaboration, and I believe inspiration, my cousin and I even invented a new sport that we called Verseball. We bought the PVC pipe, nets, and parts to build goals and to design a field. We wanted to create a new sport that could be played on a triangular field with three teams and three players on each team. It was a sport that included the use of both hands and feet, and it was simple to learn. It was a hit! Since that time, I have introduced the sport to many youth groups, schools and church groups. I am currently in the process of patenting and marketing the new sport, even though my landlady accidentally threw away my equipment.

 

Later that summer I also had the opportunity to visit Havasu falls with my brother and a group of friends. For those of you who haven’t been to Havasu Falls, I can highly recommend it as a beautiful spot for hiking, camping, cliff jumping and enjoying the beauties of nature. It was the perfect spot to forget about my troubles, and to enjoy bask in warm sunlight. Havasu falls is what was needed, not a hospital.

 

Back in Utah I obtained a job with the company Nu Skin in the French Canadian division. I had graduated from school, but I was also pursuing post-graduate studies in biology, physics and chemistry because, as indicated by my medical records, I was interested in going to medical school. I even worked to obtain my EMT license. I enjoyed my classes, but I slowly discovered that many of the people in the program weren’t actually interested in learning or in helping others. There was an intense feeling of competition in the pre-medical program, and the underlying concern of many of the students seemed to be money. When I would ask sincere questions in class, I was rebuffed and just told to memorize the information and regurgitate it. This was not the kind of freethinking, learning environment that I had enjoyed as a comparative literature major (although there were also problems in the humanities). In fact, as much as I enjoyed learning about medicine, the atmosphere seemed to be stifling to actual education or preparation for a career in the healing arts. Little wonder then that medical school produces the kind of doctors that do more harm than good.

 

On Friday, October 10, 2003, I wrote about the dangerous effects of withdrawing rapidly from “medications.” Even at this time, after having experienced it once, I knew next to nothing about the danger of a “cold-turkey” withdrawal from the drugs. I did not know at the time that it was the withdrawal from the Paxil and Wellbutrin that first landed me in the hospital. However, I was about to observe the danger in real life without understanding the precise cause: “My youngest brother is having a manic episode. He stopped taking Zyprexa, on doctor’s orders, but he and his wife didn’t tell anyone else.”

 

My youngest brother was having “manic episodes” more frequently. In a desire to help, and to be of more service to those who suffer, I started visiting the mental hospital, playing sports with the kids, and trying to understand their affliction. I also volunteered at the Utah Valley Regional Medical Center as part of my pre-med preparation. On December 3, 2003 I recorded in my journal, “Today was my first day volunteering at the UVRMC in the same day surgery department. One of the nurse assistants showed me the ropes. I am still waiting to see if I will acquire the employment I applied for – psych-tech. One of the psych-techs died in a tragic accident – he was playing baseball when he broke his leg and had some heart trouble, fatal heart trouble. This would be a hard position to fill, but I like the hospital setting so far.”

 

On December 4, 2003 I wrote, “Somehow, when the Lithium sinks in, or the Effexor takes its [side] effects, I am no longer refreshed by sleep. This has happened many times before, but now I am expressing my frustration with the written word… As I have often thought, the medications I take hinder my coordination and my athletic ability. Perhaps I am still lucky, perhaps my skills are still superb, but the difference that I feel, in reaction time, in speed, quickness, leaping, all of these things combine to frustrate me consistently as I play, especially soccer and basketball.”

 

Later that day I wrote, “I also wonder how the drugs affect my sexuality. This question plagues me. It reaches into one of the most important aspects of my life, my relationship with my (future) wife and the ability to produce children. I don’t like to have such a worry on my mind. Libido should be as natural as love, strong and constant. So, as you can tell, I am concerned about these elements, not only for myself, but for my youngest brother, and for numerous friends and others who are affected by these elements.”

 

On December 11, 2003 there was good news. Saddam Hussein had been captured. I had kept meticulous and voluminous journals, recording news both good and bad. But for the purpose of this book I am leaving out many of the wonderful experiences that I did have along the way.

 

On Friday, Dec. 19, 2003 I wrote in my journal, “I just returned from Dr. Griffin’s office. He just convinced me once again that I must stay on medication for the rest of my life. This is such a hard decision. I don’t know what the [side] effects could be, on my children, on me, on my brain, on my body. On the other hand, the ‘risks’ are too great without medication – mania, episodes, ‘scary.’ I hate being heavier, sweatier, drier mouth, intestinally ill because of medication – and tired, plus spending so much money on medication. Is this just a sacrifice I must make? I will then, but if there is another way, which I’m sure there is, let’s figure it out. Bipolar disorder is not so much a disorder as it is supposed to be. I am going to play basketball with my youngest brother – he is a genius, but he is also a medicated genius. Medicated.”

 

On January 5, 2004 I obtained my EMT license. But I soon discovered that the hospital workers showed no interest or appreciation for a lowly volunteer such as myself, so eventually I quite volunteering at the hospital.

 

On April 29, 2004 my mom was in a terrible car accident. She was broadsided by an 18 year old who was speeding. Her recovery was long and painful, and to this day she still suffers from the effects of that accident.

 

But the good news soon arrived that I was not destined to work at Nu Skin for the rest of my life, because I had been accepted into a graduate program in Jewish Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. I had always wanted to live in Israel, and to study Hebrew, so this was a dream come true. I was still anxious to get married, but I had no real prospects at the time, so I decided to follow through with my dream of studying in Israel. It would be expensive, but worth it. I would need more than $2,000 for medication alone, but I decided that I would make it happen. I wasn’t about to let a diagnosis or drugs interfere with my dreams. Before leaving for Israel, I went with my family on a brief vacation to Red Fish Lake in Idaho. It was a grand time, and I forgot about all of my worries. It was good to be together with family and friends, to swim, ski and sing.

 

Soon after that, I was off to the Holy Land. On August 18, 2004 I wrote in my journal, “Gethsemane seems small. My stomach hurts after taking Lithium pills tonight. After spending some time in Gethsemane, my friend and I walked to Damascus gate and through the Old City to the Armenian Quarter. We met a kind Armenian man who taught us many things about the Armenian people. We continued to walk, out of the Old City and through the different Al-Wadi Arab Settlements. When we finally made it back to the Idelson dorms, I was famished and sweating much. Long, long walk, but well worth the effort.”

 

On September 20, 2004 I recorded in my journal, “I am sick, diarrhea.” On September 30, 2004 I wrote, “I am sweating profusely… This morning I woke up feeling ill, thinking perhaps that my friendly little parasite (‘exodus’ I call him), if I have one, was acting up.” On October 27, 2004 I wrote, “Recently I have been getting the impression that it is time to come off of my medicines, or the medicines that have been given to me, and I have taken. I would very much love to stop, and I still believe there is a better way. What should I do? Of course I cannot do anything, not yet perhaps – but why do I feel like there is some good news pending? I forgot to take the medicine this morning, and I feel fine, but of course it would have some sort of effect on me. It is just too much of a hassle, plus I feel like it is bad for my brain, my body and my spirit. What should I do? Of course I will be obedient, but somehow I feel that there is something good I can do, something I can help bring to light. Whatever the case, I am sure that I don’t have to worry about it, and that Heavenly Father will help me, please, in His own time and in His own way, which is always so true and beautiful, and amazing to my feeble understanding. In other words, the topic of bipolarity came back to my mind today, even though I have mostly forgotten about it.”

 

On November 15, 2004 I wrote in my journal, “I spent a half an hour or so by the pools of Bethesda, thinking, pondering, and imagining myself as the paralytic in need of healing. I felt my head swimming, and I cried in my heart for the Savior, but I thought that whatever the pain or price, it would be worth it to do God’s will and not my own. I know God wants to give me everything anyhow. Things will work out. By the way, the pharmacy Al-Jazeera is not pulling through with the lithium that they promised, so I am struggling to solve this ‘medicine’ problem.”

 

On November 18, 2004 I wrote, “After a brief but difficult struggle, I finally let go of my pride and I called my parents. I could feel myself slipping into the pain of yesteryear, but luckily my parents helped me reorganize myself. My dad called the BYU Jerusalem Center volunteers, and they took me to a good pharmacy and they bought me lunch too. Everyone is willing to help, but I am slow to ask for help. I really wanted to figure this out on my own this time, to be really ‘independent,’ but it really hurt me. I reduced my amounts of lithium in order to have enough, but that was a mistake. My fault. I am thankful to still be able to study here in Israel and realize my dreams.”

 

On December 15, 2004 I wrote, “I am a little bit sick still, but I did fine on my Hebrew midterm and I made it through the inspections here at the airport.”

 

On January 31, 2005 I wrote, “I asked Mustafa (our tour guide in Egypt) if God answers prayers. He replied, ‘Yes, but he gives us what we need, not always what we want.’” Wise words from a Muslim brother. On February 4, 2005 I wrote, “The ride home was taxing, to say the least. 9 hours in a train from Aswan to Cairo… the next morning 4 hours from Dahab to Taba… then to Eilat. Then 6 or so hours from Eilat to Jerusalem. Although I ate well and slept well, my whole spirit was taxed. Now I must recover.”

 

On March 7, 2005 I wrote, “I have had diarrhea for a couple of weeks…” When I returned to Jerusalem from our trip to Egypt, I was very sick. I was dehydrated and I felt a strange pain in my stomach and chest that I had never felt before to this extent. It felt like my heart was sinking, and that I was on the brink of death. It felt as if there were a sharp, piercing set of needles going into my chest and stomach, and that I was loosing touch with reality. I recovered somewhat, and returned to school, but soon I could not take it any longer. Although I had kept an excellent journal of everything during my experience in Israel, the pages of my journal from this time I later ripped out, because the memories were so painful and traumatic. In attempting to describe the pain and the suffering, as I attempted earlier, I can only caution the reader that no words can explain or even come close to describing the extent of what I went through. Hell itself is too gentle of a word. And it was even worse a Hell than the one that I had experienced in Utah, if such a thing were possible.

 

When I realized that the Lithium and Effexor were making it harder for my immune system to respond to my illness and help in my recovery, I was upset. Before taking psychotropic drugs, when I had an illness, I would usually recover quite quickly, but this time it felt like the drugs were assisting the illness against my mind and my body. Unaware that what had caused my first hospital stay was a reaction to variations in doses of medication, I decided that I needed to stop taking Lithium and Effexor all together, all at once. Not only were these chemicals not helping me to heal and to feel better… they were making me feel worse. I looked out of the window of my apartment, overlooking French Hill and the Mount of Olives. In desperation and hoping for my body to heal (and without any sort of warning from doctors about the dangers of withdrawing rapidly from “medications”), I decided to stop taking the Lithium and the Effexor.

 

At first things were fine, and I started to feel much better. After a day or so without pharmaceutical intake, I began to feel very strange. Something was happening inside my body and my brain, and I began to loose touch with reality. I was more than delirious… I was downright delusional. The effects were not immediate, but something was changing inside of my brain. In retrospect I understand that the chemicals that had been blocking the neurotransmitter receptors in my brain were now coming loose. It was as if a cork had been suddenly pulled from a shaken up bottle of a carbonated beverage. The receptors were freed up, and the juices in my brain were flowing like never before. This could only spell trouble.

 

One day as my friend and I had taken a trip to the Old City, I became very impulsive. We went into a Palestinian rug store, and I bargained with the owner to buy some rugs. My friend was trying to caution me, but I paid him no attention, and proceeded to purchase more than $1,000 worth of rugs and blankets. Something in my mind was telling me that I had to purchase the rugs. I absolutely had to do it. It was a very strange experience, and no doubt a result of withdrawing from the “medications”. My friend was very worried about me, and was trying to get me to take the rugs back for a refund. This prompted a reaction that was very uncharacteristic of me, especially toward a friend that I loved and cared about so much. As he was gently trying to help me, I became irate and pushed him a few times. I ran off with the rugs, and left them at the apartment.

 

While still in a frenzied state of mind, brain mixtures bubbling, I came back to the old city and I even purchased a large knife. It looked like a sacrificial blade with a horned animal carved on the handle. I ran through the old city with my knife and other items that I had purchased, and made my way up to the Mount of Olives. I passed a shepherd and his boys along the way who were tending sheep and goats in the hills. I passed a group of Palestinian boys playing soccer in the streets, and I began to play with them. They were running and shouting and we were having fun, but soon one of the boys noticed my knife and wanted to see it. At this point I had begun to loose touch with reality even more, and in my drug-ridden brain I considered myself to be some great deliverer of the Palestinian people, and I even had a name that I made up for myself “Izmaher.” When they boys asked me who I was, I unsheathed my blade and held it aloft shouting “Izmaher!” “Izmaher!” And then I ran off toward the BYU Jerusalem Center.

 

After resting for a while at the BYU Jerusalem Center, I returned to the apartment complex. I was tired, and I had just spent a lot more money than I had on rugs, a knife, and other items. I stashed my booty away in my closet and tried to get some sleep.

 

When I arose in the morning, I knew that something was wrong. I was feeling even worse than the day before, and even my vision was affected. When I looked outside at the grass by the cemetery, the green was of a richer hue, but vibrant and otherworldly. It was a color of green that I had never before seen or even imagined. I had been to Ireland, and I had seen the lush green of many places, but what I saw at that time was not a color of green that could be found upon this earth. It was as if the chemicals of the drugs had actually done something to the part of my brain associated with vision and color. The grass of Jerusalem is not particularly green, but at that moment, it was alive with an otherworldly verdant splendor, almost like a radioactive hue. But things were getting worse.

 

Before I knew it, I had shed all of my clothing, and I was standing on my bed, making various uncontrolled gestures. Although I was conscious, I did not feel in control of my brain or my actions. It was more than scary. It was more than painful.

 

The next thing I knew, I had dressed myself in the white Arab jellabiya that I had purchased in Cairo. I left my apartment and went down to the street just below the apartment complex, where students were coming and going from class. It must have been odd to see an American, clad in little but a white Arab robe, meandering along the road. Again, I was conscious and awake, but it was as if something else were controlling my brain circuitry. I ran over to a fence and flailing around, I proceeded to do a headstand. My back was against the fence, my legs waving in the air… with gawking students passing back and forth. By this time my abnormal behavior had caught the attention of one of the armed Israeli soldiers who stood guard by the apartment complex. I stood on my feet, and walked over to where the soldier was standing on a rock. Some friends and students stopped to talk with me, and I began telling them random stories and “prophesying” to them. The effect of rapid (“cold turkey”) withdrawal from both Effexor and Lithium had caused my brain to think that I was a prophet of the last days, warning the people against disasters to come. All this time, the soldier kept a close eye on me.

 

I proceeded to “reveal” to certain curious passerby’s a path to healing. I remember drawing circles in the dirt and teaching about how every soul has a circle of pain that can only be filled by the piercing word of God. In my delusional post-Lithium, post-Effexor state, I was playing the part of a prophet in Jerusalem, sent to warn the people. Finally, the soldier had seen enough and he came closer to break up the confusion. His AK-47 and gear did nothing to frighten me. I had absolutely no inhibitions nor fear of death. I mocked him and told him to go ahead and shoot me. I felt invincible. “Shoot me!” I said. “Go ahead! Shoot me! I dare you to shoot me!” I approached him threateningly, and he stood ready upon the rock.

 

Anyone who really knows me understands that I was never an aggressive type. I was the calm, easy child that every mother dreams of. I was patient and loving, gentle and meek. Of course I wasn’t perfect, but my mother always said that I was an easy child. The person that stood threatening an armed Israeli soldier was not me, but a violent outburst of oddity caused by the rapid withdrawal from the so-called “medication”. As with the terrible “side-effects” of being on the drugs… sweating, weight gain, nervousness, nightmares, dry mouth, constipation, sexual dysfunction and dulled feelings, there had been no warnings of what would happen if I decided to go off of the “medications” suddenly. I could not be on the “medications” because they were making me sick, but I could not go off of them either, because my body and mind had become dependent upon them.

 

Fortunately the soldier did not shoot me, although it might have made sense at the time to do so, since I was completely out of control and hysterical. Soon there were police on the scene, and a car had come to pick me up. I had no idea what was happening, although I was awake and very keyed up. I can’t recall whom it was that took me to the hospital, but if my memory serves me right, my aunt (a different aunt than the one with who I stayed in Idaho) had come from Tel Aviv when she found out what was happening.   One of my roommates must have called her earlier when they noticed that I was acting very strange (perhaps when I was dancing about naked on my bed).

 

I was shoved into a car, which started driving off to an unknown destination. The original violent outbreak was mostly over, and I had calmed down enough to ride in the car, although I did try to open the door and jump out a couple of times. Eventually we arrived at a location that I had never before seen, and we pulled up to a strange gate. Through the gate, there was a series of buildings. By this time, I had begun to put two and two together, so that I realized, even in my delusional state, that I was being transported to a mental hospital.

 

My mind flashed back to the hellish experiences that I had had in the psychiatric ward in Utah, and the torture that I was subjected there. With police and guards ready to escort me to the hospital, I knew that I needed to do something. I was not about to let myself be tortured by a whole new set of doctors, psychiatrists and nurses. As we pulled up to the building, I began to hatch an escape plan. There were at least three people in the car with me, one of them holding me, and my prospects for escaping looked very dim.

 

At this point, I want the reader to understand that although I was conscious, the rapid withdrawal from the lithium and Effexor was creating havoc in my brain that was even more pronounced than that which had taken place after descending from Mount Timpanogos.   The Paxil had afflicted me with suicidal thoughts and compulsive behaviors, but lithium and Effexor were elixirs of absolute madness. If you want to create insanity, simply give someone such a combination of drugs for a time, then make them withdraw from the drugs suddenly.   Many of the stories that can be read in the news, stories of shooting rampages and violence, are connected to some assortment of pharmaceuticals or the effects of withdrawing from them.

 

It looked as though I was trapped, but as soon as the car came to a halt, I spied an open area just outside the inner fence of the hospital. As luck would have it, I got out of the car on the right side of the car, while the person that was holding me exited to the left, and the others were still getting out of the car when I bolted.   My captors had no chance. I was swifter than lightning, and faster than a gazelle being chased by predators. There was no way in hades that I was going into that hideous hospital.

 

My captors pursued me for a while, but I outran them and dashed around the back of the hospital until I found a place to hide. I had left my pursuers completely in the dust. They couldn’t find me, and now I needed to come up with another plan. As one might imagine, I was still somewhat delusional, but the exercise had gotten my blood pumping, and I was ready to fight. No more of this. I pitied the people inside the hospital and felt a sudden urge to help them. Not only was I ready to escape… I was also ready to set all of the prisoners free.

 

Recently I discovered that psychiatrists have even concocted a label for people who undergo psychotic breaks in Jerusalem, something called “Jerusalem Syndrome.” The diagnosis, invented in 2000, has not yet made it into the DSM, but if history is any indicator of a pattern, the DSM has much room to grow. In its more than 900 pages, a diagnosis for almost anything can be found, and no one under its rubric can be said to be “normal.” The masterminds of the DSM did not base their inventions on any scientific fact or even experimental evidence. They simply consulted together until they could agree on a variety of labels that might best serve the purposes of the psychiatric profession, and worse, of the pharmaceutical industry. Gary Greenberg has written a caustic review of the process used to compile the latest edition of the DSM, the DSM-V, in a book with the appropriate title: The Book of Woe.

 

But let’s get back to Jerusalem. I found a tree that was growing right next to a wall by the hospital. I darted from my hiding place, and sprung up the tree. Up I climbed until I reached a branch that jutted out over the roof of the hospital. I balanced beamed the branch (an impressive feat for one whose brain was swirling with toxic chemicals, or the effects of a “cold turkey” withdrawal), and out onto the roof. My pursuers were nowhere in sight, but now I could see all around the hospital and down into one portion of the hospital.

 

I could see a doorway that led to a courtyard where zombie-like patients wandered in and out, some of them smoking. At this point I knew that this was part of the mental hospital, and that these zombies were really people who had been overfed a diet of toxic pharmaceuticals. I was free, on the roof, and ready to escape for good… but part of me was pained to see all of these suffering people shuttling back and forth like prisoners. If not long before I had been a prophet in Israel calling the people to repentance, I was now a deliverer, a liberator, come to free the captives. I looked for ways that I could let them out of the prison, but there were no exits that I could see, or even windows. I would have to create a distraction.

 

And that is precisely what I did. I found a bunch of cables that connected to the lamps that lit up the courtyard, and probably other areas of the hospital. I grabbed the lump of cables and chords in my hands and gave a mighty tug. I yanked some of them out of place, and severed the electrical connections, causing some of the lights to go out. There was some confusion down below, and it was nearing dusk, so I knew that I had to get moving.

 

I climbed to a higher part of the roof of the hospital, and made my way toward the far end of the hospital where there was a tall electrical tower of some sort. I could see people gathered at the foot of the hospital, and I had been spotted. A few people had begun to scale the hospital walls to come after me, and I hurried over to the electrical tower. I don’t know exactly how tall the tower was, but in my mind it seemed to be at least 30 if not 50 feet tall. And up I went. No one would dare follow me up there. The climb was difficult and treacherous, and in retrospect, especially considering my state of mind, it is a miracle that I didn’t fall to my death. I scaled the mighty tower, and at the summit I could see all around the hospital, and all around the surrounding village. There were trees and valleys, and little people down below. The people who were pursuing me stopped at the base of the tower, while others remained at the hospital grounds anxiously looking upwards.

 

A fire truck had arrived, and there were police officers, soldiers, doctors and others among the crowd. I was trapped, but no one could catch me where I was. I had succeeded in turning out the lights in part of the hospital and escaping my pursuers, but now I had nowhere to go. I had nowhere to hide, nowhere to run, but my mind was running faster than I could keep up with. What had happened? How did I get to the top of this tower? Was this real? Why where these people chasing me? Why was I at this hospital? I remembered the events from earlier that day, the stripping, the flipping, the prophesying and the threatening of the Israeli soldier. I took some time to catch my breath, and then, at the top of the tower, I knew that, barring some miracle, I could not escape.

 

The people below were menacing, but more menacing was the prospect of being imprisoned in the torture chambers of an Israeli mental hospital. My experience in the American psychiatric ward was terrible enough to keep me from ever going near such a place again, but somehow I found myself in a place that I never would have guessed, and it looked much more primitive than any American Hospital. If an American psychiatric ward was a dungeon, or hell, this place could be the very bottom of the bottomless pits of despair. It was the psychiatric abyss, and monsters awaited me there.

 

Knowing the torment that awaited me, frustrated by my inability to escape, and writhing in the pain of my mind, I began to shout from the top of the tower. I shouted in English: “Peace in Israel!” The stunned spectators looked on in horror, wondering if I would jump or fall to my death. Remembering that most people spoke English, I shouted again at the top of my lungs from the high tower: “Peace in Israel! Peace in Israel!” Then, wanting to make sure that I was understood by all, I shouted in Hebrew, and then in Arabic: “Shalom Be Yisrael!!!” “Salaam!” “Salaam!”

 

After what seemed like an eternity, I decided to surrender myself to my tormentors. The night was peaceful atop the tower, and I was in command. But now I knew that doom awaited me. Slowly I descended the tower where I was met by a man who escorted me toward the edge of the roof. Somehow we both made our way down to the ground level, and I remember being enclosed in the passenger seat of a fire truck for a brief moment. I dreaded whatever lay ahead of me, and almost wished that I could die instead of entering into that horrible place, but I was now at the mercy of my captors.

 

If I remember correctly, a few firefighters and doctors accompanied me into the dark hospital. They brought me into a small room that was painted entirely white, but had no windows and no doors other than the one that I entered. Needless to say it was even more frightening than the hospital in Utah, and the terror was increased by the fact that I was in a foreign country, far away from my home and family, and the doctors were using many words that I could hardly understand, even though by that point I had become quite proficient in Hebrew. My mind was still aching and spinning from the effects of withdrawal from Effexor and Lithium, and I was still sick from my experience in Egypt, but these did not look like friendly people who were concerned about my health or welfare. I was right. They were not.

 

I was thrown forcefully onto a gurney in the corner of the white room, a room not unlike the Room 101 described in Orwell’s 1984, and though I was kicking and screaming, there were too many of them, and they overpowered me. I was begging them to please be merciful, to please let me out, to please don’t do this. I tried speaking in Hebrew, but not even my pleas in their native tongue could soften them, and I was strapped down. I was writhing in pain, and pleading and crying to get out, but my cries were futile. Soon a hideous hospital attendant appeared with an even more hideous looking syringe. He thrust the needle into my buttock and injected the tranquilizer, squeezing the liquid suffering into my blood stream. It was a psychotropic drug, no doubt, but something more potent than even the Haldol that I had been given in America. No sooner had he done this than I found myself alone in the all-white room, reeling from the injection and from the events of the day. I screamed, letting out peels of pain and anger.

 

I continued to scream for help, but my screams only echoed off of the white plastered walls and back into my own ears.   I was confined to the gurney, suffering and struggling, with no one compassionate in the vicinity. Reality had begun to settle in: I was in an Israeli mental hospital where I had just been injected with a harsh chemical. I was trapped, and the nightmare of my first hospital visit was brought back to the surface. I let out shrieks of pain and tried to free myself from the straps on the gurney, but to no avail.

 

Eventually, the drug began to take its effect, and I no longer had the energy to fight. I was still angry, and claustrophobic, having been held in that terrible room for more than an hour. The time passed slowly. I stopped shrieking, and just wept for pain. More time passed, and I wondered if I would ever get out of that terrible and terrifying white room.

 

More time passed, and I resigned myself to my fate. I was broken, again. I had made a valiant effort to escape, and to free the prisoners, but now I was doomed. Confined in the white room of suffering, I closed my eyes and wept out loud.

 

Finally, after what seemed like many hours, I was deemed calm enough for the doctors to take me out of the room. Dozens of zombie-like patients passed back and forth on either side, and we walked by a cafeteria area and toward a counter where drugs were distributed. The mental hospital was dank and dingy, and the patients looked as if they had never known hygiene. I was escorted to the office of a psychiatrist, Dr. Katznelson, to be interrogated and diagnosed. I do not recall any of the conversation, but needless to say, the experts did not consider me fit for society. I would be diagnosed and subjected to a new regimen of “treatment,” a foreign regimen, one that would prove even more toxic than my first hospitalization.

 

After my diagnosis and new set of prescriptions, I was forced back into the dungeon, where the doors were locked behind me. Now what? Here I was, in a foreign country, surrounded by patients who were not only zombies, but zombies that spoke in foreign languages. The floors were dirty, and the people were just as dirty. The nurses were more sinister than Nurse Ratchet from the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and there was not a friendly face to be found. I walked down the hall, past the counter of pill distribution, past the cafeteria, and toward the sleeping quarters. I was exhausted, to say the least, and I just wanted to sleep, but the beds were hardly worthy of the name.

 

There were thin, dirty mattresses placed on top of wiry metal frames, but there were no blankets. The mattresses had smoke stains and urine stains on them, and the people in the room moved about restlessly. I tried to lie down, but one of the zombies came and yelled at me, trying to move me from “his” bed. I got up, exhausted, and walked back out into the hallway. This was not a five star hotel.

 

The “patients” in their dirty garb paced back and forth, some of them stopping to harass me, and others too sedated to do anything. There was a shower on the other side of the hallway where certain patients entered and came out still half naked.   I was tired and dirty, and I just wanted to sleep, so eventually I found a bed where I could lie down.

 

I tried to sleep, but because my head was aching, and the chemicals were swirling in my body and brain, I could not. Besides, there was constant noise and movement inside of the sleeping cell that made rest next to impossible. My head was throbbing with pain, and my mind was reeling with confusion. The chemicals surged inside my cranium until I thought that I might just die.

 

But morning came, and I opened my eyes to the living nightmare. Doctors corralled me to the office of the psychiatrist for more interviews and testing. I was too tired and disoriented to make much of the situation. Afterward, I was led to the feeding trough and given a cup full of strange looking pills. Can you imagine that I was suspicious? I popped them into my mouth, and then without swallowing I made my way to the bathroom where I expectorated them, and threw-up whatever I could that was in my stomach.

 

Now I was filthier and more downtrodden than ever before, and I made my way to the showers. This shower was not a sanitary place, but I wanted to rinse myself and wash what I could. After other patients had dragged their zombie bodies out of the shower, I got in and closed the door. It was refreshing to take off my sweat-laden clothing, and at least to run some cool water over my head and suffering body. I rinsed and washed in the dirty closet, until I felt ready to face the prison folk again. I dressed again in my dirty clothes, and went back to the sleeping quarters.

 

The bed where I had slept the night before was taken, and it was hard to tell where was a safe place to lie down. Nowhere seemed safe. There were both men and women in the psychiatric ward, and few of them, even the staff, had any semblance of sanity about them. There were a couple of people that I met later who were able to hold a conversation. One was an Arab lady, a Muslim, who spoke to me in Hebrew, and her boyfriend, who also happened to be in there, whether as a patient or as a visitor I did not know.

 

Breakfast was served en masse, and the food was tolerably good. But no sooner were we done with breakfast than all of the patients were funneled off to a corner of the hospital while workers came in with a hose. The staff member proceeded to hose and mop the floors, and muddy water flowed out toward the courtyard. The filth was squeegeed away to a drainage system, and the patients were allowed to return to the cafeteria area. The television was turned on, and my zombie compatriots glued their eyes to the screen. Others wandered out into the courtyard, where I discovered that I could find some fresh air and sunlight. There were not many windows in the institution, but the miniature courtyard was free. It was the same place that I had seen from the roof, where I had removed the electrical cables. The sunlight was refreshing, and the air invigorating, except for the fact that patients were allowed to go into the miniature courtyard to smoke. The one place where I could get fresh air and sunshine was soon filled with the second hand smoke of nicotine addicted patients. This miniature courtyard was about ten feet in breadth by twenty feet in length.

 

The walls were too high to climb, and too thick to break through. The door was locked, and there was no way of escape. Once again, I was trapped. Patients wandered with blank stares and stone-like faces. Behind a caged window, a staff worker distributed “medications” to the unsuspecting zombie-like patients. I grabbed the “meds,” placed them in my mouth, and spit them out as soon as I could. This routine continued for days, interspersed with visits to the office of the psychiatrist, Dr. Katznelson.

 

Sometimes I had to swallow the harsh pills because I could not escape the ever- watchful eyes of the hospital staff. Occasionally there was a sympathetic worker, but the man at the counter distributing pills was cold and sinister looking. He was like an angry farmer shoveling slop to pigs, or a stern teacher bent on punishing every student in his classroom. When pill distribution time came along, the patients lined up and blindly ingested the mind drugs that were meant to keep them sedated and under control.

 

During this time my parents had been contacted, and my dad bought a plane ticket to Tel Aviv as soon as possible. While I trudged back and forth in the filthy cell, my dad was on his way to rescue me. Before I was aware of any such rescue attempts, or visits from friends and teachers at the Hebrew University, I was still looking for means of escape. How would anyone know where I was? After what happened, how long did these self-appointed guardians of sanity intend to keep me incarcerated? If the psychiatric ward in Provo was bad (and it was terrible), this place was exponentially worse.

 

Once, as I was humming and whistling to myself to try to be of good cheer, I felt a sudden blow from behind on the back of my head. I crumbled to the ground in pain, and then turned to see one of the largest psychiatric inmates, a bulky, grimy man with an idiotic grin on his face. He spoke with a Russian accent, and told me to stop singing, and then walked away. Could it get any worse? I hobbled outside to the smoky courtyard to try to breathe some fresh air. But the Russian ruffian was following me around. What was I supposed to do now? Couldn’t the hospital staff restrain this psychopath? He followed me back into the cafeteria area and into the hall, and then I went into the sleeping quarters to lie down. For a moment he left me alone.

 

When I went back into the hallway, he was there again, speaking to me in Hebrew. Obviously I did not want to talk to him because he had just pounded the back of my cranium moments before. He started asking me questions about faith and religion. What on earth was this lunatic talking about? “Get me out of this hell hole!” my mind screamed. He asked me in Hebrew: “Atah meyamin be Yeshua?” “Al taghidu et ze.” “Do you believe in Jesus? Don’t say it.” After some prodding and pestering, I turned to the bully and said “Ken. Ani Meyamin be Yeshua.” “Yes, I believe in Jesus.” The hefty Russian ruffian was stunned, but to my surprise he grabbed me, and with tears in his eyes said “Ani mitztaer.” “Ani mitztaer.” “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Then to my disgust, but also to my relief, he planted a slobbery kiss on my cheek and told me that he was my friend now. At least from that point on he left me alone.

 

Unbeknownst to me, my father was on his way to Israel, and others were arriving at the hospital to pay me a visit. I was not allowed to talk to any of them at first, because I was being held under strict supervision. The only time that I was allowed out of the immediate confines of the prison was when the psychiatrist would take me to her office to ask me questions. This was the closest to freedom that I felt, even though I was set under the ever-watchful eyes of the psychiatrist.

During one of my visits to her office, I was very thirsty, and so I asked her if I could get a drink from the drinking fountain around the corner. She agreed. I stood up from the chair, and went into the hallway where there was a drinking fountain. Although I had stopped hoping to find any way of escape, I soon saw my chance. As I approached the drinking fountain, I noticed that one of the doors to the outer courtyard was open. I took a few sips of water, and rather than return to the interrogation room of the psychiatrist, I slipped quietly through the door, and around the side of the building.

 

I knew that the psychiatrist would soon be suspicious, so I had to act quickly. I was acting impulsively, but I was also trying to do whatever I could to escape the continuing torture. I darted toward the back of the hospital grounds, and somehow managed to make it to the back fence entirely unnoticed. I couldn’t believe it! I was almost free. Between my captivity and the outside world there was nothing but a tall chain link fence. Quickly I scaled the fence and leapt from the top to the ground, rolling into the grass. I was free! I had actually escaped! I knew that the psychiatrist and other staff would soon be hot on my trail, so I quickly ran over the side of a hill where no one could see me. All I had needed was a drink of water, but with a little luck, I had also found an open door to freedom.

 

I was sweating profusely (partially because of the effects of the drugs) and my heart was pounding rapidly. There was no turning back. Now what? I was free, but I was also in a strange part of the country, how far away from Jerusalem I did not know. There was a deep valley behind the hospital that rose to a hill of equal height on the other side. In somewhat of a panic, I began to shuffle down the side of the valley, through briars, bushes and thorns. There was no other way to go, because the hospital was at my back, and anyone who would be looking for me was behind me. I could only go forward, and down. The bushes and briars tore my clothing and scratched into my flesh. I made my way slowly but steadily down the side of the valley until, exhausted, I reached a little pathway in the crevice of the valley. I was tired and thirsty again, but I had nowhere to go but up.

 

I began to trudge up the other side of the valley, keeping an eye out for anyone that might be pursuing me. Through more brush and brambles, I made it to the top of the hill where there was a house. With my clothes in shreds and my legs and body scratched and bleeding, I approached the house. There was a garage area where a man was doing some woodworking. When he saw my tattered condition, he greeted me and brought me some water. I rested for a time while he fetched some clean clothing and something to dress my wounds. He was very kind, and gave me a bite to eat before showing me the way to the main road where I could catch a taxi. It was a miracle that I found this person, and that he took care of me the way that he did.

 

Soon, I marched off to the road, feeling triumphant. I had escaped the very claws of death and the pits of hell, and now I was free! I didn’t know what to do next, but I was tired and very worn out. I hailed a cab and told the driver “Yerushalayim, Har HaTzofim” “Jerusalem, Mount Scopus… “ Off we went.

 

The driver took me to the Idelson dorms, where I told him to wait. I got out of the car and retrieved some money from my apartment so that I could pay the driver, and then I went to a friend’s apartment where she made me tea, and took care of me for a moment. She was very kind. I thanked her, and returned to my apartment where I collapsed on my bed.

 

I rested for a while, but the effects of the strange medications were strong, even stronger that what I had been forced to take before. I was still somewhat delirious from the trauma of the whole experience, so I tried to get some rest. My roommates were very surprised to see me, of course, and little did I know that my dad was on his way to Jerusalem. All I cared about at the time was that I had escaped from the tortures of the mental hospital, and that I was no longer subjected to the harsh treatments and poisonous “remedies” of the psychiatrists.

 

But something was still haywire in my brain, and I was not completely aware of how I was acting. One of the first things that I did as soon as I was able was to deep cleaning the apartment. For some reason, I found it very therapeutic to clean and scrub, so I organized everything in my room very meticulously and began to sweep and mop the room and the apartment. I worked until I was sweating, and the apartment was spic and span, and then I jumped into the shower. I was very keyed up, and working out of control. It was as if I were on automatic pilot, and if I could have been set loose, I would have cleaned up the entire city.

 

The cold water of the shower calmed me down a bit, but I was still not completely well. For some reason, I grabbed a razor from my toiletries bag and began to shave one of my legs… just one of them. I shaved my leg in the shower until it was as smooth as a baby’s bum, and I rinsed and cleaned myself as if I were disinfecting my entire body from the filth of the mental hospital. My mind was racing. The new drugs were taking their horrible effect, in addition to the effect of withdrawing from the Lithium and the Effexor.

 

Fortunately, after the shower I was able to calm down a bit and rest until I had retained a semblance of normalcy. I was hoping to go back to life as usual, to go back to my studies, to my classes, and the adventures of exploring Jerusalem and its surroundings, but this hope was vain. The hospital officials had not given up looking for me, even though I was so far away. They had no idea where I had gone. Before I could consider what the next step was, my dad arrived. He had flown all the way from Utah as soon as he discovered what was happening. He was relieved to discover that I was all right, and we ordered some pizza to celebrate with my roommates and friends in the vicinity. We had a clean apartment, good food, and good conversation.

 

Now that my dad was here, I wanted to show him around the city and the schools. Eventually we made our way to the BYU Jerusalem Center, but I was not feeling well at all. My legs felt as heavy as lead during the hike up the hill, and when we got to the Jerusalem Center, I was becoming delirious again.

 

One of the BYU Jerusalem Center staff was a psychiatrist of some sort, and he took me into a room to talk to me. By this point I had had it with doctors and psychiatrists, and I wanted him to stay away from me. When I went into the hall, and he approached me, I shrank back and crossed my fingers at him, supposing him to be an agent of the devil. “Stay away from me!” I said.   Eventually I calmed down, and this man was able to give me a blessing. He placed his hands on my head, and said something to the effect of: “I place my hands upon your head, like a crown, and bless you to recover and be healed in the due time of the Lord.” After approximately a decade, this is a blessing that I am still in the process of claiming.

 

I wanted to return to school, to continue my classes and finish my Master’s degree at the Hebrew University, but it was too late. My dad had arranged for us to stay in a room in the BYU Jerusalem Center, and so we settled in for a while. But soon the nightmare continued, because someone had reported me to the police and to the hospital. Officers came to the BYU Jerusalem center and demanded that I go with them. Of course, I did not want to leave, because I knew where they were taking me, but I had no other choice. I pled with them to leave me alone, and for my dad to keep me there at the center, but to no avail. They took me by the arm and put me into their car… I was heading back to the dungeon of despair.

 

With a new concoction of chemicals circulating throughout my system, and with the traumatic memories of only a few days earlier, they hauled me off to the same mental hospital that I had escaped from. I was furious, and anxious to die. Death would have been better than going back to that hellhole, or so I supposed. The guards kept me from opening the doors so that I could jump out of the car, and soon we were back on the hospital grounds. As is customary, rather than show the least amount of interest or concern, they proceeded to strap me to a gurney and inject a nasty liquid into my buttock. I screamed in pain and agony as they left me on the gurney to suffer while they discussed my fate.

 

Although it took me quite some time to obtain my medical records from the Eitanim Mental Hospital in Israel, when I finally did receive them, I had to translate them myself into English. Many of the Hebrew words were unfamiliar, but thus far I have been able to decipher the following message:

“[The patient is a] 28 year old American boy, a Christian, and a masters degree student of Jewish Studies in Israel at the Hebrew University, and he was recognized as suffering from the bipolar illness. He had a prior manic attack in the United States that required hospitalization. His second hospitalization is in our institution… His psychiatric state is due to irresponsible behavior. He is the son of a Christian family of the Mormon faith that lives in Utah. He graduated with his undergraduate degree from a university in Utah in the United States of America. He apparently came to Israel with ideological tastes for supporting the people of Israel and the Messiah… I don’t know about his past in the field of psychiatry, but it appears that he was last admitted to a hospital in the United States about four years ago. I believe that they treated him with Risperdal, Effexor and lithium, although he often didn’t take his medicines. March 16, 2005, He was hospitalized in the locked down ward because of poor behavior that endangered himself and those around him.”

 

These records indicate how much of psychiatry is just guess work. They even got my birthdate wrong by two years. Fortunately, I had never taken Risperdal, at least not that I knew of. As far as the psychiatrist’s assessment of my ideological tastes, he was merely making assumptions based on the little he knew about my religious and political background. Psychiatry assumes that people are a danger to themselves and to others, when in reality, psychiatry, along with the psychiatric drugs that are prescribed, are the real danger.

 

Once again I found myself wandering the halls of the dank and dingy hospital. Day after day I mourned my captivity and hoped for release. My dad was allowed to visit, but when I asked him to take me away from that place, he told me that he could not, and that I should do my best to help the other patients in the hospital and to make the most of the time. I was furious, but I returned tearfully to my cell. The hospital worker distributed pills in cups, and the zombie patients gobbled them up. Whenever I could, I put them in my mouth, and snuck over to the bathroom to spit them out in the toilet, although sometimes I was forced to swallow.

 

Fortunately, the psychiatrist eventually allowed me to receive visitors from time to time. One of my friends came to visit me, then a roommate, and another friend. Later, some of the volunteers at the BYU Jerusalem Center came to visit me, and one of my professors from the Hebrew University even stopped by for a visit. These visits were much appreciated, but I was still incarcerated in deplorable conditions.

 

On the bright side, there was one hospital worker who was different from all of the others. His name was Yonatan, and he was exceptionally friendly and kind. After a few weeks in the hospital, he found a way for me to spend some time outside of the hospital in the fresh air. He even retrieved a basketball for my dad and I to shoot around with on one of the outdoor hoops. Of all of the people that I had met in the hospitals up to that point, he was one of the only workers who took a real interest in the patients as people, and wanted to do what he could to help them. His was a difficult job, but he showed kindness above and beyond anything that I had experienced in the world of psychiatry. So Yonathan, wherever you are… God bless you.

 

From time to time I was let out of the dungeon to visit with my dad, or with others. I would always ask my dad when they were going to let me out of that place, but he didn’t know. The only way I could get out, as was the case in Utah, was to comply with the psychiatrist’s wished, and to demonstrate improvement by obedience to the staff. The irony, of course, was that it was nearly impossible to improve in health, and especially morale, while trapped in a dark prison and being fed strange mixtures of chemicals. Add to that the difficulty of interacting with other patients whose minds were sedated with drugs, and it made the path of healing well nigh impossible to tread.

 

I did my best to remain positive. Another friend came to visit me, and she was very compassionate. She hoped that I would get out soon, and so did I. I remember sitting on a picnic table with my dad, passing the hour together in the sunshine as he played some music on his digital device: “Oh to live on Sugar Mountain” by Neil Young. I was glad to have my dad with me, but this place was anything but a sugar mountain for me. It was more like a hill of sorrow and a mountain of pain.

 

My dad brought me some clean clothing from my apartment, and the hours passed slowly. Meaningless visits with the psychiatrist came and went. Terrible nights, with terrible nightmares, and waking to the reality of the nightmare that I was living were hardly any comfort. Once, a man came to take a bunch of patients out to a gymnasium to do some exercise. This was so infuriating, seeing as all we really wanted or needed was to be outside in the fresh air and sunlight, or to be with friends and family members that cared about us. But it was better than staying inside the mental hospital prison. The man took us to the gym where there was a basketball hoop and some exercise machinery. The patients meandered around for a while, as I picked up the basketball and started to dribble. I lost myself in the bouncing of the ball, and imagined playing a game in freedom again. But soon enough, our time was up, and we were sent back to the locked up facility.

 

Time went by more slowly than it had ever gone by. I was still agonized from the trauma of my experiences and the drugs that I was force-fed were making things worse. Still, I knew that the only way to escape was to pretend like I was getting better. So I played along as best as I could, for as long as I could stand it.

 

I was in that hospital for a total of more than a month before the powers that be decided that I was fit to leave. When I was finally dismissed, my hopes of finishing my Master’s degree in Israel were dashed, and I was so sedated by the “medication” that I was given, that I could do nothing to resist. My dad decided that it was best for me to fly home with him, and to remain in the care of my family. I no longer cared. I was despondent, depressed, and defeated. The mental hospital had crushed me once again. They had achieved their goal of controlling me and pounding me into subservience. But only with the drug that they administered, something I later learned was called Clopixol, could they truly keep a handle on me or on the other patients. My dad and I flew from Tel Aviv to Salt Lake City. I was a Clopixol zombie, with more than a month’s worth of trauma inflicted upon me. I wondered if I would have been better off if my dad, like a messed up modern day version of Abraham, had just sacrificed me on the Mt. Moriah of my suffering. Even if an angel had appeared to stop him, I would have begged for him to follow through with it. I was on the altar, I was strapped down… just thrust the blade in and be done with it. But for some reason, God preserved my life, and brought me back to Utah to recover.

 

One of my first memories upon returning to Utah was that my family went out with some friends to the woods where there was an archery range. I was so drugged up and sedated that I hardly knew what was happening, but it was good to be outside. While my family and friends talked and shot arrows, I fell asleep on top of a picnic bench. It was the middle of the day, but the jet lag, and the effects of the Clopixol were so strong that I was immobile and helpless. I lay there in a daze, on top of the picnic table, wondering if I would ever wake up.

 

Much of this time period is a haze in my mind because I was kept on a steady dose of Clopixol and other drugs. My parents monitored me carefully to make sure that I was taking the drugs. At one point my mom even took my car keys and wallet away from me because she was so nervous about my condition. Little did they know what I had been through, and little did they know what sort of effects the Clopixol and other psychotropic drugs had had on my brain. They took me into their care, and I spent several weeks just trying to recover from the blows.

 

Of course, recovery meant going back to my psychiatrist at the UVRMC. He would “manage” my medications to make sure that I was on the right dosages. I was now officially a mentally ill person who needed constant supervision, not to mention high doses of medication. I knew that I would have to get off of the medications again because they were destroying my mind and my body, but to do so openly was forbidden, since everyone simply assumed that I was crazy without them. I would have to go off of the drugs in secret.

 

Eventually I found a job at a warehouse. I saw an advertisement in the newspaper for a company that was looking for delivery drivers. When I arrived at the warehouse for the interview, I soon discovered that it was a wholesale florist company. I started working in the warehouse and learning the ins and outs of the floral business. At the same time I started taking classes in Arabic at Brigham Young University. My time in Israel, although cut short, had kindled my interest in the Middle East, and particularly in Arabic and Islam.

 

I worked hard at the flower warehouse and in school, but all this time I was on a new set of “medications” that had been prescribed to me in place of the Effexor, Clopixol and other psychotropic drugs. The psychiatrist continued to prescribe Lithium, as well as a drug called Zyprexa. At times my work as a delivery driver was next to impossible because I became so drowsy that I could not drive. The warehouse was cold (because of the freezer) which helped me to stay awake, but when I was driving and still on the drugs, I would often become very drowsy, even in the early mornings.

 

During this time I continued to work and study while devising a way to taper off the medications without anyone knowing about it. I was afraid that if the doctors, my parents, or others knew what I was doing, they would either try to hospitalize me again or force me to take more. In fact, threats of re-hospitalization were consistently levied against me during moments of conflict. But I wrote up a schedule of my own to gradually decrease the dosages of Lithium and the other drugs within about a month’s time. It was difficult because I would have to cut the pills into smaller and smaller portions, constantly fearing that I would get caught and incur the wrath of the psychiatric legions or my family. My parents and siblings offered me as much love and support as they knew how, but they could not possibly understand what I was going through. No one knew the troubles I’d seen, except for Jesus, and perhaps my youngest brother.

 

By this time my youngest brother had been married for quite a while, and he was busy with a rapidly growing family. He was also very reluctant to talk about his experiences, as were other members of my family. It was a very lonely time. Even though I was no longer being held captive physically, I was being held captive emotionally, psychologically and pharmacologically. I felt very forsaken.

 

Eventually I tapered off of all the “medications” until I was clean and sober… or at least clean. Although I had managed to stop ingesting the poisonous toxins, my body was still heavily laden with chemicals. In every way I tried to expunge the chemicals… through exercise, saunas, cleanses and so forth… but I still felt like I had been damaged by the years of toxic exposure, the injections and the traumatic mistreatment.

 

I was very weakened and emotionally unstable, but I was determined to overcome and to rise above it. But then one day, after helping a friend to obtain flowers for his wedding, something happened that I couldn’t fully explain. Fortunately my journal entries give some indication of what was going on at the time, and how event unraveled.

 

On June 13, 2005 I wrote, “I haven’t wanted to write in my journal for quite some time… since April and my crash. A lot has happened since that time – much tribulation, very much. Dad picked me up from Israel and brought me home to heal. The healing process is long and tedious… First I had to get over jet lag. Then I had to fight the adverse effects of Clopixol – a potent medication that made me hunched over and drowsy. My parents have been saints through this trial, helping me and caring for me all along the way. It was horrible. I could not stand to be alone and I felt constantly nervous. I went everywhere with mom or with dad… after the Clopixol side effects, which still go on a little bit – I had to deal with depression. Sometimes my depression was so great that I would cry in utter despair and wish to take my own life. It is the most horrible pain I can imagine. Life feels dead and meaningless. There is no joy, no happiness… but even sorrow can’t be felt. It is nothingness and deadness. It is bleakness and darkness.”

 

On September 4, 2005 I wrote, “I just started taking a new medicine called Abilify, which my youngest brother also takes.” On September 16, 2005 I wrote, “I paid $241.00 for a medical bill, and I fixed the block on my credit card. I am hoping to find a second job or some way of making some more income to pay off these debts. Life is unfair, when you fall ill and then you have to pay for it financially as well, but it will be good practice getting out of debt…. Physically I am getting back into great shape. I hope to taper off the Effexor soon as well.”

 

On October 22, 2005 I wrote, “I told my bosses about my drowsiness problem so that they could find someone to drive for them… my drugs are expensive. Abilify costs $350.00 approximately.” On October 31, 2005 I wrote, “I have a cough and general flu symptoms. I feel like I am dwelling in the cavity of a rock. I am quitting Red Mountain because the drugs I take make me too drowsy to drive. I don’t want to be overly pessimistic, but this is still a low point in my life. I feel like I am scraping and digging to get out of an eternally deep hole – all by myself. It is too lonely, much too lonely… Can I be honest with you? I write because it is therapeutic. I hope that I am nearing a new phase in my life because I need a change of venue, a new group of friends, a girlfriend, something to study, some sort of path. I really pray that the Lord will guide my steps… but I feel like I can barely walk. I am on rugged terrain, and my feet are bare. I want to run, but maybe I can crawl.”

 

On November 6, 2005 I wrote, “I am reducing my intake of Ability… which I should call Zombify… because it makes me ‘mellow,’ as so many people have graciously pointed out. I want to be off of the drug, especially since it costs $300.000 per pop – what a rip off for something that doesn’t even help me. I’m paying people to manufacture a drug that makes me so tired that I am constantly at war to stay awake and to stay interested. We’ll work this out.”

 

On December 29, 2005 I wrote, “My desire for death is second only to my desire to accomplish the Lord’s will. At times it pushes in on me so strongly that I only consider how my life should end, not why or when. But I know that my life is not my own, not mine to give or take. Is life a gift? Even a curse is a gift when viewed from a certain perspective. I am grateful for the love of my parents and my family, and I can almost imagine what it feels like to be happy, until my mind reminds me that my life is without purpose and without hope. That is why I cannot trust my own mind. No one can, no matter how healthy they think they are… I am a failure. I awake to pain, and suffering consumes me. I pray for relief, for comfort – I pray for release, but somehow this is not the right prayer. Can you describe the suffering? It is languor; it is the cancellation of hope. It is a battle against and fierce and relentless foe, and I am doomed to defeat. Should I fight? The harder I fight, the more I am defeated. I want to run, but I am trapped. I cannot even feel. All is death to me… This is just a disease; it will pass. It passes and returns more strongly, more viciously. My head is swimming… did I desire this? My heart aches for joy, but joy remains out of reach. Cheerfulness is the gospel, not despair. Love and faith, hope and joy, Jesus Christ… this is the gospel. I am defeated. I surrender. When I think, all is sorrow. I am shrouded in darkness and death beckons to me with a grim voice. I will study the scriptures now… This will pass through me. Sometimes I wish against my better conscience, that I had cancer or leukemia or amputated limbs or some visible form of suffering. The only sign of my pain is the absence of my smile, but that sign portrays weakness of character and flimsiness of will. I crack a smile, a smile of irony that seems to say: ‘I will win, despite all feelings to the contrary.’ I recall times of happiness, but I cannot recall the feeling, nor can I envision a future time of happiness. The great sufferers have had purpose and received their deserved joy. They have suffered nobly and quietly. I wish that I were that strong, but I am less than human. I have waited for my joy, but it has not arrived. Perhaps I shall wait some more… Temptations are ten times their original strength… the computer screen, the television, the girl, my mind curses at me. Anger builds up inside me, and I want to lash out in violence. The frustrating thing is that I felt like I had come so far, that I was getting better. I felt like I was on the brink of being happy, and then depression struck me again, this time even harder than before. What is the point? I thought that I was at rock bottom, but depression pounds me beneath the bottom. My head hurts. So it is time to start working my way back up again? For what? To be crushed again? Driving mindlessly for hours on end, by myself, alone. I am completely alone. My family keeps me alive, but I am dead inside. I am alone when I am alone, or even when I am surrounded with people. Horrible thoughts cross my mind, and I am too weary to combat them anymore. I know they are not mine, but they have free reign in my mind… just let me die! Do I have something to live for?”

 

On January 1, 2006 I wrote, “My spirit aches. My soul twitches with the slightest touch of pain, but it is so numb to joy that even happiness feels somewhat painful. It is like a man that has been severely burned all over his body. Another flame is painful, but even the application of aloes, gels and ointments is painful to the scalded skin. Can this man undo his charred flesh and slip slide sweetly into freshness of dermis? Can red, scabby parts be dusted away? How do you heal a spirit? How do you soothe a human mind? Does it take time? Time is running away too quickly. I need urgent care, and I need it urgently… Of course, it would appear that everything is normal. On the outside, I am fine. But my heart is broken. Only my tears can tell, like a muddy well, what my heart feels. So I cry, and I find some relief… Perhaps my feelings are so tender just from the fear that pain, more pain, is waiting around the corner. Of course it is joy, not pain, that awaits the righteous – but who is righteous? Sin wounds me even more when I am wounded and weak. Temptations burn me most when my spiritual flesh is already burned, adding sorrow upon sorrow. I thought I was at the bottom in the Provo Hospital, or in the Jerusalem hospital, or in my parent’s home, alone – but I sink further – where is rock bottom? I know I can never land there. I know that Christ went there, and that He is my only hope. Somehow, I know that He can make me whole. He can make me new. He can bring me newness of life.”

 

Even though I continued to put my trust in God for deliverance and for mercy, more suffering sought me from the shadows. Pain pursued me, and I had nowhere to flee.

 

During this time of intense stress and constant suffering, feeling that my attempts to withdraw from the “medications” were being noticed by my parents and others, I began to distance myself from people. I felt abandoned and alone, wrestling with this problem by myself. There were times that I was tempted to feel that God had abandoned me, and left me to myself. Although my faith always told me that this was not true, I could see no end to the pain, the suffering, and the loneliness. I wanted desperately to get married, to have a family, to be successful in the world of work, but as long as I was taking mind-altering substances and carrying the stigma of mental illness, none of these things were remotely possible. Furthermore, I wished to be emotionally, physically, spiritually, intellectually and socially strong before entering into a relationship as eternally significant and consequential as marriage. Whatever my problems were, I did not want to pass them on to successive generations. I was determined to resolve whatever it was that I needed to resolve in order to be a strong link in the family chain.

 

At this time, I was still unaware that the real cause of psychosis is rapid withdrawal from psychotropic drugs. I knew that I could not live with the chemicals flowing through my system, but I also knew that no one would allow me to stop taking the drugs, not my parents, not my doctors… nobody. I had to do it in secret. As I tapered off of the “medications” this time, however slowly, and however gradually, the withdrawal threw my mind into another state of panic. The wounds to my brain were so severe that I felt dependent upon the drugs. At the same time, I felt threatened by the possibility of returning to hospital torture. There was no way out. I could remain on the drugs, and continue to carry the stigma of mental illness forever, as well as the short and long-term consequences of “side effects” of the drugs, or I could try to go off of them and blaze my own path, alone. I knew I did not want to ever be on the drugs in the first place, and I knew that I could not progress as I wished while suffering from the effects (one should never say “side effects,” because that would suggest that there is some beneficial effect of drugs, which there is not) of the drugs. But before I could fully taper off of the drugs, something inside my brain was still suffering.

 

On March 18, 2006 I recorded in my journal, “A couple of times this week I have found myself in my room, weeping. Pain attacks me, sorrow surrounds me, and my heart stretches and unleashes the poison of sadness until it is empty and only light can enter in. Once, as I was crying, my mom came in my room. My dad knew that I was crying, and he was upstairs crying too. It touched me, and I knew that my dad loved me very much. Even more than this, I thought I saw Heavenly Father crying too, and He seemed to say to me that He was sorry that I had to go through such sorrow, but He knew that I would pull through, endure well. I understood for a moment, at least in part, what God meant when He said, “For God so loved the world, that he gave His only Begotten Son…” I felt God’s love so strongly, and I longed to be with Him. Apparently there are some aspects of agency that I am to learn through my experiences with depression and bipolar disorder, among other lessons.”

 

On March 20, 2006 I wrote in my journal, “I feel very poorly again today. Happily, I received a letter and a CD from [a friend]. She is kind… I am exhausted, even though I have slept well and haven’t really exerted myself too much today. I have thought about suicide many times today, even though I know that this is not an option… I feel like withdrawing from the society of men. I feel like growing whatever beard I can, and living in the mountains. It is cold though. My car broke down… I cling to vanishing hope, like a near-sighted man in a dark room, grasping for the string that pulls the light switch… where is it? I often check to see if I am angry with God, but I am not, I can’t be even if I wanted to because I prayed to Him the other night and I wept and I saw Him weeping with me. How can God weep, seeing as He is pure? Does God exist? Yes. Does He care? Yes. Does that stop my pain? No. Does it ease the pain? Somewhat, I suppose, but there is something deeper inside of my mind, wrapped in the thought-fibers of my heart, something so bright and glorious that the sun barely flickers like a weak candle in comparison: that is my faith. I know that God with all His power, mercy and love will deliver me in due time. I have tried many means of escape, but I cannot escape. I am doomed to destruction. Satan desires my misery, and for now it seems as though he has won, but if anything it is only a Pyrrhic victory for darkness. Clouds, thick clouds of darkness and pain, surround me. I am exhausted. Can I submit patiently and cheerfully to this torture? A few resigned tears strike my pillow and the sheets. ‘O God!’ ‘I hear your prayer, what would you like?’ ‘Father, I am suffering, again, and I feel the anguish more than ever.’ ‘Are you obeying my commandments John? What do you feel?’ ‘Yes, Father, I love Thee and thy commandments. My head hurts very badly and I want to cry.’ ‘Why?’ ‘I don’t have any more strength. It disappears behind a cloud of pain and suffering. Open up a way of escape!’”

 

On April 9, 2006 I wrote, “I am afraid because of the pain I have experienced, and for the difficulty of feeling any joy – I am afraid now, because I have started to adjust, but I feel like only pain awaits me… more pain… more failure… anguish. So I wonder, even if I continue to strive and to seek the cures of the Atonement as I have so tried… it hurts me to think that… I know everything will eventually work out, but must I continue in torment and loneliness?”

 

I remember one day that my Uncle, one of my dad’s brothers was at my parents’ house, and because of the effects of the drugs, I was trying to get away from him. I don’t remember exactly why, but I felt like he and my dad were threatening to take me to the hospital. At this point, there was no other threat in the world that could have scared me or intimidated me more. I could explore the jungles of Malaysia, ride under the Polar ice caps in a Submarine, fight in a war, and face the most terrible demons of darkness… but to return to a mental hospital was the terror of all terrors. I could face anything but that. I had already endured two torture experiences, along with the continuous torture of the prescriptions and the stigma attached to mental illness, not to mention the enormous amount of medical and school debt that I had accrued. Just as I had escaped from the mental hospital the second time, I knew I had to escape again. Why would they put me in a hospital again? After all that I had been through? Didn’t they know what would happen there? Did they not care about my welfare? Why? That my dad and my uncle would pursue me to put me in yet another mental hospital was more crust of irony on the bread of adversity.

 

I began to walk away from my dad because I felt that he was going to try to put me back on “medications.” I was walking through a parking lot near my parents’ house, when suddenly my uncle pulled up next to me in a Suburban. He and my father proceeded to restrain me and take me to the hospital. Besides the stress of past experiences, the stress of the drug effects, and the pressure that I felt, now I was struggling for my life to get away. They took me to the hospital to check me in, and by this time I was practically beside myself with fear and confusion. Please don’t take me here! My resistance was judged to be a matter of psychosis or neurosis. Certainly I was not feeling well, but who would feel well in such a situation, even without a variety of chemicals circulating through the blood stream? I was tapering off of the drugs on my own, because I could find no other way. This attempt to withdraw from the drugs produced, once again, the kinds of strange behavior that my family members considered worthy of hospitalization.

 

A doctor brought me into a room, and there were police officers waiting outside the door. I was in a panic, and understood that no matter what I did to try to get out of the situation, I would be dragged into another mental hospital. Why? Why was this happening… again? I told myself that I would kill myself before going into another mental hospital, and now seemed like the appropriate time. I would have preferred death to the kind of pain that is dispensed in the psychiatric wards. As the doctor interrogated me, I felt even more frightened by the prospects of what awaited me. I could not calm down, and the effects of the drugs and my past traumas were more pronounced than ever. The doctor left me in the room for a moment, and when he returned, I had removed all of my clothing. It seemed to be the last thing that I had control over. I don’t know why I did it, but when the doctor returned, I was stark naked. If my fate had been dismal before, this nervous gesture sealed my doom. This was a psychotic break that amplified the effects of all prior traumas.

 

I don’t recall what happened next because I was unconscious. Some sort of anti-psychotic must have been administered, and everything went dark. The next thing I remember, I was awakened in a strange new place, a place where I had never been before… but it most assuredly was a psychiatric ward. How I got there, I did not know. But the new anti-psychotic drugs lay heavy in my body and on my mind. I was in a room, and being held captive once again. How could they do this to me? What had I done wrong? Couldn’t they see that the drugs were causing my irrational behavior? My pleas for relief were futile. I was under the supervision of a new psychiatrist in the LDS hospital in Salt Lake City.

 

I later discovered that I had been transported to the hospital by a Gold Cross ambulance. The bill that I received for that involuntary transport was astronomically high, and as one already in debt, it caused me much grief and despair. But there I was again, for the third time, a prisoner to a psychiatric overlord, and a guinea pig for psychiatry.

 

My new diagnosis by the attending physician, Michael F. Coudreaut (physician number 07819), a psychiatrist who had never met me before and who knew nothing of my life, was Bipolar I Disorder, manic, severe, with psychotic behavior. He was also careful to note that I had a “personal history of noncompliance with medical treatment.” While the concept of “bipolar” has been proven to be shaky at best, I feel no compunction about claiming the title of one who has a “history of noncompliance with medical treatment.” In fact, I vehemently oppose the tyranny that masquerades and “medical treatment.” Like Thomas Jefferson, I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man… including psychiatric tyranny.

 

On April 20, 2006 at 12:23 am, I was admitted to the LDS Hospital baring the medical (code 019), Mental Diseases and Disorders, and (430) Psychoses. The LDS hospital medical records state, “The patient was admitted and started on Lithium 600 mg in the morning, 600 mg at night, Ativan 2 mg at bedtime. It was discovered that he was potentially hypothyroid and Synthroid was started at 0.05 mg per day. After some discussion wit the family and the patient, we elected to start Geodon 80 mg at dinnertime. There was some initial concern that the patient may not take his medication on a consistent basis because, upon admission to the hospital, he was quite guarded, fearful of the medication. He thought medication was toxic and evil. So, he was observed for cheating and apparently at one point did actually pocket some of his medications. His symptoms worsened when the medication was missed. A lithium level was done mid-stay on 1200 mg a day and it was 0.5.”

 

This medical note exhibits a curious use of the English language. The psychiatrist made it seem as if collectively “we elected” for me, a “patient” to start taking Geodon, as if my opinion had any bearing on the decision. I was his prisoner. He was my captor and poisoner. Any objection on my part was seen as obstinate and stubborn refusal of caring treatment. After all that I had been through, was it odd that anyone would be “guarded” and “fearful of the medication” or think that it was “toxic” or “evil?” After all, this was only medication, and medication is good for you, right? Naturally the psychiatrist would observe that my “symptoms worsened” when the medication was missed, since the entire paradigm of psychiatry is based upon the erroneous (and disproven) notion that drugs correct a chemical imbalance in the brain.

 

The notes continue, “Patient appeared to get better over the weekend prior to today and discharge was anticipated. When he relapsed, fairly significantly with some unusual behavior, he required time in the psychiatric intensive care unit. Geodon was increased to 160 mg, decreased again to 120 when he complained of diarrhea. But, after the increased psychotic behavior, it was again increased to 160 mg at dinnertime, which he appeared to tolerate well without significant side effects by the time of discharge. By the time of discharge, he was expressing the thought that the medication was indeed helping him, though I think there is a possibility that he may be saying this to get out of the hospital. I did discuss this with his family and I discussed his care throughout the hospitalization with his parents. They are aware that these symptoms may recur and, should they recur, I am asking them to try to bring him back into the hospital as soon as possible. In the meantime, he does have an appointment with Dr. Griffin on Monday.”

 

Genius! Pure genius! How shrewd an observation by the psychiatrist! I wanted to get out of the hospital, and I would do anything, even lie about how the “medication” was helping me, to get out. The “psychiatric intensive care unit” can best be described as a place where Room 101 of George Orwell’s 1984 meets the life sucking machine of the movie Princess Bride. There is nothing caring about the “care unit” although it certainly is very “intensive.” How generous of the psychiatrist to offer further “treatment” at the hospital if my symptoms were to “recur,” something that is inevitable when your brain is being hijacked by psychotropic drugs. This generosity did not come without a heavy price tag, to be sure.

 

The psychiatrist also wrote, “On discharge, he [the patient] is neatly dressed and groomed, more pleasant and appropriate with good eye contact. Speech is normal.   He gives very little in the way of spontaneous information but overall is less guarded than upon admission. His mood, he describes as being normal. His affect is still somewhat restricted in range. His thought process is logical and goal directed. He appears to have no delusional thinking at this time or hallucinations. His insight and judgment is improved.”

 

Thank goodness. Certainly the improvement in my behavior, judgment and demeanor were due to the merciful treatment of the doctors, and the heaven sent psychiatric drugs. These matter of fact, scientific sounding medical statements belie the cruelty dispensed behind closed doors.

 

“The patient is being discharged to follow up with Dr. Griffin at Utah Valley Regional Medical Center for psychiatric management on 05/01/2006 at 8 a.m. He will follow up with Dr. Eric Keaton at Wasatch Canyons Counseling Center on 06/15/2006 at 12 noon for psychiatric management. He is also on Dr. Keaton’s cancellation list.”

 

“Psychiatric management”? Is that what they call it? I suppose “management” is a proper euphemism for oppression and torture, just like “medication” is a proper euphemism for poison, and just like “psychiatry” is a proper euphemism for justified coercion through pseudo-scientific ideologies.

 

At the time of my discharge from the LDS Hospital they had pumped me full of all sorts of chemicals: “Geodon 80 mg two at dinnertime, 60 dispensed, lithium carbonate 300 mg three twice a day, 180 dispensed, Synthroid 0.05 mg per day, 30 dispensed, Ativan 2 mg at bedtime, 30 dispensed.” These were the drugs that “we” decided was best for me to take. Of course, there would be a hefty sum required for all of these “medications” that I had been “blessed” to ingest.

 

The same medical records indicated that, “John is a 29-year-old male who was admitted by way of Utah Valley Regional Medical Center where he presented in the company of his parents. CHIEF COMPLAINT: ‘My folks brought me here, they thought I was acting strange.’”

 

When I was first conscious of having been admitted for a third time into a psychiatric torture chamber I was enraged. I found some paper and began to write. I was in the hospital for more than a week, and I wrote and drew prolifically. I wrote poetry, and I wrote stories. I wrote a record of my experience… almost all of which works were confiscated by the doctors. At one point, I even drafted something that I called a “Declaration of Independence from Pharmaceuticals”. In this declaration, I promised never to take drugs again, and to fight the system of my torture. I signed my name at the bottom as if I were addressing a tyrant thousands of times more sinister than the King George of the Revolutionary War period. This was the third and final time that I would be in a mental hospital, and I would find any means possible to overcome my tormentors.

 

I was taken into another room to be interrogated by the psychiatrist. I just stared at him penetratingly and silently. For this, I earned a trip to the torture room, a.k.a. “psychiatric intensive care unit,” where I was again strapped onto a gurney and administered a heavy does of Haloperidol. The drugs took their effect and sedated me sufficiently until I dozed off into a heavy chemical repose. This was not healing, this was adding wounds to wounds, and creating scars upon scars.

The psychiatrist prescribed a new concoction of drugs for my “bipolar mania,” and I was required to take Lithium, Geodon, Synthroid, and Ativan. If I hated the names of the other “medications” such as Prozac, Wellbutrin, Paxil, Zyprexa, Lithium, Effexor, Lamictal, Haldol, and Clopixol… this name sounded the most lethal and the most sinister. Geodon. What kind of name is Geodon anyhow? “Geo,” like the earth? As if this substance came from the earth… and “don” like a gift… it sounded more like something from a science fiction nightmare, and the effects of the drug were just that. Not just “Geo” but “don” as in, “you’re done for!” or the earth (Geo) is done for. I was forced to take the drug in front of doctors, because they knew that I would just spit them out. I continued in this state for a time, until my parents were eventually allowed to visit again. I told my mom that there must be some other way of healing, another way that didn’t involve torture and nasty chemicals, maybe something with natural fruits, vitamins, herbs and most of all love. Of course, all of these experiences were also traumatic for my poor mother who had to see me suffer through it all.

 

The doctors wrote about my history: “The patient reports that he has had a history of bipolar affective disorder, but this is after a significant amount of conversation and despite acknowledging the history of that diagnosis he essentially denies any of the symptoms. He did an NDQ screen, which he scored ‘no’ all the way through. He stated it was not a problem, yet he did say that ‘when I am going fast, I go fast, when I go slow, I go slow.’ He acknowledges a history of hospitalization at Utah Valley Regional Medical Center several years ago and then in a hospital in Jerusalem last year. He reports he was at that time climbing a tower. Everyone thought that was strange so they brought him to a hospital.”

 

The records continued, “He has been on lithium he reports in the past, and Effexor he says has been helpful. He did not admit to me that he had not been taking it; however, there is some evidence that he has not in the past. Apparently, according to the chart and the patient, his parents brought him in part because he is in the early stages of becoming psychotic and potentially dangerous to himself. In the emergency room, for example, he became uncooperative and took off his clothes. He was given IM Haldol and Ativan. His parents believe he has not been taking his medication, and that he thinks medical personnel and Satan are trying to poison him with medications, therefore, he has been refusing to take them. He denies any symptoms of frank mania and he down plays any symptoms of depression.

 

FAMILY PSYCHIATRIC HISTORY: His brother has bipolar affective disorder and is treated with Depakote.”

 

In this new prison (although it was quite clean compared to the last one), there were a variety of interesting individuals. I remember sitting on the floor next to a couple of heroin addicts, and learning about their stories. Even though they had chosen to take heroin, and thereby become addicted, I felt empathy for the pain that they were enduring. Even though I had not chosen to be there, nor had I chosen to take the “medications,” I felt a kinship with these suffering souls more than with the “sane” people who monitored us. There were others there that I remembered… a person whose hands had been badly disfigured in a snowmobile accident, a Polynesian girl, and others. The “patients” were the sane people in my mind, whereas the doctors, psychiatrists and staff were completely out of their minds.

 

“MENTAL STATUS EXAM: The patient presents neatly dressed and groomed, superficially polite and appropriate, but clearly quite guarded with very little spontaneous information. He acknowledges very few symptoms. He is here only on behalf of his parents. He does not feel like he is having any mood symptoms of significance. His affect is quite flat and restricted. His thought content is quite minimal, especially in light of his education and his process is limited, but logical. He denies thoughts of wanting to harm others, himself, hallucinations, or delusions. His insight and judgment is low at present.”

 

If you want to discuss people with “delusions,” minimal “thought content” or low “judgment” and “insight,” a very good place to start would be the average psychiatrist. In fact, I propose a diagnosis of PPD, Professional Poisoner Disorder, for anyone involved in the field of psychiatry or pharmaceuticals.

 

On April 20, 2006 the Psychiatrist, or professional poisoner, continued to write: “TREATMENT PLAN: For bipolar affective disorder I am going to restart the patient on lithium. I want to hold off on Effexor for the time being in part because of my concern that it may stimulate symptoms. I do want to consider the possibility of putting him on Depakote, especially if his brother is doing well on it. I have a call in to his parents. Once I connect with them I will make further decision about his care.

ESTIMATED LENGTH OF STAY: Five to seven days.

JUSTIFICATION FOR HOSPITALIZATION: Worsening psychotic symptoms.

STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES: His strengths are that his family is quite involved. His weaknesses are his poor insight.

PROGNOSIS: Fair.”

 

What a joke. My diagnosis of this psychiatrist would be as follows:

“LOCATION: Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit

ESTIMATED LENGTH OF STAY: Lifetime

JUSTIFICATION FOR HOSPITALIZATION: Torturing innocent people

STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES: his weaknesses are a tyrannical nature with despotic instincts.

PROGNOSIS: Poor.”

 

The psychiatrist was also kind enough to conduct a physical examination, one that found me to be in remarkable shape for someone so battered. He did note, however, that I had zits: “SKIN: Clear except for he has a few little acne on his chin.” How observant! Fortunately, as my medical records indicate, the genitourinary and rectal examinations were deferred.

 

On April 23, 2006, there were more notes that reveal the absurdities of the psychiatric paradigm: “The patient has been on multiple medications, to include Lithium and Effexor, but he has a history of medical noncompliance. While the patient was in Utah Valley Regional Medical Center’s Emergency Room, he became uncooperative and disrobed. The patient has been followed by Dr. Griffin at Utah Valley Regional Medical Center previously, but he has not seen him in some time. At the time of admission, the patient presented with impaired reality testing to include paranoia, suspiciousness, and delusions. His alterations in mood included mania and agitation. Due to the patient’s inability to complete a credible written self-report, a Behavioral Health History Back Page is being completed in lieu of a full assessment. Information in this report is being taken from the Nursing Assessment form and the Physician’s Assessment by Dr. Michael Coudreaut, M.D. The patient is hospitalized at this time, as he poses a risk of danger to himself and others, and he has failed outpatient treatment.”

 

Let me be clear about this: It is psychiatry, psychiatrists, and all the pharmaceutical minions that pose the real danger to others. I was and am as gentle as a lamb, and were it not for the poisonous toxins that I was administered, were it not for the mind-altering “medications” that I was forced to consume, I would never have had any of the aforementioned “symptoms.” Although I was not perfect, I was a model son and brother, an obedient missionary, an excellent student, and a conscientious friend until that fateful day when I was first prescribed Paxil. I was still that same good person underneath, as I am still today. But psychotropic drugs not only damage the brain, they also alter thinking and personality. Of course I freely forgive everyone who tortured me or allowed me to be subjected to torture. For the most part I understand that they are simply misguided and misinformed individuals. But this should not stop me from sounding a warning everywhere about the inherent dangers of psychiatry and psychotropic drugs.

 

The Behavioral Health department of the hospital had more to say about my condition: “The patient will be provided a safe environment on the adult unit at LDS Hospital and will contract for his personal safety. He will demonstrate improved mood, stability, and a marked decrease in his negative symptoms of agitation and confusion. The patient will be under the care of Dr. Michael Coudreaut, M.D., who will further evaluate the patient’s symptoms and make medication changes and adjustments as required. The patient is expected to demonstrate both understanding and motivation towards treatment, as he clears. He should benefit appropriately from participation in the cognitive-behavioral, interpersonal, and recreational-therapy groups offered on the adult unit, as tolerated. The patient will also receive individual recreational-therapy groups offered on the adult unit, as tolerated. The patient will also receive individual therapeutic contacts on daily basis, for support, aid in goal setting, and disposition planning. Interventions will be made using cognitive-behavioral therapy modalities. The patient will also receive education regarding any changes in his medications, as needed. Upon stabilization of the patient’s mood and ability to maintain his safety away from the hospital, the patient will be discharged to home. The patient’s outpatient psychiatric care will be provided by Dr. Griffin at Utah Valley Regional Medical Center. Other community resources will be identified for this patient as required.   – Brad Simmon, LCSW”

 

How wonderful! In addition to the incessant interrogation, the constant flow of pharmaceuticals, and the confining quarters, I was also blessed with the opportunity to participate in “cognitive-behavioral therapy modalities.” I was even more blessed to receive “education” about the “medication,” or in other words, I would be forced to comply with psychiatry at any cost. I would be drugged, demeaned and demoralized until I admitted to myself that psychiatry was my salvation. But even after a week and a half, I was not broken, and the sly psychiatrist was well aware that any compliance on my part was feigned.

 

One medical note simply stated that, “Patient will comply with medications ordered.” “Patient will be encouraged to attend groups for coping skills. Patient will be encouraged to take his medications.”

 

Lest one think that only doctors and psychiatrists were allowed to have all of the fun, another note makes it clear that nurses, or psych-techs, also participated in the recreation: “The patient was admitted via ambulance from Utah Valley Hospital. He has bipolar disorder, and became psychotic and a danger to himself. His parents took him in to the ER tonight. While in the ER, he became uncooperative and took off his clothes. He did cooperate when given IM Haldol 5 mg and Ativan 2 mg. Last March, he also had a similar episode. He has not been taking his medications (last taken?), which are Lithium 1200 mg qd, Ativan 2 mg, Effexor XR 150 mg qd and Zyprexa (dose unknown). He thinks medical personnel and Satan are trying to poison him with medications, therefore he adamantly has been refusing to take his meds. The patient was sedated when he arrived. He was put in the psychiatric intensive care unit to bed. – S. Ketner, RN”

 

Amazing how a good hit of Haldol and Ativan can help a patient comply with “treatment.” How silly of me to think that medical personnel or Satan were trying to poison me with “medications.” This good nurse has helped me to see that I am indebted to psychiatry for their generous offerings and the gentle services of psychiatrists. Not!!!

 

On April 21, 2006 another nurse recorded that, “Patient has been pleasant and cooperative with staff and peers this shift, vitals are WNL, and patient’s effect near-bright. Patient left PICU (Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit) to go out to the regular unit at 13:30, he attended group, and has stayed out on the regular unit where he has been appropriate.

 

One “Psychiatric Progress Note” showed a list of the “medications” that I was given at one point: “Ziprasidone (Geodon), capsule, Levothyroxine (Levothroid / Synthroid), Lorazepam (Ativan), Tablet, Lithium Carbonate, Capsule, Lithium Carbonate, Capsule, Loperamide Hydrochloride (Imodium).” There was also a list of other “medications” that I am still trying to interpret: “Loperamide Hydrochloride (Imodium), Temazepam (Restoril), capsule, Prochlororperazine (Compazine), supplement, Prochlororperazine (Compazine) tablet, MAG Hyd/Al Hyd/Simeth (Maalox), sus, Loperamide Hydrochloride (Milk of Magnes), Ibuprofen (Motrin), tablet, Acetaminophen (Tylenol), tablet, Olanzapine (Zyprexa IM, Injections, Olanzapine (Zyprexa Sydis), tab dis, Olanzapine (Zyprexa Zydis, Tab dis, Lorazepam (Ativan), tablet, Lorazepam (Ativan), Vial, Nicotine 2 mg (Nicorette), gum.”

 

Wow! That’s quite a concoction! A medieval alchemist would have been impressed! Macbeth’s witches could have learned a thing or two from such a soup! And it’s a good thing that they included some Tylenol with all of those chemicals, because who wouldn’t have a nasty headache after all of that. A little Nicorette never hurt anyone either, especially one who had never smoked cigarettes before. Perhaps that was just an ingredient to prevent future smoking. So far it’s worked quite well.

 

My medical records show that I was confined to my room again for flipping off the psychiatrists and staff through one of the windows. Although I don’t remember this action, something very untypical of my character, in a way I felt more than justified in my expression of displeasure. Would that the entire assembly of “patients” would join me in flipping the bird at them, and entering into a revolt. But this was not to be. I was trapped again for days upon days. I wrote and I wrote. I drew and I drew. I did anything I could to keep my mind off of the pain and the suffering that I felt, and that others around me were enduring.

 

On April 22, 2006 another nurse or psych-tech recorded that, “The patient came to the creative arts group. He did a pretty good job on his flowerpot, but he seems a little preoccupied, and possibly a little lost. He wandered around kind of antsy after he was finished with his pot. – J. Michele Beal”

 

Come to find out that “antsy” behavior is very typical of those who have been subjected to psychotropic surcharges. In some cases, patients develop iatrogenic, or drug-induced, diseases such as Akathisia, Tardive Dyskinesia, or even the potentially fatal neuroleptic malignant syndrome. In other words, I am very lucky to be alive.

 

Later that day, another psych-tech wrote, “John had a bright affect, and pleasant mood. He attended his groups, ran on the treadmill, visited with his doctor, and interacted with fellow patients. During said time he would often answer with one-word answers. He said he is bipolar. He is here to have his meds adjusted, and he says he is doing great. It was reported by a fellow staff member that John was walking by the PICU and flipping them off. He denies doing this.”

 

Another psych-tech wrote: “The patient was in his gown until about 15 min. to seven pm. His parents came. He spent a lot of time writing notes or letters. He did not go to reflections, but sent a letter telling us about his goals. He is very social with other patients.”

 

 

The other nurses’ notes are so sloppy that they are mostly illegible. I thought only doctors were allowed to write that poorly. It really looks like a third grader was making chicken scratch doodles on his homework. This was not the handwriting of people who really wanted their notes to be read and understood. The handwriting was even worse than that of my youngest brother when he first wrote to me from the psychiatric ward near Washington, D.C., or of other psychiatric inmates who are sometimes forced to write thank you notes to the psych-techs who drug them and keep them under close surveillance.

 

The doctors would check on me periodically, something that enraged me even more. How dare they drug me up and watch me as if I were a human science experiment. I knew the routine, and I was absolutely defiant. One time they came into my room, and I was perched upon my bed with a makeshift tinfoil helmet that I had created out of some materials that I had found in the commons area. I crouched down near the back of the room, on the bed stand, with my home made helmet and my “Declaration of Independence from Drugs”… which earned me another trip to the injection-torture room, an all white room with no windows… a room that was enough to drive anyone insane just by looking at it.

 

Things were getting worse. On April 25, 2006 a staff member recorded, “The Patient took off all his clothes and laid his clothes out on the bed, then he threw them in the corner and urinated on them. He then put a pillowcase over his head and wrapped himself up in a blanket. I took the pillowcase away and he started blocking the door with the mattress and covering the camera. We gave him 10 mg of Zyprexa IM with 2 mg of Ativan, but he still refused to comply… We talked about the patient being more compliant and taking his meds as scheduled. The Patient had refused his meds this evening. No reported trauma from incident.”

 

I don’t remember any of this business about peeing on clothes and other such extra curricular activities. Evidently the drugs were working, or at least they were doing something to my brain. It’s comforting to know that at least there were cameras in place to keep careful watch over everything that the patients and staff did. These videos might give some interesting insights into what actually happens inside of a psychiatric hospital. These notes were taken as proof of the reason for another “seclusion / restraint,” namely, that I refused to “respond to staff,” and that I was “destructive of property.” I’m not sure that whizzing on clothing actually destroys them, unless of course my then radioactive whiz disintegrated the hospital robes.

 

Of course, I had a very different perspective on the whole situation. Fortunately the medical records department preserved a portion of my writings from the time of my involuntary incarceration in the LDS psych ward. On April 24, 2006 I wrote, “I want to go outside, to feel the sunshine on my face, to smell flowers, to go on dates with girls, maybe to buy some pupusas from the El Salvadorian restaurant, to breath fresh air, to see friends and neighbors and loved ones and even hated ones. I want to work at Red Mountain, to tease my friend, to make money, to climb a mountain, to go to the temple, to be with my family, to watch a movie, to swim or play soccer or tennis or basketball, to paint, to take my Arabic final, to smile openly with some doctor saying that I’m crazy for being happy – just to be out of this hole, now!”

 

I was still trying to avoid taking the “medications” as much as possible. One of the nurses recorded that, “The patient pretended to take meds, and the med RN saw him put them in his pocket. His father reported that he has done this before while in treatment. His father got him to take them and reported to the writer that he and his mother feel he is not ready for discharge.”

 

At 4:30 pm on April 25, 2006 a psych-tech wrote, “The patient expressed physical complaints. The patient ate 100% of meals. The patient’s mood appears pleasant, manic. The patient’s affect appears constricted.   The patient was social with other patients and staff out on unit. The patient attended groups today and worked on understanding the cognitive-behavioral model better. The patient started to try to compare the brain to other objects. The patient is pleasant and cooperative. The patient is a level 2Q 15 min. checks for agitation protocol and safety. The patient’s vital signs done twice a day. – Jennifer Smith”

 

The next day, April 26, 2006 a psych-tech wrote, “The patient spent the night resting in his room but did not appear to sleep well. The patient exhibits manic behavior. He was sitting in his bed writing at the start of the shift. He refused his breakfast, refused all fluids offered and refused his morning meds. Writer talked with him about taking his medication and gave him a read out on lithium, Geodon and Levathyroxine. At approximately 14:22 after eating all his lunch, writer asked him if he would take the morning medications and he said “yes.” He took the lithium and his Levothyroxine at approximately 14:22. He is still having religious ideation. He is angry about being in the hospital and having to take medications.”

 

Now, why would anyone be angry about being force-fed toxic chemicals? I should have understood that it was like trick-or-treating, and collecting different kinds of candy. I should have been pleased with it all.

Another nurse’s note reads: “’Sometime yesterday he was caught hiding his medication in his mouth,’ his father reports. He presents more guarded, suppression tools. His parents worry that despite the fact that he did better for a few days, his symptoms seem to be increasing again. He is very vague – “I’m better” – “What is better?” I don’t know. He admits to thinking the medication is toxic. The patient’s antipathy toward medication may prove a significant complication to his improvement. Increase Lithium to 900 mg twice a day, continue Geodon. – Michael Coudreaut”

 

On April 26, 2006 the same psychiatrist wrote that, “The patient was behaving in a bizarre manner yesterday. He set his chair on top of the bed like a throne, he was moved to PICU, but became increasingly agitated, requiring seclusion, and ultimately restraint. He refused to eat, refused meds, and spent the night in PICU. He now states, ‘I will cooperate with whatever you want me to do.’”

 

How pleased the psychiatrist must have been to hear that I would obey his every command as if he were God.

 

A nurse recorded that, “The patient spent the evening first talking with staff for about an hour or so, then he ate 100% of his meal. He read in his room for a while waiting for his mother. His mom came and talked for an hour. He enjoyed her visit. Later he took a shower and got ready for bed. The patient was med compliant and very appropriate with behavior and good mood.”

 

The next day, April 27, 2006 a nurse recorded, “The patient began the shift locked in the PICU area and was then allowed into the general area after meeting with the doctor. The patient spent the remainder of the shift out of the PICU area. The patient attended afternoon group as well as art and recreation therapy. He seemed to interact appropriately with other patients.”

 

Another psych-tech recorded, “The patient is pleasant, cooperative, and appropriate with staff and peers this shift. The patient was out on the regular unit this evening (from PICU) uneventfully, but is still sleeping in PICU. The patient says he knows that he needs to stay on his meds to control his bipolar symptoms, and he is looking forward to discharging tomorrow. The patient is safe in unit.”

 

As I feigned more compliance I came closer to being released from captivity, but apparently I was not too happy with the cognitive behavioral group session that day. The cognitive behavioral worker noted, “The patient made a couple of statements that had a potentially derailing effect on his progress… I decided to have the group share the source of their ‘pain.’”

 

The psychiatrist, Dr. Coudreaut wrote: “The patient reports that his day is better today. He has taken the medication and now is beginning to believe it is a good thing, he no longer believes them to be toxic, and he expressed willingness to continue taking them. I spoke with his father who feels this change is probably significant.”

 

The next note by the psychiatrist reads, “The patient reports he’s doing well, has taken his meds, reports he had had racy thoughts and agitation, but it’s better. He attributes improvement to meds, and his willingness to accept illness. I spoke with the patient’s father who reported some hyper-religiosity.”

 

Great. I wonder what kind of drugs that Dr. Coudreaut had in his arsenal to cure “hyper-religiosity”? Could it have been that I was praying with all my might to be delivered from the torture? Could my pleas to God have been diagnosed as some sort of a religious disorder?

 

On April 28 a psych-tech reported that, “The patient had zero physical complaints, dressed in gowns, ate 90 % of breakfast, 100% of lunch, hygiene fair, mood ‘fine.’ Affect labile, thought process appears clear, at times cloudy. The staff discussed taking medication. The patient does not ‘want to take medications.’ The staff pointed out specific behaviors, and the patient seemed to understand and stated, ‘Thank you for your insight.’ The patient has agreed to take medications, when feeling ‘different,’ or feeling like ‘I am going to do something crazy.’ The patient has been very calm and cooperative throughout the shift. He was moved out of PICU.”

 

The next note reads, “The patient had no physical complaints, dressed in gowns, ate 90 % of meal, hygiene good, mood ‘good,’ affect bright, thought process psychotic. We discussed medication, but the patient had to be reminded. But he did take medications without argument. He was very pleasant and cooperative. When he saw staff members he would smile and give them a thumbs-up. He did not attend Reflections.”

 

Luckily the cognitive behavioral group leader knew what I really needed. In the midst of being drugged and tormented by a psychiatrist and his minions, all I really needed to do was laugh about it, right? “Patient Education/Focus/Treatment Goal #1: Adding humor to one’s life… The patient was generally distracted by the group discussion. The patient spent most of the time making paper shapes. He did smile and laugh frequently.” This is rich. Cognitive Behavioral therapy really cured me! They helped me to understand that when a psychiatrist jams a needle into my hind- quarters, what I really need to do instead of cry, is simply giggle the pain away.

 

Some may wonder why I didn’t just comply with the doctors and earn an early release. The fact of the matter is that the toxic dump that was inside of my brain and body was so immense, that I often lost all rational control. I was determined, whether drugged or not, to defy this system of torture. After a week or so in my third psychiatric hospital experience, I was finally allowed to leave, with a bottle of Geodon as my great reward. Of all the psychiatrists, each of whom I considered a mortal enemy, this last one was perhaps the worst. In some ways, he was worse than all of the psychiatrists combined, because he seemed to study me with a scientific indifference that could have made a Nazi guard quiver in his 3^rd Reich-boots. Finally, I was released from the dungeon of despair, but now I had more than a weeks’ worth of lithium, Ativan and Geodon to deal with, as well as all of the anti-psychotic shots that had been forced into my wounded buttock.

 

On April 29, 2006 a psych-tech wrote, “Discharge thing done with patient by RN with father present. Written and verbal information given about medications and dosages, side effects, and reasons for taking medications highlighted. Follow up appointments reviewed with Dr. Caten at Wasatch Counseling on June 15 at 12:00, and with Dr. Griffin at UVRMC on May 1, at 8 am. The patient has his discharge instructions and his father demonstrated understanding of all information review. “

 

Finally, and for the third time, I was set free!

 

“The patient left unit at approximately 15:00 with his father. The patient is scheduled to follow-up with Dr. Eric Caten on 6/15/06 at 12:00 for psychiatric follow-up care.   The patient will also be following up with Dr. Griffin at Utah Valley Regional Medical Center for out patient psychiatric care. The patient will follow-up with Dr. Griffin until he sees Dr. Caten. Dr. Caten is located at Wasatch Canyons center for counseling. His appointment with Dr. Griffin is on 5/06/06 at 8:00 am. The patient refused out patient therapy support at this time. He was accepting and comfortable with his after care support.”

 

The following pages of my medical records include a variety of prescriptions for Geodon, Lithium, and so forth. That was the end of my delightful excursion to the LDS psychiatric ward in Salt Lake City.

 

I returned to my parents’ home in utter despair and suffering with more severe depression than before. My job was gone, my Arabic classes ruined, my family turned against me. I thought seriously about taking my own life. There was plenty of Drain-O to drink, or other pills to overdose on. There was a garage with a car and an exhaust pipe. There was rope. I fought these temptations with every power that I had, which was little, considering my conditions, and I drew up another plan to withdraw safely from the Geodon, this time more gradually, and while replacing the Geodon with vitamins.

 

Even though my mom began to look for hope in natural remedies, my parents still didn’t seem to understand at this point that psychiatry could do nothing for me, and that in fact it had worsened my condition. Psychiatry actually caused my condition in the first place, and it does so on a regular basis with many people, most of whom are completely unaware of the colossal crimes that are being committed. My parents discovered something called Equilib, and True Hope, with EmpowerPlus Vitamins. These were multi-vitamins developed to help people suffering with mental illness, but the amount of pills to take was horrendous. Even though they were vitamins, I sometimes had to take up to 8 capsules 4 times a day. It was just too much to handle. My parents also discovered a liquid form of Lithium and a naturopathic doctor who could measure my stress levels in my organs, and give me injections of B-12 vitamins.

 

Once again, secretly and gradually, I withdrew from the drug-poison (mostly Geodon this time), and continued on a regimen of Equilib and EmpowerPlus vitamins… but I was completely drained. After three torture experiences and untold amounts of drugs circulating in my blood stream, the damage had been done. I was more than broken. Often I would just collapse on the grass and lie out in the sunshine, wondering if I would die. Sometimes I wished for death, anything to take the pain away. I would have welcomed death many times over, but God preserved my life, and gave me new purpose for living. Gradually He restored my hope, even as my body and mind were healing.

 

On June 5, 2006 I wrote in my journal, “In consequence of harmful antidepressants and SSRI’s being forced upon me an others of God’s children, I have been led to ponder the Lord’s law of health for me specifically… PHARMACEUTICALS ARE NOT GOOD FOR JOHN… When can we tell the world that they are not good for mankind? … why does it have to be a secret? … But God can turn these experiences into a blessing.”

 

On June 6, 2006 I wrote in my journal, “A Declaration of Independence:

I declare that the use of pharmaceuticals such as so-called “antidepressants,” serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or any other such harmful materials is prohibited. The corruption of the medical establishment is apparent, and the enemy is exposed. We must fight, and the enemy will fall. When I was in the hospital, under very trying circumstances, I wrote my own declaration of independence from harmful drugs, and now I am free, and I invite all people to free themselves of these chains. I signed my name, like my name’s sake, boldly and gave it to the doctors. I hope they preserve that document, but knowing their corruption, I can only suppose that they have disposed of it, further trying to hide their sins and their corruption. Signed, John Hancock”

 

On June 25, 2006 I wrote in my journal, “So, I am injured – in my mind – and I don’t know exactly what my injury is, but there is no wisdom in going out on the playing field until I am better… and life gives me time for getting better, and that time is now… My ‘mind’ per se is fine, active, clear and ready to work, but my actual physical brain feels injured, by drugs, chemicals, whatever. So it is my brain that is injured, not my mind… I am trying to use my mind to heal my brain! I sleep, eat, and exercise well. I take care of my brain, but still there is something wrong with it, and I need to fix it or have it fixed before I proceed… It is like a thigh bruise. My thigh is still great, my leg still works, but I must treat the bruise. The problem is that the brain is so much more complex than the thigh. A thigh injury cannot be reasonably compared to a brain injury, but unless I understand the nature and extent of my brain injury, how can I possibly treat it? There is only one who understands my brain injury, and that is God… and Jesus. So, all that I am asking is for God to reveal to me, when I have studied it out of course, what this brain injury really is. What is really happening in my own personal brain – the problem is that in order for me to study it out, I need help starting out because it is hard to ‘study’ with an injured brain. Right? It is like asking an injured soccer player to run it off, when running it off may actually make it worse, although I am running it off right now and it is feeling better. Somehow I feel like the Lord will show me how to heal my brain as I exercise it. It’s not that my brain has been lazy, because I have exercised it much in the past, but now I need a new exercise… What do I think is the problem? Why the pain? a. natural human imperfections b. pharmaceuticals c. pollution in foods, water, air, environment, etc. But on a physical level, what is really happening? What was to I think? The actual thoughts themselves are good and fine, but something in the apparatus has been injured by the aforementioned conditions… So what in the apparatus? Jesus knows, and I want Him to show me. I want to be able to demonstrate logically what has happened in my brain, and how to really fix it… I don’t have to be a neuroscientist to understand simple principles of my own brain.”

 

On July 13, 2006 I wrote in my journal, “Why don’t people just figure out what is wrong or right with themselves instead of trying to fix me… blaming this or that… the truth is WE DON’T KNOW.”

 

I had made a calendar to keep track of how I would taper off of the drugs in secret, because to do so openly would have earned me another trip to the torture chamber.

But I was still subject to the psychiatric regime through the institution called Wasatch Mental Health. I reported to this place for “therapy.” On September 9, 2006 I received an evaluation and progress notes: “John provided information about his feelings towards psychotropic medications and why he is reluctant to take them. He says that when he takes care of himself physically it has a significant impact on his mental health. He stated that he needs sunshine, enough rest, water, healthy food, and exercise to stay at his best both physically and mentally. John has fair insight into his manic episodes, and says he doesn’t do well with stress, and contributes (I think this social worker means ‘attributes’) most of his manic episodes to being in stressful situations, as well as going off, or beginning a new medication. John has extremely strong feelings about the negative aspects of taking psychotropic medications, and says he has cut back his lithium from nine hundred mg to three hundred mg. We discussed the value of being stable vs. having psychotic breaks, and the damage to the brain that can be prevented by recognizing the signs of relapse early on so as to prevent a major psychotic episode. John is skeptical, but respectful.”

 

I really enjoy the audacity of these social workers, evaluating my “insight,” and the “value of being stable.” I really appreciate how much they work to make sure that people are convinced that their psychiatric worldview is accepted wholeheartedly. This particular statement shows how engrained the perception is that psychotropic drugs help people. This particular social worker, a lady named Betty Ford, was absolutely convinced, bless her heart, that psychotropic drugs are healing “medications” that even have the power to prevent brain damage. Even though the opposite is actually true, this is the worldview that permeates psychiatry and most of society at large. To challenge such thinking is tantamount to heresy, punishable by involuntary hospitalizations, injections, and ramped up dosages of toxic chemicals.

 

On September 11, 2006 another social worker presented her perspective on the issue: “Presenting Problem: John appears to be suffering from excessively high manic states and extremely low depressive states. According to his mother he has experienced 6 manic episodes in 2 ½ months, demonstrating some rapid cycling. Some of his manic episodes include hallucinations and delusions and some of the following behaviors- calling others to repentance, climbing a tower in Jerusalem and prophesying, assaulting a soldier in Jerusalem, believing that he is Jesus Christ or an anti-Christ with a vital mission to fulfill, attacking his father and feeling that it was the right thing to do at that time, etc. John is seeking a greater balance in his life. He is also experiencing obsessive-compulsive behaviors, such as excessive arranging and rearranging, which impact his functioning. Due to his opposition to medications John may need to be more educated regarding medications and their purposes in treating mental illness and the possible benefits that he may receive from them. Problem(s) Began: These problems seemed to first begin in 1995, when John was age 18. The have fluctuated over the past 11 years or so. In 2001 is when the ‘full blown mania’ began to occur and when the hospitalizations began. They developed beginning with depressive states which worsened over time, and with manic states following the depressive states, and both intensifying over the last 5 years. John was first hospitalized in 2001 at UVRMC and worked with Dr. Griffin then and has continued to since 2001 for his medication management, although he has not been consistent in taking his medications. John also reports having tried several medications over time, including Lithium, Prozac, Paxil, Wellbutrin, Zyprexa, Clopixol, Haldol and Geodon. Cause for contacting agency: John’s bishop helped him find and brought him to the Watch clinic. About a week before his intake, John had a manic episode where he tackled his father on the couch and repeatedly punched him in the chest. This incident disrupted his living situation, putting his housing in jeopardy. His parents are willing to temporarily support him while he is in treatment and is working to be able to live more independently.”

 

This is the story as it unfolds with the paradigm of psychiatry and the people who buy in to the lies, but it couldn’t be further from the truth. Of course my mother would observe erratic behavior in a son who has been so saturated with drugs that he can barely function. The mania, depression, delusions and hallucinations, rather than symptoms, these were the direct effects of psychotropic drugs and the process of withdrawal.   My dear mother, bless her heart, with her gift for exaggeration, was reporting the darkest aspects of my battle to withdraw from the Geodon. Since doctors and even family members would not allow me to discontinue the poisonous drugs, I was forced to do so on my own, and to resist the attempts to compel me to take medication. Naturally, this caused a lot of stress, and at one point when I was particularly agitated by the whole ordeal, I did punch my dad (very softly, I might add) in the chest while he was on the couch, something that has caused me much sorrow. My mom tried to restrain me, and I broke free, running to a neighbor’s house where I thought I might be safe. I never believed I was Jesus Christ or an anti-Christ, although the drugs certainly took their toll on my brain. As for obsessive-compulsive rearranging, I was just tired of living in the midst of chaos, and my behavior was most likely a nervous reaction caused by the resurfacing of suppressed trauma. I accept responsibility for my decisions, but no one in their right mind can blame a person who has been forcibly administered a variety of psychotropic drugs for apparently aberrant behavior.  The social worker was at least correct in one aspect. I certainly needed more “education” about the drugs, but that education came later as I discovered more about the emotional, psychological and physical damage caused psychotropic drugs. The moments of sadness that I experienced previous to my hospitalization in 2001 were normal responses to real events in life, not manifestations of some figment of psychiatric labeling. Every piece of evidence, both scientific and anecdotal, points to the fact that psychotropic medications caused the mood swings, the episodes and the suffering that psychiatrists were supposedly trained to fix. My parents didn’t understand this at the time, nor did the majority of the psychiatrists, doctors and social workers. Many times I have been brought to exclaim within my heart, in the words of the Savior, “Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do.”

 

I don’t consider myself to be any different than the average human being, doing his best. I was trying, and am still trying to do some good in the world. If there is at all a special mission for me, part of it now consists in informing, warning, and educating people about the dangers of psychiatry, the pharmaceutical industry, and toxic psychotropic drugs.

 

I openly apologize for any stress that I was accused of causing while I struggled to break free from psychiatric oppression, but I challenge anyone on earth to spend more than five years being drugged, tortured and oppressed by the label of “mental illness” without responding with some amount of stress. In fact, it would be impossible for a human being to do so, because the effect of psychotropic drugs after the sedation is precisely that: an increase in stress, nervousness and every other symptom imaginable. My message to the world, one that I am not alone in proclaiming, is that psychotropic drugs cause unimaginable suffering and unbearable amounts of stress. It is only by the grace of God that I was able to escape the clutches of the monster that is modern psychiatric “care.”

Meanwhile, my dear youngest brother is still saturated with psychiatric substances, spellbound by so-called psychiatric solutions. He is still the same wonderful, intelligent, and cheerful soul, even though the drugs have turned his hair gray, caused him to gain weight, and inflicted great stress upon his precious mind and body. Although I was able to escape the tentacles of psychiatry, my youngest brother is still bound. He has been productive and resourceful, and blessed with a quiver full of children, all while paying visits to the same psychiatrist who prescribes drug after damaging drug. My hope is that someday he will find a way to detoxify from the psychotropic drugs, and perhaps join in the battle against psychiatric coercion.

 

After the incident of resisting my parents, I was no longer welcome to live at home. Imagine this: I was drugged and suffering, carrying the weight of more than $20,000 in medical bills, as well as more than $10,000 dollars of school debt, with no job, no place to live, and with no one who understood the harmful effects of psychotropic drugs (except the Lord himself). I didn’t hit rock bottom. I was on the bottom, with a rock on top of me.

 

After another visit to the Wasatch Mental Health center, and a lengthy interrogation, I was asked again, “How important to you now is treatment or counseling for these social problems?” or in other words, “Are you finally convinced that psychotropic drugs are what you need?” My tongue in cheek response at the time was, “Slightly.”

 

But I wasn’t about to give up. The social worker at Wasatch Mental Health recorded: “John said that on a scale from 1-10, 10 being extremely bothered, he would say 10, thus contradicting his first answer… John appears to be complaining of several medical complaints and experiencing them nearly everyday for a month. He reports no major medical conditions. John’s parents described his health patterns as follows, ‘he has a couple of days of functioning, and then is practically disabled.’ For example, he went in for a job interview and two days later when he was supposed to go to work, he couldn’t because he was not well. It appears that all family members are finding the Equilib (a natural supplement) that he has been taking for 5 days as what has made the difference over the last 3-4 days (which appears to be the longest he has been functioning better in quite some time), although I am wondering if it is not just a placebo effect, for such a radical difference in such a short amount of time. It may be too early to tell at this point… John expresses that it is very important to have help with his medical care, but since he has been feeling better over the past 3 days, he is not so concerned now.   John and his parents described his pain, illness, and discomfort as daily and disabling… John is currently living with his parents, but due to excessive stress caused in the family due to John’s mental illness, they have threatened to not have him live there. They are willing to temporarily help him financially as he is seeking treatment, but they would like him to live independently… John appears to be a very intelligent man, with a great deal of education as he has completed his Bachelor’s Degree and one more year of school towards his Master’s degree, studying in Jerusalem. His mother also reports that he speaks four languages. He seems to have struggled with finding and maintaining employment for a very long period of time due to his illness…”

 

All this talk of my “mental illness,” and my “illness” just makes me sick, since it was the drugs and the psychiatrists that induced all of the suffering and the trauma. The use of the word “threatened” in the previous paragraph is appropriate, however, since psychiatrists, doctors, psych-techs and everyone I knew was constantly threatening to increase dosages of drugs, introduce new drugs, or throw me back into a mental hospital. In other words, I was not in a good situation, relatively speaking.

 

My mom tried to get me on food stamps, but I refused. She was determined to help me, and I admire her persistence even though her methods often exacerbated the problems. I know that both my parents were sincerely trying to help me with the limited information that they had at the time, but any help in the form of drugs, psychiatric therapy, or even food stamps, I promptly and adamantly rejected.

 

The social worker recorded that I had had suicidal thoughts beginning in 2001. At least they got this thing right, even though it was the drugs, particularly Paxil that directly caused me to have suicidal ideation. That is even a “side effect” that Paxil is known to have, but it was a problem that no one, especially not my doctors or psychiatrists, informed me about.

 

At this time I was still under the supervision of Dr. Griffin at UVRMC, but my mom discovered a naturopathic doctor, Dr. Jeff Wright, who provided some glimpse of healing hope. I was still taking 900 mg of lithium daily, and 32 capsules of Equilib daily, as prescribed by Dr. Wright. The social worker at Wasatch Mental Health inquired as to whether I had “been involved in some traumatic or terrible event and had nightmares, flashbacks or unwanted thoughts about it?” The social worker then notes that, “John said that he has, but that he would not like to expound upon this question at this time.” The clinical conclusion after the interrogation was that, “It is obvious that John has experienced all of the symptoms associated with both manic and depressive episodes of Bipolar Disorder, and it seems that he may also have rapid cycles as he has had 6 manic episodes in the last 2 ½ months. John has been meeting with Dr. Griffin at UVRMC for medication management since 2001, although John also has an opposition to medications and has a history of stopping them ‘cold turkey’ or trying to taper himself off of them. He is currently trying Equilib, a natural supplement from Dr. Wright a Naturopathic doctors. John currently takes 900 mg of Lithium. John also reports having run away from the hospital in Jerusalem. These symptoms are highly affecting his daily functioning. John demonstrates some obsessive compulsive behaviors such as moving his furniture in and out of the house, arranging and rearranging obsessively, and trimming a bush until he has trimmed the whole bush away. His parents feel that the Lithium has helped with these types of behaviors.”

 

To be succinct, the symptoms produced by psychotropic drugs are precisely the symptoms that doctors and psychiatrists diagnose as “obviously” “bipolar.” Never mind the fact that the diagnosis of bipolar disorder is based on a disproven theory of a “chemical imbalance,” or the fact that those who put together the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, otherwise known as the DSM, were basically making things up as they went. The DSM V, the “Bible” of psychiatry is nothing more than a work of psychiatric fiction voted in to use by those who stood most to profit from the sales of the book, and to profit even more by the inevitable increase in patients, not to mention the increase in pharmaceutical sales.

 

I continued to visit the naturopathic doctor, Dr. Wright, who continued to look for causes of my distress. Their medical instruments revealed that every one of my organs was stressed to the maximum…. Heart, lungs, liver, kidneys… you name it. I was a walking zombie toxic waste dump, depressed and afflicted, and once again, feeling very alone.

 

Dr. Wright had a lot of alternatives, but lithium was still part of my daily diet. Dr. Wright was the kind of doctor that a patient could actually talk to, and who didn’t assume that he was the automatic expert on the well being of absolute strangers. On April 16, 2006, a doctor at my place of primary care, Dr. Brian B. Hyer, had issued the following statement: “The patient is a 29-year old who has a history of bipolar disorder. He has gone into a manic phase. He stopped taking his medications over the last couple of day, which are lithium, Zyprexa and Effexor… The patient is stating that his medications are poison. He states that his psychiatrist is the devil. He is emotionally labile.”

 

It may have been hyperbole at the time to call the psychiatrist “the devil,” but there was certainly nothing angelic about the treatment that I received. In fact, I hold nothing against anyone who was involved in my torture. I forgive them, and pray for their souls. As I have mentioned previously, I believe that for the most part these are well intentioned, misguided individuals. But there is no excuse for subjecting fellow human beings to the kind of torture that is inherent in psychiatry. The profession needs to be exposed for what it is, then abolished, and exterminated from the face of the earth. In case the reader is wondering what needs to be done to help those who are genuinely ill, the answer is simple: start with repairing the institution of the family and being kind. Nutrition has its place, but nothing can replace the love of God and genuine human kindness. The Quakers understood this simple principle, and they produced the most effective system of care for the troubled among them, but psychiatry eliminated that competition long ago.

 

The irony is that from the perspective of psychiatry, the hospitalization in the LDS psychiatric ward was actually helpful: “The patient’s situation improved dramatically to the point where his family is comfortable taking him home. He is therefore discharged home.” In other words, Dr. Courdreaut and his minions had beat me sufficiently into submission, and sedated me sufficiently with drugs, as to create the results that they found satisfactory. I am not alone in this evaluation. There are literally thousands of people with similar stories, some of which are much worse than my own. My heart goes out to them and their families.

 

It was Dr. Paul W. Broadbent who observed, prior to my final hospitalization, that, “The patient was evaluated by the crisis worker. It has been determined that he should be admitted to psychiatry. The patient did become more and more agitated during his fairly prolonged visit. I eventually gave him Haldol 5 mg and Ativan 2 mg. He was then admitted to psychiatry.” I challenge the toughest boxer, wrestler, ultimate cage fighter, or martial arts guru to endure the kind of toxic shock that I was repeatedly administered without feeling somewhat “agitated.” In fact, as a thought experiment, what if one were to administer the same dosages of “medicine” to the cadre of medical professionals who usually do the prescribing. I guarantee that they would soon exhibit the very symptoms that they are so fond of and so eager to diagnose. Nevertheless, I believe in mercy, and would not wish this “treatment” upon anyone. I would not wish it upon my worst enemies. The arc of history slowly bends toward justice, but we are all in need of mercy.

 

When I was finally handed over to the naturopathic doctor, Dr. Wright, he reviewed my toxic history and tried to make sense of it all. He knew that I had taken Prozac, Wellbutrin, Paxil, Effexor, Lithium, Haldol, Clopixol, Zyprexa, Depakote, Synthroid and Geodon. He knew that my stomach was bloated, there was tightness in my chest. He knew that I felt “brain-fog,” and that I was “detoxing.” On a chart outlining toxic damage and stress to twenty-seven different regions of the body, only 8 of them were in the green, meaning that almost every organ in my body had been overtaxed by the drugs, and the trauma of torture. A week later, there were only 5 regions that were in the green. I needed something that the naturopathic doctor called “organ support.” I was “detoxing.”

 

My new regimen consisted of numerous vitamins, supplements and natural remedies. I was given a powder called “Inositol,” to help with depression. Cod liver oil was also prescribed, along with a variety of other pills and powders. Dr. Wright tested my “neurotransmitters.” Although Dr. Wright was much closer to being a real doctor, or someone skilled in the art of healing, these treatments were not cheap. I was supposed to take up to 32 Equilib pills per day, and I tried my best, but I felt overwhelmed by the dosages. My stress reports began to show improvement after some time, but I was still dilapidated and torn apart.

 

It was soon determined that the real problem, the underlying cause of my symptoms, was actually… drumroll… parasites. Great! Now I wasn’t simply a bipolar menace to society, but also a parasite-ridden freak. When I asked if they could show me the parasites, I was told that you can’t see them, but they’re there.   I was given suppositories that I had to suck in between my butt cheeks. But at least my charts showed that I was improving. I was also given injections of vitamin-B, since it was determined that I was deficient in that particular vitamin.

 

On June 6, 2007 I noted in my journal that I had been taking, “Baking soda baths, ” and “It is a stroke before midnight. My head is throbbing with a pain I can only describe as excruciating, and I cannot sleep. Somewhere, in many places, I know there are others suffering much greater pain then this. If my dying right now could produce comfort and hope in one other soul – but what I mean is… I am waiting for my Savior. I love my little brother, my whole family, my ward, my mother dear, and it would be a privilege to lay down my life for any of these… but not only that but for any man – the Gospel requires the sacrifice of all things, even our lives if necessary.”

 

On July 4, 2007 I wrote, “I had a massive surging headache, like blood running full force up my spine into my cranium… severe pain… Today was a tough day – I will not give up trying, but I would be lying if I were to say that I am not afflicted – but this will pass – I just never supposed that I would suffer pain so extreme that I thought I was dying and having a heart attack, and then the most painful feelings… so back to the mental health drawing board… try, try again. On a more positive note, I have some sores on my back and a throbbing headache.”

 

On July 19, 2007 (my youngest sister’s birthday) I wrote in my journal, “This journal may be of some use to someone someday. I threw away many of my hospital drawings and poems and stories (writing and drawing are therapeutic) – but I threw them away because of the traumatic memories. Now I can recall things with hope and a better perspective, although the healing process is just that… a process. I need to relax my mind often – drawing, movies, sports, etc. just like resting from any other injury, which means slowly building strength mentally and emotionally. I can only compare it to sports, as when I injured my knee or hand and had to rest…”

 

On August 1, 2007, my charts still showed that my organs were stressed to the maximum.   It was determined by the naturopathic clinic workers that I also had food allergies. On October 30, 2007, my chart of 27 regions of the body showed that only three were in the green, that is to say, balanced.

 

On October 12, 2007 I wrote in my journal, “I asked my father what my weaknesses were, and he seemed puzzled, telling me that I am an admirable, good person – and my obvious weakness is bipolar disorder. I’m sure he could have named others, but the feeling in my heart was one of joy and gratitude that the Lord would reveal my weaknesses, because when I am weak, I am strong… in other words, bipolar disorder and its attendant difficulties can become strong through Christ…”

 

On October 16, 2007 I wrote, “Tough day… I suffered horrible pain and frustration this afternoon after another sleepless night.” On October 22, 2007 I wrote, “Tough day, yes. Here’s the deal. I can’t sleep very well. I wake up in the night and early morning, around 4:00 am every morning. I woke up at 4:00 am and got up at 6:30 am, morning routine… stressful day at work… this is not me… what is going on with my brain?”

 

Every effort imaginable was attempted to rid me of these invisible parasites, which were apparently more active during the full moon, but I was still reluctantly taking Lithium. My mom did not give up, and she was determined to find remedies. We went to nature doctors, and cranio-sacral specialists. We even went to some strange spiritual healers whose methods I found nearly as deplorable as those of the psychiatrists. These were basically witch doctors that tried to conjure up spells and protections through vortices and the like. This was scary stuff, and I wanted no part in it. I knew that I had to take matters into my own hands again.

 

On November 4, 2007 I wrote in my journal, “I went to the doctor (Julie Davis) this week. My supplements have been reduced to 6 Equilib, Omega 3s and 150 mg of lithium per day (plus an occasional shot of B vitamins, methacabolomine… I called my youngest brother, and he was curt with me, but I don’t know what is going on in his life enough to be upset. I just love my little brother and understand at least some of the suffering involved in bipolar disorder… they are expecting their fourth child, and I imagine that he is feeling pressure.”

 

On November 9, 2007 I wrote in my journal, “I read some stories of bipolar sufferers, and even worse, schizophrenia sufferers. I know I don’t hold the monopoly on the pain market, not even close… many people are worse off then I.”

On November 15, 2007 I wrote, “Today was a tough day.” On November 16, 2007 I wrote, “I am going off lithium, slowly and painfully. My chest, just below my sternum was in extreme pain. When playing basketball, I was almost convulsing within, like a kind of a panic, a feeling like when I saw the moose with my friend – some ‘fight or flight’ chemical pain galore. It seriously feels like being electrocuted, stabbed, and about to be disintegrated while carrying a huge weight in my chest, and on my head, like a piano. But I could still run and play quite well… So the swing from near suicidal panic and depression, to peaceful, hopeful joy happens in a day. I want the latter, and I think it helps when I pray: ‘Thy will be done, Heavenly Father’ and seriously mean it.”

 

On November 22, 2007 I wrote in my journal, “I struggled to wake up this morning – still suffering from the tension and confusion, mental and physical pain of whatever the full-moon seems to bring on…” Four days later I wrote in my journal, “I have a mental illness. I accept that. I have done crazy things, and my body and mind get sick, but my spirit is good and strong.”

 

November 30, 2007: “Coming off Lithium.”

 

As part of the regimen of natural remedies, I started to drink a fruit drink called Goyin. At least it tasted good, and it was good for me, which is a lot more than I could say about any prior “remedies.” On December 1, 2007 I wrote, “Day of intense stomach and chest pain, difficulty breathing, and severe anxiety and disorientation… but I can write! … Dad bought me dopamine pills… pain level was high to extreme all day.”

 

On December 10, 2007 I wrote, “I went to mom and dad’s house, shedding many a tear of pain…” Eight days later I wrote, “Lithium is out of my system and must stay out… a terribly difficult night.”

 

I met many others who were suffering with “bipolar disorder,” and who had been administered drugs such as lithium. Usually these people were as drugged up and as docile as I remember the patients in the hospitals. They were slaves to psychiatry without even realizing it.

 

On December 19, 2007 I wrote in my journal, “Off of Lithium for good.” On December 30, 2007, I wrote, “I am struggling to gain balance, pain in stomach, head, dizziness, heavy and very dark feelings… maybe like Churchill’s black dog; but I am hopeful… Improvement? Hard to tell, except that it feels like my body has been so used to this that now that is gone it doesn’t know what to do – those organs will awake and do their work.”

 

By this time, other members of my family were having difficulties, and I felt terrible that I could do nothing for them because of my condition. Even though I was struggling and in need of much healing, I decided that I needed to get away from the place that I was in, and find a new start. I thought that I could move to a new city, and find a job and begin a new life. My chance soon came to return to Mesa, Arizona, and I took the chance. After all, I thought, I could stay with my aunt and uncle for a little while, and begin a new life in the sunny state of Arizona. My aunt is a good cook, and I thought that maybe her cooking, the sunshine, and new surroundings could help me heal. Although my aunt was as helpful as she could be, I soon realized that moving away was not necessarily the answer to my dilemma.

 

What I discovered was that my aunt and uncle were undergoing great difficulties in their marriage, and that their home was definitely not the place for me to find healing. My uncle (another one of my dad’s brothers) decided that I should move in with my cousin, and find a job. I moved in with my cousin, and eventually found a job with Bank of America… a job that allowed me little healing and increased my stress a hundred fold. I trained at the bank for several months, all the while feeding off of my trough of vitamins, too many to count, until eventually I couldn’t take it anymore.

 

The bank job was basically one in which newly hired peons were asked to make calls to people in debt, and finagle our way into selling them more products. It sickened me to make phone calls to people who were in at least as much debt, often much more, than I was (and that was a lot… more than $20,000 in medical debt, in addition to my $10,000 school debt), and try to sell them new cards and new programs. On the surface, a new line of credit was sold to these unsuspecting customers as some kind of a solution to their spending problems, but it would actually increase their debt and dependency upon the banks. One day, after a particularly distressing phone call involving a woman who was in the thralls of illness and debt, I had had enough. The phone calls that came to me, I began to transfer to other employees, until I had done so for a couple of hours. When the managers finally caught on to what I was doing, it was time for me to be disciplined. I was practically dragged into a room with a menacing looking woman who proceeded to chastise me for what I had done. I was desperate to keep the job, so I thought, because I needed money to pay off all of my crushing medical and school debts, but that was not the place to find mercy. I discovered that the bank, much like the hospitals, was a place of severity and greed. I was dismissed from the job, and left to ponder my fate.

 

All this time, there were great stresses that I felt coming from my aunt and uncle’s family as well. Divorce was immanent, and I felt stuck in the whirlwind. I got a job at a ma and pa’s flower shop, and worked there for a while, until I finally decided to return to Utah, and my former job at the wholesale florist. I worked there for a while, trying to gradually taper off the concoction of vitamins, and then I eventually found another job at Emergency Essentials warehouse. I worked there as I healed, until I injured my back from excessive heavy lifting. Soon I was unemployed again, and still dealing with the stress of debt.

 

Improvement was very gradual and hardly noticeable, and in 2008 I was still struggling with the aftermath of all these things. On January 8, 2008 I wrote in my journal, “I saw a neighbor at the hospital, heard about a bipolar program on the radio, looked for a couple of books on the issue, but only found books on eternal marriage… “

 

On January 10, 2008 I wrote, “Tough day.” On January 22, 2008 I wrote, “Day of intense emotional suffering, soothed and healed by the Savior’s love and the power of His atonement” On January 25, 2008 I wrote in my journal, “I had a brief panic attack.”

 

On January 31, 2008 I wrote, “I am grateful for bipolar disorder and depression. The depression is teaching me to notice others who might possibly be suffering… I still take vitamin supplements.” On February 18, 2008 I wrote in my journal, “Today was a day of torment and pain, from a sleepless night and fever to flu aches and mental anguish that I can only say in my heart: praise God. His ways are above my ways, and I will praise Him in pain and suffering as well as in joy and prosperity… O God! Hear my plea! Heal me, bless me… in Thy mercy, look upon this afflicted soul in sorrow’s depths, see my anguish, lift my burdens dear Father… if Thou wilt, Thou canst make me whole… I missed my first day of work at Emergency Essentials.”

 

On April 1, 2008 I wrote, though not as an April fool’s day joke, “Still some stomach and head pain, but I was able to focus better.” Two days later I wrote, “intense panic attack from about 2 to 4 o’clock or so, in my apartment…” At the same time, I was trying to study and to patent Verseball (the new sport that my cousin and I invented), but all of this was obviously difficult in these conditions.

 

On April 8, 2008 I wrote, “Today has been another day of intense physical and emotional suffering…” On April 13, 2008 I wrote, “I was so down today…” On April 15, 2008 I wrote, “I had a blessing given to me on Sunday, and a realization that this thorn in my proverbial flesh is there to stay. It’s onward to lithium again, probably.”

 

On June 26, 2008 I wrote in my journal, “I woke up at 8:00 am, exhausted and in pain, and drove to my parent’s house… My mom showed me some videos of people who used TrueHope ‘ear and tail’ vitamins and were cured of bipolar disorder.”

During this time I was still drinking Goyin and our family had purchased a new water filter machine called Kangen Water. I was drinking the Kangen water too.

 

On August 13, 2008 Dr. Wright recorded my conditions in my medical records, “[John is] having a bad day, not sleeping well, not avoiding wheat all the time, stomach really bothering him, mother issues, empathic, feels other people’s feelings, cries easily.” The remedies that were suggested included, “mastica 1-2 / 2x, Gastro soothe as needed, protein before bedtime, no wheat or corn.” In place of these grains, I could eat: “kamut, millet, quinoa, rice, teff.” My base point readings report showed that my stressed organs were healing to some degree, but I was far from having recovered from the trauma, whether psychologically or physically.

 

On August 15, 2008 I wrote in my journal, “So I crashed again today, big time depression, mama, pain, suffering, ouch! I don’t know why.” On September 24, 2008, my 32^nd birthday, I wrote, “I am depressed in spirit and low, very low. I’m tired, weary, at the end of my rope… this is just a painful, excruciating and taxing trial that has stretched me beyond my capacity to bear, to the point where I can go on no longer… furnace of affliction… furnace is not an exaggeration…”

 

On September 26, 2008 I wrote in my journal, “I almost felt normal, except for the stomach pain and chest pain…”

 

During this time I met a girl online that I became friends with who offered hope through her kindness and friendship. She sent me some videos of projects that she was working on to help those who were part of Make a Wish Foundation. I was grateful to her for helping me to maintain hope, when I felt that most of my friends and family members had basically abandoned me.

 

On October 6, 2008 Dr. Wright noted that I was “feeling good” for a while, but that I “had wheat yesterday (pasta), and feels terrible today. [He] started feeling bad with French fries on Saturday night.” I was given new products called “Diaverm, Pleo Ut, and Pleo Nig,” and I was told to avoid “potatos, canola oil, and fluoride.”

 

On October 23, 2008 I wrote, “I was burping a lot, and got smacked in the chest, or sternum area with the soccer ball, which actually seemed to help…” The next day I wrote, “Today was a tough day… why? What is going on in my brain chemistry? I am taking supplements and everything – I didn’t take the Lamictal – the stuff scares me – anything with a name like that or a pharmaceutical – I hate it – this trial is trying the very fibers of my soul – but I am grateful.”

 

On October 27, 2008 I was “feeling good,” but I “ate corn tortilla” and had a “headache” because of it. All of these natural remedies were helping to some extent, but it was hardly enough to compensate for the years of toxic trauma that I had to endure. The next year was still difficult, as my journal shows. On June 6, 2009 I recorded that I was still taking the “suppositories” that Dr. Wright had given me to kill the invisible parasites. On June 12, 2009 I simply wrote, “I am tired of suffering.”

 

Fortunately, I had made the acquaintance of a few angelic friends who were helping me along the way, individuals, usually female, who offered hope and comfort through their friendship.

 

On June 21, 2009 I wrote, “I have much pain, in my chest and all through my head – excruciating…” On June 27, 2009 I wrote, “What is this dull pain in my chest? This fuzzy, tingling sensation on the top of my head? … why so low?”

 

I visited the chiropractor, and had cranio-sacral massage. I was given numerous blessings by the laying on of hands. To say that the healing process was slow and tedious would be a gross understatement.

 

On July 12, 2009 I wrote in my journal, “This is a trying time. I’ll be honest – physical and emotional pain seems to beset me frequently. My head hurt this morning and my eyes can hardly open… I don’t breathe well through my nose, and my chest hurts. I have nightmares a lot. I’m underemployed and my relationship with my parents is sometimes strained. Add to this the stress of debts and the troubles of the world, and you have a great combination of afflictions, difficulties, and hardships, most of which, if not all, I seem to have no control over – and it could get worse before it gets better, although I suspect it is opposition during a time of important decisions…”

 

Later that year, on December 10, 2009, my organs were still stressed to the maximum, and Dr. Wright wrote in the medical records, “[The patient is] not sleeping, behind eyes congestion and dizzy brain-fog, chest pain and stomach pain, dry skin, off gluten, dairy and sugar. [He has] bad breath, pain in the solar plex, burping all the time, tingling on scalp, feels like bugs in hair (upon waking), anal itching, and constipation.”   As much as I hoped that the invisible parasites were being eliminated from my body, I couldn’t help but think that all of these symptoms were simply a result of the havoc caused by psychotropic drugs, not just on my brain, but on my nervous system, stomach, throat, liver, kidneys, and every part of my body. It was also determined that I had a “hiatal hernia,” that needed to be “pulled down,” a procedure that was very unpleasant.

 

I soon found a part-time job at a local florist, as a delivery driver. I worked there for a while, but the environment was less than ideal, and the healing process was taking much longer than I had hoped. Eventually I had successfully weaned myself off of all drugs, supplements and vitamins, and I was just trying to live a healthy life-style with proper diet, exercise and sleep. I had come a long way, but I still felt wounded, traumatized, and alone.

 

Fortunately, a friend of mine helped me find a new job with a company that created online language courses… this was something a little more up my alley, or so I thought. I also obtained a job as a basketball coach at a local charter school. While I was coaching basketball and creating online language courses, I injured my arm playing basketball, lacerating my elbow. The doctor stitched me up, but was careful to note that, “He does have a history of some bipolar disease.”

 

My elbow healed, but I was still stuck with the label of “bipolar disease,” which, as it turns out, is not even a “disease” in the conventional sense of the term. The medical community in general perceives “mental illness” to be like any other biological problem, something that can be “cured” by “medications.” According to this paradigm, bipolarity is just like diabetes or cancer, a physical problem that requires “treatment.” But the problem is that this idea stems from a disproven hypothesis that has lingered from half a century ago. There is no evidence that there is any such thing as “bipolar disease,” let alone a problem that is caused by a mysterious “chemical imbalance.” But doctors adhere religiously to these dogmas as if they were scientific truths. Most psychiatrists fanatically subscribe to these dogmas to the great detriment of any who happen to fall into the perilously labyrinthine system of psychiatry.

 

I worked for the language company and as a coach for three years, until the company folded, and I was on my own again. That is when I began to discover more and more details about the psychiatric industry, things that I had never before understood, and found therapeutic release in writing. While in Arizona, my aunt told me about her passion for reading books about survival, and my uncle used to joke with me about writing an autobiography about my experiences. It would take several more years until I was far enough along in the healing process, and supplied with sufficient time and resources to undertake such a task.

 

It has been many years since my youngest brother was first involuntarily hospitalized in the D.C. area, and since I was first offered that little Prozac pill. Little did I know what kind of a journey was set before me at the time, but here I am now, almost two decades later, alive to tell my tale of survival. Of course, I have had many great experiences along the way, but in order to warn of the dangers of psychiatry, I have been constrained to focus on some of the painful aspects of my experiences.

 

I have much more to write, and much more healing left to do. As I write my breathing is short, and my chest feels pain. My head is almost always in some sort of pain, and the trauma of past experiences often weighs heavy upon my heart. My relationships with family members and friends are strained, and my employment is currently nonexistent. It is still very lonely, and there are very few people who understand what has happened to me, or what goes on in the world of psychiatry. I am growing stronger, and I am determined to make all of these experiences into something good, something to learn from, to grow from, and especially to help others. I know that God has brought me through it all, and has been, in many cases, my only friend. There have been many other angels along the way who have assisted me, and for that I recognized God’s hand. I also recognize His hand in all of these difficult experiences, because if I had not gone through them, I would have no idea about what my youngest brother went through that day in the mental hospital. I would be oblivious to how psychiatry can turn perfectly normal and successful individuals into life-long mental patients.

 

Unfortunately for psychiatry… they were messing with the wrong dude. For all accounts and purposes I should have died or committed suicide long ago, but by the grace of God I am alive to recount my story of survival, and I have not yet begun to fight. As the Apostle Paul once wrote, “I can do all things through Christ, which strengtheneth me.” And “This I do always, forgetting those things which are behind, I press forward to the prize and the high mark in Christ Jesus”.

 

I recently wrote in my journal, “My little brother is no longer with Wasatch Mental Health.” In spite of this good news, I also recently discovered that a friend of mine was just admitted to the local psychiatric ward. I can only imagine the kind of suffering that he is enduring right now.

 

My hope is that what I have written may help prevent further suffering, and bring some hope and relief to those who are now suffering. There is hope, there is a way out, and God will bring you through it. The path to healing does not lie with psychiatrists, doctors, or drugs, but through the love of God, and through those whom He sends as angels along the way. Be strong, have hope. The best is yet to be.