To say that I was facing the depths of depravity would be putting it lightly. In AA circles, there is the concept of “the bottom falling out,” the point at which the addict realizes the atrocities committed and earnestly begins to want to change themselves.
The blindness of youth didn’t make me realize that my bottom had long since dropped out, fell, and disintegrated into the earth, yet I kept on falling. To set the context—I was on the back of a major depressive episode. There was little but abject shame and guilt that greeted me as I opened my eyes from the soft but short-lived peace of sleep each morning. I hadn’t brushed my teeth for a consecutive 90 days or so.
There were a few substance abuse afflictions helping me spiral on and on down—tramadol, tobacco, diacetylmorphine, aqua vitae. And this is not to vilify any of these; they were what helped me go down and keep going down—testing to see if I had the muscle to pick myself up.
On three separate occasions, all within a span of 13 days, I’d consumed mortally lethal amounts of the combination of the latter two. In such a state—more comatose and unconscious than any semblance of ‘conscious’ or ‘alive’ —I drove a car. Seated were my peers and the driver that was me, in peak traffic. The energy saps as the harsh truth of my irresponsibility comes back to me.
On all these occasions, three, I only recall somehow being in the driver’s seat having arrived at the destination we were headed. The one time, it was only me, as the rest of them saw my state and would rather take the long way home than get on a guaranteed death bucket. The other two, my peers having gotten down, would knock on my window:
Hey man! C’mon, let’s go!
Not realizing I was unconscious till that precipitous knock that tumbled my nod. Following this, we’d begin the sad, desperate revels again. I crashed into, if I recall, three separate dividers on the road. Anyways.
I was on a few prescription pills at the time, as well. The mineral work is… well…
Anyways, I’d been diagnosed with Psychosis & found myself downing Divalproex and Risperidone, on the daily. Before I continue, I’d like to take a few words here to acknowledge the lived experience of misdiagnosed psychoses people, if no one else, then—me, my former self.
Anti-psychotics are, for me, in no sense of the word, enjoyable. All those years I was on these, I felt deep sorrow and pain. Any glance through one of the many writings on spiritual emergence and emergency will make such clear. I am blessed and lucky and loved to have the wherewithal, the support from all my Chosen Family across space and across time, I am lucky to be able to write this from across the bay.
For instance, three cases of behaviors I observed and enacted when I was diagnosed with Psychosis the first time around—I wrote a booklet of 64 poems for Divination titled— The Anarchist’s Zen to a Random Sequence, along with a system to conjure up one of these poems based on a few tosses of coins—it was a personal embodiment and lived experience of the Yi Jing.
One book I’d read on the topic began such:
Only when the doctor understands the Yi Jing can [they] begin medicine.
Months before this episode, I wrote down a SMART goal in a class:
I want to be a Healer.
Then, I had a notebook filled with poetry, artwork, essays, and musings I’d been working on for eight months or so. At a nightly hour, I drenched the notebook in cold-pressed oil of a dry fruit that I forget the name of now and vodka, setting it ablaze as I started chanting songs to Smashan Tara.
Needless to say, I was experiencing that Other madness as defined by Socrates. No one was there to understand or comprehend what I was experiencing, and due to consequences outside my control, I was labeled with the tag of “Psychosis.”
Two, or perhaps one last thing—my mind had cracked open enough that I perceived, in whatever way unique to myself, the lived experiences of plants, and the furry ones, the winged ones, the insects as well. The Collective Shadow also streamed out into my conscious experience, with various permutations of us-and-them, haves-and-have-nots.
On these episodes, and the importance of guidance and instructions appears lucid here—I never am able to keep the thread rolling of my experiences during these escapades. It all gets jumbled up, as to explain one line, I need to explain another, and then the other, and inevitably, I get confused, unable to communicate what it was I experienced.
Under the anti-psychotics, though, one sensation is consistent though—I was zombified. I had no energy, no motivation. There was so, so, so much shame, and her best friend, guilt, and not much else. My mind, completely desiccated, could do little to abate the molestations I’ve faced whenever I am on these medicines. I would like to clarify that perhaps, in some situations, these are necessary. My question, though, is whether these cases require more systemic investigation—to truly distinguish symptoms and the causes.
My doctors had read in textbooks what to expect and how much to prescribe of these medications. I sincerely work towards the elucidation and awareness of more modalities of treatment, especially treatments related to the workings of the Mind. The subjectivity of human experience is not done justice via rationale and words in textbooks.
I started gaining weight, and at that point, didn’t experience Self, Soul, or Spirit; there was no way I could possibly crack through the lenses of the shame-rid ego.
I look back on those times now. I have been lucky, blessed with friends who have withstood me. Time and again, I have spilled myself out onto those around me, spewing vitriol and hurling abuse—basically, I’ve done everything to deserve to be given up on completely and left in complete isolation. The list of my mistakes would never possibly end. I find it morbidly humorous now—anyway.
It was in such a state of affairs that one evening I’d arrived home. Mind—I wasn’t in the least suicidal at that phase. The substances number and allowed the hedonist to deny the reality of my lived experience. However, I did want to know the taste of water for myself—I wished to see how the limits of these anti-psychotics would flesh out.
As I mentioned above, I have mostly noticed the culling of my entire livingness during this experience. It was, in fact, magnified many, many-fold.
Feeling curious, I took out 10 pills of 3 milligrams of Risperidone, placed them on the tip of my tongue, and swilled. Oh, not swilled—back then, I had my pills dry, just gulping them down. Bitter…
I had left myself and reality completely.
Risperidone : \ /
‘ ‘
U
For 4 days.
There are only three recollections I have. Here you are.
Yerba Mate: Just because the eagle flies atop the mountain peak, do not believe you can. Doing so amounts to preventable death.
This should not be forgotten—I was not there, in the slightest of the sense there. There is absolutely nothing to learn or enjoy from such an experience. In fact, it is not even like the “not-being-there”ness of certain of the benzodiazepines.
Yerba Mate: We scout the frontiers & report.
Yes, and, we expect you, reader, to understand, that this experience? It is no less than signing that last ‘SORRY’ on your suicide note.
Tobacco: We keep whispering. Who hear listens?
There was a persistent background of this feeling, not really here. As I write this, I do wonder why only these three scenes remain. There was a complete disconnect from living. When people nonchalantly drop the term ‘auto-pilot,’ I sometimes chuckle—in whatever way I was functioning on those four days, there wasn’t any semblance of volition or even coherence.
A robotic underpinning persisted, like a conscious automaton. This wasn’t hell or purgatory either. I wonder now what realm it was that I found myself in. Something inside me tells me that I did this to understand the nature of the mineral work somehow. I do not recommend it.
Risperidone: ——- ——–
“
0
The first scene, I walk into my parent’s bedroom, it is completely dark. My Ma, alone, wakes up, surprised, and asks me what the matter is. I speak out as if halfway between insanity and dream, that my best friend had walked in and I was merely following him. It was somewhere between 1 a.m. and 3:30 a.m. My mother lay convinced that her son had gone clinically insane.
The hallucinations, if they could even be called that, we like no other. I wasn’t actually seeing the physical form of my best friend (or other people, later in the tale). It was as if the physical and the dream coalesced…in a completely horrific manner. What I mean is I was seeing the essence or spirit of other people who weren’t physically there at all.
Risperidone : /^\ /^\
O O
“
U
The second scene is shorter in memory. My fear-stricken and horrified mother takes me to my psychiatrist. The sessions were structured like this—My parents and I would enter and give reports. Then I would be with him in privacy. Then, my parents would do the same.
I remember on this visit to have been present during that third phase of the sessions. A fortnight later, having returned to ground, the psychiatrist reminded me that I had lain on the gurney bed with one arm akimbo and holding my head up with this hand.
You laid there like Cleopatra.
On that, I do admit, I get a chuckle.
The final—I am in a love interest’s room, sitting upright with my legs folded. I remember nodding off every 2 minutes, after which I would ask, surprised: “Where did [person’s name] go?” and she patiently would reply, ‘Raghav, it has been just you and me for the past three hours,’ upon which I would recount whom I saw, what we were doing and then nod off to repeat this cycle yet again. Her cats surrounded me.
I gained nothing, I lost a lot. Bonds I have broken, all manner of trust, trust that takes effort to build, destroyed like castles in the air. I instilled a fear in the hearts of my parents that is so deep that… I still am salvaging the rubble of all the bridges I’ve burnt.
Seeing as no amount of words is of use to the Absolute fool, please—once again—DO NOT dabble and ESPECIALLY DO NOT overindulge in Psychiatric Medications or Fossil Fuels! Since, however, you who wouldn’t dream of listening to any words for your own sake and are simply searching for any next high… even if that high be of the psychiatric persuasion…
Keep two friends handy to observe you at all times. Have medical support handy. Let the people you’re with know that movement outside the selected environment is to be limited!
O You,
You who fares
For the Western Shore.
You who Bites
first and
Then
Bleeds.
Blessings from the Universe, o Coyote-
& Love. Luck. Laughter.
