Tales From The Psych Ward
Deep breath here.
If you get a moment, take a look at the comments to Tracy’s post (log-in is “yzarc” and pw is “ycart”, both backwards - no spammy-bots please).
In the comments, Tracy explains to Kate:
…you have just nailed it on the head, why patients stop taking meds. So often the medication makes them feel nothing, and if given the choice between madness/creativity and sanity/numbness, they almost always choose poetry.
Tracy gets it. This is a concept that many members of the mental health field either do not understand, or disregard. Refusal or cessation of medication is not so much an act of rebellion, of disregard for one’s health, or of paranoia. It is not meant to necessarily undermine the intentions of the physicians and caretakers. It is not to imply that the patient in question is somehow happy, content, or comfortable with their issues.
It is, more often than not, a nod to the fact that - sometimes - madness and suffering are a far better place, because at least they remind you that you are still alive. They remind you that you have not completely lost touch with the world around you, or your ability to think and feel. And sometimes they spur you to reach within yourself and pull out all the messy, goopy, yucky parts to create something of individual beauty, whether strictly for your own sake or for that of posterity.
Medication, on the other hand, tends to muchly promote a sense of numbness and false well-being. It minimizes everything, it makes you too sleepy to pay attention, it makes your thoughts fuzzy and somewhat incoherent. When you’re taking medication, someone could tell you that your dog was just ran over and your grandmother just died, and you would likely reply with “How nice!”…. if only you could stay awake and collect your thoughts long enough to put such a sentence together. Medication destroys creative process through its very mechanisms… you can no longer experience that acute, vibrant vision and drive inherent to creating something with any discernible meaning. It’s gone. *POOF* Just up and disappears right around that second week of daily pill-popping. Your “voices” no longer speak to you. Bright and shiny is suddenly mundane, and dark and gloomy no longer exists. You just muddle along mindlessly, emotionally flatlined and incapable of giving a damn about anything important, because nothing has any effect on you. No matter what, you are always just swell. You’re not “fantastic” or “great” or “okay” or “could be better” or “feeling like someone pissed in your Cheeri-Os”. You’re swell. You are officially a plastic Barbie or Ken doll, circa 1962, complete with perma-smile, and with about as much pre-packaged personality.
There is, unfortunately, more than a small bit of sense in the prelude to dying young and leaving a good-looking corpse.
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