I woke up the next day in a high security unit where there is are about three or four people with a full-time nurse. You each have your own room and a small common room with a big window that allows the whole mental ward to look in on you. Initially when the doctor’s came I told them everything from my perspective, that I had been followed in the street and that I had confronted my observers. The doctors clearly weren’t happy, and I quickly learnt to not express myself, my reasoning, that is not how the game worked.
In the meantime boredom set in and the realisation that I had responsibilities in the outside world. That week I was due to speak at a corporate breakfast which had business leaders attending from across my profession. Also coming up was the final week of my university course where it was going to be an open forum. So naturally I asked to be released. Then I begged. Then in frustration, stretched out on my bed pushing the head of the bed and the foot apart. It wasn’t my intention to break the bed, but it happened. Later the nurse came to me and told me you couldn’t break stuff, I broke down and started to cry. I apologized expressing I was just frustrated and then continued to express my desire to hug it out. I went to hug him and instantly pushes me away and says we don’t hug here. He then said we have medication if I feel frustrated.
Later it could have been that day or the next day. I was sitting down with a nurse and a doctor, I don’t know what we were talking about – I assume it was how long I was going to have to stay there – But something triggered in me and I had to break something. I did not consider the nurse or doctor, however, there was a reinforced glass pane in the door right in front of me. I ran to it and punched it with all my might, it was a glancing blow and my fist bounced straight off it. But, I was not going to accept defeat so easily. I resorted to striking the glass with my elbow and continued to do so until it shattered on possibly the fourth or fifth strike.
The glass had a wire mesh running through it so nothing came apart and it wasn’t very satisfying. But it was splintered nonetheless. This was good enough for me and my guess is I probably sat down and started sobbing, with me probably drugged up and sent to the padded cell.
My next step of desperation (by this time I was working of the logic that if I showed that this place was making me worse they would take me out of this environment) was running around naked when that clearly wasn’t working I turned to pressing all the duress buttons.
The next recollection (I can’t recall if I was in a nightgown, I think I was), was being surrounded by security guards and having the nurse unit manager speak to me. This man to me was the perfect villain he was about 6’2 with a skinny fat pear shaped body. He was pale with some freckles and moles, with mousy brown hair and a number four cut. He had no empathy in his face and looked at me with a face that was neither arrogant or with disgust but rather as if I was somewhat of an unpleasant metallic taste he had to bear.
Surrounded by security guards I decided right then and there if I was going to attack any one, it was going to be him. I also knew he was in a position of authority and if i did attack him there would be consequences. Instead I started crying and retreated to my room. The security guards started in pursuit and I shut the door, holding it shut with my body. It wasn’t long before the security guards overpowered me . I retreated to near my bed. Which was now a mattress on the floor. The guard that led the attack was about 5’8, stocky, number 2 cut with a gotye. I was standing and when he came to crash tackle me, I redirected his force and landed on top of him on the mattress and decided to dig my thumb as hard as possible into the pressure point behind the guards jaw. That lasted a couple of seconds if I’m lucky before the much larger but much less aggressive security guard peeled me off him. I was then subjected to the same punishment I dished out. Only it lasted a lot longer. Later and I believe it is on record somewhere I was accused of biting, scratching and spitting. This infuriated me so much I was shaking. This is not only untrue but went against my very character at the time.
I woke up and I was in a padded cell. I don’t know what the purpose or intent of padded cells are. From my experience they are used far more as a punishment then for any sort of healing purposes. I have always had far more respect for nurses that try talking and negotiating with me first. Of course respect is a two way street, and most of the nurses that have locked me up had no respect for me.
Nevertheless, at this point I was still driven and believed I could make it out of the hospital in time to make it to the university lecture. So I asked for my university lecture material, they provided it to me. After a while I came across a few quotes I thought worthwhile and asked for a highlighter or pen. The nurse at the time informed me that you can’t have pens in the padded cells for self harm reasons. So I asked for a crayon. She thought for a minute and went and got me one. Under normal circumstances an academic paper takes me at least an hour to get through if not a couple of hours. I have no idea how long this one took me. I was drugged and It was extremely difficult to concentrate. But I had nowhere to go and as far as I was concerned this needed to get done. I got through it underlining in crayon and writing down my thoughts on a blank sheet of paper in horrible crayonmanship.
Eventually, I was released to the other side of the glass wall. The low security psyche ward. By this time I missed my public speaking appointment, and the final lecture of my university course. So I had surrendered to the fact that this was the place I was and this was the place I needed to be for a time.
I spent most of my days pacing around the ward and most of my nights reading. The ward had a pool table (I have always been rubbish at pool, but in comparison to most of the other patients, I was alright), having said that the games would usually take for ever as we were all pretty drugged up. There was a large collection of national geographic magazines everywhere as well as a few Australian flight magazines, and paintings on the walls everywhere mostly painted by patients. The paintings were mostly symbolic abstract art. But some had English words on them such as love, hate, family and all that. While others paintings had only three to four letters that weren’t words, leaving the viewer to fill in the gaps.
I was in this place against my will, I did not consider it a place of healing, I was of the opinion that if I did need to be healed mentally the best place would be in what mental health refers to as “the community”.
So, I worked off the assumption that I was deliberately put there by the government in an order to provide me some training, and once I had achieved a certain level of competence or unlocked some code, I would be released or graduate to the next stage. So when I was first in there, I started reading into all the paintings getting out any meaning I could. I would share my insights with other patients and staff, but after awhile I ran out of paintings and no one seemed to care about the meaning I drew from it.
Then one morning I found a page that had been ripped out of a magazine and ripped into pieces as if it had been destroyed. I assumed it must have been destroyed for a purpose and that it must have had some important message. I pieced together the page and found some magazine article about tiger cubs at dreamworld. The article explained how the cubs were exploring their enclosure. I took this to mean myself being in the mental ward.
Over the next few days, I had taken to reading hidden messages in just about every written medium I read. Furthermore, in the mental health ward, other patients would constantly be telling weird stories from something as simple and benign as looking for yowies in their spare time, to people claiming to be personal friends of the president. I took everything on board, either believing it, processing it as symbology, or regarding it as misinformation or information that may be useful at a later date. Soon, I was able to infer meaning from normal conversations with the staff as well as family and friends. With musical lyrics always imparting great meaning.
While all this was happening, one lunchtime myself and some patients were sitting around a table eating and somehow the conversation turned to when you get hit you should stay down. The man leading the conversation was an elderly gentleman by the name of Thor. I asked him what if you get back up, to which he responded,: “they will smack you down and you stay down”. I continued: “But what if you get back up again. And again. And again?” Thor stopped looked at me and said: “next time I get access to the internet look up ‘Jack Dunn of Nevertire'” (by Henry Lawson):.
The first time I got leave with my mother, I took her for a tour of the hospital grounds. I retraced every step that I took the night/ morning that I ended up in hospital. She was surprised because all the locations and symbols were there, she must’ve thought that I was delusional or that I was making some of it up. But I wasn’t.
After that, I borrowed her phone and looked up the poem. I read that poem and it spoke to me in a way more powerfully than any song, literature or poetry had ever done before. Every verse of that poem, as well as the poem in its entirety, spoke to the heart of who I was. I was crying uncontrollably while I read it and was balling by the time I got to the end to find out Jack was dead.
Over the next couple of days I was incredibly hungry for any ounce of wisdom that Thor had to offer. However, whenever I asked him for a poem or a song he would simply stop and recite “Flanders’ Fields” to me, a Canadian poem about World War One. I always knew he would wake up early and do his thing, and he always had a battery radio that he would take everywhere and listen to. Mostly it was talk back radio he listened to and he often laughed randomly.
So, one morning I decided to get out of bed at 4 am to see what Thor was up to. He was having a shower and listening to the radio laughing. So I decided to have a shower and get ready for the day as well. After I was showered, dressed and made my bed, I went out to the common room/kitchen, Thor was in the kitchen, and it was a mess, partly from him, partly from the day before, all the while he was listening to the radio and laughing. I had nothing to do, so I started to cleanup the mess, while Thor fed the birds with the honey on bread he had been making.
Cleaning the kitchen took a fair while, but once again it was probably about 5 am in the morning, no one else was up and I had nothing to do. I am not sure if this happened on the first day or after a couple of days of this routine, but at some point after I was cleaning for a bit. I remember the old man saying to me, “You have no idea, how valuable what you are doing truly is”. The conversation went on for a little bit longer with the following take away message: “No matter how big or small you think you are, no matter how significant or insignificant you think your work is sooner or later shit needs to be cleaned up, and that is an inescapable truth”.
After a couple of mornings like this, I asked Thor if I could borrow his radio for a while, he had no problem lending it. I borrowed it for probably about two hours listening to the radio, I cleaned the kitchen and afterwards sat listening to the talk back radio station trying to find what was so funny that Thor was listening to. Eventually, breakfast came and the nurse told me to give Thor back his radio and I did.
The next morning I asked him what he was laughing at? He responded there is humour in everything. I asked him what do you mean? He stated that if you live for long enough and see enough, the world will be one big joke. Sure, if you focus on one event, experience or point of view you will feel pain, grief, anger or despair. But with time and understanding they all lead to acceptance and in time humour.
If you listen to an argument and know the other point of view. All you can do is laugh about the ignorance and hopelessness of the situation. Humour is in everything, you just have to look.
Over the coming days I did look, and after time I did often find myself laughing at inappropriate situations. Not a good thing to do if you want to get out of a psych ward.
Anyone, who has ever been completely absorbed within a microculture has experienced the power of groupthink. While the term has negative connotations, by and large I think groupthink is generally a positive thing and a great thing to be a part of, I have been lucky enough to experience it on two different occasions. The first in a youth group where everyone was actively coming together to seek God. The second was in a corporate rugby 10s team, where we were working together for a cup. In both instances there was no monetary gain and very little ego involved. Yet there was no problem with attendance and everyone was contributing to the greater cause to the best of their ability. Obviously some people are more capable that others, but individual humility and pride are nearly non-existent as everyone’s effort is appreciated and valued.
Within a mental ward instead of groupthink, I call it crazythink. A phenomenon occurs that often occurs in protests. During crazythink everyone generally has the same goal: Be it the patient becoming “well” in the mental health context, or changing the government/system in an organised protest context. However, every individual party has a different idea as to what the goal looks like, and what the best method to get there looks like. From the mental health aspect there are the doctors, nurses, patients (consumers) and family members as well as some times psychologists.
The doctors are seeking to get you well by being able to effectively group you into a certain category of which certain medication is the most appropriate. While you, as the inpatient, are interacting with the nurses who are the coal face of the treatment. Medically, there primary role is to observe the patients and report back to the doctor as to the effects of the medication, as well as any information that might help the doctors with the diagnosis. Practically, there job is to keep the peace on the ward. The tools at their disposal range from ignoring patients, talking to or counselling them, to forcing sedating drugs on them. For patients, most often getting well simply means escaping the system. Patient’s share stories, frustrations and experiences. Generally, the advice is pretty stock standard like “don’t get angry”, “don’t swear”, but also involves standard ways to work the system, such as never tell them you are hearing voices, or having thoughts of harming yourself or others, tell them you are good, and when they ask if you mean stable, you say yes. But of course the staff are used to being lied to and will make their own judgement calls anyway, so you have to add in a bit of genuine feelings in there every so often which will get written down as to a justification as to why you are there. But it’s part of the process of building trust with the staff and as frustrating as it is, sometimes you need to take one step backwards to take two steps forward.
At the end of the day it’s the doctor’s feelings that really matter, so if you can allow them to write down a narrative of you arriving “unwell” and leaving with some “progress” as well as convincing them you will be “compliant” they will let you out. Then, there is the family, Often they are the ones that called mental health or the police that brought you in, in the first place. They see the patients for a couple of hours a day, during which time a lot of vitriol is generally placed on them for putting them there. They will tell the doctor with the patient not present what they believe their “baseline” or normal self is. The doctors will take into strong consideration what the family members view of the patient health during their short visit, while the patient is in captivity.
The family may provide the patient with heartfelt advice such as be honest, be yourself tell them everything that happened to you, generally unaware that the doctors only have about half an hour with a patient a day and can sometimes forget a patient’s story if explained, and will certainly not have time to write down any specifics.
Thus, during crazythink everyone has a different specific individual goals and drivers, and with it comes a clash of egos. The doctor’s ego is the most important, the family’s is also a very close second. A family member will always have to curtail to a doctor; however, if they can get another doctor to be on their side it may be possible to curtail the treating doctors ego. For the patient, there clearly can be no ego, and if the system by its very presence does not break you, they will simply increase the dose of medication so high that your body and mind will betray you and you will be overcome with tremors and cloudy thoughts and chronic fatigue.
Of course at this point in my mental health career I did not know all this and was only just starting to discover it. Being young, naive and a little idealistic, I simply did not see incompetence for what it was. Rather after growing up in a culture where I had a personal Jesus, I translated the power of God onto a powerful government with what I considered my own personal clandestine operation. I was not calling the shots, but the more I looked and interacted with my environment, the more clues I found.
At first sight for an observer this is inline with grandiose ideation or ego-syntonic ideas, and as such I was diagnosed as manic at some point along the lines. However, it wasn’t until much later that I discovered through a private doctor they were most certainly ego-dystonic at their worst resulting in severe paranoia to the point that I was certain I was going to be killed and it would be made to look like a suicide.
At the beginning of this treatment though, where I was the captive and had a treatment team constantly observing me, I believed that I did have some influence over the staffs actions if only I could figure out the secret as to which I could harness this influence. I was convinced that I was under some form of test/training and looked for clues everywhere. I turned to reading the wards magazines which other patients suggested I should. There was a large number of National Geographic magazines which I largely ignored and a few Australian Flight magazines.
As my father was a licensed aircraft maintenance engineer, I grew up with these magazines laying around the house and hadn’t ever really seen them anywhere else but the news agencies. I only remember there being two, one with a cover story of Army Rotary Wing pilots and another. Not wanting anything to do with the military at this point I chose the other magazine.
In it I found an article about Glen Innes, the town my father grew up in and one we visited frequently throughout my childhood. The story detailed the flight school that was proposed for the small town and all the prospective jobs that would result from the school. It probably also had some feel good stuff about the future being bright for the town. Reading into this I believed it was some sort of message that good things were coming for my father and that he must be in on this big operation too.
A couple of days later, there was several helicopters coming and going from the hospital, apparently there had been a big accident somewhere. However, with this constant audio onslaught of rotary wing aircraft, i took it as a message to read the magazine with the Army article. It was about the squadron that was attached to the special forces, and it talked about their professionalism mixed with daring and brave maneuvers. I reluctantly took this on board as a personal message; however at this stage I was becoming depressed as the challenges provided to me were being reduced.
In the coming weeks, Thor told me to look up three more poems all on separate occasions; “Johnson’s Antidote” (by A.B. Patterson “Banjo”) – a poem about a man who was convinced he found a cure to a snake venom failed, and then started killing the very creatures that kill the snake; the other poem he thought was quite funny was “Mulga Bill’s Bicycle” (by A.B. Patterson “Banjo”).
I read both poems on separate occasions with my mother while on leave. Each time I extracted my own meaning. For Johnson’s antidote, the cautionary tale I took from it was to be cautious of arrogantly thinking you have the cure. However, I always wondered about King Billy of the Mooki in the tale and the role he plays. As well as the irony that Johnson ends up killing goannas the very creature that kill the snake. (Today, I take the goannas and snakes to be the insane, however one is good and one is evil, and King Billy a magnanimous observer, and Johnson the mental health system).
In regards to Mulga’s Bicycle, it is a cautionary tale about arrogance in regards to adopting similar but new technology. I also took it as a lot more personal message: that while a horse may spook or try and buck you off it, it will never intentionally run off a cliff. A good well trained horse will do what it’s trained to do, which in many cases may be simply to take you home. From this I took the message that I had to quit relying on myself and trust those around me. As such, I started shutting my mouth more and letting my mother talk to the doctors.
At some point along the journey Thor told me stories in regards to the origin of his name. He told me stories that I haven’t been able to find anywhere else (although I didn’t look hard).
According to this man, Thor’s hammer was a gift from his political enemies. They saw that young Thor was incredibly strong and arrogant, and that he could easily dispose of any physical opponent that would get in his way. So his enemies conspired to figure out a way to use his strength against him and devised a hammer that would return to him with the same destructive force that he threw it with.
Thor, receiving the gift with ignorance, threw the hammer with great strength and it came back hitting him harder than he had ever been hit before. His enemies assumed that as a result Thor would avoid the pain and eventually lose his strength. However, Thor feeling pain for the first time, and discovering his own mortality, felt a realisation and a challenge he had never felt before: He embraced the pain and the new challenge, throwing the hammer harder than before increasing his strength and toughness.
Now, Thor with his new understanding of pain had become even more menacing. He had very little regard or sympathy for others, unable to comprehend why they would not embrace and overcome their own pains and struggles. Thor’s enemies realizing that they had created a monster convened, and decided that the pain which they thought would make him weaker only made him stronger, thus they gave him the glove of compassion which absorbed the full impact of the hammer, so that Thor would have no incentive to throw it so hard. But in order to assume its benevolence, they also allowed it the ability to heal people. While the glove worked in removing his desire for such destructive combat, it in no way removed his muscle memory and his ability as a warrior.
In the meantime, eager to explore his new healing ability Thor turned his efforts to healing the people, and absorbed their trauma soon becoming more in touch with the common man than any of the leaders had done before.
Another time, Thor the person told me a story about Thor when he was older and had a daughter of his own. At one point,Thor’s enemies came to steal his daughter in the middle of the night. He found them in his house and asked them what they were doing there. Not wanting a physical confrontation and knowing that Thor had a reputation for being dim witted they seeked to outwit Thor, by claiming they had come to warn him about a conspiracy against him. Thor knowing that these men were his enemies, listened to them and what they had to say, he cross examined them going over every detail of the story to which his enemies always had a cunning response.
Soon his enemies became emboldened by their smarts and their cunning decoy and while they always disdain the arrogance of the strong, they became arrogant themselves. Thor thanked them for their council and continued to feed their ego by asking what he should do about it? Cross examining their plan and also adding his own discernments of which his enemies carefully accepted or rejected with guile. After a lengthy deliberation and much drink, Thor thanked his guests and asked them with a wickedly charming smile: Now do you mind if I open the curtain?
At that point his enemy’s realised the time, that the sun was out and that Thor knew who they were all along. He opened the curtain the sun shone in and they turned to stone. Thus, Thor outsmarted his opponents, simply by letting them talk.
Post this, I had my two workmates that I visited a couple of nights before going into the ward. I walked through the hospital grounds and replayed pretty much everything I had done in the grounds the night prior to my admission. They asked me why I was telling them all this. I took this as them saying that I was exposing operations, which was my general thoughts and hesitation to disclosing events. However a nurse who I believed was part of the clandestine network suggested I should share more. It was my belief that while I was interacting with several clandestine operatives, they were all operating off their own knowledge base, most likely to reduce the issue of myself identifying that they knew something they shouldn’t. Thus by sharing, it would probably empower the operators to do their job better, but also allow them to show they had gained my trust.
With that said, “Talking about your feelings” is arguably “healing”, it definitely fuels the ego; however, from my experience it is more frustrating than healing. Breaking stuff is much more satisfying as it simultaneously lets out frustration and anxiety while providing a sense of accomplishment and gives an opportunity for redemption through repair. My issue with talking largely is that within the mental health ward context it is done far more to assuage the treating team than it is to heal.
So when asked the question of why I was telling them this, I said: sharing. But in reality I was boasting. I was under the perception that I had played a real life Zelda-esk dungeon puzzle and I had solved it.
We ordered pizza to the hospital grounds and shared a meal, I shared stories about how when working in the early hours of the morning within the office, how the phones would randomly ring and putting me on edge, and how another time I started becoming most productive after several hours of torment, the fire alarm started and I had to vacate the building and that on my journey home there were way too many cars on the road for the time in the morning for me to consider normal.
We all joked about how it would be funny to be the people interfering with me. On the way back to the ward we walked past a statue and they suggested it was clapping me. Prior to the meal as we were touring the hospital grounds, there was a random flash of light in the sky. I took it to be lightning, however I heard no thunder. Understanding that Thor was the god of thunder, I took it to mean that Thor the person was dead. At that point I nearly cried, but I did not. One of my mates asked if I had seen it, which I acknowledged and commented that I didn’t hear thunder which was weird. We both noted the oddity and left it at that.
When I got back to the ward the nurse did not believe that I had stayed on the hospital grounds, I maintained I did, and she laughed and said “yeah right I was not born yesterday”. We left it at that. I walked into the common room and Thor was sitting there by himself. I told him that I thought he was dead and it grieved me greatly and expressed my gratitude for him. He simply said “thank you”.
It was about this time that a new patient came onto the ward. He was a young university student. I generally didn’t like him, which was his fault. He was skinny, spoke in a refined manner, and I had a good sense that the young man had never done a hard days work in his life.
He wrote and had no problem sharing his story. My biggest issue was his mental story was very similar to mine. He had accused his mate of being part of the CIA. This annoyed me for several reasons. Maybe I wasn’t special, but more importantly why would anyone listen to me if this guy has the same story.
I occasionally started talking to him, the little insights I got off him were abstract reflections on what came from the television. Something I never had at that time, and I was impressed, but I disregarded him as actually crazy.
But what I learned from him. Was that I can openly talk, I didn’t know any state secrets, I had “insight” in the term of the medical staff.
I remember getting Nando’s with a nurse I felt it was over at that stage. But I desired to wait for a conversation with my father, I asked him if we/our family was part of a clandestine organization, he carefully denied it, so I told the doctors a similar story to the CIA kid, showing great “insight” – and after much deliberation from my mother I was released from the hospital.
Just prior to my release however, Thor suggested I read “The Man from Snowy River” (by A.B. Patterson “Banjo”).d
Two Words 