Morning broke hard in Herman Hospital on the first day of the first confinement for going mad. Still mired in delusion, I was allowed to rest from the exhaustive pace outside. But a blaring radio brought my horror inside.
The news of the hour was a massive traffic accident on the Southwest Freeway interchange next to the Houston Post building. A truck loaded with chemicals had gone off a ramp, and in a chain reaction cars were smashed up. The poisonous vapor from the chemical would soon denude the lush landscape at the newspaper plant, but there was a more immediate, graver concern, and Hobby, the owner, marshaled the staff to the top floor to escape the deadly onslaught.
It's almost transparent what I though next. I linked this happening to yesterday's concern for the well being of myself and Hobby. My mother was still at the hospital and said, "I hope (a cousin) isn't involved." And I concluded that the cousin had sent the truck bomb to avenge my conceived treatment at the Post.
The hospital called out its heavy weapons to combat my evil forces. A psychiatrist was assigned, and he ordered a large daily dose of the drug Prolixin. We didn't talk about delusions, which surprised me, for they were still very much my reality. But then again we didn't talk very much at all. I was, of course, green to the process and didn't know the doctor and his couch had been replaced by the doctor and his pills, pharmacology. Still, as my care under that psychiatrist lengthened, I was known to comment with derision that I couldn't talk to my psychiatrist.
I think my experience--indead, all of my experiences, from the first to the last, and fifteenth, episode--all underscore my complaint with a degree of legitimacy. I entered Rusk State Hospital in East Texas and said that I had stopped my medication, Depacote, because I could no longer bear the diarrhea that was its side effect. I added that I had often voiced this concern to my doctor. The facilitator was critical of the doctor "He wasn't hearing you," she said.
In the Houston hospital's arsenal, however, the real talk came in group therapy, usually in the morning.
Evenings I played chess with a staff member.
After three weeks I was well enough to walk across the street to visit the Hermann Park Zoo.
With my head mostly clear, though questioning some of what I had thought, I was free to go home.
Freer still to drive through the western United States for a rendezvous with other Sierra Club canoeists on the Main Eel River in northern California.
And then work. I was welcomed back with handshakes, and a note from Hobby saying, "We missed you."
My troubles with employment and my caregivers would come when I slipped several cogs further into involuntary commitments.
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