SUNDAY, MARCH 1, 2009

(part 133) ONE FLEW OUT OF THE CUCKOO'S NEST


I couldn't get any real assistance and that was the problem. The damage just kept being compounded by comas, broken bones, drug addiction and alcoholism. It was the collective scarring of my mind, body and emotions that were now the end result. Each part of this whole worked in unison to create a truly lost and combative human being, me. In Camarillo, the need to make me pay for my sins, as it were, against society, outweighed any rights I may have had to receive real help in dealing with the basis for my behavior.

At the state hospital, I perceived, and rightly so, that the authorities were not interested in helping me, as much as they were determined to commit me, and thereby be rid of me and my behavior on the streets of Los Angeles and Hollywood. This may sound irrational or highly unlikely to some readers, but unless you have been in the situation I was in, you really wouldn't understand. As good as we like to think we are, we are also too eager to be free of some of societies problems. Our answer is not to help, but to get rid of the problem by denying it, hiding it, or killing it. These things sometimes cross the line into dehumanization, defended by clever rhetoric and twisted moral logic.

As my mind continued to fail me, I ruthlessly held to one clear thought: the medication I was being forced to take, had to be limited in some way. I practiced at the water fountain, trying to take liquid into my mouth and not swallow it, while making it appear as though I had, when examined. The next time the meds call came around I put this technique to the test, and although I still swallowed some of the pink poison, most of it was concealed around my gums, until I could spit it into the fountain. I'd go to the nurse's station, take the medicine and then quickly move to the water fountain, once they'd checked me.

My theory, even in the state I was in, was that if I could limit the amount of medicine being introduced into my system, I would thus retard the progressive march into total darkness and longer term commitment in the hospital. Legally I could only be held for 72 hours, unless I exhibited some form of dangerous and or otherwise bizarre behavior. This is why the doctor had insisted I was suicidal at check-in, and why this god-awful medication was forced on me. They were attempting to make me look a lot sicker than I was, so I could be legally held for a longer period.

Although I was unaware of it at the time, Carol Paulus, had been trying to contact me. She'd been unsuccessful, because she wasn't a family member. When my mother and Carol finally got together, the hospital was forced to give in to my mother's demands for some form of communication with me, because she was a family member. When I was allowed to talk with them on the phone, they knew immediately that I was different in a way they'd never heard before. I was nearly incoherent, but held to one clear and concise thought, "Bad medication, get me out now!" Even at the worst of times I had never sounded that way to either of them in the past; they knew something was not right.

This was an immediate red flag to both Carol Paulus and my mother, because it indicated that something had occurred to cause my now deteriorated condition. Within hours, both my mother and Carol arrived at the hospital demanding answers. My mother insisted on seeing me, but was thwarted at first by staff, who attempted to argue that a visit at this time could possibly make the situation worse. Upon hearing this, my mother rejected their argument vehemently, and continued to insist that they allow her to see me personally.

Faced with this turn of events, the staff at Camarillo, began backing down when my mother asserted herself into the situation in this manner. She had a very clear line of thought that she adhered to no matter what, it was called principle. If she thought that you had taken an unprincipled and illegal position, she would fight you to the death over it, and in this case that is what she believed had happened. It was now a face to face, eyeball to eyeball showdown, in which my mother was demanding that I be released into her custody, because she didn't believe the hospital had my best interests in mind.

The various doctors and higher ups had a conference, to assess their position, in the volatile matter before them. Whomever the hospital had been taking direction from in the beginning, now the situation had changed. They were stuck on the legal aspects of what my mother was threatening them with, which was to get an attorney and have me legally removed from their care. In the final analysis they agreed that her position, if tested, would be victorious in the end, so to stubbornly hold out was pointless. With that in mind, Camarillo State Hospital was forced to release me into the custody of my mother, which they did. You may be thinking that I was not in Camarillo long enough for it to be as bad as I am saying here, but my response would be to say, that it was like a 3 day nightmare in hell on bad ACID.