WE HAD TO DESTROY IT TO SAVE IT

“WE HAD TO DESTROY IT TO SAVE IT.”

I am now 87 years old.  Much earlier in my life, when I was just 36, in fact, my mind was almost destroyed as the result of a medical misdiagnosis and what is now regarded as criminally inept psychiatry.  I write of my experiences in full detail in a book that I have written and published free on the Internet and also as a paperback. 

Chapter 1 describes how in the course of one year, that opened with two episodes of cold-turkey, I was hospitalised for a total of 20 weeks, received 23 ECTs, 20 episodes of insulin shock ‘therapy’, and innumerable combinations of benzodiazepines and barbiturates.

 

A year that ended with a farcical second-opinion from someone who went on to become a doyen in the world of psychiatry.

“We had to destroy it to save it.”

Such was the bizarre reasoning given by the U.S. Authorities to justify the annihilation of a village during that most bizarre of conflicts, the Vietnam War.

              As I began to write my book, I trawled through my own memory, and read, and came to terms with, the copious notes and correspondence that formed my medical records.  When you read what I have written, I think that you may agree that the same ‘justification’ could be applied to the almost-achieved outcome of the treatments that were brought to bear to ‘save’ my malfunctioning mind.  The treatments were applied with good intent, I have no doubt, by people who were established in their professions of medicine and psychiatry.  In the process of being treated, my mind was almost annihilated.  So what went wrong?  Well, to start with, at the outset, there was nothing wrong with my mind - it was functioning well and I was in control.  But something must have gone wrong and to describe it is the purpose of the first part of my tale.  The path ahead may at times seem a little tortuous, but I am sure that you will find the journey interesting.

The journey continues in my book, and after a number of years and several chapters, eventually arrives at the day when “…a presence that I could not see moved out of the space in front of me, into me…  I began to hear voices…”

In the book, I deliberately separate the onset of ‘voices’ from the earlier ‘psychiatry’ because there is no way in which they are connected.

The ECT – Electro-convulsive Therapy to give it its full title – left me with many lasting impressions and memories that eventually found their way into this poem –

Early Closing Thursday
by Roy Vincent (1925 - )

It will make you much better, he said,
No, it won’t make a hole in your head.
The current’s quite small,
Hardly any at all,
And of course you won’t wake up quite dead.

The nurses, all gentle and kind,
Never told me that bits of my mind,
Would soon disappear,
That I’d feel very queer,
And not know before from behind.

Memories once precious to me,
Have vanished, no trace, all agree.
The voice of my child,
That amused and beguiled,
Was erased by the ‘cure’, E.C.T.

At Work, was I then in disgrace
From this hole in my mind – this great space?
For I found, to my shame,
This face - What’s his name?
Or this name – Who’s got the right face?

Who began this outrageous farce?
Who decides to switch on and to pass
A current designed
To ‘repair’ this bent mind?
Do they really know elbow from arse?

Why ‘Early Closing Thursday’?
Because it makes just as much sense as ‘Electro Convulsive Therapy"

“There is no theoretical basis to justify it.  There is considerable criticism of its extensive use because it may produce permanent brain damage, especially losses of memory and intelligence.”

So writes the Oxford Companion to the Mind.  For most people, the implication of ‘therapy’ is of some process that will aid recovery from whatever ails them, physically or mentally, and achieve it benevolently, without harming them.  By what stretch of the meaning of words can a process be so described that actually harms the very thing, the human mind, that it is claimed to be saving?

“My mind to me a kingdom is.
Such present joys therein I find
That it excels all other bliss
That earth affords or grows by kind.”
The poet, Dyer*, could not have guessed
What would be done to minds distressed.
This precious place with knowledge filled,
Shocked, drugged, benumbed - then killed.
(*Sir Edward Dyer 1540 – 1607)

The poem was short-listed in a poetry competition and subsequently published in Greater Goings On…(than you could ever guess)  ISBN  0-9544030-10

There is one poem that never fails to move me.  It is anonymous, and was highly commended by the competition judges – here it is 

LETTER TO A CONSULTANT PSYCHIATRIST

You gave me a questionnaire once a week.

21 questions to evaluate my mood.

I had to rate myself on a scale from 0-3.

You adjusted my medication according to my score.

You talked of biochemical imbalances, synapses and neurotransmitters.

You told me my thoughts were distorted and dysfunctional.

You told me that the things that had happened to me did not matter.

What mattered was how I perceived these things.

I believed your definition of illness.

I took your psychotropic cocktail and allowed you access to my thoughts.

If I could think differently, as you prescribed, then I’d be fine.

You searched for signs of abnormality and found them.

You magnified the worst aspects of me and reflected them back until I saw nothing else.

You isolated me in a world where people were purely medical problems to be solved.

The stories we shared of trauma, abuse and neglect were merely coincidental.

All you were interested in was the manifestation of symptoms.

Was I an interesting collection for you to play with?

You didn’t get a chance to give me E.C.T.

You left – moved onward and upward in your career.

And I was left – incoherent on hospital pocket money, scrabbling through ashtrays for fag-ends to smoke.

With little left to my name but the clothes I stood up in and a list of diagnoses.

If I talk of having my life stolen, of brainwashing, of being used for chemical experiments,

I’ll be labelled paranoid, delusional, psychotic, and be medicated accordingly.

So, I’ll keep my thoughts to myself, and try to rediscover the person I was before you tried to cure me.

                       ANON

~    ~     ~   ~    ~    ~     ~

My own book LISTENING TO THE SILENCES is available free on www.royvincent.net

Other writing appears on my Blog www.roycvincent.blogspot.com

Inevitably there will be some repetition between websites and Blogs as I try to reach different readers.

CONTROLLED BY THE VOICE

I hear voices and have done so for over 30 years.  I also experience a whole range of phenomena such as physical presence.  But I have never become ill from any of these causes – because I know without doubt that they all result from spiritual intrusion into my mind, body and senses.

Everything is described in detail in my book Listening to the Silences in a World of Hearing Voices which may be downloaded free at www.royvincent.org  .

I also post a wide range of articles on voice-hearing on my other Blog – www.roycvincent.blogspot.com

This Blog is for poems – serious and not so serious - on voice hearing and general mental health issues – and for articles, and letters that I have received from many voice hearers.

CONTROLLED BY THE VOICE

I sought not these voices that enter my head,

Nor this physical ‘other’ that escorts me to bed.

‘Innocence’, it seems, then, was my middle name

When first I tried dowsing - but ‘twas not a game.

Curiosity drove me.  But most curious I found,

Were voices that spoke without making a sound.

With my mind wide open – no barriers in place,

I sat one bright day, gazing, lost in my space.

Unprepared, as a ‘presence’ that I couldn’t see,

Moved out of my ‘space’ and right into me.

At first, it was friendly; at first, it was kind,

But soon it had plans to take over my mind.

Was it one?  Were there twenty?  Still I don’t know

How such vile intrusions could grow and yet grow.

While my head became such a huge circus tent

With tricksters and jugglers all fully Hell bent

On creating Hell; such a Hell without cease

Inside a clear mind that had known only peace.

If I listened and followed their every intent,

Why soon I’d be lost up my own fundament.

Do it this way, no that way, no t’other, they’d say.

If I let them, I’d stand in a dither all day,

Bereft of all power to make my own choice

Becoming a puppet - controlled by The Voice.

For thirty long years I have just had my fill

Of voices and ‘others’ – yet never was ill.

I knew from Day One, the original voice

Was – now I am faced with a difficult choice.

I know there exist certain spirits, you see.

But will you believe me?  With me then agree?

Since Ape became Man, every race then has found

Such voices that speak without making a sound.

Consoling or harming, these words that they utter.

To help you - or force you down into the gutter.

With words that inspire or words that deprave,

Shining like diamonds, or dark as the grave.

I’ve shown you the counterfeit side of the coin.

The obverse shines brightly with those who will join

With you in your quest for a mind that is free

Of malign intrusion.  But how can that be?

Good ‘spirits’ exist – of that have no doubt,

With knowledge and wisdom and notable ‘clout’.

Those same thirty years, then, have brought me such wealth

From those that approach me, but not in their stealth.

Inform me; support me; encourage as well,

Surround me with, truly, the obverse of Hell.

They came when I needed; nowhere did I look,

And that is the reason why I wrote my book.

Ah yes!  THE BOOK!  First I lived it, then I wrote it – all 160,000  words.

And now?  Yes, now I urge you to read it.  Entitled Listening to the Silences in a World of Hearing Voices it is available free at www.royvincent.org   .  Part autobiography, it is chiefly a DIY Manual and textbook for those who hear voices and experience physical presence, and for their carers.

“Hearing Voices” usually implies ‘schizophrenia’ and mental ill-health.  My book also describes the many other and positive consequences of this widely misunderstood phenomenon.

Having read it, perhaps you will join with the others who write –

“First of all, a warm ‘thank you’ for making your remarkable book available free on the Internet,” – Carer.

“Beautifully written.”  TV Producer.

“He writes clearly in a way that will probably save someone’s life.”  StumbleUpon.

“My son describes it word for word like Roy.  He has always said that it is a spiritual thing, not a mental illness.”  Mother.

“Undoubtedly, many have gone to Ashrams and got better.”  Indian Mother.

Having been invaded by malign voices while flying high over the Mediterranean, one lady wrote, “I want to thank you for writing on the Internet about your experiences.  I found it to be the only true version of what I feel happened to myself last year.  I had been looking for books to read on the subject, but found nothing useful until I came across your account.”

“My name is James Douglas A…  (ID 32----) on Georgia, US, Death Row.  I hear voices and get physically “abused”/manipulated by unseen, but very real entities I’ll call spirits of good and/or bad intent.”

A Portuguese Film-maker, seeking an interview, wrote, “My goal is to explore a different approach from the psychiatric tradition, to show how people can live with their voices…  I was very much impressed with your book.  I believe both your life and literature are a truthful account of human experience and should be shared rapidly with a wider public.”

“My name is Al -----, from the Philippines.  I just want to share with you something about hearing voices.  During college days, I was hooked on drugs.  (I graduated marine transportation – merchant mariner.)  …until one day I lose control of myself.  I heard people in my area gossiping about me which makes me truly change myself into something not me anymore.  I heard voices unlike other schizophrenic patients experiencing - those voices told them to kill, burn, electrify themselves.  Mine is different; voices I heard knows a lot about my behaviour and attitude.  They know my weaknesses… always contradict my movements, actions, speech, even thoughts.  So I give up and surrender myself to rehab centre.”

Having been clear of voices for some time, Al went to sea, but in mid voyage – “…unluckily voices strike again, so I decide to disembark and go home with shattered dreams… and suffering a disease which is still taboo in the Philippines.  All I now care is, though I have an abnormal life, I want to be a father to my daughter and a husband to my wife.  Now you inspired me a lot.”