Chapter 4: Experiences with Madness
Chapter 4: Experiences with Madness
Part 1: Asking For It
Regarding a relapse and a hospitalization, written from within the safety of white-bounded walls onto my tablet, one of my only possessions of importance.
I was fading by the time the ambulance got to me, I have mixed memories of the scene before I passed out. The sky was that ever-present charcoal, the rain was misty. The rain was not strong enough to soak you but was enough to annoy your cheeks. I was sitting in the doorway which entered into my one bedroom micro-apartment. I had tremors and was rocking side to side slightly, unbalanced, fading. The piercing alarm of a medical vehicle appeared on the distant soundscape horizon and got closer and closer. The vehicle pulled up onto the “street” right in front of the almost endless array of glass and steel cages which citizens of Steelslum call home.
The EMT was a handsome blond fellow, muscular, in his all-white outfit with modern shoulderhoods. He greeted me with a caring smile and concerned, kind brown eyes which met my violet gaze. The EMT’s assistant was a medical bot who was gun-metal gray, with status-indicating lights on its body, and was twice the size of the large man. Like most robots he had an assigned gender and a monitor which portrayed a mostly human face. It made them more personable, easier to relate to. The robot picked me up as if I were a feather and put me on a stretcher which automatically unfolded out of the vehicle. The robot and the man attached me to the stretcher with medical cuffs.
I remember vitals being taken, but the words from the EMT came beneath shallow tide pools of water. I could hear the occasional vowel but I couldn’t string together coherent thoughts. I don’t know if I really needed an oxygen mask, but they put one on me anyways. I closed my eyes and felt so peaceful. I’d been here before, in a vehicle just like this one, many times. I felt the turbines of the medcraft activate, they were loud as fuck, though they couldn’t interrupt my peace. The vehicle lifted into the air and whooshed to what was presumably the nearest hospital. I faded into consciousness and the next thing I knew was that I was in a hospital bed.
I’d been hospitalized before, but I’d never felt so weak. My Everse “vigorousness” had depleted all of my energy reserves. I was in a big room behind curtains, I heard doctors and nurses talking in the background, 50cc this, 100cc that. Beeps and zeeps were the sounds of medical assistant drones helping them with various patients in the segmented room. Their chatter was accented by the noises of electric machines, mechanical chitters and clicks. There were like five or six cables connected to my arm, and there was a monitor wire connected to a sticky patch above my heart. I looked down and saw an “emergency” or “call for help” button. I pressed it and a robot wearing a white coat rolled in and I managed to mumble words referring to Hugo. I knew Hugo probably had to be hospitalized too.
The robot spoke in a deep, soothing voice, “Greetings Alianii, your concern is acknowledged. Due to HIPAA-4 regulations, I cannot disclose the status of this person Hugo to you. I can affirm that footage relating to the circumstances leading up to your hospitalization has been reviewed, and any actions determined to be medically necessary by doctors would have been authorized. Please rest, if you exhibit signs of agitation than the administration of a sedative or anti-anxiety medicine may be necessary.”
“Can I have an ativan? I feel anxious.”
“Your request for a mild anti-anxiety medicine is acceptable, please relax as this medication is dispersed intravenously.”
A machine next to me whirred into action, it was connected to a medicine dispersal unit and a small bit of water presumably with the medication inside of it flowed into my arm. Ativan is one of the milder, safe-to-ask-for, unlikely-to-be-denied medicines that you have access to when you’re in a hospital, ordinary or psychiatric. You usually took it as a pill.
I suppose at this point I should disclose that I’ve been to a psychiatric hospital about ten times, starting when I was seventeen. Drug induced mania, activating bipolar type 1 with psychosis, LSD and ecstasy as self-medication for depression catapulted me into other dimensions of perception. I’d seen and felt shit even the Everse would find hard to top. That’s not even counting my interactions within the Everse while intoxicated, while hallucinating, rambling, paranoid, whilst having delusions of grandeur.
So what was it like, and why did I do it? Well first I’ll explain what it is, what it’s like, to give you a bit of a warning, and holistic context.
Trigger warning: The following passage is a detailed expression of the experience of the drug LSD. I do not condone or recommend the usage of this drug or other drugs, and they have caused me endless heartache and suffering, as a person with mental illness. Substances have pushed me to the deepest pits of insanity, levels many people don’t come back from. I recount these experiences, I share this knowledge and perspective, not to encourage to others to follow in my footsteps, but rather, to explain why 1) other’s have, and 2) why you should not. Some weights are not meant to be bore by an individual, some pains don’t need to be remembered, some sorrows do not need to be relived.
The following thoughts may be meandering, psychosis usually is, bear with me and hopefully my perspective will be of interest or insight.
Lucy comes usually, but not exclusively, on a tiny paper, a fourth of an inch by a fourth of an inch. It comes on a tiny square so small you could barely fit a grain of cat litter on it. Weird explanation, I know, but how does someone convey size universally? Shrug. You put the paper under your tongue, and it’s supposed to be tasteless, except for the taste of paper - but it isn’t. The micrograms of the chemical (75 is a “reasonable” amount, I’d often cruise at 250, 300, two 125s or two 150s), should be imperceptible, or a small dash of metallic. I actually think it’s the taste of anxiety - it’s the knowledge that after half an hour to an hour you begin your descent that won’t peak for hours. The anxiety trickles upwards, and twenty to thirty minutes later you notice the softness of colors, the softness of the walls - you start to sense something is coming.
An hour in and you feel the warmth in everything you touch, but also the coolness, everything is amplified, and colors start to bleed into each other. Static light coming through a windowsill looks like its dancing, ebbing and flowing. At this point you feel anything but hungry, anything but thirsty, the idea of any new substance entering your body feels almost sickening. That feeling lasts a few hours, but later on if you surpass that mental obstacle then almost anything you try is its own quintessence times a billion.
A spoonful of peanut butter is a galactic kiss from the earth. You taste the micro-abrasions on the shell that once formed each nut. The hint of dirt, the smoothness is the roundness of a melted hill of butter. A bite of banana is to fully embrace the jungle, to taste the wilderness. On the other hand, I think it’s a rare person, if any person, who consumes meat while in a spiritually magnified state as such. How could you do so without envisioning, embodying the abject horror of the slaughter of fellow mammals? You’d feel their hot blood pour down your throat, you’d feel it wash over your skin. You would crucify yourself in a chemically-amplified, time-dilated pseudo-infinity of LSD punishment. I almost refuse to believe that there are people foolish enough to subject themselves to the mind space of eating non-synthetic meat while tripping.
I mentioned the colors blending, but it’s more than that - everything blends - the door becomes continuous with the hallway, and the walls become continuous with the door. You are continuous with the blanket the warmth of which surrounds you. You are your fingers grasping the sheets in that expanded-time oblivion.
And then you close your eyes and you are the synesthesia of infinite colors multiplied by a galaxy of fireworks, at least that’s what it’s like when you hit two hundred, three hundred, and higher. You are each speck of gunpowder exploding into a mushroom cloud, you are each flicker into cascading rays of rainbow-spectrum light.
Alongside this color catastrophe is your mind and soul scanning every deed and misdeed that has defined your life. You are the spiritual reflection on simultaneous fast-forward and stopped time. You are empathy embodied, you are the pain felt by the victim of your childhood bullying. You are the inverse too, you are the child crushed by the at-a-glance carelessness of a sarcastic comment from an otherwise kind teacher. Single sentences that affected you, once, maybe that pain echoed a few times in childhood, reverberate through you like a crystal-captured earthquake.
And part of you hates it, and is terrified, and you think and feel, “What the fuck did I get myself into it? How am I going to go through this?”
And you reflect on one thing, and something, and everything, and nothing. You are every drop of rain in a torrential storm in Miami, cascading down, bouncing off clay rooftops and flying cars zipping by.
You are the history of carbon, you are walking carbon, and you are the history and guilt of carbon dioxide. You are the stomach pain and callous cause of the children in Africa some of whom, for some fucking reason, are still hungry. You look at the jar of peanut butter you had a bite of and feel sickened with yourself. You wonder about who the fuck you are, and why you deserve to be there, and why you have food - and why others don’t. How can one feel infinitely blessed and infinitely cursed at the same time?
…
Part 2: Beverly and Samuel
The psychiatric ward had a common area where patients could interact, eat meals together, and participate in group therapy. It was a large room with uncomfortable plastic chairs arranged in a circle, a few tables for games or puzzles, and windows that looked out onto the perpetual gray sky of Light’s Hope. The windows had bars, of course, but they tried to make them decorative - curling metal vines with little holographic flowers that changed colors.
I was sitting at one of the tables, pushing around some bland hospital food on a tray, when an older woman with bright green hair plopped down across from me.
“You look like shit, Silver,” she said cheerfully.
I looked up, startled. “Excuse me?”
“Your hair. It’s silver. I’m calling you Silver. I’m Beverly, but you can call me Bev.” She stuck out her hand.
I shook it weakly. “Alianii.”
“Alianii. That’s pretty. Unusual. You an egg?”
I nodded.
“Thought so. You got that look about you. So what’re you in for? Mania? Depression? Voices?”
“All of the above, I guess. Mostly the mania this time. Time dilation gone wrong.”
Beverly’s eyes lit up. “Oh, you’re one of those. How many years you got logged?”
Before I could answer, a younger guy with messy brown hair sat down next to Beverly. He looked to be in his early twenties, fidgeting with his hands.
“Samuel, meet Silver,” Beverly said, gesturing at me. “She’s a time dilator.”
Samuel looked uncomfortable. “That’s… that’s a lot, isn’t it? I mean, I’ve heard about people who—”
“Oh shut up Samuel, you don’t know shit,” Beverly interrupted. “You’re what, twelve in Everse years? Baby numbers.”
Samuel’s face flushed. “I’m in my thirties with time dilation and you idiots don’t think I know what a blow job is? Fuck off.”
Beverly cackled a cackle that’d make a witch blush, “Yeah and how much of that was video games and jacking off, doofus? You even popped a cherry yet? Thirty years my wrinkly asshole. What you need is a girlfriend, your age.”
“uh…that was unnecessary…how umm…old are you anyways? 60? 70?”
Beverly smacked the table, “I’ll say it if this skinny bitch is woman enough to spit numbers too!”
I shrugged, “You first.”
Beverly was a little too excited to talk about her numbers, “sixty-eight, birthday in a month. But with my Everse hours, just over a hundred.”
Samuel spat out a chunk of apple, “What the fuck Bev? …thirty extra years? Drugs or sex? If it’s sex and you’re giving me shit about one fucking blow job, one fucking joke, you’re crazy. You’re nuts. Walnuts or cashews or peanuts or something.”
Beverly grinned manically, “I mean a lot of both but mostly sex, and I loved every second of it. Wouldn’t change it for the world.”
Who would’ve thought the person I’d have the most in common with was this old green-haired woman, with clownish, haphazard makeup and clothes three sizes too big. She was an addict too. We we’re the same. I guess I was the clown after all, and a judgmental bitch.
“I have maybe forty years in the Everse logged,” I said, mortified, I didn’t know where to look, I certainly couldn’t have looked at Harold, and I didn’t want to give Samuel the wrong impression, “Yes I know I’m really young. I’m sorry.”
Everyone looked uncomfortable, except Beverly, who prodded me on the arm playfully, “Hot damn Silver! Hot Damn! You’re one of us aintcha’, the girls back in the city would love you. Hot damn! Shit I have a grandson about your age, I bet you could cheer him right up. Oh he’d like you!” said Beverly.
Alternative voices, which come and go, when manic, decided they wanted a word with me, “Alianii - who are you? Who are you? You’re a fucking clown, and you’re a sex addict. You’re an Everse fucking whore is what you are - aren’t you - aren’t you - aren’t you?”
I always loved the voices in my head, especially when they decided to remind me of the song of the voice of my beloved Melody.
“Okay, sorry, sorry that was a little much Silver,” said Beverly, who reached over and patted my head in a poor attempt at comforting me, “So you like to fuck? So what. It’s okay. Hey umm, I don’t feel like looking at Roger, could you tell me what time it is?”
Samuel turned and faced the clock, “It’s 4:24 Bev.”
Beverly nodded, but looked as if she was pondering some grand mystery, some celestial illusion, “Now that makes sense.”
Part 3: It Runs In The Family
Even though Mom and I are not related by blood, we both have bipolar. She explained to me that hers is type 1. She has been through a lot, mine so far isn’t as bad. I’ve only had to go to the hospital twice. I’m only fifteen, so I have plenty of time, I guess! I’m taking medicine now to keep me calm and help prevent anything really bad from happening. A white pill in the morning for lamictal, Mr. Moseby fix my spelling, thank you, helps me stay normal.
I was asked to talk a little bit about my condition and when it came out and what it’s like. This book is mostly about mom so I guess I’ll start off with how it was when I met her. When I first met Alianii my symptoms hadn’t really come out yet I guess. I just remember always feeling moody, like I was upset about something. Like I just wanted to cry and I didn’t know why. I had plenty of things to be afraid of, or be upset about or angry for, but my feelings were in addition to those parts of my life. With bipolar it’s just different. It’s like your feelings are just ready to blow up. Something small makes you go off, up or down, and it just gets worse and worse. I guess the right word is episodes, Ali always nags me to be precise with my word usage, my “episodes” have mostly been me being depressed, though I’ve been well, a little cuckoo too, if you get me.
To me, depression is like your carrying a suitcase on your back while you’re extra small. Every footstep is really hard and feels exhausting. You see ten feet ahead of you, the door is right there. But you don’t think you can walk over to it and open it. The easiest thing feels like its impossible if you’re anyone but Vishnu or Krishna or Arjun. My other mom Saraswati has been teaching me about some of the important gods and heros from Hinduism. Depression is like needing a god or a super hero to get you out from the bottom of the ocean and knowing you won’t find one. They’re not there, it’s just you even if you have family around. You’re totally alone, even when you aren’t.
At least I have my moms, and Mr. Moseby.