. PROLOGUE 2284 words
. What did you think about our chance reunion in 2006, Dr. Azim? I’m trying to place myself in your shoes to see what you might have seen when we ran into each other in a line-up in Vancouver, B.C. About thirty years had passed since I left your Aberhart group therapy program in Edmonton, Alberta.
. In 2006, we were just two guys in a line-up. I wasn’t the kid you knew in 1974. Maybe you didn’t recognize me, but I like to believe you might even have been impressed by the guy with the Art Noir look in his black vintage double-breasted suit, black t-shirt, and black Converse All-Stars.
. So what did you see that day? It was obvious you’d come directly from work, still wearing your suit, a light summer silk superbly tailored to your 74-year-old frame. You didn’t want to be standing in that ridiculously long line-up for the trendy Joe Fortes’ Seafood and Chop House. No. Of course you did. That line-up was buzzing. So you’d wait, even after waiting all afternoon to get away after the psychotherapy group you led at your West Van offices, only to wait again for two lanes of traffic to merge and creep across the Lion’s Gate Bridge during Friday rush hour.
. But why should you wait for this guy? He’s butting in. Wait. No, he isn’t. Patience, Hassan. He’s joining that bubbly, self-assured woman ahead of you, in a short skirt, linen blouse, and faded jean jacket. She and I are a sharp-looking couple in our early fifties. I’m her date. That’s obvious. Is my face familiar? It ought to be, because we know each other from 1974, Dr. Azim.
. But this isn’t the context you would have seen me in back then. At this moment in 2006, neither of us has yet recognized the other.
. Perhaps your memory files have recognized my face after we’ve been waiting in line a while—some vague awareness bubbling up to your conscious awareness. Who am I then, Hassan?
You can see I know you as the light of recognition crosses my face. But nothing crosses yours.
. “Dr. Azim? Hassan Azim?” I asked.
. “Do I know you?” you replied.
. “Aberhart Day Hospital. 1974. I’m John Dixon,” I said.
. You drew a blank. Thirty-two years had passed since then, and you hadn’t been leading groups at the Aberhart for twelve years. Not since you moved to the West Coast in 1994.
. “Probably don’t remember me. I was 18. Had long hair? Used to sit and blow smoke rings?”
. Of course I recognized you. You hadn’t changed a bit: glasses; same build; same haircut; maybe a bit of grey at the temples.
. “I didn’t talk much,” I said, “because I assumed everyone could read my mind.”
. “Well, you’re looking good. What have you been doing?”
. “After leaving the Aberhart, I became a cook. Still as delusional as ever, but thanks to you, at least I could function. I coasted. Not getting better, but not getting worse. Then a couple years after the Aberhart, I heard of a place called Cold Mountain Institute up on Cortes Island.”
. No reaction. You probably didn’t know the place—it closed before you moved to the Coast.
. “I did a resident fellowship there. A lot of talk therapy, like we did in your groups at the Aberhart. Except at Cold Mountain, I was a willing participant.”
. You raised your brows and smiled. “What a difference that makes.”
. “Workshops all day, every day. Every New Age trend. Different workshop every week for twelve weeks. By six weeks into the program, I had given up my delusions.”
. Could this be true? Possibly?
. “I was able to quit taking the Haldol. I’m a father. I have my own roofing business.”
. “I’m happy for you.” The line-up arrived at the door. “You’re doing all right. Nice to run into you again.” You seemed relieved as the bouncer let us in.
*
. How entrenched are your beliefs about schizophrenia, Hassan? I’ve often asked myself why it seems so difficult for many academics to accept my recovery. Then again, maybe you found it easy. Maybe you know it’s not unusual. Maybe these are simply my unexamined assumptions. It’s hard for me to know how many others have recovered. Because of stigma, few people are willing to share their struggles with mental illness. But I’ll try to be as open as possible.
. I don’t know schizophrenia as you or your colleagues do, Hassan, from observing it in others. I know it from inside the changes I’ve experienced. If seeing is believing, then living it is knowing it. I know all the steps in the decline of my critical thinking. And I know when I finally figured my delusions out.
. Recently, I was dismayed to read a psychology student’s intro to an essay about schizophrenia. Unlike the common cold, which would subside, he said, schizophrenia was not an ephemeral disease. A cold would go away, but schizophrenia would last a lifetime. That’s the conventional wisdom.
. People assume the delusions take over, the reasoning process is “lost” and irrecoverable, and the jigsaw puzzle can’t be put together again. Too many missing pieces, they think. I’d been floundering for four years by the time I got to Cold Mountain, but even though I needed to sharpen my tools for reasoning, I still had those tools. I learned how I could unpack my delusions and leave them behind. I know that period of my life is over—just as I know that when I find a hole in a roof, it’s not going to leak again, because I’ve been up in the attic to confirm that hole as the source of the leak, noting a wet trail on the rafter below it, and then I’ve patched it for good.
. C’mon, Hassan, why are you guys still teaching that? I thought the idea was to get rid of stigma. While schizophrenia may differ from the common cold in many respects, that isn’t one of them. Or at least it doesn’t have to be. My own schizophrenia occurred from 1972 to 1976. I had a few brief relapses in the summer of 1977 and again in the winter of 1978. Otherwise I’ve led a long productive life without any symptoms.
. The cure for schizophrenia is elusive, and so is the cure for the common cold. Our immune systems learn to recognize and reject the germs of a common cold. In a comparable fashion, I learned to question my beliefs, examine the evidence for my delusions, and shed them. That’s not to say that schizophrenia is an immune system failure. But a healthy immune system is akin to critical thinking skills, which are crucial in order to avoid delusions.
. Hey, guess what? Since I’ve embraced sanity and critical thinking, I’ve noticed another parallel. The same methods for maintaining a healthy immune system and avoiding the common cold are just as useful for avoiding a relapse: fresh air and exercise, good food, and eight hours’ sleep every night. Dreaming, rest, and physical fitness are crucial to eliminate stress.
*
. I’ve read some of your professional articles, Hassan. You’re well-respected in your field, group therapy. You were the head psychiatrist and architect of a ground-breaking, twenty-week, day-treatment program in Edmonton with about a hundred new clients each year. I was there in your first year and you continued for another twenty years before moving to the West Coast.
. I wound up in your program because I’d had a nervous breakdown in my first year at Grande Prairie College. I dropped out. I couldn’t sleep anymore and had hallucinations—waking dreams. But I kept it inside. I learned to fake normal. I took another stab at University. And failed miserably. By the time my parents heard about you and the Aberhart, I was taking an anti-psychotic drug, haloperidol (brand name: Haldol.) Maybe that’s why the hallucinations stopped. But not the delusions. To be clear: I never took any psychedelics before or during my psychotic episodes. The only drug I took was Haldol. I moved to Edmonton and spent my days in Group at the Aberhart. I was lucky because I could live in my grandmother’s attic. Because of stigma, I seldom talk about that time in my life. But most people have misconceptions. Now I’d like to help them understand.
. Maybe in that line-up at Joe Fortes’, you just meant to maintain a professional distance, but if you did even remember me, I can understand how you’d be mystified or at a loss for words. The last time you’d seen me, I was in the middle of what was considered a mental illness. How could I, a clumsy, catatonic, zombie virgin, somehow metamorphose into this coherent, middle-aged man on a date?
. At the Aberhart, I’d refused to talk about my delusions. They were much too convoluted to explain in the handful of words I spoke each day. If I’d been talking more, what would I have said? You don’t say a lot when you think you have no say in what goes on in your life.
. Sure, I could have spoken up then, but I didn’t believe I had the option, or any reason to speak up by that time in the progression of my delusions. Had I felt like talking, I might have said what I thought:
. I think U are controlling me. By U, I meant everyone else in the world (and in all of my delusions, I was always the center of the universe.) I know that was a delusion of grandeur, but I needed it. Otherwise: I am suddenly just an insignificant waste of space, when most of my life before, I was bound for success. I was going to be a doctor or a famous author or musician.
. I didn’t need to explain my thoughts, though. At that time, I thought U already knew what I was thinking.
. Suppose it was your Monday afternoon Group at the Aberhart, Hassan. Let’s say someone in Group mentioned “…people who just sit back and never participate in our discussions.” And suppose that as the head psychiatrist, you noticed I was fidgeting.
. I might be thinking: Well, why would I say anything? No point. U decide what I think, so U already know what’s on my mind. U are planting the thoughts in my head. U have all the say. Literally. U decide what I say when I talk and if I talk. U decide when I think and what I think. U decide when I arrive, when I leave, when I take my pills, when I might get out, if I ever will.
. You might have said, “I notice you’re fidgeting, John.”
. I’d squirm a bit, but try to stay quiet until the spotlight went away.
. “You’re one of those who seldom participates in our discussions, John. How do you feel about her comments?”
. Why do U always want to know what I’m feeling?
. “Do you like that role?”
. “I’m fine.”
. “But how do you feel in that role? Knowing what others feel about your participation?”
. “I feel fine.”
. “Fine isn’t a feeling, John. It’s more like a thought.”
. Now I’d be thinking something like: And U already… Oh-oh! Randy’s leaning forward now. My therapist. If he jumps in, they’ll all be on my case. Better to – “Clam up, right?” I might say. U want me to clam up, don’t U, I’d be thinking. Anyway U can read my mind, “So why make speeches?” I’d say. Especially when I don’t have anything to say. “U decide,” I’d say. I’m not talking because U decide when I talk, “When I walk, if I walk.”
. Do you see why my words always came out as word salad, Hassan? I would only verbalize a word here and there, so the disjointed thoughts came out as gobbledygook without the many thoughts rushing by in between. It’s true I withdrew and only said half of what I thought, but not because I was afraid of being judged. That doesn’t explain it. I didn’t speak my thoughts because I didn’t think it necessary.
. Of course I was expected to participate. It was talk therapy. But most of my focus revolved around all my wild ideas. I hoped some new insight would help me make sense of my situation. Usually I was 90% engrossed in my inner thoughts and hardly listening to anything else. I understand now that it would have helped to share my thinking, but I thought U (the whole world) already understood my convoluted delusions, because U planted them there. So I thought…
. It’s a common schizophrenic delusion: Everyone can read my mind. I assumed U knew exactly what I meant even if I only said a word or two.
. You helped me to cope, Hassan, but if I’d been a more willing participant, I’d have done better. I felt I had no choice about being there. Don’t get me wrong. Talk therapy works. But when it does, it’s because the people listening to me believe I’m making sense, and they care that I do. They don’t have to set me straight so much as follow along and toss my thoughts back when they catch them to let me know I’ve been heard. They help me with my struggles, but just as much, they want my help with theirs. And because they treat me as a peer, I can trust them. Either that level of trust wasn’t established at the Aberhart, or if it was, I wasn’t ready for it.
. I no longer wanted to talk, nor did I even think it necessary. I was in despair. I had stopped participating in life. I had given up on sharing my story.
. PART A: OFF TO COLLEGE – AUTUMN 1972
. CHAPTER ONE 2136 words
. My Father, the Doctor/His Son, the Author
. You must wonder, Hassan, if there is a point at which it all began……………….