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PART IV: “Sometimes we get so tired of waiting for a way to spend our time”

March 7, 2019 — leslie dean brown

When they eventually did return our phones, it was under a strong proviso. We had to sign a type of non-disclosure agreement/contract before we could even touch them:

Absolutely no photographs under any circumstances, and especially not of anyone or their face (they made that explicity clear); no social media use at all; and finally not reveal anyone other patients’ identity to anyone, not while inside or even after being released. The nurse eyed the high-dependency ward as they explained the importance of adherence to these additional set of rules and regulations. Non-compliance meant there would be no second chances… no further privileges… privileges revoked… I even think they explained that to us too… I still managed to pop off a shot or two of my bedroom when no one was looking…

And so they are in complete control. It was around this point that I realised that there was literally nothing I could do about my situation. That I was not in control anymore. And that I simply had to accept where I was. From this point on, I think I was more concerned about eliminating this great sense of underlying boredom that I was feeling more than enacting any of my suicidal thoughts.

Even so, I was in such a state of shock, that for several days I didn’t even realise there was an art therapy room! It adjoined the main room, located right next to the kitchen. It was always locked and we had to ask for it to be opened (on the inside, you had to ask for everything). It was very rudimentary, but it was an extra space I could go. I could not look at the acrylic paints (too brightly coloured) or the paintbrushes (mangled), but the coloured pencils were more than satisfactory.

I discovered this beautiful artwork buried under a mound of papers. This was the best art in the whole establishment! Clearly this is someone who is very creative, very talented. This artwork inspired me in a big way. I would very much like to know who drew it.

I started by sharpening all of the pencils because about half of them were blunt — all except black, because there was no black pencil. One day, I began to draw with the pencils. I was drawing on the shittiest paper imaginable. It was more like the paper that you use to wash your hands with after going to the toilet. Yet it felt so good to be finally doing something constructive.

I could feel myself becoming more creative. I mainly drew things that I had drawn before. Because I didn’t have any references to go off (no internet). I drew in little patches. Over the course of three days I added more and more. It had nearly finished and there was a small empty patch at the top left.

The next day they took over half of the pencils away! So I felt like I wasn’t able to finish; I couldn’t, because only half the pencils were left! The thing is, artists like their colours. How can they leave us without the red, blue and black?! Two of them are primaries!

I was forever asking and asserting for them to return the red and blue pencils because there was no red and blue ones left. “The black I can sort of understand because they were not here to begin with”, I proclaimed. A male nurse who was sitting with me said I was getting “agitated” — “I’m not agitated, I’m frustrated”, I quickly contended. I mean it’s a bit like asking a musician to play a guitar that is missing three strings! Isn’t it? He just didn’t seem to get it at all. He told me that it wasn’t a university equipped art room. I knew that. Of course. Still, it bothered me.

It occurred to me later that maybe I could learn something about myself from this encounter. I mean, it seems to me that art is very important to me. For others, it is clearly not. So I realise now that this –art– is something I care about, something I’m passionate about, much moreso than your average Joe.

It dawned upon me that the illustration shown above is a beautiful piece of art –although it only has four colours in it. Well I already knew about using limited colour palettes in art, but not in the sense of having half my palette inadvertently taken away from me. I started thinking about using the tools at hand. I’ve seen popular TV shows where professional photographers are forced to use the crappiest cameras imaginable. And they invariably still come up with fantastic photographs. I was also reminded about something my dad used to say: “a poor workman blames his tools”. From then on, I pretended that the lack of available hues was an intentional choice; for my next drawing, I used just three colours.

Was I being an OCD wanker about the pencils? I don’t know. You tell me. It’s totally okay now though because it made me more aware of what is important to me, my passion, my aptitude, my creative ability, my drawing skill. Some people care, other’s don’t.

One item they returned sooner than the other [electronic] ones was my Illustration book written by Andrew Hall. I was extremely glad to have something like that to continue reading. I guess they don’t see books as any kind of danger to mentally ill people?

One day, I forget which one, I took two packets of biscuits at afternoon tea time. Because there were only three biscuits to a pack! And I thought six biscuits was a fairly reasonable number to eat. One of the security nurses saw me and told me to put it back. I hadn’t even sat down. I swooped around and back it went – back into the same bowl from whence it came! The whole time, they were eyeing us like hawks. This is what I had to endure…

After about four or five days, I had talked to all but one of the patients at length. Mainly because the nurses were essentially too busy for more than a 5 minute chat. At first I didn’t know whether they were violent patients or not. So I was curious about that (for my own safety). But it turns out that they were all such a great bunch of people. All of them.

After speaking to an older, wiser nurse for almost 15 minutes, I was able to turn the experience around and look at it for what it really was: an acute rehabilitation center. She recommended trying to take what you can from the experience, to ask “what can I get out of it?”.

The next meeting was my third assessment, with two psychiatrists present, one of them new. Number three psychiatrist was a female and I really opened up to her about my childhood. I was to be released “either tomorrow or the day after”.

By this stage, I was talking to new people and slowly improving (my psychologist had previously told me I was too isolated). I was going to bed and waking up at the right time. I was eating a wider range of foods than before. But most importantly, I was talking to other people who shared the same views as mine. I was not alone. In fact I decided to stay a few extra days.

All in all I stayed a total of eight days inside that pyschiatric hospital ward. Others had been in there anything from one day, to one month (and in one case, five months). Towards the end of my penultimate day, the same porky pyschiatrist came into my room and asked me the exact same question, just like he had asked me the week before. This time, I answered ‘no’. No I wasn’t suicidal.

The good news is that I do feel more optimistic upon exiting the facility. My motivation level is improved. I haven’t had any further suicidal thoughts. Maybe the lesson here is that we shouldn’t be so quick to make generalised assumptions about how our future lives are going to turn out?

No one came to pick me up from the hospital, but I was well enough to catch the bus home. I must say that my newfound sense of freedom felt very strange after being locked up for more than a whole week. I was waiting at the bus stop and wondered whether to buy a snack for the journey home. In the end, I decided not to. Just knowing that I could buy something without having to ask anyone anything made me smile.

I did some further reading about that place a few weeks later. And it turns out that no one has ever died in that facility. Not for any reason. So maybe Mister PorkFace was right after all? Maybe it was a safer place to be after all, if only temporarily?

And when you said that no one’s listening
Why’d your best friend drop a dime?
Sometimes, we get so tired of waiting for a way to spend our time

Axl Rose, Coma GNR.

PARTII: “They’ll be waitin’ for an answer but you know nobody’s home.”

March 18, 2018 — leslie dean brown

Illustration by leslie dean brown. © 2019. All rights reserved.

Believe it or not, but I just spent all of last week in the loony bin… here’s how it happened:

[continued from part I]

Yes I was admitted to hospital over a week ago. First to the local emergency department. And then later transferred 1.5 hours away to the nearest mental health unit (aka “psychiatric ward” aka “lunatic asylum”). This is how my journey began.

I decided to opt for the back seat because I didn’t want to talk to anyone. The nurse sat beside me with the driver in front. I was very quiet, looking out the window at the world go by. At about the half way mark, I started to get nervous, because they were mentioning this thing called a “psych ward” with increasing frequency. Previously they had really only told me that I was being transferred to another larger hospital.

The nerves morphed into nausea. I told them I felt sick. I asked for more air. They gave me a vomit bag. The driver pulled over and not long afterwards, I vomited. Ugh. It must have been the blood test on the empty stomach that did it (and sitting in the back seat). They offered for me to move to the front seat. Pretty soon, I started to feel much better and started talking to the driver. We both agreed: this world is in trouble. And if you’ve been reading this blog, you know why. The nurse asked me: “Is all this why you’re depressed?”. “Partially”, I replied. “Partially.”

I was fine for the rest of the trip, but I was disoriented. We arrived at this weird-looking building with tall, thin vertical windows with corrugated iron cladding. I’d never been here before. I remember being escorted through several locked security doors. The sun was high up in the sky and I couldn’t tell which way was North.

We ended up in a little interrogation room and they told me to take a seat. There was a single chair with armrests in the center of the room. I sat, wondering whether or not to get myself comfortable by using the backrest. It was all a bit odd. They kept asking me if I knew why I was here. I knew. Truthfully? I don’t even remember what else they asked me. Probably my name and date of birth.

Oh I remember! There was a multiple choice questionnaire, that’s right. A K10 anxiety and depression checklist, not the usual Depression and Anxiety Stress Scale (DASS) scoring template I was already familiar with.

“About how often do you feel depressed?”, the nurse asked with a cheery voice. “All of the time”, I responded bleakly. She filled in the little circle at the far right end of the same row. “About how often did you feel that everything was an effort?”, the nurse asked. “All of the time”, by now almost monotone. She filled in another little circle at the far right end. The month prior, my depression scores were listed as ‘severe’. They literally could not get any worse.

I remember being told to remove all of my belongings except the clothes I was wearing (for some reason I got to keep my wallet although they did ask for that too). Without my phone and car keys weighing down both pockets I felt almost naked. I was searched with a metal detector.

Then I was escorted through another set of double doors commonly seen throughout hospitals. I’m pretty sure they had a metal grid inside the window portion, for added security. My purple Crumpler^® messenger bag sat on the floor on the other side of that doorway. I think here is when the shock really started to set in because –unlike at an airport security checkpoint– I was not immediately reunited with my possessions.

Once inside, they sat me down at a round table which was bolted to the floor with sturdy metal L-shaped brackets. I was presented with a piece of paper to sign. I began to read through the document, which was printed on a single sheet of A4-sized paper. It was the terms and conditions regarding my voluntary admission.

I think it all seemed pretty routine for the nurse. As for me, I was still in a state of complete shock. I hesitated for a moment. There were about eight people in the room. Lord knows what was wrong with them. Another patient wandered over in my direction, and, keeping his distance, said to me in rather a loud voice something along the lines of: “Can I give you some advice? don’t stay here if you don’t have to be here, everyone wants to get out of here if you can leave just go get out of here don’t sign anything!”, like it was one drawn out sentence with no pauses in between. Hmmm. Not a good sign.

I glanced around this room and outside towards the 20-foot security walls and the abundance of dull grey cement and concrete (yes I know the difference between the two by the way). It all all looked very sterile. Even the raggedy-looking tomato plant appeared to be depressed. To me, it all looked (and felt) like a virtual prison. That’s probably because that’s exactly what it was!

I also noticed that there was a complete lack of art on the walls –and taking this complete stranger’s sage advice– decided not to sign. It all seemed like a very depressing environment to be in and I just didn’t want to be there. “Fuck ’em!”, I thought. “I’m not staying here a moment longer than I have to”, I resigned. Besides, I held this belief: “Shit, this is really going to interfere with my work” somewhere in the back of my mind.

“I can’t sign that.”, I said. Out loud. “I won’t sign.”, I said again, emphatically. Now I don’t know if everyone realises this, but there’s a whole world of difference between the two words “can’t” and “won’t” (for some people at least). And I thought that saying both of them strongly enough, sequentially, that they would somehow synergistically add up and give me a tiny bit more clout than either word used alone would. Nope.

“I don’t need to be here”, I thought, looking around the room one last time, utterly convinced of my decision-making abilities. “What happens if I don’t sign?”, I then asked (inquisitively and a admittedly a little belatedly). “If you don’t sign we can keep you for up to two hours until you see a doctor who can release you”, I was promptly told. “Well two hours is better than two weeks”, I muttered to myself, and stubbornly refused to cooperate with them any further.

I don’t exactly remember what happened next –whether I was standing or sitting or where– but it wasn’t long before I was ushered by one of the nurses into another small private room. A large man with a somewhat porky face and dark complexion walked in. I started answering a whole bunch of his questions. And then I realised I didn’t even know who the fuck I was talking to. I couldn’t even remember his name. “Are you a psychiatrist?” I asked, once again belatedly. “Yes I’m a type of psychiatrist” he said with a charming English accent. And I was like “okay… fine… good… I’ll be able to prove to this bloke of my sanity… finally I get to talk to someone intelligent!”.

Please keep in mind that I just wanted to leave this place and go straight back home to pat my dog. Because it’s the little things like that that make me feel ‘happy’. Access to all of those little creature comforts we tend to take for granted. Plus my freedom. And I thought that if they made me stay –if they forced me to– there was a fairly strong chance I’d either throw a temper tantrum, try to escape or worse yet kill myself. There was just no way this was going to work for me. Because I was already at rock bottom. “I can’t stay here two weeks.”, I said, while shaking my head resoundingly as I often do for added effect.

Once again, I was asked whether I knew why I was here. Maybe the real problem was that I was too honest? Yesterday, I had visited my local community health centre. To try and get some more help. Because I felt that the monthly visits to my psychologist were not enough. They were helping –sure– but only very slowly (cognitive behavioral therapy or CBT as it is known is inherently a slow process). So I had told the occupational therapist my latest thoughts. I had told her everything. That’s why I was here in the first place… of course I knew why I was here.

He told me that they were worried about me and spun the old “duty of care” argument. Uh oh… I could see where this was going…

Because although I didn’t wanted to kill myself right there and then in that exact moment, I had dwelled on it for some time. I hadn’t completely ruled out the possibility of doing something like that in the future. If my situation were to get worse for example, as a kind of an escape route from my relentless suffering. Like if my mum or my sister died, or some other fairly drastic and unexpected life event. For example if my dog was ever taken away from me — simply being with her was one of life’s few remaining pleasures.

Quite frankly, yes, I was almost over it. I almost could not take any more. Almost. I had had around forty hours of cognitive behaviorial therapy in the last three years alone. My change of career was about ten times harder than I ever imagined. I didn’t feel very successful. I had no motivation left. My sleeping patterns were a complete mess. I felt hopeless. Useless. I had basically had enough of it. It might be the least desirable option, but it’s still an option. My secret option. And I had briefly checked out on that option too.

So I don’t even remember if he asked me this next question before or after the previous paragraphs, but he said it in a strange, roundabout way. Instead of asking whether I had ever had (or currently had) suicidal thoughts or asking me directly whether I wanted to kill myself, he posed the question in the conditional, subjunctive form, like this:

“If I were to ask you whether you wanted to kill yourself, what would you then say to me?”.

Now that’s a strange way of asking somebody something, isn’t it? Is this some kind of pyschiatrists’ trick? Since I’m a rather fond of learning languages, I’ve since learned that this is called “the subjunctive mood”. Right. Looking back on it now, yes, it’s rather clever now that I think about it. All of a sudden this became a hypothetical scenario. Yes hypothetically I might want to kill myself in the future if the situation got worse. And then there was an awkwardly long pause on my behalf. Too long. Like nearly this long:

He had caught me off guard. Dammit! Yes I felt about as guilty as Jan Ullrich when asked about doping. But I didn’t smile or laugh because it wasn’t funny. Nothing was. “It’s too soon”, I remember thinking. “I’m not that suicidal. Not right now. Not yet. I’m not ready to do it yet. I’m only partially suicidal.”

Lots of things were going through my mind, but I still hadn’t answered yet! I’m not one to tell lies. Should I answer “maybe”? “Not right now”? “Sometimes”? None of these are good answers. I realise now that when you’re in this kind of predicament, anything other than a straight up ‘no’ is not the right answer. In the end I decided upon saying “how can I answer that question?”. I couldn’t think of what else to say. But the alternative was to sit there and say nothing for even longer. My lame response was a partial admission of my suicidal tendencies.

It was around this point in the conversation that he said “we can keep you here as an involuntary patient” and “I don’t take this decision lightly” (or whatever way he said it). I was astonished. “You want to put a suicidally depressed patient into a more depressing environment?!”, I remarked.

I felt like a tiny insect who had flown unwittingly into the outer perimeter of a very large spiderweb. The web had been spun well before I had entered the room that day. And the juicy big orb spider was coming to get me. It was a trap and suddenly I was stuck! Fuck!

You see, up until then, I had assumed that if I voluntarily walked into one of these centres, that I could voluntarily walk straight out again. Wrong!

I honestly wish I had a fucking tape recorder with me, but I didn’t have one so apologies if this next section isn’t verbatim and/or with the correct sequence of events. He looked me right in the eye (or I looked him right in the eye if you prefer) and he said: “The state wants to keep you alive” (or the equivalent, the only words I really remember were ‘state’, ‘you’ and ‘alive’). Or maybe he said “The state has a duty to keep you alive”, or something else very much like that — sorry, I just I don’t bloody remember.

“The risk to you is less in here than out there” the man said. To which I promptly replied: “but you haven’t seen my home environment, so how can you make that judgement? YOU don’t know!“. Then he repeated himself and I repeated myself. A few times actually. I was getting anxious. And then I said “well we’re just going ’round in circles”. The nurse nodded in agreement. The meeting was basically over at that point. There was to be no further discussion or compromise.

I had been classified as either a “mentally ill patient” or a “mentally disordered patient” (I’m still not sure which one). Basically, I was sick. How had I let things get this far? I don’t know. Depression is the disease of the 21st century; it wears an invisibility cloak and it can creep up behind you while you least expect it. Somewhere along the line, I had been gradually losing hope about my future.

By now it was dawning on me that there was not going to be an exit from here any time soon. Whether I signed that silly admission form or not, they were not going to release me back into the big bad world for a while. That was it. I was to be admitted as an involuntary patient at a psychiatric hospital ward.

[continued to part III]

They’ll be callin’ in the morning
They’ll be hanging on the phone
They’ll be waitin’ for an answer
But you know nobody’s home
And when the bells stop ringing
It was nobody’s fault but your own

Axl Rose, Coma GNR.

Dance to the tension of a world on edge

December 31, 2016 — leslie dean brown

Have you ever noticed that we humans are becoming ever more stressed?

We live in a world where the tiniest provocative remark can result in the most horrific retaliatory acts of violence imaginable. Look the wrong way, say or do the wrong thing and you could be the next target. Why is that so?

But many of us still don’t know why. “He must be crazy”, they’ll say. Why are people so stressed? Many people still can’t answer this.

Sometimes it is said that society itself is decaying, but no one knows why. I know that even when I studied science, I could never figure it out. I could never seem to connect the dots.

And then one day while I was travelling in Tonga, I came across this book with an intruiging title called “future shock”. I read it in about two or three days. It completely altered my world view.

[Read more…]

Life from an outsider’s perspective

December 13, 2016 — leslie dean brown

My advice to anyone thinking of moving to a foreign land is to start thinking of yourself as an immigrant not just an expatriate, accept the local culture for what it is, try your HARDEST to learn the language and use it wherever possible. Don’t make the minimum effort – go for maximum effort! Think of it this way: Language is the very basis of communication, hence it is also the foundation of a new culture.

Talk with local people as often as possible, mix with them, mingle. Eventually you’ll create new friends & associates who you can talk to openly, then you may start to understand why their culture is the way it is. Always remember that no culture is superior to another… but we can ask the question “why are so they different?”

Contrary to popular belief, anyone can learn a new language, it just takes a lot of effort. Many English-only speaking people tend to think that the English language is superior to all others, and furthermore, that it is the responsibility of “foreigners” to learn English (even in non-English speaking countries!). But they also tend to under-appreciate genuine attempts to learn English. They take for granted the ability to speak, because they’re ignorant about the level of effort needed to learn a second language. I know, because I was definitely guilty of that when I could only speak one language. We expect to hear perfect English, but that is almost like asking the impossible. That mentality is just so wrong! It’s hypocritical, arrogant & conceited.

There are no foreign lands. It is the traveller only who is foreign. – Robert Louis Stevenson

To all immigrants and expatriates, I say the following: realise you’re not bringing your home nation with you. If you think your own culture or country is superior, ask yourself why you are moving away from it. After learning the local language, you should attempt to meld the best customs or attributes that you’ve learned from each separate culture. Try to understand the patterns of social behaviour from the perspective of a culture other than your own. Avoid falling victim to “immiscible culture” syndrome, where you fail to truly integrate & assimilate with local culture.

Farming Mars

December 12, 2016 — leslie dean brown

Another one wants to colonise Mars! Sorry, I can’t help myself:

Breakthroughs happen only when we stretch our physical limits

To make Planet Earth survivable, we envision what’s possible on Mars.

The Mars Farm Odyssey is an international consortium of like minds: companies, researchers, NGOs and government groups from the United States to China. We connect bleeding edge technologies and science in Controlled Environment Agriculture to feed a planet of 10 billion Earthlings at home and on Mars.

http://fluxiot.com/marse.io/

Whenever I see people talking about colonising Mars, I just have to speak up. And sorry for the language that is going to come, but I feel very passionate about this.

Dreamers! I think you’ll find that Earth, even in the “semi fucked” state that it’s in, is a far better home for people. Nicer. Easier. Cheaper. Better. Better ROI. Easier for people to adjust to.

Sorry to disappoint you, but there is not enough rocket fuel on this planet for 10 billion people… not only that, but the more people you get there, the more you are going to fuck things here. The fable “the dog and the bone comes to mind”.

And if it did work, if it was self-sufficient on Mars for a few hundred or thousand people, Marslings are only going to be telling Earth people about sustainability. They’d be telling *us* not to fuck our air, water and food supply. They’d be telling us to plant more trees and buy less stuff.

I think we should only go when we can do it sustainably.

Good luck with it, seriously. I wish you good luck. And note that I’m not saying it can’t ever be done. But just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should.