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[Music]

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What does it mean to be called "crazy" in a crazy world?

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Listen to Madness Radio, voices and visions from outside mental health.

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[Music]

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Welcome to Madness Radio, this is your host Will Hall.

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And today my guest is Eri Shimrat.

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Eri is a psychiatric survivor and identifies as an escaped lunatic.

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She has been active in the psychiatric survivor movement since 1986

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when she became editor of the Canadian magazine Phoenix Rising,

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the voice of the psychiatrist.

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She co-founded the Ontario Psychiatric Survivors Alliance

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and is the author of the book "Call Me Crazy Stories from the Mad Movement."

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So welcome to Madness Radio, Eri Shimrat.

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Thank you very much for having me, Will Hall.

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Yes, I was joking, you're one of the OGs from the psychiatric survivors movement.

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That's 1986, that's a long time.

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You carry a lot of history and you've been staying with it

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and you're still very much a part of the movement,

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so it's great to have you on the show.

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Thank you very much, it's great to be on the show.

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How should we get started?

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Do you want to just tell us how you escaped being a lunatic?

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So the first time was in 1978.

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I was 20 years old.

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My life had fallen apart.

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I'd been living with my father after my parents' divorce

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and my father told me that he was getting married

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and I couldn't live with him anymore.

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And my boyfriend dumped me and the program I was absolutely confident

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of getting into in university creative writing program

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at the university where my father taught, rejected me.

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And then I took a bunch of acid and went crazy.

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A bunch of LSD?

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Yes.

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Aha, how much is a bunch?

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Actually, not a whole lot.

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Some LSD and went nuts.

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I didn't mention this in my book, the LSD,

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because I didn't want people to be down on LSD, which I still like.

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Okay, well, at times they've changed since 1986.

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LSD is now a psychiatric treatment.

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So we've come completely full circle with that.

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Oh, how I used to wish they would treat me

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with psychedelics when they were drowning me and howled all.

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Oh, yeah.

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They haven't come full circle.

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That full circle.

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Yeah.

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No, no, no, they're not quite that.

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But when you say you took LSD, like as a frustration or desperation

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or-- No, no, no, no, no, no, for fun.

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For fun.

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Okay.

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And then you said you went crazy.

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So what happened?

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I entered another universe, which I later named

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the Land of Total Magic.

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And I vividly remember being in the graduate student lounge

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at the Ross Building at York University in North Toronto,

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the Ross Building, being where my dad taught.

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And there was, in my mind, perhaps in some reality,

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perhaps in consensus reality, a band playing,

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and in a sort of pit, a lower area was seating around it,

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which was real.

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And I imagine that the rest of this did not happen

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in consensus reality.

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I went up to the piano player and suggested he do something

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different.

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And I was affecting what this musical group was doing

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and tripping really hard and having a really good time

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and feeling that I had connected with the music of the spheres.

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I don't have a sense of how much time went by in between things

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and during things.

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But some time not too long after that

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and after I had also been writing all over bathroom walls

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and ceilings by standing on the toilet with a felt pen.

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And generally being very weird, I was in the car with my dad

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coming home from the university.

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And I said, you know, I can make all the light screen

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all the way home.

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While you were tripping on acid, you were in a car with your dad.

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Yeah, I had done the acid.

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I don't know how many days previous,

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but I never came down from it.

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OK.

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I presumed that had to do with the enormous stress

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that I was under.

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And it was pretty early in my career as an acid head as well.

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Anyway, my memory is that the lights were indeed green

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all the way home.

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And my father got into a panic.

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And not too long after that, I imagine

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took me to our family doctor who had a little chat with me

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and told me I needed to go to the hospital.

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And so I found myself in the hospital trying

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to run away from staff before I was even

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admitted and hiding in the bathroom.

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But they got me and they did the thing that they do

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of stripping my clothes off and sticking a needle in my ass

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and putting in restraints and putting in a solitary confinement

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like they do to make people better in the wonderful world

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of mental health.

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You were just in the universe of magic

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and just having a grand old time tripping.

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And your dad thought, this is a problem.

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Let's take you to the doctor and the doctor and his wisdom.

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Said, OK, let's put you in the hospital.

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And you tried to bolt.

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And then the violence comes down.

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Did they ask you if you wanted to go to the hospital or--

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No, no, nobody asked me anything at any point.

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They just shipped you over there.

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I don't know how I physically got there,

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whether my father took me there or ambulances were involved

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by that point as they were many times afterwards.

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I am guessing that my dad took me there

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and then I kind of looked around at what was happening

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and knew I didn't want to be there.

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And so that meant that I had to be forced to be there.

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So this was in 1978 as 20 years old.

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And my memory is that I was given free pills of hell,

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and a tiny ketchup cup when I went to line up

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at the nurses station four times a day, 12 pills of hell

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all day.

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That's my memory.

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And that's my memory from when I actually remembered it.

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Now it's a memory, memory, if you know what I mean.

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But I think that what's true.

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And that was after I stopped saying, I won't take pills.

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So it was after I stopped being given needles.

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Did you stop tripping at this point?

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Did you--

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No, I didn't stop tripping for months.

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I have a paradoxical reaction to neuroleptics.

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So I started tripping harder.

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Was it still like the magical universe happy?

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No, no, no, no.

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And there was an element of magic.

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I remember thinking that a drawer in a dresser in my room--

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did I really have a dresser in my room?

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Maybe-- was full of brightly colored things,

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like fruit loops, but they were all infused

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with psychedelic drugs.

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I would eat them as often as I could.

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I think at this point, my mind was on a scape in a way

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that it hadn't been when I initially

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took the acid that sent me away.

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So I'm just interested in the state of consciousness

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that you were in.

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So you didn't really come down, but you

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started to have a negative trip.

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When you say you were still tripping

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and you kept tripping for months, what was going on in that state?

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It certainly was psychedelic induced

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where you having really strange visual images.

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And what was the tripping like that kept

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going?

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I think that from what I remember,

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the only visual, strange in the sire

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remember was thinking that my drawer was full of psychedelic

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fruit loops.

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I think I was mostly seeing with my eyes what was actually

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in front of me.

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At the same time, I was being violently incapacitated

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by the hal-dol.

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So I was nuts.

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I wasn't happy anymore.

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And yeah, I felt desperate and terrified.

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I think I felt desperate and terrified for a long time

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before I actually started feeling angry.

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I often confuse my first and second hospitalization.

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The first one was in the suburban hospital

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that was so close to where I lived that I

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could see what I used to call the chimneys where they burned

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the mental patients from my mother's apartment balcony

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when I got out.

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I spent several months in there, because that's

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how it went then.

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In the first admission.

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Yeah.

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And much longer in the second one, which came a year later.

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So the first admission never really came down.

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And the hal-dol had this paradoxical effect of keeping you

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in this weird altered state, except now it's not magical.

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At all, it's way darker.

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Yeah, it's becoming nightmare.

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So you were still in this altered weird state

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that's now driven by the hal-dol.

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These were back in the days when they kept people

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for a long time, 78, it was.

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So what was going on in there?

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Were you trying to get out?

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I remember my second incarceration much better

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than my first one.

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I do know that in the first one, the mental ward

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was arranged around a courtyard.

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And we had access to a courtyard that was sort of

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internal to the hospital, but outdoors.

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And there were flowers growing in there.

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And there was a swing where you could swing with another person.

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And I had friends in there, other patients.

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And I used to swing with my girlfriends, as it were.

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And a thing I did was to pick flowers and eat the petals

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and think that they were getting me more high.

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I kept wanting to get more high, though less hal-doled.

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With flower petals and fruit loops.

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Yes.

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I had some good times with my friends.

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I met a man named Mel Starkman.

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I was in there who was a close colleague of Don Weitzes,

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who was the grand papy of anti-scikiatry in Canada.

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I remember doing pencil portraits of Mel

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for some reason I could draw when I was nuts.

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And I had them for a long time and then gave them to him

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when I met him again decades later.

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So always when I've been locked up,

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I've had interesting good times with fellow inmates.

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But the hal-dol really, really f**ked me up, as you can imagine.

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And I was unhappy in wanting out and physically a mess.

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And eventually I got out after a few months.

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I don't know how many months and immediately went off the drugs.

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Why did they keep you so long?

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You were still in this state and they just kept seeing you

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doing weird stuff and they said, well, we've got to keep her longer.

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It was pretty standard to keep people for a long time.

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I don't know if there was more than one psych ward at that hospital,

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but if there was, I was on the long-term one.

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And they weren't seeing me improve.

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They weren't seeing what they wanted to see,

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which is that I lie down and shut up, I guess.

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But eventually you got out of that.

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Eventually I got out.

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I went out again.

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But your parents, they agreed with the doctors?

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Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

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Thanks for reminding me of my parents,

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because at one point I actually managed to run away

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in my hospital pajamas and arrive at my mother's house,

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which they both lived near each other and near the hospital.

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How did you manage to run away?

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I don't know.

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I don't know how I just found the time when the door was unlocked

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or something like that.

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I don't remember.

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The details of it, but I do remember that.

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I arrived at my mother's house and she called my father

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and they were both in the same room for the first time

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since the divorce five years earlier.

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You know, that being remarkable to me,

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but what they then did when they were both in there,

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I was to call the police to have me put back in the hospital.

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Uh.

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Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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Eventually you got out of the first hospitalization.

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Why did you go back in?

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I went off the drugs and got very mental again.

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Eventually I was sleeping at night in the hospital.

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So they must have been giving me benzodiazepines as well

259
00:12:04,240 --> 00:12:06,320
because those made me sleep.

260
00:12:06,320 --> 00:12:10,680
I guess I went off benzos as well as neuroleptics

261
00:12:10,680 --> 00:12:15,160
and became very visibly bonkers

262
00:12:15,160 --> 00:12:22,880
and was locked up again in August of 1979.

263
00:12:22,880 --> 00:12:24,640
I'm curious about the bonkers park

264
00:12:24,640 --> 00:12:27,560
because now we don't have LSD as an ingredient

265
00:12:27,560 --> 00:12:30,800
and we don't have how long we may well have.

266
00:12:30,800 --> 00:12:31,880
Oh, I see.

267
00:12:31,880 --> 00:12:34,760
So you got out of the hospital and then you're going off your meds

268
00:12:34,760 --> 00:12:37,280
and then you're also back interested in psychedelic.

269
00:12:37,280 --> 00:12:38,800
Yeah, I think that's right.

270
00:12:38,800 --> 00:12:41,960
I think I did more LSD and that assisted me

271
00:12:41,960 --> 00:12:45,120
in going completely off the deep end again.

272
00:12:45,120 --> 00:12:47,000
Do you think that they're wanting to escape

273
00:12:47,000 --> 00:12:50,520
and all the stressors that you had been under previously?

274
00:12:50,520 --> 00:12:54,480
We're also playing a factor again and wanting to take more LSD

275
00:12:54,480 --> 00:12:56,640
or what was your interest there.

276
00:12:56,640 --> 00:12:58,880
I hadn't had enough fun for a long time

277
00:12:58,880 --> 00:13:02,520
and I wanted to have fun and LSD was still my idea of fun.

278
00:13:02,520 --> 00:13:05,200
It's less so now, but I don't reject it.

279
00:13:05,200 --> 00:13:07,920
So you went bonkers and then your family put you back in?

280
00:13:07,920 --> 00:13:11,560
This time it was August of 1979

281
00:13:11,560 --> 00:13:15,120
and both of my parents were in Israel, I think.

282
00:13:15,120 --> 00:13:20,200
And I was behaving weirdly at my mother's apartment

283
00:13:20,200 --> 00:13:21,480
where I was staying.

284
00:13:21,480 --> 00:13:25,240
Two friends came over and were very concerned about me

285
00:13:25,240 --> 00:13:30,320
and shoveled me into a taxi to take me to a hospital.

286
00:13:30,320 --> 00:13:32,960
I don't know how I didn't end up back at Branson Hospital,

287
00:13:32,960 --> 00:13:35,760
the suburban place I could see from where I lived.

288
00:13:35,760 --> 00:13:40,080
I ended up at Mount Sinai Hospital in downtown Toronto.

289
00:13:40,080 --> 00:13:45,240
I had done a year of university before I went crazy

290
00:13:45,240 --> 00:13:48,480
and I really wanted to go back to university.

291
00:13:48,480 --> 00:13:51,360
I think it was August when I got locked up again

292
00:13:51,360 --> 00:13:55,320
and then September came, but the faculty at York was striking.

293
00:13:55,320 --> 00:14:00,320
So I made my father promise that he would have me out of there

294
00:14:00,320 --> 00:14:03,240
by the time university was back in session

295
00:14:03,240 --> 00:14:05,440
and I could go on to year two of university.

296
00:14:05,440 --> 00:14:06,800
I really wanted to.

297
00:14:06,800 --> 00:14:10,040
He was of course unable either to say no

298
00:14:10,040 --> 00:14:11,720
or to keep that promise.

299
00:14:11,720 --> 00:14:13,520
I mean, technically he could have got me out

300
00:14:13,520 --> 00:14:17,600
but he was scared horribly frightened by what I had become

301
00:14:17,600 --> 00:14:22,120
and didn't feel like I would be safe out in the world and so on.

302
00:14:22,120 --> 00:14:24,040
So that didn't happen.

303
00:14:24,040 --> 00:14:26,200
University started up again without me in it

304
00:14:26,200 --> 00:14:29,360
and I basically never spoke to my father again

305
00:14:29,360 --> 00:14:32,960
and he died in October of that year.

306
00:14:32,960 --> 00:14:33,800
- Oh wow.

307
00:14:33,800 --> 00:14:37,560
- And when the social worker told me that my father had died,

308
00:14:37,560 --> 00:14:39,400
I assumed that it was an experiment

309
00:14:39,400 --> 00:14:41,160
to see how I would react to such a thing

310
00:14:41,160 --> 00:14:42,400
whether I'd have a normal reaction.

311
00:14:42,400 --> 00:14:44,120
So I tried to put out a normal reaction

312
00:14:44,120 --> 00:14:46,840
but I didn't realize until another year after

313
00:14:46,840 --> 00:14:48,440
when I was locked up somewhere else

314
00:14:48,440 --> 00:14:50,560
that my father had actually died.

315
00:14:50,560 --> 00:14:52,840
- Because you were in the hospital when they told you that he had...

316
00:14:52,840 --> 00:14:54,080
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

317
00:14:54,080 --> 00:14:55,880
- Oh wow, wow.

318
00:14:55,880 --> 00:14:59,120
- I'm gonna skip to the future, a cute story about that

319
00:14:59,120 --> 00:15:04,120
because in the hospital I finally escaped from in 1980.

320
00:15:04,120 --> 00:15:07,200
I told my psychiatrist that I had been told

321
00:15:07,200 --> 00:15:09,440
that my dad had died but didn't actually realize

322
00:15:09,440 --> 00:15:12,880
that it was true until I got to this other hospital

323
00:15:12,880 --> 00:15:15,760
which was in the States and that when I realized

324
00:15:15,760 --> 00:15:16,800
that my father was dead,

325
00:15:16,800 --> 00:15:18,800
I said to him, "I just howled."

326
00:15:18,800 --> 00:15:21,640
His response was, "I didn't realize you were psychotic

327
00:15:21,640 --> 00:15:22,840
when you were admitted."

328
00:15:22,840 --> 00:15:24,080
- Meaning what?

329
00:15:24,080 --> 00:15:28,000
- Nice, meaning that if somebody howls their psychotic.

330
00:15:28,000 --> 00:15:31,520
Animals, howl, animals and psychotics, not, you know, people.

331
00:15:31,520 --> 00:15:33,240
- So you howled because you were realizing

332
00:15:33,240 --> 00:15:35,720
that your father died and now your doctor just says,

333
00:15:35,720 --> 00:15:37,040
"Okay, you're psychotic."

334
00:15:37,040 --> 00:15:39,280
- Yeah, he said I didn't realize you were psychotic

335
00:15:39,280 --> 00:15:41,360
when you were admitted because it was obvious

336
00:15:41,360 --> 00:15:43,960
that I wasn't psychotic when I was talking to him.

337
00:15:43,960 --> 00:15:46,160
I should probably go back to chronology here.

338
00:15:46,160 --> 00:15:49,720
At Mount Sinai, I had a doctor,

339
00:15:49,720 --> 00:15:52,760
I would have liked her except she was making me take

340
00:15:52,760 --> 00:15:55,280
stelazine and then nose and end,

341
00:15:55,280 --> 00:15:57,680
two more old fashioned neuroleptics.

342
00:15:57,680 --> 00:16:00,960
The drugs were really, really fucking me up.

343
00:16:00,960 --> 00:16:04,280
I don't know how long I was at Mount Sinai

344
00:16:04,280 --> 00:16:07,400
before I stopped being crazy but again,

345
00:16:07,400 --> 00:16:10,520
they were giving me value and so I was sleeping

346
00:16:10,520 --> 00:16:12,800
and I did stop being crazy after a time

347
00:16:12,800 --> 00:16:15,520
even though they were still giving me neuroleptics.

348
00:16:15,520 --> 00:16:20,160
And many months into my incarceration at Mount Sinai,

349
00:16:20,160 --> 00:16:23,680
I said to a doctor, the drugs you're giving me

350
00:16:23,680 --> 00:16:28,200
aren't doing me any good and I don't feel like I need them.

351
00:16:28,200 --> 00:16:30,440
I would like you to take me off them.

352
00:16:30,440 --> 00:16:33,880
And I believe she tapered me and I know that

353
00:16:33,880 --> 00:16:36,440
towards the end of my stay at that hospital,

354
00:16:36,440 --> 00:16:39,760
when I got in the lineup for the ketchup cup full of pills

355
00:16:39,760 --> 00:16:43,040
with everybody else, the only pill in my ketchup cup

356
00:16:43,040 --> 00:16:45,280
was a birth control pill.

357
00:16:45,280 --> 00:16:46,120
- Oh.

358
00:16:46,120 --> 00:16:47,960
- Yeah, 'cause I had value in PRN

359
00:16:47,960 --> 00:16:50,520
but the only thing I took every day was a birth control pill.

360
00:16:50,520 --> 00:16:52,320
I also always made sure to get laid

361
00:16:52,320 --> 00:16:54,560
at least once at every hospital I was ever at.

362
00:16:54,560 --> 00:16:58,280
So my father died.

363
00:16:58,280 --> 00:17:01,000
There was actually a memorial service for him

364
00:17:01,000 --> 00:17:05,680
in the chapel of the hospital attended by other family members

365
00:17:05,680 --> 00:17:09,280
and still I thought it was all fake to see what I was gonna do.

366
00:17:09,280 --> 00:17:13,840
And then because I had been off neuroleptics for a while,

367
00:17:13,840 --> 00:17:18,560
my despair completely transformed into furious anger

368
00:17:18,560 --> 00:17:20,040
at being locked up.

369
00:17:20,040 --> 00:17:22,880
I got into all kinds of delightful adventures

370
00:17:22,880 --> 00:17:25,480
with fellow inmates and so on and so forth,

371
00:17:25,480 --> 00:17:29,040
but I also started acting up, we're acting out.

372
00:17:29,040 --> 00:17:32,960
Notably, I set fire to some paper in a metal garbage can

373
00:17:32,960 --> 00:17:36,480
in the middle of a room and was then deemed a pyromaniac

374
00:17:36,480 --> 00:17:39,240
and told that they couldn't keep pyromaniacs in this hospital

375
00:17:39,240 --> 00:17:41,240
so they're gonna send me somewhere else.

376
00:17:41,240 --> 00:17:43,120
- Do you remember why you set the fire?

377
00:17:43,120 --> 00:17:45,200
- For fun, to be a brat, for fun.

378
00:17:45,200 --> 00:17:48,480
I like fire, I wanna see some fire, I'm gonna do it safely.

379
00:17:48,480 --> 00:17:52,040
I don't know how I had anything to light anything with.

380
00:17:52,040 --> 00:17:53,720
You know, we're all prantic cigarette smokers

381
00:17:53,720 --> 00:17:55,720
but we weren't allowed to have lighters on us

382
00:17:55,720 --> 00:17:57,040
but somehow I did that.

383
00:17:57,040 --> 00:17:59,400
Because we smuggled the pack of matches or something.

384
00:17:59,400 --> 00:18:01,520
Anyway, as far as I can reconstruct things,

385
00:18:01,520 --> 00:18:02,520
my father had died.

386
00:18:02,520 --> 00:18:04,360
He had left an amount of money for me and my brother.

387
00:18:04,360 --> 00:18:06,200
My brother took charge of all the money.

388
00:18:06,200 --> 00:18:08,480
Part of that money was used to ship me to a hospital

389
00:18:08,480 --> 00:18:10,560
in Bethesda, Maryland.

390
00:18:10,560 --> 00:18:12,160
- Oh, okay.

391
00:18:12,160 --> 00:18:14,440
So when I was told that I wasn't gonna be staying

392
00:18:14,440 --> 00:18:17,200
at Mount Sinai but I would still have to be in hospital,

393
00:18:17,200 --> 00:18:20,960
they said they were gonna send me somewhere in California

394
00:18:20,960 --> 00:18:23,720
and I said, that sounds fantastic.

395
00:18:23,720 --> 00:18:24,720
(laughing)

396
00:18:24,720 --> 00:18:25,880
Oh, let's do that.

397
00:18:25,880 --> 00:18:27,600
But then I ended up in Maryland.

398
00:18:27,600 --> 00:18:30,080
- In the pyromaniac wing of the...

399
00:18:30,080 --> 00:18:33,200
- No, I ended up in a low-sjurity building

400
00:18:33,200 --> 00:18:37,000
at the Shepherd Pratt Looney bin in Towson actually,

401
00:18:37,000 --> 00:18:40,040
next to Bethesda but it was quite close to Johns Hopkins.

402
00:18:40,040 --> 00:18:45,040
I got there, I think, in June of 1980.

403
00:18:45,040 --> 00:18:47,960
Oh, I skipped an important part.

404
00:18:47,960 --> 00:18:49,760
When I was locked up at Mount Sinai

405
00:18:49,760 --> 00:18:54,240
and I had just turned 22 so it was April of 1980.

406
00:18:54,240 --> 00:18:56,280
I'd been in there all that time.

407
00:18:56,280 --> 00:18:59,360
They sent me to a group home called Regeneration House

408
00:18:59,360 --> 00:19:01,720
which I instantly named Regeneration House

409
00:19:01,720 --> 00:19:04,720
and where everybody else was a complete zombie

410
00:19:04,720 --> 00:19:06,560
on your left.

411
00:19:06,560 --> 00:19:08,320
I think I got to see the house once

412
00:19:08,320 --> 00:19:10,000
before they shipped me there

413
00:19:10,000 --> 00:19:12,720
and they shipped me there with two paper bags,

414
00:19:12,720 --> 00:19:15,520
one with a hundred stelazing in it, a neorellptic

415
00:19:15,520 --> 00:19:17,880
and one with a hundred emipramine in it,

416
00:19:17,880 --> 00:19:19,720
a tricyclic antidepressant.

417
00:19:19,720 --> 00:19:21,560
I'd never taken antidepressants.

418
00:19:21,560 --> 00:19:24,480
But the day I got there, I took all 200 pills

419
00:19:24,480 --> 00:19:26,640
with some Hagen Dust chocolate ice cream

420
00:19:26,640 --> 00:19:28,920
because it was clear to me that the rest of my life

421
00:19:28,920 --> 00:19:30,880
was going to be shuttling back and forth,

422
00:19:30,880 --> 00:19:33,000
being shuttled back to the screen hospital

423
00:19:33,000 --> 00:19:35,960
in the group homes and that wasn't gonna be a life.

424
00:19:35,960 --> 00:19:40,000
So I tried to kill myself and that's the only time

425
00:19:40,000 --> 00:19:43,440
in my life that I seriously, earnestly tried to kill myself

426
00:19:43,440 --> 00:19:47,080
but I was too eager and I didn't wait until after supper.

427
00:19:47,080 --> 00:19:49,760
I would have got away with it but I couldn't wait

428
00:19:49,760 --> 00:19:51,880
and I went upstairs with my pills and my ice cream

429
00:19:51,880 --> 00:19:56,720
and some water and my roommate came up to call me dinner,

430
00:19:56,720 --> 00:19:58,640
found me unconscious and convulsing

431
00:19:58,640 --> 00:19:59,880
and they put me back in my spine,

432
00:19:59,880 --> 00:20:02,880
I pumped my stomach and the beat went on.

433
00:20:02,880 --> 00:20:05,120
So as after that in summer, I guess

434
00:20:05,120 --> 00:20:08,160
that I got feisty enough to be starting a fire

435
00:20:08,160 --> 00:20:11,440
in a garbage can and then I think it was June

436
00:20:11,440 --> 00:20:14,760
that they sent me to this place in Maryland

437
00:20:14,760 --> 00:20:19,040
which was quite great as mental hospitals go.

438
00:20:19,040 --> 00:20:22,720
It was low security and I think the word I was on

439
00:20:22,720 --> 00:20:25,840
was periodically locked but maybe not locked all the time

440
00:20:25,840 --> 00:20:27,840
and we had a million activities

441
00:20:27,840 --> 00:20:31,600
and even though they were called therapy of various kinds,

442
00:20:31,600 --> 00:20:33,680
they were good activities.

443
00:20:33,680 --> 00:20:36,960
Now when I was in outside, I one of my ward mates

444
00:20:36,960 --> 00:20:39,320
was a young woman, a beautiful young woman,

445
00:20:39,320 --> 00:20:42,400
very talented cellist who had her cello at the hospital

446
00:20:42,400 --> 00:20:44,040
and used to play it for us sometimes.

447
00:20:44,040 --> 00:20:48,160
She had gone into the hospital after having been raped

448
00:20:48,160 --> 00:20:51,280
and getting I guess a little upset about being raped

449
00:20:51,280 --> 00:20:53,720
so they decided she was mentally ill

450
00:20:53,720 --> 00:20:56,760
and one of the orderlies was raping her regularly

451
00:20:56,760 --> 00:21:01,760
in the hospital and all Penny wanted was to die.

452
00:21:01,760 --> 00:21:02,600
I get it.

453
00:21:02,600 --> 00:21:04,440
Yeah.

454
00:21:04,440 --> 00:21:08,200
My fondest memory and my only clear memory of Penny,

455
00:21:08,200 --> 00:21:10,600
herself in particular other than that she was beautiful

456
00:21:10,600 --> 00:21:14,440
and a good cellist, was that she once gave me a pill

457
00:21:14,440 --> 00:21:16,000
called Imovane.

458
00:21:16,000 --> 00:21:19,080
I understand it's in the category of both benzodiazepines

459
00:21:19,080 --> 00:21:21,240
and something called hypnotics.

460
00:21:21,240 --> 00:21:22,960
That's older, really older.

461
00:21:22,960 --> 00:21:28,120
Yeah, I think it's newer incarnation is a Zopaclom.

462
00:21:28,120 --> 00:21:30,520
Penny said she would give me one of her Imovanes

463
00:21:30,520 --> 00:21:32,760
which I understood gave a person a buzz

464
00:21:32,760 --> 00:21:35,360
and she transferred it to my mouth from her mouth

465
00:21:35,360 --> 00:21:37,840
so that was sexy and I did get a buzz off it

466
00:21:37,840 --> 00:21:38,760
and that was great.

467
00:21:38,760 --> 00:21:41,960
So then I'm in the hospital in Maryland

468
00:21:41,960 --> 00:21:45,280
and a nurse comes in and tells me that she has

469
00:21:45,280 --> 00:21:47,800
something terrible to tell me which is that my friend Penny

470
00:21:47,800 --> 00:21:50,440
from Atmantzai has died.

471
00:21:50,440 --> 00:21:54,600
And she said if you don't want to go to activities today

472
00:21:54,600 --> 00:21:56,160
you don't have to.

473
00:21:56,160 --> 00:21:57,960
And even though activities were good

474
00:21:57,960 --> 00:22:00,040
I also really like just staying in bed

475
00:22:00,040 --> 00:22:02,480
so I just stayed in bed that day and was happy for Penny

476
00:22:02,480 --> 00:22:04,360
that she had finally gotten out.

477
00:22:04,360 --> 00:22:05,720
- Is she killed herself?

478
00:22:05,720 --> 00:22:06,560
- Yes.

479
00:22:06,560 --> 00:22:08,160
And I found out later from somebody

480
00:22:08,160 --> 00:22:09,840
who'd been locked up with us both

481
00:22:09,840 --> 00:22:12,960
that she had taken no chances.

482
00:22:12,960 --> 00:22:16,520
She had taken an overdose, drank a bunch of drink

483
00:22:16,520 --> 00:22:21,520
and then got into the bathtub with an electrical point.

484
00:22:21,520 --> 00:22:23,480
So I girl knew what she was doing

485
00:22:23,480 --> 00:22:25,520
and I was just happy for her.

486
00:22:25,520 --> 00:22:27,880
I understood completely how her life felt to her

487
00:22:27,880 --> 00:22:29,640
and that she needed out.

488
00:22:29,640 --> 00:22:31,920
- Yeah, although she, I mean it was the psychiatry

489
00:22:31,920 --> 00:22:32,840
that killed her.

490
00:22:32,840 --> 00:22:35,320
- Oh yeah, yeah, of course.

491
00:22:35,320 --> 00:22:40,320
Several of my co-inmates at Mount Sinai killed themselves.

492
00:22:40,320 --> 00:22:43,560
I for a long time remembered and I think mentioned in

493
00:22:43,560 --> 00:22:46,080
my book The First Names of Three of Them.

494
00:22:46,080 --> 00:22:50,600
I had a pretty good time at Shepherd Pratt.

495
00:22:50,600 --> 00:22:52,280
I had a lover there.

496
00:22:52,280 --> 00:22:54,480
He was very, very sweet.

497
00:22:54,480 --> 00:22:59,440
And there were fun things to do and the food was okay.

498
00:22:59,440 --> 00:23:03,160
And the act I was always ploughing my departure.

499
00:23:03,160 --> 00:23:05,800
- Your departure, you're killing yourself or your escape?

500
00:23:05,800 --> 00:23:06,800
- My escape.

501
00:23:06,800 --> 00:23:08,400
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

502
00:23:08,400 --> 00:23:10,920
no more thought of killing myself, my escape.

503
00:23:10,920 --> 00:23:14,320
So at this point, there had been some money

504
00:23:14,320 --> 00:23:15,840
from the inheritance from my dad

505
00:23:15,840 --> 00:23:18,320
and I was being given an allowance by a lawyer.

506
00:23:18,320 --> 00:23:21,080
And so I was sent in the amount of money.

507
00:23:21,080 --> 00:23:23,960
Somehow I was receiving cash at the nursing station

508
00:23:23,960 --> 00:23:26,200
every week or month or something.

509
00:23:26,200 --> 00:23:28,480
And I put all that money under my mattress.

510
00:23:28,480 --> 00:23:30,640
I didn't need money for anything.

511
00:23:30,640 --> 00:23:33,680
I also started a diary at that point,

512
00:23:33,680 --> 00:23:35,240
which I think I still have somewhere.

513
00:23:35,240 --> 00:23:37,640
I'd never kept a diary before.

514
00:23:37,640 --> 00:23:40,280
I had studied classical Greek in high school

515
00:23:40,280 --> 00:23:42,760
and I wrote my diary in the Greek alphabet.

516
00:23:42,760 --> 00:23:46,560
It was in English, but I translated it into Greek.

517
00:23:46,560 --> 00:23:49,520
And I remember my boyfriend looking at it,

518
00:23:49,520 --> 00:23:51,480
I guess there was a library somewhere

519
00:23:51,480 --> 00:23:53,880
and he got hold of something that allowed him

520
00:23:53,880 --> 00:23:58,120
to translate my diary, which I thought was genius.

521
00:23:58,120 --> 00:24:00,200
I thought that was so cool.

522
00:24:00,200 --> 00:24:03,120
Anyway, I still write in Greek sometimes

523
00:24:03,120 --> 00:24:05,240
when I want to write something I don't want anybody to read.

524
00:24:05,240 --> 00:24:07,400
That is not in Greek, but in English in Greek

525
00:24:07,400 --> 00:24:10,800
with little modifications for letters that don't correspond.

526
00:24:10,800 --> 00:24:15,640
So one day I had enough money to get out of there

527
00:24:15,640 --> 00:24:19,080
and I told my boyfriend and my other two friends

528
00:24:19,080 --> 00:24:21,960
who I was close with that I was going to high-tail it

529
00:24:21,960 --> 00:24:24,560
and that I was going by airplane.

530
00:24:24,560 --> 00:24:26,920
And then I went to the bus station.

531
00:24:26,920 --> 00:24:29,240
And I found out later that there was an alt-point

532
00:24:29,240 --> 00:24:32,080
spulitan for me in Maryland, but by that time

533
00:24:32,080 --> 00:24:34,640
I was in another state.

534
00:24:34,640 --> 00:24:38,640
And I arrived in Toronto and I arrived at my mother's door

535
00:24:38,640 --> 00:24:43,080
and my mother was dreadfully alarmed, though glad to see me.

536
00:24:43,080 --> 00:24:46,280
She wanted to call the hospital.

537
00:24:46,280 --> 00:24:49,640
And it wasn't very long before I said, OK, call them.

538
00:24:49,640 --> 00:24:51,840
And I'll go back there, but only if I can go back to the same

539
00:24:51,840 --> 00:24:54,920
word I was in because I did not like living with my mother.

540
00:24:54,920 --> 00:24:56,920
I was not working out.

541
00:24:56,920 --> 00:25:00,200
She called them and she said, no, they can't tell me which word

542
00:25:00,200 --> 00:25:00,680
you can be on.

543
00:25:00,680 --> 00:25:02,960
I said, then I'm not going.

544
00:25:02,960 --> 00:25:04,160
And I didn't go.

545
00:25:04,160 --> 00:25:06,120
Oh, I missed a very important part here.

546
00:25:06,120 --> 00:25:10,280
On my way on the bus from Maryland to Toronto,

547
00:25:10,280 --> 00:25:15,480
I sat down beside a young man who asked me what I did.

548
00:25:15,480 --> 00:25:18,720
And I said, I'm an escape lunatic.

549
00:25:18,720 --> 00:25:21,080
And he got up and sat somewhere else.

550
00:25:21,080 --> 00:25:24,560
I still love that about myself, that I said that.

551
00:25:24,560 --> 00:25:25,520
What is the fact you love?

552
00:25:25,520 --> 00:25:29,560
I can imagine, but what is the fact you love about having said that?

553
00:25:29,560 --> 00:25:33,400
It's so weird and so bold.

554
00:25:33,400 --> 00:25:36,240
And who would ever call themselves that?

555
00:25:36,240 --> 00:25:39,840
And that's exactly what I was, you know?

556
00:25:39,840 --> 00:25:44,960
It was a certain power and confidence and freedom in it, I guess.

557
00:25:44,960 --> 00:25:45,800
Yeah, yeah.

558
00:25:45,800 --> 00:25:47,320
I just thought I was hilarious.

559
00:25:47,320 --> 00:25:49,640
And I still think I was hilarious.

560
00:25:49,640 --> 00:25:55,720
So I got a place to live in a boarding house, not a psychiatric boarding

561
00:25:55,720 --> 00:26:00,720
house, a human boarding house, and moved downtown.

562
00:26:00,720 --> 00:26:02,800
I've always loved downtown.

563
00:26:02,800 --> 00:26:04,160
How old are you now?

564
00:26:04,160 --> 00:26:05,240
I'm 22.

565
00:26:05,240 --> 00:26:07,520
Did you go back in the system after this or were you

566
00:26:07,520 --> 00:26:08,720
escaping now?

567
00:26:08,720 --> 00:26:11,040
I was 18 years free.

568
00:26:11,040 --> 00:26:11,680
I didn't go back.

569
00:26:11,680 --> 00:26:12,680
I was 40.

570
00:26:12,680 --> 00:26:13,200
Uh-huh.

571
00:26:13,200 --> 00:26:13,880
OK.

572
00:26:13,880 --> 00:26:14,880
OK.

573
00:26:14,880 --> 00:26:19,280
Just looking back on that whole time, you know, you're 20 or 22,

574
00:26:19,280 --> 00:26:20,760
what did you need?

575
00:26:20,760 --> 00:26:25,080
I mean, other than just not locking you up, I mean, what is it that you felt like maybe

576
00:26:25,080 --> 00:26:30,080
would have been helpful for someone who is not coming down from an LSD trip?

577
00:26:30,080 --> 00:26:34,600
Playmates, gentle encouragement to eat and sleep.

578
00:26:34,600 --> 00:26:37,880
Ah, so part of not coming down was also not sleeping?

579
00:26:37,880 --> 00:26:38,880
Oh, definitely.

580
00:26:38,880 --> 00:26:39,880
Yeah, yeah.

581
00:26:39,880 --> 00:26:44,280
Every time I've been crazy, it has started with many nights of not sleeping at all.

582
00:26:44,280 --> 00:26:47,200
So very recurring theme for a lot of people.

583
00:26:47,200 --> 00:26:48,240
For sure.

584
00:26:48,240 --> 00:26:50,840
Did they ever talk to you about sleep in the hospital?

585
00:26:50,840 --> 00:26:51,840
No, no, no.

586
00:26:51,840 --> 00:26:52,840
They just knocked me out.

587
00:26:52,840 --> 00:26:54,600
They didn't talk to me about stuff.

588
00:26:54,600 --> 00:26:56,760
So same as it is now.

589
00:26:56,760 --> 00:27:01,320
No real discussion about how to understand or navigate the state to take the meds.

590
00:27:01,320 --> 00:27:02,320
You're crazy.

591
00:27:02,320 --> 00:27:03,320
Yeah, yeah.

592
00:27:03,320 --> 00:27:04,600
There's no real discussion of any kind.

593
00:27:04,600 --> 00:27:05,600
There's no therapy.

594
00:27:05,600 --> 00:27:08,200
I hate therapy anyway, but there wasn't any.

595
00:27:08,200 --> 00:27:13,280
Everything is just about whether they think you're responding to your drugs the way you're

596
00:27:13,280 --> 00:27:14,280
supposed to be.

597
00:27:14,280 --> 00:27:17,840
Now, I remember another important thing, which is that when I was at Mount Sinai

598
00:27:17,840 --> 00:27:24,160
and not responding to drugs the way they wanted me to, Dr. Bukari asked my mother for permission

599
00:27:24,160 --> 00:27:25,160
to give me a lecture.

600
00:27:25,160 --> 00:27:26,760
She'll go, "My mother said no."

601
00:27:26,760 --> 00:27:28,920
Oh, thank you, Mom.

602
00:27:28,920 --> 00:27:29,920
Yes.

603
00:27:29,920 --> 00:27:30,920
Very, very nice.

604
00:27:30,920 --> 00:27:31,920
Yeah.

605
00:27:31,920 --> 00:27:34,280
Were you a minor at that point?

606
00:27:34,280 --> 00:27:36,240
Why were they asking your mom?

607
00:27:36,240 --> 00:27:38,840
Because I wasn't considered a person, I guess.

608
00:27:38,840 --> 00:27:42,960
I would have been 21, so no, it would have been a minor.

609
00:27:42,960 --> 00:27:43,960
Right.

610
00:27:43,960 --> 00:27:47,400
But the laws weren't in effect where they actually asked you, which is usually how it's

611
00:27:47,400 --> 00:27:48,400
done now.

612
00:27:48,400 --> 00:27:49,400
Yeah.

613
00:27:49,400 --> 00:27:53,120
They don't know that anyone gets asked as such.

614
00:27:53,120 --> 00:27:57,840
Yeah, I think the laws that are in place now to protect people don't at all whatsoever.

615
00:27:57,840 --> 00:27:58,840
I would agree with that.

616
00:27:58,840 --> 00:27:59,840
They asked me.

617
00:27:59,840 --> 00:28:01,160
They wanted my consent.

618
00:28:01,160 --> 00:28:02,880
This is in San Francisco.

619
00:28:02,880 --> 00:28:05,520
Of course, it was very deceitful.

620
00:28:05,520 --> 00:28:11,400
They gave me some research about the safety of ECT and the effectiveness.

621
00:28:11,400 --> 00:28:12,960
I didn't understand what was going on.

622
00:28:12,960 --> 00:28:14,960
I was just reading this material.

623
00:28:14,960 --> 00:28:22,400
When it occurred to me, they say that it has extremely low danger rate, but general anesthesia

624
00:28:22,400 --> 00:28:23,760
is involved.

625
00:28:23,760 --> 00:28:26,280
I just was a logical question.

626
00:28:26,280 --> 00:28:30,880
If you're telling me that there's no risk, I know that there's risk in general anesthesia.

627
00:28:30,880 --> 00:28:34,280
Why is that not included in the conversation here?

628
00:28:34,280 --> 00:28:35,280
Yeah.

629
00:28:35,280 --> 00:28:36,280
They wouldn't answer that.

630
00:28:36,280 --> 00:28:38,480
They wouldn't even respond to my logical.

631
00:28:38,480 --> 00:28:44,520
Unfortunately, my dad was discouraging me because he had been multiple times electro-shocked

632
00:28:44,520 --> 00:28:46,520
in the psychiatric hospital.

633
00:28:46,520 --> 00:28:51,240
I think I just had a very lucky situation because there was a social worker who I think was

634
00:28:51,240 --> 00:28:55,480
moving things behind the scenes because they came and told me that the insurance had run

635
00:28:55,480 --> 00:28:56,480
out.

636
00:28:56,480 --> 00:29:01,960
They discharged me instead of electro-shocking me because I was so completely disorganized

637
00:29:01,960 --> 00:29:05,760
and psychotic and unable to take care of myself and unresponsive.

638
00:29:05,760 --> 00:29:11,680
Suddenly, I'm qualified to just kick out on the streets and put into a homeless shelter.

639
00:29:11,680 --> 00:29:14,200
They did ask me for my consent.

640
00:29:14,200 --> 00:29:16,520
An uninformed consent, let's say.

641
00:29:16,520 --> 00:29:17,520
Exactly.

642
00:29:17,520 --> 00:29:21,800
This is a big B in my bonnet and always will be that informed consent is a complete fraud

643
00:29:21,800 --> 00:29:26,000
because they never give you the actual information because if they did, everyone would just say

644
00:29:26,000 --> 00:29:27,520
no to everything.

645
00:29:27,520 --> 00:29:28,520
That's right.

646
00:29:28,520 --> 00:29:31,120
Looking back, you've taken a lot of anti-psychotics.

647
00:29:31,120 --> 00:29:37,160
Do you have persistent lingering impairment or after effects or anything like that?

648
00:29:37,160 --> 00:29:38,160
No.

649
00:29:38,160 --> 00:29:39,680
I'm glad to hear that.

650
00:29:39,680 --> 00:29:40,680
Glad to hear that.

651
00:29:40,680 --> 00:29:41,680
Thank you.

652
00:29:41,680 --> 00:29:42,680
It's very lucky.

653
00:29:42,680 --> 00:29:48,040
I had an awful lot of neuroleptics in 1978 and 1979.

654
00:29:48,040 --> 00:29:49,040
Yeah.

655
00:29:49,040 --> 00:29:50,720
It just seems like it's a role of the dice.

656
00:29:50,720 --> 00:29:57,480
I haven't seen any pattern to who gets long-term damage and who has long-term even with

657
00:29:57,480 --> 00:29:58,960
draw effects.

658
00:29:58,960 --> 00:30:02,280
The research that I'm involved in, I don't see any patterns, it really just seems like

659
00:30:02,280 --> 00:30:03,280
a role of the dice.

660
00:30:03,280 --> 00:30:07,720
You would think that the folks that have long-term and high dosage, but you had long-term

661
00:30:07,720 --> 00:30:09,760
and it sounds like pretty high-dosage.

662
00:30:09,760 --> 00:30:16,760
Yeah, but I think a lot of the people who have permanent effects, their long-term was way

663
00:30:16,760 --> 00:30:18,720
longer than my long-term.

664
00:30:18,720 --> 00:30:22,600
My long-term was only a couple of years with an interruption in the middle of it.

665
00:30:22,600 --> 00:30:27,400
I just met somebody a couple of days ago who's been on anti-psychotics for less than a year

666
00:30:27,400 --> 00:30:29,840
and has a visible tardive dyskinesia.

667
00:30:29,840 --> 00:30:32,680
I had dyskinesia, not tardive.

668
00:30:32,680 --> 00:30:37,560
I think one can only fairly call it tardive if it happens after you're off, but I had dyskinesia

669
00:30:37,560 --> 00:30:44,240
really bad both in my early incarceration and in the later ones in my part of the world.

670
00:30:44,240 --> 00:30:50,240
But it went away not too long after getting off the drugs each time, which is extraordinarily

671
00:30:50,240 --> 00:30:51,240
lucky.

672
00:30:51,240 --> 00:30:55,920
I had a long period where I couldn't read and I couldn't focus, but I was so disoriented

673
00:30:55,920 --> 00:30:58,320
that I didn't even realize that it was happening.

674
00:30:58,320 --> 00:30:59,840
I never really questioned it.

675
00:30:59,840 --> 00:31:05,040
I was really in a days for years around the time that I was in the hospitals and it did

676
00:31:05,040 --> 00:31:10,520
eventually come back, but I still, I mean, I probably never know exactly what happened,

677
00:31:10,520 --> 00:31:17,240
but I do think I have some very small cognitive impairments, some memory issues I can get.

678
00:31:17,240 --> 00:31:18,520
Kind of forgetful.

679
00:31:18,520 --> 00:31:22,760
Sometimes the people will tell me, "Oh, you already told me that or don't you remember?"

680
00:31:22,760 --> 00:31:26,320
Or they'll remember things that we did together that I don't remember in that very well could

681
00:31:26,320 --> 00:31:27,960
be related to anti-psychotics.

682
00:31:27,960 --> 00:31:30,760
And I was on anti-psychotics, I guess, for a couple of years.

683
00:31:30,760 --> 00:31:32,920
Yeah, like me pretty much.

684
00:31:32,920 --> 00:31:36,880
In between the two long hospitalizations, you know, in the suburban hospital, in the downtown

685
00:31:36,880 --> 00:31:39,880
hospital in Toronto, I tried to go back to school.

686
00:31:39,880 --> 00:31:46,320
I tried to go to the University of Toronto and take Eastern philosophy, because I had read

687
00:31:46,320 --> 00:31:50,440
something to do with that before I got locked up and was interested in it.

688
00:31:50,440 --> 00:31:51,840
But I couldn't read.

689
00:31:51,840 --> 00:31:57,080
The words kind of melted on the page and I couldn't concentrate and I didn't work out.

690
00:31:57,080 --> 00:32:00,480
You weren't taking nerve leptics at that time, but you were having the after effects that

691
00:32:00,480 --> 00:32:01,840
eventually got better?

692
00:32:01,840 --> 00:32:08,160
Yeah, you know, it was in between bouts of huge amounts of neuroleptization and the fog

693
00:32:08,160 --> 00:32:10,000
stayed with me for a while.

694
00:32:10,000 --> 00:32:13,120
I also took a French course and aced it.

695
00:32:13,120 --> 00:32:17,400
I took a second year university French course and that I could do.

696
00:32:17,400 --> 00:32:20,000
Yeah, maybe it's just selective in the brain.

697
00:32:20,000 --> 00:32:23,760
I used to be able to do math pretty well and that was completely wiped out.

698
00:32:23,760 --> 00:32:28,560
I'm hopeless with math now after being in psychiatric system.

699
00:32:28,560 --> 00:32:35,400
So I used to be able to write fiction and those early psychiatrizations killed that.

700
00:32:35,400 --> 00:32:36,400
Wow.

701
00:32:36,400 --> 00:32:41,040
And you were actually hoping to be in a creative writing program.

702
00:32:41,040 --> 00:32:43,640
I was certain that I would be a successful novelist.

703
00:32:43,640 --> 00:32:46,200
I was certain of that from junior high school.

704
00:32:46,200 --> 00:32:50,240
When you say wipe it out, like you no longer had inspiration or you weren't flowing with

705
00:32:50,240 --> 00:32:51,240
writing?

706
00:32:51,240 --> 00:32:52,640
I couldn't write fiction.

707
00:32:52,640 --> 00:32:55,520
I didn't have ideas about stories.

708
00:32:55,520 --> 00:32:59,440
You know, as soon as Phoenix rising happened in my life, as soon as I met Don White's and

709
00:32:59,440 --> 00:33:04,440
I became an editor and an activist, I couldn't and didn't want to write about anything except

710
00:33:04,440 --> 00:33:05,840
psychiatry.

711
00:33:05,840 --> 00:33:06,840
That's criminal.

712
00:33:06,840 --> 00:33:10,000
That's a criminal injury that happened to all of it is criminal.

713
00:33:10,000 --> 00:33:11,000
That's right.

714
00:33:11,000 --> 00:33:14,880
And it's not talked about just that one thing of losing a creative talent.

715
00:33:14,880 --> 00:33:18,680
That should be disqualifying for any prescription of these drugs.

716
00:33:18,680 --> 00:33:20,200
I mean, that is horrific.

717
00:33:20,200 --> 00:33:21,200
That's horrific.

718
00:33:21,200 --> 00:33:28,960
There are a lot of things that should be disqualifying and I also lost about 90% of the memory of my

719
00:33:28,960 --> 00:33:33,200
life before those psychiatrizations, my life before 20.

720
00:33:33,200 --> 00:33:35,880
Do those memories ever come back or not?

721
00:33:35,880 --> 00:33:40,600
Shards of them came back, but not solid blocks of time.

722
00:33:40,600 --> 00:33:41,880
But you didn't do the electroshock.

723
00:33:41,880 --> 00:33:44,680
This was just from the psychotics and hereleptics.

724
00:33:44,680 --> 00:33:45,680
Yeah.

725
00:33:45,680 --> 00:33:46,680
Yeah.

726
00:33:46,680 --> 00:33:55,840
My short term memory is also terrible and I used to attribute that to long lasting, lingering

727
00:33:55,840 --> 00:34:00,520
after effects and your leptics, but then I had to admit to myself that I smoke a lot of

728
00:34:00,520 --> 00:34:02,280
pot and that I'm old.

729
00:34:02,280 --> 00:34:03,280
Yeah.

730
00:34:03,280 --> 00:34:04,280
It's hard to tease these apart.

731
00:34:04,280 --> 00:34:09,120
I mean, I also had mercury fillings and I kind of wonder whether that was related to

732
00:34:09,120 --> 00:34:10,120
it.

733
00:34:10,120 --> 00:34:11,600
So let's get back to the story.

734
00:34:11,600 --> 00:34:15,960
So you went for a long period after coming out and you wanted to go back to school.

735
00:34:15,960 --> 00:34:21,080
No, I wanted to go back to school in between the two long Toronto hospitalizations.

736
00:34:21,080 --> 00:34:22,080
Okay.

737
00:34:22,080 --> 00:34:29,640
All the time I got out of Towson, I didn't want to anymore and I got this room in a rooming

738
00:34:29,640 --> 00:34:33,320
house and I loved it.

739
00:34:33,320 --> 00:34:34,800
I loved living by myself.

740
00:34:34,800 --> 00:34:39,560
I loved living downtown and I decorated it.

741
00:34:39,560 --> 00:34:47,120
I had this bed spread from my room at my father's house that was very intense, deep colors

742
00:34:47,120 --> 00:34:53,880
in a flower pattern and I reproduced that on pieces of paper that I would then stick

743
00:34:53,880 --> 00:34:56,080
around various places in my room.

744
00:34:56,080 --> 00:35:01,760
Oh, and I spent a lot of time doing colored felt pen drawings.

745
00:35:01,760 --> 00:35:06,880
I went through a big creative phase and really, really enjoyed that and I still have all

746
00:35:06,880 --> 00:35:12,760
of those and some of them are pretty funny because I did some cartoon ones too.

747
00:35:12,760 --> 00:35:17,760
After some time, a dear friend who was one of the people who helped me get into the bin

748
00:35:17,760 --> 00:35:25,040
against my will but like other people in my life is now a dear friend again got me a job.

749
00:35:25,040 --> 00:35:31,640
He was working at City Hall in Toronto doing sort of clerk stuff and he got me a job doing

750
00:35:31,640 --> 00:35:36,240
that as well and I was able to do it and it was okay.

751
00:35:36,240 --> 00:35:39,680
But I wasn't real happy.

752
00:35:39,680 --> 00:35:45,860
One of the things that happened, yeah, in between hospitalizations, those early first

753
00:35:45,860 --> 00:35:53,040
ones was I became lovers with a woman and decided that I was gay and that that had been why

754
00:35:53,040 --> 00:35:59,600
I'd ever had problems and when I was working at City Hall, I was with another woman for

755
00:35:59,600 --> 00:36:06,120
a while and then a third woman who I ended up breaking up with.

756
00:36:06,120 --> 00:36:08,240
And that was about recreational drugs.

757
00:36:08,240 --> 00:36:16,120
We had gone to a movie at a reputary theater and I had done some bad acid and I was looking

758
00:36:16,120 --> 00:36:20,200
at myself in the mirror in the bathroom at the theater and my face was melting or whatever

759
00:36:20,200 --> 00:36:22,320
and I was freaking out.

760
00:36:22,320 --> 00:36:28,000
And this man had been chatting us up and said that he had some pot at his house so I said

761
00:36:28,000 --> 00:36:30,840
to my girlfriend, let's go to his house and smoke some pot.

762
00:36:30,840 --> 00:36:31,840
She said okay.

763
00:36:31,840 --> 00:36:35,120
Acid plus weed, not a good combo.

764
00:36:35,120 --> 00:36:39,940
Well, at three in the morning, she said okay, let's go home now and I said no, I want to

765
00:36:39,940 --> 00:36:41,520
smoke more pot.

766
00:36:41,520 --> 00:36:42,760
So she dumped me.

767
00:36:42,760 --> 00:36:47,680
She left and didn't want to be my girlfriend anymore very understandably and the fellow

768
00:36:47,680 --> 00:36:54,720
assumed that I wanted to be his lover which I didn't but I did that anyway because I was

769
00:36:54,720 --> 00:36:57,160
really interested in the pot.

770
00:36:57,160 --> 00:37:02,200
And so I was with that guy for a few years and I was working.

771
00:37:02,200 --> 00:37:08,520
I had temporary secretary jobs for the city hall and then other places but I was doing what

772
00:37:08,520 --> 00:37:10,600
now gets called self-harm.

773
00:37:10,600 --> 00:37:19,920
I was pulling my hair sometimes out and biting myself really hard because I was unhappy.

774
00:37:19,920 --> 00:37:24,680
But you must have been extremely unhappy and maybe felt like there was no way out or how

775
00:37:24,680 --> 00:37:28,240
did the unhappiness lead to the so-called self-harm do you think?

776
00:37:28,240 --> 00:37:33,000
I was not unhappy all the time.

777
00:37:33,000 --> 00:37:34,680
I was kind of intermittently unhappy but I was very unhappy in my relationship even though

778
00:37:34,680 --> 00:37:36,640
he was a boy.

779
00:37:36,640 --> 00:37:38,840
It wasn't a happy thing for me at all.

780
00:37:38,840 --> 00:37:42,680
I would cry after sex privately.

781
00:37:42,680 --> 00:37:48,640
That was the only time my life I saw a therapist voluntarily and he was a practitioner of neurolinguistic

782
00:37:48,640 --> 00:37:50,040
programming.

783
00:37:50,040 --> 00:37:52,520
He was a darling, darling man.

784
00:37:52,520 --> 00:37:55,760
He said he could cure me in three sessions of my depression.

785
00:37:55,760 --> 00:37:58,520
Oh, how did that turn out?

786
00:37:58,520 --> 00:38:02,960
When that didn't work he said I'll continue to see you and you don't have to pay me anything.

787
00:38:02,960 --> 00:38:10,320
And I saw him for, I don't know if it was weeks or months and he did whack-a-do things.

788
00:38:10,320 --> 00:38:15,280
He once hung me by my ankles upside down from a tree and swung me gently back and forth

789
00:38:15,280 --> 00:38:18,840
because we knew I had a thing about breathing and they would hold my breath when I get upset

790
00:38:18,840 --> 00:38:19,840
which I still do.

791
00:38:19,840 --> 00:38:24,400
What year is this because it sounds like this is the heights of therapy, weirdness, your

792
00:38:24,400 --> 00:38:26,400
early 80s?

793
00:38:26,400 --> 00:38:29,440
This would have been in the early 80s, yep.

794
00:38:29,440 --> 00:38:32,240
I was smoking like three-paxitive cigarettes.

795
00:38:32,240 --> 00:38:36,840
We agreed that he would wrap up a pack of cigarettes for me and keep it at his house so that

796
00:38:36,840 --> 00:38:40,760
I wouldn't smoke because I wanted to quit.

797
00:38:40,760 --> 00:38:47,520
And on New Year's Eve I called him, I was at a bar with a woman, an ex lover of mine,

798
00:38:47,520 --> 00:38:51,200
and she was kind of blowing cigarette smoke in my face across the table and I called

799
00:38:51,200 --> 00:38:54,880
the therapist and I said, "I want those cigarettes, I want them right now."

800
00:38:54,880 --> 00:38:58,080
It was New Year's Eve, he was celebrating with his girlfriend.

801
00:38:58,080 --> 00:39:02,920
He had me come over to his house, we unwrapped the cigarettes from the 40 layers of masking

802
00:39:02,920 --> 00:39:07,520
tape and he wrecked his New Year's Eve for me.

803
00:39:07,520 --> 00:39:10,480
He was a very dear man.

804
00:39:10,480 --> 00:39:15,760
His primary therapeutic mode with me was to have me imagine that I was going down an escalator

805
00:39:15,760 --> 00:39:20,940
from a red room to an orange room to a yellow room to a green room to a blue room with

806
00:39:20,940 --> 00:39:22,940
blue being my calming color.

807
00:39:22,940 --> 00:39:27,700
And I used to tend to get hypnotized to make him happy but I'm unfortunately very unfortunately

808
00:39:27,700 --> 00:39:29,180
not hypnotizable.

809
00:39:29,180 --> 00:39:32,220
But why weren't you able to just go out and get cigarettes yourself?

810
00:39:32,220 --> 00:39:36,020
Why was it that you had to get them from him and unwrapped them?

811
00:39:36,020 --> 00:39:38,540
That must have been some kind of mischegos on my part.

812
00:39:38,540 --> 00:39:44,020
That must have been some weird thinking that I couldn't just go and buy cigarettes.

813
00:39:44,020 --> 00:39:46,980
Maybe I didn't have a lot of money and I thought, "Well, I have a pack of cigarettes but

814
00:39:46,980 --> 00:39:47,980
he's got it."

815
00:39:47,980 --> 00:39:50,660
Anyway, I don't know the answer to that.

816
00:39:50,660 --> 00:39:57,380
It was a while longer before I decided to stop seeing him because it just wasn't working.

817
00:39:57,380 --> 00:40:01,940
Oh, and one of the other things he did was his girlfriend was a nurse and he had me in

818
00:40:01,940 --> 00:40:06,580
his office or in a hospital office.

819
00:40:06,580 --> 00:40:11,740
Smoke Pot in the presence of him and his girlfriend to see if that could be used therapeutically.

820
00:40:11,740 --> 00:40:14,540
Boy, it was not a great experience.

821
00:40:14,540 --> 00:40:19,140
It took all the fun out of Pot smoking.

822
00:40:19,140 --> 00:40:24,820
He went to great lengths to try and help me and it was just a really sweet, sweet man.

823
00:40:24,820 --> 00:40:26,180
And saw you for free.

824
00:40:26,180 --> 00:40:28,540
And saw me for free many times.

825
00:40:28,540 --> 00:40:30,060
But it wasn't ultimately helpful.

826
00:40:30,060 --> 00:40:31,300
Oh, God no.

827
00:40:31,300 --> 00:40:39,740
At some point I started hanging out with Chris Bertschull, who was a famous lesbian in Toronto.

828
00:40:39,740 --> 00:40:42,260
This was while I was still living with the sky.

829
00:40:42,260 --> 00:40:51,820
I went to community college for book editing and design and my boyfriend was highly amused

830
00:40:51,820 --> 00:40:56,740
and aroused by the idea of watching girls doing it together.

831
00:40:56,740 --> 00:41:01,700
I started flirting with girls in my class and I had something resembling sex with a couple

832
00:41:01,700 --> 00:41:05,300
of them in one case in his presence.

833
00:41:05,300 --> 00:41:09,260
And I had said earlier that it was earlier but that's when I decided, "Oh, I'm a lesbian.

834
00:41:09,260 --> 00:41:10,260
That's my problem."

835
00:41:10,260 --> 00:41:14,460
The problem is that I'm trying to be a straight person but I'm a dyke.

836
00:41:14,460 --> 00:41:20,100
In 1984, December, I moved in with Chris Bertschull.

837
00:41:20,100 --> 00:41:22,060
The famous lesbian from Toronto.

838
00:41:22,060 --> 00:41:23,420
The famous lesbian.

839
00:41:23,420 --> 00:41:30,500
In a communal queer house in downtown Toronto, one piece of a Victorian triplex, very close

840
00:41:30,500 --> 00:41:32,260
to Lake Ontario.

841
00:41:32,260 --> 00:41:36,580
And until now you're not connected with the psychiatric survivor movement or doing mad

842
00:41:36,580 --> 00:41:37,580
accurate...

843
00:41:37,580 --> 00:41:38,580
That's right.

844
00:41:38,580 --> 00:41:39,820
That's coming right up.

845
00:41:39,820 --> 00:41:41,060
I was happy.

846
00:41:41,060 --> 00:41:44,100
I was in a great relationship.

847
00:41:44,100 --> 00:41:47,020
I was doing lots of fun drugs.

848
00:41:47,020 --> 00:41:48,020
Did that stick?

849
00:41:48,020 --> 00:41:51,700
The idea that your big problem was just not embracing being gay?

850
00:41:51,700 --> 00:41:55,260
Or was that just a hypothesis at that time that made sense?

851
00:41:55,260 --> 00:41:59,300
That was a hypothesis at the time that made sense.

852
00:41:59,300 --> 00:42:05,060
I do think that having been born and raised female was a great contributor to my lack of

853
00:42:05,060 --> 00:42:07,260
self-esteem, myself loathing and so on and so forth.

854
00:42:07,260 --> 00:42:09,780
And then of course, mental patient multiplies that.

855
00:42:09,780 --> 00:42:11,500
And most of the patients were women.

856
00:42:11,500 --> 00:42:16,380
I think historically it's mostly women that get thrown in, yeah?

857
00:42:16,380 --> 00:42:17,380
That may be the case.

858
00:42:17,380 --> 00:42:19,140
I don't remember the answer to that.

859
00:42:19,140 --> 00:42:25,220
Anyway, I became friends with Chris's friends and one of her friends found an ad somewhere,

860
00:42:25,220 --> 00:42:29,220
a classified ad for something called Phoenix Rising, the voice of the psychiatrist looking

861
00:42:29,220 --> 00:42:30,420
for an editor.

862
00:42:30,420 --> 00:42:36,500
And I had done my editing course in Community College and I met Dawn Whites and I was hired

863
00:42:36,500 --> 00:42:38,220
within about three seconds.

864
00:42:38,220 --> 00:42:41,220
But you found the mad movement through a classified ad?

865
00:42:41,220 --> 00:42:42,220
Yes.

866
00:42:42,220 --> 00:42:43,820
It's something else found.

867
00:42:43,820 --> 00:42:45,820
It wasn't even me who found the ad.

868
00:42:45,820 --> 00:42:51,580
And I had not a clue that there was another person on the planet earth who believed that

869
00:42:51,580 --> 00:42:53,700
psychiatry was a crock of shit.

870
00:42:53,700 --> 00:42:59,180
And suddenly there was Dawn Whites and there was Phoenix Rising and there were all these

871
00:42:59,180 --> 00:43:03,100
people writing for it and doing art for it and so on.

872
00:43:03,100 --> 00:43:07,780
So Phoenix Rising is sort of the Canadian counterpart to madness network news.

873
00:43:07,780 --> 00:43:11,020
And back then there's no internet, there's no email.

874
00:43:11,020 --> 00:43:13,460
I mean, it is the underground press.

875
00:43:13,460 --> 00:43:19,860
The movements are based on magazines and sending stuff through the mail and bookstores.

876
00:43:19,860 --> 00:43:25,980
And you got to the center of the center of the center of the mad movement in Canada by

877
00:43:25,980 --> 00:43:28,260
getting connected with Phoenix Rising.

878
00:43:28,260 --> 00:43:29,260
Yeah.

879
00:43:29,260 --> 00:43:36,900
I really found myself editing Phoenix Rising because I adore editing and I'm very, very

880
00:43:36,900 --> 00:43:38,220
good at it.

881
00:43:38,220 --> 00:43:45,940
I was doing what meant something to me, which is lessening the suffering and increasing the

882
00:43:45,940 --> 00:43:49,740
joy of other psychiatrised people.

883
00:43:49,740 --> 00:43:53,940
But what kind of stuff is in Phoenix Rising just for people who've never seen it or don't

884
00:43:53,940 --> 00:43:54,940
recognize it?

885
00:43:54,940 --> 00:43:57,380
It's online and people should check it out.

886
00:43:57,380 --> 00:43:58,380
Yeah, they should.

887
00:43:58,380 --> 00:44:01,460
But just give us some examples of what kinds of articles, what was the mad movement up

888
00:44:01,460 --> 00:44:04,220
to, what kinds of things were people doing?

889
00:44:04,220 --> 00:44:09,780
So there were sections, there was Phoenix Feather and Turkey Tale where we would give somebody

890
00:44:09,780 --> 00:44:14,740
an award for doing something good and thumbs down for doing something bad.

891
00:44:14,740 --> 00:44:21,260
And there was a legal section about laws concerning mental health and there was a huge creative

892
00:44:21,260 --> 00:44:24,780
writing section and there was lots of art and there was poetry.

893
00:44:24,780 --> 00:44:31,300
And there was an electro shock section at the back there'd be like a whole inside back cover

894
00:44:31,300 --> 00:44:35,100
listing shock doctors and candidates stuff like that.

895
00:44:35,100 --> 00:44:38,660
Names and addresses basically doxing the early days of doxing.

896
00:44:38,660 --> 00:44:43,020
Yeah, I don't know if it was addresses, but names is important, right?

897
00:44:43,020 --> 00:44:45,020
You're dealing with a lot of protests, yeah?

898
00:44:45,020 --> 00:44:48,060
Yeah, Dawn was really into protests.

899
00:44:48,060 --> 00:44:54,180
We were protesting in front of various hospitals with a handful of people occasionally, there

900
00:44:54,180 --> 00:44:56,900
would be a little bit more than a handful.

901
00:44:56,900 --> 00:45:01,460
And I remember demonstrating outside of the Clark Institute of Psychiatry, it was a major

902
00:45:01,460 --> 00:45:07,500
shock mill and one of the great proponents of electro shock coming out and screaming at

903
00:45:07,500 --> 00:45:12,220
us that we were endangering people's lives by putting them off electro shock.

904
00:45:12,220 --> 00:45:16,020
Wars peace, ignorance is strength, yes.

905
00:45:16,020 --> 00:45:17,020
Yes.

906
00:45:17,020 --> 00:45:22,980
So Chris Bertel, who is the greatest person I've ever met in a life full of meeting great

907
00:45:22,980 --> 00:45:28,020
people was the designer of Phoenix Rising.

908
00:45:28,020 --> 00:45:30,060
This was your girlfriend, the famous lesbian.

909
00:45:30,060 --> 00:45:33,780
Yeah, my leg, her, she did some of the design on Phoenix Rising.

910
00:45:33,780 --> 00:45:35,300
She was not a psychiatric survivor.

911
00:45:35,300 --> 00:45:40,180
She had way more reason with the childhood that she had to have gone mad than I did, but

912
00:45:40,180 --> 00:45:41,180
she never did go mad.

913
00:45:41,180 --> 00:45:42,500
She wasn't the type.

914
00:45:42,500 --> 00:45:48,060
But the gay liberation movement at this time was very critical of psychiatry because homophobia

915
00:45:48,060 --> 00:45:53,420
and the diseaseification of sexual minorities.

916
00:45:53,420 --> 00:45:59,060
Yeah, and homosexuality having recently been a diagnosis in the DSM.

917
00:45:59,060 --> 00:46:05,820
So actually the very last issue of Phoenix Rising which came out in 1990 was the gay and

918
00:46:05,820 --> 00:46:06,900
lesbian issue.

919
00:46:06,900 --> 00:46:08,820
I'm so proud of it still.

920
00:46:08,820 --> 00:46:13,540
It's a fantastic thing and all of the issues can be read entirely online.

921
00:46:13,540 --> 00:46:18,820
I think if you go to the Madness Network news website also Phoenix Rising is there, yes.

922
00:46:18,820 --> 00:46:26,500
And so is psychiatrised.org Jim Godstein's author in Alaska and now it's on the Dawn White's

923
00:46:26,500 --> 00:46:28,540
legacy project webpage.

924
00:46:28,540 --> 00:46:29,540
Great.

925
00:46:29,540 --> 00:46:30,540
Great.

926
00:46:30,540 --> 00:46:34,420
So the lesbian and gay issue was you're really proud of that.

927
00:46:34,420 --> 00:46:38,220
For many reasons it was the most beautiful issue physically I think, but I also got the

928
00:46:38,220 --> 00:46:41,900
stories of a lot of my friends who were gay and psychiatrised.

929
00:46:41,900 --> 00:46:44,460
I hadn't even known had been psychiatrised.

930
00:46:44,460 --> 00:46:46,980
It was just huge, huge fun.

931
00:46:46,980 --> 00:46:53,860
And then the magazine folded, but then not too long after that I had a couple of nationally

932
00:46:53,860 --> 00:47:00,020
broadcast radio shows, one called analyzing psychiatry and the other by reason of insanity.

933
00:47:00,020 --> 00:47:02,860
So one about psychiatry itself and one about forensics psychiatry.

934
00:47:02,860 --> 00:47:04,980
Why did Phoenix Rising fold?

935
00:47:04,980 --> 00:47:05,980
Money.

936
00:47:05,980 --> 00:47:09,340
We were getting funding issue by issue and you know those of us who were working on it

937
00:47:09,340 --> 00:47:13,460
for a couple of times were not very many of us and making a very, very small amount of money.

938
00:47:13,460 --> 00:47:16,220
And you're not getting a lot of pharmaceutical advertisements?

939
00:47:16,220 --> 00:47:21,780
No, it nobly ran for 10 years from 1980 until 1990.

940
00:47:21,780 --> 00:47:28,140
So my radio shows were in '90 and '91 and they got huge reactions and will re-broadcast

941
00:47:28,140 --> 00:47:30,900
a bunch of times on CBC, the National Radio.

942
00:47:30,900 --> 00:47:33,340
Unfortunately they are no longer in the archives.

943
00:47:33,340 --> 00:47:35,420
They don't keep the archives that long I guess.

944
00:47:35,420 --> 00:47:40,900
Somewhere I have a transcript and an actual CD of my show and also my show on cassette tape.

945
00:47:40,900 --> 00:47:43,220
They stand up, they're very, very good.

946
00:47:43,220 --> 00:47:49,540
In no small measure because my dear friend Max Allen who worked at CBC radio did a phenomenal

947
00:47:49,540 --> 00:47:53,220
job editing and producing those shows.

948
00:47:53,220 --> 00:47:55,980
Let's try and get those online so people can listen to them.

949
00:47:55,980 --> 00:47:56,980
Definitely.

950
00:47:56,980 --> 00:47:57,980
Yes, yes.

951
00:47:57,980 --> 00:48:02,380
When I first gave him the script I originally wrote, he looked at it and he said, "Yeah,

952
00:48:02,380 --> 00:48:03,900
this isn't a radio show.

953
00:48:03,900 --> 00:48:05,400
This is a magazine."

954
00:48:05,400 --> 00:48:06,840
So he re-wrote it.

955
00:48:06,840 --> 00:48:11,520
He turned things around so that it made sense as a radio show and it's very, very good.

956
00:48:11,520 --> 00:48:15,600
I remember analyzing psychiatry in particular with fondness.

957
00:48:15,600 --> 00:48:21,480
I interviewed a lot of cool people for analyzing psychiatry, psychiatric survivors and a couple

958
00:48:21,480 --> 00:48:24,320
of dissident practitioners and others.

959
00:48:24,320 --> 00:48:29,680
Around the same time his first radio show and in the same year that Phoenix folded, I and

960
00:48:29,680 --> 00:48:33,680
some other people founded the Ontario Psychiatric Survivors Alliance.

961
00:48:33,680 --> 00:48:39,600
And we got a million dollars from the provincial government to fight the provincial government.

962
00:48:39,600 --> 00:48:40,600
Holy smokes.

963
00:48:40,600 --> 00:48:43,000
We got it from the mental health ministry.

964
00:48:43,000 --> 00:48:44,240
A million dollars.

965
00:48:44,240 --> 00:48:45,240
Yeah.

966
00:48:45,240 --> 00:48:46,240
Wow.

967
00:48:46,240 --> 00:48:50,440
The staff of the provincial office were me and Randy Pritchard, the late Randy Pritchard who

968
00:48:50,440 --> 00:48:54,320
was a survivor of forensic treatment in Canada.

969
00:48:54,320 --> 00:48:59,080
Does the getting the grant of that size reflect that the politics had changed, that there

970
00:48:59,080 --> 00:49:04,800
was enough popularity of the psychiatric survivor movement, that there was enough media attention,

971
00:49:04,800 --> 00:49:08,400
that the politicians kind of saw that, okay, the ground is shifting.

972
00:49:08,400 --> 00:49:14,920
It was a time when there was a realization by the powers that be, that we have to pretend

973
00:49:14,920 --> 00:49:20,920
to have partnership and consumer participation in order to keep this charade of help going.

974
00:49:20,920 --> 00:49:28,360
I'm also imagining it was a time before the more mainstream pharma doctor aligned pseudo

975
00:49:28,360 --> 00:49:31,800
patient groups had actually been formed to create a pushback.

976
00:49:31,800 --> 00:49:32,800
Yeah, let's see.

977
00:49:32,800 --> 00:49:36,360
You were the only ones that were kind of raising the issue, so you were the ones that they

978
00:49:36,360 --> 00:49:38,800
had to cooperate with to some degree.

979
00:49:38,800 --> 00:49:45,480
They were actively looking for some big consumer participation thing they could do.

980
00:49:45,480 --> 00:49:47,680
Randy and I were it.

981
00:49:47,680 --> 00:49:49,280
We had brilliant ideas.

982
00:49:49,280 --> 00:49:55,040
He was the behind the scenes budget person and I was the flying around enjoying a lot

983
00:49:55,040 --> 00:49:56,520
of public speaking person.

984
00:49:56,520 --> 00:50:02,000
But I imagine with your radical politics and staying true to the cause that that was kind

985
00:50:02,000 --> 00:50:04,520
of a honeymoon period that didn't last.

986
00:50:04,520 --> 00:50:08,560
The thing lasted for two years and we had to have a board of directors and we had to have

987
00:50:08,560 --> 00:50:12,720
consumers on our board of directors and there were people on our board of directors who

988
00:50:12,720 --> 00:50:18,480
thought we were criminally insane for even using the word psychiatric survivor.

989
00:50:18,480 --> 00:50:22,840
There was that going to bring it down at some point anyway and then there's increasing

990
00:50:22,840 --> 00:50:30,600
pressure from our funders to be more conservative and then there were personal dynamics between

991
00:50:30,600 --> 00:50:35,080
me and Randy and together all of those things meant that the whole thing exploded after

992
00:50:35,080 --> 00:50:38,680
two years but we did a lot in those two years.

993
00:50:38,680 --> 00:50:43,960
You know, traveling all over the province, starting groups, helping people start independent

994
00:50:43,960 --> 00:50:44,960
groups.

995
00:50:44,960 --> 00:50:48,520
We would go to mental health clubhouses and say, you know, you could meet without staff.

996
00:50:48,520 --> 00:50:49,520
What years was this?

997
00:50:49,520 --> 00:50:53,360
1991 and 1992?

998
00:50:53,360 --> 00:50:57,680
We would actually go to Canadian Mental Health Association Clubhouses and kick the staff

999
00:50:57,680 --> 00:50:59,640
out and they would take that.

1000
00:50:59,640 --> 00:51:05,320
I don't know why and meet just with the victims of services for the purposes of the meetings.

1001
00:51:05,320 --> 00:51:06,800
Yeah, of course.

1002
00:51:06,800 --> 00:51:11,320
But that meant that we got to talk frankly and the people got to talk frankly the clubhouse

1003
00:51:11,320 --> 00:51:12,320
members.

1004
00:51:12,320 --> 00:51:17,400
We had the Randy and E. Riccio, which we did all over the province, was quite a riot.

1005
00:51:17,400 --> 00:51:20,000
I was the soft cop and he was the hard cop.

1006
00:51:20,000 --> 00:51:21,320
You were the soft cop.

1007
00:51:21,320 --> 00:51:22,320
Yes.

1008
00:51:22,320 --> 00:51:23,840
Oh, yes.

1009
00:51:23,840 --> 00:51:29,200
We once went to a conference where we were talking to a room full of mental health professionals

1010
00:51:29,200 --> 00:51:34,160
and he said to them, if you are not working to put yourselves out of a job, you are not

1011
00:51:34,160 --> 00:51:35,720
doing good things.

1012
00:51:35,720 --> 00:51:37,440
I was the soft cop.

1013
00:51:37,440 --> 00:51:43,200
But we would tell our personal stories and we would say, you know, I was half dead on

1014
00:51:43,200 --> 00:51:47,520
site drugs and just wanted to die and look at me now.

1015
00:51:47,520 --> 00:51:48,520
I've got a job.

1016
00:51:48,520 --> 00:51:49,520
I'm here.

1017
00:51:49,520 --> 00:51:53,800
I'm doing things that mean something to me and people were really inspired.

1018
00:51:53,800 --> 00:51:54,800
And not taking meds?

1019
00:51:54,800 --> 00:51:55,800
Yes.

1020
00:51:55,800 --> 00:51:56,800
Exactly.

1021
00:51:56,800 --> 00:52:01,080
And we spoke very frankly as you can imagine about the meds and about electroshawk and everything

1022
00:52:01,080 --> 00:52:02,080
else.

1023
00:52:02,080 --> 00:52:03,600
Yeah, just the power of truth telling.

1024
00:52:03,600 --> 00:52:08,320
I mean, I've done quite a lot of that and people are sort of shocked and people are really

1025
00:52:08,320 --> 00:52:14,120
surprised to hear the truth because the whole industry is based on not listening to people

1026
00:52:14,120 --> 00:52:17,200
and not facing the realities of people's lives.

1027
00:52:17,200 --> 00:52:21,880
So just going in and just telling a story about your own experience can have huge implications

1028
00:52:21,880 --> 00:52:24,440
for people who have never been exposed to it before.

1029
00:52:24,440 --> 00:52:25,680
Absolutely.

1030
00:52:25,680 --> 00:52:27,680
It was a good time those two years.

1031
00:52:27,680 --> 00:52:32,840
It was a lot of fun and we did a lot of good and some of the groups that we started, one

1032
00:52:32,840 --> 00:52:37,480
or two of them are still going in some guys though not radical anymore.

1033
00:52:37,480 --> 00:52:43,880
But we did radicalize a lot of people and we helped a lot of people sort of see the light

1034
00:52:43,880 --> 00:52:50,200
of maybe I don't have to just keep taking pills and hiding in my room and then going to

1035
00:52:50,200 --> 00:52:53,400
the clubhouse and drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes and that's my whole life.

1036
00:52:53,400 --> 00:52:57,760
So when you say radical, like how radical, how would you encapsulate your own politics?

1037
00:52:57,760 --> 00:52:59,280
Are you just an abolitionist?

1038
00:52:59,280 --> 00:53:00,280
Get rid of the meds?

1039
00:53:00,280 --> 00:53:02,800
What are your politics around psychiatry?

1040
00:53:02,800 --> 00:53:09,200
My politics around psychiatry is an absolute crock of shit.

1041
00:53:09,200 --> 00:53:13,440
Everything about it is fraudulent and pernicious and very, very dangerous.

1042
00:53:13,440 --> 00:53:16,760
I hang out with people who are abolitionists.

1043
00:53:16,760 --> 00:53:23,120
I don't believe that psychiatry can be abolished but I do believe that if enough people put forth

1044
00:53:23,120 --> 00:53:30,680
enough truth and enough ideas about what you can do to actually feel better, that

1045
00:53:30,680 --> 00:53:32,680
is a psychological issue.

1046
00:53:32,680 --> 00:53:37,960
Okay and other aspects of banning electroshock for example, what would you do about the drugs

1047
00:53:37,960 --> 00:53:40,040
or the pharmaceutical industry?

1048
00:53:40,040 --> 00:53:46,440
You know, I'd love to have electroshock and neorelectics and antidepressants banned but

1049
00:53:46,440 --> 00:53:47,800
that's not going to happen.

1050
00:53:47,800 --> 00:53:49,960
What about forced treatment?

1051
00:53:49,960 --> 00:53:52,080
Of course forced treatment should be banned.

1052
00:53:52,080 --> 00:53:56,400
So I think abolitionists, when we talk about, because I identify as the psychiatric abolitionist,

1053
00:53:56,400 --> 00:53:58,120
I think that's the core of it.

1054
00:53:58,120 --> 00:54:03,640
We want to get rid of any legal basis for discriminating between people's rights based

1055
00:54:03,640 --> 00:54:05,920
on a psychiatric diagnosis.

1056
00:54:05,920 --> 00:54:11,600
Thank you for mentioning discrimination because Canada has signed and ratified and the

1057
00:54:11,600 --> 00:54:15,560
US may have signed but not ratified the convention on the rights of persons with disabilities.

1058
00:54:15,560 --> 00:54:17,520
The CRPD, yes.

1059
00:54:17,520 --> 00:54:19,920
The US has not signed it or ratified.

1060
00:54:19,920 --> 00:54:24,160
Well figures and Canada's signing of it is meaningless and would have been meaningless

1061
00:54:24,160 --> 00:54:30,680
anyway but they also declared an exception to Article 12 which is the one that confers

1062
00:54:30,680 --> 00:54:32,240
personhood upon a person.

1063
00:54:32,240 --> 00:54:36,680
It's the one about legal capacity and the right to make your own decisions.

1064
00:54:36,680 --> 00:54:44,720
So Canada has signed and ratified the convention but with a stated exclusion of the core provision.

1065
00:54:44,720 --> 00:54:45,960
And so it's all bullshit.

1066
00:54:45,960 --> 00:54:47,280
It's all complete bullshit.

1067
00:54:47,280 --> 00:54:53,160
And I've been working in all kinds of ways on CRPD for years now.

1068
00:54:53,160 --> 00:54:57,080
I've heard that good things are happening in Mexico and one other place.

1069
00:54:57,080 --> 00:55:01,000
I haven't really followed up on that much because I'm more preoccupied with the bad things

1070
00:55:01,000 --> 00:55:04,400
that have never changed and aren't going to change in the foreseeable future that are

1071
00:55:04,400 --> 00:55:10,640
happening everywhere else and especially here, here for me in this context being North America.

1072
00:55:10,640 --> 00:55:14,200
So let's get back to just how did you end up after being involved with the mad movement?

1073
00:55:14,200 --> 00:55:19,440
How did you end up going back into a psych hospital even after forming those relationships,

1074
00:55:19,440 --> 00:55:23,840
forming those connections, being core to the movement and strengthening your anti-psychiatry

1075
00:55:23,840 --> 00:55:24,840
perspective?

1076
00:55:24,840 --> 00:55:27,280
How did that happen that you ended up back in the system?

1077
00:55:27,280 --> 00:55:29,360
Yeah, I'm glad you asked that.

1078
00:55:29,360 --> 00:55:36,640
When Ops saw the Ontario Psychiatric Survivor's lines exploded, I moved to Vancouver.

1079
00:55:36,640 --> 00:55:39,960
I left Ontario all together and moved to Vancouver.

1080
00:55:39,960 --> 00:55:43,320
My grandfather had died and left me a bit of money so it's financially able to do that

1081
00:55:43,320 --> 00:55:45,040
and didn't have to work right away.

1082
00:55:45,040 --> 00:55:53,160
I got temp work again pretty quickly and was having a pretty good life and then I got involved

1083
00:55:53,160 --> 00:55:59,600
with a wonderful man who was 14 years younger than me and into all kinds of drugs and I took

1084
00:55:59,600 --> 00:56:05,400
all kinds of drugs with him and went nuts on drugs again and got locked up again.

1085
00:56:05,400 --> 00:56:10,360
I couldn't believe that this had happened to me because as you just said, here I was with

1086
00:56:10,360 --> 00:56:14,520
all this supposed protection of a movement, data, data.

1087
00:56:14,520 --> 00:56:15,520
How did it happen?

1088
00:56:15,520 --> 00:56:18,880
You were taking drugs, you were really high and you were just in public and you got grabbed

1089
00:56:18,880 --> 00:56:23,400
by police or did your carbon earner call services or what happened?

1090
00:56:23,400 --> 00:56:25,400
There were a few occasions.

1091
00:56:25,400 --> 00:56:31,600
I'm not even sure if I can remember very clearly the initial one when I was 40.

1092
00:56:31,600 --> 00:56:37,560
It was a question of me going very mental and behaving very weirdly and people getting

1093
00:56:37,560 --> 00:56:40,480
scared for me more than of me.

1094
00:56:40,480 --> 00:56:42,240
Did you stop sleeping as well?

1095
00:56:42,240 --> 00:56:44,440
Oh, always, always, always.

1096
00:56:44,440 --> 00:56:46,160
That's always the number one thing.

1097
00:56:46,160 --> 00:56:50,320
I stopped eating and I stopped sleeping and I lost a lot of weight and I looked at myself

1098
00:56:50,320 --> 00:56:54,640
in the mirror and thought, I like my body for the first time ever and I was really skinny.

1099
00:56:54,640 --> 00:56:59,160
Were you back in magic universe land that realm you were discovered?

1100
00:56:59,160 --> 00:57:01,160
Yeah, it was different though.

1101
00:57:01,160 --> 00:57:02,320
It was different though.

1102
00:57:02,320 --> 00:57:06,160
It was already different by the second time because I'd had the bad experience of being

1103
00:57:06,160 --> 00:57:08,040
locked up in psychiatrised.

1104
00:57:08,040 --> 00:57:10,960
There were ominous elements.

1105
00:57:10,960 --> 00:57:17,800
Like my initial craziness, every craziness after that has increasingly had frightening

1106
00:57:17,800 --> 00:57:19,880
horrific elements.

1107
00:57:19,880 --> 00:57:25,720
Yeah, a lot of people say that that the wild, visionary state is very positive until the

1108
00:57:25,720 --> 00:57:32,080
reactions of other people start getting into the mix and that's when it starts to get darker.

1109
00:57:32,080 --> 00:57:39,640
The big bang in my 40s came when I had this terrific apartment in a wonderful, wonderful

1110
00:57:39,640 --> 00:57:47,480
area of the city and I started throwing stuff out my window into the dumpster below and

1111
00:57:47,480 --> 00:57:54,280
making a lot of noise and I at one point was going up and down the halls of my building

1112
00:57:54,280 --> 00:57:58,440
naked, pounding on people's doors and yelling emergency.

1113
00:57:58,440 --> 00:58:00,160
Not smart.

1114
00:58:00,160 --> 00:58:06,440
My building superintendent, with whom I had been friends, at one point in there said, you

1115
00:58:06,440 --> 00:58:10,320
want to go for a ride in my car and I said, sure, and she took me to the University of

1116
00:58:10,320 --> 00:58:19,360
British Columbia psych hospital, had me admitted and while I was in there unconscious, I was evicted.

1117
00:58:19,360 --> 00:58:21,160
Oh, another good part.

1118
00:58:21,160 --> 00:58:26,200
The story of my recent psychiatrizations and my subsequent life as a mental patient and

1119
00:58:26,200 --> 00:58:30,720
getting out of that is when I haven't written yet, which is a bloody shame because it is hilarious.

1120
00:58:30,720 --> 00:58:33,040
Tell us the highlights.

1121
00:58:33,040 --> 00:58:38,960
For that eviction and incarceration, which happened a couple of years after a series of very

1122
00:58:38,960 --> 00:58:44,200
short incarcerations, a long weekend, somehow it would always be a weekend and so the psychiatrists

1123
00:58:44,200 --> 00:58:46,280
would be there to release me until Tuesday.

1124
00:58:46,280 --> 00:58:52,520
But then I had a couple of six weeks ones just prior to the six week during which I was evicted.

1125
00:58:52,520 --> 00:58:53,760
I had lost my job.

1126
00:58:53,760 --> 00:59:01,000
My job had been doing clerical work for the mental health advocate of British Columbia.

1127
00:59:01,000 --> 00:59:08,120
I would be transcribing stuff that was heartbreaking and seeing how much she really wasn't helping

1128
00:59:08,120 --> 00:59:11,520
even though she would really like to help and how she didn't really get the point even

1129
00:59:11,520 --> 00:59:13,600
though she wasn't dumb.

1130
00:59:13,600 --> 00:59:18,080
One of the grand precipitating incidents and one of my shorter incarcerations that ended

1131
00:59:18,080 --> 00:59:25,280
up with a longer one after was when I went to pick up my paycheck at the office and I

1132
00:59:25,280 --> 00:59:31,240
was tearing up my paycheck while taking off my clothes while going up the spiral staircase

1133
00:59:31,240 --> 00:59:36,360
in the beautiful dominion building in downtown Vancouver where the office was.

1134
00:59:36,360 --> 00:59:40,280
Don't know what I would have done if I got to the top of the staircase but the mental health

1135
00:59:40,280 --> 00:59:42,400
advocate had her secretary called the cops.

1136
00:59:42,400 --> 00:59:43,400
Of course.

1137
00:59:43,400 --> 00:59:46,040
I was taken away in handcuffs.

1138
00:59:46,040 --> 00:59:48,360
What was going on in your head while you were doing this?

1139
00:59:48,360 --> 00:59:49,760
Was it a meaningful?

1140
00:59:49,760 --> 00:59:51,960
Oh, always, always.

1141
00:59:51,960 --> 00:59:57,360
The extremely insane things I do when I'm about to get locked up have deep, deep meaning

1142
00:59:57,360 --> 00:59:58,600
for me.

1143
00:59:58,600 --> 01:00:02,720
Another thing that I would often do, it always involved taking off my clothes.

1144
01:00:02,720 --> 01:00:08,680
I would also cut up my ID and throw out my keys and throw out my contact lenses.

1145
01:00:08,680 --> 01:00:16,960
In this case, I was viscerally rejecting symbolically and dramatically rejecting that job and the

1146
01:00:16,960 --> 01:00:23,600
idea that mental health advocacy as rendered was a useful thing.

1147
01:00:23,600 --> 01:00:28,280
Always when this happens, I'm rejecting some aspect of my own identity, I think.

1148
01:00:28,280 --> 01:00:32,640
I was mad at the job and I was mad at the advocate.

1149
01:00:32,640 --> 01:00:37,240
On that trip to the hospital, they cuffed my hands behind my back and then had me lying

1150
01:00:37,240 --> 01:00:38,560
down on top of all that.

1151
01:00:38,560 --> 01:00:40,600
The ambulance was very painful.

1152
01:00:40,600 --> 01:00:45,080
I was taken to one of the hospitals in town where I had been locked up before or would

1153
01:00:45,080 --> 01:00:47,080
be locked up or whatever.

1154
01:00:47,080 --> 01:00:50,440
Again, it was just a long weekend because I knew what to say to get out, which is, yes,

1155
01:00:50,440 --> 01:00:51,440
yes, thank you.

1156
01:00:51,440 --> 01:00:52,440
Yes, please, drugs, yes.

1157
01:00:52,440 --> 01:00:55,280
See the team, I'll see the mental health team.

1158
01:00:55,280 --> 01:00:56,280
Yes.

1159
01:00:56,280 --> 01:01:01,840
Anyway, the nurse who injected me on that occasion with Haldol, I think, although I might have

1160
01:01:01,840 --> 01:01:03,960
made that up, but I kind of think it was Haldol.

1161
01:01:03,960 --> 01:01:08,160
I think she told me so and I hadn't had Haldol since I was 20.

1162
01:01:08,160 --> 01:01:13,160
Jab me so hard with the needle that I still have a welt from it.

1163
01:01:13,160 --> 01:01:18,480
So week after that injection, when I was back at home, lying in bed, I relaxed physically

1164
01:01:18,480 --> 01:01:21,920
for the first time and my knee came up and hit my forehead.

1165
01:01:21,920 --> 01:01:23,640
What do you mean you relaxed physically?

1166
01:01:23,640 --> 01:01:24,960
You mean that from the drugs was?

1167
01:01:24,960 --> 01:01:27,120
I just was drugged for the weekend that I was in.

1168
01:01:27,120 --> 01:01:34,480
I never take drugs once I met it, but I was so tense and f*** up from that experience

1169
01:01:34,480 --> 01:01:40,120
and the drugging that, you know, I had some kind of inner paralysis thing and when

1170
01:01:40,120 --> 01:01:44,560
that let go, I had this neurological reaction.

1171
01:01:44,560 --> 01:01:49,360
That was one of the brief incursions and then I think not too long after that, my sense

1172
01:01:49,360 --> 01:01:54,760
of time is all mushed up about this is when my building's superintendant quite rightly

1173
01:01:54,760 --> 01:01:56,680
got me out of there and locked up.

1174
01:01:56,680 --> 01:02:00,960
I hadn't all my life sympathized with the people who got me incarcerated in drug.

1175
01:02:00,960 --> 01:02:03,520
Yeah, why do you say quite rightly?

1176
01:02:03,520 --> 01:02:04,520
I do.

1177
01:02:04,520 --> 01:02:08,080
I sympathize with my mother and with my father and with my friends who got me to Mount

1178
01:02:08,080 --> 01:02:14,760
Sinai in Toronto and with my building superintendent who had me put away and removed from the building

1179
01:02:14,760 --> 01:02:19,800
because I was being impossible and there isn't anything else in our society to do with people

1180
01:02:19,800 --> 01:02:21,720
who are being impossible.

1181
01:02:21,720 --> 01:02:27,720
I had to be dealt with and people did what they knew was right and it wasn't right, but

1182
01:02:27,720 --> 01:02:30,560
they had no way of knowing that.

1183
01:02:30,560 --> 01:02:36,240
During the six weeks that I was at UBC University of British Columbia Hospital, which was a rather

1184
01:02:36,240 --> 01:02:39,080
amusing hospital as they go.

1185
01:02:39,080 --> 01:02:44,960
They were very interesting social, milieu and a great smoking room, tarot, Nelly, but we

1186
01:02:44,960 --> 01:02:48,840
would all be in the smoking room at four o'clock in the morning, you know, out of sight of

1187
01:02:48,840 --> 01:02:52,920
staff being very social and having a good time.

1188
01:02:52,920 --> 01:02:57,040
Before I was released in general population of the ward, while I was still in the dungeon

1189
01:02:57,040 --> 01:03:02,640
unconscious, a social worker put me on disability without me having to lift a finger and I'd been

1190
01:03:02,640 --> 01:03:06,440
on disability ever since until just now when I got on old age pension, because that's what

1191
01:03:06,440 --> 01:03:10,240
happens, the age out of disability, old age pension.

1192
01:03:10,240 --> 01:03:16,960
You know, it was difficult for me very briefly knowing I was on a pension for a disease that

1193
01:03:16,960 --> 01:03:18,120
wasn't real.

1194
01:03:18,120 --> 01:03:20,000
I felt like a fraud.

1195
01:03:20,000 --> 01:03:27,480
But then at some point I realized that this was, though not intentionally, reparations.

1196
01:03:27,480 --> 01:03:34,120
The state had taken away my freedom and my abilities and everything that was important in my

1197
01:03:34,120 --> 01:03:35,120
life.

1198
01:03:35,120 --> 01:03:36,120
And now I'm getting paid.

1199
01:03:36,120 --> 01:03:37,120
Good.

1200
01:03:37,120 --> 01:03:38,120
I should be.

1201
01:03:38,120 --> 01:03:39,120
We all should be.

1202
01:03:39,120 --> 01:03:43,720
In fact, I think there should be a basic livable income for everybody everywhere.

1203
01:03:43,720 --> 01:03:44,720
Yeah.

1204
01:03:44,720 --> 01:03:48,920
And then rid of so many problems, including a lot of so-called mental illness.

1205
01:03:48,920 --> 01:03:50,520
We are just about out of time.

1206
01:03:50,520 --> 01:03:54,960
Tell people how they can find out more and also maybe read your book if they want to.

1207
01:03:54,960 --> 01:04:00,960
I would like very much for people to go to the Dawn White's Legacy Project to find out

1208
01:04:00,960 --> 01:04:05,400
about Dawn White's and it includes some of the stuff I did with him, but he's so important

1209
01:04:05,400 --> 01:04:08,720
and he unfortunately died last year.

1210
01:04:08,720 --> 01:04:16,280
So check out the Dawn White's Legacy Project, those words, D-O-N-W-E-I-T-Z.

1211
01:04:16,280 --> 01:04:22,560
And also you can buy my book used online, but you can read it, download it and print it

1212
01:04:22,560 --> 01:04:26,320
or else just read it on screen at Madness Canada.

1213
01:04:26,320 --> 01:04:31,840
And if you just Google, call me crazy Madness Canada, you will find it.

1214
01:04:31,840 --> 01:04:35,840
Eerie Shimmerat, thank you for joining us on Madness Radio.

1215
01:04:35,840 --> 01:04:36,840
Very much my pleasure.

1216
01:04:36,840 --> 01:04:38,360
Well, thanks so much for having me.

1217
01:04:38,360 --> 01:04:40,040
This has been a blast.

1218
01:04:40,040 --> 01:04:42,600
You've been listening to an interview with Eerie Shimmerat.

1219
01:04:42,600 --> 01:04:47,240
She is a psychiatric survivor and identifies as an escape lunatic.

1220
01:04:47,240 --> 01:04:52,280
She's been active in the psychiatric survivor movements since 1986 when she became

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the editor of the Canadian magazine Phoenix Rising, The Voice of the Psychiatrized.

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She co-founded the Ontario Psychiatric Survivor's Alliance and is the author of the book, Call

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Me Crazy Stories from the Mad Movement.

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Thanks for joining us today on Madness Radio.

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What does it mean to be called crazy in a crazy world?

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Listen to Madness Radio.

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Voices and visions from outside mental health.

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