The Eden Express_ A Memoir of Insanity - Mark Vonnegut [127]
Anita, I’m not sure what your financial shape is at this point, but if your parents are in a position to help you, this is no time to get proud. Your primary responsibility at this point is getting well. Most jobs involve anxiety, which can very easily set you back. Any short-term money you might make just isn’t worth the risk. The best way to insure your not being a financial burden is to accept the fact that you can’t support yourself now and concentrate on getting well.
Part of why I cracked as often and as hard as I did was my refusal to give myself many breaks. Every time my head cleared for as much as ten minutes, I believed myself completely cured and ready to take on the world. I found the notion of being recuperative or giving myself any special allowances abhorrent. A lot of that is due to the deceptive nature of schizophrenia. One day you’re fine, the next you’re clutching your knees trying to hold on. And there’s no simple reminder of what you can and can’t do, like that arm in a cast. The best general advice in terms of diet, social activity, or whatever is simply to notice what affects you badly, and to be utterly unabashed about avoiding it.
Friends and family can be enormously helpful as long as they understand what’s going on. Here again the biochemical model is invaluable. Instead of tiptoeing around, afraid of saying the wrong thing, dreading that they somehow drove you crazy, making feeble stabs at amateur psychotherapy, nervously checking out everything you do or say to see if it’s “crazy,” friends and family who understand that the problem is a medical one usually become excellent allies. Besides companionship, they can help you keep to good eating and sleeping habits, protect you from unwanted stimulation, and look out for your interests in countless other ways.
As well as being one of the worst things that can happen to a human being, schizophrenia can also be one of the richest learning and humanizing experiences life offers. Although it won’t do much toward improving your condition, the ins and outs of your bout with schizophrenia are well worth figuring out. But if you concentrate on getting well for now, and come back to puzzling things out later, I guarantee you’ll do a better job of it. Being crazy and being mistaken are not at all the same. The things in life that are upsetting you are more than likely things well worth being upset about. It is, however, possible to be upset without being crippled, and even to act effectively against those things.
There are great insights to be gained from schizophrenia, but remember that they won’t do you or anyone else much good unless you recover.
Take care,
Mark
AFTERWORD
The events described in this book took place nearly twenty years ago. Some things have changed. The notion that mental illness has a large biochemical component is no longer very radical. Things have come full circle to the point where it’s unusual to hear anyone say that mental illness is all mental. The view that going crazy is caused by bad events in childhood and that talk and understanding offer the best hope for a cure seems very out-of-date. This is a change for the better, though it has by no means brought an end to the shame, blame, and guilt that continue to compound the suffering of the mentally ill and their families.
The clinical definition of schizophrenia has been changed. Under the old definitions there was considerable ambiguity about what to call people like me. Under the new definitions I would be classified as manic depressive rather than schizophrenic. I wasn’t sick for very long and I didn’t follow a downhill course, both of which are required by the new definitions to diagnose someone as schizophrenic. While it’s tempting to dismiss this as an insignificant change in labels and be more than a little irritated that they went and changed the rules after I built a book around the old definitions, I