LOONY BINS

When I was admitted to Tara (for the 3rd time, in 2007), I did not tell them that I had been taking the Xanor, simply because I did not think it was an issue. I did not realise that I was physically addicted to the drug and that I would have very serious withdrawals. My blood pressure became dangerously high and I was exceedingly anxious, all of the time. The most disturbing symptom was that my skin, all over my body, was numb. You know when you play ‘dead man’s finger’? Or when you touch somebody else’s skin, and you can’t feel their leg or arm or whatever feeling your finger? Well, that’s what it felt like. My whole body, when I touched it, did not respond to that touch. My face could not feel the hand touching it. That freaked me out! And because I did not know the reason for these symptoms, I did not know how to handle them. And because the staff there did not know about the Xanor, they could not help me either. So I just became very disconnected, disassociated and thoughts of doing serious damage to myself entered my mind more and more. The staff had no option but to commit me.

Sterkfontein was a nightmare. I will enter into it in more detail in another piece, but for now, suffice it to say that it is summed up in the following: no stimulation outside of schizophrenics who cannot talk to you and nurses who lock themselves up in the office to protect themselves from the patients; Auschwitz-like bath scenes where everyone is stripped, in a queue, awaiting a supervised shower; communal toothbrushes handed out after the shower; being herded into a room after ridiculously early ablutions to await breakfast, only to be herded into the same room after breakfast to await lunch, and nothing in that room. Nothing. Just chairs, four walls, you and about 50 schizophrenics, and cigarettes. This meal, herding, sitting, smoking regime fills (what an inappropriate word for what seems like a vacuum of eternity) the day. Your cellphone, jewellery and all personal effects, including clothing, are stripped from you when you arrive. So you cannot even sms or phone your loved ones to tell them that you are there, which ward you are in and when they can come and visit. I clung onto my toothbrush, roll-on, cigarettes and a pair of underwear that I washed each evening as like the life-jackets that they really, really were. The other women had none of these luxuries, and it is no wonder that they could not maintain sanity when all individuality and dignity was stripped from them. And all of this in the face of the knowledge that you cannot sign yourself out or get a family member to sign you out. You are there until a psychiatrist thinks you are sane. And when no one can define ‘sanity’ or ‘normal’ outside of those walls, the thought that you’re in there until someone within those walls declares you ‘sane’ or ‘normal’ is not very comforting. Sheer panic was a feeling I lived with each minute of each day of the five very long weeks I was there.

But I survived. I overcame. And I am a better person for that stay. I still have post-traumatic –like flashbacks to that time. I cannot bear the smell of a burning cigarette butt because the patients were so desperate for cigarettes they smoked even the filter. But mostly it’s a highly original and show-stopping anecdote over a couple of drinks.

I found a story I wrote while I was in Helen Joseph’s psychiatric ward (very similar to Joburg Gen’s psych ward and Sterkfontein) and the immediacy of what I wrote that night in that ward might be more indicative of the experience of a psych ward:

“IN PHENIGAN’S WAKE 3.03.2007

(Phenigan is an antihistamine which, in large doses, is used as a tranquiliser in psychiatric wards, rather than the usual Xanor and its variants, as it is not addictive. I also think I am correct in assuming that it is cheaper, hence its ubiquity in South African governmental institutions.)

The difference between crazy people and normal people is not what you might think. It’s some of those things: yes, they see reality in ‘distorted’ ways; yes, they take blades to their wrists, steak-knives to their throats, they burn themselves down to the bone with cigarettes; yes, they hear the voice of Jesus and answer only to the name ‘Mary’; yes, they experience life mostly as a constant and unremitting shit-storm. Yes, they do and experience all of these things, and that’s what makes them insane and you normal.

But the real difference between the sane and the mad is the language they speak: the sane speak English, French, Chinese or Zulu; the crazy speak in the language of cigarettes. The societal structures, roles and conventions of the ward are much like society outside of these barred windows and doors. The power-play is just as present. Just as insidious.

Upon entering the ward, it is not your name, or even your reason for being there that is important, or of any concern. It is your cigarette status:
1. do you smoke?
2. if so, do you have any?
3. if so, will you give/sell (overwhelmingly option a) them to me?
Your status is determined within seconds. And word spreads. If you’re known as a carrier, you are approached constantly. Whether you say yes or no is inconsequential. They will keep asking, more so if you make the mistake of saying yes the first time you’re asked. It’s like feeding a dog off your plate one time. Just that one time. From then on, that dog will sit at your feet, staring pleadingly, then barking, sometimes ferociously, until you feed them again.

The hierarchy in this place is based on two criteria. The first, from the outsider’s perspective, seems to be the most distinctive: there are those of the frothing-at-the-mouth variety who are in a constant state of legal, governmental induced intoxication. They come off the street, their schizophrenia, paranoia and psychosis induced by heroine, crack, alcohol or marijuana. Here, their schizophrenia, paranoia and psychoses are perpetuated by seroquel, risperdal and lithium. You can tell them by the look in their eyes; the glazed, dead-pan marble. They have that constant look of being perplexed. As if someone has just asked them the meaning of the universe. Their mouths open, their heads down and slightly askew. They shuffle endlessly around the ward in shoes they’ve stolen from someone outside, or some unwitting and even more doped-up inmate inside. Or they walk around barefeet, their heels cracked and crusted from pacing the sleekly polished ward floors

Then there are the garden-variety of depressives, bi-polars, failed suicides: people who are just “Taking a bit of a break, a rest, to get their medication stabilised.” You can tell them from the street-clothes they wear. They only don their pyjamas at the civilised and agreed upon hour. Unless they smoke, or one of them are in your section of the ward, you only see them at communal gathering times: meal times or pill times. They seem strangely incongruous here, in this place, as if they’re undercover nurses, gathering info on the other patients for the matron. They are friendly, but quiet and keep to themselves.

There are, of course, the liminal – those that are difficult to distinguish and place in one of these two categories. You warily strike up a conversation, trying to determine whether you’re dealing with a pseudo-nurse or a psychopath. And trust me, it’s fucken difficult! If someone in a nuthouse tells you their name is Andrew and they’re a librarian or a fashion designer, how do you know he’s telling the truth? You don’t. There is no truth in here. The only truth, the only meaning and stability is the Brooklax-induced certainty of meds and mealtimes.

It is the second criteria for the hierarchy of this place which is the more powerful, the more insidious in the hierarchisation of the ward. It is this criterion that determines your place in the caste system. It is the same criterion as in the larger society – the haves and the have nots: those that have cigarettes, and those that don’t.

It is this 5cm cylindrical carcinogen that wields the power, regulates the ward, determines the rules. It’s the same as in prison. Cigarettes become the power tool, the bartering chip, the only intelligible language. It’s strange, isn’t it, this common element of cigarettes in the institutions of jails and nuthouses? I have my own little anthropological theory about that. (My meds make it difficult to concentrate, think and remember, but I know my little theory had something to do with the prison and the loony-bin as microcosms of societal structure and interaction between humans. I remember some ingenious thought I had about cigarettes being the lowest common denominator of the unhappy, the rejected, the scapegoated. I remember thinking that Claude Levi-Strauss would have been proud.)

More than any sedative or mood stabiliser, it is the cigarette that determines the placidity or paroxysms of madness of the inmates. The first rule is, do not, under any circumstances carry more than two cigarettes with you. You learn this rule within the first half an hour from one of the arse-licking pseudo-nurses. So you walk into the cramped, un-airconditioned smoking cell and you light up. The vultures appear from their wards, as if the meal-time bell has been rung, scurry, then settle, begging you for just one cigarette. “Just one gwaai, my sister, just one, my people are coming tomorrow and its been so hard without a smoke, so hard, so hard, they’re coming tomorrow and I’ll give you a cig sister and they’re bringing coke too and I’ll give you some coke too, thank you sister thank you so much, they just left me here with no clothes no cigarettes but they promised they’re coming tomorrow, tomorrow or the next day, maybe Saturday but they definitely coming sister and then Ill give you something sister god bless you.” Depending on your mood, or more to the point, just to shut them up, you either give them the cigarette you’re not smoking, or you break it in half so that you can get rid of two crazies at one time; or, you simply shake your head, let them watch as you smoke both, leaving them behind to fight over the smouldering butt.

Which group do I belong to? The mouth-frothers or the garden-variety pseudo-nurses? Well, I have cigarettes. I don’t hear voices (William Burroughs’ doesn’t count. If it were Jesus’ or Alistair Crowley’s, that would be a different matter). I realise that the fact that I’m in a loony bin might be a bit incriminating in terms of my sanity status. And I know what you’re thinking. Unfortunately you’re just going to have to take my word for it.”