I am looking for Sam.
I met Sam during one of my spells in a psychiatric hospital in Sheffield. She was very funny, beautiful and kind. With lustrous blond hair, she was liked by everyone, including the nurses. We became friends at once. I always found it important to make friends if I was in a hospital (a few times). I never believed in solely individual resilience. One needs a strong community to survive the damage that can be inflicted in some (not all) psychiatric institutions.
We would exchange clothes and beauty products and just laugh at almost everything in the hospital. Like me, Sam was sectioned. And when you are sectioned in England, you can’t leave the hospital’s premises. You need permission for everything, including going to a grocery shop, which wouldn’t be a problem if NHS (medical system in the UK) wasn’t struggling with staff. They don’t have enough nurses and social workers to look after the patients.
And so I bonded with Sam. There was literally almost nothing for us to enjoy, any aspect of life. The hospital’s food was then amazing but there is a limit in terms of basing one’s happiness solely on nicely made salads. People need more, they need company, empathy and some sense of freedom. But there was none of that, and so we entertained each other.
I was discharged earlier than Sam, and she was transferred somewhere else, but we kept communicating on the phone. I resumed my work (teaching at universities), while Sam was eventually released into the community and asked me to go out with her several times. But I never did it. I don’t like going out to a party in any case, and at that time I was a single mum raising a boy of five. I had not much time to see my friends.
But a couple of years later, Sam messaged me again, saying that she was living in a supported house, in the north of Sheffield. I got into my pink Peugeot convertible and drove to see her.
Sam didn’t look good when I saw her. It was obvious that she was struggling. I felt stupid with my women’ magazines, books and chocolate I had brought to her, with my pink Peugeot. I had gotten the car very cheap, but no one knew it. From the exterior, I was an image of success. I was working, looking after my son and my cat, with many friends around me. Not many knew that I was on casual, zero-hour contracts at my jobs (I had several), counting every single penny, and struggling with doing many things in parallel. But I was doing it, and Sam wasn’t. She was on massive doses of anti-psychotics, while I was on none, only using Seroquel as a night sleep aid, taking 50-75 mg at night. Even on that dose I was still constantly tired, but there was nothing else available, as the mental health services would discharge me a month after the hospital, thinking that I was ‘recovered.’
Psychoses would return.
I lost touch with Sam when I moved to the Netherlands with my son and my cat, but can’t stop thinking about her. Where is she? What is she doing? Is she happy? The last time I saw her, in that supported house in Sheffield, Sam wasn’t happy.
Then there is also David that I miss. As with Sam, we met in a psychiatric hospital in Sheffield. It was several years after I had met Sam. I ended up with another psychosis, due to a car accident. Someone drove into my pink Peugeot and the car had to be written off. It turned out to be a major stress factor for me, and a week later I ended up in a psychosis. I always felt when it was coming and would contact emergency services myself. I think that I was still believing in the system then, that they would take care of me, and release me back into the community as soon as possible, as I had a module to teach in one the universities where I worked.
It didn’t go according to my plan and my wishes, unfortunately. I was sectioned and released only almost two months later. By the end of that ordeal, I couldn’t remember anymore why I was there in the first place. The consultant psychiatrist, whom I liked, tried three or four different medications before she was satisfied with the outcome. I was on 15 mg of aripiprazole when I finally breathed some air upon my release, happy to be finally out. But my joy from liberation was soon crashed. I lost the module I was teaching because it had started when I was still in the hospital, and on aripiprazole I stopped sleeping. I had to beg the psychiatrist who was assigned to me for a month or so to go back on Seroquel, so that I could sleep.
David had a similar experience to mine. Like me, he was held in the hospital unnecessarily long. He was also put on different meds, one after another, until it was deemed he could go back to his life. He wasn’t sure why he was in the hospital either. And I never asked him about his diagnosis, because I didn’t believe in them. He probably needed help, but he wasn’t getting kind help. Like me, he was simply tortured, unable to comprehend how it was possible that doctors treated us like shit. Due to shortage of staff, we were inside the premises of the hospital all the time, without much to do. As with Sam, David and I just bonded. Like me, David lost his job as a chef because no one could possibly guarantee a job when one is absent from it for two months in a row.
We met several times after the hospital. Last time I saw him, he was happy and looking forward to his future. He stopped his meds, and contemplated moving to France, to work and live there.
I don’t know whether he succeeded with that plan.
It isn’t only Sam and David that I miss. I miss many others. It’s like a community of like-minded people; we should stick together. But life can be unpredictable and contacts can be lost. Maybe, hopefully, I will find my hospital friends.
A move to the Netherlands turned out to be good for me. It is a bit different here. They don’t section you, and keep you only for a few days in the hospital. I know that I simply got lucky. I found a psychiatrist who genuinely cares about his patients. While I ended up on high doses of an anti-psychotic again, it was gradually reduced due to my continuous complaints to my doctor. I wouldn’t leave him alone. I would write to him almost every day, begging to reduce my meds. I never stopped working, but I stopped enjoying life.
After a couple of psychoses I realised that I had to stay on meds for the foreseeable future and maybe forever, only not on the doses prescribed by the mainstream psychiatry. Both me and my psychiatrist learned a lot from each other. I taught him to have an individual approach to every patient, while he learned that patients can also have a voice. I knew by then what could work or what couldn’t, and I wanted a good life. I am now on meds that have no side-effects for me, working full time, and trying to enjoy my life. It isn’t easy but it is still rewarding. I am lucky.
But many patients who have experienced psychosis aren’t as lucky. Most of them are on high doses of anti-psychotics that, due the side effects, make the person disabled. It isn’t possible to contemplate any work when you are unable to open your eyes in the morning, totally zombified on high doses of meds. Medication maybe keeps you from a psychosis, but it can also debilitate you. How can you recover and live life fully when you have no energy or desire to live?
I am looking for Sam. I want to help her. I thought that I couldn’t but I can. Peer support is crucial in mental health system. I can’t give a medical opinion but I can teach her how to navigate the psychiatric domain, how to liberate oneself in the environment where we are just numbers, to be fed by what was found based on some statistics. We are all separate human beings. Each individual is unique. No one has the same ‘bipolar disorder.’ Schizophrenia is experienced differently by every patient struggling with it. There are those who don’t struggle with it, but enjoy it. There are those who, despite the challenges of such a diagnosis, recover, and study to become a doctor. It is never too late to change one’s life. But one needs to know and one needs support. Individual resilience isn’t enough; we are all in this together.
I am looking for David. I miss our friendship. I want to find all my other friends I made in different hospitals. I just enjoy their company more, because they don’t judge, they don’t stigmatise and they aren’t jealous about someone’s else success. We all just want a place on this earth, to live, to love, and contribute to a better society…somehow.
Mad in Ireland hosts blogs by a diverse group of writers. These posts are designed to serve as a public forum for a discussion—broadly speaking—of psychiatry and its treatments. The opinions expressed are the writers’ own. This article was first posted on Mad in America.