The Reality Inside

Posted on July 27, 2006 in Psych Wards Psychotropics

Jack comes in and walks about.
He doesn’t know what he’s all about.*

Schizophrenics roam the floor of many psych wards. We assume that they have no minds — that they have “lost” them — but I beg to differ: their behavior is in complete agreement with their minds. They are not blind to their senses but entirely and naively in touch with their own brains.

All of us depend on our brain to make sense of the world and to make decisions. Schizophrenics are no different. They hear, see, feel, and sometimes taste or smell things. What they must learn to do is discriminate between the various firings of the neurons, know the difference between —

I hesitate before I state “real and unreal” because, again, what the schizophrenic perceives is real — within her skull.

Through my own experiences with medications, I have come to appreciate what the brain does for a body. Side effects are due to nothing more than stimulation. Touch this area and you also touch adjacent areas which affect nausea, restlessness, weakness, etc. There is no drug that I know — not even the fabled Abilify — that can touch the brain without disturbing the slumbers of another vital area.

So in this way, I have communion with schizophrenics. I, too, must respond to what the brain tells me is Reality. I am a hard and fast believer an “out there” just past the fingers, but I also am a fervent and dedicated believer in the waves that ripple across the convolutions of my gray matter.

*Sing this to the tune of “The Worms Crawl In”