A new take on Mental Health in Society

I thought that I would share an essay that I wrote for my class at California State University @ Long Beach's called "Mental Health and Society" this essay was written to tell about my own personal demons and the search for "The Truth."

Don Gillson – Reflection #3 – 02.11.2015 – Mental Health and Society – T/Th 3:30 – 4:45

With our third essay the class was asked to summarize an article entitled, “The Eden Express” written by Mark Vonnegut. Mark opens his story describing a vision of a large familiar looking face that took on the persona of “God.” This so-called vision seemed to open a door beyond reality to help find the one thing that he had been looking for all of his life. Someone who could help answer the very difficult questions about life fulfilling the need for very specific answers. Even though this vision was short-lived, it seemed as though the apparition had no real interest in helping Mark, but seemed to cause serious distress within his own reality, and would just not go away. Mark tried to fight back leaving him psychically and psychologically exhausted as the apparition seemed to take from him without improving any of his circumstances. As Mark continued to retreat from this hallucination, that he believed was God, the question still remained. Was this just a hallucination or was this really happening?

Mark reflected upon his own existence during his drug induced “trip” to Eden, asking could it be possible that his vision was to help deal with his own personal problems or was this apparition something to fear? The God-like image continued to come towards him as he tried to fall asleep. It was apparent that this image was not here on a social visit, but to educate him on the major fuck-ups he had gone through in his life. As he continued to lose his connection to the real world he described this ordeal as a period of enlightenment; noticing a heightened sense of awareness where even the smallest of tasks where “incredibly intricate and complex.” He became absorbed into his natural surroundings believing that the trees around him where somehow communicating, and that each tree had its own personality. As soon as it became clear that his crisis would soon be over; he considered giving up food for a period of time to keep him grounded in reality. Mark wrote that when he tried to eat something the enjoyment he once had was no longer there; describing the food texture as “awful” and with “a sharply bitter taste.” His friends continued being alarmed due to his actions; however, all they could do was encourage him, and hope that everything would work out eventually.

As he was experiencing this hyper manic state everything around him seemed to have a deep spiritual meaning. For example, he would spend sleepless nights reading books like “War and Peace”, “The Call of the Wild” that brought out the duality of good vs. evil. In fact, he even stated he did not wish to finish these books because the reality was too close to his own life. And, if he did finish these books he would die or even worse the world would cease to exist. It was imperative that Mark needed to find an outlet that would keep him grounded in reality, so he started writing letters to explain the wonderful things that were happening around him, and the truths that he had uncovered. At times this new found enlightenment became frightening causing him to shake, convulse in pain, and into a bottomless pit of despair. Many of his friends assumed that what he was experiencing was painful; however, he believed that the crazier his reality became the more fun he was having. He described this experience as his “glass slipper” feeling as though, like a glass slipper, it had “awesome grace, symmetry, and perfection to it,” and that everything he was doing at the time seemed to be so right.

This experience did not come without complications; in fact, at times he felt no energy and that the idea of associating with anyone to be terrifying. These types of symptoms made communication close to impossible; however, his friends stuck by his side making sure that he was never alone. It was not until several days after his “trip” that he started to hear voices once again; voices that became bearers of bad news. Sometimes he would miss entire days due to these voices, and did not understand what was actually going on. Mark described this feeling “like trying to make a movie from a bunch of slides that had nothing to do with one another.” Throughout these bouts of mania he started to have feelings about suicide because of his unhappiness which ultimately became clear to his friends that he needed to be hospitalized. Furthermore, Mark’s extreme weight loss alarmed many of his friends. They tried everything that they could to get some food into his system; for example, they thought that tea loaded with “vitamins, protein concentrate, brewer’s yeast, and anything else they could think of.” Would give him the nutrition he needed. Mark remained helpless, wanting to end his life, and he hoped his friends were poisoning him with the tea to end his suffering. These delusions finally ended him up in a mental hospital where he was pumped full of Thorazine. Bit, by bit his sanity started to improve, and it was not until Mark entered the hospital that his friends felt as though there might be some hope. However, in the end it was truly up to Mark to take it all in and understand effective ways to deal with his delusional behavior.

Even though the voices and visions were the central part of his madness; the text presents the question if hearing voices and having delusions would be the primary evidence behind Mark’s mental illness? Or how can we account for the stories from the Bible were prophets, who experienced some of the same things that Mark did, believed that God was speaking directly to them. With this in mind, I started to reflect back on my own psychotic break that happened back in 2002 where I too felt as though I was speaking to God as well. Like Mark, I was very confused on what was happening. I was not delusional. I was just enlightened from the spirit world. Throughout the years, I have tried to piece all of this together and have come to this conclusion. That in all actuality I was not hearing the voice of God, but just a delusion created in my own mind due to a neurological medical condition. Even though, at the time, I believed that God was speaking to me it became clear that this was something I had manifested through my own spiritual beliefs. And, my own mind was unable to distinguish what was real and what was not.

When we look at the stories of the prophets from the Bible we need to take it with a grain of salt. Were these actual happenings or was there some other mental process taking hold because of their own spiritual belief systems? Let us take the story of Moses for instance. In the Old Testament we are told that Moses went into the mountains because he heard voices inside his head calling him up. Moses clearly stated that it was God speaking to him; however, when he came down the mountain he ordered the massacre of several thousand people because they had not abided by God commandments. Furthermore, we could examine the story of Abraham where inside voices told him to take his son up the mountain to kill as a sacrifice to his God. Could it be possible that these stories are of men that suffered from a mental illness and that there was no spiritual entity coordinating these types of horrific acts? What if these types of behaviors, recorded thousands of years ago, where not because of religious reasons but simply misunderstood as a mental illness? Many of us would say, “If it walks like a duck, looks like a duck, and swims like a duck. It is probably a duck.” However, when it comes to religion many of us change our perceptions. When I was having these types of manifestations it was clearly because my own mind believed that God was speaking to me; because at the time there was no other logical explanation.

The more time I spent trying to figure out my own delusions. I was able to accept, after many years, that just because I was thinking God was communicating with me; it did not actually mean that he was. The reality was that my thoughts where misfiring within my own brain that brought out this delusional behavior to the forefront of my mind. Now, I could be completely wrong on this hypothesis; however, it could be possible yet unlikely, that God was speaking to me. It is my opinion, that the Major Prophets outlined within the Bible were simply mentally ill, and had nothing to do with God at all. Heck, if Jesus Christ was alive today society may have looked at him as mentally unstable, and would have probably locked him up and threw away the key. Which might have been a better alternative then what actually happened to him; however, we must be mindful not to dismiss the possibility the God can speak threw us, and it is possible that mental illness is not what we have thought, but actually a gift from beyond our realm of reality.