Mental-Health — Memoirs of a Captive Shaman — The Secular Heretic

The following memoir explores the experiences suffered by one recently caught up in the abusive institutional network of mental health and psychiatric care. If you think the mental health field has come a long way since One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, guess again. Who is deemed crazy? And by what standards? By what right? And by what right are an individual’s rights to self-development entirely suspended?

I

The systematic suppression and oppression of society’s shamans and prophets by the priestcraft of psychiatry (the gnostic hierophants of mental health), has not only been a catastrophe for these gifted individuals-some of the most luxuriously bountiful specimens of mankind-but has also been instrumental in the demolition of Western society in toto. By casting the alarm and foreboding of our most wary seers (whose sociobiological function is in fact to warn us of future peril and present injustices) as a type of ‘paranoid schizophrenia’, or other ‘mental illness’, by drugging them to prevent their apprehensions from unfurling in a positive, healthy articulation, and by locking them away in cramped, socially occluded wards, their legitimate warnings have been silenced and ignored, permitting social maladies to dig their teeth ever deeper into the social body. The precipitous social rot of the West, which many dismissed for decades as mere speculation, but which now anyone with one eye still open & more than the memory of a goldfish can see (especially in the fate of Europe, which now seems all but sealed in the erection of a new Eurasian Caliphate/Hardcore Orwellian-Control State), is a direct consequence of the practices of this grave, unholy, and incredibly cruel psychiatric Anti-Church. In other words, our present turmoil is God’s vengeance on the wicked, unspeakably callous & complacent Western population that has unwisely purged itself of those who would blast a glaring torchlight upon the menacing demons it has summoned into its midst.

II

If you harm, punish or psychiatrically ‘treat’ a bad man, he might just re-consider his wicked ways; but if you harm, punish or ‘treat’ a good one, he is liable to re-consider his good ways.

III

The troglodytic masses, those institutionalised non-mental-patients, while all too fatuously and recklessly embracing ideologies of social ‘progress’, are in fact frightened of a true inner transformation and are thus locked into necrotic patterns. Meanwhile, the madman (remember, the etymology of the word ‘mad’ is to ‘change’) has awakened to the need for spiritual becoming, both in himself and in others.

IV

Enlightenment thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes and John Locke tried to appeal to and foster what is called man’s rational self-preservation, inserting it above all other goals as the centerpiece and pivot of the whole of society. Notice here how the concepts of reason and self-preservation are heavily intertwined, which still remains the case today. Madness, on the other hand, is commonly associated with throwing caution to the wind, tightrope walking over a precipice just for the sheer Hell of it, and embracing a variety of dangers that may very well end in personal extinction. However, when one considers the nature of our own inevitable mortality. . . is making self-preservation our highest goal really so rational? In order to face life in all its grim reality, is it not necessary, at some point or other, to eschew ‘rational’ self-preservation for a bold leap (if only in the imagination) towards an affirmation and embrace of this inextricable fatality? Especially if one seeks to give birth to something greater than oneself, like the Christ, and take on the grave sacrifices so often required. In other words, rather than ‘rational self-preservation’, isn’t the ability for the ‘insane self-annihilation’ of loving sacrifice an even greater sign of maturity-or of true morality? Thus also the Buddha would seem to have it, who equally, in view of the passing away of all earthly things, preached ‘Loss of self’ rather than the steady incremental Lockean accumulation of an estate that is eventually destined to perish anyway; he who is said, out of compassion, to have given his life up to be voluntarily devoured by a starving tiger. Reminds me of those ‘voluntary patients’ in the ward!

V

Rather than being allowed to live as shamans, the spiritual leaders of society, such men and women are quietly tortured in sanatoriums and cast into ignominy. Thereby society is not only deprived of its natural guiding elite, but every citizen is trained to feel a senseless (‘paranoid’) fear and hatred of their own deepest spiritual roots that prevents them re-connecting with these taboo aspects of themselves and manifesting their true potential. In truth, the true mental illness is the senseless conformity which the ‘mental health’ establishment sacralizes. This sanctified madness then, unconsciously aware of its own shortcomings, in order to sustain its own self-conception as reasonable and sane, is driven to a fervent quest to identify and persecute those it delusionally deems ‘mad’ for the sake of externalizing and thereby gaining some sense of control over its own deepest insecurities.

VI

To counteract the tide of artificial, false pretenses to expert, scientific ‘objectivity’, and the docile, herd-like conformity that actually entails within social science, within the healing professions, and within society as a whole, I propose that a personal account of one’s life-story, focusing on how one has arrived at one’s central, integral values, become a standard for all such careers. This narrative of selfhood would be a move towards bolstering the development of personality and character throughout society, preventing people from hiding entirely behind their professional veneers, and presencing the true-lived experience and actual, rather than false selves. I don’t propose this merely as a helpful task for the ‘professional’ on the way to qualifying, but as a central piece that he must present to his clients (or patients); a true curriculm vitae.

VII

His greasy trousers drove her to distraction. She very nearly called the ambulance once.

Lardy da, lardy da, lardy da.

He couldn’t care less of course, until the real threats came in. But, enough of that for now.

He only ever wanted to be a star. He only ever wanted to be cultural pioneer. He wasn’t too much concerned with his exterior everyday veneer. What a crime, what a sin; your Laws, your ‘morals’ are paper thin.

“Your trousers are filthy!” She’d cry. Optimus Einstein Bartholemew II looked at his dear mother, his tender heart hurt & bewildered as usual. He was pondering the technological Singularity, & whether Hell on earth could yet be averted in his own lifetime.

“I’m only saying it because I care about you, other people notice too but just don’t say anything!”

Yes, indeed.

______________________

Albert Einstein, Bartholemew’s namesake, had been a bit absent-minded, & shabby too at times, & he was almost universally heralded as the greatest genius of the 20 thCentury. W. H. Auden was a notorious mucky-pup. Nietzsche even pranced around in his room naked, occasionally hammering out Wagner on his piano. Perhaps if young Optimus were allowed to parade his lackadaisical attire for once without constant nay-saying & psychological black-magic from his mother, he might actually garner something of a reputation for caring about higher things, perhaps he might be thought of as a Saint of some kind (Nietzsche himself was nicknamed ‘the little Saint’ by his housemistress, despite his rampant ‘hate speech’ against Christians… & her cooking skills), rather than a messy, naughty little boy who couldn’t take care of himself.

It’s a little bit like the Amazonian medicine men who were ridiculed & spat upon for hanging around in only laurel leaves, & enjoying themselves all day in the forest (& actually healing people, unlike Western medicine), instead of rushing to become lumberjacks for enterprising timber-merchants, whereas now if they fancy it, they can make a veritable fortune selling DMT trips to high-flying sales consultants & rich kids from Miami. Lifting barely a finger.

Sadly, it seems that particular thought never occurred to his mother…

-nor did she take any DMT trips.

When he started gaining actual literary success, it confused her to no end that this little ungrateful brat, fruit of her loins, so recalcitrant to basic hygiene, could be seen side by side in magazines & journals with those above her own social echelon. For a long, long, long time she resisted this result with all her might, ratcheting up the personal attacks on his attire so that he spent a whole year in a Mental Asylum, losing half his genius & much more besides in the process. Still, as they say, you can’t keep a good dog down forever. (Well, perhaps you can, with enough detracting put-downs from one’s nearest & dearest…)

But eventually-fortunately-Optimus Einstein Bartholemew II did get there (though not before spending 6 months in winter on the streets of Brighton in hiding from his ‘benefactors’, of course). In his hey-day, he ended up resurrecting the Sonnet for Her Majesty’s 80 thJubilee, with a little fusion Jungle thrown in from his own youth (which Her Majesty loved also), reminding her of her own glory days as the prime symbol of the now (supposedly) harmless & ineffectual, humiliated “dress-up-doll” nature of the ancient class-tyrants.

Not that the whole episode didn’t leave a bit of a sour taste in the mouth. I mean, at first he was only doing it to make his parents proud; then, the way it turned out, it was as if he did it only to get back at them! It didn’t matter how he tried to forgive them & continue their relationship on a better footing; they wouldn’t forgive him for proving them wrong by not being a sick patient the rest of his life, or thanking them for their barbaric actions that more than half-destroyed & mangled their own original creation.

This is how we pay for the very crimes committed against us, & go on paying & paying. Until they actually do kill us.

What crimes had been perpetrated against dear Optimus’s parents to make them wage such an indefatigable war on their own legacy, I wonder? Could it be the tireless demands of society upon them to conform during their own upbringing? Hm, maybe it’s the progress of History; the older generations always feeling hard done by, missing out on all the new technologies, their marvellous abundance & the delicious fruits of their own labour.

Personally, I think they were simply born under the wrong star.

Anyway, it seemed to him that each spark of initiative, of virtue, dignity or authentic individuality he ever showed in their presence was scorned with utter vitriol & a vehement, indignant attempt to stamp it out lest it spread, & perhaps really take root. They say that spreading your own wings is the best thing you can do for others, since it gives them license to do the same. (But, some people just do not want that. Most likely your own parents are among them.)

At any rate, needless to say, the ‘success’ that his parents had once dreamed of for him as a small child became only a mortal wound after the whole psychiatric (mental health) debacle, filling them with a sense of only greater bitterness & defeat. You see, once you declare war on someone by having them ‘sectioned’ against their will, there is rarely any going back…

______________________

Stop in your tracks & you are deemed crazy by all around you, & unconscious & lazy. Wear a spotty shirt to a restaurant & you better stay alert, or the neighbours will be out to get you; they could well call the cops & have you thrown in jail ‘for your own good’.

Does it even matter, though, if the inner bird does sing? “What inner bird?” they cried. “Can’t you just be a good little parrot, like the rest of us? Savour your patched eye is all!”

VIII

Warning Label: This true personal account, only revealed 13 years after the fact due to the dreadful incapacitated state in which the events described left him in, will, taking a highly confrontational approach, no doubt be thought highly offensive to many (especially the perpetrators!). If you cannot tolerate a little salutary poison & malice in your panacea, please look away now. Side effects may include: much horror, legitimate remorse, bitter yet cathartic & healthy lamentation, extreme dizziness, ecstatic, trance-like states, life-changing epiphanies, rebellious outrage, vomiting up society’s propaganda, increased working vocabulary, uncontrollable weeping or laughter, shortness of breath & frothing angrily, indignantly at the mouth!

#PoetryNotPills#MeditationNotSedation#DietNotDrugs

Growing up is tough. Perhaps it has been an awful lot worse in the past. But today, it is still very hard, even in the more developed countries. Jordan B. Peterson, now the hero of a generation, makes this abundantly clear: in his work, we see how lost many people are; how lost many of us are or have been at times.

Our education system draws no attention to our spiritual life, to the cultivation of the virtues and dispositions that make life genuinely ‘meaningful’ (to use Peterson’s term). Many people, such as those Peterson speaks of, become brainwashed by the system, in a sense keeping their heads firmly in the sand and never questioning their social indoctrination. They merely become more and more fanatical.

I wasn’t like that. I suffered from, if anything, the opposite pathology. Suddenly, when I read Nietzsche’s Beyond Good And Evil at 17, I found myself engulfed by so many doubts and reservations about the education I had received hitherto, and about the ‘values’ that most people take for granted, that it paralysed my ability to continue with life-with my formal schooling-in a productive manner. However I was so enthralled to the system, so ‘institutionalized’ by 14 years of public curriculum schooling and classroom routine, that I was unable to act independently and decisively to extricate myself from this same system.

Thus I continued, going to University, pursuing a degree (Philosophy and Mathematics) that I didn’t even want. I think I would have faired better with P.P.E. — Politics, Philosophy, and Economics — but that wasn’t available at a top University other than Oxford until a year later. I should have taken an extra year and switched course, or simply abandoned the Mathematics, as I was only interested in the Human Condition at the time… but I was too indecisive, didn’t think Philosophy alone sounded as impressive or offered the same ‘career prospects’, and, not knowing what I really wanted anyway, was afraid of making any kind of a scene.

In the last year I was at University, because I was expressing my unhappiness, & had always been curious about psychoanalysis, after seeing it romanticized so splendidly in the incomparable films of Woody Allen, I foolishly consented to see a psychiatrist (an expert of mental health)-thinking I would get the full, in depth couch & dreams approach, the intrepid, disabused psychological delving & diving with a seasoned guide.

But in reality ….

The white-coated philistine asked me a bunch of puerile questions from his standard, poxy little ticklist, & unfortunately when he asked, “Do you think you receive messages from the T.V.?’, in my sweet naïvete, I simply answered, “Yes.” (Doh! The T.V. is a form of media; its whole job is to send you messages!) As a result of that moronic misphrased question and misunderstanding, the jumped-up invalid labelled me ‘schizophrenic’ there and then… & that’s how it happened folks! That’s how Eden got nuked! Because I claimed a T.V. sends messages!

Anyway… they didn’t kidnap me at that point. I merely returned to University after being kept in for a night on the ward, & then I just about passed my horrible course, after 4 years of intellectual sclerosis in the bloom of youth (though far, far worse was to come!)… But by the end of it, I was masturbating compulsively (to internet pornography), which continued for another 2 or so years at home again in my old bedroom of my parent’s residence. Then, to cut a long story short, I suffered a (minor) injury to my private parts, which I was convinced was more serious than it actually was, yet still I continued with the self-abuse, with ever mounting guilt and worry. I began having physical symptoms-coughing up phlegm, pains in my head-as well as extreme states of dysphoria upon attempts to withdraw from my porn addiction. I was concerned that I was verging upon doing permanent damage to my nervous system.

To combat this, as well as the unpleasant effects I just mentioned, I began fasting and meditating for days, even weeks at a time. After prolonged fasting, I would then feast myself prodigiously, especially on lots of meat (yes, I invented the ‘meat-only, ketagenic diet’ a good decade before Peterson-which now is officially being used to treat ‘schizophrenia’, btw!- and, unlike him, I was roundly committed for it!). And blueberries.

Meanwhile my worried mother took me to see a Dr. (who I just went along with, not considering it of any great significance and vaguely hoping he might send me for a brain scan to see what was happening with my nerves). However, due to the fact I had spent all of the last two years largely alone in my bedroom (one of the ‘negative symptoms of schizophrenia’); because I said I was concerned that my excessive habits might be causing a problem with my brain (together with my unorthodox but actually quite effective attempts to rectify the issue); and as a result of my frenzied feasting, they thought I was delusional. Psychotic. So one night, when I was least expecting it…they came to my house and ‘sectioned’ me (though ‘ vivisectioned’ might be more accurate).

The above is of course only a brief summary, and it doesn’t nearly convey the inner turmoil that I was in at the time. But that inner turmoil was nothing compared to what I suffered after that, as a direct product of my sectioning (for those who don’t already know, this means I was involuntarily detained At Her Majesty’s Pleasure in a so-called mental ‘hospital’).

I’m sure it’s rather common (‘normal’) to be distressed when State workers accost you at your home, and basically kidnap you indefinitely (the technical term for it is ‘Kafkarian Nightmare’). But the reaction I underwent at this time was extreme, even by normal (or even abnormal) human psychological standards. Years of constant masturbation combined with succeeding attempts to heal myself via fasting, meditation, and feasting, had ignited enormous reserves of energy. At home, I had been able to keep my environment under very tight control, restricting my movements, my entire attention and dietary practices exactly as I required so as to free myself from the aforementioned addiction and its attendant malaise, along with progressing my spirit even further. When all this control was completely taken away from me, all the energies that I had been on the brink of directing toward productive purposes imploded.

I was told and basically forced to accept that all of my attempts to control my own actions were wrong and I was prohibited from acting upon them. I was suddenly absolutely terrified of all my own impulses, as every expression of them was punished mercilessly by the most vicious slander, contempt and humiliation, potentially rendering me a medical captive for life if I didn’t lie to hide my excruciating agony.

When you become scared of your own impulses, Ladies and Gentlemen — especially when they are running at literally 100 MPH under heavy assault with no way to defend yourself-the intense conflict causes them to self-destruct. They destroy you. That is exactly what happened, causing precisely the nervous breakdown I had been expressing fears about previously and for which the Dr.s had ridiculed and sectioned me in the first place!No growth is possible under such conditions.

During this time, my distress and agony exceeded my tongue, and to this day that pain finds no correlative in verbal expression. For 6 months, I felt the most acute, extreme, and constant restlessness, which I was absolutely unable to do anything about no matter how much I paced around the cramped wards, and I watched internally as my nerves were crushed against my skull and gradually gave up the ghost. They said all my suffering was in my imagination. All a ‘hallucination’. They said, “You can’t feel brain damage!” They couldn’t have cared less about my agony-they laughed at me as I begged for mercy…

I suffered in Hell for 12 years as a direct result of their actions. They list in their idiotic ‘scholarly’ manuals that sleeping problems and unquenchable thirst are signs of such damage, and for the last 12 years I’ve been waking up over 20 times a night (as well as, actually more importantly, sleeping extremely shallowly compared to how I used to); whereas before, even in all my distress, I slept soundly every night. I’ve also had a more or less constant sense of some kind of nervous thirst, which nothing would satisfy and is unbearably frustrating & difficult to describe. Added to that, I have experienced a complete derangement and profound loss of my identity, memory and functionality since that time. . . I have only slowly re-gathered myself after 12 years!

Before I was (vivi)sectioned, I was extremely hopeful of writing my first novel within a couple of years. As it was, it took me 12 more years of most bitter Hell & purgatory to recover even a semblance of my former self from the iatrogenic effects of my ‘treatment’, producing a meagre one book of extremely angsty poetry (named “Madness: a form of love”).

It is only really in the last year or so, having come off the drug-poisons in late 2018, after 12 years of oppression and being subjected to friendly, little compulsory monthly get-togethers with my drug-rapists, that I have once again regained some footing and my life has become worth living again.

Max J. Lewy (1983-) was born in the ex-coal-mining area of the South Wales valleys, U.K. to a Jewish father and English mother, and is now a recovering patient of Mental Health System abuses. He studied Philosophy at Warwick University, undergoing a spiritual transition and potential breakthrough which was aborted and derailed by misplaced ‘treatment’. He spent 6 months living on the street as a runaway from NHS ‘services’ in Brighton. He self-published his first book of poetry, Madness: a form of love (2018), detailing his ordeals as a form of therapy (#PoetryNotPills #MeditationNotSedation) and defence, and is the winner of RealisticPoetry’s 2018 “Perspectives Of Love” Poetry Contest for the poem “River Of Eternity (For R. W.)”. While currently spending his time writing poetry and philosophy about Mental Health, he is also considering retraining to work in the field of Artificial Intelligence (although, as he says himself, his intelligence is already highly artificial!). In his spare time, he plays tennis, drinks pure cacao sweetened with Manuka Honey, along with various other herbal remedies and holistic health rituals, and avoids doctors at all costs.

Originally published at https://thesecularheretic.com on September 16, 2020.