In All Too Long A Time By Leif Gregersen

             Dan Phiffer CC



In All Too Long A Time


   “Fine, shoot me if you’re going to, get on with it!” I screamed through the front door to my apartment. My words were met with silence. Outside my door were two dangerous men. One of them I had sold a book to that he wanted a refund for, the other I had just the night before called the police on because of a noisy party. Until now I hadn’t realized they were members of an outlaw biker gang that had been living in my subsidized rent apartment.

   “Do it! Do it! Just leave my family alone!” Silence. I was positive they were out there, I could hear whispers of their voices. 

   ‘I want him out of Alberta.’ One of them said. ‘I want him dead!’ the other answered.

   Finally, sick of being threatened and insulted, I flung open my door. There was no one out there. I couldn’t understand how they had managed to hide so quickly. The last thought in my head, which was the logical one, was that there was no one there. I was slipping deep into an overpowering state of psychosis.

   Psychosis has a few different parts to it. In me, I would get delusional thoughts, sometimes preposterous ideas, thinking I was being pursued by gorgeous female movie stars, that I owned places I lived in. The other significant part of these false ideas is that one experiences hallucinations. Sensory input, from any of the five senses, reinforces the false ideas. This can be compounded with things like anxiety, paranoia, total fear, and many other emotions that cause all kinds of odd behavior.

   Behind the door, I could hear the two men talking, and I was full of paranoid fear. It was just a couple of weeks past Christmas, and on December 24, I had spent the evening sitting under a blanket, playing a violent video game, eating canned meat and crackers because I thought that each action, each tiny noise I made, infuriated my next-door neighbor to the point of violence. I could hear him shouting when I closed a cabinet door, I could hear vile things said about me as I walked across the floor. So, I moved everything into the bedroom and tried to stay in there.

   I can't say what went on in my building outside of my suite. What I heard and saw inside of it was terrifying, and I had no clue that I was sick, I honestly believed I was being pursued. The next day I had to work, in of all places, our local psychiatric hospital. I had gotten a job there as a creative writing teacher, a job I loved, but in the windmill of false ideas and thoughts, I was lucky to get through the day. I sat, thinking my co-workers were insulting me and laughing at me, but I did all I could and somehow got through the day.

   Getting home was another story. I had had a recent shower, my clothes were clean, but after I got on the bus, a couple of younger guys got on the bus and I could have sworn they made comments about me smelling bad. I couldn't smell anything myself, but I was horrified that I was putting off a horrible odor and couldn't notice it. I had a long ride home, and I somehow thought if I spoke up and apologized people wouldn't blame me for being unclean. I did this to one young person who sat next to me and he told me I just smelled normal, but I couldn’t get the fear out of my head. 

   It was a long and embarrassing ride back home after work that day and I went to the office of the building I live in to have a coffee and talk with my neighbors. The social workers who worked for the charity that ran my building could tell things were going bad for me. They had likely heard the stories of the shouting but there were other things. I felt that my neck was weak and had trouble holding my head in one place, and my eyes were darting around. Added to that, I felt like my arms were very light and had trouble keeping them still. All this and I still didn't fully realize things were going wrong.

   It is important at this point to give some back story. Almost twenty years before these incidents, I had spent six months in the hospital I worked at earlier that day. I had come to admit my illness and to accept treatment, and when I was released, I went through a long recovery period. I was placed in a group home where I spent the next fifteen years rebuilding my life. The key thing was that I took my medication and complied with my treatment team, which included a psychiatrist and a psychiatric nurse, and at times facilitators of classes and programs.

   I had been doing well. I had penned two books that I self-published about my mental health journey, and I was getting frequent requests to appear on panels, to speak to many varied classes. But something had gone very much awry.

   I still have a vivid image of the day things turned for the worse with me. My doctor told me that there was a new medication that could replace the one I was getting and that it would work better and I would only need to get it once a month not every two weeks like the one I was already on. I agreed to try it, feeling a bit reluctant. My previous doctor always used to say when we discussed any kind of med change that things were working well and that it might not be worth it to risk anything. Still, there was no way for my present doctor to know what was going to happen. If I knew what was going to occur I would have run screaming from his office.

   The new medication was given by injection, and over the next few weeks, I started to descend back into madness. Schizophrenia, and psychosis, are such devious, sneaky illnesses. Despite that I had been through this before, I was unable to tell that anything was going wrong. But the truth was that the new medication did absolutely nothing to stop my underlying tendency towards psychosis, and I was later told it also had the effect of blocking the medication I used to be on that was working.

   Back to that day when I went to work and then stopped by the office of my building. A friend agreed to give me a ride, and somehow, I felt so much better having him do that. He must have known how sick I was, but he made me feel okay, made me even feel comfortable. I half-joked about putting a flight to Hawaii on my credit card instead of asking my doctor to have me placed in a psychiatric ward and he didn't agree or disagree, he gave me the power to make my own decision, which was a bright beacon light that helped me get through the next 24 hours.

   I went up to see my psychiatrist, and I don’t have a lot of recollection as to what we talked about. What I do remember is being kept waiting and a nurse coming out and offering to give me my injection right away. I don’t know why I agreed, but I did, and she gave me a shot that would nearly end my life. Again, she had no way of knowing this, but so many things would have been better if I had seen my doctor first.

   I talked with my psychiatrist for a while then took the bus to my dad’s place. Part of me wanted to get away from the people I thought were going to harm me, part of me thought with my dad around in his comfortable apartment, I would have less severe symptoms. I wish I hadn't decided to do that, I put him at risk.

   Things seemed to go well with my dad and me, we had a good talk, we ordered a pizza. Then he went to bed early and somehow this was the cue for my mind to go berserk. I tried to stay quiet, but at some point in the evening, I heard the voices, the two men from the building must have followed me there! I thought. Again began the yelling and screaming, the fear, the anxiety, the false and frightening ideas. Eventually, I started screaming at the door and woke my dad. He came out and tried to calm me down but I pushed him away from the door thinking he could be shot. That must have gone on for a while because some people from the building came to see what was going on. All of this, including the fact that the hallway was empty when I opened the door did nothing to calm me. Finally, my dad said he was calling the police. An odd feeling of relief came over me.

   Yes. The Police. Many people might fear them, but I felt a little more protected by them. In my work for the Schizophrenia Society, I regularly give presentations to the police recruit class about mental illness and how to better deal with it. And then there was another part of me, the part that knew everything in my mind was approaching chaos, and that the police would take me to the hospital where I could get help and feel safe.

   The officers came and all at once I wasn’t paranoid and I had some control over my delusions and hallucinations. They escorted me to an ambulance and immediately I felt a lot safer. It might have been better if I hadn't gone so easily with them because when I arrived at the hospital, they had me sit in the waiting room alone. That was when things fell apart. I was no longer around family or friends, I was in full psychosis sitting in a place filled with people who had no knowledge or care that I was mentally ill.

   The first thing that started happening to me was that I heard the voice of the paramedic who brought me saying that I had shit my pants and that I smelled horrible. Every time someone came near me or spoke within earshot, my deluded mind would invent words that they weren't saying. I went to the nursing desk and asked for a gown and a plastic bag and changed into it in the bathroom, and trying to clean up something that didn't exist.

   Soon after, I was taken to an isolation room. I kept thinking I was going to be charged with murder or put in some hospital for life or worse. I went through the total absence of any hope, and my mind was nowhere near done messing with me.

   Outside of the door to the room I was in were two security guards, and my illness invented a conversation they were having that was all in my head. I heard them say things about sexual torturing I would experience in jail and how little life I had left to live because of my crime. In reality, there was no crime, but my thoughts built up an idea that a girl I knew from my building had been brutally murdered. Even a text from her while I was in that room wasn't enough to convince me I was wrong.

   Eventually, I got to the hospital where I would spend the next five weeks and was placed in a locked ward. Each person in there seemed to somehow dislike me or have it in for me. Delusions told me one person in there was a famous criminal who had beheaded someone, that patients who were in control of the kitchen had been putting ground-up glass in my food that would soon kill me. The truth was that most of the people in there were suffering right along with me and wanted my friendship more than anything.

   I had an incredible doctor while I was in there. He took the time to explain what had happened, how the new medication had caused me to have false ideas. He had even spoken to the staff about my belief that I smelled bad, and ended up telling me that the staff said I had better hygiene than some of them. Now, it was all a question of time. But I wouldn’t get better right away, I had to wait for the new medication to work its way out of my system. In the meantime, often the nurses would come by to check on me to find me lying on the floor behind my bed. When asked I would tell them that I heard someone had a gun and had come to kill me. One nurse was kind enough to tell me that they are very careful about not letting in people like that and that they even search bags often.

   One of the best things I was able to do while there was to retreat into my writing. I wasn’t capable of much, but I bought a small notebook and wrote short poems in it each day. Sometimes I think without doing that I could have easily gone into a very dark place in my head and been hospitalized for much longer.

   It is so hard to explain to people who have never had it what psychosis is like. My psychosis comes with symptoms of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, as well as anxiety. I take several pills each day which do a miraculous job of 1)keeping my thoughts logical 2)stabilizing my mood 3)keeping me from anxiety and depression. They do come with some severe side effects, like making my hands shake, making me sleep too much, possibly affecting my memory, and more. I have to say though when I see an unfortunate homeless person who is obviously experiencing psychosis and most likely completely untreated, I am reminded of how important it is for me to not only take my medications but to take part in my treatment. I went a long way towards healing in the time since I was in the hospital for six months, but the truth is that recovery is not a linear process. I did have a horrible time in the hospital two years ago, but afterward, I was left with a huge appreciation for those who work hard to help people with mental illnesses and even more compassion for those who suffer.

   Eventually, after five weeks, my doctor agreed that I was okay to return home. My friends and the staff who worked in the building were glad to see me feeling better. It felt great to be home, and it turned out that my next-door neighbor was never angry with me, and that he understood I was ill. He had a mental illness as well. The other person who I thought was in league with my neighbor was just an elderly man who often doesn't talk much and also had no ill will towards me.

   There were some disappointments I faced when I got out. My job at the hospital was taken over by someone else, though when that person left the position I was asked to come back. I did have one huge victory. Knowing what it was like when I was a teenager doing public speaking, I didn't know how I was going to handle something. My boss at the Schizophrenia Society had a presentation for me. She wanted me to give a speech of around half an hour to an entire lecture hall full of university students. I didn't know if I could do it.

   I tapped my fingernails nervously on a chair in front of the class that day, just three days after being released from the hospital. The other presenter was giving the PowerPoint part of our presentations, giving facts on schizophrenia and mental health and what our organization does for those who suffer. Finally, my time came to speak. I didn't work from a script as I normally did, I simply mentally broke down my story of being mentally ill from a young age, being forced into treatment at fourteen and again at eighteen. I talked about my numerous hospitalizations and how important it is for people with mental illness to have housing and support. Then I talked briefly about my recent hospital stay and how important it is to understand that schizophrenia and many other disorders don't simply go away, that it is so important to have and to follow a treatment plan. At the end of my talk, I received thundering applause. Then, one young woman, a student, walked up to me.

  "I appreciate you coming to our class and opening up like this, you have no idea how important it is”

   “Thanks,” I said with a slight smile, still reeling from the fact that I was no longer an inpatient in a hospital. “That means a lot.”

   “I also wanted to tell you that I’m proud of you.” Those words, those simple words we all dream of hearing from our fathers, our spouses, our coaches, teachers, bosses, and loved ones finally came to me from a total stranger. They will remain with me for as long as I have an active memory. After all that I had been through, the idea that I could somehow inspire and change lives with my writing and with my talks just seemed to put everything in perspective. I walked away from that presentation happier than I had been in all too long a time.
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Leif Gregersen is a self-published author of eleven books and is currently promoting his third short story collection "Voted Off the Crew" on Goodreads. His books can be found at amazon and include memoirs of his lived experience with mental illness, four poetry collections, and two YA novels. Leif's passion in public speaking and teaching, and he currently teaches creative writing at a psychiatric hospital he was once a patient in.

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