In a classic case of the treatment being (almost) worse than the disease, here are the side-effects of some of the psychiatric medications: dilation of pupils, making you feel perpetually like a deer in the headlights; constipation; indigestion; a state of extreme somnolescence that lasts all day, reducing you to a zombie; irregular pulse; “brain zaps,” which can only be described as some kind of current that originates at the top of your head, runs down the spinal cord all the way to your feet; tremor of the hands; full-body paralysis. And then some.
Which of these have I experienced? All of the above. There are many more symptoms, but these are the ones I know of. For some people, some of the symptoms could be the opposite of what I’ve experienced — for example, they might sleep more (before medication), not less.
(Note: If you choose to consult the counsellor, he or she will refer you to one of the consultant psychiatrists at the Institute Hospital only if required, which most people don’t. One of the counsellors, Dr. V. Ram, informs me that only about 10% of the students who visit him are referred to the psychiatrist. Also, it is not at all necessary that the psychiatrist will give you a prescription. Even if he or she does, if your drugs and their dosages are prescribed correctly, the side-effects will be minimal. There is some trial and error involved — psychiatry is not an exact science. But do not let my descriptions of the side-effects scare you. Also, both the consultations and the medicines are free.)
Right. So now you want to know what it feels like.
I can’t tell you. Do not pretend that you know what it’s like. You do not know. Accept it. If you think I’m putting on airs, here’s something — psychiatrists I’ve consulted have freely admitted to me that despite having formally studied psychiatry, despite practising psychiatry since before I was born, despite being privy to the most intimate thoughts of the hundreds of people who have consulted them so far, they still do not understand what their patients feel like. They can identify and diagnose the illness, offer pharmacological treatments, help them identify the fault lines in their psyche, and hopefully heal them. But they cannot know what mental illness feels like, because these are not things you can learn from theory, by reading books. It has to be lived. This is experiential reality.
It is suffering of a whole other magnitude that I would not wish upon my worst enemy.
I see the marks left by the explorers — pioneers — who were here before I was. I see, I feel, their suffering in my bones. I suffer with them. I speak their language. It is a language without words, for words are inadequate. It is a language that can only be felt, never spoken. Metaphors barely suffice.
All in the abstract, you say? Let’s get concrete now, to the extent possible.
I wake up every morning and I’m disappointed to learn I’m still alive. The very second I become conscious again, the pain comes back. Instantly. That is, if it wasn’t already present in my sleep. If I managed to sleep at all. Not just psychic pain, but physical pain as well — every single muscle in my body aches. I don’t want to get out of bed, not that the bed feels soft and comforting — it could’ve been made of granite. But by a massive effort of will, I get up. The thought of breakfast isn’t appealing. I’m exhausted, but I’m not hungry. I force myself to eat; the food doesn’t go down my throat. I want to vomit. I watch as the chap next to me eats merrily.
Normal.
I watch helplessly as my body revolts. I observe myself going through the motions of daily life. Attend class, mind in a daze. The prof says something and my creaking brain tries to process it. But he or she has moved on already. Everyone else in the room nods. People ask questions. They seem to understand.
At least they’re awake. I’m not.
I understand neither their questions nor the prof’s answers. My entire being is in pain. I want to scream out. I do. Just that there’s no one listening.
My eyelids droop. Eyes can’t focus. I have to physically keep my eyes open. But it overpowers me. There’s nothing I can do to resist. Soon, I enter a drug-induced hallucination, caught somewhere between sleep and wakefulness. It’s difficult to make out which world is real. Not that it makes any difference.
My pen is still in my hand, my hand still on the paper. Afterwards, I open my notebook and I find scribbles, in my own hand but not written by me, startlingly beautiful words somehow mined from the hidden recesses of my brain. They’re more cohesive and purposeful than anything I can write while fully awake.
After class, the prof asks me, in person, kindly enough, bless him: “Am I putting you to sleep?”
What do I say? What can I say?
I go back to my room after lunch, to rest for a bit before my lab session. I lie down, every joint in my body feeling like it’s been shot. Before I know it, I’ve fallen asleep. Sleep of a kind that never seems to present itself at night. I wake up and realize I’m an hour late for the lab. But I’ve woken up feeling even more tired. I frantically cycle to the lab.
Only to realize that no one noticed my absence.
I thought I was a zombie. Now, I’m a ghost.
The day stretches on, the sun sets. It had never risen for me in the first place. Ad infinitum.
That was just the prologue. I’ll spare you the story.
“In depression, the meaninglessness of every enterprise and every emotion, the meaninglessness of life itself, becomes self-evident. The only feeling left in this loveless state is insignificance.”
Back to the Colloquium again, for another dip.
One alarming view that was heard from among those gathered, was that mental illness could be identified by behaviour that was against “social norms.”
Oh, yes. Of course. You think I’m a mentally unstable mass-murderer who, having just escaped the hospital where I was kept under chains, gets hold of a machine gun and guns down an entire classroom in an attempt to kill my ex-boyfriend/girlfriend, thereby assuaging my existential angst. Yes?
I feel so sorry for you. And those others, not a few in number, who seemed to concur with your view.
Pray, what social norms are we talking about, when you cannot do the basic courtesy of listening to someone who wants to talk to you? Try talking about social norms to someone who, in their frantic search for solace, comes to realize that of the seven billion human beings on this planet, of the couple of hundred or so people whom they’ve met, of the handful, a dozen perhaps, whom they’ve cultivated as friends, there is not one person with the time or inclination to listen to them. Even if they do, they outright dismiss your feelings. Why, they may even accuse you of wallowing in your misery, striking you where it hurts most at a time when you’re most vulnerable. You realize then, that no one, absolutely no one, has an obligation to listen to you, save the two people who were with you at birth and are still with you now.
I’ve been there. I have, in my desperation, consulted one psychiatrist after another. Some were kind and understanding, yet incompetent. Some were presumably competent, but without a trace of compassion in their hearts, who were in the profession purely for the exorbitant rates they get to charge — an extortion racket, preying on those who are most vulnerable.
And then you come to the shattering realization that you’re now reduced to the pathetic state of having to pay someone to listen to you.
Despair — “demonic despair,” the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard called it — and dread. The twin offshoots of fear.
Fear overwhelms you. Elemental, primeval fear, of a nature so pure that it shines through the surface of the mind and overwhelms all else. The foreboding of a yawning abyss, a darkness that terrifies the mind more than mere death — an abyss of suffering, pristine, filled with the jagged edges of your own diabolical thoughts.
I have been all the way to the edge of that abyss, the unbridgeable cleft in the land which separates the world of the living from that of the dead. I have stood where Robin Williams must have stood. Precariously balanced, sinking down to my knees.
Begged for mercy. Again and again.
And again.
Cried my heart out, and dropping all pretence, prayed for deliverance. Screamed out when the pain was past endurance.
Andrew Solomon, in his soul-searing memoir, The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression, puts it appropriately: “…all I wanted was for it to let me die. But it had taken from me the energy I would have needed to kill myself, and it would not kill me…in the end I was compacted and fetal, depleted by this thing that was crushing me without holding me.”
