The realm of tormenting dreams

Of course, under such conditions it is very difficult to save one’s life, and everyone here only broke down more, disfiguring, and devastated by the memories of his/her life in the free world. The main thing was that cruel irritation, distorting one’s soul; I remember that many years later I dreamed of it in a nightmare, in that crowded room, crowded so tightly, standing each other’s presence with a great effort, experiencing a cruel incredibly agony of neighborhood with their own kind – emotionally unbalanced comrades, beyond the limits of self-control. And this stay among such people brings everyone, who lives there, a strong mental injury, anger, and most importantly, as I later realized basing on my own example, entails the contamination of the symptoms of their diseases: you begin to think and feel like one who’s next to you, borrowing from him even the process of abnormal behavior that had seemed to you completely alien. I remember my fear of such transformation into a man with almost no traces of sanity, whose face bears uncovered repulsive beastliness, an eerie creature, hammered and trained by local personnel. And the first time when I got to the hospital, and, running ahead, I must say that I got there many times and for a long time, frankly, half a lifetime, for the first time there was not so hard, for at least, no one hurt me, and I was treated by others with quite a respect. But life passed in the grip of irritation, pain and despair, I must say, the maniacal energy does not guarantee total comfort, but at the same time I did not calm down and was drunk and merry. But yet, which is still nice – smart people. Yes, here you can meet them, gifted, talented, very interesting, highly cultured, which I had not met and certainly had not communicated in real life, even very short one. I was overfilled with delight of communicating with them; I admired those individuals: writers, translators who had more than one higher education diploma, wise, charming, even if drunk with their illness. I could be for them a sympathetic kind smart boy, whom they soon loved and began to consider as equal. In addition to the attraction, erudition and even charm, these people were exposed to torments which heavily burdened their lives. And the tortures of psychosis in some stages are enormous.

I did not even supposed then that I after some time I will have to suffer such pain which no one can stand, believe me; it can only be hatefully tolerated, coming to heavy madnesses. These madnesses happened to these people, and I could not understand all these nightmares, but I really wanted to support them somehow in difficult minutes. I was confused by the gusts of acute disease inside those who had only recently been in an idle mood. But people are various here. There are drug addicts, one can encounter good guys among them, but they are rare, most of them are all vile and completely immoral. That was here when I first saw drug addicts, they were few at that time. One of these guys was very attentive to me and even found something to admire in me during our intimate conversations with him. I had a kind of “trick”: I thought that I was capable of parapsychology.

A writer and a translator wrote a poem to me:

“Maître Sergei Mikhailovich Vassiliev, praise St. Petersburg and the whole country, having mastered parapsychology, on Basil Island.” (no rhyme preserved – Translator’s note) This sounds well, does not it? I was proud. Only one rascal spoiled my the festival of my life drunk with psychosis, which never left me within the walls of the house of sorrow. This manipulator got acquainted, gained trust, and when I was dismissed, called me at home, promised videotapes, but did not bring them, took money promising to bring them later, and left. I suspected a hidden catch, I told him that I really needed that money, to make him have the hiccups later, but already completely realizing that I was cheated, still gave a ten-ruble note to that sick poor addict. Hoodwinkers just started to appear, and I already hated them.

A maniacal exultation itself can be seen as an incredible joy from a huge success, which, with its enthusiasm, does not allow any grief to knock you sideways out of this happiness. But, unfortunately, this behavior has no proper path. Since it can only anchor a little. I shall explain: I thought earlier that if the issue with skin disease is resolved, I’ll be completely free me, there will be no barriers in my way. And this factual deliberation from appearance issues – a kind of maturity, on the one hand, was also a tragic impetus to a new disease; it first gave me that pleasing relief of which I had been dreamed for almost all my life. Freud just supposed similar ways of developing maniacal psychoses. It turns out that all this mood, overfilled with freedom, can generally drive mad a person who, in principle, was very close to such an explosion of emotions due to his/her temperament, which was not the best since early childhood, and this is the second and the most important cause of the disease. It is like this, and it’s not far to seek, one should only see its root causes originating from the past of a person, his/her childhood, his/her sinister memories, escaping from which he/she creates a world of illusions. But I became aware that it all happens in such way a very, very long time later, because all the horror of my past was hidden from me, forgotten and controlled by me.

For many years I have been looking for the reasons for what happened to me in anything, but not in the responsibility of my family. But nevertheless, leading experts of the city chose a simple final conclusion, i.e. a disorder of brain biochemistry, no more assumptions, and I already took it as my own personal defect, independent of anyone, which, I must say, put me in a very unpleasant situation, because it was a real muck, it turned out, that I myself was guilty of what was happening; I thought that was an congenital defect, and, thus, I considered my case as fatal. In this first my maniacal nightmare, all thoughts were mixed in my head, the confusion in my spiritual world was incredible; to be a god, a real one, in which I was absolutely convinced, and to be for some reason in captivity, and not in the best places. How? After all, I was truthful with everyone and wished everyone good. But I still tried to find myself. It’s not for nothing that I was here, there is a sense of my being in this disgrace, and I saw in the need to be placed behind the grill a kind of profound providence, the doctor told me so, without letting me to leave on Christmas holidays: “Take it philosophically”. In addition, and, I must say, I understood this literally and thought that he was just pretending not to let me leave, and that I would be back home before the holidays, I really wanted to get out, but the doctor, as you know, brought another meaning into this tip, namely that the New Year in a madhouse is “not bad”. Philosophy helped me, of course, greatly in my grief, but being at home on holidays is sacred, and, of course, I hoped until the last.

Meanwhile, the delirium gradually began to go away, and I already understood that I was in captivity of the disease, and already agreed with my stay in the house of sorrow. I was happy such return to a normal state, and a good, already sober mood as if accompanied the outcome of the sad event. Soon I was dismissed and back home. And then a tremendous shock happened, something inside, like a swarm of bees, hit me with alarming threats. Thoughts and feelings rushing outside were a part of this swarm, probably its basis; I could not understand that kind of expressive and suppressing pain. Suddenly, with all suffocating, oppressive nightmare, I saw myself as just tiny, and this black cloud stung again and again, without giving me any rest, wanting to finally destroy me. I must say, this was impossible to anticipate. It’s like as if, for example, you are horribly morally tortured, bringing to intolerable frenzy and torments, which one under no circumstances could seem to imagine, only in case of some direct intervention into the organics of brain. I looked at my hands and body to stay in my mind, and did not find any explanation of this muck. All thoughts were focused on this, like a nightmare which more and more blackened and killed me as time passed, and which reached the limits of suffering required for itself and almost intolerable for me, and which tormented so fiercely that I felt myself like in the hands of a real executioner. And it was not possible to get away from such a situation. I realized that my parents are near, like protection, but the demon of psychotic depression was not at all dependent on anything external and seemed to know this perfectly, gloating in his action.

Well, such a symptom suddenly revealed itself in the nature of my soul. And no one knew how to cure this, how to help it, I still took handfuls of medications, medics added antidepressants and generally better drugs, but the disease strength completely ignored doctors’ attempts. Sometimes I was so oppressed that I felt as if I was drowning, and in the very end of life I could take a breath – and then was again lethally drowning. I had no self-control and asked my parents to find me similar persons, because there are people like me who suffer torments similar to mine, because it should go somehow, maybe they know how. Then suddenly I was getting the relief, on the one hand. The irritation of this infernal swarm of anxious feelings receded, but it was replaced by the results of such evil intervention into the mind, that was a state of “thoughtlessness”. The feelings were terrible: I did not feel at all that I could think, and the ability to argue was seemed to be lost to such degree that the inner emptiness, which I strongly felt all the time, was like ringing in all my body, leading me to panic. I felt to be a completely empty person, literally an idiot. And this thought, being the single in my head, pestered me with its uncompromising rightness, no less than the former imaginary murderers, depriving me of life. Emptiness and bad mood deprived me of the ability to feel life and at least somehow participate in it with my soul, which, I must say, I was completely deprived of, judging by my sensations. I remember how my beloved friend Dimon accompanied me on a trip to the parapsychologist in St. Petersburg for help, and my never-ending complaints to him, a reliable friend, to the only one who listened to my roar without tears. And the parapsychologist, I must say, at that time also reassured him, saying that everything would be fine, but how wrong he was! For many long months I experienced inexpressible feelings, staying in which, you can not think of anything else.

Soon I was looking for salvation from the guru of psychiatry in St. Petersburg, I really wanted to get rid of the defile that was destroying my inner world. Curiously enough, but the professor did not find me in need of help, at all. I began to tell him that I do not feel my thoughts, that I say and do not feel what I said, I don’t feel my mood and my life in my judgments, and he replied me to this: “So what? I do not feel it either. What makes you think that you need our help?” He said, if only this is the case, then it’s nothing special, in general. I was at a loss, I almost began to ask to admit me into a well-known research institute and finally broke the professor’s resistance. But I must say, with great reluctance, even with some disdain, he glanced in my direction during his rounds, I was not the first to suffer, although I was undoubtedly full of indignation, and was completely bewitched by the soul oppression happening in me so deadly. But in order to prove to the doctor that he keeps me here for good, speaking before the assembled commission, I told about everything that had happened to me before, and then they began to treat me with sufficient attention. But the fact is that the specialist’s mistrust occurred because I was a very good artist and, being in a terrible depression, did not inspire any trust to the guru, who could not see in me, with all his experience and elderly age, any signs of depressive mood, which I masked, on the contrary, by a brisk and lively behavior. So in my childhood, I automatically hid the pain, which was unprofitable and even dangerous to show to my parents. And now such a crazy optimism, born in childhood, played a cruel joke with me, and not only with me; yet I was admitted in the most severe hospital unit.

This hospital was unusually calm, compared to my turbulent life where I could take a rest of the maniacal state. Here, except for rare cases, everybody was calm, at least externally, and mostly asleep, spending time in bed and wandering peacefully along the small corridors of this clinic. I zealously sought and waited for the pacification, which, as it seemed to me, should emerge and had been earlier inside my soul, but I did not find at all at that moment. It was not possible to argue, neither to recollect my thoughts, the emptiness and the resulting anguish, accompanied me at every moment of my life, and whatever I did was very bad. Trying to imagine my interlocutors, to somehow study them, I began to mentally create their psychological portraits in my mind, but it stopped in such a way that having collected the idea of my comrades, I saw this idea empty and meaningless, because, besides the very visual representation, I still I could not go further, and these anxious faces, gathered in my imagination, pressed me only with annoyance and anxiety, showing me the futility of the efforts of my analysis. And no matter how hard I tried using all my strength and will, the irritation and terrible depression only grew, not allowing me feeling at least any satisfaction from life and communication. Although there were moments when the warmth of my interlocutors nevertheless could be felt in conversations, giving hope for the opportunity to escape from the clutches of this nightmare. After all, I felt it was the interaction with people that should lead me to good health and help to eliminate these symptoms, the full idea of which could hardly appear in those persons who never was prone to mental disorders. This kind of torment is totally unlike anything else, even by the fact that it is practically uninterrupted and sophisticated, giving no respite to the person who is not able to get rid of it, blinded by his/her psychic actions, being in the situation of extreme discomfort.

The existence and the pain of the disease can be sensibly understood if you try to imagine a severe violent mockery of a person, a real monster reigning in the mentality, a torturer clutching the most painful emotions and thereby tearing the string of the soul, magically twisting all the thoughts, depriving them of life and you of clarity and freedom, provoking sharp conflicts with yourself, causing you to beg for mercy from fate and this deadly evil-doer, who represents parents, was had once absolutely, completely ruled you in this way, so cold-blooded and indifferent to your sensual world. Although at that time I could not imagine that these symptoms were the memories of my interaction with parents at the very beginning of my life, so to say, the story of the child’s sensual world, which is already so acutely recalled and shows me all the anguish of my past. Therefore, such brutality, ruling the soul of a mentally sick person, is not new to him, and now it was executed repeatedly, when I was twenty years old, and all these resurrected memories, so disturbing to live peacefully, is the core of psychosis.

But everyone’s not well here in the hospital, everyone tries to find a way out, but believe me, no one finds, everyone firmly knows that one just have to wait and rely on, unfortunately, drug treatment which is to many respects completely useless. No one could understand this grief which I expressed only as a simple complaint of not feeling my thoughts, and I had not the mood that should accompany the above, and it makes me feel very bad, and everything, that’s it; and, believe me, what I said is very important. No one, of course, could understand, basing on these words, the grief that raged inside my soul, but I could not find other words, which made it even more painful. All this evil, which guided me, was absolutely not going to retreat, and, on the contrary, it was effectuating terrible steps, which inspired me with the bitterest outcome. My mother’s friend came, and I, knowing her from childhood, rushed to pour out my heart, saying that I had become so stupid that I can really compare myself to a mentally retarded guy in our village. As for myself, of course, I sincerely believed in my complaint, but this woman began to lead me away from such conclusions, she, already in another visit, when the disease had continued to torment me for years, proposed a treatment by electric shock, about which I will speak later.

My parents came to visit, and I burst into scalding tears, telling them that the cause was the glue that I had once breathed. In general, there was something to think about. Every morning of every day was an ordeal; waking up, I was filled with incredibly heavy feelings, and their heaviness was not causeless, they engrossed, depriving me of my usual ability to chatter, I was as if emotionally torn, afraid that something in me was to break and thus to be lost forever, and you need to keep everything inside yourself, otherwise you will simply perish, and this is the most important. I was trying hard to live in such conditions. In order to accomplish this task, doing something else is simply impossible, it is for sure. Even starting a simple conversation with someone needed enough courage, because it seemed to me, if I distract from the main task to keep the remaining pieces of mind together, then I would loose the fight spending the last will of my mind. The weakness of thinking processes, or may be not this, but rather its constant strengthening, but your inner world in which everything happens does not have the same laws, and you seem to be completely lost in a strange realm of tormenting dreams, an alien world of horror. And here you can not find not only the familiar logic, the order of the flow of internal psychic reactions, but even the mandatory presence of chaos here comes in the first rank, the incredible intricacies of everything, either after or at the time of treacherously intervening forces, whose purpose was a direct violence and simply the destruction of your comfort, of everything inside you, in particular, of the emotions once associated and pleasant to many respects.

But we must live somehow, and I felt already calm, knowing that I was not the inly one to be subject to such a catastrophe, that means there is salvation, since there are a lot of us here and all gathered to get help and comfort, and most importantly, there are those who suffered just like you here. And so I made friends with a kid who looked at me with a perfectly clear understanding, answered my exclamation with his “How bad!”; i.e. he neither felt better than I did, as it seemed to me. Then our attention to each other began to support both of us, and thus we recovered, I think. The healing power of friendship made the necessary spiritual upheavals inside us, pulling one after another out of depression. In addition, I was prescribed to take lithium to balance my mood. More importantly, I began reading a book about the exploits of a man who got in the world of animals and survived there, finding his place. Tarzan struck me with his courage in such a terrible situation, and I must say, comparing my sorrows and problems to his, I was replenished with determination and necessary courage, which, of course, contributed to my internal stability. But anyhow I recovered not in the way one can imagine, I swapped the psychosis depression to a slight maniacal rise, i.e., a remission. Doctors in our clinics are still convinced, and this is taught even in universities, that only remissions are possible in cases of maniacal-depressive psychosis, but it’s out of the question to think about completely good health, if once gone mad, it’s forever. And it was absolutely extended for that part of my lifetime, following the depression I was staying now in a somewhat cheerful mood, but, I must say, my behavior was quite efficient.