But here in the hospital being, I think, a prison nightmares overtake a man, against which he can no longer stand.
House of sorrow…
What a man shall undergo in a hospital? Still much filled with the rise of my super-energetic mood; I did not at all succumb to the onslaught of medications and even arranged a crazy concert with dances for all the forced patients in my ward. Forced patients are those who, being threatened by a criminal sentence, but not jailed due to a mental disease. And so I danced enthusiastically, amusing all this rabble, which were totally different from those in our village. And I must admit, I made many friends with many of them, because, again, not everyone considered me as a madman, despite my queer performance at Zemfira’s songs background. But those who realized that I was delirious, and most of them thought so, decided to introduce me to the President, as they called the local maniac Kolya, who considered himself a most real president of the world, who was imprisoned in a psychiatric hospital in order to prevent him from his powerful influence on the world, of which he was completely convinced. That is to say that for me his influence turned out to be really strong. Whether Kolya’s erudition, or his secret knowledge and secrets, whether the ability to play chess, learned from Fisher, or the whole combination of those at once, made me sincerely trust this person which was mostly charming. When my parents came to see their son and learn if he was healthy, they heard the cheerful news that President Kolya was now among my close friends. I must say that Kolya was doomed and never left the maniacal state, and all the horror of the constantly raised mood had never left him for a long time since some critical point. “I am recognized by people to be a God,” I told him, and he asserted that the greats of this world were convinced of his genius and worshiped him as a God, and we became very friendly.
Forced patients managed to get stiff drinks, they always drank builder’s tea, constructing homemade boilers, they made from bread a kind of beads they skillfully played with, and taught me to do so. I absolutely did not see the need to tell anyone that I’m a God, so this secret was only confessed to Kolya. For another month and a half, I did not leave the maniacal spin. My imagination started to mess playfully: I turned into a dragon looking for its tail, studying the order of this universe, which consisted here in the change of having meals and cigarettes in a smoking room. Here, nothing was more valuable than a cigarette. It was the only joy for anyone who got used to the tragic rhythm of life in this institution. People here became passionate smokers, and the cigarette could be smoked at once by a large group of comrades, especially those who were completely suppressed and weak, having no such dope because they were insolvent or robbed. But, having gathered their last strengths, came to the smoking room and asked for mercy to finish the cigarette stub, those poor people even did vile tricks, eating feces, as a performance for which they were given a cigarette.
It seemed that the entire heavy spirit of the hospital could not be endured without a whiff. But whatever happened around me, even with no trace of a comedy, but it still could not bring me torments, because I was influenced by some craving, in which my whole life was, and it also blew the fire of that upraised mood like Kolya had. I could not even feel vexed for not visiting the college, not going to work and generally staying in such a nasty place, I had somehow no time for regrets, I was like internally glad to something much greater, compared to the life chance which I had lost. But it’s very difficult to guess what inspired me with that optimism and pleased my whole being. Calling all that a painful mood swing, a maniacal phenomenon is too boss-eyed, because there is something that modifies these processes, keep my whole mental apparatus together, and something distracts from sadness, something which cheers up more than oppresses.
But, for example, Kolya, he was never sad, he could quickly wake up from depression and continue his holiday of presidency, which was kindled by evil companions, giving him the raw material to think upon his greatness. When I was discharged from the hospital, I had a dream. I will say that even then, without being a savvy knowledge of the analysis of dreams, for which the father of psychoanalysis Freud was deservedly proud, I already shared his views to a certain degree and at that time I perfectly understood the hidden thoughts of the dream in which I saw a parrot: this huge cockatoo clawed my finger and began to tear it apart. When I woke up, I realized that it was the image of Kolya, the man who turned into a parrot, repeating the same thing all the time, saying about his presidency. I also realized that I could implement the same destiny, if I repeat that I’m a god endlessly, never leaving the closed circle of maniacal states, and then I woke up, horrified at the situation in which I was, and at the same moment feeling myself free from it. An attack of fear turned all the aspirations of maniacal movements inside me that anticipated the possible terrible outcome of such a play as pretending to be a god, and put an end to the mood which, with devilish firmness, had tortured me for about four months, taking everything in my life, in replacing them by illusions, sucking all the remnants of reason from me. Then, the next dream, where I suffered within the walls of some gloomy dungeon, gathering my strengths, I tried to survive among gorilla-like creatures, and I myself was such monster, but I just could not stay in such an aggressive company, and I felt my weakness which I seriously needed to hide in order to stay alive. To tell the truth, such personal emotions in the hospital, and the inability to save the same personality, exhausted by this heavy ambiance, and the desire to do so is great, it must be great, and otherwise you will be without a doubt crushed in this dungeon. And, of course, the story seen in the dream contributed to the appearance of the fear to be in such a setting, which could only bring me anger, cruelty and hatred, at best, and at worst – this infernal madhouse machine invented by humans would devour you without any hesitation, transforming you into a total monster. I must say that dreams are great, and I was completely convinced of this when I got acquainted with the works of Freud, but at that moment I was very far from my later addiction – reading his famous works, at that time I was worried about the process of survival in the society, having such a very crippled mentality. I want to introduce you the questions that I had to face, because now, after the second attack, it became clear that, perhaps, they would be endless.
The fact is that psychiatrists considered the essence of the problem in the simplest way; they did not have a rational explanation for my case, or even any other one, so they replied to my complaints that everything would get better, because it had used to happen so before. And really, it was very simple and enough at some time. The truth is that I did not at all focus on this issue. I was especially not interested in it during the periods of mania, for I considered myself very healthy, even excessively, but in maniacal rises there are specific uneven fluctuations when, for example, you feel that everything is wrong and that you are lost, and then comes a moment of enlightenment, just following the heavy self-assessments. But these moments did not always directed me correctly, the way out consisted, according to the young promising specialist, who arranged a brief lecture for my mother, in a usual experience of attacks, but in order to get rid of the disease, it’s necessary to change yourself radically: totally everything, every moment, every memory should be sorted and carefully discussed, and then there you can get an opportunity to recover absolutely and completely, but this was not possible in my case.
I must say that the girl was absolutely right, but my mom could not use the hypothetical possibility, so this information became useful only for me personally and not soon, though it was not bad, indeed, at that time analyzing such issues was new for domestic psychiatry denying any method to real health from psychoses and quite clearly advocated what I, in fact, was said by the specialists of the clinics. Yes, it is to remark, a long time later everyone refused to pay any attention to the possibility of an absolutely complete mental recovery. In the medical universities our future specialists, psychiatrists and psychologists were taught that only remissions are possible, but these are, as I already mentioned, the same as maniacal rises, just in a more hidden form, and it was supposed that this could well be called a healthy state for such unfortunate fellows as I was. Where does this outrageous ignorance or even dangerous and terribly unfavorable opinion originate from?
The