It was late March 1979. The drab winter with its grey skies
was dragging on in London and spring was nowhere in sight.
I was a 20-year-old university student in my first year of studies.
One evening, I had a cold, or, more technically, as I
learnt later, a post-nasal infection and I went to the
university clinic but they were closed for the day and it
being Easter vacation my regular doctor, Dr Sedgwick, was
on leave. I had to phone for the doctor-on-call who came to
my room in the hall of residence at about 10 pm to examine me.
The doctor spent a total of, say, two minutes giving me a
cursory look-over with his stethoscope and thermometer. Yes,
he was a man in a hurry indeed, with many more calls to
make that cold winter night.
He gave me some antibiotics to take and said "take three
tablets a day and don't drink. Give this note to your
(regular) doctor in the morning" and left in a flash.
Now, I was studying Building Technology and the subject I
was covering just before the Easter break was known as
Daylighting which has implications for fenestration and
such like. For us builders and architects, a "day" means 12
hours; and "night" is another 12 hours. For laymen, a "day"
of 24 hours is our "day" and a "night."
So you can guess what happened. I overdosed on the
antibiotics, taking twice the amount necessary, a tablet
every four hours, instead of every eight.
There was one other communications failure. He said, "Don't
drink." Being a teetotaler, it simply didn't occur to me
that he meant don't drink alcohol. I just thought he meant
don't take fluids while I was on the medication. Which
meant I was soon dehydrated as well as overdosed on the antibiotics.
The next morning, some friends drove me to another doctor's
clinic. He was Dr Hunt and was covering for Dr Sedgwick in
the latter's absence. He wasn't based at the university
clinic but at his own surgery, some distance away from campus.
He took the note from the doctor-on-call, read it and gave
me some medication. He did not even examine me or talk to
me. The note from the doctor-on-call stated his diagnosis
(post-nasal infection) and on it was a prescription.
Apparently, the doctor-on-call didn't have the correct
antibiotic for my post-nasal infection and had given some
something similar to cover me in the interim.
So, Dr Hunt gave me another type of antibiotic and again,
it was supposed to be taken three times a day. But as you
know, I still didn't realise it was meant to be a 24-hour day.
So, that night or the night after--I can't remember
exactly, the memories are all one blur--I was sleeping and
had a vivid nightmare. I also had pyrexia from the postnasal
infection and was delirious. The nightmare was very
frightening; it had to do with my friends at university and
the occult: the devil, evil, flames, chanting, night,
darkness, ritual sacrifices, blood...
I woke up with a start in a pool of sweat. It was 4.30 am.
I was confused and in a state of fear. I needed help. I ran
to the door of the sub-warden's room at my hall of
residence and knocked. He was a black man, a Negro. He
opened the door with a peeved expression on his face. He
was naked and covered himself with a blanket. In his bed
was a blond, white woman, naked under a duvet. It was
obvious he was in the midst of screwing her.
The image of a black man screwing a white woman somehow
associated with my nightmare. More evil. In my confused
state, I associated him with the devil, perhaps because the
colour black was associated with evil.
He said, "Let me get dressed. Wait for me at Security."
"Yes, Security," I thought, "I should be safe there."
I ran as fast as I could to Security. I arrived in a state,
panting breathlessly. The guards asked me what was wrong
but by then I was incoherent. Confused ramblings poured
forth from my mouth. I managed to write down my name and
room number. They dialed for an ambulance. They thought I
was high on drugs. It was not uncommon in the late
seventies for students in the U.K. to get high on LSD.
In the meantime, the sub-warden arrived but I was terrified
of him. Seeing that, the guards put him in a wrestling hold
and interrogated him. He gave them the name of a mutual
friend of ours, Miss Yim, who happened to be his
course-mate. The guards phoned for her and she arrived just
as the ambulance came and so she accompanied me in the
ambulance to the Emergency Room of Hillingdon Hospital.
There, they took off all my clothes, examined my body
closely for puncture marks, as evidence of drug-taking.
They took urine and blood samples. And then, without a
word, everyone disappeared.
I was alone, naked under a blanket, on an operating table.
Bright lights glared at me from above. I was worried. "What
are they going to do to me?" I asked myself, rhetorically.
Then, in came two figures. They both wore thick spectacles,
surgical masks and were dressed in green operating gowns.
One was tall and thin whilst the other was short and fat.
It was obvious from their manner that the tall, thin one
was in charge, and the short, fat one took his orders.
The short, fat one asked me to sit up and gave me a thick,
brown, sickly sweet syrup to drink (I later learnt it was
chlorpromazine syrup). The short, fat one did all the
talking.
"Are you a good Muslim?" he asked in a thick Greek accent.
I didn't know how to answer. What if I said "Yes" and this
guy was Cypriot and he hated Muslims? Was he going to kill
me? As my fear mounted, I decided to hedge my bets...
I recited the names of as many prophets as I could
remember: "Adam, Mohammed, Jesus, Abraham, Solomon, David,
Joseph..." Threw in Confucious and Buddha for good measure.
The short, fat one said, "Oh, shut up!"
He gave me an injection (more chlorpromazine as it turned
out) on my right outer thigh. I twitched in reaction to the
needle prick.
"Be still or else I'll shoot another one up your arse as
well!" he snapped.
Then they both disappeared. The ambulance drove me, naked,
to Windsor Ward. Miss Yim was nowhere to be found. At the
reception counter, I covered my privates with my hands as I
asked the pretty receptionist (I wished I met her under
different circumstances) as nonchalantly and as coolly as I
could muster, "Can I have my clothes back, please?"
"I dunno, love. You'll have to ask your doctor. Who's your
doctor?" she replied to my question with a question. Little
did I know that I was soon to get more of this runaround,
over the coming months.
"I dunno," I replied.
Then this short, fat figure comes walking by in a three-piece
suit, looking spivvy with a red necktie and waist-clock
on a chain. He wore thick spectacles and shouted at
me, "What are you doing here, walking around starkers like
that?" before I could even ask him for my clothes back.
"Get him to his room," he barked to the orderlies.
"Room? If I can just have my clothes back, I'll find my way
home..." I said, falteringly, as he was in no listening mood.
I recognised his gruff voice with the thick Greek accent
from the Emergency Room. He was the short, fat one. His
name was Dr Kalkavarous. He was a psychiatrist. He was not
the sort of man with whom one could get a word in edgewise.
When I reached my room, I passed out. When I woke up three
days later, I noticed I had two pairs of bedroom slippers,
three toothbrushes and some bars of soap. Miss Yim and my
other friends had left them when they visited me but
obviously I was in a state of oblivion, so they left.
The chlorpromazine had knocked me out and "paralyzed" me. I
wouldn't move a muscle. Could hardly lift up my head, let
alone talk. I could just manage opening my eyes. I couldn't
even focus my eyes as the major tranquillizer had knocked
out the accommodation of my eye muscles, along with
everything else. I lay there, supine and comatose, for the
next two weeks. Even my peristalsis stopped: I didn't shit
for a fortnight.
The psychiatrists couldn't find any traces of drugs in me
and so, by elimination, they decided my vivid nightmare
were hallucinations that were caused by a mental disorder.
"Acute schizophrenic-form psychosis" was their diagnosis.
They also noted that my blood test had reported a very high
ESR (Erythrocyte Sedimentation Rate) of 37 (4 to 7 is
normal) indicating an infection, but had dismissed it as
insignificant. If they had bothered to ask me, or rather if
they had not sedated me and I was in a state to tell them,
I would have informed them about the post-nasal infection.
As it was, they didn't have a clue about that or of the
antibiotics or of their overdose.
To further confuse the issue, my taking the antibiotics in
such high dosage had cleared the post-nasal infection so
completely that by the time I was hospitalised there wasn't
a trace of the infection left.
When my friends came to visit me, I was painfully reminded
of the nightmare I had that featured them ever so vividly
and this got me into a bit of a state. The nursing staff
noticed that and hence banned my friends from visiting me.
I was put on 250 mg of chlorpromazine and 10 mg of
haloperidol four times a day as well as procycledine to
counter the side effects of these major tranquillizers.
I was heavily sedated and all alone in my room. My body had
stopped functioning and wasn't taking orders from my brain.
I could listen and I could think, but that was just about
all I could do. I was a zombie that existed in my mind only
for the next couple of months, until I slowly developed a
tolerance to the medication and regained my psychomotor
skills.
I gained 60 pounds in the next six months I was in
hospital, mostly from lack of exercise. I learnt that the
tall, thin one with the thick glasses was Dr Stanley
Wiseberg, FRCPsych, the Consultant Psychiatrist. Dr
Kalkavarous was under training from Wiseberg, hoping to
earn his MRCPsych and was therefore eager to please him.
After I left Hillingdon Hospital in October 1979 and for
the next ten years, I was gradually weaned off the
medications: given other medications to counter the side
effects of the former medications and given less potent
medications and in slowly decreasing doses. As far as I was
concerned, those ten years were nonsensical. All I suffered
during those ten years were the effects and side effects of
these medications. I didn't have a mental illness as such.
You may say I'm in a state of denial, but I think I was
never crazy in the first place. Misunderstood certainly,
but never crazy.
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