~How my father helped me escape the psych ward

Anecdotal story to start
I visit this farm in my city from time to time. It has a wide variety of animals.
One day I was watching the group of cows and I saw a larger cow push a calfling away from the presumably mother cow as it was trying to suckle. The pushing was forceful and harsh. The young cow then started to eat the abundant grass and hay around.

The purpose of the Large cow , presumably male, was to play the role of the bad guy, necessary in order to get the calf to change. The mother cow presumably likes her calf and wants to feed it, yet without the bad guy to force the calf away, there is not reason for the calf to learn to eat grass like a adult cow should.

Keeping this in mind , raising children we need a good cop and bad cop parent roles. The same for changing the mentally ill into a better way of life.

In my opinion , in generality, the antipsychotic meds-drugs do nothing for the psychotic mind. The body they do effect. Maybe I was never psychotic, maybe no one is psychotic. The drug Ativan removes fear and anger, but is highly addictive and may increase psychosis.

In another page I try to illustrate that everyone thinks they are sane. Everyone uses the math of base ten, even the psychotic.

The problem with the psychotic is that they are speaking the wrong language and may infact have things “wrong” in their alien universe. Things become wrong as a result of bad communication.

In the psychotic they have reason for whatever they are doing. It makes sense to them or they would not do it. The only reason to understand their insanity is to start communication. To do more would encourage the “wrong” from of communication.

So back to the problem, the psychotic can not communicate in the same language as “normal” persons.
The psychotic will speak in metaphor and memories of their own life, if they still have a reason to speak. If they have not given up hope, if their brain still functions.

How to change the psychotic to speak normally? A chemical can not do this. The psychotic-patient person must want to communicate themselves.

Meds-chemicals can only work in people-patients who believe in them. If a person is truly mad, they have no belief in chemicals, like the belief Dumbo had for his feather that made him fly.

My Father

My father would come to me in the hospital psych ward bringing gifts I wanted, soda and candy.

This opened communication. My father brought something I wanted.
Secondly my father introduced playing cards.

There are rules to follow when playing cards, if you can’t follow the rules in your mind and memory, you can’t play the card game.

As I was sane in the past, played cards in the past, and had a memory of the rules of card games, I would remember and try to follow the rules given an incentive.

The process of remembering the rules and learning once again to execute them, playing the game brought me gradually back into “normal” reality. ( If I was every really insane).

It is an internal self check and memory retrieval.

The process must be done with extreme patience, redundancy,and determined-ness.
It must be done gradually with a reward system.

Just agreeing to play the game of cards should be rewarded.

This also presumes the psychotic-patient-person has some enjoyment of playing the card game.

They can’t win all the time or lose all the time, you might have to pretend to lose if they are too disheartened. I don’t know.

This is also presuming they can perceive winning and losing.

I had to fight the psychiatric drugs effects along with the “psychosis” to be able to play cards and gradually progress.

Gradual progress might be becoming rational sane or being drugged less (poisoned less), hard to say.

With this they may perceive their prison and want to do the shit, and ask or understand what shit to do that the psychiatrists wants them to do in order to gain their freedom.