By D.A.
Let’s just get this out in the open: Mental illness is bullshit. It’s a scam perpetrated by the pharmaceutical companies and the medical establishment to increase office visits, sell drugs, and generally make disturbed individuals like myself feel bad about themselves. (Take that, Dr. Watkins, with all your oh-so-helpful talk about not hurting small animals! Oh, and when’s my next appointment?)
Obviously, we’re all reasonably intelligent people with a presumably well-developed sense of paranoia, so it goes without saying that these “sicknesses” are a scam. I guess that’s why I said it. In the past, people with “illnesses” were not treated (mainly because there were no treatments), but they often received the added bonus of being identified with other skills and talents. But then along comes this bullshit modern medicine and diagnoses them with problems that can be fixed—or at least treated to improve their “quality of life.” Well la-dee-freakin-da.
Here’s a short list of people who made our lives better before everything became a mental illness:
1)Psychic: Whether it’s a really cool dude like David Blaine or that asshole who gets possessed by spirits on every episode of that show where they visit haunted places, psychics will totally kick your ass. They reach into your mind like I reach for the last Pringle in the can, balling up their tiny brain-hand and using the natural lubricant of Olestra (*Google “anal leakage”) to slide right into your psyche. And believe you me, once they get in there, you’re fucked. They’re looking at your past, present, and future like they’re surfing channels for a rousing good episode of Kung Fu Theatre on a Sunday afternoon. And then, in the unkindest cut of all, they tell you all about yourself. Thank holy Jebus these psy-whores don’t have mental TiVo. But nowadays, we’re medicating and shock-therapizing away all the truly original intelli-freaks because they’re “mentally ill” or “delusional” or “shithouse crazy.”
2)Holy Man: Okay, okay, so there are probably some holy women, too, but what upstanding backwards tribe bases its nomadic movements on the whim of some dame? None of them; that’s which one. The ones that followed women died out long ago, likely in search of berries that most closely approximate some goddamn highly coveted MAC lip color. Nevertheless, back in the day these wild-eyed shamans had a direct line to God(s). So what if they shit themselves around the campfire, scratched their balls (again, only men) to determine the weather, and lived in a cave that would scare away bats? Nobody cared. That is until Westernized medical experts got their hands on a model of the human brain and said, “See? This little wrinkle here is where the crazy comes from.” Ooh … aah … shut up. Weren’t things just a lot better when you took a bundle of loco weed to Untunku’s cave and he fixed you right up by talking to your ancestors? Yes, they were.
3)Sorcerer/ess: Magic rules, and you know it. Not fakey-fakey “pull this rabbit outta my ass” magic, but like real-live Jesus-type miraculous magical shit. Are you a Lord of the Rings fan? HAHAHAHAHAHA! Just kidding, man. You’re correct that it really is a popular series of lore. Just don’t quote it in front of girls. For real, dude, just don’t do that. And nobody is more badass in any of the books and movies than the wizards, witches and warlocks who are basically running the show, while a bunch of furry-footed homos run around and almost get eaten by bigger, scalier, hornier creatures. We used to fear witches (largely because they often ate our children and made our women into adulterous Satan-slurping succubi), and now we just go, “Awww, look at the retarded hippie. She thinks she’s doing magic by smudging away negativity with a bundle of rosemary. How cute … and stupid. Let’s egg her shanty.” Whose fault is this? Doctors. And logic. But I can’t hurt anybody’s feelings by lashing out at stupid, inanimate logic. So, doctors.
4)Eccentric: When my dad was growing up, there was a WWII vet in his neighborhood who wore a dress all the time. He wasn’t gay; he wasn’t a cross-dresser in our sense of the word; he wasn’t trying to prove any kind of point. He was simply part of a now endangered (if not extinct) species known as “eccentrics.” For centuries, these folks enriched our lives with their antics, and made us thank heaven above that we weren’t related to them. Or, if we were related to them, that nobody knew we were related to them. Either way, they’re long gone and buried under a huge stack of editions of the DSM [insert whatever updated roman numeral they’re on this week]. I love people who wash their hands 300 times a day. I love it when some guy builds a sculpture garden out of old discarded toilets. I love the fact that some people just flat-out talk to themselves, no matter who’s around. But now all that’s being taken from me with a hail of blue and yellow and red pills. Ever heard of Ernest Hemingway? Abraham Lincoln? Woody Allen? Hunter S. Thompson? The most talented people in the universe have always been weird as fuck, but not for long. Not if these labcoat-wearing spoilsports have anything to say about it.
5)Transcendental Thinker: Some people can use the power of their brains to leave their bodies and embark on unspeakably beautiful and profound journeys into the ether and beyond the realm we all perceive as our known universe. Sounds faggy as shit to me, but that was the majority of the appeal. Listening to some long-haired sissy wax poetic about his external, floating sojourn into the unknown is just as tragic and awesome as the clips I find online of skateboarders busting out their teeth and cops shooting themselves in the foot while talking to school children. I heart that. But now I have to visit near-death-experience blogs to hear about people looking down on their own bodies and drifting through the ceiling and into some alternative consciousness. The drawback here is that these are normal, everyday people—and where’s the fun in that? I don’t give a fuck if some plumber from Des Moines died and met his gramma and she told him where her long-lost wedding ring was. I just don’t care. I can’t make myself care. Doctors can meet me in the parking lot and try to transcend me beating their asses. [*Note: Please only elderly, female, or infirm doctors apply for ass-kicking.]
6)Criminal/Alcoholic/Scumbag: Alright, so I have a lot of angst, and sometimes it comes across a little bitter (or a lot, depending on how much I’ve had to drink on that particular morning). Sometimes, it could even be perceived as the white-hot coals of some ever-growing, universal hate. But now I can’t even hate some dude for being a drunk piece of shit who beats his wife. Why? Because he has a disease. Child molesters and predators of all types? No longer fair game because they’re ill. Some dickhead who runs out on his family, doesn’t work, and shoplifts from hardworking folks? Nope. He’s depressed. He needs treatment. He deserves compassion. Fuck. That pretty much leaves me at a loss. If I can’t make fun of you or sucker-punch you on the way to the men’s bathroom, I got nothing for you. Nothing. No, really, that’s all I have to offer. I’m just not good at hand-holding or tear-wiping … unless by “hand” you mean “boob,” and by “tear” you mean “ass.”
I don’t know when, where, or why we started to ruin all our good old-fashioned fun by diagnosing and treating these people, but it really has to stop. All you nut-jobs out there, unite! Stop taking those crappy meds! Reclaim your inner child (or children, as the case may be for some of us a bit more traumatized than others)! If you have a friend who takes meds, make them stop! Hide that shit and see where the winds of mental change take you! It may not be the best experience of your life, but believe me when I tell you that finding yourself standing in the middle of a frigid interstate while wearing a sock puppet on your wiener is a whole lot more interesting than taking pills and being calm and watching reruns of “The Real World.” Oh, and by the way … schizophrenia.