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Gerry Roche "A Memoir"

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Gerry Roche A Survivor’s Story: a memoir of a life lived in the shadow of a youthful brush with psychiatry by Gerry Roche And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. TS Eliot: Four Quartets Contents Introduction 4 Chapter 1 : Ground Zero 7 1971: Lecturing, Depression, Drinking, John of Gods, … Chapter 2 : Zero minus one 21 1945-71: Childhood, School, University … Chapter 3 : Zero’s aftermath: destination ‘cold turkey’ 41 1971-81: MSc., Lecturing, Sculpting, Medication-free, Building Restoration, …… Chapter 4 : After ‘cold turkey’: the cake 68 1981-92: Tibet, India, Log Cabin Building, … Chapter 5 : And then the icing on the cake 105 1992-96: China, Karakoram, more Building, Ethiopia, ... Chapter 6 : And then the cognac … (and the bitter 150 lemon) 1996-2012: MPhil, Iran, Japan, PhD, more Building, Syria ... (and prostate cancer) … Chapter 7 : A Coda 201 2012-15: award of PhD … Armenia, Korea, … Postscript : Stigma: an inerasable, unexpungeable, 215 indestructible, indelible stain. Appendix: : Medical interventions on the grounds of 226 ‘best interests’ Endnotes 233 2 I wish to dedicate this memoir to my sons Philip and Peter and to their mother (and my-ex-wife) Mette, with love and thanks. I wish to give a special word of thanks to Ms. Maureen Cronin, Mr. Brian McDonnell, Mr. Charles O’Brien and Ms. Jill Breivik who assisted me in editing this memoir. 3 Introduction A cure is not overcoming anything, a cure is learning to live with what your are, and with what the past has made you, with what you've made of yourself with your own past .1 The story that I tell is of a journey, or perhaps more of an enforced wandering or a detour occasioned by what, at the time, seemed as inconsequential as the taking of a short break. In fact it necessitated a forty year search to regain the foundations on which I had once stood but of whose fragility I had then been utterly unaware: that sense of sureness and self-worth which is the birthright of every person but which I had unknowingly put in jeopardy. The event that caused this detour was a brush with psychiatry. It was caused by a bout of bad depression, exacerbated by excessive drinking resulting in psychiatric advice to enter St. John of God’s psychiatric hospital in Dublin as a voluntary patient for a few weeks rest and treatment for depression. In retrospect, this was advice which I should not have taken. The detour was the struggle to escape from the label of being viewed – even, and perhaps especially, by myself – as an ‘ ex-psychiatric patient ’. Many psychiatrists dispute the existence of such stigma but lest anyone believe that it is imagined, he need only listen to news reports about someone wanted by the Gardai and to see how a phrase such as “ the suspect is known to have a psychiatric history” is pregnant with implications; in fact that ‘history’ might well relate to little more than an episode of depression. Though the initial events were indeed negative, the ensuing detour brought me to strange lands (Tibet, Iran, Syria, Japan, Ethiopia to name but a few); to intellectual landscapes (Law, Philosophy, Zen Buddhism) and to uncovering talents (academic research, woodturning, sculpture, log-cabin and house-building) which I might never have even suspected that I possessed. It would not have been possible to write this memoir without spending close to ten years doing academic research on some of psychiatry’s more problematic aspects. This work, in addition to my academic qualifications in Law, my training as a barrister and my previous research work in the Philosophy of Medicine allowed me to challenge the intellectual foundations of psychiatry especially in relation to its coercive aspects. Though I myself was a voluntary patient and never subjected to coercion, it is the implicit, and sometimes explicit, background to all staff/patient interactions in hospital psychiatry. It is for example, a little known provision of Irish Mental Health legislation, 4 that if a patient though categorised as ‘voluntary’, wants to leave a mental hospital without permission, he may be detained involuntarily. 2 The fruit of these studies was being conferred in 2012, with a PhD by the University of Limerick for a dissertation entitled ‘ A philosophical investigation into coercive psychiatric practices .’ 3 This award has given me the standing especially in my own eyes, to enable me to write this story; its absence would I believe, have ensured that any criticisms of psychiatry that I might make, would have been dismissed, by the generality of psychiatrists, as not only unwarranted but presumptuous in that I was assuming an authority to comment on matters which lay solely within the competence and expertise of the psychiatric profession.4 That the thesis has had some small measure of success 5 has emboldened me but the very fact that I needed such validation to write this memoir is testimony to the depth and persistence of the stigma of having once been a psychiatric patient even though my last brush with clinical psychiatry was very minor and over 33 years ago. Only now do I feel that the torment of psychiatric stigma has been sufficiently trammelled at least in my own mind, to enable me to tell this story. I do so in the hope that it may assist others who wish to escape psychiatry’s entanglements, but find it difficult to do so. I hope that it will show that it is indeed possible to cut the Gordian knot and regain one’s sense of wholeness and self-respect; or, in more philosophical language, one’s ‘personhood’. This is not to be taken as a blanket criticism of psychiatrists. Although some psychiatrists consider those who seek their assistance as being akin to “ the detritus of a broken brain ” 6 whose main or indeed sole need is a medication to ‘fix’ this defective brain, others (whom I believe to be, sadly, much in the minority) engage with those seeking their help, with deep empathy and manifest an acknowledgment that the troubled individual before them is an autonomous, responsible person entitled to respect – a person who, for the time being is unable to find a path through the maze within which they are ensnarled but who desperately seek such a path. What such people need more than anything else are words of wisdom, understanding and help with how best to find a path. _____________________________ At crucial junctures I was fortunate to be helped on my journey of re-discovery by two such empathetic psychiatrists. The first occurred in 1981 when having been on various psychoactive medications continuously since my student days in 1966, I came to the conclusion that the unwanted effects of these medications posed a far greater problem for me than anything that they were supposed to cure. I attempted to go ‘cold turkey’ 7 on my own but the side effects of these efforts were so frightening that I stopped, fearing possibly life-threatening 5 consequences if I continued. Before repeating the attempt, I decided to place myself in what I considered to be a safe environment where at least my physical health might be safeguarded and I signed myself into St. Patrick’s Hospital as a voluntary patient. The medical and nursing staff were – with one notable exception – not supportive; one nurse asked me why I was in hospital at all if I was not taking medication. From the day I entered the hospital I stopped taking all psychoactive medications; I stayed in bed for the first five days and kept a diary of my various reactions. One morning a doctor (whose name I unfortunately have forgotten but who was I believe a Professor of Psychiatry from Trinity College) put his head around the door of my room and asked how I was. I replied that I was trying to withdraw from all psychiatric drugs as I believed that to me, they were of more harm than good; he said that perhaps I was right and wished me luck. He was the exception and his words of encouragement – succinct and guarded though they were – sustained me over the following weeks. I have never taken any psychoactive medication since. The second was fortuitous: having heard a radio interview with Professor Ivor Browne 8 in which he described his psychotherapeutic technique of Holotropic Breathwork, I made contact with him and attended a number of his workshops. It is only in retrospect that I can fully appreciate how much I owe to Professor Browne firstly for his deep understanding and empathy and then for putting me back in control of my life’s trajectory. A short passage from his book Music and Madness both encapsulates his personal attitude to psychiatric practice and contrasts it with the all too dominant attitude of many other psychiatrists: In dealing with a psychiatric illness there is no treatment that you can apply to a person that will bring about real change in him. The person has to undertake the work himself, and this involves pain and suffering. … Many psychiatrists seem to have missed this point entirely. They think that, by giving tranquilisers and temporarily relieving symptoms, something has been achieved, whereas in fact no real change has taken place and sooner or later the person will slip back … 9 6 Chapter 1: Ground Zero 1971: Lecturing, Depression, Drinking, John of Gods, … “The real meaning of enlightenment is to gaze with undimmed eyes on all darkness.” 1 Since completing my studies in UCD in 1968 I had occasionally seen Dr.
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