Excerpt
from Ruby Wax’s, “What’s So Funny About Mental Illness?” One in
four people suffer from some sort of mental illness, I am one of the one in
four. I think I inherited it from my mother, who, use to crawl around the house
on all fours.She had two sponges in her
hand, and then she had two tied to her knees. My mother was completely
absorbent. And she would crawl around behind me going, "Who brings
footprints into a building?!" So that was kind of a clue that things
weren't right. So before I start, I would like to thank the makers of
Lamotrigine, Sertraline, and Reboxetine, because without those few simple
chemicals, I would not be vertical today. (When
hospitalized) I wasn't sent a lot of cards or flowers. I mean, if I had of had a
broken leg or I was with child I would have been inundated, but all I got was a
couple phone calls telling me to perk up. Perk up! Because I didn't think of
that. Because,
you know, the one thing, one thing that you get with this disease, this one
comes with a package, is you get a real sense of shame, because your friends
go, "Oh come on, show me the lump, show me the x-rays," and of course
you've got nothing to show, so you're, like, really disgusted with yourself
because you're thinking, "I'm not being carpet-bombed. I don't live in a
township." So you start to hear these abusive voices, but you don't hear
one abusive voice, you hear about a thousand -- 100,000 abusive voices, like if
the Devil had Tourette's, that's what it would sound like. (But we
all know) there are no voices in your head. You know that when you have those
abusive voices, all those little neurons get together and in that little gap you
get a real toxic "I want to kill myself" kind of chemical, and if you
have that over and over again on a loop tape, you might have yourself
depression. Oh, and that's not even the tip of the iceberg. If you get a little
baby, and you abuse it verbally, its little brain sends out chemicals that are
so destructive that the little part of its brain that can tell good from bad
just doesn't grow, so you might have yourself a homegrown psychotic. If a
soldier sees his friend blown up, his brain goes into such high alarm that he
can't actually put the experience into words, so he just feels the horror over
and over again. So here's
my question. My question is, how come when people have mental damage, it's
always an active imagination? How come every other organ in your body can get
sick and you get sympathy, except the brain? …can we
please stop the stigma?
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