LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth |
Booked Solid |
by Constant Reader |
PROZAC HIGHWAY, Persimmon Blackbridge Press Gang, 270 pp, $14.95 Welcome to the Cyber Cuckoos Nest, where youll meet an unforgettable cast of characters. Foremost among these is the books narrator, Jam, an over-forty cleaning lady and lesbian performance artist. Jams life seems to be spinning out of control. Formerly under psychiatric day-care and medicated, Jam recognizes that shes slipping into depression again. She takes you along on the journey and its a memorable trip. Jam is internet connected to a group which has the site name of This Is Crazy. Their on-line chat reveals a community that is tight-knit without being exclusive. Its a place they can visit and reveal their innermost thoughts and fears and not feel out of place. They all share a strong disdain for convention and refer to the rest of the world as Melles (normals) and The Meatworld. Advice flows freely on this highway and so does disagreement. What does surface is a deep appreciation for individual liberty and a shared rebellion against traditional treatments for psychiatric disorders. Even though their words can be harsh and hurtful, what comes through is a genuine caring and concern for each other. Stuck in the writers block of trying to write a new piece of performance work for herself and Roz, who shares stage space with her and is a former lover, Jam retreats more and more to her computer world which becomes more and more her virtual reality. And youd hardly blame her. Her forays into the real world become almost surrealistic. The professional help she seeks seems to be on the single-track cure of drug therapy. Not that anti- psychotic drugs are new to Jam. Shes been there and is desperately trying not to go back. The psychiatrist she sees diagnoses her as Bipolar Affective Disorder and thinks that Prozac and lithium are the answer to her problems. She doesnt. Jam turns to an old tried and true remedyrazor cutting. She discovered this relief when a former shrink had suggested she look for replacement behaviors to curb her hysterical actions. We learn this: "Jam couldnt afford to break dishes, even cheap ones, but she could afford a razor blade. Cutting her arms was a revelation. The first time, it was the barest scratch. Shed been having a fight with someone in her house and she went up to her room to scream like John [the therapist] had suggested. It gave her a sore throat and not much else. Then she went into the bathroom and took the blade out of the razor that the guys used when they had to get a job or something. Back in her room with the door closed, she stroked the blade across her upper arm. It didnt hurt. A line of blood appeared. She felt dizzy and scared, and then very happy. She washed the blade and put it back. She didnt bother to write down what she was feeling because it was always the same: hate myself, hate myself. She didnt return to what had upset her because she didnt want to risk breaking her good mood, so she washed the dishes instead. She was happy all day. "Two days later she borrowed the razor blade again, cut deeper. There was more blood but it still didnt hurt. It started to hurt the next day at about the same time her good mood started to fade. She didnt understand the numbness, the joy. Maybe it was adrenaline or endorphins, her brain flooded with happy chemicals. Maybe it was an emotional release like John had said. It had something to do with hate myself, but she felt better and that was enough. The next time she was in town, she bought her own razor blade. She knew enough to keep her mouth shut. She wore long-sleeved shirts and told John the replacement behavior method was working well." Those two paragraphs show a brilliant insight into the seductiveness of addictive behavior, and how it can manifest in a way that seems repugnant, yet we can begin to understand the aberration and be moved by it. All is not black in Jams cyber-world. She comes close to falling in love with Fruitbat, who comes on-line from a Baltimore library. Fruitbat is in an involuntary day care program where she is struggling for sanity and freedom from forced Thorazine treatment. Their keyboard romance is rife with black humor and touching revelations. There is also an exchange within the group on hallucinations that is wonderfully funny and will perhaps give you a new insight on how to view what seem to be unsolvable situations. This book is filled with wit and wisdom as well as the dark drama of anti-social anarchists. Blackbridge has done a remarkable job of opening wide a world that is dysfunctional on the one hand and intellectually profound on the other. You care about the people she introduces us to and are moved by their dilemmas. It will make you think and ponder just what is "crazy" and why some of us are diagnosed as such. Much of this book resonates to a piece of poetry Emily Dickinson wrote in 1862: Much Madness is divinest Sense To a discerning eye Much sensethe starkest Madness Tis the Majority In this, as All, prevail Assentand you are sane Demureyoure straightway dangerous And handled with a chain. Blackbridge has written a book that is hard to put down and impossible to forget. Could you ask for more? |
LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth, Vol. 8, No. 9, July 17, 1998. |