Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

My Stages of Recovery

2014; Oxford University Press; Volume: 43; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/schbul/sbu024

1745-1701

Jason A Jepson,

Mental Health and Psychiatry

My sunglasses were still on as I entered the small room. My platoon Sergeant was behind me, and I noticed that the man waiting for us wore a nametag calling him a “Doctor.” I was wearing sunglasses because without them, my disease would spread. That meant, through the channels of extra sensory perception, my reality would take hold, and an individual would be able to speak with another individual without them being present. Suddenly, as the naval doctor was asking me questions, my platoon sergeant yelled. “Take your sunglasses off!” The very thing I couldn’t do. Because I was use to following orders, I slowly took off my sunglasses. So it begins ... the doctor will now be able to hear everyone I had made eye contact with for the last couple of months. The doctor sighed. I was confident that the voices had made contact with him. I was given pajamas to wear, sent to a room in the psych ward that I would share with three other people. This was a psych ward. Never in a million years would I have thought I might end up in a place like this. I was scared, but resigned to whatever might happen. My platoon Sergeant had driven me from Fort Irwin, California in the Mojave Desert to Balboa Naval Hospital in San Diego. During the long drive to the hospital, I felt a sense of relief. At my Army base I always had to keep my guard up. I didn’t trust anyone around me there. I had made eye contact with all of my fellow soldiers, and so the voices were influencing them too. Several things that I had experience in the military may have conspired to enable me to have the powers that I have now. I was stationed in Fort Knox during my basic and advance training. One night, we were training on the Calvary scout main weapon the M3A3 Bradley fighting vehicle. There were three of us in one track. I like to think I drove it to the best of my ability. This of course was before my special powers took hold of me. Everything was fine until I was in the back of this vehicle and my seat had a broken seat belt so I tied the two ends that I did have around me. The driver who was in front seemed to be maniac behind the wheel. He hit a bump and I hit my head on a bar over head. I was knocked out for a second. When I woke up, the trip was over. But the person sitting next to me was crying. I guess he thought I was dead. When I moved, he stopped crying. The second instance was at Fort Irwin. I was in the field during a rotation, and the soldiers in my team were parked in a line. It was getting dark and someone called me over. I went, and the next thing I knew five guys were trying to wrap my body in duct tape. I fought them off by pushing and kicking away anyone trying to tape me up. It took a different soldier (from a different platoon) who was bigger than me and stronger than me to bring me down. Imagine fighting for your life and losing. This was initiation. I was the new guy. They also taped someone else I came in with but not as bad. They didn’t put tape over his mouth like they did me. This experience split my psyche into two realities. There was an everyday reality and a reality that was all mental. The reality I explained. The reality that inspired me to go to mental health so I could figure out what this really was. A part of me thought it was a new step of evolution. I was later Honorably Discharged. At home my behavior was very erratic, so much so that my parents had to call the police. They took me away in handcuffs. It was a hard thing to go through, but now, I am thankful for that experience because I got the treatment I deserve. I finally was on medication.