Coffee with the mentally ill -- the truth will protect you

Let me just say, at the outset, you'd like her.  She's bubbly.  I like her.

Walking home the other day I passed by the Drug & Alcohol Center about 20 minutes before the start of a meeting -- thus the sidewalk was flooded with folks I knew, zipping back and forth to the nearby Starbucks, finishing cigarettes, all the usual pre-meeting, recovering alcoholic behaviors.  For the space of a few blocks it was like living in some sober version of Mayberry RFD.  "Hey there! Hello! Oh, hey! Hello! Hi!" --  I knew more people out and about than I didn't -- which I think facilitated what happened next, since the volume was turned up to 11 on my "Howdy, Neighbor!" mode.

I stopped to chat with a sponsee, and as we were talking a woman walked by just as we started laughing about ... something. I honestly don't recall, just some silliness.  "What a great sound!  I'm drawn to happy people."  She said, slowing a little.  I recognized her, I had seen her at a meeting a few months ago, I even recalled that she'd shared.  She was a big gal with a bubbly personality, and unless you were in just a horrible mood I guarantee you would absolutely return her smile if she passed you on the sidewalk and smiled at you first.  I assumed that she was on her way to the meeting.  So I gave her a big smile in response to her comment, "Howdy, Neighbor!" writ large on my face from the dozen hellos and hugs and handshakes I'd just waded through.  She came over and the three of us bantered a bit, and then my sponsee ran along to the meeting. 

As we chatted she talked about going away some time soon to an ashram or a monastery if she could get in, and I made some book recommendations about the monastic life -- in my humble opinion that's something you should read about before you jump in -- not that I imagine they let you jump in, exactly.  I don't think too many people come out of a blackout in a monk's cell with a robe and a bible at hand.  A hotel room in Vegas? Yes.  The front lawn, with your shirt over your face and missing one shoe?  Who hasn't!  But a room in a religious institution that wasn't also a hospital?  Hardly.  I remember a speaker I heard years ago talked about how she never came out of a blackout distributing food to the homeless.  Active alcoholism rarely leads to altruism.

She was grateful for the suggestions.  "Oh! Let me write those down! Do you have time for a coffee?"  Big bubbly smile.

"No, no I don't, I'm sorry."

"Well, just walk with me to the Starbucks, I can't stand here chatting too much longer, my back hurts from my bags" (she had a couple of big bags with her -- looked like she could have come from class or the grocery store or something.  Tote bags and such) "and I can sit down and write the title down."

"Okay."  It's always a reasonable little request, which leads to another reasonable little request, and the next thing you know you're sort of drawn in.  We walk the block or so to the Starbucks, and she tells me how she just likes me, we click, perhaps we knew each other in a past life?  Then she laughs, and I say "Maybe. You never know with some of that." Or something equally noncommittal.

"Oh, would you watch my bags while I go in and grab a coffee -- would you like one?" 

"No, no, thank you.  I'm fine -- I really have to get going soon."

"Right.  Here, here's my journal." She opened to a page "This is where I write down all the books I want to read... oh. No room, there," she turned the page, "this says music, but disregard that. Disregard that it says music.  Just write the title there. I'll be right back!"  We'd stopped at a table in front of the cafe, on the sidewalk. I write down "The Cloister Walk" by Kathleen Norris, then on impulse add "Blown Sideways Through Life" by Claudia Shear.  It takes her forever to come back with her coffee.

"Sorry, sometimes I just wind up talking to everyone!"  Her manner is so vivacious and engaging, it's easy to imagine her doing just that.  I tell her about the books I wrote down, and why I think she'd like them.  She laughs and tells me they sound great, and then shows off the journal she'd had me write them in.

It's battered, but bandaged with colorful tape and tied together in a few spots with ribbon -- it looks like something from the Renaissance.  "I just keep all my thoughts and important things in here." She says, or something like that -- I don't remember exactly, because now she's flipping through the pages.  I see beautiful pen-and-ink sketches.  Pressed flowers.  What look like journal entries.  Lists.  Cartoons and postcards taped inside. If you'd asked someone to come up with what an interesting, creative person's journal would look like, it would look exactly like that.

But between the pressed miniature daisies and the haiku, I saw other things, and it made me both go, "Oh! Of course!" in my head, and made me sad, since I was afraid I knew what they likely meant.

Some years ago I sponsored a man who became more mentally ill as his sober time went on.  He was also of course under a psychiatrist's supervision, and during the time I sponsored him was trying to find the right meds, and then the right dosage and combination of meds, to deal with his mental illness.  This is a very dodgy process -- literally you are your own guinea pig, and between the side effects of some of the meds and the condition that caused you to begin them ... it's a tough road.  You can as easily get worse with some meds instead of get better.  One day he came by to give me a ride somewhere, and on the way to the car he looked at me and said, "Mr. SponsorPants, I have something to tell you."  He looked very serious.  "Okay, Mr. Kodak, what is it?"  He looked around, and leaned in. "They've bugged my car, so I want you to be very careful what you say once we get in."  I blinked and looked at him for a long minute before responding.  "Okay, Mr. Kodak.  Will do.  Maybe later you can tell me more about it?"  He nodded, and went on.  "But you have to talk on the way, because otherwise they'll know that I know."  I looked at him for another long minute, and answered with "But you want me to be careful what I say."  He nodded again.  Once in the car, he pointed to the radio, the overhead dome light and then made a gesture towards the backseat, looking at me significantly.  I nodded, and tried to think of something to say.  "Gee, Mr. Kodak, it sure is great to be an American, isn't it."

I can tell you from personal experience you can fill about 20 minutes on the benefits of being an American citizen before you start to repeat yourself.  He seemed quite content with my choice of topic though.  Better Americans than I might have been able to fill more than 20, but I challenge them to do so off the cuff while trying to speak in a casual manner so that the "they" that are listening don't get suspicious.  Once you get through Democracy in general, Due Process, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights (thank God for "Schoolhouse Rock"!) it's just a general travelogue about the fifty states till you're back to Democracy.  I'm telling you, 20 minutes, tops.

From my adventures with him I learned first hand that as you descend into paranoia you do what any person would do when you're in trouble, you ask the authorities (while you still trust them) for help, because you think someone or someones are out to get you.  It's very logical, really.

And, as Bubbly flipped through the pages, I saw phone numbers for the Deputy D.A.'s office, the D.A.'s office, numbers for various state and federal agencies, all with big circles around them or underlined multiple times, with arrows pointing towards or away from them to other notations.

Suddenly "vivacious and engaging" started to look a little like "manic and with no boundaries whatsoever."  The conversation went south shortly thereafter.  I was an angel -- literally a supernatural being -- sent by a Higher Power, to help her.  She could hear what people were thinking.  She might have to disappear, she might have to wear a beard and try to pass for a man.  A recent trial in the newspapers had something to do with her.  People had sabotaged her career.  Certain people had a vendetta against her.  Her friends didn't believe her.  No one believed her.  She offered me several anecdotes as evidence of her telepathy, including the information that the man who had been sitting at the next table till a few minutes ago was here to warn her off from telling me all this.  You know, when actors in films play crazy, they usually get it wrong -- true mental illness, at least, what I have encountered, is laid out for you in as calm and reasonable a manner as a list for the grocery store or directions to the gas station.

But here's what I know to do, it's one of the first, if toughest, lessons I ever learned in sobriety, and it's one of the few that seems to apply equally in a thousand different situations.

The truth will protect you.

Not "protect you" as in protect you from harm, like a ward against voodoo, but if you only say true things you can always find your way through whatever is happening.  (And I think sharing in meetings helps develop this ability, but that's a post for another time I suspect.)

So as I learned to do with my former sponsee, I just tried to think of true things to say to her.

"It must be very hard to be going through something, whatever it might be, and feel like no one believes you."

True.  I felt it was true -- and by saying something truthful like that, I felt compassion for her.  Clearly her perceptions were off (I'm no angel, we can start with that) but making that statement helped me realize how lonely she must feel, how she has to try to figure it out all on her own, believing she has no one to help her.

"It's probably not easy to risk telling someone else, and go through wondering if they'll also not believe you -- that's a pretty hard thing too, I imagine."  Okay, I'm still telling the truth.  My Dad used to tell me about "the ring of truth" -- he was always telling me this as a prelude to letting me know he didn't believe one word of whatever bullshit drunken excuse I was offering at the time -- but I think he was literally right, and when you really try to stop and think and then say only true things, whenever you're confused or not sure how to handle something, everything you say literally has that ring of truth -- and I believe it can keep fear at bay, and can build connections between people in the most untenable, impossible circumstances.

 I went on to suggest that it was maybe not so hard to understand why her friends had a difficult time believing her -- I pointed out that her story was pretty extraordinary, by anyone's measure.  She nodded.  We still seemed to be on the same page.  I was edging my way forward-- pausing to think of what I felt was true, then looking her in the eye and saying it -- it was like trying to find solid footing across a stream, one stone at a time.  But with each thing I said I felt calmer, and I couldn't say how she felt, but she looked like she was listening.  She might have been listening to what the people across the street were thinking, but at least she looked like she was listening to me.

Whenever I don't know how to handle something, and I start to do this, eventually the way forward opens right up and I remember what I'm supposed to be doing -- I'm supposed to be trying to help.  In the moment sometimes it's easy to lose that.  But saying one true thing after another brings me back to myself, and then gives me the courage to say the thing I believe is the truest of all -- and although it's usually not easy to say, and is often unlikely to help in the way I hope it might, at least I can make the attempt:

"I think things are harder for you right now than they need to be, and I think you should try to get some help.  Some professional medical help.  I'm afraid if you wait too long then things will be even harder."  Translation:  You'll be too far into your paranoia to accept help.  Still, I was telling the truth.

Now, wouldn't it be a good world if I could say that somehow, right then, sitting at the Starbucks, I reached her?  You know that's not what happened.  The world is good, but not good in that way.

It would be a pretty bad world if she got hysterical and threw her coffee in my face, scalding me and blinding me and this was being typed by my trained seeing-eye monkey right now.  The world is bad -- sometimes very bad -- but of course that's not what happened either.

She looked at me for a while quietly, and I just sat, and let her look at me. 

She nodded, I think, and then asked me if I thought she should go to the Home Depot or the Library.  I opted for the Library.  In my truthy mode I'm glad she didn't ask me why I thought that was where she should go.  I didn't want to have to say that the idea of her in a store that sold power tools scared me a little.

Blame The Desiderata for this next part: 

I gave her my phone number.  She's not that far gone, and if I keep suggesting, maybe she'll hear it.  I would be lying by omission if I didn't tell you that when I got home I said to myself, "Gah! Why did you give that crazy woman your phone number?"  But in the moment it felt like the right thing to do.

And if she calls, I'll just keep trying to say only the truth, not humor her or blow smoke, and suggesting she get help.  Maybe sticking to what I feel is 100% true will help her hear me.  God knows, it helps me hear me, on the inside, where alcoholism most often renders me deaf to myself, or to that still, small voice it's so important I hear.

And I'll keep suggesting that she stays out of Home Depot, too.  That just sounds like a bad idea to me.

Comments

[Kathy]

A very good cautionary tale. It's hard in early sobriety to distinguish as you were able to.