In the last couple of posts I have talked a little more about life. In today's post I want to fill in some details from previous post and speculate about a serious example of psychiatric misconduct.
The Big Day Out 2007 was held January 17, as I said in the last post. I was still working at bFM on Waitangi Day, the 6th of February, the only other ones working at the station that morning being Mikey Havoc and a young female newsreader. I do not know the date I stopped working at bFM. The Red Hot Chilli Peppers' concert was held April 21 (based on what I can look up on the Internet.) So, this suggests that if I worked at bFM for another fortnight after Waitangi Day, there was a gap of about three weeks between my leaving bFM and seeing the Chilli Peppers play. If it was three more weeks at bFM, it would be a fortnight as I said in the previous post. I do not know if I was experiencing psychotic symptoms prior to this concert - my feeling is that the impression that I was under surveillance in my own flat probably began before this gig but greatly worsened afterwards. My guess is that I remained at the Big House between a fortnight and a month after the Chilli Peppers concert before I reached the crisis point I described in the previous post and had to be rescued from the flat by my brother. I do not know off hand the date I first made contact with the Mental Health System or the date, shortly after this, that I had my first consultation with Tony Fernando, the psychiatrist I would see until early 2012.
In the previous post I said that when I first rocked up to bFM in 2006, almost the first thing I told Jose was that I had "accidentally picked up a male prostitute", something I had also told my flatmates. I feel I need to explain what actually happened. Perhaps a fortnight or a month before I first went to bFM, a German backpacker came to stay at the Big House. We went out drinking and clubbing one night – he seemed to expect me to know where all the Drum and Base venues in the city were and held it against me that I no longer did. The next morning, at about 10am, I drove him into town, to the Intercity bus station. On the way, my car ran out of petrol. I pulled into a bus stop by the Civic and ran with the backpacker up to the bus station. When he was safely on his way, I went to a petrol station at the top of Mayoral Drive (this petrol station no longer exists), picked up a canister of petrol and went back to my car. A street kid hanging around at the time decided to give me a hand filling up my tank: I was in a way elated (stupid accidents can do that to a person), a state of mind reinforced by the fact that I had a bus driver honking at me, and impulsively offered the street kid a ride in my car.
He got in and we went back to the petrol station to finish filling up the tank. On the way he took a Bourbon and Coke from the bag he was carrying and started drinking it: his bag was full of Bourbon and Coke cans. I began to get a bad feeling, a feeling of sick discomfort, anxiety or dread. I was already regretting my impulsive offer. I asked him where he wanted to go and he said he had friends in St Heliers, so I drove there. On the way, he asked to use a public bathroom: I stopped and he went in and emerged shortly after. I half thought he expected me to follow him in.
By this point, you see, I had begun to develop a queasy feeling that this kid might be gay, that I had, in a way, accidentally picked up 'a male prostitue'. Picking up hitchhikers is one thing, impulsively giving car rides to street kids is another. Bear in mind, though, that this was 10am on a weekday morning and not a time when one would expect to find male prostitutes soliciting business. When I arrived at St Heliers, I found that his claim that he had friends there was a lie. I drove back into town and, becoming increasingly desperate, asked him where he wanted to go instead. He said, "I want to go with you, Andrew!" We drove back to Fort Street and, because he still refused to get out of the car, I pushed him out.
Now, I have thought about this horrible incident a little in the eleven years since. It was possible simply that this kid was homeless and wanted me as a benefactor, someone who could provide him with somewhere to stay. It is also possible, though, that this kid may well have been sexually abused when he was younger, that he was drawn towards older male father figures. I was twenty-six then. I still don't know what this kid's problem was; I can only surmise. But I do know, or at least suspect, that my impulsive offer to give him a lift in my car was an incredibly stupid mistake.
I came home and, as I said, immediately told my flatmates that I had "accidentally picked up a male prostitute". I didn't explain in any detail what had actually happened. I have since talked about this incident with my mother and, in 2014, I sent an email describing this event to my psychologist: I think the asshole didn't believe me. In 2014, for the first time, I discovered that the mental health 'professionals' treating me had performed brief interviews with members of my family and my flatmates when I first became a patient. Perhaps a flatmate had reported to them that I had picked up a male prostitute and those treating me had concluded that I made a habit of cruising for male prostitutes. Those treating me never asked me about it, and if they had been told a false story, never checked to see if their 'facts' were right. When I told my psychologist this story via email in 2014, I volunteered the information.
At this point I would like to get back to dates and events.
After leaving the Big House, I remained psychotic for the rest of 2007. I had been put on 2.5 mgs of Rispiridone. During this time I continued to believe that there were more gay people than straight people in the world, that the planet was ruled by a conspiracy of closet homosexuals. My psychosis ebbed away shortly after Christmas and I was almost well for the entirety of 2008, going back to University to complete some Philosophy papers. On the 5th of January 2009, I became psychotic again, pretty much the same night as I attended Neil Finn's second Seven World Collide show. (In a previous post I said that this concert was held December 2008 – this was an error based on my confusing the month the accompanying album was recorded with the date of the concert.) It was that month or the next that I started, for the first time, hearing voices. (I have described this moment in the post "Me and Jon Stewart".) The trigger, or stressor, that caused me to become psychotic again was that I believed, intuitively or psychically, that my evil faggot of a psychiatrist had falsely put on my record that I had come out as gay.
I was very 'unwell' for almost all of 2009. The caustic agent that made me sick was my feeling that I had been falsely outed, that those treating me thought me gay. More than that I believed that the Rispiridone might somehow actually turn me homosexual. Shortly before August 2009 I started hearing voices saying "I'm gay, I'm gay": I thought these were the voices of all the other patients in the world taking Rispiridone coming out. I was even a little scared that I might say it out loud. I panicked. Due to incredibly distressing psychotic symptoms and general physical and mental malaise associated with this horrible drug, I considered suicide, even going so far as to write a suicide note. This suicidal ideation occurred on the 6th of August, my mother's birthday.
When Tony Fernando, my psychiatrist, learned that I had considered suicide, I think he panicked. He allowed me to discontinue the drug. I reduced it by 0.5mgs a week over the course of a month and half, the fastest he would allow me to go off it. Being allowed to discontinue the Rispiridone cured my psychosis. I was pretty much well for about a month, although I had severe difficulty sleeping. I thought that by getting off the drug I had also escaped the diagnosis. I even went with my mother to Sydney for a wedding, while I was there hitting on a girl in a boat. A couple of weeks after I got back from Sydney I again became unwell, the triggering event being, bizarrely I admit, seeing an advertisement on TV featuring Iggy Pop. Basically, I decided that even though I had managed to get off the horrible drug Fernando had put me on, I was still stuck in the same situation.
Shortly after this, I ended up back in the Taylor centre and was put on Olanzapine, the dosage gradually being increased to 10mgs. I remained psychotic but the psychosis I experienced when taking Olanzpine, while being slightly more intense than the psychosis I experienced when taking Rispiridone, was far less terrible. I thought, wrongly, that I had somehow "got out the other side".
That summer I met Jess (at a Hearing Voices group) and started talking continuously with her and Jon Stewart in my head, a period I have described in a number of posts in this blog. My psychosis abated over the first couple of months of 2010. For the next two and half years, I was well. From around November of 2009 until early 2012 I continued taking 10mgs of Olanzapine. My last appointment with Tony, after which I was discharged, occurred right after January 30 2012 – I remember this vividly because I had attended the Laneway Festival on that date and I was still extremely sunburnt. At this appointment I negotiated a decrease in my medication from 10mgs to 7.5mgs. Because I felt so well, I took it upon myself to decrease my dosage to 5mgs. I remained well for all of 2012, starting and completing a degree (an MA in creative writing). In early 2013, I asked my GP who I saw every month, or every couple of months, if I could decrease my dosage from 5mgs to 2.5. She advised me to alternate between 5 and 2.5.
In early 2013 I became psychotic again, the triggering event this time being a letter I sent to the newspaper about an historical correlation between lead exposure and crime, a letter that was published. Just before Easter I again voluntarily re-entered the Mental Health Service as a patient and saw the psychiatrist Dharma, my first appointment with a psychiatrist other than Tony since 2009. I have described this appointment in the post "Bruce Springsteen vs. Faith No More". I sought two things: first, I wanted it finally on the record that I was straight and second I thought by doing so I could somehow help Jess, that I could vouch for her. My psychosis that year was very much concerned with Jess – I was afraid she might somehow turn lesbian (which in a way she did that year or the next). I had two appointments with a locum called Dharma and then saw Tony once. Tony advised me to increase my dosage back to 10mgs. I was reluctant to increase my dosage because I no longer saw any therapeutic value in antipsychotic medication. I started seeing a different psychiatrist, Jen Murphy. In first appointment with Dharma, I had told him of the three women I'd been in love with over the course of my life, Danielle, Sara and Jess; just before I saw Jen I heard a voice saying, "Don't talk about love, talk about sex" and so, at my first appointent with Jen I told her truthfully that the first time I slept with a girl was New Years Eve 1997 and that the last time was a one-night stand in Wellington two years previously. Even this didn't seem to be enough to prove I was straight and so I wrote a short essay in which I described the closest I had ever come to a homosexual experience (an experience I mentioned in the post "Definitions of Sexuality"). For some reason Jen didn't believe me; at a later consultation she even implied that I was a 'phoney'. After a couple of months of seeing Jen, I was bullied into increasing my dosage either to 10mgs or 12.5mgs (I can't remember now how much). I felt like I was being punished for telling the truth and started throwing up every night to get the drug out of my stomach. For a period towards the end of the year and the beginning of the next I was permitted to be drug free. I went to the Big Day Out in January 17 2014 with my brother and this is the last time I can remember being happy.
In early 2014, I think around February, I was put under the Mental Health Act and started receiving compulsory treatment, as I still do. Despite now receiving compulsory treatment I continued experiencing psychotic symptoms. At the very end of 2014, I again considered suicide – this after a year of seeing the psychologist Simon Judkins. I was much more unwell between 2014 and 2016, when taking 300mgs of Olanzapine once a month, than I had been in 2012 when I was only taking 5mgs daily. Towards the end of 2014, there was a thunderstorm and I heard a voice, speaking it seemed out of the thunder, saying "I'm gay". It was awful. I was again scared, as I had been around July 2009, that I might say it out loud. It was shortly after this that I considered hanging myself in a closet. Judkins had obviously been of great assistance to me. It is really only over the course of the last six months that I have fully recovered. I was much more 'well' in 2012, when I was taking 5mgs of Olanzapine daily, than I have been over the last three years when taking 300mgs every four weeks.
All this information may seem boring. But I have had multiple 'independent' hearings and in every hearing false claims have been made about my life and my medical history – this is why I feel the need to talk about it publicly. In every hearing, it has been claimed that I was on 12.5mgs of Olanzapine and that I became sick at the beginning of 2013 because I had reduced, unilaterally, my dosage from 12.5mgs to 2.5. This is bullshit. I was on 5mgs of Olanzapine from very early February until very early 2013 when, as I have said, I reduced my dosage slightly with the consent of my GP, from 5mgs to the equivalent of 3.75. At other hearings it has been said, falsely, that I was ill in 2008 and 2012. In fact, in the last hearing, even though the psychiatrist on the panel seemed to accept at the time that the years that I considered myself most ill were 2007, 2009 (by far the worst year in terms of psychosis) and 2013 he went ahead and wrote in my judgement that I was unwell in 2008 and 2012, completely counter to my oral testimony. What evidence do they possibly have that I was unwell in 2012? I wasn't even in the system. Also in my last hearing, Jen Murphy said that I had only ''recently disclosed' the suicidal ideation that I had experienced at the very end of 2014 – but this is another untruth. The suicidal ideation I experienced had come up at a hearing in September of the previous year and it had been known about since shortly after it happened.
None of these psychiatrists can lie straight in bed.
I'll highlight another massive untruth. It has been said about me that I was ill in 2008 and well in 2009, that I didn't become sick again until shortly after up I stopped taking Rispiridone. It was said that I dicontinued the Rispiridone because of side-effects. In fact, the eight months in 2009 before I discontinued Rispiridone was the worst period of psychosis I ever experienced. The real reason I was allowed to discontinue the Rispiridone was because I had considered suicide and Tony Fernando panicked. Shortly before I started incrementally reducing this drug, I'd heard a voice saying "The only difference between you and them is testosterone"; I thought Rispiridone might somehow turn me gay by fucking with my hormone levels. It was only after I had started reducing my dosage that I told Tony Fernando that I thought my testosterone levels might have been being adversely affected and he referred me to an endocrinologist. In fact, my testosterone levels were fine; my fear had emerged from my psychosis, from a terrible anxiety that the drug I was on might somehow turn me gay. It wasn't "side effects" that forced Tony to allow me to discontinue the Rispiridone, it was the fact that I had considered suicide. The claim that I was allowed to discontinue the Respiridon because of "side effects" is another lie, a lie to protect Tony Fernando from charges of gross incompetence of misconduct.
Around February or March 2014 I wrote a long essay describing my entire life, right up until the time I was put under the Act. Many of the things I wrote about in this essay I have covered in this blog, although this essay was perhaps better written and more complete than any of the posts I have written. I took this long essay into the Taylor Centre and asked for it to be given to Jen Murphy, my then psychiatrist. I don't think it ever reached her. In 2013 I had written a short essay, as I said, describing the closest I had ever come to a homosexual experience and, when I alluded to my essay, those treating me (and I include not only Jen Murphy but also Simon Judkins) may have thought I meant the one I wrote in 2013 rather than the one I wrote in 2014. Why did this essay I wrote in early 2014 not reach Jen Murphy? I think Tony Fernando took it out of her box. I remember one time going into the Taylor Centre to have a blog post given to her; Tony Fernando overheard me, emerged from his office to make sure that it was me in the reception, and then went back into his office without talking to me. He was making sure it was me surreptitiously. This does not seem like much in the way of evidence that Tony was intercepting my written communications to Jen Murphy – but all these years later I can only assume she never read the long essay I wrote in early 2014, and the only reason I can assume that she didn't read it was because Tony Fernando removed it from her cubbyhole.
In my appointments with Tony, appointments that I had between 2007 and 2012, I often received an impression of absolute mendacity and dishonesty. I have said before, and I will say it again, that this psychiatrist is a sociopath, a man fundamentally dishonest, with no respect for the truth at all and no sense of shame. I just sensed this. I suspect that Fernando regards psychiatry as a game – how far can he go to make his patients worse without being held criminally culpable? In my case, his treatment of me almost amounted to sadism.
The whole mental health system is based on bullshit. Obviously, dear reader, the only explanation for what happened to me is that someone lied about me. I feel absolutely sure that it was Tony Fernando who lied. But it is not just Tony who lies. They all do it. Rather than admit that a psychiatrist has fucked up, deliberately falsified records or made an accidental mistake, the doctors close ranks. Whenever a mentally ill person kills himself or herself, the psychiatrists lie to exculpate themselves. These are people, after all, who a few decades ago would compel the mentally ill to receive Insulin Shock Therapy and Electro Convulsive Therapy, who at Lake Alice would force the inmates to take ice baths. I remember an appointment with a psychiatrist, one Jeremy Whiting, at which I said that "labelling people was a way of withholding empathy"; he recoiled from me as though I were a snake. Psychiatrists routinely dehumanise their patients. And they are all thoroughly dishonest. They are dishonest because the whole system is based on two massive lies: that mental 'illness' is literally an illness and that antipsychotics work. And the stigma surrounding mental illness only makes the power imbalance between doctors and patients worse – it discourages patients from speaking out when they have been mistreated because they fear public discrimination.
I have written several post about the psychologist I saw in 2014 but one other thing he said is worth mentioning. I know I digress but bear with me reader. One day he delivered a strange mad outburst. He said to me, "So you think homosexuals can't get sick?" It was an objectively insane thing for him to say. I would assume that homosexuals are at least as susceptible to psychosis as heterosexuals and in fact I have met one openly gay patient through the service – as well as several other patients who I think have had their sense of sexual identity screwed up by their treatment. I used to think Judkins was just an asshole – but perhaps what happened is this. I assumed he had read the long essay I wrote around February 2014 but perhaps he didn't even know about it. Perhaps he only read the short essay I wrote in 2013. Moreover he most certainly based his view of me on what Tony had written about me. It may be that Simon Judkins was actually trying to be a good man but that his view of me was skewed because he had received false information.
This post is a little chaotic I admit. If you dredge through it, however, I think you'll receive some idea of what had happened to me. I believe that I have been the victim of serious misconduct – and the primary culprit is the psychiatrist I saw between 2007 and 2012, Tony Fernando.
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