How I fell Into The Vulture’s Clutches… (This recollection is from my new book “GaslitByAMadman”, currently available on Amazon in Kindle Format)
Growing up is tough. Perhaps it has been an awful lot worse in the past. But today, it is still very hard, even in the more developed countries. Jordan B. Peterson, now the hero of a generation, makes this abundantly clear: in his work, we see how lost many people are; how lost many of us are or have been at times, (which we know even better from personal experience, if we are honest).
Our education system draws no attention to our spiritual life, to the cultivation of the virtues and dispositions that make life genuinely ‘meaningful’ (to use Peterson’s term). Many people, such as those Peterson speaks of, become highly brainwashed by the system, in a sense keeping their heads firmly in the sand and never questioning their social indoctrination. They merely become more and more fanatical. I wasn’t like that. I suffered from, if anything, the opposite pathology. Suddenly, when I read Nietzsche’s “Beyond Good And Evil” at 17, I found myself engulfed by so many doubts and reservations about the education I had received hitherto, and about the ‘values’ that most people take for granted, that it paralysed my ability to continue with life – with my formal schooling – in a productive manner. However. I was so enthralled to the system, so ‘institutionalized’ by 14 years of public curriculum schooling and classroom routine, that I was unable to act independently and decisively to extricate myself from this same system. Thus, I continued on, going to University, in a degree (Philosophy and Mathematics) that I didn’t even want to be doing (I think I would have faired better with P.P.E. – Politics, Philosophy, and Economics – but that wasn’t available at at a top University other than Oxford until a year later. I should have taken an extra year and switched course, or simply abandoned the Mathematics, as I was only interested in the Human Condition at the time… but I was too indecisive, didn’t think Philosophy alone sounded as impressive or offered the same ‘career prospects’, and I was afraid of making any kind of a scene).
In the last year I was at University, because I was expressing my unhappiness, & had always been curious about psycho-analysis, after seeing it romantized so splendidly in the incomparable films of Woody Allen, I foolishly consented to see a psychiatrist – thinking I was gonna get the full, in depth couch & dreams approach, intrepid, disabused psychological delving & diving with a seasoned guide. But in reality…. The white-coated lame wad asked me a bunch of stupid, childish questions from his standard, poxy little ticklist, & unfortunately when he asked ‘Do I think I receive messages from the T.V.?”, in my sweet naivety I simply answered ‘Yes’. (Doh! The T.V. isa form of media; its whole job is to send you messages!) As a result of that moronic misunderstanding, the jumped-up invalid labelled me ‘schizophrenic’ there and then…. & that’s how it happened folks! That’s how Eden got nuked! Because I claimed a t.v. sends messages!
Anyway… they didn’t kidnap me at that point. I merely returned to University after being kept in for a night on ward, & then I just about passed my horrible course, after 4 years of intellectual sclerosis in the bloom of youth (though far, far worse was to come!)…but by the end of it, I was masturbating compulsively (to internet pornography), which continued for another 2 or so years at home again in my old bedroom of my parent’s residence. Then, to cut a long story short, I suffered a (minor) injury to my private parts, which I was convinced was more serious than it actually was, yet still I continued with the self-abuse, with ever mounting guilt and worry. I began having physical symptoms – coughing up phlegm, pains in my head – as well as extreme states of dysphoria upon attempts to withdraw from my addiction. I was concerned that I was verging upon doing permanent damage to my nervous system. To combat this, as well as the unpleasant effects I just mentioned, I began fasting and meditating for days or weeks at a time. After a week or two of fasting, I would then feast myself prodigiously, especially on lots of meat (yes, I invented the ‘meat-only, ketagenic diet’ a good decade before Peterson… which now is officially being used to treat ‘schizophrenia’, btw!… and, unlike him, I was roundly committed for it!) and blueberries.
To cut a long story short, my worried mother took me to see a Dr., (who I just went a long with, not considering it of any great significance and vaguely hoping they might send me for a brain scan to see what was happening with my nerves). However, due to the fact I had spent all of the last two years largely alone in my bedroom (‘negative symptoms of schizophrenia’, and because I said that I was concerned that my excessive habits might be causing a problem with my brain (together with my unorthodox but actually quite effective attempts to rectify the issue), plus my frenzied feasting, they thought I was delusional, psychotic. So one night, when I was least expecting it… they came to my house and Sectioned me (though vivi-sectioned might be more accurate)…. https://www.psychvictims.com/stories/view/how-i-fell-into-the-vulture-s-clutches
