This issue had a couple of highlights for me: the article on acai berries, whose popularity I had not understood until now. Reading the article made me think about how all great local food discoveries, no matter where in the world they originate, somehow make it into some kind of food fad - whether because they have health benefits (purported or real) or they are economical, or are low-calorie, or, quite simply, because they are delicious. Such is the case right now with Greek yogurt. I am not complaining, because I am a huge fan, and Greek yogurt's massive popularity makes it easier and cheaper for me to buy it. However, it did cross my mind that when I was in Greece in 1996 savouring the delicious local yaourti me meli (with honey), why did I think to myself, "ah, what a wonderful memory of Greece this will be," rather than "Wow, how can I mainstream the production of this in North America and make millions of dollars?" Clearly as a marketing graduate, I am somewhat lacking in the "big ideas" department.
The other highlight for me was the article about the mentally ill woman who refused to accept her diagnosis but despite her obvious illness was released from hospital without her family's knowledge, and who then proceeded to break into an abandoned farmhouse and attempt to subsist on apples through the winter, eventually dying of starvation in mid-January. It was fascinating to read the author's re-creation of what the woman must have been experiencing in her solitude in the house, based solely on the journal entries she wrote while there. The saddest thing is that she was clearly intelligent, but could not focus that intelligence because of her refusal to deal with her illness. I have been thinking of mental illness a fair bit lately, partly because I read this article and partly because in the news this week a schizophrenic who decapitated and ate the flesh of a fellow passenger on a Greyhound bus in Canada a few years ago has just been released from mental hospital on day passes. He says now that he believed the poor guy was an alien and that the voices in his head told him to kill him. The mother of the victim believes the killer should be kept locked of for the safety of society. Last week two tourists from Toronto were killed by a schizophrenic woman in the States. There is no question that the "voices" that schizophrenics hear can lead them to do dangerous, unpredictable things if untreated; they can pose a great danger to society. The problem is that it is so easy for schizophrenics to stop taking medication.
I lived with a schizophrenic for a couple of years in my 20s. When he moved into the apartment I shared with him and one other person, he was a kind, thoughtful, hilarious, energetic, fun-loving guy and a good friend. He was getting roles as an actor in Toronto and life was going well for him. So well, in fact, that he decided to stop taking his medication. The first day that he didn't take it, he was fine. Same thing the next day. Soon he decided he was "cured" and didn't need it anymore, since he felt just as fine as the day before.
The problem was that the voices came back. They come back so sneakily, so stealthily that the sick person doesn't even notice them at first. They manifest as a weird "feeling" about someone or something, or a generalized or specific paranoia. But by then, the sufferer doesn't have the self-awareness to know that this is what they are experiencing. They don't even think about going back on the medication. Instead, my roommate would wake me up at 3 am when he got home from his job at a bar (steadily being demoted from bartender to runner to busboy to fired) and keep me up half the night telling me how every person he had seen that night had looked at him and whispered that they wanted to kill him, how everyone just seemed to be looking at him waiting with eager anticipation for his death, etc. etc. We knew he was sick, but he didn't. Eventually, after being fired and losing any interest in him that the theatre world had held, he had to move home because he couldn't pay the rent. But once there his parents could not convince him to go back on the medication, and he grew worse. Finally he lost it on Christmas Day and they had to have him committed - but you can only hold someone against their will for 72 hours. After years of moving in and out of places and jobs, causing no end of torment for his family, he finally agreed to take the medication again.
And then he was fine. But he wasn't the same person anymore. He went from being colourful, fun, creative, the life of the party, and one of the best actors I have ever seen perform to being bland, ordinary, boring. He knew it, too. He stayed back on the meds for many years, but the last time I saw him, which was 9 years ago, he was definitely off them again. He dropped by my new apartment unannounced on a warm March day with no shirt on, covered in mud, and explained that he had just been in a fight with someone who didn't like his singing as he walked down the street. Since then I get the occasional random message from him on Facebook, rambling on about something that happened close to 20 years ago now. When I go to reply less than a day later, he has deleted his online profile. This has happened twice now.
Schizophrenia is a horrible, debilitating disease. I'm not sure that everyone who has it can be trusted to self-medicate daily without fail. I am not convinced that this killer who beheaded the guy on the bus is no threat to society. I hope I'm wrong.
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