Off-Label: Why I Quit Therapy (Part I)

I ended two years of re-engagement with psychiatry recently. During this period I saw two psychiatrists, both female, fifty-something, and of a psychoanalytic orientation, but by no means ideologues. The first, who had specialist qualifications in child psychiatry but appeared to see mostly adults, would mostly stare at me for an hour a week while I vacillated between a terrified muteness and a more laconic, well, what I am supposed to say? After two months she put me on Xanax temporarily, and after six, Zoloft and Xanax combined. The initial Xanax prescription was occasioned by my terrified muteness mutating into tears one morning, and her threatening to ‘fire’ me unless I started talking. I told her what was bothering me – the office ‘romance’ I was engaged in at the time had ended abruptly again – and out came the PBS pad together with an invitation to call her at any time over the next few days if I felt the need. While I appreciated the offer, I had a dim impression, not quite a recollection, of what happens to patients who call their psychiatrists in the middle of the week. And the Xanax, for which I had no tolerance as a teenager, worked a treat. That day, I was due to head off to one of those corporate-style love-ins, or retreats as they are not-quite-so euphemistically called, and a pharmaceutical Band-Aid was what was really needed, given that I had been responsible for organising the damn thing, and had endless meetings and a three-hour car trip both ways in the company of my ambivalent paramour to look forward to. I sailed through it all, and successfully ignored phone calls from people who had no business calling me the following weekend.

This retreat (from reality) was held, ironically enough, in what was once a large state mental hospital, one of those 19th century monoliths way out in the middle of nowhere wrapped in a ‘Ha-Ha’ Wall, in a part of the country spotted with small towns that all like to call themselves ‘historical’. Our group gathered in what was once a large dayroom or dormitory, complete with seclusion rooms at the back where extra tables and chairs were now kept, and we slept in the nurses’ quarters, me in what must have been the head nurse’s room, complete with fireplace and antechamber that had been transformed into a bathroom that was almost as big as the room itself. Because my room was so big, the younger staff hung out there a lot, playing cards and drinking games. Xanax and beer don’t make for crystal clear recollections, but I do recall one rather astute but cruel boy daring me to say ‘X (the ambivalent paramour, my relationship with whom was supposed to be a secret) gave me genital herpes,’ and me collapsing in a fit of giggles on the floor, thus forfeiting my turn. At some point later that evening, I found myself in bed in another room with another young man (as well as another newly acquainted couple) and succumbing to his urging to ‘rest your head on my shoulder, just there, yeah.’ Not long after that, relative maturity together with the knowledge of another long day ahead kicked in, and I excused myself and returned to my quarters, sweeping them clean of any human or glass debris and toppling into a deep, opaque sleep.

Presumably the Xanax in my system prevented the meaning of my surroundings from resonating more fully, but I was sufficiently intrigued by them to borrow a camera and take a lot of pictures – and I’m someone who travelled right around Italy with taking a single snap, on the grounds that it was just too tourist-y. While it would be an exaggeration to say that at this point in time my memories of my earlier hospitalisations had been repressed, they were certainly not memories routinely accessed, or experienced as having any implications for my safety or identity. As far as I was concerned, I was just curious. Anyway, one of the photos I took eventually inspired my online moniker - click on the photo to see the graffiti: