America the Poor: A Wanderers Tale, Vol Two

Chapter 19:Let's go Crazy, My New Life as a Human Zombie

So I was somewhat adapting to life confined to the nuthouse, but a bit too slowly. The many rules and expectations were difficult for me personally to adapt to, and many of them I outright refused. One such was my own bed. I still refused to ever make it. Strangely, my blind roommate made a perfect bed, military style, strictly by feel. No staff that I ever saw did the actual quarter test, but if they had, Tim would have passed every time.

Tim was talented in so many ways, far more so than I ever was. He was an amazing guy as well as very unhappy and forever depressed, ever since I first met him. When he chose to deal with things, he was very good at it, but he would never be happy, and he always made it known. Strangely he usually seemed to follow the rules carefully, unlike myself, but not always.

The doctors ended up starting me again on various doses and varieties of medication for various possible conditions , even though I had fully demonstrated my control before in advance of my planned IQ test. Maybe they had quotas to fulfill, and high salaries to justify? Doesn't everything in our sad society boil down to this, the almighty dollar? Even our personal sanity is up for grabs, for a price.

They prescribed things, and I was forcefully compelled to take them;. Either willing, via orally, and in full view of careful staff, or by utter malicious force, as I had experienced before. Held down painfully by very large muscular males, and injected in the buttocks, in a very undignified manner. Either way, I would receive the allotted medication one way or another. However, the method I'd receive this was up to my sad choice. Volunteering was painless and fairly dignified, and unwilling was messy, painful, and beyond embarrassing. I chose the former, only because I had experienced the consequences of the latter, it was no fun.

The first medication they gave me was thorazine, a very common medication, this much I remember. The morning after, I woke up a bit slower, although I was never exactly eager to be up in the morning. For me, the early hours are my personal curse.

The true times of misery in my life are usually the mornings, and this is certainly true all these many years later. If I was designed by a higher being, this was done on purpose, no doubt of it.

The nighttime is my natural time, and the morning is my personal Hell. My brain is the essence of fog at that time. I have zero motivation to be up and about. There's literally nothing I ever wished to do or accomplish in the earliest times of the morning, these are like the Achilles heel of my existence. If someone wants to catch me off guard and totally unprepared, wake me up during the early hours, and see for yourself. I didn't possess a hunger for brains, but I was a human zombie all the same. Drooling, shuffling and all.

After 11am or so, my mind and disposition improved. On a good day, maybe 10am, but that was my absolute limit. 9am and earlier was an "ungodly hour" and always will be, throughout my long strange life.

The next morning, after my first full dose of thorazine, I was foggy, and it was quite uncomfortable for me. I'm so used to being sharper than a straight razor, and noticing literally everything around me, being ready for anything. That ability was lost for a time starting from that first morning and many mornings after. I awoke slowly, as "encouraged" as I was by the staff invading my room, and banging my bed up and down on the floor, loud demanding voices, and the bright lights above me obviously. However I responded even slower than usual, which is to say, turtles would have responded faster than I ever could. I eventually left my bed, noticing my roommate was long gone, and his bed looked as perfect as humanly possible, his blue cover was tight and professional.

My bed was chaos itself, sheets and blankets intertwined everywhere at once, as they always would be. I slowly dressed in the drab uniform and slippers provided. Such sad and pitiful attire, designed to depress the human soul I'm sure. Imagine trying to run and escape in simple thin slippers, it would have been more of a comedic effect. This was also by design. Anything I, and any other patient could think of, was already envisioned and planned for,, many years before I was ever there.

I started at the beginning of this chess match, and those in charge of us were long in the end game. Every possible outcome was already carefully considered, and prepared for. Sad isn't it, when I look back on it now. Escape was literally so unlikely as to be next to impossible, that's how they designed it. Whether Innocent, guilty, or merely misunderstood, we were in there for the count, together.

That morning, I started my slow shuffling, versus my normal fast walk. There was no hurry, it seemed so much easier to slowly and steadily get there. That's the insidiousness of mind altering drugs, they don't alter just you, but your entire perspective on things. It's a very evil thing, and has a strange power. The power of chemistry.

They make it so much more comfortable to just slowly go along, than to do any actual resisting. Too much effort is involved to consider defying anything by that point. That's their goal and to me that's an evil thing. There's a damned good reason they are called mind altering drugs, they do exactly that. They remove any possible resistance by making it so much easier and simpler to merely go along to get along. It's like trying to struggle out of very deep comfortable soft cushions, it's so much easier to simply lay there, not resist, and vegetate in a warm helpless embrace.

If that's not evil, I don't know what it even is. Fogging the brain, clogging not only our thoughts, but our very motivations to do anything at all. After all, we are absolute slaves to the chemicals coursing through our brains, and when you alter these, you create actual slaves as well, or practical zombies. Either one seems fine to this depressing and oppressing system that reigns above us all. Both conditions seem acceptable, as long as it keeps us malleable, obviously.

That morning was my first true zombie shuffle, straight to the small cafeteria, my single pitiful motivation, where I blissfully consumed a tasteless breakfast, utterly not caring at all. Brain fog makes everything, no matter how substandard, seem alright and acceptable. Thoughts lose their dimensions, and everything becomes singular, and simplified. I lost my ability to think on many multiple levels.

I have no idea if these effects were standard with the other boys, I can only speak from my own experience. My greatest ability was fast thinking, and reasoning on many levels in advance as well, this was gone for the moment. I retained my memory to a degree, but my humor was also reduced, since this requires the ability to think on many levels. It was a tragic loss, but luckily it was not forever. For the moment I was a shadow of my former self. To me, I became a zombie.