What we can learn from the tragic case of Terry Davis
Originally posted as a YouTube comment
Hi,
I wanted to share a bit about myself. I am not a coder although my father wanted me to major in Computer Science in college before I dropped out. I took introductory C++ and Java and learned DOS as a kid. I was an average kid… Today I found out about Terry and the fact I have had schizo-like tendencies and episodes in the past and go on rant binge made me sympathetic to his genius.
In the mid 2000s I was diagnosed with schizo-affective disorder and bipolar. The signs were obvious. I took a glass tray and slammed it onto our glass table when my mother was away at work. I even wanted to smash the windshield of the car. Upon returning home, my mother was scared and … to cut a long story short I was institutionalized three times. I was put on 4 different meds including Adderall, Abilify, Effexor and Depakote.
I don’t know how much of my condition was genetic or environment, but the fact is I was in denial about my condition for a long time. The way SSRIs work is that they can be D1 or D2 receptor antagonist — which is fancy way of saying it lowers the dopamine. Schizophrenics by nature might have too much dopamine and hence the ‘genius’ (even though I am not but take your average garden variety one like Van Gogh… no offense) who are always wired and busy. Anyway again to cut a long story short I was on meds for 10 years and the fact that I couldn’t “get” my dopamine fix made me turn to hardcore energy drinks like Redline (sometimes twice a day with Redbull along with continuous smoking of Spice throughout the day — which is basically a nasty drug like meth or something I reckon sprayed with infectant and JW chemicals and what not….) Marijuana was still not legal here in California so I was doing Spice.
Then weed got legal and I started doing spice or Weed intermittently along with continuous smoking of Spice like Hunter S Thompson ritual. I tried to go back to college and did some semesters but I always dropped out of my class. In Anthropology I got A, in Theater I got A, in Sailing C and Robotics B… etc. I also took Epistemology, Symbolic Logic, Architecture, Asian Art History, Ceramics… but at the end I dropped out. I couldn’t tolerate English 101 critical thinking and Political Science.
At any rate, I stopped my meds cold turkey. I hated every second of it as it made you numb. And then started self-medicating with weed. I am not saying medications don’t help (maybe it does in the acute cases… ) but such is the corruption in psychiatry, mental health industry funded and fueled by Big Pharma that “a patient cured is a customer lost”. The problem with psychiatry is that it wants you to be on meds forever where you just “get by” like a zombie in an emotional numb state 24/7 devoid of life. This is no way to live a life. As I said, meds might help but there should be a transitory period where shrinks wean you off meds. But no one shall do so in this profit driven industry.
Right now I am doing well and not on meds and I don’t see doctors. I got addicted to weed by self-medicating and trying to get out of it.
The point I am trying to drive at is that having experienced mental illness first hand we simply don’t know if treatment would have been effective for Terry. Maybe it would have slowed him down. Maybe it would have chemically lobotomized him or made him an intellectual eunuch as I often felt on meds.
In my humble opinion, had someone took Terry under his wings or had he had a loving, compassionate supportive community he would have flourished more. Ubuntu.
Love heals.
Meds, therapy and even marijuana can only do much. Sure there should be constructive criticism and feedback, but I humbly urge everyone to take a lesson out of Terry’s book and Joker 2019 portrayed by Joaquin Phoenix to be accepting, loving, kind, and compassionate to our fellow human beings. Not everything needs to be faakin need to be torn in to shreds with caustic bitter criticism like a pretentious jack-axxx git.
Be kind to your fellow human being. Show some love and tolerance and acceptance. And when you do find criticisms or holes, do it with much love couched in positivity.
Let us take a lesson from Terry’s book so that humanity NEVER have to repeat this same mistake again.
Such is the vile game of capitalism, unless something makes money it is not worth a dime. Capitalism pits one another in a ruthless dog-eat-dog world of cutthroat competition — be it in advertising, or even comedy or academia, or research or art or social media or writing community and what not.
Such is the petty nature of our human ego — instead of saying ‘hey look — let’s see what we can accomplish if we work together — in a loving harmony of cooperation’ we play petty politics and try to further our own egoic lust and agenda every inch we can get.
Thanks for listening. Didn’t mean to write such a longueur. Let us take a lesson from Terry’s book so that humanity NEVER have to repeat this same mistake again.
Love,
Zeeshan Mahmud