The night before I checked myself into the hospital, I told my brother that I only had two episodes of the third season of House left to watch, and that once they were over, I didn’t know what I was going to do with myself. He can’t be blamed for thinking I was exaggerating.

Since psychiatry has proven itself to be anything but a science, the entire concept of mental anguish must be reexamined. Might the elements of “mental illness” more properly be called personality traits as well as reflections of the societies in which those traits occur? Might those elements even be called talents of a sort?

Psychiatry’s masterwork of pseudo-science, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM IV), once included homosexuality amongst its “scientific” diagnoses. Psychiatry thus reflects the “values” of the United States far more than concerning itself with patients, much less looking past and through society’s existing prejudices.

Even those behind psychiatry’s Shroud of Turin question its validity. Of late, there has been talk of attributing DSM diagnoses by degrees rather than mere labels. Thus, a person would “have” a “mental illness” on a scale, not just “have” it. In such a case, the flatliners who dominate the population would once again establish the “typical American’s” plot-pointed life as “sanity.”

Yet no one who suffers emotional distress would applaud the benefits of that distress. To do so would be to refute its existence and betray oneself as an imposter. Far more likely is it that many flatliners never mention their irregular heartbeats. Could it be a Second Renaissance lies beneath the ever-recycling digital ruins and its constant skies of acid rain?

Consider anxiety. Those with anxious traits are often highly-attuned. To call them “sensitive” is, in this society, an insult. “Sensitive” implies weakness, an inability to “man up.” Instead, the anxious should be viewed as a tuning fork against which society reveals itself — rather than the “patient” — as out of tune. That no one else recognizes society’s discordant sounds only proves the anxious to be society’s musicians. Countless permutations of that metaphor support themselves.

The same may be said about every other “diagnosis.” Schizophrenia might be viewed as a William S. Burroughs’ cutup of “reality” as presented, emphasis on “presented” because, of course, most of our environment has nothing natural about it and is, in fact, a presentation in every sense.

Some conditions do respond to medication. Usually, the reasons remain unknown. In turn, the medication may solve one “problem” while creating many more. Those who take most antidepressants may no longer feel depressed about nothing, but they feel depressed about their diminished sexuality, especially males whenever they try to… express their end of sexuality’s conclusion.

Returning to anxiety, medication does relieve its incapacitating aspect, but the medications that accomplish the effect also accomplish something else, that being the worst addiction known to humankind. This class of drugs, benzodiazepines, includes Xanax, Valium, Ativan, etc., the whole lot of tranquilizers, excepting the rarely-prescribed barbiturates. In some cases, antidepressants may relieve anxiety. However, they do so for reasons as unknown as the reasons antidepressants diminish depression. Likewise, they alleviate anxiety but create symptoms that mirror anxiety, such as trembling hands, odd emotional states, etc.

Rather than diagnoses, all of these traits show themselves to be products of society, products of the product society uses to diagnose those personality traits, and the products society sells to treat the products of the product society uses to diagnose those personality traits. That’s to say, they’re products of an environment completely divorced from nature.

All of this enshrouds some rather simplistic facts about a complicated subject. To martyr those suffering in the way biographers now “diagnose” every author, musician and artist “of the ages” as “bipolar” reduces suffering by labeling it, making suffering a product of their products, that being books and, eventually, films based on those books. Those who write memoirs about their “mental illnesses” bend over backwards for sainthood and reveal themselves willing to do endure any humiliation in exchange for profit.

On the other hand, failing to notice the strange talents hidden within the emotionally inflamed creates an even greater injustice. These strange talents do not prove the existence of artistic talent, as many would like to believe, but they do reveal an artistic temperament. No one can suffer emotionally but for recognition of something and, more likely, many things, and their recognitions go unnoticed by the general public. Why does no one listen to them? Who do “doctors” listen only to themselves when they recognize nothing beyond the power of their prescription pads? Is it because they realize their absolute lack of talent, strange or otherwise?

Most of those suffering in the ways described cycle through life in various stages of function and dysfunction, and most have periods of absolute dysfunction. To calls these periods “nervous breakdowns” would be far more accurate than to split the hairs of the suffering with psychiatry’s blunt axe. They must be tended to as they once were, in humane sanitariums surrounded by the true environment. Such sanitariums could — with no joke intended — be established on useless golf courses around the nation.

With that, some proposals:

1) Psychiatry should be abolished. It simply lacks the will, or even desire to have the will, to fulfill its dream of being medicine. Psychiatrists should be stripped of their meaningless licenses and sent on their way to more suitable careers, like accounting.

2) The “mentally ill” should be educated to understand their conditions as also encompassing strange talents, until they begin to believe the fact that their recognitions are true even when masked by the wildest hallucinations.

3) Medications should be dispensed by doctors who have achieved certification in dispensing those medications. They should know, and prove that knowledge by required yearly testing, that they understand prescribing medications and the facts of addictions that may occur to any such medication they dispense.As it stands, psychiatrists receive eight hours of addiction “education.”

4) Medications known to cause addiction should be removed from any policing or government surveillance whatsoever. Those subject to mental anguish should not be criminalized for trying to relieve that anguish, including and even especially when relieving the added anguish of addiction to a prescribed medication.

5) All those suffering from the acute perceptions so well described in Rumblefish should ultimately determine their own treatment, including beginning or continuing use of addictive prescribed substances, even when addiction has established itself, for the suffering caused by eliminating that addiction will likely lead to more dangerous and illegal addiction.

Flatliners already receive society’s benefits. Those who benefit society without society knowing it — those with strange talents — deserve just as many benefits.

Please place a “1” before any of the following statements that cause an improvement in your mood:

_ We all have problems.
_ It could always be worse.
_ Everyone feels that way.
_ This, too, shall pass.

Now, add your scores.

Despite my lack of psychic abilities, I predict you scored zero. Therefore, you’re probably considering paying a visit to a psychiatrist. Guess what? You’re right: Paying is one thing you’ll definitely be doing, and plenty of it. Meanwhile, you imagine being treated by a person who practices what Merriam-Webster calls “a branch of medicine that deals with mental, emotional, or behavioral disorders,” a/k/a psychiatry. It sounds like some kind of love. It sounds astonishing. It sounds like it’ll take your breath away… and it just might!

But before the breaking of your brain’s hymen, remember that, in layman’s terms, once fucked by a psychiatrist, your mind will never be a virgin again. Therefore, aim for abstinence, the only form of mind control that’s 100% effective in preventing brain impregnation by drugs for which the average psychiatrist has never bothered reading the manufacturer’s prescribing instructions, much less the truth.

We understand you may have passed the point of caring. For whatever reason, you’re determined to sacrifice your virginity. You’re only human.  So, assuming that you’ll act upon this decision, you shall now be guided through the process of brain impregnation and, we hope, avoid getting pregnant upside-down.

First, let’s get real. Psychiatry is only rarely practiced in the United States. The goal proved too difficult and the profit margin too slim for almost anyone to bother trying. Psychiatry was abandoned for easily-attainable and profitable goals, that being guesswork, drug dice throwing, abject apathy, and, of course, check cashing. Derived from Freud’s daughter Anna, this brand of malpractice is unknown as capitalanalysis. This has never been disclosed, and no one will admit it, yet capitalanalysis has been and remains the almost-ubiquitous form of “mental health care.” They even still call it psychiatry! But it’s still capitalanalysis, and the only things analyzed are the degree to which any psychiatrist is not a doctor and the degree to which any psychiatrist is not a psychiatrist. A minus sign precedes almost all such ratings.

You shall now be walked through your first visit to Johnny the capitalanalysist. You’ve come this far, and you might as well come all the way. However, surrendering your virginity need not equate the surrendering of your self-authority. Tell yourself, “If you’re going to stick it to me, buster, you’d better treat me real good.”

So let’s begin with the proper greeting. Upon entering the capitalanalysist’s office, which capitalanalysists call “the brain’s bedroom,” immediately shout, “Where’s the mustache, Adolf?” Now you’ve told Johnny, “I know the facts, Jack:” Exactly what do you know? That you’ve accepted the risk of entering the bedroom of a “medical field” born in Nazi “medicine.”

Next, while being “evaluated,” you must evaluate the psychiatrist. The latter carries all the weight, while the former bears none. The purpose of this process can be easily remembered by the acronym ASIF (Avoid Sadistic Ignorant Fascists). The odds of your accomplishing this task have been estimated in Vegas as approximately 1 in 9,234. Whether you ever accomplish that mission depends on how much money you can blow. Capitalanalysis entails the fact that only the wealthy can afford psychiatry-psychiatry, not psychiatry. Don’t try to keep this straight in your head; it’s crooked on purpose.

As the evaluation continues, interrupt one of the “doctor’s” boilerplate questions and state, “Just to be clear, I’m employing you, not the other way around.” You’re the authority figure. You take charge even in the capitalanalysist’s own bedroom. After all, it’s your virginity on the grill.

Soon, you’ll be diagnosed. You may or may not be told your diagnosis. The diagnosis is the capitalanalsyst’s theory. From this point forward, the capitalanalsyst’s sole concern is proving his theory correct. No capitalanalsyst can feel what you feel, nor would any capitalanalsyst care. Your treatment is entirely designed to prove the capitalanalsyst’s theory, and you will be blamed if you fail to assist in proving that theory. The theory is never wrong; you’re wrong. Otherwise, the insurance companies might cost Johnny his virginity in the last place he wants to lose it.

Or so you’re told. Demand your diagnosis. Johnny might refuse. He cares even less than the average capitalanalysist, if that’s possible. Are you going to stand for this from the first Johnny who fingers your frontal lobe? Of course not. Repeat your demand for the diagnosis. When Johnny finally belches the diagnosis and code, and no matter how accurate the diagnosis may seem, say, “Bullshit!” If Johnny runs, he doesn’t even care enough to despise you for stopping him at third base. Congratulations: You’ve terminated your first capitalanalsyst, and you’re still a virgin. It’s too late to abort the capitalanalsyst, but at least you won’t have to terminate Johnny again.

If Johnny doesn’t run, he will produce his prescription pad as if it’s a magician’s rabbit. Where was it? On the desk the whole time; you’ve been duped by Johnny again. Didn’t you know Johnny slips everybody mickeys?

Stop!  Pause and refresh your memory. What was that diagnosis, again? Oh, yes. Odds are it was bipolar disorder. That’s because almost no other disorder “requires” so many drugs as bipolar disorder, making it a very appetizing theory indeed for capitalanalsysts. In fact, it’s their favorite excuse for cocktail hour, but you’ll be the only one swallowing anything. Get used to it. You may swallow a hundred different cocktails and never get to where you planned. Don’t worry: You can’t get your brain pregnant by swallowing, silly!

More than likely, you’ve been misdiagnosed. You’ll notice this after two years of a depression six feet deep: You might as well be dead. Hopefully, just in the nick of time, you’ll finally figure out what’s been making you “sane” made you disappear! Now you’re Johnny’s rabbit, and you’re all but pulling tricks unless you confront that dirty rotten son of bitch. You tell Johnny, “You’re not getting to home plate with me! And use your fingers on yourself, fuckface.”

Yes, even after all this time, your brain is still a virgin no matter how many time’s it’s been fingered. By now, you’ve probably figured something else out, too: You weren’t bipolar, just anxious. But you have to prove it to a capitalanalsyst, and words won’t do the trick. You wanted it, so get naked. Act exactly the way you feel. You might consider smashing the capitalanalsyst’s degree over his head. Don’t fret: That won’t hurt any capitalanalsyst. There’s nothing in their heads!

Learned your lesson yet? Rather than giving it up to any old Johnny who calls himself a doctor when he isn’t a doctor any more than he’s an Olympic athlete, keep that abstinence until you can’t stand it any longer. Your brain deserves love, not just a lousy lay Johnny will give anybody in town who calls him “Doctor.”

Finally, whatever you do, keep your eye on those mickeys. Some are worse than heroin, but don’t expect a capitalanalsyst to tell you that! With the best mickey he can give in his self-interest and the worst you can take in your self-interest, a capitalanalsyst supports whole industries, from drug manufacturers to rehabilitation centers.

Have you learned your lesson? Abstinence first! And even then, swallowing might catch you a virus they call addiction. We call it capitalanalysis, and we don’t take dick from Johnny!