Aftershock: Raised Consciousness Crumbles SHAM Psychiatric System

By Connie Neil

Threatened for the second time after fifty years of freedom with forced electroshock, I wrote my 57,361-word non-fiction ‘AFTERSHOCK’ on psychiatry’s expanding portals that include elder restraint and the DSM inroads that characterize as mental illness our natural life events.
This is my experience with forced shock treatment, my activist battle to ban ECT, and my recovery of mental balance. Readers can dock in a safe harbour of lessons in native teachings, shamanism, Buddhism and meditative magical healings. My quest led me through a smorgasbord of spiritual risky challenges: UFO contact; past lives; ghosts; and the greedy legal system that angered me, a condition for which psychiatry offers “gentle, safe and effective” brain damage. With this threat to my retired years I re-activated my anti-psychiatry activist gene to discover what evil psychiatry spawns today. With CAPA (Coalition Against Psychiatric Assault) I wrote a street theatre script to illustrate Toronto’s part in the May 16/15 largest international protest – 30 cities in nine countries – against ECT and the APA (American Psychiatric Association) meeting across from City Hall. I was the featured speaker.
In this survivor report I offer what works to restore balance with compassion, instead of the present distanced psychiatric system. Most stories, like the classic One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, deal accurately with the institution scenes, but fall short of a strong viable response. Mental professionals take an elitist perspective. The growing psychiatric trend to present ECT as the best, first, gentle solution to depression – not just to me when I ran into anger issues, but to every family I spoke with – alarms me. And who believes a crazy person that this is abuse? Every fifth Canadian who faces brain damage from the tortures of ECT.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Connie Neil
• Release date: Oct 16, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370431427

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

(NB: * marks first mention of assumed names.)

They wheel me into the white, tiled room and shunt me onto a table. Oops-a-daisy. Slide over now, there’s a good girl. Globs of cool slime smudge onto my temples, my chest, and the electrodes are lodged in those spots. The needle pierces my vein and fuzz creeps into my mind.

‘Wait! I can’t breathe.’ I can’t move or speak. My lungs are paralyzed. I try to tell them, try to scream for help, but a mask with a hose attached blocks my mouth and nose, and I know no more. Except I feel that I am dying.

How long after? Hours? Days? I have no idea how I got here. Hush now, Connie, don’t make a fuss. Am I making a fuss?

Perhaps my name brings me back to this world. I know nothing else. They show me how to hold a spoon and eat. That man – Bob -- keeps fidgeting around saying, Hush, and that he is my husband. That shrieking noise is my baby, they say, held up to me by a leering old woman. I know nothing; care less.

Something bad has happened. I no longer exist. A shell is left in my place.

* * *

That was my first shock treatment and it was in a general hospital with anaesthetic and so-called relaxing drugs, a kind of chemical curare that stops all automatic movement –like breathing, like heartbeats. This method today is called the improved gentle ECT form by Max Fink, teacher of ECT. (Fink, 1999)

Like any sane person, given the disastrous reaction, I refused the next session. True to protocol, that is the signal I am clearly insane and cannot be trusted on the streets of Hamilton. I am institutionalized on the mountain, the crazy house the Ontario government runs with our tax dollars, for 20 more ordered against my will and without anaesthetic, so I can feel the full horror of destroying my mind.

If they knew the truth, I reasoned, of the permanent brain damage that was done by this seemingly barbaric operation, it would be outlawed, banned. There must be some major accident, something broken in the machine, which caused this horrendous aftershock.

But no: they already knew. This burning my brain away, this slump in my ability to learn was exactly what was planned. No, mine was a typical case handled in the socially accepted manner. Troublesome, opinionated, loudmouth rule-breaking new mother must be brought into line, or buried where nobody can hear her complaint. Shock will fix her.

And what did they wipe out? My acting/writing career, musical training, 8 to 15 years of memory, any trace of self-confidence, my IQ, EQ, every Q. All depleted or burned away with every session.

Where can I go to learn to be whole? Shrinks? Hell, no. To whom can I appeal when my every comment is deemed crazy? Neat trick, these bio-psychiatrists and their ilk concocted. This treatise is not about me: I am fine, perfectly fine, just fine, really fine; fine with my alternatives to achieve adequate balance but nowhere near what I was put into this lifetime to achieve. Yes, I am fine, but what of the millions over the past (2016 – 1939 =) 77 years who succumbed to this torture? Shock is ordered by an elitist group of mostly men upon women who make up 2/3 of the targeted victims fed electroshock purported to be a cure for depression, for sadness, for frustration, for reaction to reality that is unfair (Burstow, 2014, pg 195).

And what behaviour did I exhibit that was a danger to myself and/or others, the criteria for locking away recalcitrant members of society exhibiting egregious harm? I had a baby, got flu, and failed to wrest control of my baby’s care from my obsessed mother-in-law where I was parked while hubby wrote his final exams in another city. Shock was what I deserved, they judged. My adult history showed no crazy markers to convince authorities I was in need of their ‘help’. Before their infringement I had many successes.

What I Lost to Electroshock

We set out in two cars towing a trailer of our dismantled farm porch theatre set on a crisp winter day to drive 150 miles past Montreal to Lennoxville where Bishop University hosted the Inter Varsity Drama League Festival. Long trip. It was Ryerson’s first entry in five years. Fellow actor Robin Brewer and I sampled the whiskey to keep warm until Donald Sutherland, our English teacher and chaperone, poured the remainder out onto the snow at our second stop. No more booze.

For our technical rehearsal, we re-constructed the set, designed and built by Bill Underwood, the only one not studying Radio and Television Arts. He later made his theatrical career at Stratford. The set was praised for simplicity and atmosphere by our adjudicator, Montreal producer Rupert Caplan. In the brief time allotted, we ran lights and cue-to-cue lines while director Ken MacKay roamed the gods checking that our projection was clear.

It would be surprising if we did not do well as Ryerson attracted talented young people. And we cleaned up with Tennessee Williams’ 27 Wagons Full of Cotton, his one-acter that the controversial Hollywood movie Baby Doll was based on. We took Best Production, Best Director, Best Actress and Honourable Mention for the lead actor.

At the awards dinner, when Rupert Caplan announced, The winner is Connie Neil he looked at me in surprise, did not recognize me off-stage, the mark of a talent for disguise. As I rose and walked forward, he added, and accepting for Connie Neil is … I had to tell him, Connie Neil. He fumbled, Is it you? I nodded. For the part of simple-minded Baby Doll I was padded to a plump roundness so that my ripped costume after the rape only revealed blood and bruises, and not my usual sleek shape. He wrote, Although this is not a great play, it is an example of how a good performance can make a play great because the audience believes in it. Connie achieved a great degree of believability. She is a promising young actress. Two universities choose that play; only ours won awards.

At the Banff School of Fine Arts that summer I took both acting and playwriting to help decide where I best fit. At the auditions for their mountain dialect play, they moved me up to advanced acting, the Shakespearian studies, and gave me the lead of Barbara Allen in the 3-act play Dark of the Moon. In this challenging role I was wooed by a witch-boy, raped in church, gave birth on-stage, mob-killed and left dead and sprawled on a rock for the witch-boy to play with. Brought the house down. People hung around backstage to weep and tell me how strongly I affected them with my performance.

I also got high marks in playwriting.

For my final Ryerson year I took the lesbian role in Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit, the play of three disreputable characters in a waiting room for the afterlife that for them is hell. I received Honourable Mention for acting: No mean feat in competition with eleven universities.

Aside from these honours I performed in musical and comic revues, dance shows, piano recitals, singing, radio and TV acting and wrote a number of plays.

All this stopped with electroshock. In reviewing old papers I came upon letters of congratulations; there had been national newspaper coverage. One was signed Sharon, and from the content we had been close. She named people I recognized, but she is lost in the area of my brain burnt out by thoughtless shock docs. What does it matter to them that a few lists or personnel are missing? It matters not at all.

Oh sure, my interests were still present, but all I was capable of was chorus work, minimally. Once I was helping choreograph Toronto City Hall Revue dance numbers. In the grand finale the lead dancer was to lift me, spin around and roll me out for the big finish. Because I had demonstrated both male and female roles, in performance I lifted him, spun him around and rolled him out for the final TA-DA. Did not even realize I had done it until we were in the wings and he asked, What was that all about? All I could do was laugh, and never tempt that brain shock mistake again on stage. Performing, even as an amateur, was over. That brain glitch meant I was unreliable on-stage.

One reason I did well performing was my prodigious memory: All the script changes were imprinted on my mind. If an actor was in the wrong place or gave the wrong line, I could cover because I remembered every nuance of the rehearsal period. All gone now. No more connections. And what enrages me today is that psychiatry knew this destruction is the result of ECT, always the result, and in their arrogance, their greed, their lusting for the easy way around difficult personalities, they hide the truth they know; brain damage is always the result.

What Little They Disclose

Today there are legislated informed consent discussions as in the 2002 Andy Behrman memoir Electroboy. I notice the bio-psychiatrist and not the shock doc gives the information to him and his parents, outlining the different methods and expected results. It is now admitted the chief problem is memory loss, a condition even my nice psychiatrist suggested was brought on in me by my mental illness. They like to blame the victim: it is how they are trained. The classifications are: 1) neurotransmitter theory shows ECT is like antidepressant drugs and affects serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine; 2) anticonvulsant theory claims ECT seizures condition the brain to become seizure-resistant; 3) neuroendocrine theory says these convulsions cause the hypothalamus to release mood stabilizers; and 4) brain damage theory admits that the damage created gives the illusion of mental stability.

Note that these are theories, not proven scientific facts that explain how ECT treats depression or mania. The fact that ECT results are unproven does not stop psychiatrists from charging ahead, delivering their shocks and, when they fail to ‘work’, adding more series of shocks until you no longer complain. You learn what torture comes from objecting.

ONE

How Easily I was Committed

In a daze, nothing of Connie could respond for interminable days: until they talk about going back to the hospital for another treatment.

No, I scream in true terror. Not that place, no. Please don’t make me go back there again. I can’t! You don’t understand!

And when they insist the treatment isn’t finished until I have the full series, I scream, I won’t go back there, not ever. That murdering shrink – your shrink – tried to kill me. To refuse treatment, they were warned, is a sign I am not rational. Refusal and the fictitious ideas [read: LIES] about harming my baby or self, the signatures of Bob’s drunken family doctor and his mother’s workmate psychiatrist are all they need for an order of committal, good for six months, or longer if I don’t respond adequately.

At the mental hospital I think Bob is signing the papers and answering questions because I am so down and annoyed at being manipulated here. For weeks thereafter when asked by staff on the ward if I am Voluntary or Committed, I tell them, Voluntary. I don’t know why they look vexed, until one day a staff corrects me, saying, It’s time you start facing facts, young lady, that you are Committed.

Oh, another test! Well, if it’s on the chart, why keep asking me? Who is crazy here, the inmates or their guards? Of course, dense isn’t the same as crazy. Or is the key word protocol?

The first few days are spent in Observation. In the glassed-in booth someone watches every movement (including toilet) I make. They take every personal item, all my clothing, my paper, pen and books. I wear their large shapeless housedress, and paper scuffy slippers. My paint-by-number set is also taken.

Put you in a cage, remove all diversion and say you will be watched to see if your reactions are normal, and see how you do. The object is to prove me crazy, not normal. They succeed.

Decades later, under the Freedom of Information Act, I had my record read to me. Three different diagnoses were made by three separate doctors, all of them indicating ‘borderline’ this, and certain ‘tendencies’ or symptoms; no cut-and-dried sure-fire mental illness or psychosis, no mention of baby blues. But I knew that relationships over my growing years plus wild after-baby hormones produced the ‘psychotic’ break, not a disease. On this ward there are several young mothers gone awry.

Well, now they have me, I will get through it as best I can. As tension-provoking as Observation is, I would trade it gladly for my next ordeal.

No Escape from the Locked Shock Ward

And next is the locked shock ward where they ‘treat’ me to twenty ECT without anaesthetic (to produce true terror): that’s every Monday, Wednesday and Friday for the next six weeks. In addition, mood elevator pills and sleeping capsules are tried in various dosages to determine ‘correct’ (read: ZOMBIE) dosage. The medication makes me sick. Walking down the hall, everything goes ‘tilt’, and I find myself on the floor. And I can’t perspire. Any exertion – like the obligatory games of bowling (and wouldn’t you know they built the library adjoining the crashing bowling alley) – all exertion causes my skin to blotch in red and stark white patches. They must see the physical effects on me; but alter meds? Not without an absent doctor’s order!

I’d have to catch him first! I want anaesthetic while undergoing shock to hide from some of the horror of the treatment. Over and over I feel I am dying: being murdered. I imagine they are forming a new Connie, as my brain is swept bare each time. Who am I now? When will Shock Doc be satisfied? What must I do? Locked away from husband and daughter, how do I become the ‘good wife’ and ‘good mother’ here?

I sneak out amid a group of patients with Grounds Privileges for a new ward aide to find the elusive doctor. It is so easy to be free! Can I fly from this terrible place, never to return, phone Bob, get my baby, and escape? I know I am critically damaged: will never be the same again. I have no money, clothes, job, or food. Bob, I know, will return me to this ward. My parents don’t want me. On committal my bank account is frozen, driver’s licence and life insurance suspended. Police will arrest me and return me. No, there is no escape.

Do not think the mind debilitating electroshock and befuddling drugs are not affecting me. I see fellow shock victims on days I am not treated. After an hour in recovery, here they come: Rubbery-legged patients are supported, hauled and dumped into chairs in the day lounge. Blank faces are shouted into, "You are <Insert Name>!! You’re in Hamilton Ontario Hospital. This is the lounge." until some light sparks in their eyes. Then they are assigned to nearby un-shocked patients to be taken to lunch, shown how to eat, where their bed is, how to dress.

I look at my predicament: I cannot be this. Trapped!

I do not sleep well here. Often, nights, I walk the ward end to end. The nurses tolerate this so long as sleepers are not wakened, although they mark this ‘disturbed’ behaviour in my chart. I have company: frequently on my night walks I pass Doreen* pacing the ward. Doreen volunteers hairdressing services three days a week, anything to use up anxious energy. She also works part-time at a nearby beauty shop when she is well enough. Most of her life has been used up in and out and back in this Ontario Hospital. To calm her down she is given a pre-frontal lobotomy. They cut the front brain connectors to the back brain just behind the eyes and this is considered a final solution (read: VEGETABLE) for greatly disturbed people who do not respond sufficiently to shock or drugs. And still she anxiously paces the ward every night after a full day’s work, with another working day ahead. Doreen is not calm, but as she does not cause trouble, they let her walk and smoke the nights away, wrapped in her private turmoil.

I am amazed to learn that Doreen is here on a Voluntary basis.

Once an inmate learns what de-humanizing processes operate in a psychiatric facility, how can she consider voluntarily returning? Not me! This is not a healing place but a destroying prison of torture. I must be released with their approval – or never be free. On observation I believe that the treatment is more psychotic than any of my ‘symptoms’.

How I Gained Privileges

And here is his office. I knock, and hear, Come in.

In his small office Chief Dr. Shrink sits behind a Formica-topped desk with files and charts sprawled across it. Surprised to be faced by