Dear Mom

By Adam Holbrook

A troubled son, in a lengthy letter to his mother, reveals the tortures and torments of living in the throes mental illness. Dear Mom is the true story of Adam Holbrook as told in the first person. A MUST READ FOR ALL MENTAL HEALTH PROFESSIONALS.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Adam Holbrook
• Release date: Apr 23, 2018
• ISBN: 9781540103840

Adam Holbrook

Adam Holbrook was born in Lima Ohio  and grew up a a farm near the village of Westminster, Ohio. Adam began writing at the age of fifteen years and worked as a writer and photographer for several local newspapers. After bouts with schizophrenia, alcoholism, drug dependance and many psychiatric hospitalizations Mr. Holbrook has recovered to the point of being able to resume his writing career after many unproductive years.

Book preview

Table

of

Contents

Introduction  7

I  - The Departure  9

II – Chicago  13

III – Denver  17

IV – On The Road  23

V – The True Christian  29

VI – Drunk and Disorderly  33

VII – California  37

VIII – NBC  43

IX – On To Phoenix  49

X – From Bad To Worse  53

XI – My Freedom Machine  59

XII – The Assassin  63

XIII – Return To Burbank  67

XIV – The Party  71

XV – Closer To Home  75

A Word From the Author

I found it necessary to place an explanation (rather than a disclaimer) at the outset of this version of the record of my life experiences.

Dear Mom was published many years ago-1996. We all change and evolve through the years as our age and experiences progress. At the time I authored Dear Mom I was an evangelical Christian and had many beliefs about mental illness and how it relates to spiritual things. Those beliefs have been radically altered through the years, as have been my core convictions about God and Jesus Christ. I remain very much a believer but, as I said, my perspective has changed. Keep this in mind as you read the following work.

Introduction

Dear Mom:

I have desired many times to relate to you and the world the trials which I survived during the winter of the great mid-west blizzard. I have spent many sleepless hours mentally compiling recollections of my 1978 odyssey in preparation, hoping to one day put them on paper.

The reason I have failed to do so until now is that I wanted to immortalize my thoughts as well as the facts, a task which for so long seemed to be an insurmountable

obstacle.

Why? You see, the world of a person suffering from schizophrenia is a bizarrre

combination of fact and fantasy. It is a world in which a harsh reality makes its presence known as the mind bombarded by thoughts which are abstract and unspeakable they defy description.

Person who suffer with schizophrenia have a difficult time not only comprehending what is going on around us, but also interpreting what our senses tell us. We live in an Alice in Wonderland world where fantasy just might be fact. It is a world in which our sight, hearing, taste and touch can not be trusted. Even our most treasured memories are contorted and made to be grotesque, ugly and insidiously evil.

We not only have an often cruel reality to deal with, but we are also under constant assault which are so sinister, so macabre, and incredibly eveil the pit of hell couldbe their only origin.

Do you understand why I find it difficult to relate to others the strange things which dominated my thought life while I was gone? Are you able to comprehend the abysmal confusion, heartbreak and often times unrestrained terror which had engulfed me?

I pray not. Really.

I am just now beginning to fathom the full implications of the potentially dangerous situations in which I had found myself. At times I lie awake in the wee hours of the night trembling in my bed until my joints ache