Narratives of Recovery from Serious Mental Illness by William Tucker

Author:William Tucker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

Engagement and Stability

Prescribing appropriate medication for him could not have been simpler. During our first four years, his dose of risperidone fluctuated between 4 and 8 mg daily, according to his requests, and his requests for Benadryl, a non-habit-forming sleep aid, were similarly reasonable. His view of their benefits would qualify easily as insight, to anyone who cared to score him on that item: “Medication helps me deal with loneliness and stress.” He could even identify the source of his adherence: “My grandmother told me what to do and didn’t have to tell me twice.”

In return he asked for very little. His one room was furnished mostly with a couple of mattresses, along two walls, and perhaps a single chair. At any given time there were several CD players scattered about, never more than one of them functioning. The once-white walls of the kitchen alcove were spattered with yellow stains of cooking oil. Frying pans, some of them containing food residues, stood atop several of the burners. The room reeked of tobacco smoke.

Yet this was his world, where he spent most of his days, practicing his guitar and listening to recordings. Early on in my visits, I saw that his guitar strings were of rubber, and that they produced only the faintest sound. One day, walking to his neighborhood, I noticed some nylon ones in a shop window and during my next visit, offered to purchase them for him. He demurred but must have noted my offer, because he later replaced them on his own with steel ones, to my relief: a step up for him.

Besides showing up at my office monthly, he must have made periodic excursions to pick up food and other supplies, because toward the end I learned that, rare as these had been, he had managed to make a favorable impression on neighbors and even on casual strangers. They must have been impressed with his quiet dignity, just as we at Pathways regularly were.

One incident illustrates how limited his social interactions remained. His super suspected a gas leak in his apartment and had called the local fire department. Then he accompanied them on their visit, taking the opportunity to press me to transfer Richard elsewhere. He cited the casual housekeeping but more likely, I figured, was trying to forestall the landlord’s responsibility to perform the required repainting. Richard remained cooperative and fairly calm throughout the whole incident, though he wondered whether the super “used a gas meter outside my door.” He acknowledged the gas leak but attributed it to the extinction of a pilot light on the stove. It was clear that Richard had not contributed to the leak in any way. Once the stove was repaired, and the pilot light functioned again, the super seemed mollified, saying there was no longer any problem with his staying on. To forestall any future threats, I asked the super to call me if one ever arose again.

But the gas leak was not the major problem with the state of his apartment: water was.

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