Ticket to Madland is the fearsome, funny story of my four-month journey through a mysterious mind-body illness, which took me through doctor and therapist offices, a rehab center, and a locked psych ward. (Spoiler: I recovered.)
In this excerpt, I reflect on the friends, family, and professionals who were trying to help as I slid down the hole in late October 2020. I called them my defense team, but as you’ll see, they were really something else. –Jocelyn Davis
My entire defense team meant well; they tried their best. Yet I remained in the prisoner’s dock, looking at them looking at me, a wall of glass between us, the floor under my feet bumping down, down, like a janky elevator, taking me farther from aid and nearer to the executioner’s block. What would I say to them now, other than “Thanks for trying”? What would I say to anyone who wants to defend a friend, patient, or loved one against the brutal encroachments of insanity?
When faced with a mentally ill person, few of us can resist offering advice. We tell the ill one to get outside, stick to a routine, engage in self-care, take supplements, see a therapist, go on vacation, come for a visit, or try Rolfing. We suggest they exercise, journal, breathe, meditate, knit, eat plants, or smoke weed. When we see our advice isn’t landing, most of us know enough to back off: we revert to offering a sympathetic ear, a shoulder to cry on, support as requested. “Talk to me,” we say. “Call me anytime. Let me know how I can help.” And we’re right to say those things. Listening, after all, is what a good friend does. But the critical point we tend to miss is that a person with major depressive disorder isn’t “feeling down.” A person with an anxiety disorder isn’t “experiencing some stress.” A person with obsessive-compulsive disorder isn’t “so anal, ha-ha.” A person with bipolar disorder isn’t “moody.”
A mentally ill person is sick.
Certainly as sick as someone with pneumonia, possibly as sick as someone with cancer. We don’t expect a friend with pneumonia or cancer to chat to us; we don’t expect them to feel better because we invited them out for a drink and encouraged them to share. We take their illness seriously, knowing that we as laypeople can’t fix it, and we don’t demand they perform wellness in order to ease our fears. A friend with a mental illness, though: while it’s easy to understand, intellectually, that they’re sick, it can be hard to grasp that they’re really and truly sick, sick to a degree that all the sharing in the world won’t mitigate. And of course the last thing we want is to be blamed, should worst come to worst, for not having done everything we could. So … “Talk to me,” we say. “Call me anytime. Let me know how I can help. Have you tried cannabidiol?”
What the mentally ill person hears: “Take responsibility, amid your illness, for creating the circumstances whereby I can help you.” And now, for that mentally ill person, another task looms: another task in the overwhelming, minute-by-minute, breath-by-breath effort to bear the torment, which is fast becoming the only item on their agenda.
I expect I sound churlish. What else can people do, after all, other than reach out and listen? Do I not appreciate those who worried, who called or took my calls, who emailed or messaged as I was spiraling down the well? Am I not grateful to Margaret, James, and Susan, to the Fellow Sicklings, to Therapist Denise, to the brothers South Carolina and Oxford, to the nurses Nice-but-Useless and Just-a-Nervous-Girl? To Emily, who sent me good morning emojis of hearts and flowers, cow and lion faces? To Matt, who supplied endless mugs of tea and said, “If you’re scared in the middle of the night, just come downstairs and wake me up, I don’t mind”?
I am grateful. I am deeply, deeply grateful to every one of them. But not for the advice. Not for the offers of help. Not even, really, for the sympathetic ears. You know what I’m grateful for?
They were there. They sat in the panopticon seats, scattered among the leering, heckling demons, and with calm, interested eyes watched my trial unfold. Their attempts at back-bench coaching were, quite frankly, ineffective; even their cries of encouragement or commiseration failed to make me feel better, because in the end, the only person who could make me feel better was me, along with serious medicine and (maybe) divine intervention. But their mere presence—that made a difference. The simple fact that they emailed, messaged, called, answered, invited, or shared their news, that they said, “How are you?” “I’m sorry,” “Praying for you,” “I love you,” “Hey, remember when?” “Wow, that sounds bad!” or really anything at all—made a difference.
As it turns out, those friends and family, nurses and therapists, weren’t my defense team. They were my witnesses. And witnesses, it turns out, by some mysterious mechanism make torment just a tad more bearable.
Ticket to Madland: How I Went Insane and Met New People is available on Amazon and wherever books are sold.