Mental Read online

  ALSO BY

  JAIME LOWE

  Digging for Dirt: The Life and Death of ODB

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, New York 10014

  Copyright © 2017 by Jaime Lowe

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  Photograph here courtesy Sam Polcer. All other photographs courtesy Jaime Lowe.

  Blue Rider Press is a registered trademark and its colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Lowe, Jaime, author.

  Title: Mental : lithium, love, and losing my mind / Jaime Lowe.

  Description: New York : Blue Rider Press, 2017.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017021267 | ISBN 9780399574498 (hardback) | ISBN 9780399574511 (eBook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Lowe, Jaime—Mental health. | Manic-depressive Persons—United States—Biography. | Manic-depressive Illness—Chemotherapy—Biography. | Lithium—Therapeutic use. | BISAC: PSYCHOLOGY / Psychopathology / Bipolar Disorder. | BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs. | PSYCHOLOGY / History.

  Classification: LCC RC516 .L72 2017 | DDC 616.89/50092 [B]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017021267

  p. cm.

  Penguin is committed to publishing works of quality and integrity. In that spirit, we are proud to offer this book to our readers; however, the story, the experiences, and the words are the author’s alone.

  Version_1

  FOR MY PARENTS

  (ALL OF THEM)

  CONTENTS

  ALSO BY JAIME LOWE

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  DEDICATION

  PART 1—EPISODE 1

  1: PAINT THE CEILING WITH ME AND I WILL SHOW YOU THE SECRET TUNNEL TO NEVERLAND

  2: ADMITTANCE

  3: IF NAZIS DON’T GET YOU, THE MOCCASINS WILL

  4: FAT AND BLOOD AND CIRCULAR INSANITY

  5: CLEAN NEEDLES NOW, ASPHALT VOLLEYBALL . . . NEVERMIND

  6: RABID MUTANT SQUIRRELS, FRONTAL LOBE, BEAST IN THE ATTIC

  7: IRRECONCILABLE DIFFERENCES AND THE OMNIPOTENT DR. VISCOTT

  8: “IT’S TIME TO START LIVIN’!”

  9: THE FACTS OF LIFE

  10: REACH FOR THE SKY

  PART 2—EPISODE 2

  11: MIDNIGHT COWGIRL: 1; HOUSE & GARDEN: 0

  12: SEX ’N’ EGG ’N’ CHEESE

  13: HYSTERICAL METAMORPHOSIS

  14: TAPER MEDS, THANKSGIVING IN MAINE, KYRGYZSTANI MAN

  15: AND NOW FOR A PSYCHOTIC BREAK . . . OR THAT TIME I ALMOST GOT MARRIED ON TOP OF THE WORLD TRADE CENTER

  16: CHEEKING MEDS, BARTERING FOR UTOPIA, AND THE PASSOVER CRUISE

  17: THE CORNER OF SIXTH AVENUE AND GARFIELD; COPING SKILLS 1, IMPROV, AND THE SAD CLOWN

  18: COPING SKILLS 2, CHOPPING MUSHROOMS BADLY

  PART 3—THE TRANSITION

  19: THE BIG BANG, THE THIRD ELEMENT EMERGES, HOSTS ALIEN LIFE . . . MAYBE?

  20: LITHIUM’S LORE AND THE TRANSITION TO DEPAKOTE (TAKE 1)

  21: THE CALM WATERS OF BAD KISSINGEN

  22: WHEN IN ROME AND THE LITHIUM RECKONING

  23: DEPAKOTE (TAKE 2), LITHIUM TAPERING

  EPILOGUE: HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL

  NOTES

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  INDEX

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PART 1 — EPISODE 1

  CHAPTER 1

  PAINT THE CEILING WITH ME AND I WILL SHOW YOU THE SECRET TUNNEL TO NEVERLAND

  WHERE WAS THAT NUGGET of old, dried-up shit weed I bought on the Venice boardwalk two years ago from a vagrant dealer who may or may not have sold me a thimble full of dirt mixed with oregano?

  I pounded on the volume button of my Costco-special Magnavox stereo. It was pulsating in syncopation with my anxiety. Cacophony doesn’t describe it; it was so loud I could feel it traveling from my heels to my outer cranium, taking in the itching, the scratching, the clawing, the gridlock of atonal chords. It was loud and I needed it to be. I could feel the chorus like combat and I could deflect the harmony. Angels and peace and major chords weren’t welcome, just the loud cheap stereo behind my slammed-shut door.

  Where was it? Where was it? Where? I knew it was somewhere. The chords crashed on top of each other. I could see them. I could see the waves of sound cascading from speaker to skin. I could taste them.

  It was not under my mattress or tucked into a corner of my pink floral Laura Ashley sheets (a present from my Bat Mitzvah). It was not in my jewelry box that my paternal grandparents, Oma and Opa, had given me when they traveled to Austria. The jewelry box (not the weed) had a tiny ballet dancer on a rusted metal gear that would spring to life and pirouette to canned music every time the lid was cracked. The lid was not cracked and the tiny dancer was crushed under a different sound, suffocating. Where was the nugget? Where was the nugget? Where was that nickel bag of shit weed? I bought it. I smoked it once on a Friday afternoon when no one was home. I felt nothing but fire in my throat, swallowing red hot embers. I was good, I was great, I was perfect all the time. But now I needed that chunk of bullshit weed so that I could get out of this terrifying place with no windows. Out of this castle of chords crashing down on me. A wall of terror, collapsing onto my skull, the way they had wanted it to. I had to get out, away from my tulip sheets, away from my delicate jewelry box, and very far away from my mask collection. The lips that moved in the night. It was subtle, I could see it. Those faces had something to say and would not shut the fuck up.

  I hear you now, I am listening to you, I am leaving.

  The popcorn tin! It was in the tin. The tin that once held caramel, cheddar, and butter and sat next to a life-sized penguin in our living room. My things that no one needed to know anything about. Behind my tiny rocking chair and boo boo bear. Stop looking at me, glass-eye.

  I ripped off the tin lid. It smelled like popcorn; small stale kernels were wedged in around the edges. There was a folded-up piece of material. It was the key to my escape. I unfolded the material carefully like a curated item from a time capsule and, just like my vision, there was that shit-brown weed, barely more than seeds and stems. There it was, right where I had stashed it, my dirt fucking weed. It was in that forest-green tin wrapped in that original Venice beach baggie. I needed it now. It needed to be with me in my backpack. It needed to travel with me wherever I ended up. I could not leave without it. Essential item. Essential survival. Surviving. Surviving this. This war. This war with secret spies and reborn Nazis and people in masks, people who refused to take off their masks.

  I grabbed it, buried it in my backpack, and laid my full body weight on top of my dog, Nature. My calm, calm, calming dog, immune to emotion. She accepted my love like the weather. It was there, nothing she could do about it but wait until it passed. I scratched behind her ears and above her tail. It wagged out of obligation and reflex. She had sad Labrador eyes and seemed empathetic to my plight, but she was indifferent. She didn’t know war, she didn’t know combat. She was even nice to the hissing opossum; she stood in front of the nocturnal beast licking her nose with her wet, pink tongue until thwack. That asshole opossum sideswiped her snout with a fistful of daggers. Claws. Nature was my soul mate, my partner in sad and lonely. She could not wear a mask and she could not throw a grenade or a gas bomb or knife.
She had no opposable thumbs, so she was an ally. I could wiggle my nose in front of her wet muzzle and she sat patiently, collapsing on all fours to sleep like temporary death had struck her. She was so calm. Where I was going, she could not go. She would be eaten alive and maybe I would be too.

  I had to go. I don’t know why I was chosen to move out. I don’t know why they wanted me to leave. But I knew it was absolutely essential to say good-bye to Nature, to escape the tightening parental grip of my controlling father, to run from the cascade of sound. My dad did not understand that Michael Jackson had communicated with me directly, and that I knew of a direct tunnel to Neverland, a not necessarily safe place but a place I could go, if needed. A last resort, Neverland. When I saw Michael Jackson, Michael Jackson wore masks upon masks and would remove each one, revealing different faces like a Russian doll shedding compartmental tiers of painted tiki.

  I grabbed the shit weed and filled my backpack with several small cameras to document atrocities. It was a JanSport back-to-school backpack with a leather bottom (another Costco special). I packed a change of clothes and papers I had been working on, my manifestos about Nicaragua and the Holocaust and the Muppets, some drawings and diagrams.

  I did not leave the house quietly; many doors slammed in my wake. I left my Magnavox on, waves of big guitars colliding, a tsunami of screeching sound. I was not communicating effectively with my dad. He did not understand anything. He yelled when I was suffocating in stereo but now I wanted him to know I was gone, going, forever, good-bye at age sixteen. My stepmom, Marilyn, was away, at her stepdad’s Bar Mitzvah in Chicago. He was too old to be Bar Mitzvahed, but I respected his newfound love of the Torah, of God, of ritual, of holiness. I believed so deeply in God that I did not think a book could hold the majesty. Not scrolls. Not nothing. God had chosen me to be a savior and to be saved, which meant escape. And so I did.

  I ran out the side door screaming, my dad chasing me. I think he yelled, I yelled back. I was that song, I was screaming those guitars. I was signaling something. He grabbed my backpack (MY BACKPACK!) and we struggled on the driveway near Marilyn’s mustard-yellow Volvo station wagon. I was a prisoner, held back, held against my will, trapped in a house masked with shingles. Rights revoked. Violated. Eventually, I let go, the backpack didn’t matter. Escape did.

  He opened the small pouch and saw a handful of keychains with cameras. No big deal. Except for the keychain that contained the key to my Honda Civic hatchback. He took that key. He opened the big compartment and rifled through until he saw the folded material. He unfolded it. And took my shit dirt weed. I screamed about unfairness and abuse; I needed my car but I needed that shit dirt weed more. It was like an oracle. Magic leaves so potent I didn’t even want to smoke them. I screamed, “That is mine, I am a person with rights,” and he grabbed my arm.

  “You cannot go anywhere.”

  And I was gone. Hysterical and running down Beachwood Drive with a backpack full of shit but not my shit weed. My dad followed about three quarters of a block behind me, keeping up and keeping his distance. I was not so much crying as bellowing and heaving and crashing into the cement. I turned right on Rosewood and left onto Larchmont. I knew there was a pay phone on Larchmont and Beverly. I could call someone, I could get away. I could be free. I could go to Neverland. I could remove Michael Jackson’s mask and find skin, humanity, a preserved and sweet boy aching for identity and autonomy. I could free him. I could see his real face, his real smooth skin.

  The thing was, my dad wasn’t the only person after me. The Nazis were after me. There was a violent war in Central America that had just ended, but I knew from Sandinista training with Salvadoran guerrillas that that war was far from over and I needed to be free to fight. I was on call to save the world. From the Nazis, the Contras, to free Michael Jackson (oh wait, you thought Michael Jackson was free already? Hahahahaaaa. They got you to believe that), and to free myself from my chasing-me dad who was clearly throwing a wrench in my self-determination.

  I had an idea. It was a good one. If I stopped at a pay phone, my dad would try to get me home. But he could not make a scene. It was not in his nature. He was first-generation German. And Larchmont Boulevard would echo angry voices.

  I saw activity at Prado, a restaurant we’d been to for dinner as a family. I had eaten soft-shell crabs to celebrate graduation or an anniversary or straight A’s. Javier Prado, the owner, had opened the place two years before, in 1991, a fancy addition to our neighborhood. Javier was previously the head chef at The Ivy. I looked in the window and saw ladders and drop cloths and a handful of people painting the ceiling a deep dusky turquoise. They were expanding the dining room and technically closed. I opened the door and went in anyway, hot mess radiating in every direction. Javier sat me down, past the drop cloths and ladders by the kitchen, away from the ceiling painting. He gave me a glass of water. His wife listened to me. I told them my father had kidnapped me, abused me. That he was after me, that I had to run away. Then my dad showed up, a late-forties bespectacled lawyer with sparse, Jewish hair. He was out of breath and demanding to see me (frantic in his own calm-presentation-German-American way). They kept me sheltered away from him, my abuser. Though they did not know what to do with me, no explanation from my dad was sufficient. They did not know I was an unreliable narrator. I did not know that either.

  So I sat with my water and eventually I called my mom from their phone at the hostess area. She was expecting this call. My stepdad, Jeff, and my mom had just gotten back from Maine—I flew home early to get ready for the school year. I was particularly taken with the loons, calling out to them as they shouted to each other, diving through the cold lake, inspired by their long runs under water. (Did you know the loon plumage went gray in winter? Did you know loons have a salt gland near their eyes and can live in freshwater and salt water? Did you know they need a quarter-mile runway to take off and leave the lake when they migrate?)

  I sat in Prado’s kitchen clutching my JanSport backpack, comforted by the dishes being washed and by a new friend. Javier’s daughter was three years younger than I and had Down syndrome. The lilt of her voice made me think we were talking in code, that she understood me and that I understood her and that as long as things were being washed, we were both okay. I could read her thoughts. They were about math and school. I touched her hand and I felt, just by sitting in close proximity, that I understood her deeper than she had ever been understood before and that I could help her. And that she could help me. I felt bonded by trauma. I no longer had this urgency to battle and run from Nazis; I just wanted to talk to this girl who did not make it a practice to talk to many people. I was special; she was special; things were being washed.

  I was calmer than I had been in three months. We were telepathically in a deep embrace, a mind-soul hug that went on for minutes, maybe decades, maybe never at all.

  All summer I had been operating on a more efficient schedule, no sleep and little food. The past five days I had ramped up my regimen. I hadn’t slept, not for a minute for the five nights previous to this one. I hadn’t eaten much because most of what I was being fed was poison. I was running on vapors. Occasionally the late Jim Henson would come to me in a vision: warm, bearded, kind Jim Henson, an oracle for all things sensational, inspirational, celebrational, Muppetational.

  But here, under a half-painted ceiling, I was still.

  My mom pulled up to Prado with Jeff in the passenger seat. My dad was still hovering outside the restaurant, not allowed in, on my orders, shunned as an abuser. They regrouped, strategized. They had already formulated a plan. My mom had consulted with her therapist about what one does with a daughter full of demons. My dad went home and got his car. It was after dark and I got in my mom’s silver sedan clutching my backpack full of end-of-world supplies. She pulled away from Prado, steering toward Westwood with my dad following. I thought that if I needed to, I could tutor Javier’s daughter after school. I could make eno
ugh money to afford to pay for Yale. Maybe Javier would even spot me tuition for a year because obviously I was now estranged from my father. I had a plan to pay for Yale, a school I was determined and destined to go to. Javier could be one of my four corporate sponsors. He could be first up, sponsor a year of school and then I would work for him for a year. Wash dishes, tutor, whatever. Then I would have a second-year corporate sponsor like my uncle Steve. (He worked at Sweet’N Low.) And so on and so forth—an expensive education paid for. I had a plan, it would work, it was working. I was safe from my dad, a lane of traffic away. I had my backpack and my paperwork. Neverland could wait. For now. Yale would be next, next year this time exactly.

  We arrived at the UCLA emergency room after dark, pulling into the curved brick driveway behind ambulances and EMTs. We didn’t normally go to UCLA for emergencies. I was confused: Why were we going to the hospital at all? My mom said something to the effect of: We don’t know what the fuck is going on. We don’t know what to do. We are out of options. And we are fucking scared. There are doctors past those motion-sensored glass doors that know what to do. They are going to help you because we fucking can’t anymore. My mom, though a tiny human, was fierce and forceful. She happily employed the vocabulary of her Teamster father.

  I got out of the car cautiously. My mom said, in a tired, terse, exasperated, desperate, please-listen-to-me-demon-daughter way: “This hospital has a neuropsychiatric institute for adolescents.” I did not register the implication of the statement. I just saw a waiting room full of masked faces in permanent grimace. This place was the place I was supposed to be, the place to engage in the war that haunted me. I had to crawl through the belly of a dark beast to see the shining graceful light of shelter. And so I agreed.