The Healing

Dr. Hate loved having me as his patient. He knew that he could wind me up. He did it deliberately - relished pissing me off - worse than those maggots behind their glass at the job centre 'social' also did. The Hippocratic Oath he will have had to have taken to care for his patients would also have been a Hypocritical one as he clearly didn't give a flying shit for these, not for my well being anyway. How he hadn't been horribly killed yet I couldn't understand. He was lucky that I was a hippy. He sat there judging me in his dazzling white crinkle free GP's coat, making my formerly relaxed hand clench into a tight fist. I imagined pounding the smiley face punching bag I took my stress out upon at home, trying not to imagine Dr. Hate's face there instead of the smiley because that was negative. The white-coat sneered down his nose at me, not bothering to hide his contempt. "Name?" he enquired briskly and when I told him, rooted out a file. He flicked slowly through this, stroking his far reaching from upturned hooter chin, leaving me to gaze around his office at all his other files and a framed photo of his oh so healthy and not in the least bit dysfunctonal family. He referred to a psychiatric report that stated that I was caning loads of drugs including heroin and amphetamines and also drinking ten cans of Special Brew a day. I told him this just was not so, as I had also told him on our last meeting and our meeting before that. He made no verbal response to this, but instead moved on to another page about my police trouble. Fare evasion, possession of cannabis, failure to pay fines etceteras. "So what do you want from me?" he asked, still stroking his chin. "I'd like some help," I ventured "I'm finding it hard to cope." He reached for a pen to write me a prescription.

I hadn't wanted to take Their drugs. I had stopped using the illegal ones of my own accord - all except cannabis (this not really a drug, but a herb, I had reasoned then) which I had carried on smoking like a trooper. This herb I guess is what turned me into a hippy (and what kept me as one), chilling the hot headed me out. Peace and love, maaan. Cannabis was the best medicine I had discovered for keeping my head together. It was only cos I couldn't afford my cannabis habit that I thought I'd also try some of Theirs. In spite of the cannabis I was still having nervous breakdowns far too regularly, so I just thought What the hell. The drug they tried me on was a new one called Zyclops. These were round and grey.

Zyclops made the news ten months after I started taking them, linked to a spate of psychotic incidents - murders, suicides, bouts of random violence. By this time I was addicted to them and needed them more than I had ever done cannabis. I was barely bothering with the wacky backy anymore - I toked on the occasional spliff if I was with my mates, to be sociable. I saw dope for what it was: A pacifier - Fuck that. I felt I had a right to be angry. I no longer had any problem with imagining real peoples faces in place of the smiley one (sewn on punchbag) that I unleashed this anger upon. Negative feelings were only natural, I realised. Fuck being a hippy. The only problem was that the negativity didn't feel too good. It was making my depression worse. And rather than sit around and get more and more depressed, or pound away at that punchbag, or try and end it all by carving The End in my wrists, I figured I would start to direct this finally recognised energy (my wrath) towards those people that deserved it.

First person I decided I would confront was that prick Dr. Hate, although I realised I would have to show some restraint in order to keep the prescriptions running. Unfortunately I forgot this when I saw him face to face and, three minutes after entering his office, was cleaning his blood off the framed photograph of his oh so healthy and not in the least bit dysfunctional family. Shit, I realised I had commited my first murder. And that I'd not be getting my prescription. Panic stricken I ransacked his desk drawers for the paper he wrote them on. I would have to forge his signature. I grabbed a bundle of blank scripts, and being careful to keep the blood off them, hastily exited out of the window through which I had entered, and right off the scene.

Dr. Kroker was my next GP. He wrote me an additional prescription. Now I had so much Zyclops I figured I might as well take double doses. My memory of my last meeting with Dr. Hate became that of a dream - as had my everyday reality. I sleepstomped through it full of a now self justified burning rage that I was no longer inclined to keep inside of me. If someone pissed me off they would get to know about it. I was like The Incredible Hulk. On crack and PCP. I stopped caring about any ill consequences to myself as a result of any of my outbursts, for all that I was perceiving was but a dream. I was lucky with the first few people I killed in that I killed them unwitnessed, but since I didn't care whether I was witnessed or not (it all being a dream), it was inevitable that sooner or later I'd kill someone with others about. I did this at Brighton Social after they stopped my Incapacity Benefit. Although the people that witnessed my choking the general manager to
death on the main floor all cheered, the police were unsympathetic. They surrounded the building with a SWAT team and I was shot to bits. I was woken from that nightmare by a ticket inspector whose body I had a hell of a lot of trouble flushing down the train's toilet.

Dr. Kroker became concerned that I might have developped drug psychosis from the very drug that he (and Dr. Hate before him) had put me on. As it was, the media was calling for Zyclops to be banned. It had been dubbed 'The Destruction Drug'. (With twenty three major reported incidents and one hundred and seven noted deaths.) But whilst it was still available I needed to be on it, I told old Kroker as I smashed his skull in with his paperweight.

So they got me in the hospital. And on some even madder drugs.