Author: Greg Bauder

Publisher: Publish America

ISBN 1-4137-3296-8

The following review was contributed by:  SHELDON (SHELLY) WAXMAN & click to view Shelly's reviews

            This story provides an insightful look into lives of the mentally ill.  In this short story, Don is a moderate schizophrenic but he is stable and is employed. He calls someone having a psychotic episode “jonesing” or having a “jones”. He periodically hears the voices of demons; however, the voices are greatly ameliorated by his medications. There is no cure for schizophrenia. All that the medical establishment can do is treat the symptoms.

            Ariel is afflicted with a schizoid-affective disorder. In many ways this disease is more serious than schizophrenia because it exhibits not only schizoid affects, such as paranoia, but it is also characterized by extreme and sudden mood swings.

            Don and Ariel meet in a boarding home for the mentally ill in Vancouver. Don falls for Ariel, who is exciting as well as beautiful. With Don it is not only sex, he dreams of a house, a family, and a normal life.

            Ariel’s mood swings make for a difficult relationship but Don won’t give up. He is in love. She is very manipulative and her love for Don is feigned. Don accepts his mental illness and dutifully takes his meds and follows the advice of the helpful nurses.

Ariel won’t take hers, which causes her to relapse. They take Ariel to a psychiatric hospital. Don flips because of this and they take him to the hospital too.

While there, they consummate their love. This dalliance with sex cements Don’s love for Ariel. But it becomes clear that Don’s love is doomed because of Ariel’s illness and her refusal to accept it.

She flees the hospital to meet up with a former boyfriend. The two of them are found dead from an overdose of heroin. Don accepts the news resolutely and we are left with the hope that Don will someday fulfill his dream of a normal life.

Most people who are not familiar with mental illness don’t realize that, except for the very seriously mentally, psychotics are not crazy all the time. The illness is episodic. They learn to compensate for their illness, just as do the physically ill. They avoid trouble having learned lessons from their past.

Don’s seems almost normal, except for his sleepiness (an indication of the major tranquilizers he is taking) and crying fits. He is definitely the more stable of the two and his love is real.

He describes how the nurses try to help him. Stress is a trigger for a psychotic episode. He knows that the medicine helps. He has accepted that there is something wrong with his brain. Accepting a psychotic illness is an absolute requirement to allow the treatment to work. But meds do not help some people. They dislike the zombie like feeling that the medicine provides or they have some of the other side effects of the medicine, such as tardive dyskenisia, an involuntary lip smacking. These people are doomed for the rest of their lives. They will not take medicine and they remain active psychotics. 

Ariel is one of the doomed. Anything sets her off. Don’s description of her fragile nature and his attempts to not say the wrong thing is frighteningly real.

This book was a good, quick read—written in an easy readable style. I suspect Don is the author and that this is really a memoir—creatively fictionalized. My suspicion is enhanced because only someone who has lived the life of a mentally ill person through it could describe it the way Bauder has.