Contrasting Tones of Good v. Evil: Wherein, I try to describe one aspect of  the psychological trauma that I experienced while hospitalized at The Arizona State Hospital. 

       Each and every day, seven days a week, including holidays, the Flagstaff Family Food Center feeds multi-course, well rounded dinners to  upwards of 100-200 needy individuals and their families, as applicable, from temporarily down and out folks such as yours truly, to chronically homeless campers and transients, and the seriously mentally ill. The center has a small staff of paid employees who work very, very hard in their own right at minimal rates of pay in order to assure that the Center functions as a safe and healthy venue for anybody who might happen to visit, but the real heroes at the Center are the many volunteers who appear each morning in order to help with all aspects of the Center's operation. Over the past three months, I have been privileged and pleased to be able to participate in the Center's activities, both as a diner almost every night of the week, and as a volunteer in the kitchen 3-4 mornings a week. I have made friends, supplemented my very scarce dietary budget, and I have sincerely enjoyed the company of numerous kind hearted people every time I go to the Center.

        

       This is the sort of thing I am most accustomed to when it come to caring for others: sincere, heartfelt consideration of another persons needs, no matter how simple, and consequent appreciation for their inherent value(s) as a person. Ideally, of course, this is what I am accustomed to, but I have a work history that includes at least a dozen different positions in basic customer device, from waiting tables and retail, to public and private school teaching, as well medical care experience as an emergency medical technician and professional ski patroller, so I can certainly acknowledge that service positions can be complex. But I think it is fair to Say that I have well rounded expectations, too, when it comes to looking to others who represent themselves as health care professionals in legitimate hospital settings.
       I wound never have imagined that in this day in age, a person in the United States would be subjected to ongoing disrespect and outright verbal abuse in psychological care facility, and I sure didn't expect that when I arrived by ambulance at ASH. But shockingly enough, that is precisely what I got at ASH, pretty much from day one. I am not going to say that everybody would have experienced the far too often negative and abusive staff conduct at ASH the way I did, but I can attest in my own right to the fact that my depression and willingness to remain openminded about suicide were directly stimulate/aggravated by these things, and I know as well that I am not the only who feels that way. I have mentioned my friend Thomas, for example, who was "terrified" of staff, and Audrey P., who has to suffer through her life at ASH in the hands of brutally cold hearted clinical staff that frankly don't care one way or the other about how difficult her life is there at ASH. I cannot count how many times I witnessed gross manipulations of a patients' peace of mind for no other apparent reason than to satisfy one or another staff persons given mood at the time, and mind you, many of the the staff at ASH are far from the the sharpest tools in the tool shed in terms of people skills.       

          Upon leaving ASH in late February, 2012, I was immediately blown away by how polite people in the "real" world, this in the sense that I went into a Circle K within one half hour of my discharge, and even the clerks there struck me as the kindest people I had encountered in seeming decades. I recognized the situation for what it was, too, realized without having to put too much thought into the fact that the staff at ASH had, somewhat overwhelmingly, so deteriorated my expectations of how people treat one another, that even the most basic niceties struck me as bizarre. And as I settled into the routine at a short terms transitional facility, I began studying my reactions to these things because I was really concerned that my ASH experience may have destroyed whatever fundamental appreciation for other people that I had once had.  In a short time, however, I was relieved to rediscover myself for who I am, which is to say that I am not by nature hateful or spiteful, and I have never invited conflict or negativity into my life. But at ASH, I was surrounded by hateful and spiteful staff, and many of them actively invite conflict in the most basic of their interactions with patients, as though they are paid to test the patients, to push their buttons, and demean them, as a matter of day to day common practice.
         In this sense, my post ASH experiences have been variously marked by outstanding examples of basic human decency, and it has for the most part been nothing short of a profound relief to be free of the perpetually oppressive and degrading times of voice and related body language that ASH staff so readily rely upon in order to maintain their arguably petty status as employees of a broken and corrupt state system.

        On Thursday morning (May 17, 2012), however, when as matter of trying to stand up for my fundamental rights as the victim of a violent crime, I had to listen to the bone chilling voices of Joel Rudd, lead mortician at the AZ Attorney Generals Office, who represented the interests of ASH and ADHS, and Donna Noriega, who is the the Chief Operating Officer at The Arizona State Hospital, I immediately felt the same abject terror that often gripped me while a patient at ASH; my blood pressure shy rocketed as soon as I heard Donna Noriega's voice, and for a moment it felt as though I had that suddenly plummeted again into a much darker universe, where ill qualified representatives of Arizona's only long term public metal health care facility victimize the states most at-risk citizens as a matter of tending to their own lotus-eating greed and revoltingly perverted need for self gratification. I had to go for a good long trail run as soon as I got out of the hearing in order to distance myself from the fear that felt when I sensed that those two devils were in striking distance of my relatively peaceful life today, and even now, three days later, I am still shaken up by it all.   

       My late older brother Reed taught me about love, honesty, and the potential tenderness of any man's heart before I was even12 years old. He used to take me on long hikes in the mountains of New Mexico, and we would always be in discussion about something of merit. He was a great teacher and storyteller, and I clearly remember him telling me stories about our family history, particularly with respect for our father, who died in 1971; as well as tales of his own adventures on the west coast and in the Oregon forests, and as we moved through the cognitive and physical landscapes of these settings, he patiently showed me in each passing moment of our time together what it means to help those unable to help themselves, be they human or nonhuman in form. Reed was about 11 years older than I, and while living in northern California off and on during the late sixties, he became friends with a number of very influential people, including Neil Young (see photo below), after the two of them met at a small folk festival in the Bay area that was being held in order to raise funds for a free kitchen that my brother used to work at in Oakland, circa 1968-1970. 

        Shortly after the death of our father, on my 11th birthday, Reed gave me the epic Neil Young & Crazy Horse album, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, which was the first record that I ever owned,  as well as Richard Bach's seminal novella, Jonathan Livingston Seagull.  I kept that original recording of Young's earlier work for over 45 full years, and I still consider it to be one my favorite albums. My brother pretty clearly saw the need for me to learn about life's deeper mysteries at a pretty young age, at least in my interpretation of such things, and I sincerely believe that his efforts in this context had some of the most significantly positive effects that I have ever experienced in life. He seemed to recognize my most basic attributes, too, for he really had a knack for getting my attention and keeping it. 

        In 1975, Young's song "Cortez the Killer" was banned in Spain because its lyrics offered a beautifully written critical expose' of European colonization in the Americas, in direct defiance of contemporary ideologies about the history to our nation. This is a spirit that I feel comfortable in assigning to myself today, and the nature of it has led me though one hell of a strange arrangement of door ways in recent years, but I am comfortable with it. I am seeing the air and sky itself more clearly than I have since boyhood, and nothing in the last 20 years of my life has made me feel so alive, in fact, as dedicating myself to fighting the substandard mental health care. I don't know if it because I'm helping other patients at ASH, or if its because I am so sickened by the malevolence of ASH staff that I really love telling them that they are no longer going to get away with it

          My brother Reed died in late spring, 1974, from complications associated with a drug overdose (heroin), while staying by himself in an unfurnished and unheated apartment in Boonton, New Jersey. He had spent most of the previous winter staying with me and my mother in Albuquerque, but he headed to the east coast in order to hook up with  some of his oldest childhood friends. I know very little about the event, beyond these things, and I have no idea if he ever had the chance to hear "Cortez the Killer." He died alone, and far too early in his life. Had Reed lived, I honestly believe I would never have experienced the worst aspects of my childhood, and my mom would have very possibly remained much happier, too. 

       All of that said, it is apparent to me today that my core ideals with respect to being human, and directly related concepts that I have about how we, as humans, should treat one another, directly contribute to how I interact with the world around me. Humans are, by nature, social animals, and for whatever reason, I am overly effected by the reality that some people treat others like shit. This led to consider suicide for the first time when I was 14 years old, and it also came into play when I revisited suicidal thinking, albeit on a much more severe scale, following the death of my mom, and in relation to the carnage that I experienced through my struggles with alcohol circa the early 21st century. I have, at various times in my life, experienced a host of deeply set inner conflicts, in essence, and many of these conflicts are rooted in very real elements of the social landscape around me. 

       Meanwhile, the ideals that I mention flow from my earliest experiences in terms of practical education. My experiences as the youngest child in a family of four started out pretty dynamically, albeit in a fragmented way, because my siblings had all been raised in different parts of the world, and when I was young, they all shared an enormous amount of their own acquired life experience with me. By the time I was born, the whole family had traveled and lived amongst varying cultures, and immediately following my birth in 1961, we lived on a sprawling estate in Bermuda, the main house of which was built by a 19th century pirate, until I was almost two years old. I was also introduced to reading at a young age, and became especially fascinated with tales relating to human experience at the metaphysical level, including the Greek tragedies  and other similarly fantastic explorations of what it means to be a person. Likewise, the fact that my father was an American Indian, and my  mother the daughter of first generation immigrants from Ireland and Germany, contributed to a familial identity that was rich in terms of both deeply bred western tradition(s) as well as well as inherently unique progressive thinking and proactive lifestyle pursuits in the modern landscapes of the mind.  By the time I was born, the whole family had traveled and lived amongst varying cultures, and immediately following my birth in 1961, we lived on a sprawling estate in Bermuda, the main house of which was built by a 19th century pirate, until I was almost two years old. These sorts of  things, at times fleeting and yet undeniably integral to who I am as person, all lend themselves to my strongest sense of self identity today.  

            Such is life. I recall coming home form school one afternoon and finding my mother sobbing in her bedroom. She told me that Reed had died, and I felt awkward, somehow, in her presence. She was very, very upset. I wound up excusing myself, and then leaving the house in order to go ride my bmx bike, like I always did after school. I do not recall ever feeling sad that Reed had died, although I do remember realizing how much I was going to miss him. It was a strange thing to experience, his passing, but I did not take it hard.

        But my older Reed's death drastically, and understandably, tore my mothers already fragile peace of mind apart. In the first 6-12 months after his death, she began to abuse alcohol on a daily basis. It was like night and day, seeing as I did the degree to which her mental state deteriorated during those years, and in time, the effect of this abuse had drastic effects on me, because my mom developed into a psychologically abusive and somewhat violent closet drunk, which in turn caused me to consider for the first time why I should feel obligated to remain here on this earth. It is just about that simple. I remember this period of my cognitive life quite clearly, and that I never really felt sorry for myself, or that I needed to share this fundamental suicidal thinking with anyone else; for to me then, the idea of taking my own life was much like it is today: Suicide is an act, nothing more, nothing less; a willful expediting of a process that each and every one of us is going to be subject to one way or the other.
        It was established very late in my treatment at ASH, largely through my own self directed contemplations with respect for my overall state of mind and sense of self awareness, that my earliest acceptance of suicide developed in my mind sometime not long after Reed died in 1974. My mother's relative meltdown and the effects that it had on me coincided almost directly with my coming to realize that if I wanted to, I could always follow my brother Reed to wherever it was that he has gone. I distinctly recall concluding at the time that my brother had not "died," in fact, at least to the extent that I could not agree to anything along the lines of knowledge about what death itself meant. At his funeral, I placed a handwritten letter that I had written to him, and I can only recall today that I asked him to feel free to contact me from the other side of it all, if that were to turn out to be possible. I know that I was was pretty wrapped up in parapsychology at the time, and that I had recently a story read about Bridey McMurphy and other like phenomena. But in essence, I also had nothing but absolute faith in the reality that nobody knows what actually goes on once our physical bodies expire.
         Specific to my experiences as a client of the Arizona Department of Health Services/Behavioral Health Services (ADHS/BHS) and patient at The Arizona State Hospital (aka The AZ Center For Criminal Patient Abuse), I will never forget how profoundly I was struck by the humanity of the Family Food Center when I first visited it in mid-March, 2012, this after full 13 months of the cold hearted substandard and abusive conditions at The Arizona State Hospital (ASH). It was amazing, akin to entering a long awaited welcome home party, or finding a long loved lost pet waiting for you at your front door. After all that ongoing abuse and directly related fear, the Center is a virtual heaven on earth. Therein, these contrasts, the trauma of being treated like I didn't count for anything, as though my failure to die was a burden on them, the cruelest of ASH staff; and then, the brightness of the volunteers at the Center, and the friendliness of the diners, and the beauty of the forests, and the land, the sky.  

      
     Discompassionate, and therein incapable of sincere warmth or concern for the needs of weaker persons, Donna Noriega and Joel Rudd cooperatively represent the modern medical communities astonishingly reptilian underbelly. I am as certain as I have been about anything in my life that neither of them holds the positions that they hold out of concern for their fellows, and it is no coincidence that they should be the ones most centrally responsible for the utterly amoral and arguably criminal goings on at The Arizona State Hospital. They are, the both of them, as cut out for their respective jobs as is manifestation of representative evil.              PLEASE SEE MY APRIL 30, 2012 "RESOURCE IDEAS" ARTICLE,  and help bring  light back into the lives of the patients at The Arizona State Hospital. Help stop the ongoing abuse and brutally unlawful and substandard mental health care practices there by speaking out today, via the internet or by phone or by snail mail in stalwart defense of the critically threatened dignity acitizens, family, and friends at ASH and beyond. 

paoloreed@gmail.com