Musiccosmos

“I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people.” –  Isaac Newton Schizophrenia is madness in motion. When I am psychotic — when I see and hear things others do not — it seems as though the buzz of atoms, the molecular bonds that hold things together, reveal themselves as tiny humming grains beneath the appearance of my surroundings. It took me a while to learn my illness isn’t like other ways of being sick: it knows everything I know. It uses my brain against me and the more active and operational one’s brain, the more powerful the disease: the more tools it has at its disposal. When I learn new coping methods so does the disease, which in turn seeks to undermine them. As I say, it knows everything I know. That is why a lot of the time I choose to blunt my brain: with drugs, with alcohol, with sleep . For a long time I existed in a dysfunctional zombie-like haze before I learned to manage a rough, teetering balance between sedation and awaren...