During the long wait in A & E in London, Jane is left with many unanswered questions about the causes of Dan’s psychosis.  To access previous chapters, visit Jane Read’s Author Page.

 

Chapter 10.                                                                

JANE

                     

                               Insanity is hereditary. You can get it from your children.

          Dan Levenson

As well as the routine pulse, ECG and blood pressure checks, the medics need Dan to produce a urine sample which proves trickier than it sounds. Dan hasn’t been eating or drinking much, and I am starting to worry about the adverse effects of dehydration on his mental state. I step out of the room, returning in a few seconds with a filled plastic beaker, which I announce on impulse is ‘Holy water’ and will definitely be good for him.

I’m a bit ashamed of my blatant pretence as my children have always trusted me to tell them the truth. Even endorsing their belief in Father Christmas made me uncomfortable when they were small. I did encourage the annual letter and list-writing, to generate anticipation, but I also saw it as an opportunity for a bit of spelling practice in the holidays.

My holy water strategy does the trick, but it works a bit too well. Dan wants refill after refill. Eventually he produces a sample and after some agitation about God’s mission, and further thwarted attempts to leave the building, two nurses arrive with some very large, pink tablets, which I assume might be something to sedate him. I am hopeful that we might get a bit of a break now. He takes hold of the beaker of water and the plastic pot of tablets. Then with the broadest of grins on his face, he promptly tips them both upside-down, emptying their contents all over the floor.

We shout in protest, urging Dan to be more sensible. He is cajoled into swallowing some replacement pills which act quickly to make him drowsy. I persuade him to lie down. He stretches out across the line of uncomfortable plastic seats, his head in my lap. I stroke his damp hair and clammy forehead wondering what is happening inside his fevered brain and how on earth we might help him come back to reality and back to us.

Graham closes his eyes for a few minutes as we wait, listening to the sounds of a hospital department gearing up for a daytime shift, clattering, clanging and bleeping sounds mixed with rapid footsteps and voices.  Two psychiatric consultants finally appear, at around nine-thirty in the morning. They ask Dan questions as he sits up unsteadily, much quieter now. Then they tell us that traces of amphetamines were found in his urine, so his psychotic episode might be drug related. We stare in disbelief.

‘What are amphetamines?’ Dan asks. I don’t know what they are.’ The men turn towards us,

‘Your son might possibly have been a victim of spiking. This happens a lot in London.’

Several students on his course had used substances for several years already and appeared to get away with it, completely relaxed about their illegal activities so Dan had assumed it was a normal thing to do and saw it as no big deal when he was invited to sample just a small amount at a student party. His friends might have been experienced and street wise, but Dan was young, and much too trusting.

Could his minor experiment really be the thing causing these massive changes in his brain? Some say psychosis is a direct result of childhood trauma, but I can’t think of any specific examples of trauma in Dan’s past life. Was it a pre-existing part of him, lying in wait for something to trigger it? Or might it have been the direct result of pressures he’d been under at drama school?  Were these changes brought about by his need to achieve perfection in his performances, his desperation to meet the expectations of others? Were they the result of being cast in challenging, demanding roles before his young mind had developed any clarity about who he was?

My mind is flooded with so many questions, to which there seem to be no immediate answers.  I know what I want those answers to be. My instinct is to defend him, exonerate him and most of all to find a way to restore him to his former self. He is my son, my baby, lying here across these seats with his head resting on my lap, while I weep silently. It feels impossible for me to blame him for this catastrophe.

We find out through further discussion with Carl and Mark, that many months earlier (at another student party) Dan was handed a plate of brownies laced with cannabis, ‘hash brownies’ was the joke label they’d adopted for them. Brownies had always been Dan’s favourite cake, so he’d eaten quite a few with no idea what they’d contained. A guy from his year group arrived late to the party, wearing his new, scarlet jacket. Dan became wildly delusional, pointing at him, raving that he must be Satan!  He was out of his mind with terror. The other students found his ‘trip’ quite amusing, so they agreed with his perceptions, reinforcing his fear, in order to prolong their entertainment instead of talking him down. One of them claimed afterwards that Dan’s drug-induced experience would have been good for him, even helping to expand his mind!

Several students from this particular year group, habitually applauded the worst behaviours, congratulating their peers for excessive drinking, taking drugs and boasting sexual conquests, instead of validating genuine talent, which was the thing they were all there to develop.

In my lowest moments, I have found myself wondering whether they were deliberately trying to eliminate the competition at this prestigious drama school, once the desperate scramble for agents had begun in earnest. Maybe these toxic gifts were given with the aim of destroying Dan’s true gifts as an actor. But I realise that this is probably just a protective mother’s paranoia and it was more likely to have been the result of youthful recklessness.

One doctor tells us that it is better news if it is a drug induced episode, because Dan will come down from his manic state quickly, once the substance has worn off. This proves to be far from the case.

We have been so naïve about the dangers. Parents like us can imagine that we have put sufficient safeguards in place as our kids grow older. We think we have taught them right from wrong and how to recognise potential threats in their world. We assume their school PSHE curriculum must have educated them to make intelligent, informed choices. Many of us have recently been forced to wake up to the fact that street drugs are out there, more readily available, cheaper, and easier to obtain than ever before, unregulated substances, their content unknown, fuelling our country’s chronic mental health crisis, one more dangerous hazard for our sons and daughters and our grandchildren to negotiate. I wish it were not so. I really wish it were not so.

The reason we believe everything Dan is telling us is because it quickly becomes apparent that being psychotic is the equivalent of being injected with a truth serum, all normal inhibitions lifted, no censorship or filters in place. The person in the throes of mania sees no reason to hide anything. Dan proceeds to confess all his ‘sins’ to us during these early stages of his illness.

It seems weirdly inappropriate but something of a relief, to allow ourselves to laugh at something, even in the middle of a crisis.  My brother, a Monty Python fan back in the seventies, phones me every few days to offer support,

‘In view of everything, do you ever feel tempted to announce to the world,

“My Son is not the Messiah…. He is a very naughty boy!”?’  (‘Life of Brian’ 1979)

I laugh with him, but at the same time I feel compelled to protect Dan. This bizarre and unexpected situation is a serious one and seems disproportionate to anything he has done. I am already anticipating that it will come as a nasty shock, once he realises that he isn’t the Messiah after all.

‘It’s bound to be something of a come down.’

‘I see what you mean,’ Pete ponders this thought for a minute.

‘But then again, if you think about the job description, who the hell would actually want to be the Messiah?’

No-one, in their right mind, I guess!