CHRONICLES OF A POETIC MADMAN

My personal journey with schizophrenia and mental health.

By Timothy Paul Brown

I have developed PTSD from my childhood years. And I have developed PTSD as a result of being abused physically and mentally within the mental health system. I started using drugs at the age of 11 years old. I’ve been told that my drug use exacerbated my mental illness. I tried drugs like marijuana, cocaine, cigarettes, alcohol, mescaline and angel dust. I was never a heavy drug user. It was what would happen to me as a result of using. I would hear voices. I would see things. I thought I was God. I would have rituals and superstitions. I became super paranoid. And eventually became very depressed. I was diagnosed with a paranoid schizophrenic disorder. Which later became a schizoaffective disorder. I used drugs sporadically over the years. Every time I had the same result. The paranoia. The hallucinations. The delusions. The grandiosity. The obsession compulsion and the depression. I tried going to narcotics anonymous and alcoholics anonymous meetings. After years of going there I realized that I wasn’t an alcoholic or drug addict at all. I’m a mentally ill person whose life was in danger every time I decided to use. I was there with hard core drug addicts. These people used more drugs in one month than I did in my whole life! The good thing that came out of it is that I stopped the destructive behavior. I haven’t had a drop of alcohol and haven’t used a substance since December of 1996. I even quit smoking cigarettes in June of 2005. I don’t even use caffeine. I live a very clean life.

The first time I started hearing voices was at the age of 17. I would hear voices coming from miles away. They would talk to me, and they would talk to each other. They would say things like they are going to kill and rape me. I spent a lot of my life in the shelter system. I first experienced homelessness at the age of 18. When I was on the street, I took a hallucinogen called mescaline. That was my introduction into the mental health system I started seeing things which seemed so real to me. I started seeing the face of what appeared to be a devil on the face of the person that gave me the mescaline pill. I started hearing this crazy voice. His pupils became pinpoint. His ears sharpened and his teeth grew fangs. After that happened, I was going around town accusing people of being possessed. The police picked me up and brought me to jail. When they realized I was sick they transferred me to a forensic unit at the jail. Then they sent me to Rockland State Psychiatric Center in Rockland County New York. This was back in 1983. They put me on Thorazine. My tongue started swelling and my eyes rolled back into my head. Until they gave me Cogentin for the side effects. This was only one of many traumatic experiences in my life. This was my entrance into the world as a young man. Most of us usually go to college, have a girlfriend, get their first car, maybe even get an apartment. This was not the case for me. No one, man or woman, should experience these things at such a young age! I have been in and out of hospitals from the age of 18 to the age of 52. I have had over 30 hospitalizations. On my second hospitalization, I experienced the most terrible hallucinations. I was seeing and hearing things that weren’t there. It was so real to me that I have remnants of those memories in my head even today. And in my mind, they are still real sometimes. I can rationalize and reality check though. But the impact is still there. It’s like a computer program running in the background. The voices were so loud and the visual was as clear as what the average person sees every day. As a result of my hallucinations, I tried to kill myself every chance I could get. I was consistently trying to hang myself but always got caught and stopped. I wanted to die so badly. I had tried killing myself numerous times in my life. One time I swallowed rat poison. A few times I tried to overdose on my pills. Once I tied my shirt around my neck and tied it to a tree and jumped. My shirt snapped and here I am to tell the story. This was in 1993. That was the last time I have ever tried to hurt myself. I have been very suicidal since then but have never attempted suicide again. I realize that I must be here for a reason. So, I promised myself no matter how bad things get, suicide is not a solution.

Most of my story I have blocked out to protect my mind. I have lost time for weeks at a time. There are parts of my life that I will never get back because of it. I struggle with that a lot. However, as the years go by, I am getting glimpses and pieces of my past.

I started having the worst panic attacks. I still have them today. There is one place I have not gone back to since 1991 because of a terrible panic attack I had. I cannot be in closed places with a lot of people. There must be a way for me to leave and quickly or I will have a meltdown. I have embarrassed myself as a result of melting down in front of people. They all called me crazy. I couldn’t take buses or trains for years because of it. Airports and subways are a nightmare for me. It took years of therapy and personal effort for me to overcome my panic attacks. I still have my issues with it today. At this point I can ride the buses and trains. I can go to NYC. I belong to a gym that I frequent. I’m not so afraid of people. My social skills have improved tremendously. My progress started in 1984 when I was put on the drug Prolixin. That was when I started a medication regiment. I tried to get off the medications in 1985 and 1998. I thought I was cured. I think most of us have experienced that. But I have been taking my medications without fail since 1998. I truly learned my lesson. I now know the importance of taking medications. I started therapy with a therapist by the name of Dr Straytner. He was the first male that I bonded with since the time I came into the mental health system. I have had numerous therapists since then. They all played a different role in my life. The most important and pivotal point in my therapy came with my present therapist Linda A. We have developed an unbreakable bond over the last 5 years. It is a partnership. We talk about everything. I teach her and she teaches me. Our relationship is very reciprocal. I’ve helped her to look at psychotherapy in new ways. She knows how to treat me naturally at this point. I have had doctors and therapists literally call me crazy because of the way I think. I think my thinking threatens their intelligence. Linda has never done that. She has been a god send. I have never covered and uncovered more in all the years I have been in therapy. I have a lot of grievances towards some of the treatment I have received over the years. I find that we all have grievances in the system. A great majority of us are afraid to express them for fear of being put away or given more medication as a result. Some of us don’t know how to express our grievances. We just respond to whatever treatment we receive. A great majority of us are afraid to be who we are for those same reasons. We feel we must fit in just to be right with the world. We feel isolated sometimes. A lot of us feel controlled. A lot of us don’t realize that we are a different kind of people. We think differently. We feel differently. We perceive differently. We process information differently. We act differently. We will never be whole or on a path to recovery until we recognize and accept that about ourselves. That is the major reason why I write. I don’t believe in sugar coating the truth. I believe it is my responsibility to tell the truth as I see it. I cannot hold back. I believe that I write about things that we all have experienced. I write about things that we all have thought about. I have been praised for giving people something to identify with. As well as being given courage to deal with everyday life. I have given many of us reason to love ourselves through my poetry. I have helped put people on a path of healing through my poetry.

I want to talk about my journey with poetry. I started writing at the age of 10 years old. My very first poem was entitled “Fats”. It was about an overweight child whom kids would beat up and tease because he was overweight. It is what they would call bullying and fat shaming today. I was able to see that in 1975 as a 10-year-old kid. I have always been told that I have a lot of insight and vision. I carry this through my poetry. I didn’t start writing on a regular basis until about the age of 21. I remember I was hospitalized. I met a young poet whose poetry really took me aback. I was totally amazed by his style. He would make four sentences that all rhymed and then go onto another four sentences. He would make maybe 16 bars. The content of his poetry amazed me. This young gentleman took my poetry on a different path. I wrote a lot of poems while I was there. My poems were thrown in the garbage because they weren’t considered practical to my mom. In any case my love for poetry remained. The oldest poem that I have in existence was written in 1988. I have the original. 1997 is when I really started writing. I was working the graveyard shift at a gas station. I would write in between customers. I had a lot of time to write. At the time my greatest influence was a rapper by the name of Tupac Shakur. His mental anguish and conflict between good and evil really did it for me. Then in 1998 there was a rapper by the name of DMX that exploded on the scene whose work really intrigued and inspired me. His conflict between God and his street life was amazing to me. My conflict is between my concepts of God and the reality of my insanity. It seems like they’re at odds with each other fighting to be my main personality. When writing I take the intensity and the passion that I feel and write it down I use the subject matter that goes through my head. That way it is all original material. I very rarely read other people’s work. This makes my work pure. I use my own processes, perceptions, philosophies, teachings and put it in poetic form. I just create. I am in my zone when I am writing. It is my high. It takes me to places I never imagined. People would tell me how talented I was. To me it was survival. I never thought I could do something with my work. I had a life changing operation back in 2021. After I started to recover, I got the idea to publish my work. I put all my work together and contacted Kindle Direct Publishing. From there I published my first book “Poetic Madman”. Shortly after that I published six more books. “A Man Divided”. “Obsession Depression and Madness”. “Genius or Lunatic”. “Schizoetry”. “No Way Out” and “Twisted Rage. I made a lot of mistakes throughout the whole process. It was a lot of trial and error. But I finally got it done. I created a website poeticmadman.com during that time. I have audiobook recordings on there. You can also purchase all formats, including paperbacks, hardcovers, eBooks and audiobooks directly from my website.

My work gives people an understanding of what it is like to have a mental illness. It gives practitioners, loved ones, consumers, anyone interested in knowing more about us, insight. It goes deep into what we think about. What we’ve been through and what we need as a people. Which is mainly love and compassion. 

I used to live in a perceived threatening world. Some of it real and some of it not. None of it fabricated. What people don’t realize is that none of this is made up. It doesn’t mean that what we perceive is real. It just means that it is not made up. What we go through are real experiences just by the fact that we experience it. Everyone should be able to trust their own perceptions. It is one of the most basic human needs. The ability to trust one’s perceptions. To us what we go through is real. It seems that we as a people are the only ones taught that we can’t trust our own perceptions. And sometimes we are persecuted when we do. Sadly, sometimes by the people who care for us. I’m so grateful that it is only an emergency when we are seen as suicidal or homicidal. It means that we can think and feel, however we choose as long as we are not a threat to ourselves or others. That is so liberating. I have been waiting for that all my life. I come from a time when anyone can have you committed if you were acting a bit off. I come from a time when anyone could call one of your practitioners and get information about you. There was no protection for the mentally ill. There was no HIPPA law. This made me gun-shy about expressing my thoughts and feelings. Today I feel freer. That’s how I was able to fearlessly create my website. That’s how I can unapologetically express who I am.

I believe poetry is a form of expression that brings us as a people together. Poetry can be a vehicle towards self-healing. I believe it empowers us in a world that can be unforgiving. Self-expression, to me, is vital to our recovery. In my experience poetry has given me great courage. I think it can do the same for all poets with mental disabilities. It is a form of therapy. Even those with no experience at all can benefit from writing. I’ve seen it firsthand. I am proud to share my poetry with the world. I know from my own experience that poetry gives self-esteem, self-worth, and true pride to persons like myself. I believe it gives us purpose and meaning. Poetry is my saving grace. I will always say that. It is the most powerful tool of self-expression for me. I love poetry! And poetry loves me!

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