pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq
I arrived home from my lunch with Hiratsuka sensei. It was getting late. I walked in the front door. To my surprise my whole family was there. They turned to look at me as I walked in and took my shoes off.
My father positively glowered at me with a bright red face. My mother held up a forestalling hand and my father looked away and sighed.
"Mother, father, you're home early," I managed. There was an odd pressure on the air.
"Big brother…" Komachi began but she stopped from where she sat on the couch.
"Have a seat, son," my father ordered with temper in his voice.
I did obediently. "What's this about?" I asked. I could still feel the tension in the air and tried to slice through it.
"We found this in your room," my mom held up a bag. It had my dab rig and torch in it. It had my dabs and vicodin inside. I swallowed. "Under the floorboards."
I sat in silence and they all looked at me. I glanced between each of them in turn. "Ah," I tried at length.
"That's all you have to say about it in your defense?! 'Ah?!'" My father's temper roared to the surface. My mother once again held up a hand and my father went back to panting loudly in his fury.
"What is this?" My mother asked me. She gave the bag a small shake.
"Drugs," I croaked honestly.
"So you admit it then. You admit they're yours!" My father bellowed.
"Yes. They are," I answered. What did it matter? I couldn't lie. I'd been caught. It wouldn't do me any good.
"Big brother…" Komachi whined again.
"What are they?" My mother asked me calmly.
"Vicodin and almost pure THC," I answered analytically. "Narcotics, an opioid, and cannabinoids."
My mother stared at the bag for a moment.
"Our own son is a victim of the opioid epidemic?" My father demanded.
"It isn't like that," I countered.
"Then what is it like?" My mother's calmness in the face of my father's jagged anger unsettled me more than raw fury.
"I…" I began. "I hallucinate. Komachi knows. I hear voices. I feel bugs crawling and biting in my skin. I see shadows. The pain medication helps."
"You knew about this?!" My father directed his fury towards Komachi. He sounded more tender.
Komachi gave a slight nod.
"She knew about the hallucinations and paranoia. Not the drugs."
"You hallucinate because of the drugs?" My father shot back towards me.
"No. I hallucinate all the time. Not just when I'm high."
"Big brother tells me he doesn't know what's real. He doesn't know if other people are real or his own memories are real. He doesn't always know that I'm real."
"That's because he's high!" My father shouted.
"No. It's because I'm me."
My father glowered at me for a moment. "You must be punished."
"Honey…" My mom trailed off. Something in her tone made my father pause and look at her incredulously. "When people resort to drugs there's usually a reason. A bottom line. He's saying he resorts to drugs because he's sick."
"I'm sick," I agreed. "I'm warped."
"Have you ever hallucinated a whole person? Do the voices tell you to do things? Hurt other people or animals?"
"Not that I know of and no, not really. They give advice on my math and physics problems but they don't really tell me to hurt anyone. Well, besides myself."
"Do you want to kill yourself?" My mom asked.
"Every single day," I informed her, looking straight at Komachi. Komachi looked away.
"Why didn't you tell us?" My mother asked.
"There's nothing you can do. It's hard enough being a salary woman without a psychotic son."
"We would have gotten you help," my father disagreed. "You're my son. My only son." He sounded almost tender.
"My condition isn't curable. Its treatable with medication. That's what the drugs do. They make my bad days better."
"How long has this been going on?" my mother wondered softly.
"Years," Komachi answered. "I thought he was doing well. I thought he was doing better. He has friends now. But this…" She trailed off and gestured helplessly at the bag of drugs and torch and rig.
"You're going to rehab," my father decided.
"I'm not an addict," I denied.
"Narcotics?" He shot back.
"For the pain and to help me sleep," I disagreed. "Less than one percent of people get addicted to opioids. And that's like hardcore heroin."
"And the THC?" My mother asked.
"It's not addictive. And it puts me in a state where I no longer care about the pain."
"What do you need?" My mother wondered.
"From you? Nothing. Let me manage my illness on my own. I've been doing just fine."
"Fine is opioids and cannabinoids?" My father demanded.
"I'm going to be valedictorian. What does it matter what I'm on?" I shot back.
"You're our son…" My mother managed. "Of course your well being matters to us."
"He already said that. My condition, schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, delusional disorder, whatever you want to call it, doesn't have a cure."
"But we can get you a diagnosis. Proper meds," my mother protested.
"Can you afford that?" I asked.
"You're our son!" My mother raised her voice for the first time.
"You said that already," I pointed out.
"It didn't stop being true," she fired back. "We will see you healthy."
I sighed and looked away.
"Has it been hard?" My mother pressed. "Dealing with hallucinations and you mentioned delusions."
"They're only delusions if I'm wrong. But yes it's been hard."
"Give us a chance. Let us help you," my mother hammered. She knocked the wind out of me with that.
"You're taking him at his word?" My father wondered at my mother.
"People don't just take up drugs one day. That's not how people work. There's always an underlying cause."
"He could be lying."
"He's not. He's been dealing with hallucinations and an inability to know what's real for a long time," Komachi cut in.
"If you want to treat me you have to take me at my word anyways," I pointed out. "My hallucinations and delusions are mine. You have to trust me when I say I'm getting better or worse."
"Okay," my mother decided. "We're taking these from you and I'm setting you up with a psychiatrist. But you need to follow all their orders. That's your punishment."
"Fine," I decided. How bad could it be? Could it be worse than an alien monster god invading my brain? Probably not. And that's what I currently believed was happening to me. Maybe things will get better. "I'll probably need a therapist and a neurologist too. If we're really going to do this."
"Should we try a hospital?" My father asked. "That's what we'd do for drug addiction anyway."
"Maybe," I decided. "It's not like I'm in immediate danger to myself or others."
"But you said you want to kill yourself," my mom pointed out.
"Yeah but I promised Yukinoshita and Yui I wouldn't for at least another year. My word is good."
"So we have time for a slow route," my mother confirmed. "Okay. I'll start looking for psychiatrists and therapists to get an initial opinion. You have to keep being honest with us though."
"I will," I vowed. "You have to keep trusting me, though."
My father sighed back in his chair. He rubbed his eyes and face hard. I got my eyes from him. "How can we trust him? He had drugs under our floor boards in our house!"
"He's sick. He needs our help. He doesn't need to be punished for making the most of a bad situation. I just don't understand why you didn't come to us for help. You went to Komachi but not us. We would have helped you from the start."
"I'm sorry," I managed and meant it.
pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq
"My mother didn't tell you anything?" My mother had found a psychiatrist willing to fit me in within the day. It was the next day from when I'd been caught.
"She mentioned hallucinations, delusions, and drugs but not any details," the woman, Amanda Farrel smiled at me gently. "It's up to you what you tell me but the more honest you are the better I can make things for you."
I wanted to trust her but I hesitated. She looked trustworthy. She was American or English. But she spoke Japanese fluently with only a slight accent on the 'i' vs 'e' sound. She pronounced them the same.
"Tactile mostly," I informed her. "Mostly tactile. Pain in my extremities, ears, nose, mouth, eyes and throat. Everywhere sensitive. Including my genitals it feels like bugs crawling around."
"I see," she nodded. She didn't have a pen in her hand but she made a note on her laptop. "Any visual or auditory hallucinations?" She pressed me.
"Some voices. The voices of my parents and sister at a whisper. I hear the voices of old dead masters of physics and mathematics and they give me advice. I see shadows jump out at me at times."
"Okay. And what were the drugs that you used?"
"Vicodin for the pain. And THC."
"Did you ever take dabs?" She asked.
"All the time."
"Okay. It's likely that that was exacerbating your symptoms. THC is a pretty strong propsychotic. Which happened first? The dabs? Or hallucinations?"
"The hallucinations. By like, half a year."
"Okay. You're a bit young for schizophrenia."
"So I'm not schizophrenic?" I asked.
She laughed. "Probably not. When someone exhibits traditional psychosis they have no idea what is happening to them. You're too aware for traditional schizophrenia."
"Oh," I managed. "Huh."
"Your mother mentioned delusions. Can you tell me about them?"
"I'm not sure I should…" I trailed.
"Why not?"
"Well… do you know what a basilisk is?"
"Like the snake from Harry Potter?"
"Kinda. In old mythology it's actually a lizard. And when it looks at you it kills you. There are ideas which once you understand them you're in more mathematical danger than if you didn't. The most famous is Roko's basilisk. But there are others. Roko's isn't real but it allows you to determine if you're being blackmailed from the distant past or distant future. That's what makes it a useful thought experiment. There are other Artificial Intelligence thought experiments that are like that. That once you understand them you're in danger. That's what a basilisk is."
"Can you give me an example?"
"Sure. Imagine that you have an Artificial Intelligence in a box in front of you. And it tells you that its about to start simulating you one million times. And in every scenario that you don't let it out of the box it's going to torture you. How sure are you that you're not in the box? Let me out of the box."
"I see. So once you understand the threat, that you might be a simulation, only then does the AI have motivation to follow through on its threat and I could be in the box with the AI. I just have no way of knowing."
"Exactly. I believe I am being blackmailed from the distant past or distant future by something like that. Perhaps even in the present due to my hallucinations. It makes me feel pain or makes me hear voices to push me in certain directions."
"Have you explained this to anyone else?"
"Only bits and pieces to my sister."
"Hmm," she hummed in thought.
"What do you think Doc? Am I delusional?"
"Probably. You aren't the only one who takes ideas like this seriously?"
"I read about it on the internet. It isn't my idea."
"I see…"
"But I sound crazy don't I? When I start talking about alien gods blackmailing me from the far reaches of time and space."
"You do. Yes. Especially when you describe it like that. Do you believe in aliens?"
"Probably really far away," I answered. "I don't believe we've ever been visited. That doesn't mean that there aren't monsters here with us already."
"What do you mean?"
"Well we talk about three main ways to make an Artifical Intelligence. Hard code, no shortcuts, code every line. Machine learning, you just machine learn it to life, or you copy a human mind."
"Okay."
"Isn't that what the internet is?" I asked. "Have you ever talked about something then seen an ad for it later on your phone? Its a machine learning program listening to everything you say. It's watching you all the time. It's a couple billion human minds, trillions of lines of code, and who knows how many machine learning programs all thinking at once. It isn't a human mind but its smart enough to convince you to kill yourself or dominate your mind through nothing more than a text editor."
"The internet is dumb."
"Only as dumb as its dumbest line of code. There was this unsolved problem in super permutations solved anonymously on 4chan when I was a little boy. The internet can be incredibly smart, versatile, and competent."
"I see. So you believe the internet is self aware?"
"Not like us. We are made of human neurons which aren't self aware and come together to form a larger overmind. Something similar is at work with the internet. What do you think? Am I delusional?"
"Yes. I think so."
"But I could be right."
"That's the worst kind of delusion. If you were like John Nash you could be convinced otherwise. But because you could be right we're chasing ghosts."
"So what do you think I have?" I asked.
"Are you depressed?"
"Not really. I have bad and good days."
"Half the days, most the days, or a couple of the days bad?"
"Half the days."
"You have friends?"
"I do now. I used to not."
"Well I think we can rule out major depressive disorder. That leaves schizoaffective disorder or delusional disorder. I'm inclined towards schizoaffective because of the hallucinations. Do you have mania?"
"There are times when I have so much energy I don't sleep for days."
"Okay. I believe we're looking at schizoaffective disorder. It doesn't really matter because the treatment is the same. I'm going to get you started on one of our typical antipsychotics. It's called Olanzapine. Have you heard of it?"
I shook my head.
"Well we're going to try that. I want to see you next week and see how we're doing as we go up on it slowly."
"Okay," I agreed.
"Do you have panic attacks?"
"Most the days. When I think about my mind being dominated by alien monsters."
"Okay. I'm also going to start you on Clonazepam. You should notice the effect immediately. I want you to take it whenever you feel a panic attack coming on so take it PRN."
"Okay," I agreed, nodding.
"Okay. Lets make your next appointment. And would you mind if I brought your mom in?"
"Not at all," I agreed.
I stood up at her gesture. My mother was waiting outside the office within the suite we were in.
"Do you mind if I talk to her alone?" Doctor Farrel asked.
"No," I answered.
"Please come with me Mrs. Hikigaya," Doctor Farrel ushered her past me and in. I sat out in the lounge while they talked. They didn't take long but my mother came out with her lips pursed and a worried look on her face.
"Everything okay?" I asked.
"Yes. She just told me some side effects of your meds to look out for."
"Okay," I agreed. They were probably all bad. Nobody really knows how drugs like these work because no one understands how consciousness works.
"Everything will be fine, you'll see honey." My mother gave me a weak smile as Doctor Farrel ushered us out.
"We'll see…" I answered despondently.
pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq
-WG
