CB: My God.
W: One day, he said I couldn't live there no more, and so he drove me back to my mother's. Actually, I followed him in the car I bought-it cost one hundred dollars. He left me at her door. She came home from a birthday party and asked me, "So what makes you think you can stay here?" I didn't have the wherewithal, I never really recovered from the problems I had when I was 15, so I told her, "Where am I going to live if you don't take me in?"
CB: Go on.
W: Like my father, she wanted me to work. So I scoured temp agencies in Manhattan. At the end of the day, I got a job at L.F. Rothchild. It was a good job, the people were nice, and I stayed there for a month. It was the summer of 1979. Then my mother told me, "You should go to school." What did I know? I thought she had my interests at heart. So I started college, and one day she told me, "I'm calling the hospital. You're going in." I asked "Why?" and she said, "I don't want you here."
CB: I can't believe this.
W: At that point, I took my luggage and escaped out the window, and went to the ferry terminal. I called my father, who rather than pay my mother the money for my support, sent me rent checks for a furnished room in a rooming house. I was eating well and sleeping well for a number of months. And then I ran into this guy I met in the hospital, he kept pushing me to hang out. Finally I broke down, and he got me hanging out . . . drinking and hanging out with him. One day I couldn't take it so I threw his radio against the wall. He punched my head, and drew blood. I felt fear, everything was disintegrating. I told myself, "I could kill myself, but I'm only 20, I'm too young to die."
CB: You were hospitalized again in 1980. What were some of the thoughts going on in your head?
W: After that breakdown, I had a lot of fear, anxiety, depression, a lot of hopelessness. This longer hospital stay was the straw that broke the camel's back.
CB: So, you were in and out of the hospital in the eighties?
W: Mostly in.
CB: What medication did they give you back then?
W: I was on Navane, one of the older drugs. The psychiatrists tried different things, and this one worked the best. Originally in 1978 and 1979, the doctors put me on little token doses of medication, and took me off it, because they felt I didn't need it.
CB: When you were on the Navane and stayed on it, how did that affect your symptoms?
W: It calmed me down, and I needed that. I didn't have my first psychotic symptoms until 1982 when I took myself off the Navane.
CB: Could you tell us some of the symptoms?
W: Oh, I had "homosexual panic"-I thought homosexuals were attacking me while I was asleep on the unit. I thought they were coming in my room while I was drugged up. People had that before, there's such a thing.
CB: Your last hospitalization was in 1982?
W: No, I wasn't smart, I was in my twenties, and thought I could do without the meds, so kept taking myself off them up until I was 34. I was hospitalized on and on.
CB: When do you feel things changed for the better for you?
W: I was 34, and it clicked, a light went on. From 1994 until 2004 I stayed out, except for the time the new psychiatrist tried me on an atypical. It didn't work, and I was hospitalized for three weeks.
CB: Still, that's a remarkable accomplishment: you were out for 10 years.
W: Yes, it's not a place you want to go . . . in the hospital.
CB: What are your top three coping skills for living with the schizophrenia?
W: One thing: you gotta take the meds. Another thing I feel is having something to do during the day, a place to go. Keep yourself active, and don't hibernate inside a room or an apartment. Get out there, even if it's just to go to the movies if you have the money. Could be a coffeehouse. Maybe you can't do it every day, but don't isolate, that's the key. Also, to develop a support system, have a circle of friends, that helps as well.
CB: You've made a life for yourself. Tell us about some of the things you're passionate about.
W: I spend time at Skylight Center [a clubhouse]. And I'm also a member of NYAPRS [New York Association of Psychiatric Rehabilitation Services].
CB: Tell me about NYAPRS. You've been involved with them for three years.
W: It's an organization of peers with psychiatric diagnoses, and basically we do two things. We go to legislation day in Albany and we lobby for changes in laws. I'm a field organizer. I meet with the other field organizers each month to discuss political issues. The legislative process is a slow process, and change doesn't happen quickly. For everybody pushing in one direction, there's somebody pushing in another direction. The second activity is the film festival-it's Saturday, April 26 at St. Francis College {in Brooklyn] this year.
CB: What's a typical day like for you?
W: I drop in to Skylight Center, it's a nice clubhouse. They give us meals every day. You can work in the kitchen unit or the clerical unit. I've been going steady for 15 years. I met a lot of good people up there, a lot of caring people on both sides of the couch. That place if anything saved my life.
CB: How did you find out about the military movie screenings at the Fort Hamilton army base?
W: Well, I used to go into Brooklyn and hang out in a coffee shop in Brooklyn Height
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