It’s hard to describe mania to someone who has never experienced it. One minute I’m so high that my mind and body enter a nirvana-like state with feelings of ultimate power and supreme authority. And then in the next minute I feel so paranoid and scared that I think my heart will thump out of my chest.
In 2005, my mania escalated to the level that I believed a police officer was trying to pull me over to murder me. I took the police on a high-speed chase and was arrested for the first time in my life. A couple of days later, I believed I was waging nuclear war with China and President Bush was obeying my signals from my jail cell. I thought a microchip was implanted in my lung and the evil forces of the government were trying to control my actions. I was eventually placed in a mental health hospital and remained there for nearly a month.
This is how Paton Blough begins his personal story about his encounter with law enforcement. Paton’s narrative is the first in an ambitious series called 31 Stories in 31 Days being launched this month by the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
Each day during May a different story will be told, including one later this month by my son, Kevin Earley.
NAMI’s 31 Stories in 31 Days will put human faces on a shameful, national scandal — the inappropriate incarceration of persons with mental illnesses in our jails and prisons. (An estimated 500,000 persons!) The program was created to augment a new national effort called Stepping Up that is being launched on Tuesday (May 5th) by NAMI, the Council of State Governments, the National Association of Counties, the American Psychiatric Foundation and numerous law enforcement associations, mental health organizations, and substance abuse organizations.