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CHAPTER 7 : THE HORRIBLE XMAS OF 1977 AND ITS AFTERMATH

 

The 1977 Xmas turned out to be the first in a row of  Xmases during which my beloved daughter would be again and again locked up in a looni bin against her will, and despite her protests and mine too. The first shrink I went to see with my daughter and her mother decided - after hearing the mother's complaints against her daughter - that daughter should be sent to the psychiatric ward of hospital for "observation", namely, to see if she needs any treatment for mental illness. The shrink then asked for the parents' consent in writing. The mother readily signed away her daughter, but I refused to sign. I knew nothing about psychiatry then, but I had enough respect for my daughter's human rights so as to support her refusal to go to that hospital, but for the shrink the signature of the mother was sufficient to incarcerate daughter against her will.

Soon I would find out to my horror that the term "observation" the shrinks had used as a pretext to have my daughter incarcerated, was observation by name only. In reality they considered her as mentally ill from the moment of her arrival, and began to "treat" her with psychiatric drugs against her will and despite her protests. As she protested ( "why me?"she would painfully protest) the higher went the dosage of the potent drugs injected into her by force, both to crush her resistance as well as to comply with the psychiatric practice of considering the patient's resistance in itself as a sign of illness which requires more intense drug treatment. Finally, the psychiatrist in charge (a zionist, as I would find out later) managed to turn my daughter into a living vegetable and a docile patient.

Early in 1978 I had sold my 5 acre block and returned home. Soon after we put the house on the market and went for a tour of the countryside to look for a more comfortable house on a block of land which would become our self sufficient farm. By that time daughter was allowed back home, and I was hopeful that the new home would help her overcome the trauma of the looni bin incarceration. What I did not know then, and I know now from books written by the USA psychiatrist Prof. Peter Breggin ( see his website, www.breggin.com/contact.html), was that the, so called ,anti-psychotic drugs are addictive, therefore great care should be taken to very gradually reduce them, and not abruptly in which case it is likely to lead to a severe crisis.   On top of that daughter needed friends and empathy, and plenty of it from society, but could not find any. All of which would land her again in the looni bin.

During 1979 - 80 , as I was looking around for ways to help my daughter, I hit the idea of writing , producing and selling a satirical collection of working-class humour. Initially I intended the collection - titled, BULL'S EYE JOKES - WORKING-CLASS HUMOUR - to be prepared in partnership with my daughter, especially with her cartoons elucidating and supplementing the written jokes, but it didn't work out that way. To cut the story short, I went ahead with my own work on the booklet. In the five years that followed I have prepared ,produced and sold 10- 12 editions totaling 17,000 booklets. I sold them in Victoria, NSW, South Australia, New Zealand, and in London. They were selling like hot cakes with mostly very faourable feedback (the nasty remarks came from the different enemies of the people who felt offended by the booklet).

During 1981 I agreed with my spouse on separation, but we went to try and live together again in early 1982 for the sake of daughter. In early 1981 daughter was locked up in the Royal Park looni bin, then escaped on 29th of May. To help her avoid being locked up again all three of us drove off to Sydney, and rented a flat there. However, the addictive psychiatric drugs now abruptly cut off, the traumas of incarcerations, as well as the damage caused by the psychiatric drugs, all played havoc with her entire being, and there was no solution to be found in Sydney. So I began corresponding with two organisations in Britain. One was founded by Dr. R.D. Laing, a dissident psychiatrist opposed to incarceration of patients, and the other one was a USA psychiatrist who purported too to oppose the psychiatric methods of compulsory drug treatment. Both organisations have actually invited me to come over with daughter to London, promising to help daughter.

My spouse objected to us going to get help for daughter in London. She has been persistent in her support for the local shrinks, and consequently she considered a trip to London with daughter as a waste of money.  For me at stake was daughter's chance to live as a human being, therefore the separation between me and my spouse would become an official divorce by 21 February 1985. In the meantime, on daughter's 20th birthday, myself and daughter left for London.

After a long and tiresome flight our Jumbo landed at Heathrow Airport. Upon arrival we immediately took the bus to Oxford, then changed to a local bus which would drop us at our destination : a village at outskirts of the town. There the Philadelphia Association, founded by Dr. R.D. Laing, owned an old, spacious farmhouse which the association transformed into a communal house for ex-psychiatric patients. At the time of our arrival there it was home for 3 people  : one man in his early 60s, one woman in her early 30s, and one man in his mid 20s. I was very happy to have arrived there with daughter, hopeful that it would be our final destination in Britain. However, my hopes for the place would not last long.

The woman who had actually invited daughter to the place ( in reply to my letters to the Philadelphia Association) was initially very friendly to her. However, daughter was virtually in a state of shock after the long flight and the sudden landing in a strange country, then expected to settle down in a totally unfamiliar environment. It was just beyond the endurance of the fragile, injured and damaged ego of daughter. She needed plenty of time and patience, and plenty of love and empathy, to let her adjust herself to the new reality. The local woman, herself an ex-psychiatric patient with her own bag of problems, was disappointed to find daughter not responding to the friendly welcome. Eventually, someone complained to the head office in London, and daughter was told to move out. We did so.

We then tried the other organisation, Arbours, in London. Having found a cheap accommodation in a London suburb I immediately phoned Dr. Schtzman of Arbours. It was him who invited daughter to come to London in reply to my letters to him. Following our visit to his private clinic he recommended that daughter be admitted to one of Arbours halfway houses. However, the other chief of Arbours, a smart Dr. Bourke, had objected to daughter's admittance because we did not have enough money to pay him. As a result daughter, now being rejected for the second time, fell into despair and eventually into panic. As I was looking for a new alternative for her in London she went missing, wandering aimlessly and with no sleep in the streets of London.

I had made two more attempts to find in London alternatives for daughter but failed. As our money was running out we decided to return to Australia. We arrived back in Melbourne in early 1983. Daughter went to live with her mother in a rented 3-bedroom house in Preston. I rented a room in Moonee Ponds, and my son lived in a rented flat in another part of Melbourne. Ostensibly, my son was doing well - he graduated from RMIT as an electronic officer, and later would move out to NSW to study philosophy and psychology in NSW - but the family was torn apart and there was little cooperation between us. In the case of my son, he would become the next target of the zionist Gestapo, as we shall see later in this autobiography. 

As for myself, obviously, my health had been negatively affected by the crushing process of my family. So I went to seek help from nature by traveling to southern NSW and pitching a tent in the heart of the biggest and most beautiful national park in the southern coast of NSW.  For three and a half months I lived there alone by the basalt rocks along the ocean beach, making friends with leeches, ticks, mosquitoes and snakes, as well as with an incredible array of birds. I was rewarded with clean fresh air, pure spring water, the music of the forest, and with harmonious and relaxing sights. As a result of that overall healing force of nature plus my own relaxing walks and exercises rejuvenated my body's defences and  I came out of the forest healthy and vigorous. During February, 1984, I was on my way back to Melbourne.           

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