Adolescence in psychiatric hospital

Poignant testimony

Testimony of Jean-Sylvestre THEPENIER, author of the book « I Am Alive, or Drugs : No Question »

Psychiatric Hospital of Villejuif, 1970

It seems that actally the cops found me senseless. Hospital, cannulation and detoxification at Doctor Olivenstein’s in Villejuif. I did not tell this, I believe, but I had already gone there one time, but this time, it is in a closed service. There is a room in this doctor’s service where junkies can paint what they feel like ; there are rather smashing drawings. There I meet a guy who took in India too strong a dose of LSD. Since that time, from time to time he sits cross-legged and says he is the Christ. One day, with mates, we jump the wall but without being able to buy anything, for doctor Olivenstein had let the apothecaries know that they should not sell amphetamins, and we go round pharmacies. When we come back, male nurses catch us ; blood test and Olivenstein tells me I have taken some « speed » (amphetamins), that the result of the test proves it. I do not catch this, for I have taken nothing for several weeks. I am driven to an other service and given some drug.Little by little, my head is dropping , tilting to my shoulder and I cannot set it upright, I go panic, I feel like my neck were going to break. I yell, bawl out. I am locked up in a padded room, in my briefs. However much I knocked against the door, my fists bounce, nobody comes. My dread increases, I feel like I become mad. I actually become mad. I would so much like to be listened to, that somebody come and see me, not to be alone anymore, and I am there, in my briefs, wringing my neck, screaming with despair.How many days, nights or hours, I do not know. It lasted for ages. The door opens, I must have been a good boy, I must have been satisfactory to them, for I am given a sheet of paper with a pencil, how nice they are to me, I would like to kiss them, but the door closes. Then I draw a torn, cracked face, as by earthquake, with scrawny hands sticking out of the head, with bloodshot eyes, with vampire fangs.

As I am drawing, I feel that I am taking possession of my body again. The pieces have gathered. I finally jumped into my madness with my feet together.

In the psychiatric hospital, I stayed two months, two long months, then the judge granted permission to release me.

I go through my parents’ place. It seems that I had lost my memory. I do not know.

Stay at Sainte-Anne, 1971

My father came and fetched me and I have just been confined in Sainte-Anne, in a closed service.

The bird is in its cage. There is one guy who screams and dribbles all day long. An other one, enormous, with a baby face, whining voice, who rocks backwards and forwards. He touches in me the right chord, never stops weeping for he is laughed at. From time to time he gets angry and stops dead, ashamed of his reaction and runs off to hide.

A show-off from Marseilles teaches me how to play the crapette [Translator note : a French card game]. And also, there are the male nurses who keep us packed in, doing their job only because they are payed.

The preferred sport of all these birds with broken wings is hunting for cigarette butts. Oh ! It needs perseverance ! One has to follow the future butt which has just been lit, step by step, without being spotted and then push away the other hunters, who would take your place. Before the fag becomes a butt, one rushes to beg for it, even if it means being rebuffed, and when this completely chewed scrap arrives into the ashtray, gently take it — marvellous treasure —0 to light it again, only take one or two drags before burning your lips. But it is so good,and there is nothing else to do.

The long corridor allows us, when drugs have not knocked us out too much, to go and slide, which raises cries, because we jostle eachother, we hamper.

The dormitory is quite foul, thirty or fourty people gathered, stinking with sweat and tobacco. The way out is blocked for us by two bolted doors.

One day, I am fed up, I start knocking the door with my feet and fists, it is too hard to be locked up. A huge male nurse comes, pins me against the door with his belly. I end up in a sort of cell, struggling, the bastards, they bind me. I earn myself the straitjacket, sort of shirt with very very long sleeves wich pass over the hands and are used to cross the arms over the chest and which are bound to the bed frame. The door closes and the light is switched off.

I gently call, « Please », no reply.

« Please, can you switch the light on, I’m scared. »

Then I dare raise my voice a bit louder. « Please »

Still no reply.

I beseech and cry. « Please, let me loose, I’m scared. »

I scream, « Please, let me loose ».

Still no reply.

Then, I kind of somersault and with my foot, I try to reach the handle of the door. After several trials, I manage to open it.

I start beseeching again.

Son of a bitch and damned bastards, the male nurses ! To think that they have to look after me !

They came, not to make me feel easy, tell me that I must not be scared, no, not for this, only to also bind my feet.

I topple. Not a word comes out of my mouth, nothing but a slight sob amongst tears.

I know they will not come anymore.

Do we have to treat human beings as animals only because we do not understand them ?

But do you know that we are living, thinking, also weeping ? Have you even seen us ?