Chapter 7 in a series on mental illness.
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It has been over five years since I penned the previous chapter in this chronicle. My brother was incarcerated in the California correctional system for most of that time. He was released this past June of 2015 after being convicted on crimes of felony vandalism and criminal threats. He did those acts while off his meds, fully delusional, and in a state of what his friends and I refer to as insanity. Much of that story is recounted in early chapters (see the links above). After five long years, the last of which was spent on parole at Atascadero State Hospital, Tony is finally a free man once again. As Tony puts it, he has spent eleven of the past thirteen years of his life incarcerated in various institutions. That is a story that only he can tell. In time, he will tell it. I know he will and I look forward to hearing the whole story.
For now, I will just say that my brother is doing well, under the circumstances. He is staying on meds, he has housing, and we enjoy spending time together again.
Is my brother cured of his mental illness? My answer to that is no, I don’t think so. I believe that the reason he is rational now is due to him staying on his medications. If he were to go off his meds, as he has done in the past, I think he would “decompensate” as he puts it, and fall back into a pattern of irrationality that I have tried to describe in early chapters of this saga.
I will let Tony tell his own story going forward if he so chooses. Tony asked me to remove the original interview we did from YouTube because it contained some personal information he preferred to not be in the public eye as well as some inaccuracies. Tony once told me that he did not want to make a career out of my his mental illness. Still, he is a good writer. I hope he will write about his experiences in the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. It is a fascinating story. And I hope he will allow our original interview, perhaps edited a bit, to be public again and do a follow-up interview.
Until such time as Tony writes about his own life or collaborates with me, this brief note will be the last chapter in the story I’ve had to tell.
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