In Another Land

Officially, my story starts in late August & early September 1978: I was in the then South African Police Force when I suffered a total nervous breakdown. I ended up in a facility in the east of Pretoria for two weeks. Diagnosis: depression. Treatment consisted of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), a cocktail of very powerful drugs, and counselling sessions (of which I can't remember anything - in fact, I remember very little of those two weeks and the months after it).

If you followed the link for ECT above, you will have read that "common initial adverse effects from ECT include short and long-term memory loss, disorientation and headache". I had them all. Then, and even after 30 years short-term memory is still a bit of a hit-or-miss lottery.

I left that facility with a bagful of drugs, basically a zombie. I went back to work, continued with the drugs (mercifully in lower dosages) and went for counseling sessions with my psychiatrist, both of which tapered off over the next few months.

Less than a year later I was back in another facility

Follow up:

, this time in the west of Pretoria. Another two weeks (or was it a month?), fortunately with relatively mild drugs, and serious counseling sessions. The therapist was intent on finding something that triggered my depression - eventually he was barking up a totally wrong tree, but at least he got me on a track that paid positive dividends later on.

I got married in May 1978, so my wife got a whole lot more than she bargained for: my first episode ruined her birthday, the second episode ruined our first anniversary! Fortunately she meant her wedding vows: she stuck with me through all of this, right up to today. The fact that I'm still here to write this, is largely thanks to her. (Of course I'm not forgetting about God, but He tends to work through humans, and she was the human that stuck with me "for better or for worse" - usually for worse!

The SAP decided that sending me out on the streets with a gun on my hip was a really bad idea, held a quick "board of inquiry", and got rid of me. ( I don't blame them!) Later on the SA Defence Force called me up for National Service, took one look at my medical history, and sent me straight back home - do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars.

Not exactly the kind of resume people would like, right? Especially in those days, with the limited popular understanding of mental illness and all the shame surrounding it.
And - Surprise! Surprise! - even today people people look at you funny when this is your history: Even Christians have started avoiding me when they find out, probably because they do not want to associate with my "sinfulness".

Fortunately God didn't mind associating with me. Just when I hit the lowest low, He moved in. My wife and I was sitting in bed one evening, reading our Bibles, when a verse jumped out of the Bible and slapped me right between the eyes. I turned to my wife and said: "Listen to this!" Like a typical woman she interrupted me and said "Listen to this!", then proceeded to read the exact verses I was looking at: "See what is going to happen from now on. Althought there is no corn left, and the grapevines, fig-trees, pomegranates, and olive-trees have not yet produces, yet from now on I will bless you " - God speaking in Haggai 2: 18b, 19 (TEV).

When God speaks like that, you take notice. We did. And I can testify that He has been true to His promise. He undertook for us, and helped me to finally get to the point where I learned to live with my disability. It wasn't easy, but He got me (and my wife) this far, and I'm sure He'll see me through until the day I close my eyes for the last time - His time for it, not my lunging for deliverance - and awake to a new day where even my disease will finally be no more.

...to be continued...

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