Posts tagged - ECT

Electroshock and My Dog Squid

Posted on: February 20, 2019, in: , , , , ,

SquidI have a dog we named Squid, because he has long turned up feet, a bit like the Squidward character in Spongebob Squarepants. Squid was in and out of the shelter at least three times by the time we got him. His problem seemed to be that he was very friendly and affectionate, liked to be held, and all the things that make a pet dog desirable, but if you accidentally stepped on his tail or his foot, or if someone accidentally pulled is hair, he’d turn on the offender with a growl. And if he was on the couch and you tried to push him over, he’d turn on you and growl.

Well, here’s this perfectly friendly animal but suddenly he’s threatening, so back to the dog pound, especially if there were kids.

When we got Squid we realized he occasionally had seizures, or epilepsy. His whole body would stiffen up, his feet would jerk and tremble, and he’d vacate his bowels and throw up. So as soon as I would see him stiffen up and start to tremble, I’d move him from the carpet to the hardwood floor to make cleanup easier. It wasn’t hard to move him, he was as rigid as a piece of wood.

It wasn’t very long, however, before he was afraid of the hardwood floor.  We had to put a carpet runner in the hall to get him to walk down to the bedroom at night. And we had to put his food bowl on the carpet, as he’d refuse to walk across the kitchen floor to eat.

He had another seizure while he was drinking from his water bowl, and from then on, he was afraid of the bowl. We changed bowls, tried turning off the lights, but he would bark until he got an escort to stand by him while he drank his water.

Squid is otherwise not a timid dog, and has — when harassed by big dogs – snarled and held his ground. But anything associated with a seizure – such as his water bowl or hardwood floors – terrifies him.

Seizures can be caused by a number of things. Brain lesions, electrical shock, high fevers, or too much insulin for example. Psychiatrists think that inducing a seizure by electricity (called ECT for electroconvulsive therapy) or insulin shock, will alleviate certain kinds of mental illness.

Cerletti's original electroshock machine adapted from a slaughterhouse pig-shocker. Photo by Francesca.pallone

Cerletti’s original electroshock machine adapted from a slaughterhouse pig-shocker. Photo by Francesca.pallone

That stupid idea started when Ugo Cerletti watched pigs being shocked to prepare them for butchering. The shock caused the pigs to seizure and fall down, so it was easy to cut their throats. Cerletti, for some reason, thought this might be a way to treat mental illness, and developed the first ECT machine.

I was in a writing group with a woman who wrote very funny stories, but she had some troubles and received a course of ECT. After that she continued to write but she was no longer funny. Another writer, Ernest Hemingway, had a series of 20 electroshocks, went home, put a shotgun in his mouth and blew the top of his head off. So as a writer, I wasn’t very excited about ECT.

So if causing seizures — such as I witnessed with Squid — is supposed to cure anything, I’m not buying. He’s as crabby as ever if you step on him or try to push him off the couch, but he’s terrified of anything remotely connected to seizures. Those seizures did not remove any mental disturbances from him, they added compulsions and terror.

What worked with Squid was affinity, getting down on the floor and playing with him, talking to him during the day, using “watch out” to get him to move out of the way and something called a nerve assist which stops the seizure very quickly and gets him back to normal.

Recently the FDA reduced the threat level of ECT a notch to make it easier to use it on kids. Don’t buy it, it’s not a therapy at all, it’s like kicking you in the head and hoping you’ll be smarter afterward. You’ll be stupider and boots will terrify you.

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The Drug Addiction Crisis is Your Fault

Posted on: October 09, 2018, in: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Uncle Sam PixabayBy now, everyone is convinced we are in a drug-addiction crisis, and there’s plenty of blame to go around. Such as pharmaceutical companies that invented street drugs to begin with. Bayer once touted heroin for headaches,  Abbott Labs promoted methamphetamine as a remedy for alcoholism, Sandoz invented LSD, Merc invented morphine, distributed cocaine, and invented MDMA, and Purdue convinced doctors to prescribe OxyCodone for pain by assuring them that chances of addiction were very slim. And we can blame the doctors who ignored evidence to the contrary.

We can point the finger at pharmacies that order thousands more opioids than will be needed and fill prescriptions far above what makes sense. Pharmaceutical distributors that ignore huge orders for opioids from small pharmacies, and pressure legislators to pass bills that make the DEA impotent to enforce existing rules. DEA and FDA executives who jump ship to work for big pharma at huge increases in salary so they can help build strategies to circumvent legal restrictions on their activities. Psychiatrists and physicians who take money from big pharma and go on to promote medication assisted treatment not for detoxification, but as a permanent opioid-fueled future which will benefit pharmaceutical firms and their stockholders, who put addicts on naloxone and methadone which is much harder to detox than heroin, but has the advantage of diverting money from the street drug dealer to the pharmaceutical drug dealers and their investors. The pharmaceutical companies who invent drugs to block addiction to all but their own drugs, that block death on the street and then – aping the strategies of the most venial drug pushers – raise the prices multiple times, crying that “shortages exist, you’d better hurry!” Correctional institutions who embrace medication assisted treatment to medicate inmates instead of using incarceration as a period of drying out for later life, and did anyone mention investors in big pharma stocks because wow, riches await from more and more addicts using more and more pharmaceuticals?

And there’s plenty of blame for all those judges, doctors, lawyers, psychiatrists who help close the gap between prescription drugs and street drugs. For the military exhuming the abominations of MKULTRA by experimenting on those with PTSD, trying a little of this LSD, a little of that marijuana, some wires in the brain – who knows? We might find a way to create a new and better Manchurian Candidate, make robots out of soldiers, make mass murderers out of troubled spirits. And we can blame “non-profit organizations” like the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, who are spurring interest in using drugs to swap neuroses for outright insanity, organizations who secretly channel millions to legalize marijuana, to companies like Coca-Cola which once contained cocaine for a little boost, which is now going back to its roots, putting marijuana in its product. We can blame the legislators who get swept along in this tsunami of cash and influence, passing bills and listening to drug pushers in suits who convince them that it’s all good, and “here’s a little donation for your next campaign.” Psychiatrists who contend that everyone is basically nuts, so a little drug, a little electroshock, a little wire in the brain certainly couldn’t make you any worse…

But for all the blame to hand around, what about you? Do you know people who have their kids on speed (called ADHD medication by the shrinks)? Do you have a family member who is using marijuana or drinking too much? Are you on an anti-depressant because you feel bad sometimes? Do you get drunk on the weekends to unwind, or smoke a little weed, because after all, it’s legal now? Is your aged mother on “happy pills” so she won’t complain so much about the food, the loss of independence, the minimum-wage helpers telling her what to do in her assisted living facility? Do you nod sympathetically at people who start every conversation with “I’m ADHD” or “Since I was diagnosed with PTSD,” or “I’ve been depressed for some time now.”?

So what are you doing to help make things better? Is it all too big for you? Are you just one person? Are you in agreement with those who try to make addicts poor victims of the system? Who say that addiction, mental illness, criminality is all just a brain disease, not a choice, that we are all just victims of circumstance? We should all just go down the drain together and let the greatest country the world has ever seen evaporate like bong smoke.

Well, grow a pair why don’t you? Do something useful. Someone says. “I’ve got ADHD,” you can retort, “Who gave you that idea?” Someone says “I’m on an anti-depressant,” you can reply “What can you do to handle the situation that’s depressing you?” Someone says “marijuana is legal now, so it’s fine,” you say “So now the government has your best interests – and the taxes on weed – at heart?” Be blunt, invalidate those stupid ideas and self-victimization. Stigma is a good thing – it might help deter a kid thinking about drinking, or using meth or shooting up. Might keep him or her from ending up as a shit-stained twist of laundry in an alley somewhere, or a numbed-out methadone or pharmaceutical junkie for the rest of his or her life.

Do you vote a straight Democratic or Republican ticket, because you’re too lazy to read the voter guide? Or just not vote because there’s nothing you can do about it? Find out who’s taking money from big pharma, from the American Psychiatric Association, from the American Medical Association, the PACs and special interests and vote against them. Vote for those you think might not be in step with a stupider society.

Support religion and spiritual awareness and don’t fall for the efforts to pit one group against another. Support groups that help families, that repair marriages, that support kids and adoption and good education and a prosperous future – and beware of the “everybody-will-agree-with-this” PR and feel-good empty words of the campaign trail. Evaluate the politically correct movements to see if they lead to a better life and a better society, if they do, join, and if they don’t, oppose them even if you get hammered for it on social media.

There’s an old statement to the effect that “You get the government you deserve.” Look at what we’re getting and take some responsibility for it. It’s up to you not to your neighbors or your representatives. The left, the right, the middle, all political stripes have their own agendas, their own railroad tracks leading to their own little utopias. Do you want to travel with them? They make it easy, and they will appeal to your stupider self that thinks life consists of food, sleep and sex, and getting high can handle the rest, all funded by insurance, by taxes on “the fat-cat one percent” or the tiny fines on multi-billion-dollar drug firms.

So what can you do? Join up with effective organizations fighting stupidity and drug-induced dreaming not doing. Check out Foundation for a Drug-Free World, the Citizens Commission on Human Rights and other effective anti-drug and anti-stupidity groups. Sure, the organizations I mentioned above are related to the Church of Scientology, and all the crap you’ve heard about Scientology? It’s a measure of just how effective these organizations are in enlightening people on the drug and psychiatric agenda. Those lies and smears in the media? A badge of honor. If they were ineffective, they would be ignored by the psych-drug-media cartel, or perhaps even supported by it.

OK, so this mess is not all your fault, but if everyone woke up and went into action, this drugged-up country could reboot and get back to some basic principles. There are 21 of those principles, and here’s a link to them. Good luck.

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Review: “A Larry Comes” by Ulf Wolf

Posted on: October 31, 2017, in: , , , ,

Ulf Wolf wrote a fictional and fascinating story about Ernest Hemingway’s electroshock therapy and suicide that I liked very much. Wolf, who is a writer and worked for a time in a psychiatric hospital, is well qualified to dive into the havoc wrought on a creative mind when electricity crackles through the brain, and that story “I Killed Hemingway” is touching and horrifying at the same time.

His oddly titled “A Larry Comes,” – I’ll get to the title in a moment — is longer, a novelette in several parts. I picked it up because it contains a fictional interview with Ugo Cerletti, the inventor of electroconvulsive therapy, but Wolf’s story grabbed me immediately, as his protagonist Sandy Fielding – an amazing creative man — tours his own personal universe with God.

It’s the God part that gets Sandy in trouble and committed to a mental hospital. But Sandy Fielding’s universe is so rich and vibrant I wanted in. Its lush imagery, flowing narrative, and literary eloquence is refreshing and brilliant.

In Sandy’s creative cathedral, corridors are authors, doors are books, and his love of the books, the authors and their words are incredibly concentrated, like the essence of some field of flowers distilled into one bloom.  “The water in Gene Wolfe’s brook,”  says Sandy, ” was fresh with the memory of snow.”

Sandy quotes from his favorite authors, many of whom I’ve never read but now plan to. He quotes Arundhati Roy: “May in Ayemenem is a hot, brooding month. The days are long and humid. The river shrinks and black crows gorge on bright mangoes in still, dustgreen trees. Red bananas ripen. Jackfruits burst. Dissolute bluebottles hum vacuously in the fruity air.”

During an interview by a psychiatrist, Sandy says he can tell an honest book by the author’s intention. When questioned, he replies: ““If you feel good, or inspired, or encouraged as you read, his intention is to help you, to inspire you.” As I read “A Larry Comes” I felt myself rising to an aesthetic sensibility, a kind of bright mental stillness, and that feeling of inspiration and aesthetics lasted for several hours. From that metric, Ulf Wolf is an honest writer and a kind of literary therapist.

The book takes a dark turn as Sandy is drugged, and his thoughts begin to change. “I began to slip.” Sandy says. “It was very much like soap, this Chlorpromazine. Slippery. Sluggishly slippery. Couldn’t get a good hold on my thoughts, they slipped through my fingers, or more like I slid off them—as if they had been oiled or greased…” Thoughts begin to slow, and the degradation of his universe begins.

The interview with ECT inventor Cerletti, — which I began reading the book to find – arrived, and while it was interesting, did not match the previous portion for sheer raw creativity and power, and I was pleased to return to Sandy’s universe. But “treatment” had changed Sandy, and that change illustrates, in a fictional context, the tragedy of ECT, of psychiatric abuse under the pretense of help and healing.

The title “A Larry Comes,” refers to “the Larrys” those hairy, big-armed psychiatric enforcers who repeatedly drag Sandy from his room, into the deadly slow elevator ride to the basement, for another shock treatment.

You can read the opening chapters for free on Ulf’s website get a version of it on Smashwords or better yet, get a Kindle version.

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What’s Wrong with Mixing Electricity and Brains?

Posted on: October 21, 2017, in: , , , , , ,

Danger pixabayMost people are familiar with movies about drugs, hypnosis, electroshock and so forth that are used to manipulate and control human beings. But they’re science fiction, right? Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Terminal Man, The Matrix, Total Recall, The Manchurian Candidate all feture stories about mental manipulation and control.

A little closer to reality One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest showed how electroconvulsive therapy can be used to control and suppress human beings. It was filmed at the Oregon State Hospital in Salem, and created a wave of revulsion against electroshock that continues today, and is one obstacle  that electroshock advocates must hurdle.

You may be surprised to discover that there are electroshock advocates who are still zapping brains. Most people think the practice died out in the early 1960s, back when author Ernest Hemingway had 15 electroshock treatments, went home, put a shotgun in his mouth and blew the top of his head off.

But psychiatrists are still putting electrodes on the sides of people’s heads and shooting current through their brains. About 100,000 people per year endure the process. Those advocates  make it seem nicer these days, they put the patient to sleep first, and inject them with muscle relaxant so that they don’t break so many teeth and bones from spasms and contractions. Some even load up the body with insulin to make it go into convulsions. It has the advantage of reducing the electric bill, just an overdose of insulin and presto, you have a dazed and confused person who doesn’t seem so crazy.

Electricity even when used with good intentions often  ends up in the heavy hands of control. We’ve used jolts of electricity as punishment in many ways. Electric cattle fences, cattle prods, tasers, electric shock collars for dogs, etc. Ivar Lovaas, a UCLA professor who died in 2010 began putting autistic kids barefooted on electrical wires. He’d turn on the current until they did something non-autistic, then he’d turn off the current. On off, on off,like a light switch  over and over to condition the dog – or children rather – to act less autistic. Slaps, yelling, etc. were also used but electricity was the centerpiece.

And now, with the advance of technology, we’ve got subtle and not so subtle ways of using electricity to control others. Surveillance technology from closed circuit cameras to electronic ankle bracelets, GPS monitoring of cell phone locations, etc. But perhaps the most intrusive new technology is putting wires in people’s brains in something the  psychs call deep brain stimulation. This electrical stimulation of the brain – like electroshock – has its own 1950s bad example.

In the early 1950, it was a secret government project called MKULTRA – don’t worry, this is not “tinfoil on head”  stuff – here’s a document from the Supreme Court describing the program: “Between 1953 and 1966,” said the Supreme Court, “the Central Intelligence Agency financed a wide-ranging project, code-named MKULTRA, concerned with ‘the research and development of chemical, biological, and radiological materials capable of employment in clandestine operations to control human behavior.’” One project in MKULTRA was controlling the human mind with chemical and electrical brain implants. It was spurred by the Cold War and the idea was to figure out how to control the enemy’s minds and save money on bullets.

Since the project was bound to create outrage if discovered, it was kept secret for a while and when it was exposed, the CIA Director destroyed most of the records. But enough data leaked out that it was pretty big news.

Since secret government projects often appear on Wikileaks,  this time around — in my opinion — a project similar to MKULTRA  is being conducted in the open, albeit under cover of how electricity, wired into the brain, can  cure brain diseases, epilepsy, speed up learning and so forth. It’s funded by the Department of Defense. Sound familiar? The keyword is “electroceuticals,” a combination of “electricity” and “pharmaceuticals.” And DARPA the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is funding it.

Another idea is to control minds with wireless electricity, so much less messy. There could be little emitters all up and down the streets making everyone very passive, or happy or normal. But that sounds like science fiction again.

So when you hear about these marvelous new techniques in which electricity makes athletes stronger, makse students smarter, makes epilepsy disappear, stops compulsions and obsessions, and cures all sorts of intractable diseases — just stop a minute and remember that this stuff can be — and probably will be — used for some new and exotic flavor of mind control.

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Psychiatry Responsible for Brain Mutilation, Extreme ECT

Posted on: October 16, 2017, in: , , , , ,

Wilhelm Wundt, Wikimedia Commons

Wilhelm Wundt, Wikimedia Commons

“Wilhelm Wundt — often regarded as the “father of psychology” — separated psychology from philosophy,” says Selwyn Duke in a New American article. Wundt removed the concept of psyche – spirit or soul – from psychology. “This decoupling of philosophy and psychology to create a new ‘science’  has, ironically, birthed a field that disgorges both bad philosophy and bad science. … Its physician arm, psychiatry, was responsible for 50,000 cases of the brain mutilation known as lobotomy in the United States alone, not to mention all the excessive use of extreme electroconvulsive therapy.”

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Electroshock Roundup

Posted on: October 05, 2017, in: , , , ,

Cerletti's original electroshock machine adapted from a slaughterhouse pig-shocker. Photo by Francesca.pallone

Cerletti’s original electroshock machine adapted from a slaughterhouse pig-shocker. Photo by Francesca.pallone

In a PETA release, a USDA inspector recently witnessed meat plant workers electroshocking a pig multiple times  as it shrieked and struggled hanging from a chain. And for those who quibble that shocking pigs has nothing to do with electroshocking human beings? Inventor Ugo Cerletti got the idea for electroshocking humans from watching pigs being electroshocked to make them docile before their throats were cut. And cannibals once called human entrees “long pig” because they taste alike. But I digress.

Norway has evidently been shocking people for their own good, but without their consent, and Pennsylvania is trying to ban the use of electroshock on children a move perhaps sparked by the FDA’s decision to reduce the threat level of bolts of juice through the brain so that everybody can now enjoy it.

Utah is using a device to shoot electricity into the ears of prisoners to stop opioid cravings, and finally just for a change of pace, in the UK, mental patients are being taught magic tricks to boost self-esteem. Perhaps they can use it to better hide the antidepressants they are supposed to be swallowing.

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Georgia Bill Would Pull Plug on Electroshock Abuses

Posted on: September 26, 2017, in: , , , , ,

Four Georgia state Senators have sponsored SB 146  that would — among other restrictions – prohibit the electroshocking of children, require informed written consent for the procedure, and the opening of records on the practice. Informed consent must include information about common side effects which include, says the bill, “…possibility of death , memory loss, brain damage, physical trauma, fractures, cardiac ischemia, cardiac arrhythmias, prolonged apnea, post-treatment confusion, prolonged seizures,  treatment-emergent mania, exacerbation of psychiatric symptoms, headache, muscle soreness, and nausea and vomiting.” Sponsors include Sen. Donzella James, Sen. Steve Henson, Sen. Michael Rhett and Sen. Gail Davenport.

Sen. Donzella James’ crusade against electroshock (ECT) began after her sister, a high school valedictorian, was institutionalized and given ECT. ““We found out she’d had 460 volts of electricity given to her more than one time,” said Sen. James in an interview reported by the Citizens Commission on Human Rights.  “This is a young woman that loved to read, loved to study and was athletic in school.” Sen James went on to say that her sister gained weight and became like a zombie.

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The Return of  Government Mind Control Programs

Posted on: September 14, 2017, in: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

CIA Director Richard Helms, who in 1973 tried to destroy all trace of MKULTRA.

CIA Director Richard Helms, who in 1973 tried to destroy all trace of MKULTRA.

Back during the Cold War, the government – worried about Soviet, Chinese and North Korean brainwashing – began experimenting with mind control techniques. One of the worst was MKULTRA. According to government records:  “Between 1953 and 1966,” said the Supreme Court, “the Central Intelligence Agency financed a wide-ranging project, code-named MKULTRA, concerned with ‘the research and development of chemical, biological, and radiological materials capable of employment in clandestine operations to control human behavior.’ The program consisted of some 149 subprojects which the Agency contracted out to various universities, research foundations, and similar institutions. At least 80 institutions and 185 private researchers participated. Because the Agency funded MKULTRA indirectly, many of the participating individuals were unaware that they were dealing with the Agency.”

Unfortunately, in 1973, CIA Director Richard Helms ordered all MKULTRA records destroyed. Fortunately, some 20,000 documents were later discovered, and in 2001 some surviving information was declassified and thus much of the impact of this program became public record.

What was discovered were horrific experiments – many conducted with unwitting subjects – using drugs such as LSD, electroshock, and unconsciousness to eliminate memories or to plant false ones. “Psychic driving” by Dr. Ewen Cameron, killing an elephant with LSD by Louis Jolyon West and electrical and chemical brain implants by Manuel Rodriguez Delgado.

Recently, Rodriguez Delgado’s work with implants that delivered electricity and chemicals directly to the brain (which he called stimoceivers and chemitrodes respectively) have returned with more advanced technology, disguised as help and healing. “Electroceuticals,” developed by GlaxoSmithKline and other drug firms, are electronic brain implants to replace the heavy hand of psychopharmaceuticals with their no-better-than-placebo results, skyrocketing costs, unpredictable and sometimes lethal side effects, and competition by generic drug equivalents.

Pharmaceutical companies, the military and psychiatry are again hard at work to recreate the same mind-control techniques supposedly abandoned almost 70 years ago. Consider that DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency predicts that within a few years, scientists will gain the ability to wipe out a PTSD-causing memory and replace it with something else. Flowers and sunny days, perhaps. DARPA’s “Electrical Prescriptions” program (ElectRx) seeks to develop “… real-time biosensors and novel neural interfaces using optical, acoustic, electromagnetic, or engineered biology strategies…” Like MKULTRA, mind control experiments are targeted on veterans – in World War II they were afflicted with “shell shock” or “battle fatigue,” and in recent times, it’s “PTSD.” It seems that veterans in trouble are convenient targets for experiments in mind control.

And Louis Jolyon West’s psychedelic druggings are back again as well. The Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) seeks to use MDMA, LSD, psilocybin, and similar drugs to “treat” PTSD and other conditions.

So can the government, big pharma and psychiatry be trusted with mind control? In the 1950s they secretly implemented a mind control agenda with MKULTRA using drugs, electrical stimulation and electroshock. Do they deserve a second chance with the latest and greatest technology? Have they reformed?

In 2013 Edward Snowden exposed a secret NSA surveillance program called Prism. Twenty years earlier, the Clinton Administration tried to implement the Clipper Chip that would put a government backdoor in all computers and networks. That flopped amid public outrage, but it seems now that the government went ahead anyway snooping into phone records, Internet, email and other communications.

The FDA just decided to lower the risk category of electroconvulsive “therapy” so children can receive it, and pharmaceuticals are now a $1.5 trillion dollar economic giant. So no, these psychedelic, electrode implanting, pill pushing electroshocking cretins cannot be trusted and must be stopped.

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Jack O’Lantern

Posted on: August 20, 2017, in:

The soccer game had been spectacular, with Springfield trouncing Cape Barnard 3 to 0. The rain started late in the game, but was not called and finished just as the lightning and thunder began. The sky darkened, bolts of lightning lit the field and surrounding forests as players and spectators raced for their cars, the brilliant flashes followed immediately by thunder so loud, many covered their ears.

Jack Beech and Andy Jameson were estatic, having cooperated to score the final goal. They raced through the woods and into the greenway beyond, shirts held aloft, snapping in the wind, their yells of triumph snatched away by the storm and the roar of thunder.

Suddenly, Jack felt his hair rise on his head, the thin hair of his arms go rigid. The air crackled and Andy, running 10 yards ahead dissolved in light so brilliant, that Jack shut his eyes and saw the field, the forest and Andy clearly, through his closed eyelids. His eyes burned with sparks and flashes, and for a moment he could not see. The rain poured down in a darkness so complete Jack was blind.

Slowly, the blackness lightened around the edges, although a black smudge blanked out the center. And he saw Andy laying in the grass, his white shirt luminous beside him. The air, the field, the forest, seemed numb, featureless without temperature or movement, even though the rain poured down and the trees swung wildly. He approached Andy in a bubble of stillness, and gazed down at a crater in Andy’s head. He idly remembered a watermelon he’d tried to carve into a jack-o-lantern as a child. He dug a hole in the center with a knife.

Jack didn’t remember walking home or the days that followed. He texted Andy but got no response. He emailed and called and posted to Facebook and Twitter, but still no response. He ignored the messages that poured in from friends. They thought Andy was dead.

He rode in his parent’s silent car to a celebration of life. A vase: Andy’s earthly remains. Many tears, flowers, stories and hymns. God took Andy home. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. No answer.

Jack didn’t care, his lips were numb, he could not speak or walk or run, and unfinished jack-o-lanterns burned brightly in the night, light streaming from ragged holes, shadows clutched at themselves, resisting the counselor who tried to tug them off. He saw two things. Andy’s watermelon and Andy’s parents, clutching one another and wailing, the others rushing outside to give them privacy or just to escape the grief too deep to countenance. He could help them, Jack thought dimly, he could help lessen their grief. Andy kicked the final goal and so he deserved to live.

He went to their house and they hugged him and cried over his return or so it seemed.

Pills sent him to an empty place, a white place with no pain, no happiness. He lived there for many weeks, while his parents called to him from far away. But he could not answer, because he spoke a different language now, a language of thick sounds and many vowels, a language of groans and squeaks, like ungreased wooden axles, and the sounds did not issue forth as one intended, but only as the pills allowed.

And so at last, they strapped him to a bed, injected him with muscle relaxant, smeared conducting jelly on his temples and sent lightning through his brain, again and again. Electro convulsive therapy seemed promising for killing hogs. It made them passive, easier to slaughter, rock to water.

And as he convulsed, Jack became Andy, he became the dead with a hole in the head. He would go to Andy’s house, quiet as a mouse, and his parents found their boy, shouted their joy. No hole in the head, no empty bed, his place at the breakfast table taken, a boy to hold and love, a child restored to his family, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, bacon to bacon.

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