The Shock Treatment Gulf

So why have I been obsessing on my days in the army of late? OK, so there've been a few external triggers like the 25th Anniversary of the End Conscription Campaign, and the re-surfacing of the monster military psychiatrist - Dr Aubrey Levin. But there's another greater reason at play: I'm trying to bridge the gulf that shock treatment severed upon my life.

The 6 sessions of ECT that I was given in my second year of army duty cut my life in half. There was everything before that date, and everything after that date, kind of like a B.C. and A.D. Perhaps I captured it best in some words from a poem I wrote several months later:

They put a shock to my head
And left part of me dead
I want that part back most
But its like chasing a ghost

Yes, there was a part of me that I lost forever. And that's why I'm digging around in my army memories. Because the BPG that was serving in Angola, was the BPG 4 months prior to the Big Gulf. And that is the real bridge that I need to rebuild. Some kind of reconnect between BPG before Shock treatment and BPG after shock treatment.

As an aside, this is the same reason, I am convinced, that I restarted smoking weed 6 months ago. In the few years prior to the Big Gulf, I was a heavy dope smoker. Weed kind of defined my life at that point. After the Big Gulf I steered well clear of weed for over a decade - the psychiatrists (military and otherwise) having gone to great lengths to convince me that my whole psychosis was THC induced.

Now when I get stoned, I definitely connect with the pre-Gulf days. There is a positivity there, an excitement, a belief in possibilities and perhaps most - an abundance of energy that was never tarnished by the ECT. Yes, I suppose you could also call it kind of mid-life crisis, but I would argue that if there was any crisis it was back then in Shock Treatment day, and that this reminiscing is actually just therapy. Or Bridge Building.