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.

Ward 22

When the news broke of Psychiatrist Aubrey Levin's recent sex abuses, stories about his infamous role as Head Psychiatrist of South Africa's military hospitals in the 80s appeared all over the international press.

There was some confusion though about the Ward number of the psycho ward. A lot of journos had it down as Ward 22. Well, I was there, and it was definitely Ward 24. (although one of the more accurate accounts I found on the Net claimed that it was originally Ward 22 and then became Ward 24).

The picture above is of the "New" 1 Military Hospital in Pretoria. That's where I went (by ambulance) for my 6 sessions of Shock treatment. But I didn't stay there, I stayed in the "Old" 1 mil hospital several miles away - an old delapidated building that was less conspicuous. Less conspicuous, by design, because the New hospital was where the heroic injured soldiers from the border war were flown in. It was modern, slick and a proud landmark for the Apartheid Military. NOT somewhere where you want to showcase your bunch of loonies & deviants that were also casualties of the compulsory military conscription.

But here's the kicker: Us looneys weren't the only dirty little secret stashed away out of view. When I got to Ward 24 there was indeed a Ward 22, and it was housed with its own dirty little secret - dozens of black soldiers with amputated limbs. No, they weren't enemy soldiers, they fought on the side of South Africa in the Angolan War and were part of the deadly unit - 3.2 Battalion. These were the real war heroes. They were the guys that did 60% of the real fighting - their missing limbs proof of their live combat.

When I was in Angola I personally saw some of these guys going into battle. It was a scary sight. They were psyched like I've never seen people psyched. And they didn't wear standard military attire, some wore bandannas; some were waving pangas in the air. Their faces were wild. 

Once these guys needed a mauled arm or leg amputated, they too were flown to the "New" 1 mil hospital for the surgery. But as soon as the surgery was done, they were shuttled to Ward 22, out of the view of the South African public (along with the loonies like BPG). And so the fairy tale of the heroic white boys that had put their lives on the line to defend Christianity against the dark forces of Communism lived on in the eyes of the South African public, untarnished by any blemishes. The "new" 1 military hospital standing tall and proud, a place of white heroes...

Time marches on

I'm still skirting around this old army shit. Started a book - Borderline Insanity - written by a guy that was in my same Infantry Camp - 1SAI (aka 1 Canon Fodder Battalion). He got there a year after me but went through all the same shit. Even had the same Regimental Sergeant Major as me.

There've been a whole slew of  "bush war memoirs" in the past year in SA. But its probably only us dudes that were that are reading them :(

Anyway, I also did a lot of digging around on the web and have managed to put some of the jigsaw puzzle together regarding my war experience. At the time I had zero rank - I was a "Rifleman" which is about as low as you can go, so we weren't privy to what was actually going on at higher levels.

I have subsequently found out that the intake I went in on was always destined for one of the biggest operations in the War. Well, when I say biggest, not in numbers, or in successes but in number of South African soldiers killed. I volunteered to go up about 4 months prior to that with a few mates (just to get the fck out of that prison ground) and our little excursion, in retrospect, was really a preparatory operation. We were in small groups, driving combat vets from 6.1 Mech. There were also some recces & 3.2 Battalion.

When we arrived at our base in Angola - Xangongo - we (the small engineering corps that came with) were tasked with repairing the bridge there that crossed the Cunene River, one of the few crossing points between the SWA border and the Angolan hinterland. About 3 years earlier, on SA's first major assualt into Angola we had crossed the Cunene, wreaked havoc and then withdrew back to Xangongo. The Recces then blew up the bridge at Xangango, so that no enemy mechanised divisions could come our side. The river became the new border.

So our little expedition was to go patch up that bridge, and yes, cross it in armoured vehicles in little groups and go do some snooping around on the other side. All of this, because the Big Brass were planning the big crossing of Operation Askari in a few months time. Not that we knew anything back then - as I've said I've pieced it together after lots of research.

Heres the bridge at Xangongo:

You can see where it was blown in the middle and then how it was patched up again. Once it was patched, my little armoured vehicle - EyeSpy - was the second to cross North. My mate in front Barry was driving "Buffalo Soldier" (actually I have to do a whole notha post on Buffalo Soldier due to the schizophrenic irony that characterised those days) Where the locals are bathing on the right on the far bank in the pic, we spent many a sunny day swimming in the river. Up on the hillock above was where we slept in out trenches and where the G5 cannons used to blast their loads over the Northern horizon every sunset.

Lots of memories for me. One wonders whether to go back and dig them up, or just carry on marching forwards. A good friend of mine said he opened up his box of army memories recently and then decided it was a bad idea and just shut them back up in the box. Me, I'm not sure... Looking back at those days I often wish I was that young, borderline insanity dude again. We were clueless as to the greater political picture but we were super-fit. We were fearless, not in a courageous type of way, but in a totally reckless - couldnt give a fck- kind of way. Had we been thrown into the middle of a conventional battle I've got no clue what would have happened. Maybe I would have shat myself and climbed in a hole. Maybe I would have gone on some Amok type mission. One never really knows these things.When we got home we partied like nobody else could party. BiPolar Disorder wasn't even a term back then I don't think. "Manic Depression" maybe. Or the Afrikaans - "Bos- Bevoked" - basically "Fucked up from the Bush"  

But my romantic wanderings down memory lane were soon bought to a big Halt, when I went looking for more pictures of Xangongo Bridge. You see my whole internal narrative revolved around that bridge. It was my persoanl Bridge over Troubled Water and at night I used to listen to "Burning Bridges" by Naked Eyes. Yes, the same Naked Eyes that sang "Voices in my Head, my Head..." (which accompanied me to Aubrey Levine's Ward 24)

All of it smashed and thrown up on the forgotten shores of history. 

This was the pic I found. With the new 21st Millenium bridge zooting across the Cunene river, our own little Blown-Up and re-mended bridge nothing but a sinking memory.

Maybe I must build a new bridge too. I mean fuck the old one. Who needs it? The Cubans don't. The Russians don't. UNITA doesn't. SWAPO doesn't. The Buffalo Soldiers don't. The Apartheid Regime doesn't. And the peace-loving local dudes that live today on the banks, and in the old bombed out buildings of Xangongo certainly don't.  So why the fuck do I need to cling onto it???   

Vasbyt

This is my old army helmet.

To survive the brutal army training all the people at home used to say "Vasbyt!", which translated from Afrikaans is literally "Bite Tight"

The set of teeth are my own taken by my dentist a few years ago, after it was discovered that my excruciating headaches and shortening of my teeth was a result of grinding my teeth too tight in my sleep at night. Vasbyt.

More army Shit...

There were a few reasons I landed up in Aubrey Levin's "the infamous Ward 22".

One of them could probably be described as PTSD - Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. 6 Months previously I had spent about 4 months in Angola in what was called South Africa's Border War. Going up to the northern part of South West Africa (now Namibia) was pretty standard in your 2 years compulsory military service. But not that many actually crossed over into Angola where massive brigades of Angolan soldiers were based, trained by top Soviet Military Advisors and backed up by 1000s of cuban troops (up to 40 000 at one time it was said.)

Crossing the border into Angola

I was part of a platoon of drivers that had volunteered to go to the border halfway through our first year of training. That training camp was hell. If you want to talk about humans rights abuses you could talk about that training camp for the next 10 years. So when an opportunity arose to escape (albeit it to a war zone) me and a few mates seized the opportunity.

Most of the guys that were in that war don't talk about it much. And I'm convinced that one of the reasons is that there were always other guys that had it worse than you. I was fortunate in that I never experienced a conventional contact situation. On the one night we thought we saw the lights of an enemy convoy approaching our position and we opened up with everything we had for about 2 hours.We captured an enemy troop at one time too. I got there just after he had been shot. And another time in the bush there was some gunfire but I'm not sure if it was all ours or if there was other fire too. That was the nature of that war. It was in the bush. You never new what could be hiding around the next corner. 

So, no I didn't have shell-shock or direct battle trauma to deal with. But the whole place definitely worked on your nerves. There was a total recklessness about the whole thing. I slept in trenches for about 6 weeks. We lived on "ratpacks" - a cardboard box a day containing some biscuits, tinned meat and coffee. And I had the misfortune of living with some of the roughest, barbaric Afikaaners that you could ever imagine. Ex-convicts and stuff, chosen for their real battle experience in former operations.  And behind it all, in my mind, my hate for the Apartheid government in any event, which kind of gave the whole thing a schizophrenic backdrop.

This whole Aubrey Levin scandal has dug up a lot of old memories for me. There is so much of it. All bottled up. Yesterday I had a bad day - got stoned and drunk and spewed out about 6 hours of non-stop shit about the army to Mrs M. Think I need to talk to a therapist about it all one day...

Thats the funniest part of the whole thing. By the time I did land up in that psychiatric ward 6 months later, I spent hours and hours in interviews with psychiatrists about every aspect of my whole life. But strangely there was not one question, or even mention, of my time in Angola...

  this was my mate Barry, in Xangongo, Angola

This is me in Angola with my pet bushbaby which shared my trench for about 3 weeks.

Dr Aubrey Levin (aka "Dr Shock") and his "gross human's rights abuses"

A big news story broke out last week about a Canadian Professor of Psychiatry - Dr Aubrey Levin - who made sexual advances on one of his male patients. The patient caught it on camera, and since then another 29 patients have come forward with similar tales. The story made international news, and has featured in newspapers throughout the world.

Here's the article as it appeared in the UK's Gaurdian:
'Doctor Shock' charged with sexually abusing male patient
Why am I interested in this? Because it was none other than Dr Aubrey Levin (aka Dr Shock) who authorised my course of shock treatment when I was in the South African army last Millennium. Dr Levine emigrated from fled South Africa for Canada after he was accussed of "gross human rights violations" in the 1990s. Most of the accusations come from the gay community in respect to his heinous "cures" involving electric shocks practised on gay conscripts in the 80s. 

But it wasn't only gays that fell foul of Levine. Genuine PSTD patients like me were also subjected to his unique military style "Psychiatric Therapy". In fact it was pretty emotional to read about "the infamous ward 22 at the Voortrekkerhoogte military hospital near Pretoria" in newspapers around the world. I WAS THERE!!

So I did some digging on the Neb and came up with an excellent summary of what I went through here:
THE ABUSE OF PSYCHIATRY IN THE SADF

Some of you might know that I wrote a book about my experiences in Ward 22 24 (along with other subsequent experiences) and it was vindicating for me to see my writings echoing the findings of the report. Here are some excerpts from my book juxtaposed with excerpts from the Abuse report:

REPORT
In the late 1960s a new ward was created in the SADF's main military hospital at Voortrekkerhoogte near Pretoria. Ward 22 (later Ward 24) was set up ostensibly to cater for the needs of conscripts and members of the Permanent Force with psychological problems or disorders. The SADF's venture into psychiatry came at a time when the length of service was increasing and the size of the armed forces was expanding.
 

BOOK
We were greeted by a Captain and I was taken down a long corridor to a door with the words “WARD 24” written above it. Inside, the doors opened up to a large open plan hallway with long rows of military beds lining both walls. Soldiers were scattered around the ward smoking, playing cards and watching TV. Most of them had dream-coats on, but I could see they were soldiers.


REPORT
Few conscripts found an atmosphere which was supportive and conducive to working through their concerns. Most of the people we interviewed experienced their time in the ward as profoundly alienating and at times punitive. Phrases like 'It was the worst time of my life' and 'It is a period I want to put behind me', recurred in all their stories.

The procedure of admission to the wards, the composition of the patient population, their organisation along military lines, the attitude of the personnel working there and the types of treatment used, all included abuses of psychiatric and medical ethics.

The organisation of the ward is along military lines. 'Patients' in 1985 were being subjected to military discipline. Regardless of their state of mind, they were forced to rise at five in the morning, make their beds and clean the wards in preparation for inspection at 6.30 a.m. Most of the patients regarded this as an extension of basic training. Until at least 1980 there was second inspection at 2 p.m., followed by a two-hour period of drilling in brown overalls.

BOOK
It must have been about 6 in the morning when the first glow of daylight started seeping through from the veranda. I hadn’t slept a wink and felt incredibly tense and keyed up. Soon a few soldiers started stirring and then one or two jumped out of bed and a guy at the far end shouted for everybody to wake up. “Hurry, hurry…. He’s coming soon!”. There seemed to be a hint of panic in his voice, but it worked for everybody was scrambling out of bed. For the next few minutes there was a state of high frenzy as soldiers tidied there little bedside tables up and pulled their blankets and sheets straight. “He’s coming! He’s coming!”

Just then one of the soldiers closest to the door shouted: “Attention!” and all the soldiers rushed to the foot of their beds and stood at attention in their dreamcoats. I stood in line with them sensing the general feeling of fear. The staccato clip clop of army boots grew louder and then a huge Afrikaans sergeant barged through the doors at the far end of the ward and started inspecting each soldier and his area one by one. He had a large stick with him and stopped at the bed of the shuffler from the night before, who had somehow also managed to manoeuvre himself into position. “You Fucking moffie!”, the Sergeant bellowed in his face, poking his stick viscously into the shuffler's stomach. “ You cowards might be able to fucking fool the nurses but you can’t fucking fool me!”The shuffler’s face stared ahead twitching now and then in strange contortions...

Suddenly I was scared. I had been through hundreds of inspection parades before and I was used to the insults and bellowing. They had never phased me before. But this time it was different. This sergeant was evil - I could sense his evil presence from the moment he walked in the door. This sergeant was the enemy, the front guard of the forces of darkness. And I knew that he knew I was here. For the first time I felt a tremor in my knees and tried to control it but couldn’t.


Slowly the sergeant worked his way down the ward, one bed at a time. Now and then he would stop and poke his stick in somebody’s stomach and scream and curse about moffies, cowards, hippies and drug addicts. Since leaving Addington 24 hours earlier I had not had any medication and my shaking was getting worse. By the time the sergeant turned the corner at my end of the ward and got to my bed, I felt like my knees were knocking against each other. When he got to me the Sergeant stopped directly in front of me, looming above my head. “ Aha, a fucking newcomer!” he shrieked in my face. “ And look what a fucking shambles his bed is! Look’s like a bloody whorehouse! Who’s c*nt are you going to fuck soutie, you mother’s?” He lifted his stick and I felt its butt strike me in the stomach and drive all the breath out of me. “ I know why you’re here soutie! I know exactly why you are here. But you cannot escape from me!” He stood there staring down at me with his evil eyes for what felt like a full five minutes, before moving on...

The evil sergeant came every morning, and every morning my shaking got worse. He never failed to stop in front of my bed and poke me in the stomach with his stick. “This is not fucking heaven soutie, this is the fucking army!” he would shout. One day he bought these two huge Alsations with him on his inspection which were apparently meant to sniff out any marijuana. They looked more like wolves to me and were just as evil as the Sergeant. The one soldier was so terrified of the dogs that he went into a type of epileptic fit and lay writhing on the floor with foam coming out of his mouth. About four male medics had to hold him down to get the injections in. The Sergeant seemed pretty pleased with himself that day.

REPORT
The orderlies were seconded from military units as part of their duties. Their attitudes varied - many were hostile, shouting orders at, and verbally abusing patients. Orderlies were armed with pistols at all times. One of the servicemen interviewed by RESISTER, who worked as an assistant to psychologists in 1983, said that there was continual tension between the qualified medical staff and military officers over the handling of patients in the wards, with the higher ranking military officials having considerable say.


BOOK
I could hardly finish my words as two burly male medics appeared out of nowhere and dragged me back to the Ward where they stuck a huge injection into me. Satan was here; he was fighting for his life.

As it dawned on me, I let out an almighty scream and leapt out of my seat. I don’t know how I managed it, but I ran down the corridor, out the front entrance and down the driveway of the hospital. I had only been able to shuffle for the past few weeks but now pure adrenaline took over. My techni-colour dream-coat streamed out behind me in the wind and in one hand I waved my pocket Bible in the air. At the end of the driveway a guardhouse appeared and two soldiers jumped out with R4 rifles.

“ Repent! Repent!” I screamed in their faces, but it was all in vain. The next thing I knew I was on the ground with my pants down and a male medic on top of me ramming a huge syringe of venom into my backside.

REPORT
Patients with serious disorders have been heavily drugged for long periods of time. Medication and sedatives have been fairly freely dispensed among he patients. This has led to a feeling among some of the patients suffering from post-combat stress that it was more convenient for the staff to drug them than to confront their experiences.

BOOK
By now my pills had increased to ten in the morning and four at lunch and supper. The medication clouded my mind and I battled to concentrate. Really frustrated one morning I decided to go to the athletic field in the hospital ground and take a jog. I had been very fit before this whole thing began and I figured that a run would clear my head. Maybe I could start running every day? But I was in for a nasty shock for when I started to run I found that I couldn’t. My feet felt like blocks of lead that I just couldn’t lift fast enough. It was a terrible sensation, like that feeling you can sometimes get in nightmares when you are running away from an attacker but seem to be held back by an invisible gravitational force. I was devastated and began to realise what the snakes on the badges were for – they were slowly poisoning me...

The sluggishness from the drugs got worse and worse. Days went by and then weeks went by and eventually it was with horror that I realised that I, too, had become a shuffler. When I went anywhere I couldn’t swing my arms. They just hung, like solid steel pipes, at each side. And my feet inched forwards, half a foot at a time.

AND THE MEETING WITH DR AUBREY LEVIN:

Pic: Dr Aubrey Levine

REPORT
The SADF's psychiatric units were largely the creation of Dr Aubrey Levine, whose career as a psychiatrist owed much to the SADF. He joined the army after qualifying for a medical degree and went on to study psychiatry on military bursaries. He worked under the supervision of Lt. General Cockcroft, the Surgeon General from 1969-1977. Upon his refirement Cockcroft become active in ultra-right organisations.

By the early 1970s Levine had been promoted to the rank of colonel and was chief military psychiatrist co-ordinating work in the army, navy and air force. Levine was solely responsible for the types of treatment used in Word 22. He was never accountable to a wider reference group of qualified personnel, and his approach could not have been cruder.

BOOK
On the second to last day I was sent to the far corner of the hospital where a very important man had an office. He was a Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology and one of the most learned men in his field in the Southern Hemisphere, they said. I packed my journal for the long journey anxious to show the Professor my discoveries. He was my last ray of hope. He had to understand.

Finally a little lady in red indicated that it was my turn. I entered the Professor’s little office and sat down on the opposite side of a little coffee table to him. He was dressed in civilian clothes and I could detect an air of smugness in his demeanor. He observed me, waiting for me to say something. I opened my journal to where I had joined the Alpha and the Omega. “Look,” I said, “ The Alpha and the Omega”
He examined the picture for a while and then shook his head: “ Look’s like a penis to me.” He said.

***
NOW I KNOW WHY IT LOOKED LIKE A PENIS TO HIM!! THE MAN MOLESTED HIS MALE PATIENTS

Within 2 days of meeting with Dr Levin, I commenced a series 6 ECTs (Electro Convulsive Therapy) against my will.

I am angry. But strangely I also feel vindicated. In the final analysis he was more fucked up than me...

You can see a review of my book here:

You can buy the book here:

(In all fairness I must warn you that although the above excerpts are taken directly from the book, other parts of the book are highly philosophic and esoteric)

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