I do not have too much information about what will happen to him but a lot more information about everything he has gone through in the past. And I have to talk about the aftermath in our lives.
First I want to say that Craig and Heather are not my friends real names. They have both given me permission to blog about them and even asked me to write about them. I think they also believe in giving the wider world a look at what life is like for people like us. Heather knows that I am writing and I believe that craig would agree.
Craig is in jail. He had an outstanding fugitive from justice warrant from the town he used to live in in another state. This is a gross misdemeanor charge so I do not think they will extradite him. I really cannot see why that city and state would want this kind of problem back for them to deal with.
And make no mistake that is exactly how they view people like us. It is the same thing here. When I talked to the lady in our towns police department I really felt the message strongly. We do not want to deal with this crap. She actually said something like "the only thing we can do is send uniformed officers (this is a kind of threat, either conscious or unconscious- if you make us deal with it we send cops) out to do a psychiatric transport(I have had one of these they hand cuff you and put you in the back of the police car and drive you to the emergency room. I called the po9lice and requested it.) and even then they will only take him if he is a danger to himself or others(even then they wont deal with it unless he acts out in front of them-they will threaten him with arrest-disorderly conduct-if he doesn't 'calm down and act right'). The authorities do not like to deal with people in a mental health crisis and if you make them deal with you you risk punishment.
So at this point we have to wait until monday to find out what that other state and city have decided. There will be a hearing at the county jails courtroom on monday to finalize the results. Then on tuesday there will be a hearing in my town on the charges of harassment and interfering with the firefighters. They decided to press charges. The authorities have decided to punish Craig for making them deal with the situation. These charges are all misdemeanors and may not carry any very heavy sentence. these charges will also most likely be dropped as Craig's doctor has verified that this may have been caused by his new high blood pressure medication.
At this point I am not really worried about the long term consequences of this episode. My real and terrible fear is what is happening to my friend right now.
I have also been arrested in the middle of a severe psychiatric crisis. I had a warrant for failure to pay child support. So instead of taking me to the hospital this time when I called for help I ended up going to jail. They took all my clothes away and put me in a little cell with nothing but a blanket and ignored me except for bringing food and taking me to the little courtroom at the jail. I told them repeatedly, every time I saw someone that I had psychiatric problems and was on medication. I also told them I was diabetic. They never did anything about either of those things. I assume if I had been insulin dependent they might wait until I was in a coma before treating it. During this crisis I can tell you I was no where near as messed up, delusional and confused as my friend was on thursday. I have not mentioned it to heather but I am terrified that they have not medicated him or treated him in any way. I cannot imagine spending four days (I only spent tow days.) in his state locked up alone in a tiny room. and if he cannot control himself they will very much punish him and in the past for him that has included some very brutal things.
I am a little reassured since no new charges have showed up on the internet. I can look his case up on the internet. I know if they had to deal with him and they got tough with him and he fought them they would insist on adding more charges.
Some background on Craig: Craig has fetal alcohol syndrome. He is bipolar w/schizo effective. HIs birth mother died when he was five. He was adopted by his much older half brother(not sure about his father and he may not even know). His adoptive father molested him. At the age of ten he nearly died huffing gasoline. He began to use meth at the age of 16 and did it for about 25 years. He quit everything but marijuana about three and a half years ago. Heather had had enough and quit and told him that he had to quit or she would leave. This was about four years ago I guess. Then she finally left him and went to New York. Three months later he got arrested stealing at Wallmart to support his habit. He fought with security and the cops. He was tweeking. They were going to give him ten years but at the sentencing dropped it to a gross misdemeanor and gave him several moths in jail. This is when he decided he had had enough and had to quit. he ran before his jail date and came to Oregon to get away from where he had easy access to drugs and where all his friends were still in the drug culture. I also found out that he was combining meth and heroine, a combination of drugs that killed someone I love very much.
I have known Craig and Heather for three years. I have never seen them use anything harder than marijuana. Heather says and I believe her that if he had relapsed she would have left him. At the same time she says that the only times in the ten years that they have been together that he has had episodes like this was when he was on meth. I investigoogled the high blood pressure medication - Hydrochlorothiazide. Among the side effects listed are: insomnia, depression, anxiety, heart pounding and chest pain. This explains him repeatedly thinking he was having a heart attack. I believe that he went without sleep for three or four days straight.
I was wrong about him threatening Heather. He held a chopstick to him neck and threatened to kill himself with it and said don't make me hurt you to Heather. He later stabbed himself in the thumb with a steak knife. He barely broke the skin. When the ambulance arrived he panicked and tried to run. He fell down and hit his shoulder on the wall. He popped up and took a swing at the firefighter but missed and the firefighters took him down easily. I really think all in all he lived up to my faith in him that he is not a violent person. He was hearing voices insist that he hurt himself and others and was able to fight it. When he could not fight it he, like I have done in the past, turned the violence mostly on himself. It is best not to hurt anyone of course but I think it is better to harm oneself than another person. The guilt and shame could make the mental problems much worse. They do for me.
The aftermath is that even though he did not hurt anyone. I have a policy against having anyone who could be like that out of my life. This has been my policy for a long time. There was a time when a friend of Ben's had brain cancer. we became roommates and let him know that we would do anything we could to help him. Unfortunately the disease changed him to the point where we no longer felt safe. We basically notified his family and moved out. It made me feel so guilty but he got so bad I was not feeling safe.
Well, both Heather and Ben have expressed the feeling that he might have changed in some fundamental way. I just feel we have to reevaluate our friendship. I am not willing to cut my friend out of my life yet. But I could end up losing a friend because in the end we have to be safe. I worry if he has changed. I worry more that all this trauma will cause him to relapse on the drugs.
Rant time: I really feel adding the police to a situation like this is about the worst thing that could happen. If my friend is having a reaction to medication then this is a medical crisis. Craig has had legal problems since the age of thirteen. In his state he thought the ambulance was the police coming to get him. I honestly think that this is the only reason he panicked and took a swing at the firefighter. Even without his history treating a person in a mental health crisis with the police is cruel. It is. They cannot add anything productive. Sure in some places like nearby eugene has had classes for the police to help them deal with people in mental health crisis. That one day seminar has to fight against decades of entrenched police custom and mentality that punishes people for acting out and not complying even when the subject has zero comprehension of what is going on around them and/or no ability to control their behavior.
If you do not believe me just ask the University of Oregon student who was recently tazed. He is from Asia and does not understand english well enough to comply the way the police expected. In our area the police have given themselves authority to taze for non-compliance. This includes the elderly and pregnant women. And yes it was used on a confused elderly lady who was never any kind of threat to the officer and only did not understand or refused his order to exit her home in the middle of the night in her nightgown. Really.
In Eugene there is a private organization that will send out a van to help out in these situations. Trained counselors to talk the person down and a van to transport when needed. Maybe as part of the overall healthcare reform we could move in this direction on a national level. Maybe instead of escalating every case with the police we could have trained mental health professionals who could go out and help with crisis management. They could easily work with the police to ensure everyones safety. IMHO it would probably be much cheaper than locking up so many people in prison for being in a mental health crisis and not being able to control their behavior. I really, really just do not see the sense in punishing Craig. It will not change his behavior because he does not behave like this. He was not in control of his behavior because of the mental health crisis. He may not even remember anything that he did. Punishment will never improve his mental health and let's face it if we want to prevent this from happening again then mental health treatment is the most likely way to succeed at that. Really any time we want to reduce crime and prison populations we can just begin to increase and improve the treatment of people who suffer mental illness. Free or low cost DBT/CBT type treatment for any person who displays mental illness and interacts with the law. CBT/DBT therapy available to all prison and jail inmates. Channel people with diagnosed mental illnesses into treatment instead of jail. In some places this is beginning to happen but it needs to go nation wide. We need a federal policy to guide the treatment of persons with mental illness.
P.S. on a personal note because of this incident I have decided to make Ben meet my doctor and we are going to give each other access to our bank accounts and maybe other rights. We lost all that when we had to divorce. I have also decided to try to find funding to go back into DBT. I am hoping to convince Craig to do so as well.