Excerpt from "A Very Thin Line: My Journey with Bipolar" by Rohan Sharma
Preface
Some may think you need light in order to have a reflection. I am here to tell you about a different type of reflection — one that occurs even in the absence of light. This reflection is your outer world. The darkness occurs when you are in a place where there is little hope, a place where darkness is the norm. The Philadelphia Industrial Correctional Center (PICC) on State Road is one such place.
Out of the five county jails in Philadelphia, PICC is notorious for being the most violent. The inmates nicknamed it “Pokémon City,” because it has the highest rate of stabbings, or people getting “poked.” Not only is PICC packed with violent criminals, but the block which houses the mentally ill (where I spent nearly two years incarcerated) is a madhouse. There are fights nearly every day and corrupt correctional officers. It is a place where sanity and order are left at the door.
So, what do we do if we find ourselves in an environment where we cannot perceive light?
We create it.
I am here to tell you that there exists within each of us a Divine spark which will light even in the most heinous of places. I know this to be true and I hope by reading this book, this will become evident to you. It only takes a single candle to light a thousand, and its flame is never diminished in doing so. It spreads its light without limits, without bias, without hesitation. The brilliance of its light never fades as it spreads.
Floating down a river of despair gets you nowhere. There I was, holding on for dear life in rapids so tumultuous, I often look back and wonder how I survived. Was it all a dream? I carry scars that remind me it was not. It takes a strong mind and an even stronger will to survive, to navigate such treacherous waters. But the journey has been worth it since it has brought me to you — dear reader.
I would like to point out what led up to my incarceration: not getting the proper help I needed until it was too late. Keeping my emotions bottled and pretending everything was fine when in reality, my life was falling apart, splitting at the seams. My life went to an extreme which it may not have had to, and although I don’t regret what happened (I am incredibly grateful) this does not mean what I went through is a path for everyone.
If you are reading this book while struggling with a mental illness, please get the help you need. There is always a way out, and life can become exceptionally better after you receive treatment. That is my promise to you.
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I absolutely hate the term “Bipolar.” I feel it fails to capture the severity this disorder can have on those it afflicts. To me, it suggests an occasional mood swing characteristic of what we all go through. Although it is a mood disorder, it’s also much more than that. People who suffer from it can also experience wild delusions, as well as acute hallucinations and even psychosis.
Bipolar Disorder is a curious illness. Statistically, it affects 2.6% of people in the United States, targeting both men and women equally. Staggeringly, 1 in 5 people with this disorder end up dying by suicide. There have been celebrities who seem to have everything but have taken their lives despite their fame and success, which goes to show depression and mental illness does not discriminate based on socioeconomic status or tax bracket. Lives can be thrown into chaos by this condition, as my story demonstrates.
I have heard it said that if you could bottle and sell “mania,” you’d become a millionaire. I have no doubt this is true. The world comes alive when you’re in a manic state: the sun shines brighter, you may experience your television and radio speaking to you, you laugh hysterically to yourself, and you access ideas that you may have never been able to imagine otherwise. But there are downsides to this flight of unbound creativity. Delusions can become paranoia and take over, as they often have for me, sometimes culminating in indescribable depression, hopelessness, and loneliness I wouldn’t wish on anybody.
This book is not so much a documentation of mental illness as it is a memoir of hope for those who may struggle (and those who don’t). It’s about overcoming the various challenges life may throw your way and choosing to be happy in spite of them. And therein lies the key word: choosing. Happiness is a choice – a lesson lost on me in my younger years but one I ended up learning anyways, albeit through a much rockier path. You don’t have to go to jail or read the multitude of self-help books that I did in order to learn this lesson. You can put your foot down each morning when you wake up and make the conscious decision that, no matter what the day brings, you will be joyful because that is who you prefer to be. And even though I had to go to a Hell few will ever know in order to make this discovery, don’t take it lightly when I say that I wouldn’t trade this lesson for anything in the world.
Perhaps an equally important lesson was learned after I was released back into society. I knew it was true from my first-hand experiences in jail: your world is like a mirror, reflecting back your beliefs and definitions. Waiting for your life circumstances to improve before changing your state of being to what you prefer is like frowning in a mirror and waiting for your reflection to smile back[1]. I can tell you your reflection will always outlast you when it comes to who will smile first. Notice, however, that as soon as you smile, the mirror has no choice but to return the smile. If I had learned this early on, my life would have been much more enjoyable. But hindsight is 20/20, and it does no good to linger on prior experiences you wish were different.
Ever since I chose to define my illness as not an illness, but rather a gift, that’s exactly how I’ve begun to experience it. Life is much better now, and I can honestly say I enjoy waking up and looking forward to what the day brings. But don’t take my word for it. I’m a strong believer that you shouldn’t take advice from anyone you don’t want to end up as, for it will only make your life closer to theirs. So if you are in a position where you hate getting up to start your day, it can’t hurt to redefine your circumstances in a way you prefer. Start telling a different story and watch the world around you change like magic.
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Last, and I can’t emphasize this enough, this memoir is not a jail survival guide. Time and time again, I saw inmates bigger than me getting jumped, and inmates smaller than me getting extorted. I was only able to make it through my time (and even thrive, as you will see in the following chapters) by what I believe was the grace of divine intervention. A dear friend of mine, Sandy, said that when she read this book, she saw God. I am not trying to convert any atheists, but my wish is to deter anybody from going down the same path who may think “he made it, so can I.” If you are facing time in jail and you picked this book up hoping to gain some insight into jail life, my advice to you is this: be genuine in all situations, stay true to yourself, and perhaps most important of all, pray.
[1] Bashar
Excerpt
It is the way of weakened minds to see everything through a black cloud. The soul forms its own horizons; your soul is darkened, and consequently the sky of the future appears stormy and unpromising.
— Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo
Broken glass lay strewn everywhere around the small, dirty bathroom floor of my studio apartment. In my psychotic state, I shattered an empty beer bottle that was lying around; one of many. As I put one of the sharp fragments to my neck, I caught a look from the stranger in the mirror. He looked at me with eyes wide open. Despite not sleeping for almost a week and being physically exhausted, he had a maniacal look. As I peered deep into his irises, he stared back confidently as if to say, “Trust me.”
With that, I sliced open the skin underneath my beard. I felt no pain as the result of swallowing the remainder of my Excedrin migraine pills (there were about eight left), and as the gash widened, I switched to using a pair of grooming scissors I had laying on the sink. As I cut away the skin at the edges of the laceration, blood began to stain the bathroom floor. I wondered why I didn’t cut my jugular vein and end it all. This felt like more of a curiosity venture, opening my neck up and prodding around.
Everything in my subconscious mind came bursting out. I wrote the letters “D.M.T.” in my blood on the mirror. Dimethyltryptamine – the world’s most powerful known hallucinogen. I experimented with it heavily during my senior year of college and as odd as it sounds, it felt like the only thing that kept me sane and allowed me to graduate. It had been my therapy; my release. Now my spirit yearned for it. But with no means to obtain it, my desperate plea for more went unanswered.
I took the sharp end of one of the glass fragments and began slicing my body. A feeling of relief poured over me with each cut. I turned around and looked at the blood around me, and as I did, my reflection sported the brand-new ink on my upper back. “Only God Can Judge Me,” it read. The name of a song by the rapper Tupac, now imprinted on my body forever. Why did I choose those words? I still didn’t know for sure. I got it impulsively a few weeks prior, but in my delusional state, it felt right.
It was my fourth month into my first year of medical school and my mental illness had come out in full force. I had spent the previous month self-destructing – not going to class, failing my exams, drinking every night, losing the cash my parents had given me at the casino, and doing the only thing that kept me from diving completely off the deep end: smoking marijuana. But now I had run out.
A drug dealer I met in the shady Germantown area of Philly had become my only real contact with the outside world. D was a rough looking, stocky, older African American man. After spending the night attempting to dissect my own neck, I called him up to ask if he could front me some more weed.
“You still owe me sixty dollars from last time,” was his answer.
As he hung up, the first thought I had was how easy it would be to rob him. After all, the world wasn’t real and I could do whatever I wanted, right? According to my delusions, other people were projections of my subconscious mind and had no volition of their own.
It was a crisp, fall day as I walked out of my apartment. I popped the collar on my fleece to cover the gash in my neck as I waved to the security guard on my way out the door. A feeling of equanimity came over me and I was eerily calm on my way to the gun store.
A Very Thin Line is available for pre-order at Rhythm & Bones Press.
Rohan Sharma is a national speaker and rapper who goes by the stage name “Rx Mundi”. He became an avid mental health advocate subsequent to serving a twenty-three month jail sentence after pleading guilty to an armed robbery that took place in the fall of 2011. At the time, Rohan was a medical student at Drexel University. However, due to his mental illness being misdiagnosed, he was given the wrong medication which induced a psychotic episode.
He mainly speaks at high schools and college campuses as part of NAMI’s “Ending the Silence” program, demonstrating the power of positive thinking to students as well as how he was able to create order in his life. His story has been featured by “This Is My Brave” - an organization dedicated to telling the stories of those afflicted with mental illness. In addition to this, he is being showcased in an upcoming documentary by academy award winning director Ken Burns.
