I don’t know what it feels like to have a psychotic disorder. I don’t know that pain, no matter how I hard I try. I’ve read dozens of books, listened to lectures on abnormal psychology, stared at brain diagrams until my own brain aches, taken hallucinogenic drugs that made plane contrails sparkle, my skin look like shimmering lizard scales. With headphones I’ve listened to “schizophrenia simulations,” blurred my eyes and imagined hallucinating spiders crawling on my bedsheets. But I don’t know—I can’t know—what Tim and millions of others feel when waves of neurotransmitters run roughshod over
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