- * "Now memories are blurred, and their faces are obscured"
- * racist/sexist intuitions: avoid the gaze of males; males physically smaller than me are OK
- * a moment of solidarity with a black male smaller than me?
- * beliefs about evolutionary psychology (make friends, avoid enemies) very salient
- * fragmented memory: Joy intentionally hurt herself while I was trying to help her, football coach-like orderly said he was only trying to help; Joy says, this never happened
- * black woman named "Tone" asked what we had for breakfast
- * black man saying something about his mother, I explained that his mother probably did love him, he got angry, and I hid behind my door
- * doing better than in 2013 precisely because I was modeling the place as a prison
- * wanted to avoid taking medication, put on a magician-like "show" to nurse to try to trick her, it didn't work
- * I ended up with a booklet that claims I have the right to refuse medication, but this isn't actually true in practice
- * asking Anna on the phone whether I was a political prisoner "Really?" "Really really?" followups (if I were a political prisoner; she might not be able to say so)
- * mother visited, mother was cranky, Michael Vassar visited; Michael said that rape doesn't really happen in this kind of facility, and I believed him; I handed him papers (which I thought was necessary to escape the powers that be)
- * vision of needing to pull the fire alarm?
- * other males pacing the way I pace
- * my reports were not reliable; I thought Vassar pretended to be a doctor; I thought one of the other inmates had a security code
- * trope-awareness of being a psych patient; distrustful of other psych patient; thought I could subtly leave clues that I was a Jesus-analogue (as a Jewish male with long hair) to discourage people from murdering me (because the Christianity meme says you're not supposed to do that); I told people that my father was coming to pick me up at the end of my 72-hour (== 3 days) evaluation period, but that it wasn't fair that I couldn't rescue everyone. (I'm proud of this one.)
- * my father actually did pick me up three days later!
+But a system that actually had my best interests at heart would not have _kidnapped me and locked me in a building with strangers_, which is _not a good environment for getting rest_. Serious antipsychotic medication is scary stuff. When I was institutionalized in 2013, I got tardive dyskensia—an involuntary lip-smacking compulsion—from the Haldol that they gave me. Tardive dyskensia can be permanent in some cases. Given that experience, and given the information I had at the time in 2017, I do not think I had good reason not to just trust the system!
+
+...
+
+I remember pacing the tiled halls of a the first facility where they took me—probably [Contra Costa Regional Medical Center](https://cchealth.org/medicalcenter/psychiatric.php) in Martínez.[^ccrmc] I was exhausted, but also feeling a sort of manic euphoria, pacing around, tapping demonstratively at the signs on the walls, thinking it was my duty to teach the other inmates how to read. Ziz's report of Vassar's comment about "Zack Davis _vs._ the world" stuck with me; I had of vision of myself as one of the seven most important people in the world in the lead-up to the intelligence explosion, as reckoned by future historians. Being a world–historically important genius wouldn't have _felt like_ being a genius at the time, most of the time. It must have felt like being pretty smart, and the rest of the world seeming dumb and crazy. (A young Albert Einstein working in the Swiss patent office wouldn't have had the mononymic aura of "Einstein" _to his contemporaries_.) Notwithstanding that I was having psychotic delusions of grandeur at the time, I do think it was legitimate for me to feel that I was pretty smart, and that the rest of the world was dumb and crazy.
+
+[^ccrmc]: I only know this because, when consulting the doctor's notes available to me while writing this up more than six years after the fact, one of the notes mentions "CCRMC PES". "PES" is probably "Psychiatric Emergency Services".
+
+There were two rooms with beds, in that first facility: one for women, and one for men. I didn't end up sleeping there that I recall. Before long, I was taken to a separate facility, [Fremont Hospital](https://fremonthospital.com/), which had individual rooms. (Or was I incredibly lucky to not have been assigned a roommate? Having to sleep by someone else at night would have been very bad for me, given my fear of the other inmates and my desperate need for sleep.)
+
+...
+
+My memories of life in psych prison aren't very clear, partially because of how out-of-it I was, and partially because it's been more than six years since then, and memories decay if you don't _write them down_ (within hours, days, weeks—not _six years_). I wrote a [little](/2017/Mar/fresh-princess/) [bit](/2017/Jun/memoirs-of-my-recent-madness-part-i-the-unanswerable-words/) about my experiences in 2017. I think I would have written more if I had remembered that the consequence of not confronting [the challenge of](/2017/Nov/the-blockhead/) recording painful memories is that you lose them. I retain some access to my psychotic [sense of life](http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/sense_of_life.html), but only episodic fragments of specific events. ("Now memories are blurred, and their faces are obscured, but I still know the words to this song" ...)
+
+My beliefs about game theory and evolutionary psychology—the theory and practice of making friends and avoiding enemies as a animal—seemed much more salient and actionable than anything about the world that was made of words, or the right way to behave as a person in civilization (as contrasted to an animal).
+
+It seemed important to avoid the gaze of males, particularly males physically larger than me. (If they noticed me noticing them, they would try to threaten me.)
+
+...
+
+An Asian woman named Joy seemed to hurt herself on the hinges of the cart used to bring us meals, in a way that plausibly looked like my fault—maybe I had opened the door on the cart while her fingers were in the wrong place? A football-coach-like orderly took my side (in the manner of a grown-up intervening in a squabble amongst kindergarteners), saying that I was only trying to help. When the orderly was out of earshot, Joy looked at me and whispered, "This never happened." I was never sure what that was about. Had she only been pretending to be hurt, and was telling me to keep quiet?
+
+A young black woman named Tone asked me what we had for breakfast—as if the Orwellian dominance rituals we were forced to undergo, had her doubting her senses and her memory, and she was looking to me (a fellow inmate, not an authority) to keep her sane, to verify her connection to reality.
+
+A black man in the hallway was saying something about how his mother didn't love him. This seemed unlikely to me, so I tried to explain to him that his mother probably did love him. He got angry. I hid behind a door.
+
+I shared a moment of solidarity with a black man who was physically smaller than me, and therefore seemed safe to interact with. Society locked us up here because they don't want to deal with people like us, I said, but we need to stay strong.
+
+...
+
+I got the idea that it ought to be helpful to prove my agency to the staff. I'd say something like: I'm going to take a shower now, and then be ready for bed at this-and-such time, and then point out at the aforementioned time that I was actually ready, just like I said I would. My ability to make correct predictions about my future behavior showed that I was an approximately coherent agent, therefore sane, and therefore that I should be released.
+
+...
+
+I remember having Anna on the phone, and asking if I was a political prisoner. (The Soviet Union had declared its dissidents sick with sluggish schizophrenia as a pretext for persecuting them; how could I be sure things worked all that differently here?) She answered in the negative. "Really?" I said. (If I _was_ a political prisoner, she might not be able to say so over a telephone line controlled by the authorities.)
+
+...
+
+My mother visited. Her presence was actively anti-helpful. She was very cranky, acting like being here was my fault, my punishment. I had a vision of pulling the fire alarm, and being held back by the knowledge that it would only make my punishment worse. (I'm not confident there was actually an alarm for me to pull; I would have expected other inmates to have had the same idea.)
+
+Michael Vassar visited, overlapping with my mother. Michael was extremely helpful, including in de-escalating my mother's hostility. (I would later describe him as "pretend[ing] to be a doctor for my mom", but on reflection, I don't think that's what happened; More likely, he had mentioned MetaMed, and I misinterpreted it.) I talked to him in a side room, saying that I was scared to sleep because I was afraid that this was the part of the simulation where I would get anally raped. Michael said that that didn't really happen in this kind of facility. Crucially, _I believed him_. (I wouldn't have believed any assurances from the "hospital" authorities.) I handed him some folded papers on which I had jotted down some notes (inmates were allowed dull golf pencils), thinking that I needed to be covert to escape the attention of the authorities.
+
+...
+
+I remember seeing another male pacing the hallways, the way that I pace sometimes. I hadn't particularly thought of that as a "gendered" (sexually dimorphic) trait, but seeing another man do it (and not particularly remembering seeing a woman do it) made the hypothesis salient, that it was the spandrell of some hunter (not gatherer) behavioral program.
+
+...
+
+I was a very genre-savvy psych prisoner. I was distrustful of the other inmates, and distrustful of the authorities, but in different ways; the optimal strategy to protect myself against each was different.
+
+I feared violence from the other inmates. I thought I could subtly leave clues that (as a Jewish male with long hair), I was an incarnation of Jesus, which would discourage them from attacking me (because many of them would have already been programmed by the Christianity memeplex to believe that killing Jesus was the worst sin). I told people that my father was coming to pick me up at the end of my three-day evaluation period, but that it wasn't fair that I couldn't rescue everyone. (I'm proud of this one, even though I no longer agree with the threat model.) My father actually did pick me up in three days.