Schizophrenia + Support Your Local Library

"If someone with multiple personalities threatens to kill himself, is it considered a hostage situation?" - George Carlin

A life-long friend of mine started doing crack around Christmas. He is 55. He also is schizophrenic. He has been drinking alcohol to quench his thirst from the crack. He hates liquor. He hates drunks. He is showing his mastery of self-loathing with this act. He is no beginner.

The roof leaks above his bed and several windows are blown out on the small, rusty, filthy, infested, water-less hitch trailor he calls home. He is unable to fix any of it or get a new one. Mold, mildew and dirt are under his fingernails and covering skin that's usually naked in the Texas heat and winter rain. Someone stole most of his belongings when my friend was in the psychiatric ward in the fall. Shortly after he was released in November, someone poisoned his dog. The dog was his everything. They both carried fleas. The dog was staggering toward him and just keeled over.

My friend has become afraid. His parents are in their 80s now and both have cancer. They send him care packages sometimes, and disability covers rent, electricty, phone and a P.O. box. He lived in the same trailor park for years near Austin, but the county condemnded it for the public good to restore it as a flood plain. My friend, who plays a soulful flute and saxaphone as a street muscian, spent more than a year trying to find a place to tow his trailor and call home. His search ended with a clydesdale breeder who gives mercy to social outcasts. There is a woman there, too, a crack addict and alcoholic who is abusive and mean and comes on to him sexually. My friend, who is a bible thumper, sometimes becomes enraged and violent.

Early last year when he talked to me about not having a settled home for himself, he told me that in the past he knew he could control his manic violent outbursts (he becomes incredibly strong during them). At age 55, he was afraid he could kill someone by accident while in a rage. In the past he has been able to stop himself from going to that point. He felt that ability weakening. So far, he hasn't hurt anybody. He just complains a lot.

He's desperately lonesome, and afraid one day he may be alone with only his illness to talk to.

He won't take medication because it takes away his feelings, he says. It makes him afraid to not know how he feels. It makes him feel out of control. I think he is doing crack and drinking because he wants to kill himself, or get someone to do it for him.

I have been reading author and L.A. Times columnist Steve Lopez's book, "The Soloist," about another schizophrenic. Nathaniel Ayers and my friend share much in common. Perhaps I will send my friend the book. He loves to read. It focuses him. It relaxes him. It helps him feel and experience ranges of emotions he can't locate through any other means as a social outcast. He swallows books whole, instantly.

For him, a 250-page book is a nice morning read. He's half blind now, reading through glasses that are the wrong prescription, still taking in every story with excitement, and eager to discuss them. There is no library in the blink-and-you-miss-it town where he's parked. Only a post office a long walk from there, his long blonde and gray nappy head, toothless smile and lanky form puttng one foot in front of the other.

We need libraries. They are threatened by the Internet. Support your local library in person.