On both sides of the wall Henry Cockburn


At the age of 20 in the year 2002, I had the


most profound experience that I have had, neither before nor since. It changed the course of my life, for either good or ill, determining the path I was to navigate throughout the next 17 years. Illness, recovery and then a certain degree of artistic success were all triggered by the same incident – this mystical experience that changed my outlook on the world. Many, including close family members and friends, believed what I saw as a spiritual awakening to be the early warning signs of full blown schizophrenia. And maybe in an off -hand way it was, but for me it was real and always will be. Everything resulted from this episode that changed my perception of the world, and brought me to the conclusion that things were not quite how they seemed. T e realm of magic no longer appeared to be confi ned to the pages of fairy tales and legends. If this was possible what else could be. Bizarre but true, I will put it plainly – I had


a conversation with a tree! And it spoke back, in English, between about six in the aſt ernoon and about two in the morning. True, it was not an audible conversation; it was a conversation in my mind’s eye. But never-the-less we conversed about various things and I kept this a deadly secret, rightly assuming that everyone would think I had gone mad. And when I fi nally did confi de in a psychiatrist a week later, he came directly to that conclusion and threatened to section me if I did not consent to take the anti-psychotic drug Olanzapine. What could I do? I had never had my freedom compromised before, I was scared, I had no experience of mental hospitals and so, rather than preserve my dignity and stick by my story, I consented to take the medication. And so it must have been a delusion. A result


of being exposed to cannabis at an early age, or maybe it was a genetic fl aw, something wrong with my DNA making me more susceptible to voices. Perhaps it was a chemical imbalance: too much serotonin in the brain. Maybe it was my upbringing: were my mother and father at fault. Whatever it was, there was something very wrong with someone talking to a tree. But I am not telling you the full story am I? I neglected to tell you the build up, how I tried to climb an aqueduct and failed to swim an estuary, and this makes the delusion of the talking tree less plausible and my madness


Context 169, June 2020


more palatable. But to this day I stick to my guns: trees are not as dumb as most people think they are. Science tells us that they breathe in carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygen, whereas we humans do the opposite, and so trees are good, we need trees, the world needs trees – but beware anyone who goes around talking to them, because that would be well, mad! But what is madness? It’s hard to defi ne.


A disassociation with reality, delusions, voices, paranoia: these are the symptoms of schizophrenia. And, as time went on, I began to, and I freely admit this, become disassociated. What was real, and what wasn’t – all became merged. Yes, I still believe that the tree did talk to me, but back then, I never felt I had taken the journey to its full limit. I wanted more talking trees, I wanted unknown secrets and, with no one to confi de


in, leſt to my own thoughts, I became isolated. I dearly wanted a magi, a yogi, a priest, a shaman or some great philosopher, someone to guide me and show me the way, but that never happened. Instead, the only answer I received was that what I was experiencing was a psychological breakdown which could be stabilised with various medications. Preoccupied with the nature of magic, I leſt the real world behind and neglected to take care of myself. At one point, I stayed awake for over a week believing there to be snipers outside my bedroom window, ready to pull the trigger. But the irony was that the more I felt I wasn’t being listened to, the less I could open up and tell anyone what was really going on in my head, and so my condition deteriorated. On refl ection, I can see now that some of


my behaviour was irrational, paranoid and delusional. Having been in hospital for such


11


On both sides of the wall


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