Psyched Out

Misfortune and Acceptance

Researchers keep talking about a cure for mental illness. They say that in the future Rodney will be able to take a pill once a day and kiss his mental illness goodbye, with no side effects. Others pin their hopes on gene therapy. Some of them say it will be within a decade.

Illustration by Tra Selthrow

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SEATTLE WEEKLY
2004 MENTAL-HEALTH COVERAGE

• One suicide too many (1/14/2004). MORE

• Mentality challenged in Olympia (3/3/2004). MORE

• Give them shelter (5/5/2004). MORE

• Mental-health purgatory at Western State Hospital (8/11/2004). MORE

• Psyched out and fighting for normalcy. (11/17/2004) MORE

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That would be nice, but in light of previous cures, I'm not holding my breath. But I do think it's reasonable to hope for a time when America accepts people who have had the misfortune of a chronic mental illness as full-blown members of society. A day when someone like Rodney Plamondon can get a job without hiding the fact that a piece of his life is missing. For Rodney and me, it would be the best revenge.

That vengeance is down the road for Rodney. Right now, he's caught between the world of living and the world of living death.

We talked recently at a diner in Wallingford. Rodney wore jeans, a dark-blue hooded sweatshirt, and a T-shirt with an elephant charging in front of a Buddhist temple. He looked better than I'd seen him before. His eyes were alive. He wants to move to Vermont, perhaps next spring, where a friend he made during his first hospitalization in 1984 lives on a few acres abutting a hardwood forest. For the near term, his goals are smaller.

"I want to be able to ride the bus anywhere in Seattle," he said. "I want to write again."

How's he going to do that when he's awake eight hours a day, tops, so zonked by his meds?

"I don't know," he said. "But I've got to get busy."

pdawdy@seattleweekly.com 206-467-4384