posted on Jul, 23 2017 @ 03:24 PM
First let me set the stage. Since 2012 I live in Anti-Kraak accomodation. There appears to be no direct/easy translation to English (for some
conspiratorial reason??? Anti-squat?) but it is temporary accomodation with few rights and few facilities. We have a 28 day contract which renews
automatically every 28 days or until the owner decides he has a new purpose for the building. The buildings are often government properties that are
no longer used. I have lived in a nursing home, an office tower, a school and now, a library.
I along with 3 (officially 6) other guys share the toilets, the kitchen and the shower but we all have our own rooms with locks. We have been here
now for 3 months or so. It was immediately apparent that one of our residents was "different". Most people in this kind of accomodation want to be
left alone and have no trouble with other residents. Ages and backgrounds vary but a lot are young people, students and a lot (like me) are 40
plussers who have reached dead-end temporarily. Divorce, prison, financial ruin, drug addiction and other life challenges also sometimes are
reasons that people do it. In my case it was financial. It is also very cheap. I pay 300 euros a month all-in. I've also moved 4 times in the last
year due to buildings being repurposed or sold which wasn't fun but them's the risks.
So, now I'm in Rotterdam and thankfully it is a quiet and safe neighbourhood with all amenities close by. As time goes by (I'll call him John, not
his real name, he's 21 btw) John starts to spend more and more time in my room. I liked the company as I'm alone all day, unemployed so ok, yeah.
Chilling and listening to music and it kept him out of his room where he liked to annoy the neighbours with his 2 (yeah...2!) subwoofers. He gave
the impression of being constantly high on something but without the euphoria. We spent six weeks daily with each other and it gave me an good
chance to gauge him and his condition. I am not a mental health professional by any means but this was a one in a million.
After a few weeks I noticed the pills. Doctors pills with his name on. They laid untouched on his table for weeks. I google the name Clozapine and
my jaw drops. Next time I'm in his room I ask him casually if he still takes his pills. No, he hasn't used them in a year and a half, longer than
he lives here. I ask why and am politely told that he didn't need them, he could get by just by thinking about things. An alarm bell starts ringing
gently in the back of my mind... He remained his usual spaced-out self and ended up telling me everything as time progressed. As time progressed
his behaviour started to change.
In the beginning it was little things. He also had an obsession with mirrors and his image. I have a small table mirror. Every once in a while
during conversations or chillings he would stand up and check his image in the mirror. He also used his smartphone to check his image using the
camera function at regular intervals. There's a mirror on the wall in the hall by the toilets. Sometimes if I needed to pee late at night
(sometimes 3am), John would be standing there in just his boxershorts looking in the mirror. Or in the shower area where there is also a mirror.
Weird. But a good sign that something is quite wrong with the guy and this might need to be addressed faily soon.
I should add that most of the time we spent together were pleasant but spaced-out every time. I cooked for him more than once, lent him a small
amount of money, he helped me by letting me use his internet (took me 3 months to get it fixed! I'm recently an internet user as data-caps suck and
I ain't paying mobile rates...yay!) to arrange a few personal matters, bank, etc. He always presented the same impression during this time. Even if
had just awoken he always seemed ... shot away. Never higher or lower. Always spaced, slightly slowed reactions but not really anything most people
would call crazy, just a little strange. Polite, well-spoken and mannered, an intelligent young guy that apparently had everything going for him.
Time passes. He takes ecstasy in my presence. Hey, it's a free world and he is 21. I can at least see that he doesn't do something stupid. If he
is in my room I can also stop him from using his subwoofers and my music can be entertaining too! It gives me another opportunity to "look inside"
him. (He told me days later he sneakily took a second ecstacy pill the same night without me noticing) I saw a hole a mile wide in the personality
that used to be there. Without the correct knowledge it is hard to describe. It's as if there's still a piece of John there vaguely but a fusebox
seems to have been blown. An important fusebox.
I told him later that this was not something he should do often. He progresses to truffels, a legally available product in the Netherlands
containing psilocybin, a hallucinogen. He starts to do the truffels almost daily, I contact the hire company to tell them he needs help, with little
effect. I won't be a Holy Joe, I know exactly what these drugs do but it is visible that John needs very little to get very far. I like John
though, he's a nice guy on a good day, he just needs help and no one, including the residents here, his parents or the rental company seem to know.
John's gotta heart of gold, truly. But the rest is gone, along with focus, tastebuds, sense of time, where he lost his bike because he can't
remember where he last parked it...oh the list is endless.
John is away for a day so I look in the (communal) toilet next to his room he claimed as his own and I see more, different pills. Haloperidol. 8 or
10 boxes, all untouched. I google Haloperidol...oh my. Anti-psychotics again.
Things progress. John deteriorates slowly, but surely in the course of our time together. He becomes opinionated, vague and it sounds like he really
is in a psychosis. He remains at all times non-violent and non-confrontational but tries to tell me that I have it all wrong. I avoid those topics
and focus on music and we remain friends. He starts drinking more. Expensive stuff, Bacardi mix drink thing or the other expensive one. He remains
the same.
I tell John that drinking daily is dangerous. John doesn't drink too much but he does drink daily but it was a friendly statement. I'm an
alcoholic, I know. And he is a man and free to choose, as am I.
Obviously I have asked myself many times during our time together
"What happened to you?", perhaps I should have asked John but I don't think John knows anymore, and maybe that's better. And John ain't got no
gun in his hand. Not yet...
John starts to deteriorate again and starts knocking on doors in the middle of the night, mainly mine. Once with an earth shattering volume,
possibly a kick. I was still awake and know it was John. He was standing in the hall when I went looking for the car I thought had crashed into the
building. John is John. I tell him to be quiet and he tells me not to exaggerate or call the rental company. I walk to the toilet and return to my
room.
cont...