What we have here is a failure to communicate

For the "what we have here is a failure to communicate" file.
I have been keeping my friend Alex, also known as Dro, up to date with my inability to obtain social services, but Dro is not quite understanding the dynamics of what is going on here. A week ago Dro called his personal doctor and told him that I was having problems obtaining SSI. So Dro calls me and tells me that I will be hearing from his doctor. I never did hear from his doctor, but I did explain to Dro that doctors do not jump out of their chairs to go to bat for people they have never met in order to help them obtain SSI. There is only one thing that a doctor hears in such a conversation, is someone a threat to themselves or others although I do suspect that they would also intervene if someone was threatening to commit serious damage to property. I mean we do live in a Capitalistic society and it is vitally important to protect peoples shit, sorry I mean property.

So I spoke to Dro again today and explained that I had begun a fast as a political protest and that I had been unable to obtain services from Sonoma County Mental Health. I hang up and Dro calls me bad a couple of minutes later excitedly saying that he had called Sonoma County Mental Health and that they would be happy to talk to me immediately. After several rounds of prompting I agree and I call the number he provided. A man answered the phone saying "psychiatric emergencies" and I immediately hung up. Yes I was already aware that all I had to do was make a phone call and state that I was either at risk of harming myself or someone else. The inevitable response to such a call is would be that a team would immediately be dispatched to my apartment to assess whether I actually was at risk of harming myself or others and if so to hospitalize me. But I am NOT having a psychiatric emergency, I am not suicidal, gravely disabled or a threat to anyone else. I have a serious problem with sensory overload that is trapping me in my apartment. At the moment I'm not even sure how bad my sensory overload is at the moment because I am isolated in a very quiet place. I am no longer having visual sensory overload which is great and I might not even be having a problem with serious audio sensory overload at the moment. I may have the guts to go on a serious fast and I may have the courage to speak Truth to Power, but I am a complete chicken shit about leaving my apartment and going out into the community to see how bad my sensory overload is. I am quite happy to hunker down and hide in my quiet apartment. What I do need from Sonoma County Mental Health is a case worker to help me creatively problem solve how to obtain the services I need. They would be able to arrange for someone to drive me to a doctor so that I could obtain services. They would be able to connect up with a doctor so that I could get a single dose of a strong sedative/pain killer delivered to my home to temporarily suppress my sensory overload so I could see a doctor. They could probably even arrange for a doctor to visit me. What I DO NOT need is to be hospitalized in a noisy hospital in order to treat my inability to tolerate noise. I hope folks get my fundamental dilemma here because many of the mental health workers I talk to do not. I've been hospitalized before and their response to my pain at being unable to isolate myself from noise is to suck it up. Not exactly the level of medical intervention I need in order to get a handle on my sensory overload.

When all you have is a hammer, everything in the Universe looks like a nail. Hospitalization is the default option for doctors to invoke when they don't want to deal with a person. The first year I had a problem with serious sensory overload I went from doctor to doctor as the played hot potato with me because they did not understand what sensory overload was, in fact they had never heard of it. So they repeatedly tried to get me to hospitalize myself. The only problem was that I needed to be suicidal in order to be hospitalized, but I wasn't suicidal! So they would go on a fishing expedition asking me questions over and over again in different manners trying to get me to express an interest in killing myself. But I was not suicidal, I was suffering from sensory overload and was in great pain. I had a complete sensory meltdown where I couldn't stop crying and I was incapable of even calling a doctor much less making my way to a doctor on my own. So my roommate Andrew, who had a Master's degree in Psychology and who worked as a therapist drove me to see a doctor at Southwest Community Clinic. The doctor did not even know what sensory overload was, but did suggest hospitalization and repeatedly tried to get me to to admit I was thinking of killing myself. While I felt like I was dying, I has no intention of killing myself nor did I even have any suicidal idealization, the preliminary step on the road to suicide. After we returned home Andrew sat down with me and told me he had a difficult question to ask me. He told me that while I was seeing the doctor that a nurse came out and spoke to him and claimed that I was suicidal and that I owned a gun. I have rarely been so freaked out or felt so betrayed. I carefully explained to Andrew that I had never owned a gun, the idea of owning a gun was radically out of character for me as I was a deeply committed pacifist and that with my sensory overload I wouldn't even be able to handle the sound of a gun firing. I ended up going back to Southwest Community Clinic and speaking to Richard who ran the day to day operation of the clinic. I knew Richard personally and knew him to be a man of exceptional integrity so I explained what happened and asked him to look into the situation. A couple of weeks later Richard called me back with the results of his investigation and told me that he could find no evidence that anyone claimed that I had a gun. Had it been almost anyone else I would have escalated my concerns to the appropriate California regulatory body. But I had already raised my concerns to one of the most professional and moral people I had ever known. Given that Richard had intervened in the situation I simply had no one more honorable that I could take the issue up with. See, this is why we can't have nice things.