Courageous Adventure

My son has schizophrenia. There was a time when music and his playing the guitar were as fluid and easy as breathing. Then one day the music stopped, and he was tormented instead by cruel voices. Medication after medication was tried but was no help. Eventually a powerful but carefully monitored medication did provide some relief. My son began to play music again and we both thought that maybe we could beat the odds. Maybe he could live a normal life.

Vocational Rehabilitation developed a plan and agreed to pay tuition at a fabulous school in Hollywood, California. My place of employment offered me a sabbatical to develop and explore the mental health system in California and compare it to New Mexico.

We were off to California with a trailer full of guitars and high hopes. Remarkably, services began to fall into place. SSI was $870/month and Metro passes for people with disabilities were $12/month. Personal care attendant services to help with getting to doctor appointments and assisting with daily living activities were assessed by one social worker visit and allotted in a few days. My son picked a schoolmate to be paid by the Personal Care Options (PCO) service.

The mental health clinic was punitive with guards scouring and confiscating anything electronic such as cameras, and guards escorting anyone who entered the clinic to the locked bathrooms, and all staff behind heavy duty plexi glass prison-type windows.

All of Hollywood was highly energized with 40 story billboards advertising the next Shrek movie and bigger than life marquees advertising the next Ryan Seacrest show. Everyone was filming something or being filmed.

The school was incredible with high tech equipment, recording studios, practice rooms, and students from around the world into singing, playing guitar, drums, bass, guitar repair, and recording.

Intensive interviews and testing rated my son's ability high and he excelled in almost all his classes. He was bumped ahead from beginning to intermediate and even then he was at the top of his classes. A month went by with everything going beautifully. Then the voices came back, and try as he might, they would not leave him alone. All day everyday they tormented him. Still he went to classes for 10 to 12 hours a day. Eventually the voices became unbearable and he made the decision to return home and be close to the people he loved. The last day he took pictures of all his new guitar-playing friends and teachers and he played a beautiful solo in one of his classes with tears in his eyes.

Was it worth it? You bet…even if it was to find out that his talent was as good as the best…and that the bluebird of happiness may be in our backyard in Albuquerque.