T elling me that I have a brain disease and that I should take medication does not solve my problems. When I was first given the label of “psychotic,” I’m not sure it really mattered to me what had caused it. What I heard was you telling me that I had a chronic disease. When I was a child, we called people with this disease “crazy.” “Crazy Annie” was the woman in our neighborhood who wore her winter coat all summer and usually had on a hat with flowers. “Crazy” was the tall man in the dark coat from down the street who would go into downtown traffic at Christmas time and start to direct the cars until the police took him away. “Crazy” was what landed people in the state hospital where men sat in bathrobes staring into space in a room with 50 beds: chair, bed, chair, bed. Whether it was a brain disease or not, I did not want to have a mental illness. Having a mental illness has put me in a strange relationship with myself. I’ve had experiences that are not like other people’s. Some people have told me that what I describe sounds like their experiences on acid, but there’s a difference. They did something to have those experiences. They created a chemical change in their bodies. My experiences happened without any outside catalyst that I can identify. In fact, they felt like me. When I think back to how I have been when I was psychotic, I identi-