Thursday, November 4, 2010

The Madness...

On the way to New York, I was sitting besides a psychiatrist. I always thought that they are the kind of people who must hate their job. After seeing so many crazy people everyday and dealing with them, who wouldn't? But, like most other Americans, he enjoyed his job.

I had a nice discussion with him during the journey and got to know lot of interesting things. He said that most people become mad as they cannot achieve what they want in their lives. Or rather, they would not accept who they are or what they have become. It can happen to anybody who finds it difficult to digest failure (or rather be jealous of the success of others).

After this, I was curious and asked him how people who seem to lead a perfectly normal life turn wierd all of a sudden. He said the process of getting mad is similar to the thing that happens when people get drunk. When people get high, the part of the brain that regulates what you speak mellows down and you begin speaking what you really wanna speak, without filtering it.

Similar thing happens when you become mad. The difference is that when you are drunk, you get back to normalcy within a few hours, it's not the same when you turn mad. It's very difficult to come back to the state of normalcy for them. The worst part is no medicine can bring your brain back to normal, you yourself have to work your way out of it. Medicines can only temporarily put you to sleep or mellow you down, but not change anything. It is like taking painkiller, the pain is still there, just that you don't feel it. There is no standard way to bring things to normal, different things work out for different people.

He talked about some weird people that he treated. He had a patient who used to be normal all day and turn mad after 10 in the night. Some people turn mad when the come across a particular person or see a particular color or object. These are the type of people who are the most difficult to treat. Their brains are wired to think in a particular way. They have to be taught to unlearn that, which is very difficult. People are a lot more reluctant to change rather than they seem to be.

He says, the best part about his job is that a lot of people come back happily to him and thank him for bringing them to normalcy. According to him, a lot of doctors in other fields do not get credit for the job they do. People visit them in times of sickness and when they get well, there is no acknowledgement.

His happiness lies in the fact that he has brought lives of numerous people back to normalcy!

4 comments:

Gaurav DobhaL said...

You told him about enginnering?
No credit for job.
Turn mad after 5pm.
alcohol,smoke-temporary cure.
Permanent madness.
And we are not even in New York!

pratap said...

i dont think you should use psycho that liberally. It has a derogatory connotation

Sanket said...

Good one Gaurav!

@Pratap...Thanks for correcting, changes done.

anand said...

superlikes dobal's comments..

keep updating regularly my friend