“Crazy-Know-How” has to be experienced.

Janov's Reflections on the Human Condition

How I Know About Psychosis      (Click to access!)

“Crazy-Know-How” has to be experienced.

I had an ambivalent relationship with alcohol right from my home. My religious parents never allowed intoxicating liquors whatsoever, which, during my adolescence, gave me a desire out of curiosity / opposition to test it. These tests showed, early on that my usually happy and open personality was depressed by alcohol. When many friends loosened their inhibitions with alcohol, it had the reverse effects on me. Decades later I understood that alcohol provoked memories in my traumatized / epileptic prone brain and body and triggered anxiety. To the extent that I could ignore the external pressure, to drink at social gatherings, it quickly became easy for me to give up drugs. It happened more than once that I watered a hostess’ plant with a drink, which I knew would bring my demons.

It is a remarkable insight into neurosis and madness to remember the unhappiness I once felt not to be able to tolerate alcohol. That way, I could not live up to the neurotic ideals that often prevail/d in many businesses; to be capable of withstanding large amounts of alcohol. This inability added a sense of humiliation and increased my stress due to my epileptic stigma. The consolation and “dividends” that I got in exchange for my sensitivity, and my escape from alcohol was that I did not have hangovers, and was always in great physical shape. Thanks to “Evolution in Reverse” they turned out to be my secret retirement savings.

I never tried marijuana except for when I passively inhaled and became high from marijuana smoke during a Count Basie concert 1979 in a packed Hollywood Bowl, when I was still on Carbamazepine / Tegretol. My respect for all kinds of drugs was too big to follow up on this euphoric experience, and / or my chemical antiepileptic “lobotomy” was too effective.

So how did I go crazy and open the gates to my horrifying pain? By applying reckless physical structural integration already in the late 70ies and by quitting my chemical lobotomy 20 years later. Both ways brought me to experiences that took me through hell. During hours, I felt crazy, mentally ill, had a sensation of dying, disappearing and being humiliated. It was like a feeling of  being burned living. I had a deep sense of “I cannot take this and I won’t make it”. 

The feelings of mental and physical ill-treatment had the rhythm and repetition of my birth primals, which are built up with pain, pressure and anesthesia, but during these occasions instead of hyperventilation, production of mucus, strangulation and being pulled out, followed by a baby cry, I had feelings of being mentally tortured. All feelings became distorted and twisted and turned against me in the most humiliating way. I felt to the marrow the significance of being mentally ill. Religious torture was included, and I was in subtle ways forced to accept what I did not believe in. It is difficult to judge how long the feelings lasted (I estimated two hours) or the equivalent of a birth primal (grand mal seizure).

I’m still amazed and thankful “someone” could “tango” me through all this!

Jan Johnsson