Purgatory, bridge and the last night

All that I can say about mental health and psychiatry, I intend to describe in details in this story, which probably deserves, if not a Nobel Peace Prize or the Pulitzer Prize, then at least two or three mugs of beer, because my journalism was like high-grade Gonzo in conditions of state swings, despite the fact that I was a conscript, deprived of the will, rights and ability to resist.

Due to the statute of limitations and disappearance of that grandiose state formation from the historical arena, persecution of me on the facts from the past is unlikely. And, to be honest, that state mechanism was beaten by me, and, as you know, the winners are never judged.

The line of nuances I experienced then in that adventure, now seems to be quite tolerable, although with immersion in a special atmosphere of all-consuming excitement and ubiquitous bluff, like in an adventure movie. But, finally, I returned home as a man who had been in a concentration camp. The second photo attached to this publication, taken in the first weeks after returning from the Crimea at the end of 1991, confirms this. My weight was only 67 kilos with 190 sm of my high at that time.

So, here's what happened.

RESIDENTS OF AL ARAF

“They yearn to enter paradise, but their sins and virtues are evenly balanced. Yet with the mercy of God, they will be among the last people to enter paradise.”
Qur'an. Surah Al Araf. The People of Al-Araf (Purgatory)

Frankly speaking, I was an inhabitant of two psychiatric hospitals since July to November 1991. First in the civilian, and then in the military. It was interesting and curious. There was no fear. Because all this was part of a series of events flowing one from the other, which could be influenced with difficulty. However, something saved me from the danger of hitting my head against pitfalls or crashing against icebergs and drowning in the abyss of system labyrinths.

And, objectively speaking, this adventure of mine had nothing to do with my mental condition. This was an adventure that itched in my memory for a long time, demanding its own textual fixation. But, the intention was always at the wrong place and time to tell everything. The legs of this (adventure) grew out of the previous Gonzo practice, which happened on the eve of the calling of me into the ranks of the USSR Armed Forces. By the will of fate, it (the previous Gonzo practice) became for me the first urge to become a journalist and something like the heavy brick that falls to a passerby on the head from a construction site  (see http://proza.ru/2016/12/19/125 ). In fact, my journalism in the format of total participant observation began with that previous case.

Having escaped one Gonzo-esque circumstance, I found myself in another: performing my military duty in the armed forces of the USSR. I was conscripted in the last round of military service before the fall of the Soviet Union, when the continents still stood in their traditional places and the program "Serving the Soviet Union!" blared fanfares on TV every Sunday.

After a seven-day train journey from Alma-Ata (former name of Almaty), I arrived in Sevastopol with other bald conscripts my age. Our train was slow and compliant, allowing even postal and freight trains to pass us. As luck would have it, I was assigned to the elite troops of the USSR - the marines - and specifically to the Brigade of Marines named after the 60th anniversary of the formation of the USSR, in the Crimea near Sevastopol in the Cossack Bay.

Initially, I refused the offer of a special recruiter who had reviewed my case and offered me a job at a military printing house as a journalist and assistant. Instead, I longed for romance and valorous service, like those depicted in Soviet and American movies about marines.

After a few weeks of physical training and basic instruction on small arms and special weapons, I was assigned to a special anti-aircraft missile platoon of A-company in the third battalion. The service wasn't too difficult, despite occasional clashes with soldiers who were six months older in other military units. This was the law of the military jungle, which my upbringing in Almaty had prepared me for, but I didn't expect any support.

Two months into my time as a sailor in the Marine Corps, my commander, the head of the separate anti-aircraft missile platoon, promised me a promotion to his deputy platoon and eventual elevation to sergeant. However, I grew alarmed by the fuss over my placement within the structure of the military and the people in uniform with high ranks who wanted to put me in a position without my consent. I was barely understanding what was happening and realized the dubious ethical content of it all.

The situation came to a head when an order arrived from Moscow to form a special company of newly conscripted sailors to protect the first person of the USSR, who was expected to arrive on vacation in Crimea. We were told that we would be sent to Cape Foros, not far from Sevastopol, to guard the residence of Mikhail Gorbachev.

However, as it turned out a little bit later, a parallel command came from Moscow against this background due to the actions of the Crimean Tatars near Simferopol, where they began to return from many years of exile in Siberia on the wave of liberalization and other Gorbachev's innovations. In other words, the military authorities decided to suppress the returnees, who, against the background of the visit of the first person of the state, created a scandalous situation. In fact, some big people in military authorities decided to throw us, who were armed to the teeth, into an open field near Simferopol and disperse the protesters using firearms.

Even with those young brains, not yet disfigured by intellect, I was tormented by the issue of participation in such an operation against a kindred Turkic-speaking people. I have already been a bit privy to historical contexts, as confrontation on the ideological front grew. To openly oppose the military machine with all the bureaucratic mechanisms was like death. This would immediately lead to a disciplinary battalion or a prison term with tuberculosis in addition and other delights of imprisonment.

For me was necessary a consultation and a search for the least costly ways out of the situation that was developing at that time. I connected with one unspoken adviser from among the sailors in the sanitary unit. He told me that feigning any illness would not help. Colds, dysentery, and any infections can be cured by military doctors in a couple of days, even on the march. He recommended me to break your arm/leg or swallow potassium permanganate to make an ulcer. But, I myself have already refused this, realizing that I do not need disability in the future.

Then, the orderly, listening to my moral-ethical torments, the adviser suggested to me a simulation of a mental disorder or drug addiction. Then, be listening to my moral and ethical torments, the consultant offered me a simulation of a mental disorder or drug addiction.  But, at the same time, he warned me that if psychologists found that I was mentally healthy, then I would have to spend several years in a disciplinary battalion or in a civilian prison.  If they don’t find out, then I will have to be a regular visitor to psycho-neurological dispensaries all my life, wherever I live in the USSR further.

In his opinion and as I understood it, simulating drug addiction seemed easier than exposing it without a special investigation. To support his argument, my expert referred to previous cases involving sailors who returned home apparently healthy, enjoying their mother's pies and fresh apple compote. Later, when they registered at a drug dispensary, they easily disavowed any addiction, providing proof that they were not dependent on drugs. This appeared to be a plausible option to me.

The consultant gave me a needle and recommended that I create several wounds in the inside elbow bend where veins are usually located before the arrival of the head physician or the doctor on duty. He asked me to hold my hands out in front of me and, without warning, struck the same spot forcefully with a metal ruler. The impact caused hematomas to form over the scratched wounds, making me indistinguishable from a drug addict. I had all the necessary evidence. All that remained was for me to display my acting skills.

Once I had managed to cope with the burning pain, the doctor on duty entered the emergency room just in time. I had no choice but to simulate withdrawal symptoms with groans and eye rolls. When he asked what was wrong with me, I told him that I urgently needed a dose. He had never encountered such cases in elite troops and did not inquire about the drug I needed, which made me happy because I did not know the details of the chosen disguise.

I was immediately transported in a "Loaf," a small ambulance bus model that Soviet people aptly named. I was taken to a military hospital in Sevastopol. However, at that very moment, the affective pathology department was overflowing with more serious patients with suicidal tendencies and genuine mental illnesses. Therefore, all soldiers and sailors who were alcoholics, drug addicts, toxicomanias, or faking their conditions were transferred to a civilian psychiatric hospital in Sevastopol.

Thus, I ended up in the Sevastopol civil psychiatric hospital, where soldiers and sailors were viewed as mere extras. However, in my opinion, among the total number of military personnel, there were some very serious cases that deserved detailed study and close attention from psychiatrists.

For example, several sailors of the military medical service robbed a military warehouse of medicines, tried everything they considered necessary, and went with weapons to seize another warehouse of medicines. One soldier who was called to serve in the army without one finger was seriously addicted to toluene, acetone, and gasoline. Several Coast Guard soldiers, in a state of severe alcohol intoxication from technical surrogates of ethyl alcohol, which are used to wipe searchlights, injured their commanders. Another soldier, who was already in a mental hospital, persuaded weak-willed patients to satisfy his sexual needs. By the way, with his antics, he reminded us very much of Launchpad McQuack from DuckTales, who could never land his plane without problems. So the nickname Launchpad stuck to him.

Nevertheless, life in a civilian psychiatric hospital was very different for all soldiers and sailors from the life of civilians. The head physician of the department was on vacation or in the process of preparing for the defense of a dissertation, and we were given free exit from the building of the psychiatric hospital and the opportunity to walk around the surrounding gardens and cottages, albeit in medical pajamas.

It was not close to the sea, and therefore, as young organisms that require vitamins and fresh fruits in their diet, we stripped all the nearest gardens and plantings in summer cottages of Sevastopolians within walking distance for three to four hours at a quick pace, without any impulses to walk to the sea and be caught by the patrol of the commandant's office.

During the period of free exit, I had the opportunity to communicate with various friends in that tragicomic situation. One of them was Edik, whom I remember as an Ossetian from the Abkhazian Tkvarcheli city. And also by the fact that his elder brother came to visit him in that psychiatric hospital with courtesy. According to the local Abkhazian hierarchical acts of initiation, that elder brother received the status of a "half-thief".

In the criminal hierarchy of Abkhazia, such an important title is one step away from the status of "thief in law." That brother brought to Edik a handmade bronze-brass pectoral cross, as a symbol of his exaltation, from among the so-called crafts of prison masters. That artwork was stylistically something like a mix of Gothic classics and famous samples of medals from kefir bottle caps, and was a masterpiece, no less!

Sevastopol and Crimea as a whole are fertile lands, with many things growing on bare stones and shell rock, all of which taste great and are fragrant. With Edik and other sailor soldiers, we often climbed almond trees that grew in the park near the psychiatric hospital and enjoyed eating their fruits while swaying in the wind on the tree trunks, as if on stilts without support. During one of these conversations, Edik spoke about the rise of his brother and the tradition of giving something valuable to a younger relative.

I do not remember why or how Edik ended up in a civil psychiatric hospital, but it was likely due to a similar detachment from reality as many of us at that time. I don't know if he is alive now after the Georgian-Abkhaz war and other events in Abkhazia.

During one of our regular walks in the remote vicinity of the clinic, my Kazakh countryman from Jambul (now called Taraz) and I found a hemp plantation on one of the cottage plots. Whether it was a random or a purposeful planting is almost impossible to determine now. However, since we were both familiar with the methods of determining its potential, it was not difficult for us to confirm and collect the optimal amount of this miracle plant.

We brought it (referring to the hemp) into the psychiatric hospital and smoked with all the civilian patients in the men's department of the clinic at night. It was a Sunday and all the clinic staff had already gone home. The orderlies on duty had gone to play cards and drink beer. Therefore, the party from the movie "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" then immediately lost to us, and turned into a naive melodrama in comparison to how much fun we had that evening. It became clear how people change, moving from one doomed state without hope to a new one.

After that, Danila, a large Ukrainian peasant, contacted me every day, requesting that I invite him to my place and show him where the Chui Valley is located in Kazakhstan, when I arrive in Alma-Ata.

Then, after long stressful situations, he smiled for the first time. The fact was that in a fit of rage, he broke the jaw of his mother-in-law, who had long tormented him with her attacks and accusations that he was not worthy of her daughter. After that incident, the mother-in-law and her daughter wrote a statement to the court about his incapacity and sued for his apartment without his presence. Danila's sister had announced this about a month before the smoking incident, and he had been plunged into serious thoughts from which he only emerged after our “festival.”

The next morning, the staff, suspecting nothing, let us out for a free walk again. We went to the treasured place and collected the rest of the hemp. I returned to the department with bulging pockets, red eyes, and a smile from ear to ear. The orderlies, sensing that something was wrong, searched us and found everything we had naively tried to bring inside. In addition, some of the respectable patients, who felt obliged to report what had happened the day before, informed the orderlies about the previous night's festival in a timely manner.

The orderlies beat me professionally, not as a patient, but as a rogue who had undermined their trust. I was saved from further beatings by the intercession of a criminal authority who was undergoing examination to avoid conviction and imprisonment. He said that I had carried everything I had in my pockets to him and to Romanian. Since he and Romanian were held in high esteem by everyone, there were no further sanctions against me.

By the way, there's a Russian movie called "I" in which a Russian soldier tries to avoid military service through the same institution. To be honest, the film is dark and dirty and doesn't fully convey the brightness of possible storylines. However, it is about that psychiatric department, and in particular, about the Romanian.

Alexei Gorbunov's performance is noteworthy, and the Romanian character is quite similar to the real prototype. However, the movie doesn't fully capture the real Romanian's character. He should be shown with gray hippie hair, prison-religious tattoos, gold and silver chains, crosses and amulets, with "dedicating" tattoos on his fingers, as well as silver rings with gems, wearing a Soviet leotard with "bubbles" and flip flops on his feet with rope tattoos, and two ampoules of opiates wrapped every time into his underwear.

Furthermore, the director of "I," Igor Voloshin, admitted that the film was inspired by the memories of another Russian director, Alexei Balabanov, as well as a number of artificially synthesized trends.

Although Balabanov is significantly older than me (he was born in 1959, while I was born in 1973), the storyline implies the Romanian and some nuances from observations and information relevant to my period. I fully admit that there is a small piece of Balabanov's memories in addition to a fat cigarette with this magic. Voloshin extracted the real Romanian from his own infosphere since he himself comes from Sevastopol. The myth about the Romanian had likely been circulating and synthesized for a long time in the Sevastopol infosphere, which actually legendized his special persona. Moreover, the mystical symbolism of the nickname "Romanian" even reached Alma-Ata in the early 80s, but without the original Sevastopolian context.

According to the movie's storyline, the romantic character of the Romanian ends up in a psychiatric hospital for murdering a number of police officers who dealt with his beloved girlfriend. They destroyed the romantic mood of the Romanian as a possible law-abiding citizen of the Soviet Motherland. He was given capital punishment for the fact of killing policemen, but the sentence was later replaced with a psychiatric hospital as a measure to compensate for the balance of mystical justice.

In reality, all I managed to find out about the Romanian person were the rumors that he really killed a cop, but why this happened was not clear.

He taught me how to play poker with two sets of dominoes and was also the first one who came to me and talked to me when I was tied to the bed for the first time. He watched over me in a state of "abstinence", to see if I would destroy everything and become rowdy.

Later, I noticed that he enjoyed his very privileged position as a "perpetual guest." In particular, medical opiates were given to him in ampoules on his hands without any prescription, and he supplemented his "impressions" of them with several tranquilizer pills, which, according to him, helped him to contact with something.

Later, when I brought the "magic herb" to the clinic for the second time, and with the support of the criminal authority Lionia from the third ward, I managed to turn it into currency. I exchanged some part of it for tranquilizers from the Romanian to get to know those with whom he contacts sometimes. The borderline state with visions and images and thoughts entangled in the abundant stream of consciousness did not impress me much.

The second ward was the basic gateway to the psychiatric universe, and my episode of purgatory in that clinic began precisely with the "gateway". For some reason, all new arrivals began their epics from this ward because both the staff and the earlier patients were looking at them and into their souls. I found out why new arrivals were placed immediately in the second ward, and not in the first, which was like the entrance doors to the department, a little later.

The next step was ward number three, which traditionally housed criminal patients who needed a proper medical report to avoid serious persecution. Patients without disorders were also placed there for testing for social adequacy. As you know, the criminal environment requires compliance with a number of codes of conduct and socialization.


Long before my release and on the third day after entering the clinic, I found myself in the third ward. At the entrance to the ward lay a damp rectangular piece of cloth on which I wiped my flip-flops when I entered. At the same time, I said a little of what I remembered from my Tatar grandmother, who had said it many times at important moments: “Bismillahi Rahmani Rakhim. Amen." This ritual of mine made an impression on Lionya, who was the criminal authority that inspired respect from everyone. Among others, I met a young window thief who was barely 16 and who once opened up and instructed himself to me: "Rafa, if you go to an apartment, go alone! You can't trust any of your accomplices!"

Starting from the third ward, I was allowed to leave the civil hospital because I showed neither violence nor delusion. I was offered a choice: attend therapeutic treatment procedures or follow the mental patients and glue boxes for toys to contribute to the economic viability of the Soviet system or simply walk on hundreds of hectares of park areas and empty cottages of Soviet citizens. Why were the cottages and garden plots empty without people? Because all Soviet people were working for the Soviet Motherland during the day.

Of course, I and my fellow servicemen chose the last option.

However, after being caught with an excess of weed in our pockets, we lost the ability to leave the clinic. By that time, only three or four people, including me, remained from the soldiers and sailors. The rest were taken away, some to the military commandant's office, and some back to their military units.

But we were taken for treatments: Charcot shower, electric massage masks, mud baths, and a swimming pool no more than one and a half meters deep. The food was excellent, and the medical supply, unlike civilian patients, was only vitamins. I was transferred from ward to ward until I reached the 11th ward in a row. By the way, when I was in ward No. 6, I did not find anything Chekhovian about it at that time. The increase in the ward numbers indicated that the people arriving in them were being prepared for discharge.

Despite the closed mode, we have not diminished our adventures. In particular, it is necessary to draw the reader's attention to a soldier from the construction battalion named Launchpad, who was caught with one of his lovers engaging in same-sex pleasures. As punishment, he was injected with haloperidol by medics and placed in the first ward, where patients with severe forms of disorders, but not violent ones, were housed.

Haloperidol is used as a treatment for schizophrenia, manic states, delusional disorders, oligophrenic and involutional epileptiform and alcoholic psychoses, and other diseases accompanied by hallucinations and psychomotor agitation. The next day, Launchpad showed up for lunch from the first ward in a natural state for someone who had been injected with haloperidol: his head was thrown back with the back of his head resting on his upper back, and his tongue crawled out of his mouth to his chest's nipples. He stayed in such a "reduced" and frozen state for a couple of days until the head physician, who returned from vacation, took pity on him and prescribed a single dose of some tranquilizer that eliminated the effect of the haloperidol treatment.

On the morning of August 19, 1991, the putsch broke out in the USSR, and Gorbachev, whom I was originally supposed to protect along with his professional presidential guard, was surrounded by troops controlled by the putschists.

From the hall of the dining room on the fifth floor of the civil psychiatric hospital, I could see the Kuznetsov aircraft-carrying cruiser standing on the repair roadstead, occupying the entire horizon. For some reason, this monster-miscarriage of the Soviet military industry was on fire, and black smoke from it covered the entire panorama of the sea to the horizon. On TV, none of the four channels showed anything but a recording of the ballet "Swan Lake."

Somewhere around the same time, one of the long-term guests of the first ward of the men's department of that clinic died, someone with the family name Sorokin. He was placed as a child either in Auschwitz or Buchenwald and suffered a lot of bullying and experiments on himself. After the victory over fascism, he never returned to a healthy life. By old age, his serious mental problems worsened, and his relatives decided to place him in the clinic. According to the nurses, they simply forgot him there, getting rid of their worries.

During his lifetime, he always looked like a concentration camp prisoner. A peculiar grotesque was given to him by pajamas with vertical dark and bright stripes. He always stayed in the first ward, along with the same abandoned old people who either had a neoplasm on the whole top of their head with roots in the brain, or cancer on the whole cheek and everything fell out when they ate, and potent drugs were injected in horse doses for pain.

A couple of weeks after the failed coup, the head physician of the department decided to find a final conclusion for me that would decide my fate. Since I did not have the practical skills of feigning the use of hard drugs, I did not succeed in successfully fooling the civilian medical professionals.

Thus, I had to return to my military unit where, in all likelihood, a tribunal and a disciplinary battalion awaited me at best. All my attempts to appeal to the head physician's sympathy and focus on the situation with the old-timers did not lead to the desired result. The tactic was unsuccessful. His conclusion was inexorable: to send me back to the unit. He wrote something in my case and reluctantly informed me that the next day I would be leaving to continue paying my debt to the motherland.

On the last evening, another inmate of the psychiatric hospital, with whom I was in ward 11, advised me to do everything possible to avoid returning to service, because ideological conflicts had begun between Russians and Ukrainians, and things were either heading towards civil war or the collapse of the country.

"Rafa, keep pretending! Do you see what's going on?! Do you need it? Do you want to be cannon fodder? I'll give you a syringe, put it in a small bag and fasten it with a pin inside your underpants. And when you are taken to the unit, you will be undressed for inspection, and they will find the package. And then you just have to play along again!", the well-wisher insisted. "But with me, there will be a medical conclusion that I am a malingerer! And I will not be able to peddle the same theme again!", I doubted. "Don't worry, when they see the hidden syringe, there will be no question of any conclusion!", the neighbor said categorically.

In confirmation of this, the leaders of the union republics began to broadcast statements about self-determination on the restored TV set. The parade of sovereignties had begun.

AS SIRAT

As-Sirat is said to be thinner than a strand of hair and as sharp as the sharpest knife or sword (because of its danger). Below this path are the fires of Hell, which burn the sinners to make them fall. Those who performed acts of goodness in their lives are transported across the path in speeds according to their deeds leading them to the Hawd al-Kawthar, the Lake of Abundance.
Sahih-i Muslim, M4730

Upon returning to the medical unit of the Marine Corps Brigade named after 60 years of the formation of the USSR, I ran into the same doctor who sent me to a psychiatric hospital for the first time. He probably had some prejudice towards the representatives of the Central Asian region, believing that all Asians are treacherous and dangerous. And when I was undressed for examination and search, I played along with him, telling that life in a civilian clinic is very unbridled and I have not changed at all, but rather fell into a deep dark abyss with my head.

My simulation behavior frightened him again, and he, once again, sent me to the hospital by medical car. This time I got to where I did not expect to be at all.

It was called the Department of Affective Pathology of the Pirogov Hospital in Sevastopol city. And, the institution was with the strictest regime rules and conditions.

First, it was an absolutely closed space with several degrees of clearance. Second, there were three orderlies as three soldiers of the medical service: Seva, Misha, Kolya (there are doubts about this name, perhaps his name was Senya). They were moderately educated and impressively physically built, well-fed enough that they could break any resistance if it erupted to the surface from the souls of soldiers, sailors and violent officers who had lost their contact with reality.

The three-faced Cerberus were three-faced Ukrainians by origin, but from different parts of the Soviet republic. Misha was a Greco-Roman wrestler from somewhere in Donetsk who admired Bolat Turlykhanov; Seva was a medical student from Kyiv, basically educated by good teachers of humanitarian disciplines; and Kolya/Seva was from Western Ukraine. In my opinion, he was a future engineer or specialist in something agricultural. All of them were good-natured, and in their own way, understandable if you followed their rules. I taught all of them how to make chips and dice from bread pulp, salt, and different colored ink, and of course, I also taught them to play the board game "mandavoshka" (such an understandable jail game) with all those elements. All of this created some preferences without regular beatings for me. There weren't any other entertainments except for the three-faced Cerberus to create nightmares for new incoming patients.

Third, that medical and regimen atmosphere could break anyone there, especially in the regime part of the department. There was lightning switched on all day and night, and the windows were with thick reinforced frosted dark-colored glass, which did not make it clear what time of day it was outside the walls of that dwelling of Dr. Mengele. There was a corridor that connected all main corners by blind doors, locked with special keys.

Patients who were in the regime part of this perimeter, tied to beds and injected with drugs that were frightening in their effect, could only hope for a miracle if their minds were yet whole. Fourth, the head of the department was a certain Colonel Oborkin, whose signature about my unfitness for military service was embodied in a medical report that became the only reason for my commission from the active Soviet Army later.

As it turned out several days after my first meeting with him, Colonel Oborkin and I were countrymen. He was either a native Almaty citizen or moved there as a child during the WWII evacuation. But despite the nostalgic lyrics that flooded over me, he tried to break me stubbornly and purposefully most of the time I was there.

From the first minutes of my stay in the department, the staff received the go-ahead from Colonel Oborkin, and I was rudely and energetically forced onto my stomach and tied to the metal bed by the brave orderlies. One middle-aged nurse then injected me with about 80 ml of a gray-yellow suspension of sulfazine from four 20 ml syringes. After this, I was immediately turned over on my back and tied by my hands and legs to the metal bed.

According to Oborkin's plan, 20 ml of sulfazine in both buttocks and under both shoulder blades was supposed to be the therapy that could break any crazy monster or simulator hoping to bypass the monolith of the Soviet system. However, it was not a cure for mental therapy. It was most likely a way of intimidation and physical torment. Although, I suppose, with all the torment I endured, it later became a useful attack on my immunity.

The result of such injections was a general condition resembling a severe infectious disease. There was hellishness throughout my whole body, and my body temperature balanced on the verge of 42°C.

Under the conditions of Soviet punitive psychiatry, sulfazine was used as a punishment measure against political dissidents. The effectiveness of sulfazine in modern medical environments is highly questioned, and there are no serious studies confirming its therapeutic activity at the biochemical or electro-physiological level.

The orderlies only untied me when my bladder was already on the verge of exploding, and only during the morning, noon, and evening special times. At the same time, it took incredible effort to get out of bed due to terrible pains all over my body, especially at the injection areas. For a couple of minutes after untying, under the screams of the orderlies and the prodding of a nurse, I had to try to roll over onto my left or right side, depending on the position in which I was tied earlier.

If the day before I was tied with my head to the door, then I had to turn to the right side, and to the left if I lay with my feet toward the exit. Each time it was necessary to turn around for so long because my body did not obey, and any movement brought unbearable pain. When turning to the side, I always managed to put my hand under me and sit on the bed, which made it easier to stand up. However, no one showed any intention to help.

My roommates were also tied up. The orderlies smiled, and the nurses looked on cynically. After that, I still had to go to the toilet and reach my urogenital accessories with my non-rotating hands. In this state, I always wanted just an apple, but it was impossible to find one. Several times, in such an ugly condition, Oborkin called me to his office. His sarcastic smile encouraged me and testified that he would play by my rules anyway.

In his office, he had an explanatory conversation with me. He said it would be better if I admitted my shortsightedness and renounced my beliefs. Then they would take pity on me and appoint a short punishment in the disciplinary battalion. I replied, "Comrade Colonel, you can see that I am a drug addict and incapable of performing tasks that are too much for me." Thus was the trade. He had to convince me to accept my fate, and I had to stand my ground.

In the end, he changed tactics: "Even if I can't prove anything to you, you will have to be registered in a psychiatric hospital and a drug dispensary for the rest of your life up to 45 years." I replied, "Only God knows what will happen next." But this did not stop him, and I was injected with horse doses of chlorpromazine three times a day, which lowered my blood pressure, caused constant dryness in my mouth, and extinguished any inciting desire for mental activity.

It got to the point that my tongue and mucous membranes cracked in several places in my mouth due to the dryness that chlorpromazine caused. And my buttocks felt like a sieve from a shotgun blast. The underpants issued in the army once a week, after a couple of weeks of such therapy, were covered with red-brown stripes due to the ichor flowing from my buttocks.

What remained of the muscles at the injection sites stopped absorbing the disgusting solution injected through the injections. Immediately after the injections, the solution erupted outward in pink fountains. Despite my repeated appeals to the nurses to reduce the dose and stop the execution, they referred me to the head of the department and continued to inject me under the supervision of the orderlies.

There were three wards in that gloomy compartment of the department. The first ward housed civilian youths who were determined to avoid military service and who were present there by agreement between their parents and Oborkin or superiors above him. No means were applied to them.

From outside, relatives gave them fresh food and cones of Crimean hemp, which they smoked in the toilet before going to bed with permission from the orderlies. An officer with delirium tremens was placed in the ward with me, or perhaps his wife had poured henbane on him (more on henbane below). According to this major, the orderlies talked about the situation that had arisen between him and Oborkin. That officer entered the department in an uncontrolled state with wild eyes, and the orderlies left him in the corridor in front of Colonel Oborkin's office, where he tried to breathe air from the open window.

The deep breaths and soothing exhalations, like those practiced by Shaolin monks, rather alarmed the head of the department who suddenly appeared and allowed himself to yell at the meditating Major. The latter, seizing a chair, began to chase after Oborkin, whose voice was heard in all parts of the department of affective pathology, and possibly, outside of it.

The orderlies managed to twist the major and tie him to the bed, saving the situation, after which he was immediately injected with a horse dose of sulfazine. To my surprise, the dose that turned me into a wreck only affected the major with a slight increase in temperature.

And in the third ward, among other not-so-memorable characters, there was a silent and emaciated boy named Kolya, who did not talk to anyone and hardly reacted to any appeals or commands. Colonel Oborkin thought that Kolya was a malingerer and injected him several times with sulfazine. For his low ability to communicate, he was beaten several times by orderlies, who were infuriated by Kolya's gaze into nowhere. They turned to him, and he almost always stayed in Neverland. In all likelihood, such a dismissive attitude towards this soldier came from the head of the department, and the orderlies, like his faithful dogs, barked and gnawed at those whom their master pointed out.

But once Oborkin drew attention to a lost sheet of analysis, which came with a month's delay. It clearly determined the low level of insulin in Kolya's body and the high sugar content. In fact, Kolya was in a near-coma all the time.

After insulin therapy, Kolya's cheeks filled out, and his body, which had looked like it came from "Buchenwald," began to acquire healthy proportions. Some time later, after his long silence, his parents found out about the fate of their son. They rushed to see him, and he was safely discharged for health reasons. But a week later, we found out that Kolya had not made it home and had died.

Meanwhile, the inter-ethnic conflict between Russian and Ukrainian personnel in the department intensified more and more. With each new discussion of pressing political and social issues, passions grew in intensity. Against this background, Oborkin, in all likelihood, woke up from a Soviet dream and began to notice reality.

Perhaps by that time, he had begun to repent for the mistake in the case of Kolya, whom he pushed with his appointments and orders for orderlies and other medical staff. Probably, this prompted him to change his attitude towards me, among others. After two months of chlorpromazine therapy, with which he intended to exhaust me, and periodic persuasion sessions, he probably began to wonder if he was moving in the right direction.

Interviews with me became more frequent, but the colonel's voice was no longer harsh. During our meetings, he probed my mental state. It was then that I recalled the story the orderlies had told me about the delirious major who had chased Oborkin with a chair. At several of these interviews, I had to hold onto the back of the chairs in the colonel's office when standing up or sitting down. Every time, I felt the unbearable weight of those chairs.

As the Cerberus orderlies later explained to me, all canvas-covered chairs had a special niche in which 20 bricks were placed. Thus, it was impossible to lift such a chair with ease using one or two hands. This was done intentionally in case of violent patients who were ready to direct their aggression towards Oborkin. According to the orderlies, Oborkin had been numb with fear for a moment when he saw the delirious major effortlessly lift such a chair with one hand and run towards him.

The day came when Oborkin condescended to look at the effects of chlorpromazine therapy on my buttocks. By that time, I could not sit due to obvious reasons. The injections were stopped, and I was transferred from the casemate to a common compartment with other patients, similar to a hospital ward. There were saucers with napkins on the bedside tables, and on them were clean glasses to pour water from a decanter whenever desired. In that compartment, there was a TV and windows facing an inner courtyard, which had a “rock garden” in Soviet style. It was simple, with strips of gravel and rubble on which yellowing leaves crumbled. It was already October, and the radiators were getting warm.

No one could convince me that I had done wrong by refusing to participate in the suppression of the Crimean Tatars. There were no nurses in my compartment, and the environment was almost glamorous. There was a lieutenant who had been driven out of his mental state by Hare Krishnas and constantly quoted the Bhagavad-Gita. There was also a civilian alcoholic businessman who was being prepared for a “stitching” operation, meaning an ampoule with some active substance had to be sewn into one of his buttocks. Several days later, the ampoule was sewn in, and during the test for the smell of alcohol, he emptied his entire stomach into a bucket prepared for him.

Another guest in my bright chamber was a lieutenant colonel whose negligence led to the death of his subordinates. He didn't reveal the details of the incident, but it was evident that he expected a favorable verdict in his examination. However, to my surprise, he didn't receive one and was most likely sent to a less remote location under escort.

A noteworthy incident occurred when very young cadets from the Nakhimov Naval Military School were brought to the adjacent ward. They were mere creatures with only the reflexes of worms. As it turned out, these minors had experimented with henbane. While in Central Asian tradition hemp is fried in oil and sugar to produce narco-baklava, in Sevastopol the cadets decided to do the same with henbane. However, such "food" doesn't take effect immediately.

Therefore, the cadets felt that they had not consumed enough and doubled their dosage. But the active phase still didn't arrive, even after the first dose. Subsequently, they quadrupled the amount they had ingested. By this time, the first wave had already hit them. To celebrate it, they added a couple more spoonfuls of the "goodies." And then something happened! For the next two weeks, they writhed like four worms in human form, crawling under the beds of the neighboring ward and scanning the room like cats in an attempt to spot a ghost. Oborkin didn't subject them to any terrifying psychological treatments because they were underage. Crimes against minors in the USSR were punished to the fullest extent, so the worm-vegetables spent two weeks without any shocks.

There was a TV in this section of the department, and they were allowed to watch Moscow television's "TIME" program on it. On October 18, 1991, the final meeting of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR took place. The next day, I was permitted to leave the closed department for the first time to hand over soiled linen and receive a new batch of laundered linen. Before that, one of the nurses and orderly Misha hinted that I should walk by the mailbox and that I should send news home. Misha also added that my family was waiting for me at home and that I could give them hope that I would soon return.

Then, someone from the patients gave me a postcard and an envelope with stamps from their stock. I wrote a letter and sent it. I knew that the letters would be opened and read, but I allegorically informed my mother and sister that I might see them soon. Before that, I wrote a letter to them from the Sevastopol civilian clinic, which was also encouraging. However, after that, I disappeared for a long time.

After two months of total isolation, I still eagerly absorbed information from the TV. Among other things, I had conversations with a patient named Alyosha, who was the same age as me, and for whom I had compassion. He was a sailor on the aircraft-carrying cruiser Kuznetsov, originally from Novosibirsk, and had suffered horrors among the old-timers.

The thing was that being a draftee of the same conscription as me, but unlike me, he got a sailor status in the ship's crew. Traditionally, such a contingent served for three years due to the need for detailed familiarization and study of all equipment and weapons on the ship. However, in 1991, a new order came into force, transferring newly incoming conscripts to a two-year term of service.

Thus, in fact, it was stated that the previous two military drafts would be demobilized six months and a year later, respectively. Naturally, this was the reason for the old-timers to take out their grievances on the new sailors. Bullying took on terrible forms and mass character. According to Alyosha, the sailors of the new draft began to disappear in the lower compartments of the cruiser, and his senior comrades beat him day by day. Once Alyosha, unable to bear this, cut his veins.

At the end of October 1991, seeing that Azerbaijan was claiming sovereignty, and then Turkmenistan, Alyosha asked me if I would like my native Kazakhstan to also become independent. I replied that I would be happy about it, and then I began to develop the topic. Alyosha was deeply shocked, and there was no more place left for the former hostile relations between us.

In the meantime, on October 24, 1991, the Agency for the Protection of State Secrets in the Mass Media, which was the last censorship body in the USSR, was liquidated based on a resolution of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR of October 15 and an order of the USSR Ministry of Information and Press of October 24. At the same time, Colonel Oborkin informed me that a commission would be waiting for me in the next few days, which would decide my future fate.

Between the lines, he allegorically let me understand that I would be sent home under a specially designed demobilization article 6B. This meant that I had achieved my goal. The committee meeting came later than I had expected, closer to the middle of November. All this time, I continued to eat, drink, defecate, and watch TV without any drug therapy.

By that time, the Yugoslav war was already in full swing, and the President of the Russian Federation Boris Yeltsin had issued the Decree "On the activities of the CPSU and the Communist Party of the RSFSR," prohibiting their activities. He also signed a package of ten presidential decrees and government decrees related to Russia's transition to a market economy, and the Government of Russia adopted a resolution "On measures to liberalize prices." It was a chaotic time, but in the midst of the chaos, hopes glimmered in people's souls - some for a new life, others for revenge.

FINAL FEAST and LAST NIGHT

I didn’t know what was going on in my republic, but I hoped that when I returned, I, along with the whole country, would live a different, happier life where I could apply my creative abilities and receive a worthy reward for them. At that time, I naively believed that all the evil was over and nothing else would interfere with the infinity of light and good. Now, looking back at the 31 years I have lived since then, I understand how drunk I was with hopes, and we were all deceived by circumstances.

By mid-November, I was taken to a military unit near Cossack Bay. One of my colleagues, named Kot, looked at me as an ideological enemy. The other, who was a year older than Kot and was already packing his things and preparing for demobilization, pulled Kot aside and drew his attention to me, saying, "He is not a traitor, but you are a fool! You still have a year to serve, and he came much later than you, and now he leaves after serving only 8 months in this two-year slavery." Kot did not understand what was being said to him, which, in my opinion, made him hate me even more.

The next day, I was sent to Simferopol. As it turned out, in my absence, I was transferred to another military unit to avoid casting a shadow on the elite Soviet troops. The new unit was not far from the peninsula's capital and was classified as a motorized rifle unit. From there, I had to return home.

In the same place, the military clerks did not forget to issue me a military and escort certificate according to all the rules. They attached a young lieutenant, who had graduated from a military school a couple of years ago and had just married, as my escort. They gave him travel funds and sent me home with him.

The way to Alma-Ata with the escort ran along a different route with additional adventures. It was only possible to get there through a detour route, passing through the Siberian and Altai blizzard stations. During that short period of time, I gave the lieutenant the funds paid to me by the Marine Corps Brigade that had accumulated during my six months of absence. He understood that his life was difficult, his family was young, his salary was meager, and the rise in prices for everything was catastrophic. He did not forget to take a receipt from me that I transferred the money to him free of charge, taking into account the circumstances that we invented together.

He was overjoyed. He had been worried about the timeliness of the route reports and had been tormented by the fear that he would not be able to save the funds allocated to him.

In early December 1991, I found myself in Alma-Ata wearing a long black overcoat. One of the boys from the neighboring building noticed me walking around the courtyard and informed everyone in our circle. That evening, friends and girlfriends came to visit, and the table was overflowing with treats. The next day, the lieutenant registered me as demobilized in the military registration and enlistment office, stayed with us for a couple more days, and left for Simferopol with oriental dried fruits, which were common for us but exotic for him.

I don't know what happened to the lieutenant after that, and my friends and acquaintances who came to the final feast for me after "purgatory" and the "bridge" have been battered by life in every way. Some have passed away from a "golden" dose, some are disabled, some have fallen into the arms of Jesus but remained in the same context as before, some have joined law enforcement agencies with all the ensuing consequences, some have become deputy ministers, some have moved to Israel, and some have gradually become inveterate drunkards despite having previously acquired serious illnesses.

For more than thirty years, I myself have turned into a large uncle weighing 140 kg with many marks on my body and soul. During this time, I only had to resolve issues with the drug dispensary and confirm that I was not a drug addict in the first year. However, in 2011, I had a funny conflict with a certain figure who was supported by the ruling party, and he hired bloodhounds to gather compromising evidence on me. Some of those generalists managed to buy my medical records from special archives. It was then that an unflattering story appeared in a number of media outlets about me as a deliberately inadequate character who was not who he claimed to be.

At the same time, law enforcement structures began to demand that I be forcibly subjected to a psychiatric examination for insulting that figure. I was assigned an examination, which was to be carried out in two stages. On the first day, I went to the clinic on the famous Kablukov street in Almaty and was subjected to a long and confusing interrogation. Then I realized that there was a tangible intention to demoralize me and subject me to an ordeal that I should not have endured on the second day of the examination. The interrogation conditions were deliberately complicated by extraneous noises, ridicule and bullying.

On the evening of the first day, I contacted my supervisor through an intermediary and asked through him that this bullying be stopped as soon as possible. I motivated this by the fact that one phone call would be enough to stop the power pressure against me. In addition, I did not disdain blackmail, saying that if this did not stop, then I would be forced to admit where I worked at that time and what my work was.

The next day, I was expecting anything, but the chairman of the commission, who had been contacted the previous night, reassured me by saying, 'Don't worry, THEY have phoned me the last night.'