I work as a psych tech, which means I get all of the dirty work. If the psych patients puke, I clean it up. If they wander into the wrong room, I retrieve them. I take them to the nameplate outside their door and say, “This is your room. See. This is your name.” I take them out to smoke. I show them the location of the lighter on the wall of the smoking porch. I demonstrate how to use it. No lighters allowed. They may burn the place down. I’m their guide through Lala Land. I’m their shepherd in fields of madness, even though I was once a lot like them—paranoid and eccentric.
Book 1 of Robert’s memoir, Stranded in Skin and Bones: A Memoir of Faith and Madness, is on sale. Each hand-bound copy is $6, with all proceeds going to the 360 West Project.
Stranded In Skin and Bones is about three subjects—the author’s life, his father’s life, and the lives of patients in a short-term psych hospital. It gives readers a rare look behind the locked doors of a psych hospital, and the more Stofel opens the inner life of the hospital for the reader, the closer he comes to his insanity.
To order, contact KrisReisz@Gmail.com with your name and address.
The 360 West Project 