"It's like I'm a drug addict, huh?" I said to the doctor, who was used to non sequiturs.
"Sure, sure it is." He shifted in the hard chair opposite my bed, getting ready to go.
"No, really, I'm not just running my mouth. It's like this: *I* don't think I have a problem here. I think that my way of conducting my life is perfectly harmless. Like a speedfreak who thinks that she's just having a great time, being ultraproductive and coming out ahead of the game. But her friends, they're convinced she's destroying herself — they see the danger she's putting herself in, they see her health deteriorating. So they put her into rehab, kicking and screaming, where she stays until she figures it out.
"So, it's like I'm addicted to being nuts. I have a nonrational view of the world around me. An *inaccurate* view. You are meant to be the objective observer, to make such notes as are necessary to determine if I'm seeing things properly, or through a haze of nutziness. For as long as I go on taking my drug — shooting up my craziness — you keep me here. Once I stop, once I accept the objective truth of reality, you let me go. What then? Do I become a recovering nutcase? Do I have to stand ever-vigilant against the siren song of craziness?"
The doctor ran his hands through his long hair and bounced his knee up and down.
"You could put it that way, I guess."
"So tell me, what's the next step? What is my optimum strategy for providing compelling evidence of my repudiation of my worldview?"
"Well, that's where the analogy breaks down. This isn't about anything demonstrable. There's no one thing we look for in making our diagnosis. It's a collection of things, a protocol for evaluating you. It doesn't happen overnight, either. You were committed on the basis of evidence that you had made threats to your coworkers due to a belief that they were seeking to harm you."
"Interesting. Can we try a little thought experiment, Doctor? Say that your coworkers really *were* seeking to harm you — this is not without historical precedent, right? They're seeking to sabotage you because you've discovered some terrible treachery on their part, and they want to hush you up. So they provoke a reaction from you and use it as the basis for an involuntary committal. How would you, as a medical professional, distinguish that scenario from one in which the patient is genuinely paranoid and delusional?"
The doctor looked away. "It's in the protocol — we find it there."
"I see," I said, moving in for the kill. "I see. Where would I get more information on the protocol? I'd like to research it before my hearing."