Journals, Paintings Trace
Young Man's Journey into Schizophrenia

(January 4, 2004) - Adam Samec was a creative, sensitive and gentle child.

As a young man, he loved to paint and write music, songs and poetry. He taught himself to play guitar and dreamed of becoming an anthropologist.

He was 20 when he killed himself.

Adam left behind a devastated family, along with more than 30 journals, songs, drawings and paintings that reveal the inner turmoil, struggle and pain of his illness, offering insight into the thought processes of a young man diagnosed with schizophrenic affective disorder / depressed type.

"Looking at all of it, I think he left behind something very special that could help professionals in the mental health field and help parents who find themselves dealing with a child's mental illness," says Adam's mother, Vicky Reicks of Cresco. "I can't pack them all away. It's a gift he left behind, and within his writings, he left behind messages to me. He knew his mom would read these journals."

Adam shot himself on April 11, 2001.

Vicky couldn't bear to look at the journals until last winter, and what she read on page after tightly written page were not ramblings, but a kind of poetry, vivid word portraits tracing the chronology of her son's illness, the medications, the voices he heard in his head, the angels and demons who sat on the edge of his bed or hovered near the ceiling regaling him with tales, his intense loneliness and isolation, and eventually, his flirtation with suicide.

"I had grown ill over time, though I took my pills as a good boy should. I was fretting now terribly, unable to think, rest, my moody temperament coming forth. More pills, more days, it would all be better. Found little rest in my routine, knowing that my purpose was also to the point of breaking. ... Dosage after dosage of medication would not be allowed to take hold, for I was on the outside, severely incapable of change. ... The doctors had seen nothing but my dismal face and thus subscribed me to a long list of takers of a specific drug meant to target symptoms which I had, though the disease was all around a different story."

The notebooks, computer print-outs and loose-leaf binders are scattered across the dinner table. Passages are marked with yellow Post-it notes, where Vicky has made notations. This passage, she points out, is about practicing suicide, and this entry was written when Adam was hospitalized., and here is a direct appeal to his mother to forgive him.

"He was so lonely. Everyone went their own way in the end. He lost his friends, he lost himself and he didn't know what to do," Vicky says. "There is so much here, I think there's enough material for a book. I'd like to tell Adam's story in some way, to help other people because there is so much stigma attached to mental illness."

Adam was first hospitalized in 1999. The high school student had become increasingly withdrawn and his personality changed. With a mother's instinct, Vicky knew something was wrong. Although she respected his privacy, she sneaked a peek at his writings and was disturbed by what she read. A crisis was brewing, she felt it in her bones.

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Vicky sought advice and intervention from doctors and guidance counselors. Adam's behavior was dismissed as a teen-age phase. He was going to school, had a girlfriend, held down a part-time job. She worried too much, and perhaps should seek counseling herself. Adam refused to see a doctor despite his mother's entreaties.

Then she received a phone call from his girlfriend's parents. Adam was having an anxiety attack and needed medical help.

"He was committed to Allen Hospital on Aug. 28, 1999, and that was the beginning of a long, painful and rough journey," says Vicky. He was hospitalized for 19 days and received electroshock therapy treatments for depression. In late 1999, he was finally diagnosed with schizophrenic affective disorder/depressed type.

"It makes you feel desperate as a parent. I hoped it would be psychotic depression. Isn't that something for a mother to hope for? Something that could be successfully treated? The diagnosis was difficult to accept because schizophrenia was something that wasn't going to go away," she recalls.

In the United States, three-quarters of people with schizophrenia are diagnosed between the ages of 17 and 25. Approximately 2.2 million American adults ages 18 and older are affected by the brain disorder, according to the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill.

The disorder interferes with a person's ability to think clearly, manage emotions, make decisions and relate to others. Symptoms can include hallucinations, such as hearing internal voices; delusions; confused thoughts; poor eye contact; reduced body language; anxiety and terror; bizarre or rigid postures; decreased emotional expression; loss of motivation; and social isolation. Medication is used to control the disorder. Statistically, most persons with schizophrenia commit suicide within the first 10 years of their illness.

Vicky accompanied her son to every doctor's appointment.

"He was hurting. Thoughts flowed out of him and he wrote constantly. I found out he was cutting himself on his chest, arms and legs. He showed me and I was horrified. He said it was the only way he could feel anything," Vicky says, " and his inner voices told him he deserved to suffer."

Adam wrote about the cutting episodes, swallowing countless pills in rainbow hues and alternating feelings of hopelessness and acceptance. He also described episodes of hospitalization and interactions with doctors, including "faking them out" while recognizing he knew they were aware he was faking.

A long period of pain

"Eaten up by pills and pimples and Prozac, I simmer down from my cues, shifting down, someone always there ... I alter my views as I alter my face ... Help me not to fall down."

Medication improved Adam's condition, and he continued to write, draw in ink

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and charcoal and paint watercolors. He presented a self-portrait to his mother for Mother's Day, and drew numerous other self-portraits at various stages of his illness. He also painted demons and angels and other images, mingling bright and dark colors into startling, affecting images.

Adam was hospitalized off and on for a total of 135 days in a 1 1/2-year period. His medication changed numerous times, often causing other medical problems, such as stomach ailments. He enrolled in a research program at the University of Iowa in Iowa City before deciding not to go through with it. He was hospitalized in Fall 2000 for nearly a month. While he was gone, someone broke into his apartment and stole his guitars and amplifiers.

In February 2001, Adam attempted suicide by taking a medication overdose. His stomach was pumped and he was hospitalized.

Her son's suicidal thoughts never stopped, Vicky believes. "It was a way to end the pain. His mind was never at rest. He was never at peace. The illness brought him to his knees. My ex-husband, Adam's father, still can't read the journals because it's too sad and painful for him."

The pills, the pain, the bitterness

Adam shot himself on April 11 in his father's home. His brother discovered his body. The final entry in Adam's last journal reads:

"I hope that they will find my body cool, warmed only by the remaining heat under the blanket. Breathless, I lie upon the pillow drooling no more, cotton-mouthed from all of the drugs. My body no longer functions and my heart is dead now; never had room for anyone else anyway. Don't let them find me all insecure like this, but instead, let them find me secure with death."

Vicky says, "All of the doctors, all the pills, all of the treatments. I'm left with the thought that, in spite of it all, we somehow let him down. I have a lot of bitterness about a society that still treats mental illness as something that should be hidden away in the dark. When you have someone in your family who is mentally ill, people walk the other way. If he'd had cancer or some other disease, they would be more sympathetic and understanding."

Figuring out what to do with his writings and artwork is something tangible that keeps mother connected to son.

"All of this," she says, gesturing at the journals, "multiplies my pain. I think about my child suffering through this and it just about kills me. I just want him back, to hug him and tell him how sorry I am that this happened to him."

Source: The Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier

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