Talking Back to Madness

摘要

Terry was 13, a lonely African-American boy growing up in a troubled home in Detroit, when he first heard the voices. They were ugly and mean. The voices said he was no good, that no one loved him, and that he should kill himself. So he tried his best: When he was 15, he took 30 Valium pills and had to have his stomach pumped. Then the voices commanded him to kill his father. They told him exactly how to do it-put rat poison in his food. Fortunately, some other, gentler voices intervened and told him not to. After high school, Terry began attending university in Detroit, but that didn't last long. Still haunted by the voices, he was soon addicted to heroin, and his marriage ended in divorce. In 1980, he moved to New York, looking for a new start. He got a job at a doughnut shop, then at a community center, but eventually the voices got worse and so did his drug habit.