Psychobabble: Tales from Inside the Crazy House

3/5 ( ratings)

Psychobabble is an extension of a zine I made in the mid-nineties. It was #35 on a list of the top 50 zines ever, here is the review: "I work five nights a week on an in patient psychiatric unit..." begins this zine about the author's job. Articles include sobering stuff like "My Worst Nightmare", the patients revolt; "Take Down", a term meaning to immobilize unruly patients; "Reasons Why You Wouldn't Want To Be A Psych Patient" etc. Fascinating, recommended reading with a fine and disturbing color cover too" - Seth Friedman, Factsheet 5, Zine World http://www.musea.us/132issue.html

This is the story of Sam, a young man in his early twenties who works the night shift in an acute, locked psych ward in the San Francisco Bay Area. We learn what it is like to work on the psych ward: the drudgery of the night shift, punctuated with moments of panic, terror and despair. Sam and his co-workers cope with the stress from their job with dark humor, drugs, alcohol and sex. Beyond the walls of the psych ward, we meet Sam's roommates, friends, and girlfriends. We witness Sam's struggle to escape bad relationships, childhood trauma and the psych ward which haunts him no matter how far away he runs.

This book is based on my experiences while working for nine years as a Mental Health Worker in military and civilian hospitals in San Francisco, Oakland, and Berkeley, CA.

As long as I can remember, I have been a writer. I used to write in someone else's voice. I don't think I found my own until I was 25 or so. That's when I started reading poetry at open mic nights at the Chameleon bar in the Tenderloin in San Francisco. I was trying to be Bukowski, but I could never get that drunk or that brilliant. The crowds were loud and tough, and if you read shit, they gave you shit, and if you were able to move them, the whole place would go silent while you were reading, and then they would all clap and yell when you were done. It was a great way to learn what works and what doesn't. Psychobabble started as one of those readings, then it became a handmade comic book called matches that had a folding cover on the outside like a matchbook and all of the artwork inside was drawn, made into rubber stamps, and hand stamped on every page by yours truly. I traded up from the stamp method to Xerox production for the zine version of Psychobabble. I then spent years at copy machines churning out thousands of issues. It was well received, and Tower Records even picked it up and distributed it all over the world. I got letters from everywhere. Then I got a real job and just let it all sit in a box until 2009, when I was laid off for two years during the recession and I finally had time to write again. I spent many late nights on a pawn shop laptop over those years and I took about 3,000 words and expanded it to 50,000. Then I edited it and refined it for a couple of years. I still want to edit it and refine it, but I figured I better try and get it out there so I can get an agent and a real editor to fix it up and hopefully sell a few thousand copies!

If you read my book, even just the free sample, please do me a favor and write an honest review. I would truly appreciate it.

Thank you for your time,

Ty Fitzgerald