Finding an Old Adversary Dead in a Toilet
A guest post by Leon MacFayden about PTSD among first responders
The Frontier Psychiatrists is a daily health-themed newsletter. Today's post is a guest article by friend of the newsletter Leon Macfayden. I strongly recommend subscribing to his newsletter while you're at it!
Leon used to work as a police officer, and today he brings us a story about what it's like to try to maintain your compassion in high-pressure environments. Spoiler alert, it's not easy.
I want to share a special thank you today, in advance of Thanksgiving, for all of the first responders, police, and medical professionals who will be working on a holiday most of us don't. Every time there's an an emergency on Thanksgiving, there are emergency workers who are spending time with your family, and not theirs, and I'm endlessly grateful for their service.
I loathed Him, yet I can’t even remember his name. I met Him when I used to work in an Off license — a UK shop that sells alcohol. At that time, I had pulled myself out of being bullied and had finally become someone I could respect.
However, I was 22 and had a hair-trigger temper. After years of being treated like dirt, I was obsessed with respect, and I saw this dangerous job — working alone, late at night, and selling alcohol in a rough neighborhood — as a chance to prove myself.
In this pressurized environment, I met Him. Skinny and 6ft 5 of bad attitude. If there were a line, He would push to the front. He would throw the money on the counter with an air of arrogance. I had an obsession with respect, and He looked down on me.
He also bullied his girlfriend. I saw Him outside many times shouting and berating her. The only good thing about Him was his cute little boy, but what kind of life would he have? I knew his dad took drugs, was usually drunk, and probably beat up the boy's mum.
The Battle Lines Were Drawn.
I warn you this is going to sound petty. Every night, I would lock up, count the takings, set the alarm, and then I would have one minute to leave and lock the door before the alarm went off.
One night at 11:30 pm, I was in the process of counting the money when He came banging on the door. He said he wanted milk for his son. This was my chance to make a stand. To get some petty revenge. So I told him he was too late. What kind of dad realizes their son needs milk at nearly midnight?
He stood outside screaming abuse at me in the street, and after this, our “relationship” was even tenser.
An Awful Discovery.
A few months later, I joined the police. I had upgraded my life hard and was feeling proud of myself. I had become the person I thought I wanted to be, and He was a distant memory.
One day, I received a call to attend a public toilet for an unconscious male. Upon my arrival, I noticed two things:
It was Him. My old adversary.
He wasn’t unconscious. He was dead, and He still had the needle to prove it.
Luckily, the paramedics arrived at the same time as me and began CPR as they carried him into the back of the ambulance. It was to no avail.
That wasn’t my most awful discovery. My even worse discovery was how little I cared. I didn’t even feel sad for his son, who I reasoned would be better off without Him. I had written this man off as a piece of garbage.
I felt like I had won. This guy that I hated had died and, of all the people in the world, it was me that found him. As my life APPEARED to have become a big success, his had crumbled and ended in a dirty toilet.
The Mental Effects of Policing.
“Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”
– Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
It took years for me to understand what had happened to me. I had already been diagnosed with PTSD, but by the time of this incident, I was considered “cured.” But more than a diagnosable mental illness, policing makes you hard.
I had gone from crying when I saw roadkill to feeling smug when a human being died in terrible circumstances.
Every day as a police officer, you are exposed to this kind of misery. It is a relentless drum on the psyche. You may be surprised to know that in the few minutes it took to carry Him to the ambulance, another junkie had entered the same toilet, and when I went to preserve the scene, I found her about to inject.
The conveyor belt of human misery.
You can’t absorb it all day in day out and do the job. So I became hard very quickly. The best way to survive was to categorize different victims — those who deserved what happened and those who didn’t.
Over time, as the body count piled up, the “deserved it” category kept expanding.
I was constantly exposed to the worst of humanity. After a boy had been stabbed to death, people were angry that they couldn’t climb over him to get to the kebab shop. When a man fell three storeys and broke his back, a delivery driver was angry he wouldn’t make a delivery on time.
The abyss was staring back at me.
It was unsustainable to constantly see the worst and roughest side of society. Policing destroyed my faith in humanity. Consciously, I stopped caring about everything.
Subconsciously, these scenes replayed in my dreams. The victims of bloody crime scenes who I had written off lined up to teach me a lesson while I slept.
PTSD and the End of the Road.
After another sickening crime scene where I was unable to say the victims “deserved it,” I broke completely and ended my career suffering Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
The end of a career, but the start of unpacking the damage to my brain.
It took years to recognize the hardened monster I had become. Just because I didn’t like Him for various petty reasons doesn’t mean I should be glad He died in such degrading circumstances.
Why do I have the right to judge victims by some arbitrary scale?
What had happened to me?
If it’s any consolation, I paid a heavy price. As I lifted my protective barriers and began to feel again, I felt the pain from all of them.
All the victims I had ever encountered. All the people I had written off hit me at once in an appalling avalanche of grief and remorse.
No longer confined to my nightmares, I would get full-blown flashbacks where I would shake, cry and relive every moment of the horror.
Reborn.
Every time I put on that uniform, every time I went to a crime scene, part of me died alongside the victim. When I had nothing left to kill off, that’s when I became hard and judgemental.
PTSD tried to shield me from suffering by making me calloused. If you look at many Police Officers today, you will see the signs.
The hollow eyes, the monotone voice, the apparent lack of empathy.
Emergency workers, in general, have no idea about PTSD and cannot recognize their descent until it’s overwhelming.
Finally, I can say that it’s true. I didn’t like Him. He was everything in a person I despised. But that doesn’t mean I have to be gleeful about such a wasted life and sad demise. A demise that will ripple through his children and cause damage for generations.
More broken people mean more pointless death and trauma in a never-ending cycle.
Who in their right mind would be gleeful about that?
Conclusion.
I was lucky. Unlike the people I had condemned, I had a second chance. I got away from the job that was damaging me. Through the love of my family and proper treatment in the form of medication for PTSD, I rediscovered most of my old self and worked through my experiences.
But I have never wholly recovered. Some parts of me died forever. My remorse and feelings of guilt for my judgments sometimes overwhelm me, as do flashbacks and nightmares from scenes so horrific that if they were suggested in a movie, they would be dismissed as unrealistic.
This pain is the price I pay for being human. And being human is better than the monster I had become.
Thanks y'all for reading, and please follow and subscribe to Leon's work.
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