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Voices: Philip, do you consider yourself a mental health consumer? Philip Dolinsky: Yes

Voices: How would you define recovery from mental illness?

PD: Let me try to think about this for a second…getting my life together from being sick. Voices: Tell me more about what it means to get your life together.

PD: Going from a horrible state of mind to having a stable state of mind.

Voices: How important is medication for treating mental illness?

PD: I believe it's extremely important; at least for me.

Voices: Did you ever relapse?

PD: In 1990 my psychiatrist took me off my medication because I was doing very well. She decided to take me off and I agreed. Eight months later I lost 55 pounds and wound up back in the hospital because I got sick.

Voices: Philip, did you ever relapse because it was you who decided to stop the medication?

PD: Only before my homelessness.

Voices: Is medication the whole answer to recovery?

PD: No. You also need therapy and friends, spiritual and material supports and companionship.

Voices: Tell us about your experience being homeless.

PD: In 1985 I was kicked out of my furnished room and I went to the streets because I had no money to pay the rent. I lost my job [and at this time I got] suckered into giving all my money [to a religious cult that made] me believe in their idol-worshipping religion.

Voices: You once wrote that this cult contributed to your mental breakdown. Tell us how they messed with your fragile mind at the time.

PD: They tried to convince me that there were people after me trying to destroy me. They told me to take tomatoes and fifty-dollar-bills and put them together and rub them around my body and then give it back to them the next day. Then they would tell me if it's true or not.

Voices: If what's true or not?

PD: If it was true people were trying to destroy me. I believed it and I became brainwashed into their tyranny of idol worship. Before [I met them] I was legally homeless after being kicked out of a group home for something I didn't do. The director didn't believe me. He accused me of defecating on the floor in the group home and I couldn't prove my innocence. To this day I try to prove my innocence with it. I have written the director many letters even to this day. I've told him I didn't do it. That's when my medication treatment stopped (liquid Navane once per night); when they kicked me out. My [non-consumer] peers said I didn't need medication, so I never bothered getting it for myself.

Voices: How has music helped you in your recovery?

PD: I was 20 years old when I bought a used guitar because I finally decided I was interested in learning how to play. It was an electric guitar. I also bought a Casio keyboard. When I would practice in the room there, the neighbors would complain. It took me two months to learn how to tune the guitar. This is just before I went to the [cult].

Voices: Tell us how music helps you today.

PD: I decided that the music would help me with my emotions when I was in that room—

Voices: Did music help you when you were homeless as well?

PD: After about a few weeks of being homeless on the street, I took my favorite guitar and I threw it in the Hudson River on Pier 10 or 20 or whatever it was. Then I went back to sleeping in the street in the Village. I decided I wanted to continue playing guitar.

Voices: Was this while you were homeless?

PD: Yes. I was in a psychotic state because I do not know why I threw that guitar in the river. To this day I miss that guitar. Two years later, toward the end of my homelessness, I rented a small cubicle in a mini-storage where I would practice. The money came from my SSI (Supplemental Security Income), which I had applied for in 1987, yet I was homeless.

Voices: How did you collect your SSI if you were homeless?

PD: I had a P.O. Box and I had a bank account.

Voices: Do you continue to use music in your recovery today?

PD: I was interested in becoming a more religious Jewish person since 1996 and I decided to combine Judaism with heavy metal music, which I liked for many years. When I was practicing in the storage cubicle in 1988, I heard a voice in my head that told me to make music with the Old Testament. I made a CD of orthodox Jewish heavy metal.

Voices: Is any of your music dedicated to mental illness or mental health recovery?

PD: I had one song like that.

Voices: Tell us about this song.

PD: It's called "Stigma is a Disease that the So-called Normal People Have (see lyrics below)."

Voices: What are your hopes and dreams for the future?

PD: For a cure for mental illness for the world.

Voices: What would you like to do in the next five years?

PD: I'd like to marry an orthodox Jewish woman and raise Jewish children as well as have a successful career in music and acting. [I'd like to] spread the word of Judaism to Jews around the world and also educate people about mental illness; and to eradicate the stigma of mental illness. I'd like to thank the G-d of Israel for all the wonderful things [S/He's] done for me and for saving my life.

Stigma is a Disease That the So-called Normal People Have
By Philip H. Dolinsky © 2001
They make fun of my brain
They say that I am insane
They say that I'll never change
They say I have no brain
Stigma is a disease that the so-called normal people have
Stigma is a disease that the so-called normal people have
Stigma is a disease that the so-called normal people have
Why do they make fun of my brain?!
Why do they say that I'm insane?!
Why do they say that I'll never change?!
Why do they say I have no brain?!
Stigma is a disease that the so-called normal people have
Stigma is a disease that the so-called normal people have
Stigma is a disease that the so-called normal people have
Normals, they have the disease of stigma
More than me, they are sicker
Bad things of me they love to whisper
Of all they have is the disease of stigma
Stigma is a disease that the so-called normal people have
Stigma is a disease that the so-called normal people have
Stigma is a disease that the so-called normal people have