Conscious Choice Seattle: Music, My Joy and Savior

May 2004 | Dr. Cat

Music, My Joy and Savior

Neither a mother nor death can destroy the power of music

By Dr. Cat

Life without music would be a mistake.
—Friedrich Nietszche

In May of 1976, at the age of 22, I’d just gotten out of Harborview Hospital in Seattle. It was my third trip to the psychiatric ward in a year. I was also anorexic and bulimic, and addicted to marijuana. I was not a happy camper.

I’d been living on my own since leaving home at 17 to attend college out of state. When my voyages into psychosis struck at 21, I was back in Seattle, halfway through the Landscape Architecture Program at the University of Washington.

Following my third psychiatric hospitalization, I was too beat up to go back to school. My parents invited me to live with them for a year in Edmonds, where I grew up. Given the relationship between family systems and my various illnesses, you can probably imagine that it wasn’t easy to be back in my childhood home with my parents. I doubt if it was easy for them either.

The first three months I was there, I slept 20 hours a day. At some point, my parents and I realized that whatever was happening wasn’t going to shift without help. I remembered a psychiatrist I’d met in the hospital who seemed smarter than most, so I called him.

He was the first to correctly diagnose my illness as manic-depression, which was not as well known in the mid-1970s as it is now. Although diagnostic labels are destructive when used to stigmatize people, they can be a godsend when used with compassion—as a tool to identify a condition so it can be properly treated.

In my case, the psychiatrist prescribed powerful antidepressants for several months, and I did concurrent counseling. Lithium was also prescribed to keep my mood swings within normal range (I went off lithium in 1984 under medical supervision).

After months of treatment, I was well enough to go out into the world again. Having decided to take time out from school to regroup, I got a job with a company that had given me a scholarship for college years before.

Toward the end of the year I spent living with my folks, I was hanging out in my room one night after work, listening to a cassette tape of Cat Stevens’ music that I’d bought for $7 with money from my new job. During that difficult period, it was a tiny spot of joy for me to have music I loved. That tape was the only music I had.

My mother came in while I was listening and asked about it. When she heard that I’d purchased the music, she glared at me and said I shouldn’t be spending money on something so frivolous when I had more important things to save for.

This was the same woman who told my doctors in the psych ward that she believed my mental illness was a punishment by God for being sexually promiscuous (which for her meant any sex outside of marriage).

In other words, her comment about my music purchase wasn’t the most shaming thing she’d ever said. Rather, it was the depth of my vulnerability at the time, coupled with the underlying message of her comment, that made my heart bleed.

I was 40 before I could buy music for myself again.

Fortunately, I’ve had many loving friends along the way who knew about this wound and treated it tenderly. They gave me music and cheered enthusiastically when I bought music for myself. They knew what I’ve always secretly known—that music is a necessity, not a frivolity.

Before I go, let me tell you one more story about music. In 1992, I went to Esalen for a two-week advanced intensive in shamanism taught by two of my longtime shamans, Michael Harner and Sandra Ingerman. I knew the training included a journey past the point of death, and I really wanted to see what my soul would be doing next.

That journey was by far the most awesome and life-changing one I’ve had. It wasn’t at all what I expected. For me, there was no tunnel of light, no life review, no saints or dead relatives waiting to greet me. Although I’m not ready to say publicly what happened on that journey, I will say it doesn’t involve another dance on earth.

After I got home from Esalen, I journeyed again to talk with my shamanic teachers (in nonordinary reality) about my death journey. I told them one thing troubled me, namely, I felt deeply sad about the idea of never hearing any more music if I wasn’t going to be human again.
With a twinkle in their eyes, they looked at me tenderly and said, “You haven’t heard anything yet!"

Cat Saunders, Ph.D., is a psychotherapist and the author of Dr. Cat’s Helping Handbook. Contact Cat by calling (206) 329-0125 or visiting www.drcat.org. See Cat in action at Seattle’s Discover U (www.discoveru.org) on Saturday afternoon, May 8, for her class “The Five-Minute Switch System: Making Addiction Work for You."

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