Mechanic analogy

On the wall of a garage, the painted sign « PSYCHIATRIST » is covered by a red banner reading « MECHANIC », which the mechanic in overalls is finishing hanging from his stepladder; his customer watches him, next to a car. At the bottom, the painted title « The mechanic analogy »

Since this phenomenon started, I’ve taken antipsychotics several times. The first one was after that first « telepathic » contact, which happened in late 2021, maybe early 2022.

I know it’s hard to be taken seriously when you say that kind of thing, when you start talking about « telepathy ».

But back then, that’s how I lived it. I’m not making any of this up, and I know it’s hard to read.

After that episode, I figured this had to be it, the thing people call schizophrenia. It’s a shame, because I then forgot about that night for a long time, even though that night (I only remember one night, I can’t say anymore whether it went on for several days) we had « talked », me and that group of « French expat neighbors », through thought.

I remember asking them things like:

« Are you from the future? »

« What year? 2500? 3500? »

« Are you aliens? »

The wildest part is that it was a pretty friendly exchange, both ways. I was buzzing at the time, I thought it was so unbelievably cool, me being a « technology » fan. Anyway.

I’ve forgotten a huge amount of detail because it was a while ago, and it’s as if my brain had buried that episode, like it was so strange to me that I went into denial.

I think I talked about it with my wife, and told her I’d probably become schizophrenic. I kept telling myself it just wasn’t possible, and so on

And even though I still heard those « famous French expat neighbors » every day, I no longer had that experience I considered too strange to be real

Anyway. After that, I decided to go see a psychiatrist, who prescribed me Risperidone, in a small dose.

Anyway, I took it for a few months. It seemed to help with those telepathic communications because there weren't any afterwards and I managed to sleep more or less properly at night. I could still hear them during the day, and even at night. But at the start the medication, because it was new, had a drowsy effect, it knocked me out a bit and that let me fall asleep anyway. So I was fairly satisfied.

I tended to hide from my wife the fact that it was still going on, because I didn't want to worry her, and above all I wanted to stay positive and not end up on an elephant-sized dose.

I'm not going to go into my history with antipsychotics on this page, because that could be a page of its own.

But what's for sure is that I'm 1000% convinced that turning to medication is not the solution for people who live through what I live through. That's my opinion and that's what I apply to myself. I'm not forcing anyone to follow me.

And to explain that, I came up with the mechanic analogy

Imagine you have a problem with your car and the radio won’t turn off anymore. Every time you’re in the car, you hear it. On top of that, it isn’t pleasant to listen to and says unsettling things that hurt with surgical precision, as if they were tailor-made for you.

So what are you going to do? You’re going to see an expert in car and radio problems: a mechanic.

You’re going to leave your car with them, and in exchange, what do you expect?

To get your car back as it is now, but without the radio constantly playing.

But imagine that when you get your car back, it’s not like it was before...

You get your car back and what do you notice? Well, you discover that it now has an extra 400 kg trailer, it’s not as nice-looking as before, and its headlights look tired.

I get the feeling something’s not right, don’t you?

And that's not even the worst part

When you look inside your car, you realize that it is slower than before and no longer responds as it used to. On top of that, you discover that the radio is still on all the time. The mechanic reassures you and tells you that’s just how it is: things don’t change overnight, and it can take months for the medication to take effect.

And to top it all off, your handbrake has become completely soft, even though it used to be firm and hard!

That’s normal in 2026: psychiatrists are the experts on this subject, and clearly it works very well

So you have to keep taking your Risperidone. After all, why question it? You, who have always taken good care of your car, now find yourself with an extra 400 kg trailer, all these other side effects, and the « problem » still isn’t solved.

But that's okay if this medication doesn't work after several months and disrupts the way your body functions.

You can go through a transition phase lasting several months to change treatment and move on to another treatment for several months.

Abilify, on the other hand, doesn’t cause a trailer at the back of the car or a soft handbrake, but in return it makes the car shaky and hyperactive.

Your car might have a little trouble staying in place when it's parked at night, but that's okay, because the mechanic tells you, word for word: « there's also the SOS medication to help you stay in place at night ».

Anyway, I’m going to stop talking about cars. I think the mechanic analogy has reached its limits.

The psychiatrist told me to use this antipsychotic together with its SOS friend to help me sleep, even though I already have trouble switching off naturally in order to sleep.

And on top of that, the medication the psychiatrist called SOS was actually a sleeping pill, and it really disgusted me.

I understood that the psychiatrist took me for a complete idiot, and that he was really just handling the situation the way he had learned to at university.

In a consulting room, seen from behind, a patient in a patterned shirt says « … I hear people talking without seeing them… » to a psychiatrist in a white coat sitting behind his desk, under a psychiatry diploma; above the psychiatrist's head, a thought bubble shows a golden retriever wagging its tail

Maybe I'm going a bit far here, but the way I see things is that, when a patient shows up in front of a psychiatrist and tells him he « hears voices », I think he gets a dopamine boost right away.

In his head he must be a bit like a golden retriever that starts wagging its tail when it's happy.

He must have loads of connections firing off like « Oh yeah, antipsychotic! Problem solved »

Through my own experience, because when you think about it, I’m probably better placed than psychiatrists to talk about it. Better placed than neurologists.

Because as of today, in 2026, if I start picturing in my imagination a chimpanzee in a yellow t-shirt holding a camera, well, they have no way of knowing unless I tell them.

Now the people from the phenomenon mentioned in religions, among other things, have no trouble at all knowing what I'm thinking about, what I'm picturing in my imagination.

In a living room with beige walls, a green and orange parakeet is sitting on the wooden floor, next to its empty perch; the window is wide open onto a tree

The way I see things is that the way schizophrenia is « treated » right now seems to work, but it isn’t deterministic at all. Psychiatrists say so themselves: you have to try loads of treatments before reaching a satisfactory result, all while knowing that these treatments disrupt the hormonal balance so much that it takes months, or even years.

For me, saying that antipsychotics work « against schizophrenia » is like saying that clipping a parakeet's wings would be the solution to stop it from flying out of the window.

Sure it works, but it's clearly not the right solution.

It can't even get up on its perch any more and on top of that, I get the feeling it's natural for a parakeet to fly out of the window.

Makes you think.

The character is driving and smiling, his eyes replaced by red hearts; a lightning-shaped bubble comes out of the car radio, « PHENOMENON FM », announcing « We satanize the world and we never say the opposite of what we think »

The way I see things, I hear people who talk to me or who talk among themselves so that I hear them.

Sure, they have a way of speaking that's a bit cryptic, but there's no doubt about it, I really am in contact with a form of intelligence, and not a minor one, even if they make you think otherwise

So after all, why not experiment? I started testing things out: sometimes I bluffed to understand how these « expat neighbors » were always one step ahead, I tried recording, I tried asking them questions out loud at first, then through thought afterwards, I read a load of stuff on the internet, I tried changing my behavior, I tried making jokes with them, and there I got positive feedback a few times. I also thought about it enormously, when you think about it, among all the things I've been able to hear from them since the start, you have to sort through it. And there's an enormous amount of it.

It took me about 5 years to get to a 100% positive view of the people from the phenomenon.

What saved me is having hyperfocused on the fact that one day at the « start » one of them had « shouted » « You're so funny!!! », then loads of other fairly positive stuff, the fact that some of them have ways of speaking nothing like mine, that they sometimes use words I didn't know, like « kuffar ».

And after a while, when I understood that I had to change the way I think and behave, I remembered I'd read on the internet that it takes 3 weeks to create new habits.

And from there, I started correcting myself, identifying patterns in the way I think, etc. And from there it became more and more positive.

But well, that's a pretty rough way of summing things up.

And actually, I realize that by doing that, well, I end up at the same conclusion as a lot of religious texts that tell the stories of mythical figures.