Yes. After several years, I was able to admit to myself the reason for my nervous breakdown.
Several years ago, before the animal rights people apparently convinced them to not do it, Wal-Mart had lobster tanks in their seafood departments, and they required their seafood department employees to steam the lobsters alive for customers.
It was in 2007, near the height of what people now admit was a ‘great recession.’ I was struggling to find decent employment, and I accepted a job working in the Wal-Mart meat and seafood department.
It violated my conscience in a big way. I’ve never eaten lobster, as far as I know, because of the way that they have to be killed. I don’t want to be steamed alive or boiled alive. I wouldn’t choose that way of dying.
I tried to rationalize my decision to work there for about 3 or 4 reasons:
- I didn’t want to be a financial burden to my parents.
- I thought that it was a necessary compromise with evil.
- I tried to do good from the inside, frequently steering people to buy the pre-cut lobster tails instead of the live lobster.
- I reasoned that if I didn’t do it, someone else would.
My conscience would not accept these rationalizations. I think that I remember the first time that I snapped and started delusionally talking to myself as if there was an alien parasite in my head that was training me and humbling me through this process of doing something that violated my conscience.
That started my psychotic episode.
I think that it did teach me something, though: I should not try to rationalize away my conscience on serious things like that. There is no telling what kind of hell on earth a person will go through if they become psychotic. So, in the words of the old song now, I think in terms of big violations of my conscience:
“You could stand me up at the gates of hell, but I won’t back down.”