CROW

Two canvas pieces—one white, one burgundy—meet
at the corner of the living room
walls. Across them are sprawled the words
‘Split Decision—no one can do it for you.’
Shae Therrien’s artwork echoes his state of
mind, pulling in two directions, one dark,
one light. An artist, boxer and writer, Therrien struggles
with bipolar depression, characterized by extreme shifts
in mood, behaviour and energy. Over the years he’s
sought relief in everything from alcohol to electroshock
on a journey that has brought both pain and inspiration.
The journey began in 1998 in Armstrong, British
Columbia, where Therrien worked at a fiberglass
plant. He had been awake for three days straight. No
matter how hard he worked out, or how exhausted his
body was, his mind wouldn’t rest. It wouldn’t shut off.
He stopped going to work and avoided his friends. Finally,
after three weeks, he dialed his sister for help.
“He said he had a knife and he was going to
hurt himself,” Corrie Atkinson McLeod recalls.
She acted fast, calling on a girlfriend who lived in
Armstrong to stay with Therrien until she got there.
She was on the next flight out to British Columbia from
Saskatchewan. When she got there Therrien was clearly
not himself. He seemed “flat,” speaking little. Tears ran
down his cheeks. She drove him back to Saskatchewan
and brought him to the Souris Valley Hospital in Weyburn,
formerly known as the Weyburn Mental Hospital.
For the next six months, Therrien called the hospital
home. He was put on anti-depressants and sleep
aid pills to help him stabilize. The medical staff also
tried electro-convulsive therapy—electroshock—and it
seemed to help. Slowly he climbed out of the depression.
But Therrien wasn’t ready to accept his illness.
“My sister told me that after I left (the hospital),
‘You have to take these pills, this could happen
again.’ And I just had no interest in that,” Therrien
recalls. “As soon as I left Saskatchewan, I
chucked my pills out the car window and drove.”
He headed west, finding work on Alberta’s
oil rigs. But his illness wasn’t so easily
cast aside. He tried to ignore it by partying.
“I found a lot of purpose in booze and drugs…
Sometimes I would stay up for three or four
days drinking and doing drugs, simply because
I couldn’t sleep,” Therrien remembers.
In 2003 Therrien had an accident on the rigs. In retrospect,
he says it was the best thing that ever happened to
him. He quit his job and headed back to Saskatchewan,
mentally and physically battered. There he cleaned up,
got off drugs and reunited with his family. He was taking
his medicine again, and things seemed to improve.
Then the manic side of bipolar hit. Years later,
he wrote it was like being in rush hour traffic in
New York but without streetlights and traffic signs:
“Imagine complete chaos but everyone is happy.”
He decided to become a healer, and that all he
would have to do was touch people to heal them.
Then he thought he would become God. Then he
thought he was God. He ended up in a psych ward
again, mind racing, thoughts snowballing out
of control. Suddenly bliss turned into darkness.
Although Therrien had resumed taking his anti-depressants,
medicine alone wasn’t enough to
keep depression at bay. Therrien’s doctor suggested
he try electro-convulsive therapy again.
ECT is a therapy cloaked in stigma, according to Rob
Wekerle, program nurse at the Regina Qu’Appelle
Health Region’s ECT clinic. Most people imagine
scenes from Ken Kesey’s novel One Flew Over the
Most people imagine scenes from Ken Kesey’s novel One Flew Over the
Cuckoo’s Nest, in which Big Nurse orders electro-convulsive treatment to
punish patients who challenge her authority.
Cuckoo’s Nest, in which Big Nurse orders ECT treatments
to punish patients who challenge her authority.
The procedure involves sending an electric current
through the brain to induce a seizure. The shock
lasts for six to eight seconds, while the seizure can
last up to 40 seconds. The shock increases the blood
flow in the brain and is believed to help neurotransmitters
function better, delivering serotonin
and dopamine, ‘feel good chemicals,’ to the brain.
The procedure has changed drastically since it
was first used to treat schizophrenia in the 1930’s. Today,
patients are put under anesthesia for the duration
of the treatment. A muscle relaxant is administered
so that the body doesn’t tense up and cause injury.
ECT is not free of side effects, however. Reported memory
loss is common among people receiving ECT. Some
patients lose memories of the night before a treatment,
or a few hours after ECT is administered. Those memories
most often come back, but there are rare cases when
events from the past are forgotten and never recalled.
“I am really foggy for a day, and recollecting
things that happened two or three days ago before is
not really there, but they come back,” Therrien says.
For Therrien , it was a small price to pay. He believes
the therapy gave him a second chance in life. “It’s like a
reset button for my brain,” he says. He continues the treatments
to this day. But ECT is not his only line of defense.
Therrien hit the gym, joining the Regina Boxing
Club in 2003. Boxing offered routine in the form
of group calisthenics
and timed workouts on a
punching bag. It demanded
focus, settling racing thoughts.
Nowadays he leads the workouts
every Monday and Friday
evening. He greets the
club members with jokes and
laughter—and then begins
yelling at them like a drill sergeant,
driving them through
laps around the gym. Later,
he wraps his hands in tape,
pulls on some bag gloves and
settles into his own routine. Sweat drips down his
forehead and the smack of his gloves on the heavy
bag falls faster and faster with each ring of the bell.
He sees his illness as a tricky opponent: to win, you
need to devise a plan and stick to it. His art is part of the
battle, too. Paintings fill his apartment, colourful works
of eyes, pyramids and geometric shapes. Even his kitch-
Therrien leads a workout at the boxing
club. Below: The ECT treatment room
at Regina’s General Hospital.
en cabinets are an art project, sanded down and torched
for a rustic look. His latest piece lies half assembled on
the living room floor. Using small pieces of bamboo, he
is tying together sticks to spell a quote from William
Lyon Phelps: “This is the final test of a gentleman, his respect
for those who can be of no possible service to him.”
“This one is going to take a while,” he laughs and
lights the second half of his
Blackstone Cherry cigar.
“The moment is all we have,”
he says as he takes a drag
and examines the letters.
Bi-polar has taught him not
to take anything for granted.
For the last year Therrien has
journaled daily. It has helped
him come to terms with what
it means to live a fulfilling life,
and what that life looks like for
him. Now Therrien is looking
for a publisher so that his experiences
and words can help someone else struggling
with bi-polar. His manuscript, titled Interrupted with Bipolar,
offers this signpost of hope for others on the road:
My recovery, that I am continuing to believe I am never
out of, shows me that those little setbacks can put me down for
the depression 10-count, but I know I am never out of the
fight. Never.
20 THE CROW Fall 2012 Fall 2012 THE CROW 21