ABSTRACT
Few psychiatric patients are activists. Most play no role in lobbying or advocacy and don't speak publicly about their experiences. But there are patients who see the example they set of recovery without hospitalization or drugs as fighting against the psychiatric system, and James Melton is one of them. James is a gay man whose life was profoundly changed by the AIDS epidemic in the United States. James Melton's story is a classic quest narrative, with a hero who descends into the underworld and returns from a place of no return. The books that James chose to read when he was in the greatest agony and the music he listened to all center on themes of death and redemption. The only difference between James Melton and the countless other people throughout human history who have plumbed these depths of emotion is that he is living at a time when the experience is reduced to a "chemical imbalance".
