Column: The MKUltra ghost - my years campaigning against a fact
For years, I didn't just believe in conspiracies, I had the receipts.
I spent my 20s in a state of high-alert activism, convinced that the dark chapters of American history weren't actually over.
I wasn't hearing ‘voices’ in the way movies portray it - I was reading the CIA’s own website.
I saw the declassified reports on MKUltra , the unethical experimentation on psychiatric patients, and the shadows of the Cold War.
To me, these weren't just historical footnotes, they were my current reality.
I was ‘fact-anchored’.
Because the Government had done these things, I was certain they were doing them to me.
When you are living through a psychotic episode, your brain’s ‘salience filter’ stops working and everything becomes a sign.
A black SUV wasn't just a car - it was a tail.
A glitch in my phone wasn't a bug - it was a wiretap.
I funnelled every ounce of my energy into what I thought was a righteous crusade.
I reported my ‘findings’ everywhere—to local police, to Government offices, to anyone who would listen.
I felt like a whistleblower, a man on the front lines of a secret war.
In my mind, I wasn't ‘sick’, I was just the only one who had done the homework.
The most difficult part of schizophrenia isn't the’craziness’—it's the logic.
My beliefs were built like a jigsaw puzzle using real pieces of history to create a picture that wasn't there.
The transition out of that world is a strange, quiet grief.
It’s called post-psychotic insight and it’s the moment you realise that while the documents on the CIA website are real, the man you thought was following you was just a stranger walking to his car.
Looking back on my 20s, I see a person who was deeply troubled but also deeply brave in their own way.
I was trying to fight for justice - I just didn't realise the ‘enemy’ I was fighting was a glitch in my own neurochemistry.
Today, I still know the history, I still know what Governments are capable of.
But I also know that my brain can be an unreliable narrator.
Learning to tell the difference between ‘the truth’ and ‘my truth’ was the hardest campaign I ever had to run.
I am now delighted for the opportunity of an education, doing acts of kindness and having a happy ending.