My Schizophenic Friend

I have known the man I'll call Mannie here for about fifteen years, and in the past five or six years, since we have been driving to a weekly activity - about forty-five minutes each way - I've got to know him very well, and, despite his severe mental illness, I can call him a friend.
Mannie is a large, slow-moving, gentle man in his forties. The drugs the psychiatrists have been giving him have made him quite fat - though sometimes he loses weight, because he has hallucinations about his food and can't eat anything.
It took Mannie years to trust me enough to admit that his illness was mental, and by now he often bares his soul to me, and I don't really know what to do with his confidence. I'm not a psychiatrist, and I'm never sure what I should be telling Mannie.
Mannie sometimes complains that he feels as if he's drunk, but without the pleasure of being tipsy. He hears voices that tell him to do all kinds of things: mainly to protect people about whom he's worried. He worries in particular about one close friend, who has stood by him for years. Mannie has often said to me, "I'm very worried about Arnold. I think I should park my car in front of his house all night and make sure nothing bad happens to him." Mannie thinks that the police or some other "bad people" will come at night to murder Arnold, and he can stop them.
He has similar fantasies about hospitals. The other day he told me that he had seen an elderly man dressed in blue and white, and he stopped his car to ask the man if he could help him. The man said he was going to Hadassah Hospital. Mannie offered to give him a ride, but the man said he would take a cab. Mannie decided to drive to the hospital himself, so that he could protect the stranger dressed in blue and white. He apparently spent a few hours wandering around the hospital, protecting the patients.
Just recently he told me that he was sure that some very evil people were doing bad things to him, making him ill, but that God had given him the strength to withstand it.
A few years ago, when the news was coming out about the accusations against Moshe Katsav, Israel's former president, I made the mistake of mentioning the case to Mannie. It was clear to me at the time that, where there's smoke, there's fire. Katsav would not have been indicted for sexual misconduct if there was nothing at all behind the accusations - whether or not he will ultimately be found guilty.
It was an error for me to raise the subject, not because Mannie was an ardent fan of Moshe Katsav's, but because Mannie believes he forced a woman to have sex with him in Eilat, years and years ago. He construes the most innocent remark, such as, "Mannie, did you bring your music stand?" as an accusation: "Mannie, you raped that woman in Eilat."
Mannie is a sweet, kind man, considerate, helpful, and even humorous, when his illness will allow him. His suffering is entirely incomprehensible - to him and to anyone who has never experienced something like it.
Sometimes Mannie calls me for advice, and I try to tell him: "It's only your illness talking." Maybe if he could begin to dismiss the voices that tell him that the people he loves are in danger, he could manage his life better. But from the way he speaks of them, it's clear that those voices have more strength and presence than anything I could tell him. Though he often seems to call me because he wants me to tell him not to go and guard Arnold.
Other times I tell him, "Mannie, it's normal to be worried about people. Everybody's worried about the people they love." Or, "Mannie, it's true, there really are a lot of bad people in the world, but here in Jerusalem we're well protected by the police and the army." He isn't entirely out of touch with what I think of as reality, and I try to appeal to that.
However, Mannie gets messages from the signs of buses and billboards, or from the way people in the street look at him. I sometimes try to say, "Mannie, we all feel that something could be a sign of bad luck or good luck." I also asked him, "Do you ever see signs that are encouraging?" He loves lights, the sight of a town from a distance, and he admitted that sometimes he gets a good feeling from them.
There's not much anybody can do for Mannie, beyond being patient and friendly. He's been in and out of mental hospitals very often, and the doctors haven't been able to find a drug that will control his psychosis. My contacts with him leave me feeling very troubled. I'm relieved that I can leave him behind and go back to my own life. But it's terribly sad to see a big, strong man crippled by the chemistry of his brain.