As Adam Maier-Clayton lists the treatments he’s tried, he has a hand clutched to his chest, perpetually breathless and dehydrated. He feels chills and can’t stop quivering as he says “talking manifests in pain, cognition manifests in pain” – pain is all he knows now. But Adam hasn’t just broken an arm, fractured a limb or pulled a muscle. Adam has a mental illness, psychosomatic pain to be exact, where his mental pain turns physical – and it’s torturous to him. “Physical illness and mental illness can actually induce the same amount of pain. The only difference is that physical pain has a physical pathology, mental pain is psychosomatic” he says, “but to the patient, the pain feels exactly the same”. And the worst part? There’s no real cure for Adam.
“People say ‘call a number, go to the ER’. Are we supposed to go to the ER everyday? Because I would rather die than live like this.”
Margaret Maier, his mother, describes Adam as ‘a researcher’, and his YouTube channel represents as much. Adam ‘became the face of mental illness’, according to Vice, especially regarding mental illness, the right to die and Canada’s C14 bill. This bill discloses the right to die for people suffering with “intolerable and incurable illness, disease or disability, where natural death has become reasonably foreseeable” – meaning mental illness doesn’t classify as terminal and that people like Adam cannot go through with assisted suicide.
Image: Gene Shilling / THECANADIANPRESS
Adam has devoted his life to challenging the government and society’s view, not just because he’s passionate about it, but because this is his every day, his life revolves around this illness. “Basic things like going to the bank or the grocery store, all these things amplify my pain. It involves brain activity – looking at my statements, price tags, operating the ATM machine, it hurts.” His videos document how debilitating this illness is. Adam is an activist because sure, it’s an important cause, but also because there’s nothing else he can do. He used to work three jobs, be athletic and attend college, but he describes his psychosomatic pain as degenerative, it just kept getting harder for him to live. Imagine working a regular job and getting crippling chest pain when serving a customer, or speaking publicly and being so unable to think that your head feels like it’s burning with acid – that is the normality for Adam, and yet people don’t think he’s worthy of death.
“You can see the real Adam, and the disorders built into me. See the nice, young man with capability, and how the illness is detracting from it, how it’s screwing him up.”
One of the main criticism against mentally ill people receiving euthanasia is the legality surrounding informed consent, or the lack thereof. How can a mentally ill person make an informed and logical decision regarding their own life if they are mentally ill? Mark Henick argues, “(Mental illness) attacks your perception of hope and ability to conceptualize your recovery.” But Adam makes clear that this isn’t just your usual case of depression or anxiety, which, of course, can be harrowing, but do have treatments that work in one way or another. Psychosomatic pain sufferers like Adam don’t have ‘good days’ where the sun shines a little brighter, or they make it through without a panic attack. Their version of a ‘good day’ consists of things like being able to speak for 20 minutes instead of 15 before their eyes begin to burn and they go into withdrawal mode. “People say you don’t know how you’ll feel tomorrow… that’s true. But if you have someone that’s been suffering for 10 years, regardless of treatment, and they’re confident in their decision, it’s pretty nonsensical to say ‘Hey, you don’t know what’s around the corner. Just stick around.'” Adam says in his interview with Wency Leung, “It’s not the sufferers’ responsibility to wait for modern medicine to advance to an appropriate level.”
“As much as I love the people in my life, the reality is that their words and support cannot fix me chemically.”
Adam took his own life in April this year. He had to die alone in a motel room – away from the two parents that loved him, as they may have faced criminal prosecution for aiding and abetting, even if they didn’t supply the illegal drug that killed him. The illegal drug was given to him anonymously, from somebody that again risked prosecution just to help Adam and his cause. This drug made him tired, slowed his breathing and eventually stopped his heart. His family believes that he should not have died alone, which he wouldn’t have if the C14 bill recognized that his quality of life was poor and intolerable.
Adam didn’t want to die. In fact, he saw so much beauty in life – but he couldn’t bear to live if it wasn’t something he could appreciate entirely. However, he knew that assisted suicide could not, and should not, be an offer extended to all mental health sufferers. Most people with mental illness should go through treatment and recovery, they deserve to find a way to cope. But sadly not everyone has a treatment that works and no sign of getting better – “I understand suicide is bad, I’m not saying it’s a good thing… We should advocate treatment. But if it doesn’t work and you don’t want to suffer, that’s your decision – not the psychiatrist’s, not the governments’.”
“I am my own savior. Always have been, always will be.”
There is the possibility that the C14 bill will change. The government has asked the Council of Canadian Academies how the bill relates to mature minors, people facing dementia and those suffering from mental illness, with a report expected in 2018. Hopefully, Adam’s passion, drive, and great activism will play a part in the response to the C14 bill, shaping policy and paving a way for people just like him. Adam’s activism doesn’t mean that you should ‘give up the good fight’, as it were, but that the option is there for the people that need it. You are not burdened to a lifetime of misery if treatments do not work – but you should wholly devote yourself to trying, just like Adam did. Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem, yes, but some people’s problems aren’t so temporary.
Rest in peace, Adam Maiers-Clayton.
Image Credit: Nick Youngson
