Shock therapy

What is shock therapy?

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT),
formerly known as electroshock, is a
psychiatric treatment in which seizures
are electrically induced in anesthetized
patients for therapeutic effect.
Insulin shock therapy or insulin coma
therapy (ICT) was a form of psychiatric
treatment in which patients were
repeatedly injected with large doses of
insulin in order to produce daily comas
over several weeks

Carl Solomons Report from the Asylum (1950)
Carl Solomon (1928 1993) was an American writer. In his youth, he was
voluntarily institutionalized at Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital in New York
State. At the Hospital, he underwent shock-therapy.

Upon being strapped into my insulin bed, I would at once break off my usual stream
of puns and hysterical chatter. I would stare at the bulge I made beneath the canvas
restraining sheet, and my body, insulin-packed, would become to me an enormous
concrete pun with infinite levels of association, and thereby a means of surmounting
association with things, much as the verbal puns had surmounted the meaning of
words....

Each coma is utterly incomparable to that of the previous day. Lacking a time-sense
and inhabiting all of these universes at one and the same time, my condition was
one of omnipresence of being everywhere at no time
Invariably, I emerged from the comas bawling like an infant and flapping my arms
crazily (after they had been unfastened), screaming Help!

Task:
1. Underline key words or phrases in Solomons writing above.
2. What adjectives can you think of to describe his experience?
3. Using your work from tasks 1 and 2, write a poem in pairs
about Carl Solomons experience. You can choose to write it in
the first person or the third person. Think about sound effects
and incorporating different voices (e.g. the nurses).