But the drug starts failing, and in the anti–mental-illness culture of fear immediately after the Sandy Hook school shooting, Adam’s in-school episodes go over poorly. Adam nearly always recognizes his surprisingly coherent, sometimes-helpful hallucinations as not real, and his executive function is generally unimpaired he can keep his illness hidden from his classmates. (Adam is Italian-American with no identified race so likely white.) Though the medication works at first, visual hallucinations still plague him. Adam befriends “impossibly pale…blindingly white” Dwight and starts dating beautiful Filipina Maya. At first school seems OK despite the provocations of a bully. Through journal entries he’s writing for his therapist, Adam details both his changing symptoms and his experiences as a new student at a Catholic school. Maybe the experimental (fictional) drug he’s taking will allow him to control his symptoms enough to make new friends who don’t know his history. It’s 2012, and a 16-year-old boy with schizophrenia starts fresh, with a new drug trial and at a new high school.Īdam’s old friends didn’t stand by him when they became aware of his schizophrenia, though he’s been experiencing symptoms since he was 12.
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