After listening to my favorite artist Kid Cudi’s album Man on the Moon II: The Legend of Mr. Rager recently, I noticed that one of the songs sort of connected to One Flew Over the Cookoo’s Nest. The song, titled “Maniac,” has a very dark and lonesome feel. In addition to sounding different and dark, I noticed that it also featured Cage, an artist I had never heard of before. I thought maybe he could have had a hand in the dark feel of the song so I did some research on him. I was shocked by what I learned.
Chris Palko (aka. Cage) had an indescribably turbulent childhood and adolescence. His father served in the army and got dishonorably discharged for using heroine. After the discharge, his father would force the young Palko to help him inject his heroine. Also, his father held up his family with a shotgun before being arrested when Palko was only eight years old. Palko soon turned to drugs like cocaine, PCP, LSD and marijuana during his adolescence. After multiple arrests, a judge sent him to a psychiatric hospital for a two-week evaluation. He stayed for eighteen months. Palko found himself in a test group for the anti-depressant drug fluoxetine. The hospital misdiagnosed Palko and he attempted suicide several times as a result. Additionally, he was illegally restrained over twenty times for up to thirteen-hour periods by straitjacket. Palko left the hospital at age eighteen and began to start his rap career using the name Cage.
I find it totally unacceptable that a psychiatric institution could misdiagnose such an untested and powerful drug in modern times. Also the fact that the hospital illegally restrained Cage makes me wonder how often other institutions do the same kind of thing. The plight of the rapper Cage goes to show that certain aspects of mental hospitals portrayed in One Flew Over the Cookoo’s Nest still exist today.
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