It was around the year 2000 when I experienced something quite unimportant, yet greatly traumatic. I was passing nearby SMP 1 Bukittinggi when I saw a beardy man, wore something like safety shoes, babbled in the middle of the street. I was with Sigit that time, and as we were passing near him, he suddenly gave us a kick with his leg, toward our heads! It was extremely close, but fortunately we could protect ourselves, and ran away.
Crazy. Insane. It is so easy for us to give the insanity stigma, without knowing the real reason. After the deathly-kick incident, I was afraid to any kind of ‘insane people’, even to Sore, a mental illness sufferer who live near my home. She is said to be raped inhumanly by a man until she was pregnant. Actually, I’m not sure whether or not that rapist is a man, he’s most likely to be a soulless body with penis, that’s all.
When I became a pharmacy student, the stigma for ‘insane people’ was not as simple as I thought before. On my internship programme, I had to monitor the use of medications for a mental illness patient. Every time I visited his home, he always sleep. His family said, his life was just between sleep or rage. And the community around him will easily gave him a stigma of insanity without doing something. That is a clear, crazy picture of our community. I bet those people never read Ry Kusumaningtyas’ book Mereka Bilang Aku Gila (They Say I’m Crazy). She clearly states there that even Abraham Lincoln, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Frank Sinatra were also bipolar disorder patients, a condition which makes the sufferer easily called as ‘crazy’.
Someday, I was met with our guest in this Interv123’s edition. Well, we have not really met yet actually. He was the Chairman of Cantus Firmus Student Choir when the choir held the Poelang Kampoeng Concert. I saw him, of course, but he might not recognised me. He might think I was only an alumna with purple outfit, trying to synchronise my mouth with the concert’s songs. Or at least, he recognised me as the brother of the concert’s MC. That’s all.
Then after some time, I knew that this guy has a problem commonly known as bipolar affective disorder (BPAD). This Interv123 intended to bring us to different side of BPAD. So, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Bonaventura Sukintoko Pramudyo, S.Farm. Recognise his title? Yes, he is a bachelor of pharmacy who is currently doing the programme to be a pharmacist. He was also brilliantly finished his bachelor before the targeted time, and is also a singer!
Hi, Bon! How are you? I hope you’re fine!
Actually I always a bit confuse if people ask whether I’m ‘fine’ or not. But anyway, yes, I am greatly fine and healthy.
ariesadhar.com 