As I relapsed I had mostly delusions and paranoia. I thought the CIA was after me for awhile after I wrote a letter to the editor of Science magazine about how the US military was using dioxin as a weapon in Vietnam. My delusions had faded for the previous summer but they had never completely disappeared. That is to say I believed some pretty strange things. In Halifax I thought I had discovered the cause of World War Two. The influenza epidemic of 1918 changed peoples' nervous systems and led to the rise of fascism everywhere, so the cause of the war was a neurovirus. I thought my law professor in Halifax was very well connected with influential people in world politics and was telling people about my theory. Various important people were coming from Europe to meet the man who discovered the cause of World War 2. For example, someone might come up to me in Crofton and talk about mopeds and I would believe this man was the president of Motobecane, the world's largest manufacturer of mopeds. People seemed to know me before I introduced myself, and the local townspeople seemed to be laughing at me. I remember once the political cartoon in the local paper seemed to be about me and people who picked me up hitchhiking seemed to know who I was.
In the spring of 1980 I left Crofton forced out by the townspeople who demanded I get a job. I took the bus with no destination in mind until I ran out of money. From then on I usually hitchhiked, mostly through Alberta and B.C. quitting a job with my first pay check because I found working with people so difficult. They were playing games with me and making fun of me. I would then hitchhike somewhere else. I thought I was being followed by a WW2 veteran everywhere I went who wanted me to shape up by working in construction lik ...