Schizophrenia & Football

Okay, Football is a natural topic to choose for a blog post, but what about schizophrenia?? Who cares about natural things, am not writing about natural people anyways ;) .There is football and there are football fans. There still are frenetic football fans & then there are... or probably there IS only ONE schizophrenic football fan. I live with one!. We 5 guys stay together here in Chennai in a big house and one of them is the creature am talking about. I know this guy (we call him "Psycho", the most appropriate pet name ever given :) ) from last 7 yrs as he happens to be a good friend and a classmate from my engineering days.

Night of 25th June 2006. England were playing against Equador in the 2nd round of football world cup 2006. Schizophrenia is a psychotic disorder characterized by distortions of reality and disturbances of thought and language and withdrawal from social contact. Coming back to this perticular match. Now, there are two versions of the match we need to discuss. One that was going on in REAL world where England were struggling to score a goal against Equador in first half and the score was 0-0. All of us other flatmates, who were not at house, got calls from Psycho - "Abe, England ki to lag gayi, 2 goals thok diye Equador ne England ke khilaf first half main!!!". Though I would not call myself a football freak, this news was still able to rouse me a little and I said "Achha!!!".
One by one we all got back to home and told each other about the score report that Psycho gave all of us. We were then baffled to see a 0-0 score on tv where the match was still going on. Psycho was staring at the screen, mouth open & body loose, as if he'd lost all his senses. It was after shaking him for 2-3 minutes that he at least seemed to be talking to me. My obvious question was "Abe, idhar to 0-0 hai score tu to bola ke 2 goal ho gaye England ke khilaf!". Psycho was still mumbling something, that somebody from Equador scored 2 goals and all.
At that split moment I realised the bitter truth. My dear friend has got schizophrenic and the score he was reporting was from the virtual England Vs Equador match that he was imagining. No doubt that England was loosing in HIS version of the match, because I knew how he used to hate England team. This guy had been walking/eating/drinking only football from last few days. Was deprived of sleep for last 8 days as he had to watch each and every match every day which made him stay awake till 3 AM. And then he would be dosing off in the bus at 7.30 AM on his way to office. Office would be the place where he'll keep discussing about football again, thanks to the bulletin boards at office. (I have even heard of the stories of people selling used ball pen refills specifying how much ink was left in it and bids coming in at 25 paise!)
Anyway, all this football mania has taken it's toll. The symptoms he's showing are called positive ones. Then there are negative symptoms of Schizophrenia. I've been doing a lot of R&D over this topic since then and the cause in this case seems to be environmental. Paranoia Network is one of the places where these kind of patients can find community support. Even the great people like John Nash are thought to have been affected by Schizophrenia. This, sometimes, makes me feel that even my dear friend must of that league ;) lol. But, at other times, I'm very much worried about his and his family' future. Just thought of making an appeal through my blog to all of you to be more careful and sympathetic towards such people. Those who want to see a live demo of "A beautiful mind" can visit our house in Chennai and meet Psycho. Psycho is a 26 yr old IT professional and looks a little like Hrithik Roshan. No it's just about his looks, otherwise he has only 10 fingers on his hands ;) lol We are also thinking of hosting charity shows featuring this guy and proceeds from these shows will be channelized towards the self help groups like Paranoia Network. If people can buy tickets to watch John Nash in "A beautiful mind" they sure will love to spend time and money for this one. We guarantee to show you a character worth a study of lifetime! ;)

Disclaimer: Any resemblance to the actual events and persons in this post is coincidental. If I get killed after this post, my flat mates know who is to be jailed or rather to be sent to mental hospital ;-)