Patch Adams

Below is an excerpt of an interview with Hunter "Patch" Adams, by 'Caring People' Magazine, Spring 1993.

(Dr. Patch Adams was born May 28, 1945, in Washington, DC, and was raised in Northern Virginia. After a brief stint at Sewanee University, Adams attended George Washington University, receiving his undergraduate degree in 1967. He received his medical degree from the Medical College of Virginia in 1971, and after serving a one-year pediatric residency at Georgetown University, he founded the Gesundheit Institute.)

CP: Why did you create the Gesundheit Institute?
ADAMS: My life is one of social action. I want to be useful. I thought creating this model was a way that I could sustain myself and it would be thrilling to do. I wanted a lifetime kind of project that was my style. I needed a place to practice where it would be thrilling to be next to human suffering every day, all day long. Because if is not thrilling, it will eat me up. That is part of my selfishness in creating this hospital.

I would like to see that Gesundheit is both a stimulant and an irritant - that those are its two real functions, not so much that it's doing free medicine and that sort of thing, but that our example either stimulates you to follow your dreams or irritates you where you are with your life.

CP: What are the major problems in our health care system today?
ADAMS: Greed, malpractice, lack of intimacy, and paperwork.

What's wrong across the board with our society is that we have become so bored, lonely, and afraid that we barely can look outside of ourselves - and even the self is not pleasant to us. In that kind of climate it makes sense that, since we cannot find value in ourselves, we can at least put value on what we can collect.

So money became god. I think money and power are the two truly worshipped objects in our modern world society - by the rich, poor, doctors, lawyers, Indian chiefs. Medicine is not unique. Whenever life is, greed has taken hold in an ugly way. In medicine, because human life is in the balance, it sometimes becomes uglier. The Gesundheit Institute is a pie in the face of greed - by taking the most expensive thing in America, health care, and giving it away for free.

I also think the nurse and the doctor used to feel a lot more equal, when there was a lot more humility around in medicine. They realized that they each were good nurturers, one for one style and one for another style. Nurses have been able to hold onto that longer than doctors have.

CP: How did you escape following the same path others have followed?
ADAMS: I had a crisis in my life. My life was basically happy until I was a mid-teenager. I was an A student; everything was easy. I used to dissect hamsters and always thought I would be in the healing arts.

The crisis came in my teenage years. My dad died when I was 16. I lived overseas, came back, and got knee-deep in the civil rights movement. As a young man at 16, I was crushed by man's inhumanity to man, and I used to hide under my bed and cry. There was a lot of confusion in my life.

Twice in my senior year in high school, I was hospitalized for ulcers, and then I graduated and went to egghead U, Sewanee University. My uncle blew his brains out, and then I tried to kill myself a lot of times and ended up in a mental hospital. It was there that my life changed.

With my interaction with my roommate, I, really for the first time in my life, stepped out of my suffering and cared about him, because his suffering was so much greater than mine. In suffering, I was in kindergarten, and he had his PhD. I could see that I could still have fun, but he could not have any fun. So I, for the first time, empathized as an adult with another human being. In the civil rights movement, I had empathized with groups and even individuals I knew were suffering. But here, on a locked ward and behind the closed doors in the mental hospital, my roommate helped change my life by me seeing that my pain lifted as I got involved with him.

"The most revolutionary act you can commit in our society today is be happy." The biggest thing, and I guess the real core of my faith, is that when my friends came to visit me, I had a good time and I recognized that as long as I thought of them, I still had a good time. So friendship became my god, my metaphor for the greatest power imaginable in life.

I left that hospital on fire, and I turned myself around. I looked to the problems of the world and said I can do something. I was just lucky that I found out at the age of 18, so I didn't have to have another crisis in my life. I could settle down and really devote my life to doing something about the problems and use the joy of creativity that can come from such a passion. The last 30 years have been that exploration.

P: What did you learn and what do people learn from suffering?
ADAMS: In hindsight, I can't really say I have suffered very much, particularly as I have seen human suffering. It felt like it at the time, but it was grossly exaggerated in me. I am embarrassed at how great my life has been. Granted, I ended up in a mental hospital and had two ulcers. I see those now as my fast train to joy. They made me wake up. Instead of having a heart attack at 56 and going, "Gee, I have blown the last 30 years so I had better start living," I had a chance to see that in my teens. I looked around for joyful people, and I found that joy is something to behold.

CP: Aristotle, when asked what is the essence of life, said to serve others and do good. Do you agree?
ADAMS: One of the best-kept secrets of all the history of humanity is that giving is the greatest wealth-giver of the planet of anything possible on this planet - whether it's giving as a mother to a child or giving to a friend or lending a hand to a stranger. The opportunity and the thrill to lend a hand is an intoxicant. I'm addicted to it, I know it.

You don't have to be Mother Teresa or Gandhi. Those to me are symbols; they are not even people. They simply are symbols of efforts and inspirations for effort.

I believe we're here for fun. What the bird does with flight, what the ant does in doing its little thing, I want to do with feet and hands and tongue. Each of us has a chance to have the maximum amount of fun until whatever else in life interferes with that. Humans right now are doing a tremendous amount of interference.

CP: What is the most important lesson you've learned in your life?
ADAMS: Friendship, friendship, friendship, friendship, friendship, and friendship. We need each other deeper than almost anyone dares to admit, even to themselves. I think it is a genetic imperative that we huddle together and hold onto each other. There is no question in my mind that there is nothing else in life really but friendship.

I would say imagination would be number two, because everything is the imagination. There is nothing ever thought or done that didn't first come in the imagination. So the friendship covers all of the needs, and the imagination is the celebration.

CP: Any last words?
ADAMS: I just want to call to arms all people. As Walt Whitman says in the Song of the Open Road, "My call is the call to battle, I nourish active rebellion, he going with me must go well-armed". He's not speaking of weapons.

Now, here's my favourite line from the movie based on Dr. Hunter Adam's life, "See what no one else sees. See what everyone chooses not to see... out of fear, conformity or laziness. See the whole world anew each day!" - Arthur Mendelson.