âCollective madness is called sanity.â â Paulo Coelho
Dr. Igor has a theory. Not an official one, not published in psychiatric journals, not accepted by his colleagues. A private theory heâs been developing for years, tested quietly, unethically, on the patients of Villete.
He calls it the Theory of Vitriol.
Vitriol: medieval Latin for a toxic, corrosive substance. In alchemy, the universal solvent that could dissolve anything. In Dr. Igorâs theory, the bitter poison that slowly destroys the human spirit.
Most doctors treat mental illness as brain chemistry gone wrong. Depression, schizophrenia, anxietyâall explained through neurotransmitters, genetic predispositions, chemical imbalances. Fix the chemistry, fix the patient.
Dr. Igor thinks theyâre missing something fundamental. The real disease isnât in the brain. Itâs in the soul.
According to Dr. Igorâs theory, Vitriol accumulates when people suppress their authentic selves to meet external expectations. Every time you deny who you really are to become who others want you to be, a drop of Vitriol forms in your system.
At first, itâs manageable. Everyone conforms sometimes. Social life requires compromise. But when conformity becomes constant, when you spend years or decades living according to othersâ scripts, the Vitriol builds up.
It poisons everything. Your joy. Your creativity. Your sense of meaning. Your will to live. Eventually, it becomes toxic enough to cause what psychiatrists call âmental illness.â
But Dr. Igor believes the illness isnât mentalâitâs spiritual. The brain isnât malfunctioning. The soul is being poisoned by a life lived inauthentically.
Depression isnât a chemical imbalanceâitâs what happens when you spend years denying your true nature.
Anxiety isnât overactive neuronsâitâs the constant fear of being discovered as someone other than who you pretend to be.
Schizophrenia isnât just genetic bad luckâitâs often the ultimate retreat from a world that wonât accept your authentic self.
Hereâs the radical part of Dr. Igorâs theory: most people in mental hospitals are saner than the people outside.
The patients at Villete recognized, consciously or unconsciously, that living an inauthentic life was poisoning them. So they stopped. They broke down, withdrew, refused to play along. They chose symptoms over soul death.
Society calls this madness. Dr. Igor calls it honesty.
The real madness, he believes, is outside the hospital walls. The real madness is the collective agreement to deny our authentic selves, suppress our desires, conform to expectations, and call this normal. Call this healthy. Call this success.
Everyone is a little mad, Dr. Igor theorizes. But most peopleâs madness is acceptable. Theyâre mad in the right wayâpursuing careers they hate, maintaining relationships that drain them, living lives that feel meaningless, all while pretending everything is fine.
This madness is invisible because everyone shares it. Itâs the water we swim in, so we donât notice weâre drowning.
But some people canât maintain the pretense. Eduard, who couldnât be a diplomat when he was an artist. Mari, who had a perfect life but felt empty inside. Zedka, who had panic attacks trying to be the perfect wife and mother.
Their madness became visible, unacceptable, diagnosable. So society locked them up.
Not because theyâre sick, Dr. Igor believes, but because they stopped pretending. Because their Vitriol levels became so toxic that they could no longer maintain the collective illusion of normalcy.
This is where Veronika enters Dr. Igorâs theoryâand his experiment.
She attempted suicide not because of mental illness, but because of Vitriol poisoning. She lived an externally perfect life that was internally empty. The conformity required to maintain that perfect life poisoned her until death seemed preferable to continuing.
Her suicide attempt was actually evidence of sanity. She recognized the poison and tried to escape it.
But Dr. Igor saw an opportunity.
Hereâs what Dr. Igor doesnât tell Veronika initially: her heart is fine. The overdose didnât cause irreversible damage. Sheâs not dying in five days.
He lied.
Why? To test his theory. He wanted to see what would happen when someone freed from the burden of a futureâsomeone with nothing left to loseâfinally stopped conforming completely.
Would she become more alive? Would the Vitriol drain from her system? Would she discover her authentic self when external expectations no longer mattered?
Itâs profoundly unethical. Playing with someoneâs life, giving them a false death sentence, treating a human being as an experimental subject. Dr. Igor knows this. He justifies it anyway.
For science. For understanding. For potentially helping countless others suffering from Vitriol poisoning who donât even know theyâre sick.
And because, he admits to himself, heâs curious. Curious about what a truly authentic human looks like. Curious about whether freedom from the future can cure what conformity to the past has poisoned.
Dr. Igor explains his theory to his notes, if not yet to Veronika: Vitriol forms at the intersection of awareness and conformity.
Animals donât get depressed (not in the human sense) because they live authentically. They donât pretend to be anything other than what they are. A wolf is always a wolf. It doesnât suppress its wolfness to please other wolves.
Children rarely suffer Vitriol poisoning. Theyâre authentic by default. They cry when sad, laugh when happy, say what they think. The Vitriol comes later, when they learn to conform.
Adults accumulate Vitriol throughout their lives. With each suppressed desire, each authentic impulse denied, each moment of pretending to be someone theyâre not, the poison builds.
Is there a cure for Vitriol poisoning? Dr. Igor believes there is, though itâs difficult and radical.
Stop conforming. Live authentically. Be exactly who you are, regardless of external expectations or social consequences.
Easier said than done. Most people are so invested in their inauthentic lives that they canât imagine alternatives. Their careers, relationships, identitiesâall built on conformity. To stop would mean losing everything.
But what are they really losing? Dr. Igor asks. Lives they donât want? Relationships that drain them? Identities that feel false?
The cure requires courage. The courage to disappoint others. The courage to fail by conventional standards. The courage to be labeled crazy for refusing to participate in collective madness.
Most people canât do it. Canât risk it. So the Vitriol continues to accumulate, slowly poisoning them, until they end up depressed, anxious, suicidal, or in Villete.
Veronika doesnât know sheâs part of this experiment. She thinks sheâs dying. That belief is the treatment.
If you truly have only days to live, conformity becomes irrelevant. Career? Doesnât matter. Reputation? Meaningless. Othersâ expectations? Who caresâyouâll be dead.
This freedom should be terrifying. Instead, Dr. Igor observes, itâs liberating. Veronika is becoming more alive as she approaches her (fake) death. More present, more authentic, more engaged.
Sheâs playing piano again. Connecting with Eduard. Experiencing real emotions. Living fully in each moment because she believes those moments are limited.
Dr. Igor knows what heâs doing is wrong. Lying to a patient. Creating psychological trauma. Manipulating someone for experimental purposes.
But he also sees the results. Veronika is transforming. The emptiness that drove her to suicide is being replaced by aliveness. The Vitriol is draining from her system.
Not because of medication. Not because of therapy. But because she believes sheâs dying, and that belief has freed her from the conformity that was killing her slowly.
Does the end justify the means? Dr. Igor isnât sure. But he continues the experiment anyway.
Because if heâs rightâif Vitriol is the real disease and authenticity is the cureâthen maybe this unethical experiment could save countless lives.
Or maybe heâs just a curious doctor playing God with a suicidal patientâs psychology. Maybe his theory is nonsense and heâs just causing harm.
He doesnât know yet. Wonât know until Veronikaâs transformation is complete. Until he reveals the truth and sees whether she chooses life or death when both options are real again.
Dr. Igor has developed the Theory of Vitriol: a bitter poison that accumulates when people suppress their authentic selves to meet external expectations.
Vitriol causes âmental illnessâ: depression, anxiety, schizophreniaâoften results from living inauthentically, not just brain chemistry problems.
The real madness is conformity: most people outside hospitals are mad in an acceptable way, denying their true nature to fit societal expectations.
Patients are often saner than the ânormalâ people: they recognized the poison and broke down rather than continue the charade of inauthentic living.
Dr. Igor lied to Veronika: her heart is fine; the death sentence is fakeâan unethical experiment to see what happens when someone is freed from the future.
The cure is authenticity: living exactly as you are, regardless of consequencesâdifficult and radical, but the only way to stop the Vitriol from poisoning your soul.