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Spencer Merritt thought he was going to die. Voices in his head—angry, insistent voices—told him he’d been poisoned by Ivermex, an antiparasite drug prescribed for veterinary use that his mother kept in the house. Other imagined voices belonging to his mother and stepfather told him they had poisoned his beloved dog, Lulu, who had died a year earlier. He thought they were talking to him through hidden microphones and speakers, although he couldn’t find any in his room.
Merritt, 32, felt like he couldn’t breathe. He thought he was having a heart attack. His cluttered second-story bedroom seemed like a death trap, and he was terrified that his parents were going to kill him. He bolted up from the sofa he used as a bed, ran down the stairs and out the front door. It was 1 a.m. and he was wearing jogging pants and a blue bathrobe. Outside, on the streets, he paced and ran, falling to the ground several times as pain shot to his chest and voices echoed in his head. Maybe he was having a seizure, he thought…
