Havana Syndrome

From October 2023 to January 2024 I was involuntarily detained for three months after an acute attack of weaponised tinnitus so violent that it produced flashing black spots in my vision and propelled me, half-blind with panic, to the nearest emergency room. I agreed to a “weekend observation” on the psychiatric ward, naïvely believing that any competent physician would recognise the neurological red flags and order proper testing. Instead the door locked behind me, and I was held under successive crisismaatregelen and a zorgmachtiging while the hospital leap-frogged every differential diagnosis and went straight to “psychotic disorder” and 800 mg amisulpride daily. No brain MRI with contrast, no EEG, no lumbar puncture, no heavy-metal screen, no neuro-ophthalmological exam—none of the basic workup that sudden-onset explosive tinnitus with visual loss demands in 2024 medicine—was ever performed.

The medical record is riddled with omissions and contradictions that render the detention legally indefensible. The presenting complaint—directional tinnitus severe enough to cause transient scotomas—was repeatedly noted yet never quantified or investigated, despite matching the exact signature of Anomalous Health Incidents described in the Havana Syndrome literature since 2018. The psychiatrists documented a “normofreen denkpatroon” (normal thought form) and a “fully systematised, coherent, non-bizarre delusional system” that they openly admitted was impossible to test or falsify within the hospital. Meanwhile I was granted repeated unescorted leave for hours or entire days, during which I independently travelled by train, collected my best friend’s young children from daycare, cared for them unsupervised, and returned on time without incident—an objective demonstration of intact executive function that directly contradicts any claim of imminent danger under article 3:4 Wvggz. The public prosecutor compounded the violation by forwarding the zorgmachtiging request to the court weeks late, making my continued detention unlawful from approximately day ten onward under both Dutch law and Article 5 ECHR.

Two years later a leading Dutch neuropsychiatrist reviewed the full dossier and explicitly affirmed that my account is factually consistent and shows no evidence of delusion. The symptom cluster I presented—sudden directional tinnitus, head pressure, whole-body pulsations, cognitive fog, memory impairment, and visual disturbances—maps almost perfectly onto the peer-reviewed AHI criteria, yet the psychiatric system in 2023–2024 responded only with forced antipsychotics and prolonged incarceration. Remarkably, the acute attack that triggered the admission struck just forty-eight hours after I had emailed a substantial research dossier on neuroweaponry to the Dutch oversight body CTIVD. I was not delusional; I was silenced. The hospital ignored an internationally recognised injury pattern, fabricated legal grounds for detention, and participated—whether wittingly or as cover, or unwittingly as useful idiots—in the very suppression my persecutors had threatened from the start.