Patch Adams talks humor and healing

Nearly 1,000 people attended the University of Rhode Island Honors Colloquium on September 22 to hear from Dr. Patch Adams, a physician, activist and self-proclaimed clown talk about his life and experiences.

Sporting eccentric clown attire, complete with blue hair, vibrantly printed pants and multicolored, neon sneakers, Adams gave a two-hour lecture on founding his Gesundheit! Institute for Holistic Medicine and his philosophies about healing with humor.

Adams grew up in Germany during World War II, but moved back to the states after his father died. He was constantly bullied, which led to his relationship with humor at a young age.

“Kids said I was a weird, nerd, dweeb, dork, sissy-boy,” Adams said. “I never started humor to laugh, it was to save my…you-know-what.”

As a young adult, Adams became deeply unhappy and was in and out of mental hospitals for suicide attempts. After three hospitalizations in one year, Adams decided that “you don’t kill yourself, you make revolutions.”

He took that notion with him to college. While working toward his degree in medicine, Adams said he was “too weird to get dates, and too smart to study” so he set out to play with the world.

He experimented with talking and interacting with other people on elevators, by cold calling, and by talking to people on the street.

“I fell in love with humanity,” Adams said. “If I was a nice person the world was mine. Humor gave me my life, and I loved life almost aggressively. It’s so fun to be alive.”

Adams emphasized that as he graduated from college, he wanted a better system for practicing medicine that aligned more closely with his values. He set out to open a free communal hospital, with no insurance of any kind.

In 1971, Adams, along with 20 other adults transformed a six bedroom house into that community hospital. Each night they housed over 50 patients and had between 500 and one thousand patients visit every month. Adams and his team never turned away or charged a single person.

“I wanted to eliminate the thought of debt,” Adams said. He focused on making the patients feel like a part of something bigger, and added that he wanted to make someone feel more than just “the kidney in 403.”

Adams’s methods included unconventional ways of making people laugh and healing through that laughter. 

“We had barf-alongs with the bulemics,” he said. Adams then went into a colorful rendition of a mental patient who would stand in the living room of the hospital yelling profanities for seven hours at a time. He explained that he would gather any students or patients around him and ask for help, and they would all stand in a circle and imitate chickens, squawking  along with him.

“Normally people would call someone like that a loony,” Adams said. “But we’re saying ‘we’re here with you buddy,’”

In the first nine years of the hospital no one made any money and no one left.

“I’ve only known paying to be a doctor,” Adams said. “I love the practice of medicine… done exactly the way I want to.”

After 12 years in this setting, Adams went public, and worked to turn his hospital into today’s Gesundheit! Institute, and expanded his aim to heal people through laughter worldwide. As a part of the Gesundheit! Global Outreach program, Adams has set up clinics in various countries, and makes trips to visit people and heal through laughter as real life clowns several times a year.  

In addition to the program, Adams does speaking engagements where he goes to different local hospitals and care centers and clowns. Towards the end of his presentation, Adams showed video of some of the work he does clowning with sick patients. One video detailed the interaction he had with a girl with Autism. It shows Adams and the girl goofing around, dancing, hugging, laughing and playing hand games. This same girl had never been able to speak or communicate with anyone, and until Adams visited the institution, she had never put her arms around anyone.

URI student Gisel Bello attended the lecture to hear about humor in the medical perspective, and how she could use that in her future as a doctor.

“It doesn’t hurt to love, doesn’t hurt to show yourself, and be there and understand,” Bello said.

After the talk Adams opened the floor to a general Q&A session, and the most emotional reaction from the crowd came from a Rhode Island physician, Manoj Garg.   

“Twenty-one years ago, I was a med student and you stayed with me,” said Garg. “Now, I’m [a physician] beaten down by the system. Thank you for tonight. Patch’s humor is not for a day, it’s what he leaves in our hearts.”

Adams invited Garg to the stage and embraced him, and said, “when I’m rich, I say I’m a trillionaire. You just saw some of my gold.”