actually pretty dull stuff anyway.
This I had to write for a very good friend of mine. He's someone I open
up to because I trust him and cherish him dearly. For reasons I can not
explain I haven't explained the dark stuff that I sometimes chat to
random strangers about. This and the next post will correct that error.
Sorry buddy.
My first interaction with a psychiatrist was at the tender age of 15. It
was before my GCSEs. I'd been kicked out of home by my parents who
couldn't handle my detrioration. A war had ensued between us and I'd
stopped speaking to them. I rebelled against them by leaving my room a
total mess and playing Rage Against The Machine at full volume. It was
around that time I first started self-harming. I can't recollect why I
started. It just seemed an appropriate thing to do to carve "Fuck you"
into my arm with a compass.
Eventually after a fight with a family friend I was taken to hospital to
have my wounds dressed and told my parents didn't want me back. My
memory is hazy but I remember being okay with that. I was moved to a
children's home in Harlesden. It was lucky in a way. I didn't have
anything else to do but revise for my exams. I still kept turning up to
school. I told my friends but they didn't believe me. It was only when I
showed them I was travelling from a different stop to my usual one that
they realised. Even back in those days no one could tell what I was
going through. I remember seeing a psychiatrist at some point and they
declared me sane: a child reacting to an unusual set of circumstances,
reacting against the oppressive regime of strict professional Asian
parents with no ability to have a dialogue.
The children's home was an interesting experience and one to elaborate
on in another post. There is one memory I had of one of the workers
coming to have a chat with me. That was so important because I was very
isolated - imagine the alienation a public school boy would find in a
place where people had lived their lives in abject poverty. It was a
black man and he was very kind. He spoke to me about god but I explained
I was a hardened atheist. He explained that I could speak to god. God
was the voice in my head. I didn't believe him but I tried it and heard
nothing back. Its only in the last few years that I've come to
understand what he meant.
I was moved to a foster home and soon returned to living with my parents
within six months. I got surprisingly good GCSEs and my parents packed
me off to a local boarding school so I continued my education without a
break. I managed to get into a top 5 university to study a degree in
Electronic Engineering. I fitted in well there and quickly became well
known and even popular through being the friendly, recognisable drunk
with his name in the paper every week as one of the student newspaper
photographers.
My second year was somewhat different. My friends had noticed a pattern
of deterioation from the start to the end of term. It was worse that
year. I took on a lot, slept little and ate less. I never turned up to
lectures but I kept busy being involved in lots of clubs and societies
in the Students' Union. I was probably going to fail my degree. I had a
torrid relationship and my first experience of requited love. Eventually
we split up a week around the time my grandmother died (someone I had
grown up with and had looked after me when I was a baby while my parents
were in the UK during my early childhood). That triggered my first
thought of a suicide attempt though it was a very poor one, not thought
through and done in public. After a break up I downed a handful of
paracetemol and downed some vodka. On the advice of my friends I went to
see a university counsellor who told me to pull myself together and had
I not been reading about mental health before then and known that was
the worst thing to say I would have been broken. Instead I told my
friends and laughed about it.
I dropped out of university shortly afterwards and isolated myself from
my family. The self harm started again and I carved my ex-girlfriends
name into my arm. Its always the same arm and at the time it served as a
lifelong reminder to me but in retrospect I don't see the sense in it. I
also self harmed to feel again. I'd never had much value for my life
anyway and I contemplated suicide but got through that bleak patch. I
eventually started seeing the same counsellor who'd told me to get over
it, managed to get back to university and get my degree. The last year
was a lot of fun and I did copious amounts of drugs but managed to get
my work done. I even managed to get a well-paid graduate job with a blue
chip company which I deferred for a year so I could do a bit of travelling.
I'll skip forward to the period where I started my graduate job. It was
a time of great hope and fun for me, and it was the start of my proper
fall into the hands of the psychiatric system. I was smoking an insane
amount of high quality gear - almost £160 a week - doing a high pressure
job with my own high pressure attitude, living in a new place and
drinking myself silly. I'd probably been hypomanic before but I hit a
hypermanic stage. It was psychotic too and I experienced high levels of
paranoia as well as some unusual, transcendental experiences. My state
of consciousness and experience of reality would change on a daily basis
and with a high degree of variability. One day I might hear the voice of
god speaking directly to me through the MCs voice in a drum and bass
tune, the other I'd be thinking that the Illuminati were trying to get
me and paying cab drivers not to tell them where I'd been. There were
lots of good and interesting parts to this experience but I'll skip on.
Eventually a threat of suicide (not an intent) to one of my housemates
(who I thought was part of the evil conspiracy) during a very paranoid
evening got the assertive outreach team over and they dragged me into a
psychiatric ward. I was told I had to stay otherwise they'd section me
and I wanted to leave so they did. I didn't wanted to be treated, I
didn't want to be detained and I didn't want to take medication.
Eventually after I was acute tranquilised (forced down, a large needle
shoved in my arse and a high dose of antipsychotics injected to cause
unconsciousness) my will was broken.
I was given a diagnosis of bipolar. Eventually I got out of hospital and
carried on being a bit mental but had calmed down a lot. I can't
remember if I was taking medication at this time. Eventuallly I returned
home and was seen by a top private psychiatrist. He medicated me with
antidepressants, mood stabilisers and antipsychotics at very high
levels. The reason he gave was my blood levels showed that they were
necessary at those levels. I think the high dose of antipsychotics may
be because I continued to smoke skunk and drink but also because the
medication didn't seem to work on me. Brown people can also be slow
metabolisers.
I wanted to die during that time for a number of reasons, not least the
loss of my potential life of success. It was worse. I was mad. I was a
loony. I was a bipolar. I experienced a lot of the self-stigma. My life
was cursed to be shit by abnormality and illness. If I didn't take the
medication, medication that ruined my life, I would be ill with this and
I would end up becoming hypermanic again and destroying my life anyway.
A Hobson's choice. I didn't do anything about it because I couldn't get
the energy together but there were days all I wanted was to die. I
struggled through a live less lived and experienced, so much colder and
darker from the colourful pre-psychiatric life.
I got a job as a temp delivering post at a local council then helping
out sort out some data for another department. There I quickly showed
that I was capable and they exploited my misery and avolition to get
high standard work for little pay. To them it didn't matter that I was
doing the work my boss should have been doing with her salary several
times mine but I'd been so crushed that I worked for less than an 18
year old temp doing a basic administration job while I sorted out
complex, statutory data returns. I they ignored the quality of my work,
my dedication and silent sacrifices and preferred to focus on the
negative aspects of me, my lifestyle and my work.
Eventually I ended up in a pointless disciplinary proceeding but it
affected my mental health very badly and I was quickly signed off sick
for several months. I could have been signed off for longer but I worked
for children's services so I quit. That began a bad journey. I wanted to
kill myself after that. I was still taking medication and still smoking
my medication but I no longer had that purpose or that reason to live.
As always serendipity gave an opportunity through a friend of a friend
who wanted to start a magazine. I got involved to give them advice but
ended up running the startup. I was suicidal throughout and that changes
how a person makes decisions. For example loans were the easiest thing
to get without thinking about it because there were no consequences. I
took big personal loans to live my life and run the business whenever I
needed them because if the business wasn't a success and the money ran
out I could simply kill myself. In fact even if the business did work
out and I wasn't happy I could still kill myself.
I ran the business with that deep underlying depression and had a good
time even though the stress was high. It probably could have been a
success as well if I had a thought for the future. In the end it failed
and the loans needed to be paid back. I took an overdose of
antipyschotics - half the dose that could potentially kill someone from
the information I'd gleaned from the internet. It didn't work so I tried
again the next week but I did it while I was drunk. I'd had a massive
episode of whatever that evening and ended up self harming infront of a
family member and taking the pills in front of her. I don't know why I
did that. An unconcious cry for help or an attention seeking outburst? I
also burnt my medication and swore off them.
A trip to A and E was next like a repeat of my childhood and the message
that my parents didn't want me back. This time I ended up in a
psychiatric ward but it was for accomodation rather than mental ill
health per se. I was a voluntary patient then. From that point I refused
to take medication and ended up in temporary accomodation. For three
months I went mad and suffered a hell I would wish on no one. I came off
all my meds including alcohol and skunk. My life was in tatters as well
as my self-esteem. I had nothing to do during this time and few
possessions so I played Sudoku all day. Pretty soon I got back to my old
self-medication though at much lower levels and felt much better.
Things were getting better slowly but I started to come out of
depression too quickly. I wasn't manic but was told I was. I was
starting to experience psychosis again. On Christmas eve I went out to
the pub, got drunk and tried to score some weed. I couldn't and I blamed
the force or entity that was controlling things. I decided I'd had
enough so I decided to kill myself rather than live with this
controlling force messing with everything and controlling everything. I
lay down on the road on my local high street and waited for a car to run
me over. I came very close to dying and to this day I wish that I'd
succeeded. It marked the start of a new chapter in my shit life. One for
another post.
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