one but managed to survive without being seen by services.
Psychosis itself is confusing and lifechanging. Sadly with the
psychiatric model of care it's usually something which changes life for
the worse. I have a hope that it can be something which changes people
for the better, eventually.
On my 25th birthday I was hospitalised for the first time. I was a
couple of months into working at Capital One, then one of the best
places to work in the UK and the world. I was at the start of an amazing
career and I hoped to become a corporate success.
I was paranoid during that time. My diagnosis was bipolar with paranoid
features. Even once I left hospital I the paranoia didn't stop. I didn't
want to be in the hospital and did everything I could to get out so I
think they just had to give in. I returned home to London and didn't
work for a year. I wasn't on benefits. Just lived off a loan I'd taken
out when I was manic and from the money I made from my corporate job.
I saw a private psychiatrist that year and for a couple of years after.
He was the one that drugged me to the eyeballs. The problem was I
continued to smoke skunk and I wasn't absorbing the drugs. I was very
unhappy. My dreams had been shattered. Worst of all I had this
diagnosis, a diagnosis of madness. I had a lot of self-stigma.
My first job after that was distributing leaflets telling people when
their rubbish would be collected. I had a degree in Electronic
Engineering, had programmed for a European Space Agency project when I
was 18 and been recruited to one of 10 places on Capital One's grad
scheme from 4,000 applications. With my diagnosis I thought all I was
good for was that level of work.
My next job was as a very basic admin job. I sorted the post out every
day at a council. They moved me to another department, Children's
Services. I'd in a children's home and a foster home briefly when I was
a kid. They didn't know that though. I was paid less than an 18 year old
temp doing an admin job while the work that I was doing was pretty high
level - a lot of what I was doing my boss should have been doing. I was
too depressed to care.
Two years of that job did help my esteem blossom. I worked very hard. I
worked outside work when I wasn't drinking and sometimes I'd work while
I was drinking. It's when I started that pattern. I was exploited, never
rewarded appropriately for the level of my work. Ecentually an
opportunity came up but my boss was my friend and the only way to take
that opportunity was to take her job. I'd been encouraged to apply by
the management team who'd seen my dedication and the results I could
achieve within the constraints.
The year I programmed for the European Space Agency was part of a scheme
for budding entrepreneurs and "captains of industry in 20 years time"
but I didn't feel like that. I felt like a mad person, someone
who...well...was mad. It was something I hated and I asusmed my life
outcomes would be worse because of it. I was partially right in a sense.
I didn't really have the aggressive streak required by entrepreneurs. I
was very passive when I worked that job but that's because I was drugged
to the eyeballs with a chemical cosh.
I never felt angry at being mistreated or underpaid. I didn't care. I
didn't really care much about anything. That's really the effect of
antipsychotics. For many people they don't stop psychosis. I wasn't even
experiencing psychosis at the time but the risk of an episode meant I
was told I would be on these medications for life.
In a series of stupid circumstances I quit that job. It was all I had to
live for. I became very depressed. I drank continuously. Didn't care.
Just wanted to die and while I was alive it was better being drunk. An
opportunity arose through a contact of mine to provide input for a new
magazine. In the end I decided to sod it all and have a go at this
magazine. This wasn't a single decision but a series of steps.
I took out huge loans and spent money wildly. I didn't care. I'd made an
internal decision. If things didn't work out I'd just take my life. If
things did work out I'd take my life anyway. I told no one about this
decision of course. Anyone who's been suicidal knows that's the usual
practice. Obviously I didn't tell my psychiatrist. I didn't trust him.
In the end the magazine didn't work out and the money ran out. One
evening I took an overdose. I remember changing my mind and trying to
sick it up just once. Then I got over it and lay down to die. I remember
waking up the next day thinking, "shit. I'm alive." A week later I tried
again but it was a very different way. I was drunk and angry and had
snapped. I cut myself in front of someone, burned all my medication and
took what was left of them in another overdose. My family got an
ambulance and I think they called the police too. They handcuffed me
which was totally unnecessary.
I was in hospital for a couple of days, Accident and Emergency, while
they monitored me. I said I was fine but they wanted to make sure. Then
some social workers came in and said my parents didn't want me to return
home. I'd been through that before when I was a child. I wasn't
bothered. I didn't know what I was going to do but I didn't care.
They housed me in a psychiatric ward for a few weeks. I think they
weren't sure if I was going to attempt again. People who are suicidal
need to be good liars at times if they're going to make another attempt.
It's what anyone would do if they wanted to take their own life.
I ended up in temporary accommodation. My life was in tatters. I was on
a meagre income. I learned to yellow sticker shop to survive. That's
what I called the feeling of scanning the shelves looking for bargains
and rummaging through the reduced price food which is almost mouldy. In
fact sometimes it had gone off but it didn't matter. It's the only way I
could eat nice food.
At that point I came off everything. Drink. Drugs. Psychiatric
medication. If anyone has found it hard coming off antidepressants or
stopping smoking then they've got no frame of reference to how hard that
period was. I had no support. I was alone with the comedown from all of
that as well as what I perceived as the shattering of my life. The only
support I got from the NHS was my CPN during that time though after a
while I managed to get a referral to a drugs and alcohol counselling
service. Clearly someone in Brent had read the government's dual
diagnosis strategy. I don't think that's happened in other boroughs.
I've had a few crises in my life but this time in retrospect was one of
the worse. I had virtually nothing when I moved into that room. A few
books. I couldn't even afford new ones. I read fast so I decided the
most cost effective way to escape from the withdrawal from all those
medications was to play Sudoku. Endless hours of Sudoku day after day.
There is a saying about champagne and lager or something. Once you get
used to champagne lager is never the same. My life had gone from a high
social status with a good quality of life crashing down to the doldrums
of poverty and isolation. It has happened so many times in my life it's
really quite horrible to think of it happening to anyone else but me.
This is the pattern of my life, the cycle. This is my personal journey
and one I have to face, often alone. There is no acceptable solution and
I've sought one. I've sought many. I will keep searching but in all
honest I doubt I will find anything else but the final solution which,
in my meaning, is an assisted suicide.
For others I hope they find their own solution is better than mine. If
it's psychiatry, spirituality, hedonism or any other way then that's
great. I would want no one to live my life and I'd fight for you to have
the opportunity never to experience what I've been through.
I know the social disability in and out. I know the distress and the
suffering and the endless pain. I've got more personal experience to
inform my views than any psychiatrist or politician.
I live the sort of life which leads to a reduced life expectancy. I do
it by choice as a passive way to kill myself as well as a side effect of
the other things I want in my life apart from death (my own, not anyone
else's).
I've taken you to a point in my life four or five years ago. The last
few years have been even more intense in some ways. Highs and lows. But
I'll leave it there for now.
No comments:
Post a Comment