The Ten Points discussed
1. Choose Life. Sometimes an immediate issue. Recently I was talking by Internet to a man in New York who said he was sitting with five loaded guns under his chair. A difficult situation. Sometimes my life has been saved only because of the absence of loaded guns, pills, or by happening not being on a clifftop. Four or five people on the Internet took it in shifts to listen and talk, it went on for about nine days. Then he stopped talking. We never found out. A Samaritan told me that people have the right to chose. Fine, but if someone calls our group for help, we have the right to respond. Suicide is no longer an option for me, although the feelings come and go. If nothing else, the decision to act on those thoughts can be put off till the next day with a bit of persuasion. Choose Life and maybe give it one more chance. What can you tell a man with his finger on the trigger ? Maybe that a quarter of a century has passed since my own attempts failed, and, despite the difficulties and pain along the way, despite the doubts, I’m glad I’m still here. Along the way our group has saved a few lives. Simply because we were there and someone turned up as a last resort. For a few moments maybe, someone set their own problems aside and listened, and maybe said something that planted a tiny seed of hope. Choose life, and maybe, save another one.
2. Use the Group as a Source of Strength. The real strength in the group is the commitment. The decision to turn up. No individual can provide that same quality of support, and no individual can draw on the strength without giving some of his own, knowingly or not. We are not a fountain of wisdom, we don’t hand out fixes and remedies. It’s a lifeboat, and we all lend a hand in some way by adding to the unity and the bond of mutual survival. I don’t look for strength from individuals, I look for the feel people give each other when their lives and their qualities of life are at stake. Sometimes the strength comes from talking about illness, sometimes from recovery, the key lies in the honesty. No-one can rely on the strength of others in the group without giving it back, and passing it on. If anyone feels better, if their lives take on new dimensions, it might be a good idea to try to pass that on to someone else.
3. Try to get a True Understanding of the Illness. Find out where you are, get to know your cycles of moods, see how the effects vary from person to person. Lonely self-diagnosis is a one way trip downwards. If we think life is beating us up, we don’t have to lend a helping hand to it by constantly painting negative picture of ourselves. I know what my illness is called, and I can take my pick of old and current theories as to what causes it. Some say chemical imbalance, some say the position of the planets, some believe we have been bad people in a previous life. What really matters is to know what is illness, and what isn’t. Is a mood change part of some remote uncontrollable cycle or am I having a bad day? How did I respond last time I felt this way, and do have different choices now of how to respond? Are the limitations that my illness seems to place on me something I can negotiate with by changes of actions and thoughts, or do I simply give in to its unseen power and fall at every fence? Am I a person affected by an illness or am I an ILL person; there is a difference. Although my illness is unpredictable, can I plan for how I will deal with the next change of mood? Maybe the first step is to talk to someone who cares, or has been through the same thing and come out of the other side.
4. Try not to Get Depressed about being Depressed. Seems like a statement of the obvious, and yet it is a dangerous part of our cycle. Since in a low period, we are well aware we are not feeling the way we used to, or the way we would like to, it is too easy to pile one negative feeling on top of another, or build walls round the walls. On a day when the black cloud threatens, I may be limited in what I do, and it can lead to thought that this a No Day, no point in resisting. Whatever I would like to believe, I’m about as good as what I do with the situation in front of me. However small the progress I can make during the course of the day, I accept the reality of the situation that at all costs I must keep moving, even inch by inch.
5. Find Solid, Manageable Ways of Handling the Illness. I don’t know where the notion or attraction to doing nothing and letting depression swallow me whole comes from, but I know it has happened sometimes.
At present, I am managing my illness by changing my actions, modifying plans, and working to realistic targets. I can’t tell people how to do this, I can only say what I do. All said and done, I’m a bit of a mess by “normal standards.” My ability to cope with adverse situations was never brilliant, and at times I have found it hard to manage making a cup of tea, let alone manage a massive and crushing mood change. Improvements come in small, visible bricks for me, not in glittering dream palaces. My illness is like an unreliable car. Sometimes the window sticks, sometimes the wheels fall off.
I’ve left myself at the roadside a few times, or even at the scrapyard door.
This very day I have the ability to have some kind of plan or order, some hopes and even signs of a managed life. The illness isn’t quite so much in the driving seat. With help from some good people, I am.
6. Have a Clear Knowledge of the Past but avoid Living in It. We can’t get far today if we are dragging the chains of yesterday. Like any other person, our histories are seldom a model of perfection, or some happy Soap Opera. Mr Normal knows how to regroup after some personal disaster and move on. He isn’t likely to suddenly fall back into the quagmire or lapse into some sad daydream of regret. He won’t sit down and write a list of “The Ten Stupidest Things I’ve ever done.”
7. My past lives on the top shelf of a corner cupboard in the kitchen. It doesn’t stand staring me in the face like a trial judge. I know that if I allow it enough power, it will drain the potential goodness of any day, or any moment of that day. Virtually every self-help book I’ve ever read makes some reference to the point of living, thinking and feeling in the present. Within one day, which is all we have any power over. They are not kidding. This could be the best lifesaver of all.
8. Be aware of Others Worse Off and try to Support them. Like I have said elsewhere, we are not a special case. Our illness deserves no more attention from outside sources than any other. I have two illnesses, chronic alcoholism and manic-depression, but I also have an ongoing opportunity to recover, to manage the situation. Many people do not. Within our own illness, we aware there are people who seem to be beyond the kind of help a group like ours can offer. They can’t get there, they are locked up, under section perhaps, or medicated beyond reason. Or they are indoors, crushed between four walls, just like some of us were. Even with our group, there are people whose lives and present situation are appalling compared to mine. We do try to support them, and the group has recently made moves outside its own walls into local hospitals. If we can help break the loneliness, despair an isolation even for a moment, its worth it. Somehow, helping others seems to be the best therapy of all. It’s a pity the world isn’t aware of it.
9. Use the Telephone. It’s too easy to say “Well they wouldn’t’ want to hear from me.” I found the answer to this one by accident one day. I made a list of a dozen people I could phone, and phoned the last one first.
The reason they were last on the list was that I really believed they wouldn’t want to hear from me. All I can say is try it. To be phoned is a pretty clear indication someone is thinking about you. I sat in this very room ten years ago with no-one to phone. And I stopped answering the calls, too.
If you’re really on an up, phone someone you think doesn’t like you much.
If you are really on a down, give someone the chance to help you. They will probably love it, that’s a fact.
10. Plan to Go to the Next Meeting It’s the easiest thing in the world to miss meetings. Someone phoned me yesterday who thinks they are a group member. The truth is, they have been twice in two years. Maybe you don’t feel like going, and the last thing I want to do is to have to sell the group, or make a rod for someone’s back. Maybe you think you are too ill to go, or too well to go. That’s your choice, and I don’t walk in your shoes. The fact is, I’d like you to be there. Someone might turn up who needs you. Remember how you felt the first time you came. Someone was there for you. Enough said.
Wednesday, 28 March 2007
Saturday, 17 March 2007
unleash hell
David Kerr’s Story
Sometimes in the midst of all our apparent normality, life and circumstance take a turn for which no human being could expect to be prepared.
The world hurtles happily through space and time, its surface popping insanely with boundless human travesties. In any given moment, thousands of instant catastrophes are happening all over the world, even one of which would be too much to contemplate. In the time it took to write those few lines, lives have been shattered, snatched and broken, trashed and in those few seconds, everything is gone. The second hand on the wall clock moves one inch and everything you believe in, all your education and experience, all your history of love and life, means nothing. As the California license plate says,
Shit Happens.
Before it happened, I was David Kerr. Now I’m writing at the request of Mike Parker, founder of the Basildon self-help depression group. I cannot attend the group at present, I'm in an “Intensive Care Mental Ward” I do not feel, as it happens, intensely cared for in here. The unit is new, opened last week by the Chairwoman of Basildon Council. You can smell the polish and the OBEs. It is pristine, with Malibu style wooden floors, a state of the art Nurses Station, seemingly modelled on the gas-chamber observation room in San Quentin, a triple door entry system. It looks the part, like a film set. The truck arrived last week and spewed out the crew. A sorry bunch of half-life casualties. They are the staff. The patients seem more used to the displacement ritual. Two million pounds worth of instant decay, National Health Monopoly money scattered in a festival of ill-guided be-seen self-indulgence. I’m writing a four pager for Mike’s new book on depression self-help. Mike knows me, he knows I can write a thousand pages, but he keeps saying only four. I offer him 18 pages , he laughs and walks away. Out through the triple entry door system. Jesus wept, there’s no picture of the Queen, what hope is there for us? Mike says he doesn’t want a ream of change-the world rantings. He wants to know David Kerr. So do I.
I had, in some respects, a brilliant childhood. The streets of Cumbernauld, Glasgow, Scotland, tough mean and fun, with real adventures coloured with daydreams, my father’s scrapyard and dogs, anti-picturesque and musical, the central feel of family laughter, togetherness and warmth of optimistic poverty and the pop of air-rifles among the sad and derelict cars, pellets and shouts defining territory. We made our lives work, with the sheer energy of being, and rough and clannish but unshakeable bonds. It was alright to be us, it was more than alright. We never really knew if there ever was a big pike in the fishpond, the fabled lone symbolic predator feared by perch and little boys alike, but we waited endlessly for that unmistakeable ferocity of bite and the imagined glamour of being the one that landed the thrashing monster. Boys were born to kill giants, to take on the monster in the search for recognition and even adulation. The real monster waited.
A town dubbed as number two in the publication “The fiftiest crappy towns in the UK” where badgers were either too ashamed or too afraid to show up at night, according to the homespun humour which is the built-in self help therapy of lifestyles that otherwise might me labelled as inadequate. Millionaire pop-singers echoing in the ice-rinks and pubs “All you need is love” and our mothers scour Woolworths for a few pennies off, and live under the spiky umbrella of debt-collectors and the tally man. Teenagers with vacant faces in “The Worst Town Centre in Britain” while myself and comrades climb forty feet up a tree in search of a kestrel egg surging with forbidden anticipation, the seduction and rape of nature. The obscure prize nestling innocent and virgin, and only a hero can claim such a prize. And the legend that a swan’s wing can break a man’s arm proved true by one mate. It always seems that these things happen to a certain type of friend and never us, but it is the whole gang of us that become stranded on a cliff-top suddenly reminded that we are dependent still on some aspects of the adult world, not as safe as we thought. Maybe after all, adults know some stuff and can protect us. When shit happens. So, on a day when maybe thoughts were wandering to the mysteries of what girls have and boys don’t, there’s a sudden switch of realities when a raid on a starling’s nest triggers an attack by ferocious wasps who sting my ears into ugly swollen flaps and somebody, naturally, says “serves you right.” The dawning realisation that despite the endless attractive qualities of Mother Nature, she sometimes bites back, and hard. At about the same time, the blackest of comedic moments when a wasp invades farmboy’s yokelly overalls as he makes clumsy progress with an early female prospect who already is realising that a farm-working huntin’ shootin’ fishin’ adolescent lump somehow lacks the finesse and romance she craves.
I flee the scene, a hysterically bad slapstick figure. She must have laughed herself sick.
The move from Primary School to Secondary School turns a shy awkard achiever quickly into a Punk, I go quickly to the nearest and easiest peer group bandwagon, learning the best ways to flout the worst words in the language, the little swot overnight becomes a monosyllabic oaf-urchin, safer from the bullies now, the sensitivity less obvious, the doubts hidden in copied bravado, and under pressure, learning to live the lie. The dangerous conflict of high ego and low self-esteem begins to grow. Am little big man, or a big little man. I operate from defence, not aggression, years must pass before that simple safe philosophy is dashed forever.
It is Wilma who makes some attempt to make a man of me. We do the Thing. There is no lapel badge to flout to say “I did the Thing” We go further than the Thing and embrace Love, and clutch at it gladly, it means we are normal, and even a punk rebel has emotions of a sort. Her father offers me a job as a flat roofer, and I learn quickly to identify with the Sex Pistols happy benevolent outlook that “I was made a Moron, and have “No Future.” Their success endorses my gravitation to failure. The cult of Money must be financed by a cult of poverty and fed my acceptance of mediocrity. We suck on ciggies and feel comfortably wordly and American when we pull the tab on a can of cola.
It is Wilma too that opens the door to depression. It seems like a small door but there’s many rooms in that mansion, I am to discover. Wilma decides to share herself around. The head-spinning feel of first love and romance becomes a dirt-cheap parody as the tale-tellers feed me with skin-crawling details. The first raindrops of sad disillusion herald the arrival of the black cloud. The wasps move from my ears and sting deep inside me. They breed on the fluids of a sickening stomach. I am a blob of raped innocence, the colour of life turns to foggy mush, I buy wholesale into the pain and I have no defences as my Wilma, irreplaceable, satiates herself, gorging on garbage , feeding at the trough of cheap sensation. She takes more, she settles for less, and I have nothing.
The life-force and inspiration drain from my consciousness, and I taste the bitterness of deception, the hollowness if the Big Con, at a time when mindless promiscuity was in its infancy, at a time when some of us still clutched at the endless confetti of love songs and lived our emotions second-hand through the heroic hymn tunes of Phil Collins. High and brilliant feelings reduced to the appalling squalor of a Coronation Street bang behind the Rover’s Return. I taste the huge capacity of the Human to hurt others, I vomit the nauseating blood of betrayal, not realising, that just around the corner, the Beast waits. Shit is going to happen, and it is going to be bigtime.
Like a lamb to another slaughter, I begin the rounds of Doctors and Psychiatrists, again buying wholesale into yet another illusory world, actually still a believer. Here come the anti-depressants, they look promising and somehow I feel like a Graduate of the School of Life. I look at the pills, my new and trusted friends, they are pretty those little foetuses of process, and somehow compliment the neatness of the lady in Boots. Was she betrayed too? Does she know? Like an alcoholic tasting that first brimming beer, I am off and running, albeit backwards, albeit chaotic, albeit innocent, I am a consumer in the burgeoning billion-dollar industry of hope measured in milligrams and have not a whisper of an idea that one day I’ll begetting stronger doses of the Happy Elixir, through a needle, in the arse, held down by a gang of moronic mental health workers. No mention of this on the list of side effects. In some distant leather-clad office, the managing-director of some silky sweet pharmacological
Corporation can confidently order another Aston Martin. A new punter has entered the game, and sadly, it seems to be me. The quack says six months, they seem to have some weird affinity to that time frame, since they forget you in six minutes. All that pain and heartbreak, and instead of the kindness of angels I have only a little green prescription slip as a memento of the lost battle with love.
Six months. Too long to think about when the Suicide virus is already well installed in the system. I have a whole packet, a real-live gun.
Instead, the Geographic cure. London calling, and the prosperous South-East, depression neatly packed into a hold-all wrapped in some new hope. First stop is Ealing YMCA. Somewhere along the line I had shifted my suicide plans to somewhere in my forties, so now I considered my life half-done. I meet and fall in love with a head of staff at the Y, and we talk marriage. Her name is Jill Saward. The Beast is ready, the second hand on the clock sweeps slowly towards his Coming. He comes as suddenly as an axe wielded from behind, but with less mercy, he comes as totally as a horrendous nuclear blast, but with less reason. On March 6th, 1986, what happened is described by the Daily Telegraph as “One of the most notorious sex crimes in history” At the time of writing it is 21 years and seven days ago. It might as well be seven minutes.
In an Ealing Vicarage Jill Saward meets the Beast full-on. It comes in the form of three men, two high on drink and drugs who drag Jill, her father, and I into the study and after crushing the skulls of the men with cricket bats and pouring salts into the wounds rape my fiancée, my Jill, my love, over and over in the most vicious and appalling style. We are made to watch, and listen to the stream of abusive drunken filth. Heaven caves in and crashes through the earth taking all life with it. The senses, physical and mental, cannot take it in, it’s too bloody
big. A personal reverberating Armageddon knifed into the consciousness and twisted with hideous maniac glee, all the puss and filth of human garbage flooding every cell of the body, all the sins of sick and soulless men stamped behind our eyes for ever, and our mentality, the skin of life, so bloody thin, ripped from our skeletons and leaving only vacant staring terrified eyes and a mashed and jelloid brain which cries “No More!” There is a deafening silence of numbed consciousness, but no, it does not take refuge in legendary style in the subconscious, it is raw and naked and it rages. It sobs and shrieks and vomits, and if and its here forever. For some of us, the idea that time heals is an appalling sick joke. And brace yourself, victims, THEY are coming. The forgivers and forgetters, the Judge, the Jury. Unable to even imagine the horror of the victims, they take the next best course and sympathise with the perpetrators. See my book, currently under construction. See Jill’s book too, she somehow through some unseen grace, managed better than I.
The crime finished out relationship, the vicar forgave the three “men” a week later on TV. Jill forgave too, and later later married and had children. Somehow the second hand of the clock comes out of freezing and begins to trick me into depression, rage, paranoia, a healthy young man except for a dread of anything sexual and every conceivable form of mental illness writhing under the usual polysyllabic conglomerate Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome.
I will take nothing from Jill’s courage and strength by saying I was a victim too. Help offered to me……none. I become a celebrity of sorts at work, the cheap innuendos and sexual remarks come from every directions, people love to cash in on an easy target in order to boost up their vision of their own safe and ordered lives. Nobody wants a victim around, it makes them aware of their own vulnerability when the Beast is to close to home. Thank heaven it wasn’t me, say the rubberneckers. That bloke’s been through hell, let’s finish the job. He must have asked for it.
My first brush with Society, the System, the hypocrisy and neglect, the indifference and a ridiculous posturing legal system that gowns and wigs itself away from the real nature of crime. It tells us we are less than It. Queen’s council? Go council the Queen.
The punk graduates. Guns now, car and lorry theft, credit card fraud. The baby is rattling and good. #
Some compensation comes, but is swallowed up by the property crash. A flood of fractured relationships. Seeking emotional compensation with addictive voracious and empty encounters. Inside the child screams for love. A business venture with video rentals leads to meeting my partner Trish, who gives me two sons Jake and Jamie, now 10 and 11. Relationships for me the minefield of them all, the apparent normality infected by old messages in the mind, the slightest emotional difficulties turning quickly into hideous explosive unbalance. Alienation and resentment on hair- triggers. I leave the business and return to the work market.
At a local factory the prize comment, and maybe they drew straws for the honour, was “I’ve heard the rapists buggered you as well.” The milk of human vileness so freely available once again to an easy target. Two accidents, one a blow to the same side of the head fractured by the rapists, and now, inevitably, the whole network of emotion, rage, bitterness, blinding inner loneliness, unravelling me in every direction as every untreated mental wound festers afresh and PDST flashbacks, the hallmark of the Vietnam Veteran, create a ghastly nightmarish mental time-bomb leading be back to the face-flannel superficiality and irrational authority of the mental health system, where diagnosis and ham-fisted treatment are served up fast-food style. Next year’s street-corner drugs ladled out in bucketfuls and Have a Nice Day. An after care treatment with an astonishing resemblance to total abandonment finds me taking on the whole sick fairground of suicide attempts, from the mock-religious overdose to the more glamorous jumping in front of trucks and trains. The journey from hurt to madness is well known, and frighteningly easy. An exorcist-like fight for possession of my soul between mental illness and medication illness. More diagnosis, less care. In the end they go no further than the first page of the file. They don’t like to pry. Drug pushers professionally avoid involvement with their clients. After all, if it comes packed so prettily, it must be harmless in a dreadful sort of way. They have me now. I’m multilabelled, I’m on the computer, I’m Googleable. Just open open up a mental health unit anywhere, sooner or later David Kerr will show up. You only need a dozen David Kerrs and you are in business, the natural flow of money is assured, and through people like me you can claim your right to respect and a good pension. You can drive home happy and fulfilled. Hooray. Here comes the London train. Quick look to the left and right and its hey-ho, a horrendous screech from brakes and commuters alike and leap like a mad frog onto the littered rails. Failed again, hello forced injection.
What saved me? Mike Parker’s self-help depression group. They use a long forgotten medication there, its ancient as dinosaur droppings, and the health service fears and scorns it. Friendship. The real stuff, the 18 carat bond of actual care. There is wellness there. Two quid a meeting and you can stuff yourself on chocolate digestives. Suddenly the world shifts. Maybe, no matter what, despite the flashbacks, the smash-ups of the mental ward and factory premises, the latest admission to these very new and very thick walls, despite it all maybe its ok to be me. Mike thinks we can make it. Maybe even in the process we can shatter the plastic vacant smile of the corporate institution, maybe we can kick over a few money-changing tables in the temple. Maybe out there in the blind and cynical and increasingly self-driven world somebody will finally hear the Scream.
Sometimes in the midst of all our apparent normality, life and circumstance take a turn for which no human being could expect to be prepared.
The world hurtles happily through space and time, its surface popping insanely with boundless human travesties. In any given moment, thousands of instant catastrophes are happening all over the world, even one of which would be too much to contemplate. In the time it took to write those few lines, lives have been shattered, snatched and broken, trashed and in those few seconds, everything is gone. The second hand on the wall clock moves one inch and everything you believe in, all your education and experience, all your history of love and life, means nothing. As the California license plate says,
Shit Happens.
Before it happened, I was David Kerr. Now I’m writing at the request of Mike Parker, founder of the Basildon self-help depression group. I cannot attend the group at present, I'm in an “Intensive Care Mental Ward” I do not feel, as it happens, intensely cared for in here. The unit is new, opened last week by the Chairwoman of Basildon Council. You can smell the polish and the OBEs. It is pristine, with Malibu style wooden floors, a state of the art Nurses Station, seemingly modelled on the gas-chamber observation room in San Quentin, a triple door entry system. It looks the part, like a film set. The truck arrived last week and spewed out the crew. A sorry bunch of half-life casualties. They are the staff. The patients seem more used to the displacement ritual. Two million pounds worth of instant decay, National Health Monopoly money scattered in a festival of ill-guided be-seen self-indulgence. I’m writing a four pager for Mike’s new book on depression self-help. Mike knows me, he knows I can write a thousand pages, but he keeps saying only four. I offer him 18 pages , he laughs and walks away. Out through the triple entry door system. Jesus wept, there’s no picture of the Queen, what hope is there for us? Mike says he doesn’t want a ream of change-the world rantings. He wants to know David Kerr. So do I.
I had, in some respects, a brilliant childhood. The streets of Cumbernauld, Glasgow, Scotland, tough mean and fun, with real adventures coloured with daydreams, my father’s scrapyard and dogs, anti-picturesque and musical, the central feel of family laughter, togetherness and warmth of optimistic poverty and the pop of air-rifles among the sad and derelict cars, pellets and shouts defining territory. We made our lives work, with the sheer energy of being, and rough and clannish but unshakeable bonds. It was alright to be us, it was more than alright. We never really knew if there ever was a big pike in the fishpond, the fabled lone symbolic predator feared by perch and little boys alike, but we waited endlessly for that unmistakeable ferocity of bite and the imagined glamour of being the one that landed the thrashing monster. Boys were born to kill giants, to take on the monster in the search for recognition and even adulation. The real monster waited.
A town dubbed as number two in the publication “The fiftiest crappy towns in the UK” where badgers were either too ashamed or too afraid to show up at night, according to the homespun humour which is the built-in self help therapy of lifestyles that otherwise might me labelled as inadequate. Millionaire pop-singers echoing in the ice-rinks and pubs “All you need is love” and our mothers scour Woolworths for a few pennies off, and live under the spiky umbrella of debt-collectors and the tally man. Teenagers with vacant faces in “The Worst Town Centre in Britain” while myself and comrades climb forty feet up a tree in search of a kestrel egg surging with forbidden anticipation, the seduction and rape of nature. The obscure prize nestling innocent and virgin, and only a hero can claim such a prize. And the legend that a swan’s wing can break a man’s arm proved true by one mate. It always seems that these things happen to a certain type of friend and never us, but it is the whole gang of us that become stranded on a cliff-top suddenly reminded that we are dependent still on some aspects of the adult world, not as safe as we thought. Maybe after all, adults know some stuff and can protect us. When shit happens. So, on a day when maybe thoughts were wandering to the mysteries of what girls have and boys don’t, there’s a sudden switch of realities when a raid on a starling’s nest triggers an attack by ferocious wasps who sting my ears into ugly swollen flaps and somebody, naturally, says “serves you right.” The dawning realisation that despite the endless attractive qualities of Mother Nature, she sometimes bites back, and hard. At about the same time, the blackest of comedic moments when a wasp invades farmboy’s yokelly overalls as he makes clumsy progress with an early female prospect who already is realising that a farm-working huntin’ shootin’ fishin’ adolescent lump somehow lacks the finesse and romance she craves.
I flee the scene, a hysterically bad slapstick figure. She must have laughed herself sick.
The move from Primary School to Secondary School turns a shy awkard achiever quickly into a Punk, I go quickly to the nearest and easiest peer group bandwagon, learning the best ways to flout the worst words in the language, the little swot overnight becomes a monosyllabic oaf-urchin, safer from the bullies now, the sensitivity less obvious, the doubts hidden in copied bravado, and under pressure, learning to live the lie. The dangerous conflict of high ego and low self-esteem begins to grow. Am little big man, or a big little man. I operate from defence, not aggression, years must pass before that simple safe philosophy is dashed forever.
It is Wilma who makes some attempt to make a man of me. We do the Thing. There is no lapel badge to flout to say “I did the Thing” We go further than the Thing and embrace Love, and clutch at it gladly, it means we are normal, and even a punk rebel has emotions of a sort. Her father offers me a job as a flat roofer, and I learn quickly to identify with the Sex Pistols happy benevolent outlook that “I was made a Moron, and have “No Future.” Their success endorses my gravitation to failure. The cult of Money must be financed by a cult of poverty and fed my acceptance of mediocrity. We suck on ciggies and feel comfortably wordly and American when we pull the tab on a can of cola.
It is Wilma too that opens the door to depression. It seems like a small door but there’s many rooms in that mansion, I am to discover. Wilma decides to share herself around. The head-spinning feel of first love and romance becomes a dirt-cheap parody as the tale-tellers feed me with skin-crawling details. The first raindrops of sad disillusion herald the arrival of the black cloud. The wasps move from my ears and sting deep inside me. They breed on the fluids of a sickening stomach. I am a blob of raped innocence, the colour of life turns to foggy mush, I buy wholesale into the pain and I have no defences as my Wilma, irreplaceable, satiates herself, gorging on garbage , feeding at the trough of cheap sensation. She takes more, she settles for less, and I have nothing.
The life-force and inspiration drain from my consciousness, and I taste the bitterness of deception, the hollowness if the Big Con, at a time when mindless promiscuity was in its infancy, at a time when some of us still clutched at the endless confetti of love songs and lived our emotions second-hand through the heroic hymn tunes of Phil Collins. High and brilliant feelings reduced to the appalling squalor of a Coronation Street bang behind the Rover’s Return. I taste the huge capacity of the Human to hurt others, I vomit the nauseating blood of betrayal, not realising, that just around the corner, the Beast waits. Shit is going to happen, and it is going to be bigtime.
Like a lamb to another slaughter, I begin the rounds of Doctors and Psychiatrists, again buying wholesale into yet another illusory world, actually still a believer. Here come the anti-depressants, they look promising and somehow I feel like a Graduate of the School of Life. I look at the pills, my new and trusted friends, they are pretty those little foetuses of process, and somehow compliment the neatness of the lady in Boots. Was she betrayed too? Does she know? Like an alcoholic tasting that first brimming beer, I am off and running, albeit backwards, albeit chaotic, albeit innocent, I am a consumer in the burgeoning billion-dollar industry of hope measured in milligrams and have not a whisper of an idea that one day I’ll begetting stronger doses of the Happy Elixir, through a needle, in the arse, held down by a gang of moronic mental health workers. No mention of this on the list of side effects. In some distant leather-clad office, the managing-director of some silky sweet pharmacological
Corporation can confidently order another Aston Martin. A new punter has entered the game, and sadly, it seems to be me. The quack says six months, they seem to have some weird affinity to that time frame, since they forget you in six minutes. All that pain and heartbreak, and instead of the kindness of angels I have only a little green prescription slip as a memento of the lost battle with love.
Six months. Too long to think about when the Suicide virus is already well installed in the system. I have a whole packet, a real-live gun.
Instead, the Geographic cure. London calling, and the prosperous South-East, depression neatly packed into a hold-all wrapped in some new hope. First stop is Ealing YMCA. Somewhere along the line I had shifted my suicide plans to somewhere in my forties, so now I considered my life half-done. I meet and fall in love with a head of staff at the Y, and we talk marriage. Her name is Jill Saward. The Beast is ready, the second hand on the clock sweeps slowly towards his Coming. He comes as suddenly as an axe wielded from behind, but with less mercy, he comes as totally as a horrendous nuclear blast, but with less reason. On March 6th, 1986, what happened is described by the Daily Telegraph as “One of the most notorious sex crimes in history” At the time of writing it is 21 years and seven days ago. It might as well be seven minutes.
In an Ealing Vicarage Jill Saward meets the Beast full-on. It comes in the form of three men, two high on drink and drugs who drag Jill, her father, and I into the study and after crushing the skulls of the men with cricket bats and pouring salts into the wounds rape my fiancée, my Jill, my love, over and over in the most vicious and appalling style. We are made to watch, and listen to the stream of abusive drunken filth. Heaven caves in and crashes through the earth taking all life with it. The senses, physical and mental, cannot take it in, it’s too bloody
big. A personal reverberating Armageddon knifed into the consciousness and twisted with hideous maniac glee, all the puss and filth of human garbage flooding every cell of the body, all the sins of sick and soulless men stamped behind our eyes for ever, and our mentality, the skin of life, so bloody thin, ripped from our skeletons and leaving only vacant staring terrified eyes and a mashed and jelloid brain which cries “No More!” There is a deafening silence of numbed consciousness, but no, it does not take refuge in legendary style in the subconscious, it is raw and naked and it rages. It sobs and shrieks and vomits, and if and its here forever. For some of us, the idea that time heals is an appalling sick joke. And brace yourself, victims, THEY are coming. The forgivers and forgetters, the Judge, the Jury. Unable to even imagine the horror of the victims, they take the next best course and sympathise with the perpetrators. See my book, currently under construction. See Jill’s book too, she somehow through some unseen grace, managed better than I.
The crime finished out relationship, the vicar forgave the three “men” a week later on TV. Jill forgave too, and later later married and had children. Somehow the second hand of the clock comes out of freezing and begins to trick me into depression, rage, paranoia, a healthy young man except for a dread of anything sexual and every conceivable form of mental illness writhing under the usual polysyllabic conglomerate Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome.
I will take nothing from Jill’s courage and strength by saying I was a victim too. Help offered to me……none. I become a celebrity of sorts at work, the cheap innuendos and sexual remarks come from every directions, people love to cash in on an easy target in order to boost up their vision of their own safe and ordered lives. Nobody wants a victim around, it makes them aware of their own vulnerability when the Beast is to close to home. Thank heaven it wasn’t me, say the rubberneckers. That bloke’s been through hell, let’s finish the job. He must have asked for it.
My first brush with Society, the System, the hypocrisy and neglect, the indifference and a ridiculous posturing legal system that gowns and wigs itself away from the real nature of crime. It tells us we are less than It. Queen’s council? Go council the Queen.
The punk graduates. Guns now, car and lorry theft, credit card fraud. The baby is rattling and good. #
Some compensation comes, but is swallowed up by the property crash. A flood of fractured relationships. Seeking emotional compensation with addictive voracious and empty encounters. Inside the child screams for love. A business venture with video rentals leads to meeting my partner Trish, who gives me two sons Jake and Jamie, now 10 and 11. Relationships for me the minefield of them all, the apparent normality infected by old messages in the mind, the slightest emotional difficulties turning quickly into hideous explosive unbalance. Alienation and resentment on hair- triggers. I leave the business and return to the work market.
At a local factory the prize comment, and maybe they drew straws for the honour, was “I’ve heard the rapists buggered you as well.” The milk of human vileness so freely available once again to an easy target. Two accidents, one a blow to the same side of the head fractured by the rapists, and now, inevitably, the whole network of emotion, rage, bitterness, blinding inner loneliness, unravelling me in every direction as every untreated mental wound festers afresh and PDST flashbacks, the hallmark of the Vietnam Veteran, create a ghastly nightmarish mental time-bomb leading be back to the face-flannel superficiality and irrational authority of the mental health system, where diagnosis and ham-fisted treatment are served up fast-food style. Next year’s street-corner drugs ladled out in bucketfuls and Have a Nice Day. An after care treatment with an astonishing resemblance to total abandonment finds me taking on the whole sick fairground of suicide attempts, from the mock-religious overdose to the more glamorous jumping in front of trucks and trains. The journey from hurt to madness is well known, and frighteningly easy. An exorcist-like fight for possession of my soul between mental illness and medication illness. More diagnosis, less care. In the end they go no further than the first page of the file. They don’t like to pry. Drug pushers professionally avoid involvement with their clients. After all, if it comes packed so prettily, it must be harmless in a dreadful sort of way. They have me now. I’m multilabelled, I’m on the computer, I’m Googleable. Just open open up a mental health unit anywhere, sooner or later David Kerr will show up. You only need a dozen David Kerrs and you are in business, the natural flow of money is assured, and through people like me you can claim your right to respect and a good pension. You can drive home happy and fulfilled. Hooray. Here comes the London train. Quick look to the left and right and its hey-ho, a horrendous screech from brakes and commuters alike and leap like a mad frog onto the littered rails. Failed again, hello forced injection.
What saved me? Mike Parker’s self-help depression group. They use a long forgotten medication there, its ancient as dinosaur droppings, and the health service fears and scorns it. Friendship. The real stuff, the 18 carat bond of actual care. There is wellness there. Two quid a meeting and you can stuff yourself on chocolate digestives. Suddenly the world shifts. Maybe, no matter what, despite the flashbacks, the smash-ups of the mental ward and factory premises, the latest admission to these very new and very thick walls, despite it all maybe its ok to be me. Mike thinks we can make it. Maybe even in the process we can shatter the plastic vacant smile of the corporate institution, maybe we can kick over a few money-changing tables in the temple. Maybe out there in the blind and cynical and increasingly self-driven world somebody will finally hear the Scream.
Monday, 12 March 2007
it starts here.......
Intro. “keep it real” (Ali G)
Our self-help depression group is well into its fourth year. This book shows depression from the view point of people who want to do something about it.
It is has 3 aims. First to present depression management for those that have it, second to try to help friends and relatives of sufferers to understand the illness, and last to show by example how people with the same basic problem can find tremendous support and therapy through forming groups of their own.
Doctors and psychiatrists have taken a few guesses, some of them quite good, over the years, as to what we feel. The professionals aren’t enough. The principle of groups of our kind was laid down in the 1930’s by Bill Wilson, who founded Alcoholics Anonymous. The medical profession at the time had virtually written off chronic alcoholics as a lost cause. Within five years, Bill W had 100,000 alcoholics sober, by meeting in local groups. Scott Peck, the enlightened community- building American Psychiatrist who wrote “The Road Less Travelled” wrote that the founding of AA was the most significant event of the century.
Our group is the natural extension of two people trying to solve mutual problems over a cup of coffee. This is the obvious first step. When there are 3 or 4, maybe rent a room for a weekly meeting. Advertise and tell.
150 people have attended our group, and at any time there are between 8 and 15 at any meeting. Some of their stories are here, and hopefully illustrate the range of the illness. This is not a cry for help, nor an invitation for sympathy. This is a Lifeline.
Our self-help depression group is well into its fourth year. This book shows depression from the view point of people who want to do something about it.
It is has 3 aims. First to present depression management for those that have it, second to try to help friends and relatives of sufferers to understand the illness, and last to show by example how people with the same basic problem can find tremendous support and therapy through forming groups of their own.
Doctors and psychiatrists have taken a few guesses, some of them quite good, over the years, as to what we feel. The professionals aren’t enough. The principle of groups of our kind was laid down in the 1930’s by Bill Wilson, who founded Alcoholics Anonymous. The medical profession at the time had virtually written off chronic alcoholics as a lost cause. Within five years, Bill W had 100,000 alcoholics sober, by meeting in local groups. Scott Peck, the enlightened community- building American Psychiatrist who wrote “The Road Less Travelled” wrote that the founding of AA was the most significant event of the century.
Our group is the natural extension of two people trying to solve mutual problems over a cup of coffee. This is the obvious first step. When there are 3 or 4, maybe rent a room for a weekly meeting. Advertise and tell.
150 people have attended our group, and at any time there are between 8 and 15 at any meeting. Some of their stories are here, and hopefully illustrate the range of the illness. This is not a cry for help, nor an invitation for sympathy. This is a Lifeline.
our view
see it
We do not claim to be “a special case.” We are one among endless illnesses, some of which are so obviously more dreadful. Our world seems to be rife with illnesses of every description, cruelty, need, and all these enhanced by selfishness and indifference. Failure to share the world’s resources with each other has led to appalling differences in living conditions. In Britain, the loss of community has deadened the affinity of people to help each other. “I’m alright Jack” has never been stronger. Professionalism and big business in the health services has turned patients into what are now called “service users,” or consumers in a world that increasingly emulates big business. We, the group are one illness in the middle of all this, and we are a small and growing community which uses one resource. Each other.
.
The term depression means about as much as the term “a bad leg.”
Just as a bad leg can mean a stubbed toe, or severe gangrene, depression covers everything from a mild downturn of mood, to what we have come to call the Black Pit. In the general community, it probably means something of a grey cloud. Therefore, there can be no diagnosis of “depression.” It isn’t enough. Suicide figures give some guide to the scale of the illness.
Over a million people commit suicide each year. One every forty seconds. Given those statistics, its hard not to be cynical when people say “it’s a cry for help”
There are in addition of course, just as many suicide attempts. And then there’s the countless millions who carry the notion of suicide around, as it were, in their back pocket. Then there are the people who have no idea they are depressed. Their performance is low, their hopes limited, their lives greyed-out. They might work and have families, somehow hanging on, and may have the idea that something inside is wrong. It’s worldwide, it’s growing, and it’s often ignored, denied, glossed over, misunderstood, or worse, simply laughed at.
The definitions and categories of depression have little value here. If our lives are affected by negative mood changes, if we feel despair, powerlessness, lack of drive, low self-esteem, sense of failure, all these, and sometimes for no apparent reason, either intermittently, or seemingly endlessly, there is obviously a disorder to be faced. Our experiences show that we usually have limited resources in ourselves to deal with the situation, we have to look elsewhere. We have turned to the medical world for cures, and been disappointed. We have turned to our families for support and understanding and have met fear, judgement and misunderstanding in some cases, even from caring ones. Sometimes we have found refuge in trying to understand the symptoms of our illness, such as our addictions to substances and behaviour, and have sought the roots of our problems in our childhoods and meantime tragedies, or even our genes.
We have found however in our groups that the feelings are far more significant than the facts, and that the differences in our histories are far less than the feelings we have in common. Like every other creature on the planet, we can do little more than try to get the best out of each day as it comes along, and we are among the many millions of people who seek support from our own kind by talking in specific groups about specific problems. We have to find ways to disempower our illness, by understanding our limitations, seeing where in we are in relation to others, but also by seeing our potential. Often the first person to write us off has been ourselves. Doing nothing, and sharing nothing, has sometimes been our way of life.
We recognise that the propensity for depression is what we have in common, but more importantly we realise the limitless opportunity this gives us to help each other. Help may be talking, listening, or simply being present, instantly taking the isolation from the other person. Being there, and being aware, perhaps for the first time, that there is a bond of care available in the group which is special, and not available elsewhere. We have learned the combined power of listening and sharing in a safe, non-judgemental environment, and learned that we are more than people with a convenient label for those that would write us off. We are not defined by out illness, we are people with an illness, which sometimes comes and goes, with varying effects. And what is more, we have become vital to each other’s quality of life.
We do not claim to be “a special case.” We are one among endless illnesses, some of which are so obviously more dreadful. Our world seems to be rife with illnesses of every description, cruelty, need, and all these enhanced by selfishness and indifference. Failure to share the world’s resources with each other has led to appalling differences in living conditions. In Britain, the loss of community has deadened the affinity of people to help each other. “I’m alright Jack” has never been stronger. Professionalism and big business in the health services has turned patients into what are now called “service users,” or consumers in a world that increasingly emulates big business. We, the group are one illness in the middle of all this, and we are a small and growing community which uses one resource. Each other.
.
The term depression means about as much as the term “a bad leg.”
Just as a bad leg can mean a stubbed toe, or severe gangrene, depression covers everything from a mild downturn of mood, to what we have come to call the Black Pit. In the general community, it probably means something of a grey cloud. Therefore, there can be no diagnosis of “depression.” It isn’t enough. Suicide figures give some guide to the scale of the illness.
Over a million people commit suicide each year. One every forty seconds. Given those statistics, its hard not to be cynical when people say “it’s a cry for help”
There are in addition of course, just as many suicide attempts. And then there’s the countless millions who carry the notion of suicide around, as it were, in their back pocket. Then there are the people who have no idea they are depressed. Their performance is low, their hopes limited, their lives greyed-out. They might work and have families, somehow hanging on, and may have the idea that something inside is wrong. It’s worldwide, it’s growing, and it’s often ignored, denied, glossed over, misunderstood, or worse, simply laughed at.
The definitions and categories of depression have little value here. If our lives are affected by negative mood changes, if we feel despair, powerlessness, lack of drive, low self-esteem, sense of failure, all these, and sometimes for no apparent reason, either intermittently, or seemingly endlessly, there is obviously a disorder to be faced. Our experiences show that we usually have limited resources in ourselves to deal with the situation, we have to look elsewhere. We have turned to the medical world for cures, and been disappointed. We have turned to our families for support and understanding and have met fear, judgement and misunderstanding in some cases, even from caring ones. Sometimes we have found refuge in trying to understand the symptoms of our illness, such as our addictions to substances and behaviour, and have sought the roots of our problems in our childhoods and meantime tragedies, or even our genes.
We have found however in our groups that the feelings are far more significant than the facts, and that the differences in our histories are far less than the feelings we have in common. Like every other creature on the planet, we can do little more than try to get the best out of each day as it comes along, and we are among the many millions of people who seek support from our own kind by talking in specific groups about specific problems. We have to find ways to disempower our illness, by understanding our limitations, seeing where in we are in relation to others, but also by seeing our potential. Often the first person to write us off has been ourselves. Doing nothing, and sharing nothing, has sometimes been our way of life.
We recognise that the propensity for depression is what we have in common, but more importantly we realise the limitless opportunity this gives us to help each other. Help may be talking, listening, or simply being present, instantly taking the isolation from the other person. Being there, and being aware, perhaps for the first time, that there is a bond of care available in the group which is special, and not available elsewhere. We have learned the combined power of listening and sharing in a safe, non-judgemental environment, and learned that we are more than people with a convenient label for those that would write us off. We are not defined by out illness, we are people with an illness, which sometimes comes and goes, with varying effects. And what is more, we have become vital to each other’s quality of life.
first group sheet
Daily thoughts:
A bad wake-up can cause a bad day. Try, however difficult it may seem, to stand aside from the depression. Decide to not let it take over and damage your whole day. Depression is part of you; it may even be a large part, but it is not the whole you.
You owe it to yourself to give the day your best shot, no matter how you feel. Refuse to listen to hopeless, repetitive thoughts. Think of the support and strength that you know is available from the group; remind yourself that you yourself are a source of strength to others in the group. Think about the last meeting, and think about the next meeting. Think how far you have come by joining the group at all....a positive step towards a better life. You turned your back on isolation, and you never have to go back to that.
Today, try to claim part of your life back from the illness. It might help to make a short written plan for the day, and try to carry it through. You are probably doing things right now that in the past have been difficult or impossible.
When it’s hard, divide the day into three parts, morning, afternoon and evening and plan to get something for you out of each part, some small task, a phone call, a letter or some small job that needs getting out of the way.
Think of the goodness in the group, and remind yourself that you never have to struggle by yourself unless you choose to. Think back to when there seemed to be no hope at all and remember how much power you have to help those worse off, perhaps people who have illnesses that are never going to improve, and people who are totally cut off from sources of help.
Don’t be alone, be a friend.
Michael February 2004
A bad wake-up can cause a bad day. Try, however difficult it may seem, to stand aside from the depression. Decide to not let it take over and damage your whole day. Depression is part of you; it may even be a large part, but it is not the whole you.
You owe it to yourself to give the day your best shot, no matter how you feel. Refuse to listen to hopeless, repetitive thoughts. Think of the support and strength that you know is available from the group; remind yourself that you yourself are a source of strength to others in the group. Think about the last meeting, and think about the next meeting. Think how far you have come by joining the group at all....a positive step towards a better life. You turned your back on isolation, and you never have to go back to that.
Today, try to claim part of your life back from the illness. It might help to make a short written plan for the day, and try to carry it through. You are probably doing things right now that in the past have been difficult or impossible.
When it’s hard, divide the day into three parts, morning, afternoon and evening and plan to get something for you out of each part, some small task, a phone call, a letter or some small job that needs getting out of the way.
Think of the goodness in the group, and remind yourself that you never have to struggle by yourself unless you choose to. Think back to when there seemed to be no hope at all and remember how much power you have to help those worse off, perhaps people who have illnesses that are never going to improve, and people who are totally cut off from sources of help.
Don’t be alone, be a friend.
Michael February 2004
Saturday, 10 March 2007
Jean's Story
Jean’s Story
When I was about 5, my mother gave me some news. She said she was pregnant, and since we only had a two-bedroom house, I would have to go into a Home. She left me at St Barnados. I was sexually abused in there by the staff. Depression and fear were my way of life. I felt like a total nothing.
I was there for about 5 years, I always made friends and sometimes they let me down. But some of my friends have been lifetime friends.
When I worked, I was a GPO telephonist, I loved my job, and was told I was good at it. They had me all over Essex on relief, and despite the pressure I enjoyed it, made friends and had some happy times. Eventually everything became too much and I had a breakdown. I still miss my job all these years later.
Happy times were soon gone when I married. He turned out to be a violent drunk. He beat me and starved me. When I was on benefits he took all the money for drink, he called me terrible things, and eventually went to prison for arson. I divorced him.
My life became a cycle of depression, breakdowns, and mental hospitals. Endless medications, I still take a dozen tablets a day, and I have had electric shock treatment. For years I ended up in the wards about once a year because I couldn’t handle life. Sometimes the loneliness is terrible, and I am severely affected by physical illness and can’t go out. I’m waiting for a hip operation and am in constant pain, as well as having several other illnesses.
Ten years ago I met Mike Parker at a Mind day centre. He was so depressed and lost, and I asked him if he would like a cup of tea. He became my friend and visited me at home about once a week. He sat there in silence mostly, we would watch videos and drink tea. Sometimes we would go to the Mind Sunday lunches. For weeks Mike could hardly speak, and seemed unable to take care of himself or his appearance. Gradually he became a little more able to talk, although his car was repossessed and his phone was cut off, and he was threatened with bailiffs and eviction.
Six years later we were still friends, and went out sometimes when I was able.
Mike’s wife returned after many months, but he would come over on Saturday mornings, and gradually I saw him recovering, although sometimes, like me, he would slip back into deep depressions. I still ended up in the Mental Health Unit once a year.
One day I was looking in the local paper too see if there were any depression groups, and saw one in Southend and one in Chelmsford. I asked Mike if there was any way we could start one in Basildon. Mike put a postcard in a shop window, and I called the local church to see if we could rent a room. A month later, four of us arrived for our first meeting. That was three and a half years ago. We started out as once a month, then twice, then every week, then twice a week, then a Saturday coffee morning. One Tuesday 23 people turned up.
I made many good friends, some of them I still see, and continue to make new ones, though I can hardly ever get to the group because I can’t walk any more, with the arthritis. Mike comes round once or twice a week if he can, and group members phone me. My depressions still come in cycles, but I have never been back to the Mental Hospital since the group started. Mike’s Ten Points start out with “Choose Life” and it has saved me from overdoses which used to be regular for me. When I’m suicidal I phone Mike. I phoned my doctor one night when I couldn’t get any help from the emergency mental health team, and he struck me off his list for bothering him. My psychiatrist came to see me eighteen months ago and said since I am so disabled he would visit me regularly. He has never been back. Over the years they have upped the medications, and for a long while gave me painful anti-depressant injections which always made me ill.
I learned to talk about myself in the group gradually, and tell my story sometimes although it is very difficult for me. The main thing is the support of people with the same illness, and the care I feel from them. Mike says he needed me at the group because I know how to smile and welcome people, especially new people.
If I ever have the hip operation I would love to be at the group every week like I used to. After a year in the group I was able to fly to Guernsey to visit my relatives there. I kept cancelling plans, but the group encouraged me. I actually made it to a meeting a few weeks back, but I was in pain, and know I am housebound until after my operation. One day I will be able to walk again, and look forward to meeting all my friends every week….
Jean. Feb 2007
When I was about 5, my mother gave me some news. She said she was pregnant, and since we only had a two-bedroom house, I would have to go into a Home. She left me at St Barnados. I was sexually abused in there by the staff. Depression and fear were my way of life. I felt like a total nothing.
I was there for about 5 years, I always made friends and sometimes they let me down. But some of my friends have been lifetime friends.
When I worked, I was a GPO telephonist, I loved my job, and was told I was good at it. They had me all over Essex on relief, and despite the pressure I enjoyed it, made friends and had some happy times. Eventually everything became too much and I had a breakdown. I still miss my job all these years later.
Happy times were soon gone when I married. He turned out to be a violent drunk. He beat me and starved me. When I was on benefits he took all the money for drink, he called me terrible things, and eventually went to prison for arson. I divorced him.
My life became a cycle of depression, breakdowns, and mental hospitals. Endless medications, I still take a dozen tablets a day, and I have had electric shock treatment. For years I ended up in the wards about once a year because I couldn’t handle life. Sometimes the loneliness is terrible, and I am severely affected by physical illness and can’t go out. I’m waiting for a hip operation and am in constant pain, as well as having several other illnesses.
Ten years ago I met Mike Parker at a Mind day centre. He was so depressed and lost, and I asked him if he would like a cup of tea. He became my friend and visited me at home about once a week. He sat there in silence mostly, we would watch videos and drink tea. Sometimes we would go to the Mind Sunday lunches. For weeks Mike could hardly speak, and seemed unable to take care of himself or his appearance. Gradually he became a little more able to talk, although his car was repossessed and his phone was cut off, and he was threatened with bailiffs and eviction.
Six years later we were still friends, and went out sometimes when I was able.
Mike’s wife returned after many months, but he would come over on Saturday mornings, and gradually I saw him recovering, although sometimes, like me, he would slip back into deep depressions. I still ended up in the Mental Health Unit once a year.
One day I was looking in the local paper too see if there were any depression groups, and saw one in Southend and one in Chelmsford. I asked Mike if there was any way we could start one in Basildon. Mike put a postcard in a shop window, and I called the local church to see if we could rent a room. A month later, four of us arrived for our first meeting. That was three and a half years ago. We started out as once a month, then twice, then every week, then twice a week, then a Saturday coffee morning. One Tuesday 23 people turned up.
I made many good friends, some of them I still see, and continue to make new ones, though I can hardly ever get to the group because I can’t walk any more, with the arthritis. Mike comes round once or twice a week if he can, and group members phone me. My depressions still come in cycles, but I have never been back to the Mental Hospital since the group started. Mike’s Ten Points start out with “Choose Life” and it has saved me from overdoses which used to be regular for me. When I’m suicidal I phone Mike. I phoned my doctor one night when I couldn’t get any help from the emergency mental health team, and he struck me off his list for bothering him. My psychiatrist came to see me eighteen months ago and said since I am so disabled he would visit me regularly. He has never been back. Over the years they have upped the medications, and for a long while gave me painful anti-depressant injections which always made me ill.
I learned to talk about myself in the group gradually, and tell my story sometimes although it is very difficult for me. The main thing is the support of people with the same illness, and the care I feel from them. Mike says he needed me at the group because I know how to smile and welcome people, especially new people.
If I ever have the hip operation I would love to be at the group every week like I used to. After a year in the group I was able to fly to Guernsey to visit my relatives there. I kept cancelling plans, but the group encouraged me. I actually made it to a meeting a few weeks back, but I was in pain, and know I am housebound until after my operation. One day I will be able to walk again, and look forward to meeting all my friends every week….
Jean. Feb 2007
intro
Intro. “keep it real” (Ali G)
site and our book shows depression from the view point of people who want to do something about it.
It is has 3 aims. First to present depression management for those that have it, second to try to help friends and relatives of sufferers to understand the illness, and last to show by example how people with the same basic problem can find tremendous support and therapy through forming groups of their own.
Doctors and psychiatrists have taken a few guesses, some of them quite good, over the years, as to what we feel. The professionals aren’t enough. The principle of groups of our kind was laid down in the 1930’s by Bill Wilson, who founded Alcoholics Anonymous. The medical profession at the time had virtually written off chronic alcoholics as a lost cause. Within five years, Bill W had 100,000 alcoholics sober, by meeting in local groups. Scott Peck, the enlightened community- building American Psychiatrist who wrote “The Road Less Travelled” wrote that the founding of AA was the most significant event of the century.
Our group is the natural extension of two people trying to solve mutual problems over a cup of coffee. This is the obvious first step. When there are 3 or 4, maybe rent a room for a weekly meeting. Advertise and tell.
150 people have attended our group, and at any time there are between 8 and 15 at any meeting. Some of their stories are here, and hopefully illustrate the range of the illness. This is not a cry for help, nor an invitation for sympathy. This is a Lifeline.
site and our book shows depression from the view point of people who want to do something about it.
It is has 3 aims. First to present depression management for those that have it, second to try to help friends and relatives of sufferers to understand the illness, and last to show by example how people with the same basic problem can find tremendous support and therapy through forming groups of their own.
Doctors and psychiatrists have taken a few guesses, some of them quite good, over the years, as to what we feel. The professionals aren’t enough. The principle of groups of our kind was laid down in the 1930’s by Bill Wilson, who founded Alcoholics Anonymous. The medical profession at the time had virtually written off chronic alcoholics as a lost cause. Within five years, Bill W had 100,000 alcoholics sober, by meeting in local groups. Scott Peck, the enlightened community- building American Psychiatrist who wrote “The Road Less Travelled” wrote that the founding of AA was the most significant event of the century.
Our group is the natural extension of two people trying to solve mutual problems over a cup of coffee. This is the obvious first step. When there are 3 or 4, maybe rent a room for a weekly meeting. Advertise and tell.
150 people have attended our group, and at any time there are between 8 and 15 at any meeting. Some of their stories are here, and hopefully illustrate the range of the illness. This is not a cry for help, nor an invitation for sympathy. This is a Lifeline.
john's story
John’s Story
Sometime in Summer 1988 I started work on an idea for advertising products sold via the multi-level marketing system as used by Amway etc, since it seemed to me that conventional methods failed to account for the fact that products were not immediately visible to the consumer public and relied instead on the distributor network seeking out customers in order to demonstrate them. Which was giving me a few challenges, as some of the group my wife and I had built up lacked the confidence to build up a customer network and when I wasn’t showing the Amway opportunity I was doing product demos for them. Things were looking good, and just about everything was ready to present the idea to the sales manager at Amway UK, a guy named Martin something, when what appeared to be a minor incident occurred and really upset the applecart. Popped into work at the Institute of Chartered Accountants’ Education and Training stores one Sunday to strip out some old racking prior to installing secure storage for examination papers and received a crack on the skull from a falling heavy steel beam.
Woke up some time later, no idea how long as I was working alone, with a lump the size of an egg on my forehead and a headache like I never knew was possible. Reported it and headed for home just about able to see the road through blurred vision. Took that idea into Martin on the Monday morning, who acknowledged it as a brilliant idea and said he’d get straight onto head office in the USA so we could get it underway. A few days later I was away somewhere up on a remote mountaintop so high I could see forever and glimpsed Heaven as well. Could also see all the challenges faced by the world and the answers right along with them. Didn’t know how I got there and didn’t really care; the feeling of exhilaration wiped out everything else apart from a great and all pervading sense of well being and a love for every individual on Planet Earth. Probably beyond too if I’d had time to think about it. Pacing around the house unable to settle for more than a few seconds, drinking cup after cup of tea and smoking endless cigarettes, just waiting for Martin to give me the go-ahead to get cracking. Every fibre of my being was vibrating with the life force surging through me, I felt like I was frying in mental energy with sleep not so much an impossibility as unthought of –except by my wife, who kept trying to persuade me to rest because my eyes were red, eyelids peeling and she was scared witless about what was happening. So were my young daughters. Me, I felt terrific.
The GP was called in –ultimately followed by a psychiatrist and social workers and next thing I knew I was in a strange place surrounded by strange people known as “staff” and a bunch of ghosts who wandered around “the unit” pale faced, silent for the most part and extremely vociferous for the rest of the time. Lost doesn’t begin to describe the feeling and I wanted out, so I left and went home –not discovering until the police turned up at my door hours later that I shouldn’t have been able to do that as I was under 24 hour observation –hmmm.
Enter the drug therapy; haloperidol, chlorpromazine and a few other pretty pills which sent me further up the wall than I was already and far from calming me down actually made matters worse, because suddenly I couldn’t control arms, legs and jaw, couldn’t speak clearly and felt like I couldn’t sit still but couldn’t keep my balance when standing. Still today, eighteen years on, my left arm shakes badly from the effects of the haloperidol. Martin phoned and spoke to my wife, and on being told I was in hospital –but not why- asked her how I intended to finance the idea; she told him she’d no idea. Some time later when the hurricane died down I told her, neither had I.
Several weeks later, maybe seven or eight, mentally and physically exhausted, baffled by the effects of the manic high and the drugs I collapsed and slept the sleep of the dead for several days –which I probably would have done anyway without the all the first lot of drugs and all the extra ones that were pumped in because the first lot didn’t work, as I’ve done with every episode since on minor balancing dosage. Finally reached ground level and stayed there for a week or two, then crashed down into depression just as I was about to be discharged. Another three months in the unit, tears and fears never before experienced and, worse, a period of complete emptiness –no-feeling no-thought, nothing going in and nothing getting out; nothing to identify this person who was and wasn’t me either, even the family couldn’t get through. The psychs stood no chance. More pills, hours of sleep and still more hours just lying on my bed staring at the ceiling, mind as empty as my stomach because I couldn’t eat without feeling sick and didn’t really want to anyway, just couldn’t be bothered.
Got through that in the end and back home to recover. If that’s possible after an experience that fragments self, shatters confidence and leaves you doubting everything you ever knew, or thought you knew, about yourself. Realising that your mind is capable of playing such tricks on you doesn’t give you much confidence for the future, and as far as the future was concerned the doctors were very non-committal. What caused this event? Grunt. What was wrong? Grunt. Will it happen again? Grunt. Finally managed to get someone to mumble “Hypomania and depression.” Thanks. Will it happen again? That was pushing the realms of expertise too far. “Hard to say,” was the answer that time. Okay, knowing when I was beaten and singularly unimpressed with the average psych’s couchside manner I gave up and went home, where my wife was moved to make a statement that proved to be as far from accurate as it could possibly be. “Thank God that’s over!” God couldn’t have been in that day, or had ear-plug in.
Back to work nine months or so after the high first high. Doing okay, no nerves, no stress and no tension, just relieved it was over and enjoying normality again. Huh! False sense of security. Just when the whole thing was fading into the background, horrors forgotten, the beast in the brain struck again; equally as devastating, equally as confusing and twice as painful because none of my family thought we’d ever have to go through it again. In that first two years I spent eighteen months in hospital, discovering that the beast is no respecter of persons as there were patients there from all walks of life. The only thing that made that second episode a little easier was knowing I was actually in a hospital, the Campbell Centre in Milton Keynes. Still didn’t want to be there and still periodically walked out and went home despite being under “constant” observation. Hmmm again!
After discharge that time the ICAEW asked the docs for a prognosis report. “Two major episodes of manic depression,” wrote the doc dealing with it, ”Hints at the probability of further episodes occurring at frequent though possibly irregular intervals.” Thanks doc, for telling me that I had manic depression –now known as Bi-Polar Affective Disorder- but it would’ve been nice to know about it before my employer did. The ICAEW decided they couldn’t live with the uncertainty and that was that, jobless but with a good compensation deal for the accident so not too many grumbles.
1991, third hit, six months of a lesser hell. 1992 a decision to try changing course completely in the hope of offsetting the effects of the illness by starting out on a new path through life. Enrolled on an Access to Further Education Course, aiming at a degree in English Language, Literature and Psychology and a career in adult education. All looked set fair for high marks in the exams in 1993; a place guaranteed at Nene if all went according to plan. Three weeks before final exams, hit number four, five months in hospital and the deepest depression thus far. Came out of hospital well ahead of when I should have done and was sitting in the dining room in the dark hours before dawn one morning with the family asleep upstairs. I’d just about had enough, couldn’t see anything at all worth going on for, couldn’t trust my own mind and any remotely positive idea was immediately suspect. All I could see was a dull grey existence hovering somewhere between what passed for “normality” and absolute chaos if and when an episode of the illness hit; not for me, I’d always been able to rely on myself, to make my way through life confidently and with a positive attitude and I wasn’t prepared to do anything less. Also I’d seen how the illness affected my family, especially the two daughters, and I wasn’t prepared to see them suffer anymore either.
Went into the kitchen on autopilot and took out the almost full packs of chlorpromazine and amitryptiline from the cupboard, placed them on the dining table by my left elbow, cup of tea by my right and a ten pence piece in the centre. The coin came down heads side up, entirely the wrong way as far as I was concerned at the time. Kicked myself afterwards; I’d always said you never knew what was just around the corner, proved right this time too and if I’d missed out on what was to come a couple of years later I’d have been well miffed. Would also have missed the chance to learn something so important to me in recent years that I’d call it a life saver.
1994 and early 1995; dead time, dead life. Nothing to really look forward to with days and nights –the latter mostly sleepless, at the best restless- stretching away endlessly into a black hole of a future. Afraid to start anything but determined that one day I would. Then out of the blue, as is often the case when the really good stuff happens, life for our family began to change for the better. My wife was asked to go to China for two weeks, a country I’d always been drawn to like an iron filing to a magnet. Everything about that amazing country appealed to me from philosophy to food, and there was only one trouble –I wasn’t going! Not that time anyway, but later when my wife got the chance to go again I did go, and it was like coming home. 1996. The offer of a ten year contract out there for Karen, me to go as well -and because I’d lost that job with the Institute of Chartered Accountants, because I’d lost the opportunity of a place at Nene on a four year degree course, because the ten pence piece had come down heads side up I was free to go with her and found the niche I’d longed for and the start of a new life, one I’m still living today only in a vastly different way that even manic depression cannot interfere with more than a little.
I was asked to teach at first one, then two and then three schools, and my reputation as a teacher grew. I was able to earn the respect of the community simply because the local people didn’t know I suffered the illness and for three years it never showed at all. Early in 1999 I became aware of the slight change in thought pattern that I’d come to recognize as the possible start of a high, pleaded bad asthma, which I had anyway, and returned to England downhearted and hoping I’d be able to return. I couldn’t, simply because the asthma worsened and I knew I’d no longer be able to stand the heat and humidity. Bye bye to the best job I’d ever had and the happiest period of my life for years.
2001. Unable to take the strain of a dual life –working in China and married to a guy who couldn’t be there with her and was feeling the strain himself, my wife asked for a divorce. End of an era, 29 years down the chute. No depression though, just two years seen through the bottom of a beer glass until common sense prevailed and I returned to my hometown –and the first episode of manic depression for years. The following year –2004- an old friend came over from China, reminding me of the great time I’d had there and all the things I’d seen and done. All of them, including the lifesaver. Just after she returned I had another hit –controlled all the way through the high by the breathing exercises learned from the (fairly brief but intense) early morning study of tai ji quan, which resulted in the acquisition of all the knowledge needed to teach at one of the schools in China over the internet in just a few weeks –from absolutely nothing. Since that time it’s been the same with the following two highs, controlled all the way through with the calmness induced by the breathing exercises and the energy of the highs keeping me awake, able to study endlessly for weeks (nine in 2004, six in 2005 and four in 2006 with no sleep whatsoever) and again with the acquisition of specialist knowledge required by the school. The depression though has been the same problem as before; I’ve yet to find the answer but feel certain it comes from way back in my past and could be controlled in a similar manner to the highs.
I don’t believe pills are the answer to either highs or lows, at least for me and possibly for anyone who’s once known either the peace of the countryside or the inner peace and resolution of spirit of any martial art like tai ji quan, with the former especially in their formative years. I’ve had both, and carried on throughout most of my adult life through carp fishing (mostly at night). It might help to get patients out of themselves and into sunshine, birdsong, green grass and fresh air rather than stuck in front of a TV in a stuffy ward with nothing more to look forward to but the next mealtime and the rattling squeak of the medication trolley. Time perhaps to remind patients that they were good and whole people once and could be again, that there’s no need to sit staring at that screen that means nothing to any of them while feeling that they’d rather be swallowed up than walk across the floor to the WC, so some just don’t bother. Thank heavens for self-help groups and the encouragement of others who’ve been through the mill and come out shining; they’re the only positive examples of a treatment that really works and they don’t cost anything but a commitment to be at the meetings and a desire to be free of a much misunderstood and potentially killer illness.
John Latarche February 2007
Sometime in Summer 1988 I started work on an idea for advertising products sold via the multi-level marketing system as used by Amway etc, since it seemed to me that conventional methods failed to account for the fact that products were not immediately visible to the consumer public and relied instead on the distributor network seeking out customers in order to demonstrate them. Which was giving me a few challenges, as some of the group my wife and I had built up lacked the confidence to build up a customer network and when I wasn’t showing the Amway opportunity I was doing product demos for them. Things were looking good, and just about everything was ready to present the idea to the sales manager at Amway UK, a guy named Martin something, when what appeared to be a minor incident occurred and really upset the applecart. Popped into work at the Institute of Chartered Accountants’ Education and Training stores one Sunday to strip out some old racking prior to installing secure storage for examination papers and received a crack on the skull from a falling heavy steel beam.
Woke up some time later, no idea how long as I was working alone, with a lump the size of an egg on my forehead and a headache like I never knew was possible. Reported it and headed for home just about able to see the road through blurred vision. Took that idea into Martin on the Monday morning, who acknowledged it as a brilliant idea and said he’d get straight onto head office in the USA so we could get it underway. A few days later I was away somewhere up on a remote mountaintop so high I could see forever and glimpsed Heaven as well. Could also see all the challenges faced by the world and the answers right along with them. Didn’t know how I got there and didn’t really care; the feeling of exhilaration wiped out everything else apart from a great and all pervading sense of well being and a love for every individual on Planet Earth. Probably beyond too if I’d had time to think about it. Pacing around the house unable to settle for more than a few seconds, drinking cup after cup of tea and smoking endless cigarettes, just waiting for Martin to give me the go-ahead to get cracking. Every fibre of my being was vibrating with the life force surging through me, I felt like I was frying in mental energy with sleep not so much an impossibility as unthought of –except by my wife, who kept trying to persuade me to rest because my eyes were red, eyelids peeling and she was scared witless about what was happening. So were my young daughters. Me, I felt terrific.
The GP was called in –ultimately followed by a psychiatrist and social workers and next thing I knew I was in a strange place surrounded by strange people known as “staff” and a bunch of ghosts who wandered around “the unit” pale faced, silent for the most part and extremely vociferous for the rest of the time. Lost doesn’t begin to describe the feeling and I wanted out, so I left and went home –not discovering until the police turned up at my door hours later that I shouldn’t have been able to do that as I was under 24 hour observation –hmmm.
Enter the drug therapy; haloperidol, chlorpromazine and a few other pretty pills which sent me further up the wall than I was already and far from calming me down actually made matters worse, because suddenly I couldn’t control arms, legs and jaw, couldn’t speak clearly and felt like I couldn’t sit still but couldn’t keep my balance when standing. Still today, eighteen years on, my left arm shakes badly from the effects of the haloperidol. Martin phoned and spoke to my wife, and on being told I was in hospital –but not why- asked her how I intended to finance the idea; she told him she’d no idea. Some time later when the hurricane died down I told her, neither had I.
Several weeks later, maybe seven or eight, mentally and physically exhausted, baffled by the effects of the manic high and the drugs I collapsed and slept the sleep of the dead for several days –which I probably would have done anyway without the all the first lot of drugs and all the extra ones that were pumped in because the first lot didn’t work, as I’ve done with every episode since on minor balancing dosage. Finally reached ground level and stayed there for a week or two, then crashed down into depression just as I was about to be discharged. Another three months in the unit, tears and fears never before experienced and, worse, a period of complete emptiness –no-feeling no-thought, nothing going in and nothing getting out; nothing to identify this person who was and wasn’t me either, even the family couldn’t get through. The psychs stood no chance. More pills, hours of sleep and still more hours just lying on my bed staring at the ceiling, mind as empty as my stomach because I couldn’t eat without feeling sick and didn’t really want to anyway, just couldn’t be bothered.
Got through that in the end and back home to recover. If that’s possible after an experience that fragments self, shatters confidence and leaves you doubting everything you ever knew, or thought you knew, about yourself. Realising that your mind is capable of playing such tricks on you doesn’t give you much confidence for the future, and as far as the future was concerned the doctors were very non-committal. What caused this event? Grunt. What was wrong? Grunt. Will it happen again? Grunt. Finally managed to get someone to mumble “Hypomania and depression.” Thanks. Will it happen again? That was pushing the realms of expertise too far. “Hard to say,” was the answer that time. Okay, knowing when I was beaten and singularly unimpressed with the average psych’s couchside manner I gave up and went home, where my wife was moved to make a statement that proved to be as far from accurate as it could possibly be. “Thank God that’s over!” God couldn’t have been in that day, or had ear-plug in.
Back to work nine months or so after the high first high. Doing okay, no nerves, no stress and no tension, just relieved it was over and enjoying normality again. Huh! False sense of security. Just when the whole thing was fading into the background, horrors forgotten, the beast in the brain struck again; equally as devastating, equally as confusing and twice as painful because none of my family thought we’d ever have to go through it again. In that first two years I spent eighteen months in hospital, discovering that the beast is no respecter of persons as there were patients there from all walks of life. The only thing that made that second episode a little easier was knowing I was actually in a hospital, the Campbell Centre in Milton Keynes. Still didn’t want to be there and still periodically walked out and went home despite being under “constant” observation. Hmmm again!
After discharge that time the ICAEW asked the docs for a prognosis report. “Two major episodes of manic depression,” wrote the doc dealing with it, ”Hints at the probability of further episodes occurring at frequent though possibly irregular intervals.” Thanks doc, for telling me that I had manic depression –now known as Bi-Polar Affective Disorder- but it would’ve been nice to know about it before my employer did. The ICAEW decided they couldn’t live with the uncertainty and that was that, jobless but with a good compensation deal for the accident so not too many grumbles.
1991, third hit, six months of a lesser hell. 1992 a decision to try changing course completely in the hope of offsetting the effects of the illness by starting out on a new path through life. Enrolled on an Access to Further Education Course, aiming at a degree in English Language, Literature and Psychology and a career in adult education. All looked set fair for high marks in the exams in 1993; a place guaranteed at Nene if all went according to plan. Three weeks before final exams, hit number four, five months in hospital and the deepest depression thus far. Came out of hospital well ahead of when I should have done and was sitting in the dining room in the dark hours before dawn one morning with the family asleep upstairs. I’d just about had enough, couldn’t see anything at all worth going on for, couldn’t trust my own mind and any remotely positive idea was immediately suspect. All I could see was a dull grey existence hovering somewhere between what passed for “normality” and absolute chaos if and when an episode of the illness hit; not for me, I’d always been able to rely on myself, to make my way through life confidently and with a positive attitude and I wasn’t prepared to do anything less. Also I’d seen how the illness affected my family, especially the two daughters, and I wasn’t prepared to see them suffer anymore either.
Went into the kitchen on autopilot and took out the almost full packs of chlorpromazine and amitryptiline from the cupboard, placed them on the dining table by my left elbow, cup of tea by my right and a ten pence piece in the centre. The coin came down heads side up, entirely the wrong way as far as I was concerned at the time. Kicked myself afterwards; I’d always said you never knew what was just around the corner, proved right this time too and if I’d missed out on what was to come a couple of years later I’d have been well miffed. Would also have missed the chance to learn something so important to me in recent years that I’d call it a life saver.
1994 and early 1995; dead time, dead life. Nothing to really look forward to with days and nights –the latter mostly sleepless, at the best restless- stretching away endlessly into a black hole of a future. Afraid to start anything but determined that one day I would. Then out of the blue, as is often the case when the really good stuff happens, life for our family began to change for the better. My wife was asked to go to China for two weeks, a country I’d always been drawn to like an iron filing to a magnet. Everything about that amazing country appealed to me from philosophy to food, and there was only one trouble –I wasn’t going! Not that time anyway, but later when my wife got the chance to go again I did go, and it was like coming home. 1996. The offer of a ten year contract out there for Karen, me to go as well -and because I’d lost that job with the Institute of Chartered Accountants, because I’d lost the opportunity of a place at Nene on a four year degree course, because the ten pence piece had come down heads side up I was free to go with her and found the niche I’d longed for and the start of a new life, one I’m still living today only in a vastly different way that even manic depression cannot interfere with more than a little.
I was asked to teach at first one, then two and then three schools, and my reputation as a teacher grew. I was able to earn the respect of the community simply because the local people didn’t know I suffered the illness and for three years it never showed at all. Early in 1999 I became aware of the slight change in thought pattern that I’d come to recognize as the possible start of a high, pleaded bad asthma, which I had anyway, and returned to England downhearted and hoping I’d be able to return. I couldn’t, simply because the asthma worsened and I knew I’d no longer be able to stand the heat and humidity. Bye bye to the best job I’d ever had and the happiest period of my life for years.
2001. Unable to take the strain of a dual life –working in China and married to a guy who couldn’t be there with her and was feeling the strain himself, my wife asked for a divorce. End of an era, 29 years down the chute. No depression though, just two years seen through the bottom of a beer glass until common sense prevailed and I returned to my hometown –and the first episode of manic depression for years. The following year –2004- an old friend came over from China, reminding me of the great time I’d had there and all the things I’d seen and done. All of them, including the lifesaver. Just after she returned I had another hit –controlled all the way through the high by the breathing exercises learned from the (fairly brief but intense) early morning study of tai ji quan, which resulted in the acquisition of all the knowledge needed to teach at one of the schools in China over the internet in just a few weeks –from absolutely nothing. Since that time it’s been the same with the following two highs, controlled all the way through with the calmness induced by the breathing exercises and the energy of the highs keeping me awake, able to study endlessly for weeks (nine in 2004, six in 2005 and four in 2006 with no sleep whatsoever) and again with the acquisition of specialist knowledge required by the school. The depression though has been the same problem as before; I’ve yet to find the answer but feel certain it comes from way back in my past and could be controlled in a similar manner to the highs.
I don’t believe pills are the answer to either highs or lows, at least for me and possibly for anyone who’s once known either the peace of the countryside or the inner peace and resolution of spirit of any martial art like tai ji quan, with the former especially in their formative years. I’ve had both, and carried on throughout most of my adult life through carp fishing (mostly at night). It might help to get patients out of themselves and into sunshine, birdsong, green grass and fresh air rather than stuck in front of a TV in a stuffy ward with nothing more to look forward to but the next mealtime and the rattling squeak of the medication trolley. Time perhaps to remind patients that they were good and whole people once and could be again, that there’s no need to sit staring at that screen that means nothing to any of them while feeling that they’d rather be swallowed up than walk across the floor to the WC, so some just don’t bother. Thank heavens for self-help groups and the encouragement of others who’ve been through the mill and come out shining; they’re the only positive examples of a treatment that really works and they don’t cost anything but a commitment to be at the meetings and a desire to be free of a much misunderstood and potentially killer illness.
John Latarche February 2007
roy's story
ROY’S STORY
(David Kerr talked to Roy in the ward at Basildon Hospital Mental Health unit, and drafted the story. I visited him 3 times myself, and between the three of us we have patched this story together. Roy has limited reading and writing skills)
I’m an alcoholic. I suffer from severe depression. I am on a Section Three in Basildon Hospital. I have spent a lot of time in hospitals and detox units. They could keep me here for up to 6months, but I hope to leave earlier. Since I have been here, nobody has talked to me about my alcoholism. Mike from the Basildon Self-Help Depression Group visits me on Fridays now and we talk about recovery from alcoholism. Mike has been sober for 26 years, he’s an alcoholic like me, and I also have been going to the depression group that Mike now runs here on Thursday mornings in the hospital. David Kerr, another patient who was recently moved to Runwell Hospital after a flare-up with the ward staff, also goes to Mike’s groups when he’s out of hospital, and he suggested Depression group to me. Mike says there is an AA meeting in the hospital on Friday evenings, but the ward staff have never told me about it.
It is totally boring here. There is nothing to do at all. We have to sit in the ward and watch TV. Recently I met a girl here, and when I get out she is going to help me stay off the booze. Mike told me yesterday that support is wonderful, but he says I must get sober for myself too. I haven’t drank for six weeks since I’ve been here. It’s when I get out it’s going to be hard.
I’m a cockney labourer, but I haven’t worked for over two years, I am 46 years old. Father of Louise aged 17. Up till now I’ve lived with my parents who are in their sixties, but there is a lot of trouble there and I am looking for a place of my own when I get out.
My life story is that I had measles at 2, a double ruptured hernia at three, and I was seriously hurt when a metal bar fell from a conker tree, and hit me a full blow on the side of the head causing brain damage. I think I was always depressed as a child, my parents were always shouting at each other and fighting in front of me. My dad used his belt on me, always the buckle. At school I had trouble, I used to write in different colours from the rest of the class, and I chucked all the sand out of the sand pit and everyone laughed, and I used to try an look up the teachers’ skirts with fascinated curiosity, and we used to put spiders in the girls bags. I left school with no qualifications, and used to get into a lot of fights. I preferred one or two good mates to gangs.
My first job was on a building site in Deptford, and ten I was plumber’s mate for the Greater London Council. At the first job I fell off a roof, but my mates saved me. At first my drinking helped my shyness with girls, but once I fell down a manhole and broke my wrist. Again my mates rescued me. My hobbies were swimming, boxing and artwork. I drove and my favourite car was the Cortina Mark 4. I built myself up with weights as I was always in fights, though not a starter of fights. Once I was beat up real bad by a gang and went after them one by one later. I didn’t really like the violence, but it seemed I had to do it. I ended up sentenced to a year in Wandsworth Prison for malicious wounding. I had the job of picking flowers outside and kept my nose clean, got on well with fellow inmates and got out after 6 months.
I drank heavily again and was often violent and hurt people.
Drink was my entertainment, and I went to the doctor about depression after a girl split with me, and the pills worked sometimes, and I also took sleeping tablets. I was with the mother of my child for about a year, it was a torrid relationship. I took purple hearts for the sexual highs. At fifteen I had fallen in love with a girl of fourteen. I’ve been in love 5 times and engaged once, as well as various drunken encounters.
As my drinking and depressions worsened, I took to drinking at home, my parents’ house. They made me drink mostly in the outhouse or garden. I wanted to avoid trouble and fights by staying out of pubs. I did this for years, and after one hospitalisation I stopped drinking and smoking for three years and just isolated totally home. The depressions took me over, I was like a cabbage.
Later I resumed drinking at home. Sometimes I had visions of the Virgin Mary, protecting me, even being jealous about me thinking of other women. I have been in dreadful trouble many times but always feel as if I am protected and looked after by her.
I’ve had enough of the depressions and terrible drinking, and I realise my body and mind are damaged by alcohol, I get terrible pains in my arm sometimes.
I don’t hate people as much these days, and I realise I have a chance to get sober and have some kind of a life. I’ve had a lot of fun, but the bad times will get worse unless I change.
Mike says Alcoholics Anonymous might work for me, as it did for him, but right now I am working on depression with Mike, and looking around for other people to help. I am frightened of what may happen if I reach for the drink when they send me out of here, as has so often happened in the past.
Now I’ve met others from the group I don’t feel so alone.
Roy April2007
(David Kerr talked to Roy in the ward at Basildon Hospital Mental Health unit, and drafted the story. I visited him 3 times myself, and between the three of us we have patched this story together. Roy has limited reading and writing skills)
I’m an alcoholic. I suffer from severe depression. I am on a Section Three in Basildon Hospital. I have spent a lot of time in hospitals and detox units. They could keep me here for up to 6months, but I hope to leave earlier. Since I have been here, nobody has talked to me about my alcoholism. Mike from the Basildon Self-Help Depression Group visits me on Fridays now and we talk about recovery from alcoholism. Mike has been sober for 26 years, he’s an alcoholic like me, and I also have been going to the depression group that Mike now runs here on Thursday mornings in the hospital. David Kerr, another patient who was recently moved to Runwell Hospital after a flare-up with the ward staff, also goes to Mike’s groups when he’s out of hospital, and he suggested Depression group to me. Mike says there is an AA meeting in the hospital on Friday evenings, but the ward staff have never told me about it.
It is totally boring here. There is nothing to do at all. We have to sit in the ward and watch TV. Recently I met a girl here, and when I get out she is going to help me stay off the booze. Mike told me yesterday that support is wonderful, but he says I must get sober for myself too. I haven’t drank for six weeks since I’ve been here. It’s when I get out it’s going to be hard.
I’m a cockney labourer, but I haven’t worked for over two years, I am 46 years old. Father of Louise aged 17. Up till now I’ve lived with my parents who are in their sixties, but there is a lot of trouble there and I am looking for a place of my own when I get out.
My life story is that I had measles at 2, a double ruptured hernia at three, and I was seriously hurt when a metal bar fell from a conker tree, and hit me a full blow on the side of the head causing brain damage. I think I was always depressed as a child, my parents were always shouting at each other and fighting in front of me. My dad used his belt on me, always the buckle. At school I had trouble, I used to write in different colours from the rest of the class, and I chucked all the sand out of the sand pit and everyone laughed, and I used to try an look up the teachers’ skirts with fascinated curiosity, and we used to put spiders in the girls bags. I left school with no qualifications, and used to get into a lot of fights. I preferred one or two good mates to gangs.
My first job was on a building site in Deptford, and ten I was plumber’s mate for the Greater London Council. At the first job I fell off a roof, but my mates saved me. At first my drinking helped my shyness with girls, but once I fell down a manhole and broke my wrist. Again my mates rescued me. My hobbies were swimming, boxing and artwork. I drove and my favourite car was the Cortina Mark 4. I built myself up with weights as I was always in fights, though not a starter of fights. Once I was beat up real bad by a gang and went after them one by one later. I didn’t really like the violence, but it seemed I had to do it. I ended up sentenced to a year in Wandsworth Prison for malicious wounding. I had the job of picking flowers outside and kept my nose clean, got on well with fellow inmates and got out after 6 months.
I drank heavily again and was often violent and hurt people.
Drink was my entertainment, and I went to the doctor about depression after a girl split with me, and the pills worked sometimes, and I also took sleeping tablets. I was with the mother of my child for about a year, it was a torrid relationship. I took purple hearts for the sexual highs. At fifteen I had fallen in love with a girl of fourteen. I’ve been in love 5 times and engaged once, as well as various drunken encounters.
As my drinking and depressions worsened, I took to drinking at home, my parents’ house. They made me drink mostly in the outhouse or garden. I wanted to avoid trouble and fights by staying out of pubs. I did this for years, and after one hospitalisation I stopped drinking and smoking for three years and just isolated totally home. The depressions took me over, I was like a cabbage.
Later I resumed drinking at home. Sometimes I had visions of the Virgin Mary, protecting me, even being jealous about me thinking of other women. I have been in dreadful trouble many times but always feel as if I am protected and looked after by her.
I’ve had enough of the depressions and terrible drinking, and I realise my body and mind are damaged by alcohol, I get terrible pains in my arm sometimes.
I don’t hate people as much these days, and I realise I have a chance to get sober and have some kind of a life. I’ve had a lot of fun, but the bad times will get worse unless I change.
Mike says Alcoholics Anonymous might work for me, as it did for him, but right now I am working on depression with Mike, and looking around for other people to help. I am frightened of what may happen if I reach for the drink when they send me out of here, as has so often happened in the past.
Now I’ve met others from the group I don’t feel so alone.
Roy April2007
Group Stories
CAROLS STORY
I had a very happy childhood along with my 3 brothers and sister our parents were great,always ready to sort out any problems which came along.
My first disaster was after my marriage and my pending pregnancies.My first pregnancy resulted in a premature stillborn, my second in miscarriage and my third was aborted due to problems. I of course was devastated as was my husband who asked the Doctor why was it happening, he replied that I may never have a child but just keep trying because anything was possible .My husband told me I was a freak and that he was leaving me for my best friend who could give him the family he wanted while he was young enough to enjoy them.
I got over the divorce quickly as I realised that he wasn't worth my tears and the depression I was feeling.Then I realised it wasn't for him but for the babies I had lost and the fact that I just knew that I would never have a family of my own.
I consider myself very lucky as my family including my Nieces/Nephews and now their children have always found time for me through their lives and always keep in touch. They have helped me so much especially when my younger brother died at the age of 39 with an unexpected heart attack, there was only 11 months between us so we were very close. I thought I would never get over it,then exactly a year later my father died.more heart ache.
Time is a great healer which I was grateful for when my Darling eldest Nephew was killed in an accident, I wanted to kill the man who was in his late seventies for killing him and which almost killed his girlfriend I think the hatred I had for this man kept me going for years as we were waiting for him to return to England from Australia to stand trial for reckless driving and falling asleep at the wheel of the vehicle he had been driving for 14 hours without a break.Unfortunately after a few years he was never well enough to travel back to the U.K.
My depression at this time was diverted as I knew that I had to help my Sister and Brother-in-law,also my niece to come to terms with the loss.I cried alone and smiled for them.My Nephew and Godson will never be forgotten as there are three presentation cups named after him at Aveley sports centre for football.Which my sister presents every year.
Then at the age of 79 years and 51 weeks my mother died,she was cremated on her 80th birthday 17th march, she was sadly missed and she always will be by me.we spent every weekend together and I used to call her at least twice a day,I still miss the calls and telling her my troubles.
On August 29th 2005 I was coming back from a barbecue at my brothers home with my friend and her husband when the Taxi in which we were travelling in got hit by another car who's driver was over the drink/drive limit and also uninsured, he did stop thankfully and was arrested at the scene of the accident.Both cars were a write off although the occupants in the other car were not injured at all ,We in our taxi all had to go to Hospital,I was injured quite badly with facial lacerations and bad bruising I needed 13 internal stitches around the eye and 18 stitches outside, my body and legs were severely bruised and my left leg although previously under the hospital for a replacement hip in 2006/7 needed the hip replaced due to deterioration following the impact.I had to take six months off work.
I resumed work at the beginning of February 2006 and I had also restarted to look for a new home with a garden.I had had several let downs with people pulling out at the last minute costing me over three thousand pounds without moving from my front door in surveyors fees and it was looking as if there was no hope for me to get a new life somewhere else following let down after let down, I was getting very low. and after being back at work for a few weeks my boss had to tell me that my job was no more and that my office was closing down and the personnel were moving to another area but there was no job for me, so I had to retire on my 62nd birthday, I really didn't want to finish working as I couldn't imagine having nothing to do all day.I have worked all my life since I was 15.I was so sad but eventually I found a house with a decent size garden but the buyer of my property wanted to move into the flat within five weeks,so I had to pack up before the house I was buying became available and put my home in storage with friends and also move in with one too. it was a very stressful time and I lost patience with all of the other estate agents in the chain, my friend was great but I was worried in-case our friendship was tested luckily it wasn't,eventuallyI took possession of the keys after waiting all day for them to be handed over.There was one excuse after another from the previous tenants as to why they were not out as stated on the purchase documents but I eventually got the keys at 6pm on the 18th of May 2006 but moved in on the 20th because the property was filthy and needed cleaning from top to bottom before I would allow anything of mine to be put in it.The previous owners hadn't packed anything before the day they moved out so nothing had been swept cleaned and dusted and the family and friends that were helping me to move in couldn't believe the mess they had left me.they told me they were leaving the carpets and curtains but had only left the dirty carpets that they had used as underlay. and the curtains that they had left up at the windows were only fit for the rag bag,I had no light bulbs and worst of all, no internal doors.massive holes in the walls of the bedrooms where they had torn down units and shelves,and the lounge and dinning room walls downstairs had been scribbled on by the kids.and the freezer took three days to defrost leaving me with defrosted foods all over the floor,but at least now I could open the freezer door and put my own food in it. I couldn't believe what I was seeing I felt devastated and started to cry.All the family said I would soon get it sorted and that it would be fine they knew I would not live with the mess and dirt so naturally thought I'd cope as I always have before, but this time it was too hard for me, I had come to this horrible home without any family or friend anywhere near. I didn"t know which way to turn.so I didn't do anything.I couldn't eat, sleep,go out, I just sat around crying all the time,I had no phone for two weeks and wouldn't answer my mobile and because I wouldn't speak to anyone my Sister-in-law was worried and came over she was shocked to see the state I was in,she tried to take me out but I wouldn't go and when I did go out I didn't want to come back.I couldn't shop because I didn't know what I wanted, I kept forgetting what day it was and my memory was virtually non-existent.the only positive thing I did throughout was getting up daily and having a shower with clean clothes.however I didn't wash the dirty clothes.thankfully my sister-in-law did.she stayed with me most days going to work from here to London every day but coming back to my house to cook me food and to see I was o.k.and sort out my mail which I was ignoring along with everything else.
Then my life changed for the better,In the locaI paper was the notification of a Depression Group in Basildon not far from the house,my sister-in-law rang the organiser Mike Parker,without my knowledge and left a message about me on his answerphone,Mike rang back when I was on my own so I was forced to answer questions which for weeks had been answered by someone in my stead,I was very shaky and kept crying but said that I would attend the group on tuesday,not really thinking that I would or could but my sister-in-law came over straight from work and took me there,I was terrified,I tried to talk but cried and cried but everyone that was there was so kind,gentle and friendly and after all these months I consider myself very lucky to have found the group and the friends there and hope that I will continue to feel better and to know that I have only to pick up the phone and call someone in the group if I am down.The group is my life line and I will continue to use it as such.
CAROL February 2007
I had a very happy childhood along with my 3 brothers and sister our parents were great,always ready to sort out any problems which came along.
My first disaster was after my marriage and my pending pregnancies.My first pregnancy resulted in a premature stillborn, my second in miscarriage and my third was aborted due to problems. I of course was devastated as was my husband who asked the Doctor why was it happening, he replied that I may never have a child but just keep trying because anything was possible .My husband told me I was a freak and that he was leaving me for my best friend who could give him the family he wanted while he was young enough to enjoy them.
I got over the divorce quickly as I realised that he wasn't worth my tears and the depression I was feeling.Then I realised it wasn't for him but for the babies I had lost and the fact that I just knew that I would never have a family of my own.
I consider myself very lucky as my family including my Nieces/Nephews and now their children have always found time for me through their lives and always keep in touch. They have helped me so much especially when my younger brother died at the age of 39 with an unexpected heart attack, there was only 11 months between us so we were very close. I thought I would never get over it,then exactly a year later my father died.more heart ache.
Time is a great healer which I was grateful for when my Darling eldest Nephew was killed in an accident, I wanted to kill the man who was in his late seventies for killing him and which almost killed his girlfriend I think the hatred I had for this man kept me going for years as we were waiting for him to return to England from Australia to stand trial for reckless driving and falling asleep at the wheel of the vehicle he had been driving for 14 hours without a break.Unfortunately after a few years he was never well enough to travel back to the U.K.
My depression at this time was diverted as I knew that I had to help my Sister and Brother-in-law,also my niece to come to terms with the loss.I cried alone and smiled for them.My Nephew and Godson will never be forgotten as there are three presentation cups named after him at Aveley sports centre for football.Which my sister presents every year.
Then at the age of 79 years and 51 weeks my mother died,she was cremated on her 80th birthday 17th march, she was sadly missed and she always will be by me.we spent every weekend together and I used to call her at least twice a day,I still miss the calls and telling her my troubles.
On August 29th 2005 I was coming back from a barbecue at my brothers home with my friend and her husband when the Taxi in which we were travelling in got hit by another car who's driver was over the drink/drive limit and also uninsured, he did stop thankfully and was arrested at the scene of the accident.Both cars were a write off although the occupants in the other car were not injured at all ,We in our taxi all had to go to Hospital,I was injured quite badly with facial lacerations and bad bruising I needed 13 internal stitches around the eye and 18 stitches outside, my body and legs were severely bruised and my left leg although previously under the hospital for a replacement hip in 2006/7 needed the hip replaced due to deterioration following the impact.I had to take six months off work.
I resumed work at the beginning of February 2006 and I had also restarted to look for a new home with a garden.I had had several let downs with people pulling out at the last minute costing me over three thousand pounds without moving from my front door in surveyors fees and it was looking as if there was no hope for me to get a new life somewhere else following let down after let down, I was getting very low. and after being back at work for a few weeks my boss had to tell me that my job was no more and that my office was closing down and the personnel were moving to another area but there was no job for me, so I had to retire on my 62nd birthday, I really didn't want to finish working as I couldn't imagine having nothing to do all day.I have worked all my life since I was 15.I was so sad but eventually I found a house with a decent size garden but the buyer of my property wanted to move into the flat within five weeks,so I had to pack up before the house I was buying became available and put my home in storage with friends and also move in with one too. it was a very stressful time and I lost patience with all of the other estate agents in the chain, my friend was great but I was worried in-case our friendship was tested luckily it wasn't,eventuallyI took possession of the keys after waiting all day for them to be handed over.There was one excuse after another from the previous tenants as to why they were not out as stated on the purchase documents but I eventually got the keys at 6pm on the 18th of May 2006 but moved in on the 20th because the property was filthy and needed cleaning from top to bottom before I would allow anything of mine to be put in it.The previous owners hadn't packed anything before the day they moved out so nothing had been swept cleaned and dusted and the family and friends that were helping me to move in couldn't believe the mess they had left me.they told me they were leaving the carpets and curtains but had only left the dirty carpets that they had used as underlay. and the curtains that they had left up at the windows were only fit for the rag bag,I had no light bulbs and worst of all, no internal doors.massive holes in the walls of the bedrooms where they had torn down units and shelves,and the lounge and dinning room walls downstairs had been scribbled on by the kids.and the freezer took three days to defrost leaving me with defrosted foods all over the floor,but at least now I could open the freezer door and put my own food in it. I couldn't believe what I was seeing I felt devastated and started to cry.All the family said I would soon get it sorted and that it would be fine they knew I would not live with the mess and dirt so naturally thought I'd cope as I always have before, but this time it was too hard for me, I had come to this horrible home without any family or friend anywhere near. I didn"t know which way to turn.so I didn't do anything.I couldn't eat, sleep,go out, I just sat around crying all the time,I had no phone for two weeks and wouldn't answer my mobile and because I wouldn't speak to anyone my Sister-in-law was worried and came over she was shocked to see the state I was in,she tried to take me out but I wouldn't go and when I did go out I didn't want to come back.I couldn't shop because I didn't know what I wanted, I kept forgetting what day it was and my memory was virtually non-existent.the only positive thing I did throughout was getting up daily and having a shower with clean clothes.however I didn't wash the dirty clothes.thankfully my sister-in-law did.she stayed with me most days going to work from here to London every day but coming back to my house to cook me food and to see I was o.k.and sort out my mail which I was ignoring along with everything else.
Then my life changed for the better,In the locaI paper was the notification of a Depression Group in Basildon not far from the house,my sister-in-law rang the organiser Mike Parker,without my knowledge and left a message about me on his answerphone,Mike rang back when I was on my own so I was forced to answer questions which for weeks had been answered by someone in my stead,I was very shaky and kept crying but said that I would attend the group on tuesday,not really thinking that I would or could but my sister-in-law came over straight from work and took me there,I was terrified,I tried to talk but cried and cried but everyone that was there was so kind,gentle and friendly and after all these months I consider myself very lucky to have found the group and the friends there and hope that I will continue to feel better and to know that I have only to pick up the phone and call someone in the group if I am down.The group is my life line and I will continue to use it as such.
CAROL February 2007
Wednesday, 7 March 2007
Nothing.....thats what it feels like
AT ZERO
The eventual outcome of a black-pit depression, or a manic period, may well be arrival at a point where there is nothing left. Nothing financially, nothing emotionally, nothing to hang on to as a possible rebuilding process. Staring vacantly out of the window or at the walls, and the sense of having died inside.
The blackness of depression may have lifted, but has left a shell, a numbed emptiness, a total lack of direction and hope. Efforts seem trivial and puny, the days pass without significance, and there may be a feeling that absolutely nothing good or useful can ever happen again. It is a period after the storm where the wreckage remains, it feels like Zero.
In my own case, this meant wife gone, car repossessed, eviction notices, phones cut off, and my long manic drives reduced to maybe walking to the nearest shop once a week, praying that no former friends would see me. Walking empty of feeling, neither wanting to be our or indoors. It’s hard,and maybe pointless, to explain to a doctor that we are not actually depressed, but we feel like nothing. There is no medication for nothingness. Usually our families will settle for “There is something wrong with you” and leave it at that. The fact is we have been through a severe phase of illness, and are stunned by it’s after effects, and we once again find ourselves without the skills or motivation to cope with the situation. And worse still, we may well be setting ourselves up for another bout of severe depression. A good time to get into a group, and hang on. Find someone else who has been through it, and come out the other side.
We are no different in a sense that a person recovering from a bad road accident. The pain has mostly stopped, but we may have to learn to walk again, to lie down again, and even communicate again. We cannot remember the last time we were in a situation with somebody who cares and understands us. Life feels as thin a paper, like a mockery of all our former dreams and hopes. It is possible that sharing openly with others maybe the only salvation at this point.
This is the time to choose; get worse, or get better. “get busy living, or get busy dying” (The Shawshank Redemption). For me stagnation is only sliding down hill in disguise. When I awake, the first choice is simple. Get worse or get better.
When the lethargy hits, I can stop or walk slow. Any kind of movement is better than giving in to the nothingness, any menial task, any walk, any phone call.
Somehow or other, we chose life. Having done so, it’s worth a bit of pain to have a crack at it.
Get well, help others.
Mike. march 2007
The eventual outcome of a black-pit depression, or a manic period, may well be arrival at a point where there is nothing left. Nothing financially, nothing emotionally, nothing to hang on to as a possible rebuilding process. Staring vacantly out of the window or at the walls, and the sense of having died inside.
The blackness of depression may have lifted, but has left a shell, a numbed emptiness, a total lack of direction and hope. Efforts seem trivial and puny, the days pass without significance, and there may be a feeling that absolutely nothing good or useful can ever happen again. It is a period after the storm where the wreckage remains, it feels like Zero.
In my own case, this meant wife gone, car repossessed, eviction notices, phones cut off, and my long manic drives reduced to maybe walking to the nearest shop once a week, praying that no former friends would see me. Walking empty of feeling, neither wanting to be our or indoors. It’s hard,and maybe pointless, to explain to a doctor that we are not actually depressed, but we feel like nothing. There is no medication for nothingness. Usually our families will settle for “There is something wrong with you” and leave it at that. The fact is we have been through a severe phase of illness, and are stunned by it’s after effects, and we once again find ourselves without the skills or motivation to cope with the situation. And worse still, we may well be setting ourselves up for another bout of severe depression. A good time to get into a group, and hang on. Find someone else who has been through it, and come out the other side.
We are no different in a sense that a person recovering from a bad road accident. The pain has mostly stopped, but we may have to learn to walk again, to lie down again, and even communicate again. We cannot remember the last time we were in a situation with somebody who cares and understands us. Life feels as thin a paper, like a mockery of all our former dreams and hopes. It is possible that sharing openly with others maybe the only salvation at this point.
This is the time to choose; get worse, or get better. “get busy living, or get busy dying” (The Shawshank Redemption). For me stagnation is only sliding down hill in disguise. When I awake, the first choice is simple. Get worse or get better.
When the lethargy hits, I can stop or walk slow. Any kind of movement is better than giving in to the nothingness, any menial task, any walk, any phone call.
Somehow or other, we chose life. Having done so, it’s worth a bit of pain to have a crack at it.
Get well, help others.
Mike. march 2007
As bad as it gets
THE BLACK PIT
It seems like the end. It isn’t. It’s a halt, a severe halt.
The world is muffled, it’s in cotton wool, and its becoming distant. People are remote, seemingly hollow and even if they do phone, or talk, we can’t really hear, and they cannot get in.
Over and over, the one word that keeps turning up is Isolation. This does not mean simply physical loneliness. We can be alone in a room full of people, we can be alone when we are with a doctor, we can be alone even when we are with a lover. We can appear to be functioning normally, even interacting socially and professionally, all while in isolation. We learn to respond and appear to listen, we make normal faces and noises, but inside we are lost and empty. Sometimes we pretend to enjoy the things others enjoy, just so as not to appear different or anti-social. We look at people around us and wonder how it is they seem to cope with everything. Life around us feels detached, and sounds hollow. We can genuinely laugh at a comedian, but we are operating on a surface, which has been part of our coping mechanism. Sometimes we find ourselves “leaving early” from situations, or making excuses not to attend. As depression tightens its grip, we become less and less able to maintain the superficial front, and at this stage, relationships and jobs become difficult to hold on to. Now we are gravitating towards a shell or cocoon, an exile, and many of us end up with no-one.
Some of us are natural loners. Others of us become so because of our illnesses. We often mistrust organisations, and because of mood changes, find long term-relationships and friendships difficult. People appreciate consistency, “Good old Jack, he’s always the same,” and I’m not Jack, We, on the other hand, are not always the same. Our experiences tell us to hide away when we are feeling low, to stay away from situations that make us feel even more vulnerable. We don’t want to embarrass others with morose silence, total lack of interest, or be the one in the family group that everyone else needs to make excuses for. We don’t want to be out there in the world where we are constantly reminded that something is wrong with us, where we see people who apparently can cope with life.
Withdrawals can last days, months, or a lifetime. If we have been through one, it remains a constant threat when we are well, or even worse we read from it that there is no point in getting well, since it will happen again. Gazing out of the window or at the TV with eyes that take in nothing, living on the couch, going out only for survival food. A vague idea persists that some miracle might happen along and cure us, mixed with the ever present hope that we will not wake up in the morning.
We are becoming, at these times, a creature of existence only
Suddenly the good old Uncle type advice doesn’t work anymore. “get out more”
“you need a holiday” or “buy yourself a present.” We cannot treat ourselves to any of those type of fixes if we feel we are not worth it. Along with the depression, perhaps now a growing guilt for not being what other people think we are, for “letting them down” by not being the old self they once new.
Friends and family who observe out withdrawal, make take it personally, as if we are doing it to them, and because of them. Even worse, we may begin to attract predators who spot our wounds, and close in. Those who have loved us now begin to look at us in a different way. People at work or in business begin the process of writing us off, they adjust to our absence while we are still there.
More than likely, other problems intertwine. Money, status, self-esteem, ambition can flood away fast. The depression is finding fresh food to gorge on.
Our first visit to the GP is usually a colossal disappointment. “get more exercise” “we all go through these sort of things,” or more disturbing, one group member was told “It’s all in your mind,” and another member was told “you are different to everyone else.” Many people at the doctor’s for the first time, unable to express suicidal feelings, (and usually unasked) leave the surgery with a bottle of pills and “Come back in two months.” It might have taken all the courage in the world to make that first appointment, it is devastating to be sent away after a few minutes of nodding and computer tapping. The average time for a person to ask for help with depression is twenty-five years after the first symptoms. Devastating. And it is in that two months that the illness may accelerate. Depression has come to call. It has probably not come to stay. We must learn how to handle it, we have no choice. It can lead us to a place that is one step only ahead of suicide attempts. We have come to call this place The Black Pit.
Time is an endless blur…it races and yet it stands still.
The medical world seems detached, and robotic. Memories are hazy and meaningless.
When people talk , we feel they are speaking into a void; we are not there.
We swallow pills and wait. Our minds shut down out bodies, we taste no food, we become
Motionless, we feel no love. Our advisors trot out the same old observations and advice, their voices empty and hollow, their motivation suspect..
Somehow, we have to escape the black pit. We have to move from the problem into the solution. For us, this is infinitely more difficult than even well-meaning carers and medical staff can understand. It is a hundred miles to our kitchen, and thousand to our door. Two feet away, a book may be far out of reach…and the phone is a meaningless dead thing. Plans like going to the shops, or the library can become impossible to act on.
If we are hospital, we become as whitewashed as the endless corridors, as sterile as the floor. Its one huge clatter. We have a weird and partly convincing feeling we are in the right place, sometimes replaced by a sinking drowning sensation that we are in entirely the wrong place.
Our body in hospital, our souls fragmented and dispersed, our minds ragged and lost, or simply unavailable. People come with clipboards and write things down. We sometimes act grateful; it seems to pay off. We have to court the system sometimes, we found that out. We nod. Sometimes we expect care and understanding in hospital, and are amazed at the apparent indifference, the long numb days, the empty endless questions, the forlorn feeling in the ward, the void of communication.
We know, we may be released into care into the community. We’ve had some of that before, enough said. Sometimes we freeze ourselves into a block of ice, sometimes we melt into drained jelly. We learn how to walk the hospital way, sit the hospital way, and stare at the TV like good consumers. We vainly glance at people we think might be sicker than us. They look at us the same way. We wonder if they feel as bad as we do, but usually, in the ward situations, conversations are superficial and fleeting, and not particularly encouraged. The staff watch us to see if we are watching TV. If we are not, it may be written down.
The black pit is not in the hospital. It’s in us.
It’s going to be hard for us. Our coping skills are limited, it appears. Well people expect us to somehow have the same recovery tools they have. Probably their belief is founded on the fact that we breathe the same air, and respond the same stimuli. And are comforted by the thought that it can’t happen to them, they are too together, worldly-wise, and the order of their lives unshakeable. Unlike us, they are not instantly categorised, assessed and labelled. They have a vague idea that we do it to ourselves.
In the end, we begin to find our recovery in front of our eyes. People in the same lifeboat, people hanging by the same slender thread. People like us, both blessed and cursed with the same sensitivities. When we meet these people, we feel it immediately, we know and they know, they talk the same language.
We have to learn to keep each other afloat. We are our only true resource. We meet in corners, and hopefully, become known and available to others. Our bond, once made, may strengthen into a real and unshakeable lifeline. Sure, we can walk away, but it just might be a good idea if we don’t.
Some of us have spent a few minutes with a stranger, and felt more than we have felt for a long time.
There are no clipboards or charts, just the survival instinct reaching a little deeper. Kindred minds with the same hopes, rediscovering our right to be us, sick or well, our right to be understood and nourished by real simple human care, the acknowledgement, that after all, we are OK. Maybe two or three of us share a coffee….then someone else comes along. Then maybe, the quietest voice in the world, the voice of the depressed or mentally ill person, begins to be heard. We take back our right to a real community, we become more than a diagnosis on some computer, we may even become a force. And what is more, a benign force. Maybe for the first time. People seem to know what we are talking about, and do not frown or look vague when we talk to them.
Im a sick person. It’s official. Most of the negative labels can be stuck on me. I am easy to dismiss or write off.
I have an illnesss, maybe several. But I also have something that those in the Illusory Well World perhaps have not. I have some real friends. One friend of that quality would be enough, but a handful have become something close to a fortress. My old theory is gone. I am not alone, I’m not
unreachable, and I count.
It doesn’t come in bottles, packets and prescriptions, it can’t be scrawled on a bed-end clipboard.
One day, I might be alone, helpless, and lost. It isn’t going to be today. One day I may simply give up,
but it will not be this day. And if I can reach out, touch, or even smile, it won’t be tomorrow.
Something is at work in me today. And if you can read and feel these words, that something… Is probably you.
Mike…..December 2006 Basildon Self-Help-Depression group.
It seems like the end. It isn’t. It’s a halt, a severe halt.
The world is muffled, it’s in cotton wool, and its becoming distant. People are remote, seemingly hollow and even if they do phone, or talk, we can’t really hear, and they cannot get in.
Over and over, the one word that keeps turning up is Isolation. This does not mean simply physical loneliness. We can be alone in a room full of people, we can be alone when we are with a doctor, we can be alone even when we are with a lover. We can appear to be functioning normally, even interacting socially and professionally, all while in isolation. We learn to respond and appear to listen, we make normal faces and noises, but inside we are lost and empty. Sometimes we pretend to enjoy the things others enjoy, just so as not to appear different or anti-social. We look at people around us and wonder how it is they seem to cope with everything. Life around us feels detached, and sounds hollow. We can genuinely laugh at a comedian, but we are operating on a surface, which has been part of our coping mechanism. Sometimes we find ourselves “leaving early” from situations, or making excuses not to attend. As depression tightens its grip, we become less and less able to maintain the superficial front, and at this stage, relationships and jobs become difficult to hold on to. Now we are gravitating towards a shell or cocoon, an exile, and many of us end up with no-one.
Some of us are natural loners. Others of us become so because of our illnesses. We often mistrust organisations, and because of mood changes, find long term-relationships and friendships difficult. People appreciate consistency, “Good old Jack, he’s always the same,” and I’m not Jack, We, on the other hand, are not always the same. Our experiences tell us to hide away when we are feeling low, to stay away from situations that make us feel even more vulnerable. We don’t want to embarrass others with morose silence, total lack of interest, or be the one in the family group that everyone else needs to make excuses for. We don’t want to be out there in the world where we are constantly reminded that something is wrong with us, where we see people who apparently can cope with life.
Withdrawals can last days, months, or a lifetime. If we have been through one, it remains a constant threat when we are well, or even worse we read from it that there is no point in getting well, since it will happen again. Gazing out of the window or at the TV with eyes that take in nothing, living on the couch, going out only for survival food. A vague idea persists that some miracle might happen along and cure us, mixed with the ever present hope that we will not wake up in the morning.
We are becoming, at these times, a creature of existence only
Suddenly the good old Uncle type advice doesn’t work anymore. “get out more”
“you need a holiday” or “buy yourself a present.” We cannot treat ourselves to any of those type of fixes if we feel we are not worth it. Along with the depression, perhaps now a growing guilt for not being what other people think we are, for “letting them down” by not being the old self they once new.
Friends and family who observe out withdrawal, make take it personally, as if we are doing it to them, and because of them. Even worse, we may begin to attract predators who spot our wounds, and close in. Those who have loved us now begin to look at us in a different way. People at work or in business begin the process of writing us off, they adjust to our absence while we are still there.
More than likely, other problems intertwine. Money, status, self-esteem, ambition can flood away fast. The depression is finding fresh food to gorge on.
Our first visit to the GP is usually a colossal disappointment. “get more exercise” “we all go through these sort of things,” or more disturbing, one group member was told “It’s all in your mind,” and another member was told “you are different to everyone else.” Many people at the doctor’s for the first time, unable to express suicidal feelings, (and usually unasked) leave the surgery with a bottle of pills and “Come back in two months.” It might have taken all the courage in the world to make that first appointment, it is devastating to be sent away after a few minutes of nodding and computer tapping. The average time for a person to ask for help with depression is twenty-five years after the first symptoms. Devastating. And it is in that two months that the illness may accelerate. Depression has come to call. It has probably not come to stay. We must learn how to handle it, we have no choice. It can lead us to a place that is one step only ahead of suicide attempts. We have come to call this place The Black Pit.
Time is an endless blur…it races and yet it stands still.
The medical world seems detached, and robotic. Memories are hazy and meaningless.
When people talk , we feel they are speaking into a void; we are not there.
We swallow pills and wait. Our minds shut down out bodies, we taste no food, we become
Motionless, we feel no love. Our advisors trot out the same old observations and advice, their voices empty and hollow, their motivation suspect..
Somehow, we have to escape the black pit. We have to move from the problem into the solution. For us, this is infinitely more difficult than even well-meaning carers and medical staff can understand. It is a hundred miles to our kitchen, and thousand to our door. Two feet away, a book may be far out of reach…and the phone is a meaningless dead thing. Plans like going to the shops, or the library can become impossible to act on.
If we are hospital, we become as whitewashed as the endless corridors, as sterile as the floor. Its one huge clatter. We have a weird and partly convincing feeling we are in the right place, sometimes replaced by a sinking drowning sensation that we are in entirely the wrong place.
Our body in hospital, our souls fragmented and dispersed, our minds ragged and lost, or simply unavailable. People come with clipboards and write things down. We sometimes act grateful; it seems to pay off. We have to court the system sometimes, we found that out. We nod. Sometimes we expect care and understanding in hospital, and are amazed at the apparent indifference, the long numb days, the empty endless questions, the forlorn feeling in the ward, the void of communication.
We know, we may be released into care into the community. We’ve had some of that before, enough said. Sometimes we freeze ourselves into a block of ice, sometimes we melt into drained jelly. We learn how to walk the hospital way, sit the hospital way, and stare at the TV like good consumers. We vainly glance at people we think might be sicker than us. They look at us the same way. We wonder if they feel as bad as we do, but usually, in the ward situations, conversations are superficial and fleeting, and not particularly encouraged. The staff watch us to see if we are watching TV. If we are not, it may be written down.
The black pit is not in the hospital. It’s in us.
It’s going to be hard for us. Our coping skills are limited, it appears. Well people expect us to somehow have the same recovery tools they have. Probably their belief is founded on the fact that we breathe the same air, and respond the same stimuli. And are comforted by the thought that it can’t happen to them, they are too together, worldly-wise, and the order of their lives unshakeable. Unlike us, they are not instantly categorised, assessed and labelled. They have a vague idea that we do it to ourselves.
In the end, we begin to find our recovery in front of our eyes. People in the same lifeboat, people hanging by the same slender thread. People like us, both blessed and cursed with the same sensitivities. When we meet these people, we feel it immediately, we know and they know, they talk the same language.
We have to learn to keep each other afloat. We are our only true resource. We meet in corners, and hopefully, become known and available to others. Our bond, once made, may strengthen into a real and unshakeable lifeline. Sure, we can walk away, but it just might be a good idea if we don’t.
Some of us have spent a few minutes with a stranger, and felt more than we have felt for a long time.
There are no clipboards or charts, just the survival instinct reaching a little deeper. Kindred minds with the same hopes, rediscovering our right to be us, sick or well, our right to be understood and nourished by real simple human care, the acknowledgement, that after all, we are OK. Maybe two or three of us share a coffee….then someone else comes along. Then maybe, the quietest voice in the world, the voice of the depressed or mentally ill person, begins to be heard. We take back our right to a real community, we become more than a diagnosis on some computer, we may even become a force. And what is more, a benign force. Maybe for the first time. People seem to know what we are talking about, and do not frown or look vague when we talk to them.
Im a sick person. It’s official. Most of the negative labels can be stuck on me. I am easy to dismiss or write off.
I have an illnesss, maybe several. But I also have something that those in the Illusory Well World perhaps have not. I have some real friends. One friend of that quality would be enough, but a handful have become something close to a fortress. My old theory is gone. I am not alone, I’m not
unreachable, and I count.
It doesn’t come in bottles, packets and prescriptions, it can’t be scrawled on a bed-end clipboard.
One day, I might be alone, helpless, and lost. It isn’t going to be today. One day I may simply give up,
but it will not be this day. And if I can reach out, touch, or even smile, it won’t be tomorrow.
Something is at work in me today. And if you can read and feel these words, that something… Is probably you.
Mike…..December 2006 Basildon Self-Help-Depression group.
for better or worse.....me...
Mike's Story
One beautiful spring day 25 years ago I woke feeling an exultant happiness. In the bathroom mirror I saw tears of joy. Every dog has his day, and I knew this day was mine, I had been anticipating it for three months or more, and knew that I would recognise it when it came, and inside my mind, some powerful spiritual-type voice was saying “This is the Day. This is Your Day, Michael.”
For me, the trials of life were over, and the solution clear. Kill yourself.
Twenty-four hours later, I woke up in a car filled with exhaust fumes, hundreds of miles away in the New Forest. A sense of failure, a sense of being cheated, and with serious carbon-monoxide poisoning, and with temporary brain damage. It was about a month before I could tell the time again, or count money.
In the Maudsley Mental Hospital, two days later, doctors told me “You don’t try to take your life when you are happy, you must learn to be honest.” I suppose they think if you are slowly burning in a fire, you relish the moment and want it to go on forever. For me it was crystal clear. I was doing myself and the world a favour. Ending the pain, closing it all down, was indeed a reason to be happy.
A couple of days later, a psychiatrist told my first wife, “walk away and pretend you never knew this man. Forget him. He will never leave hospital. He has totally withdrawn and nothing will bring him out.” I was out of hospital in six weeks.
Two years later, I took 50 double-strength aspirins, was very ill for a day, and went temporarily deaf. I told a doctor I took them “by mistake,” with no intention of harming myself. I would not accept that I had depression, because
I didn’t want to have that label, I had enough labels already, Abused Child, Introvert, Loner, Thief, Fantasist, Alcoholic, Recovering Alcoholic. Accepting that I had depression would have been like taking the hair shirt and crown of thorns, a self-sentence to failure and mediocrity.
I had to stop drinking to discover depression. I didn’t know. I knew there was “something wrong inside me” and became familiar with the idea of not wanting to wake up in the mornings. I found something I didn’t like when I got sober. Me. I had flimsy and fluctuating self-esteem, but protected the void sometimes with a large ego. That’s a real bad personality set-up, and the basis of an unmanageable life.
I felt like an impostor on the planet, although sometimes bursts of apparent normality shone through the clouds. Then came the rain again, the colours sapped out of life, I could feel the doors closing, the ton weight back on my shoulders, the separation, the oppression of the other self. Life, happiness, acheivement, love, all became laughable, the spark flickering and dying once again.
Long-term friendships, and work, became almost impossible. Periods of huge elation intervened sometimes, which I know now is called a manic high. A bliss of infinite proportions, reckless love for life, unstoppable flows of ideas, a sense that the true Genius was surfacing. Delusive grandeur, an overblown sense of significance, an impatience with the uninspired around me, and the severing of actual relationships. My second wife thought I was schizophrenic, she wanted to have me sectioned to protect me from my compulsive overspending, lack of sleep and food, wild geographical sprees, all symptoms of what is now called Bipolar Illness, or Manic Depression.
Then, the roller coaster would stop, I’d have a few days perhaps sensing a coming change, then down into the black pit. Days, weeks, months. From the highest high to the lowest low, it’s a long way to fall, and it hurts beyond belief.
Eventually, maybe twenty years later than one might reasonably expect, I finally get diagnosed. Only because I chanced on a book by Spike Milligan which listed all the symptoms of manic-depression, and I had all of them. The round of doctors and therapy began, thin and spare, cursory and indifferent. Leaving consultations with an empty feeling, astonished that the self-adulated science of psychiatry concerned itself only with whether I slept and ate adequately, and was I taking the medication. It seemed if I could turn up, that was evidence of wellness. “He is a well-dressed bespectacled man” reads one report. I found out later, if I didn’t turn up, this was also evidence of wellness. To these people, lack of wellness would probably be defined by foaming mouth and secreting axes about one’s person. If im not a danger to myself or others, it seems I am not hardly worth a second look.
Somewhere along the line it occurred to me, that if alcoholics can keep each other sober, maybe depression sufferers could help each other manage their illness. Those who have not been there, with the best will in the world, simply have no understanding whatever of the extremes of the illness, and though medication can smother the symptoms, it cannot touch the deep-rooted causes.
There seems to vague theory sometimes that we do it to ourselves. Well, I didn’t.
My parents taught me to dread and fear life, a philosophy that seemed also to be freely available at school. The violence was bad at home but the scorn and ridicule, judgement and apparent hatred did the real damage. 50 years on, I still hear the echoes of those messages, but I no longer buy into them, I try to set them aside. My childhood was appalling, but no worse than many others, but extreme sensitivity and vulnerability made very day a risk, every goodness suspect, and drove all my hopes and expectations into a shoddy panicky corner.
I learned to pretend, lie and cheat, and became addicted to any substance or behaviour that made me feel better for a few moments. Where my friends seemed to grow and progress, I felt like I was hanging by the slenderest thread, scrabbling in the dirt with my fingernails looking for a moment of recognition, hoping only for some miracle to come along and snatch me out of the loneliness and misery. Sometimes a period of normality would come along, teasing and insulting, like a bright new toy waiting to be smashed. Walking a tightrope for a while as if I didn’t know it would fray and break.
With bipolar illness undiagnosed, I scrambled and tumbled through life, and tasted some victories, glided and soared, inevitably nose-diving into The Black Pit, sometimes numbed out and anaesthetised by a refusal to feel, and learning to play the game of apparent normality, acting like Everyman, some masked tragi-comedic figure in a Mediaeval play. Like many others, I learned to tell doctors the bits they seem to be able to understand, and tell friends and employers some kind of cover story. Paste over the cracks, move on, play the game as best I could, still lacking the basic needs of survival, like Honesty, Balance, Real Human Interaction, Care, Responsibility, the real tools of an adult life. (see Scott Peck…The Road Less Travelled.
In 2003, it began to change when Jean Arnold, a friend, asked me if I thought we could start a group for local depression sufferers. For me now, change was no longer an option, since commitment and responsibility, never really available to me, were obviously going to be required.
We started our group that September, four people drinking tea round a table, simply happy to be there. The group story has its own chapter in this book.
Let me say that the group is the love of my life. It’s real, whether there are two or twenty of us, and it works. It keeps me as well as the confines of my illness will allow, and it often holds the power of my illness at bay. Despite some of my previous theories of life, (One Man Against theWorld, the Ice Man, The Reclusive Genius..etc) I have found that people are the best medicine for me.
People who share their pain, their hopes and their hearts in order to help others survive. People who attain some recovery to pass on to the new person.
I found out that even I can sustain friendships, and be part of something, and that illness can be put into perspective, and managed.
I am not a guru, I am not a natural leader, I’m still a flawed and damaged man.
I cannot tell anyone what to do, but I can tell people what I did, where I am, and what is in me. I can’t do that with medical professionals.
I am sustained by the love, generosity, and spirit of the others in the lifeboat. I have seen qualities in some of the group that astound me continually, unselfishness that I have rarely seen elsewhere. Honesty and goodness have an infectious quality, as does the will to survive and grow.
This is no miracle story. It’s a long partnership of Time and Care. There have been days, one or two, where I have practically crawled to the group, or when it has been the only thing I have managed to do within that week.
However, the overall process of getting better and managing better, the gradual recovery which is harder to accept than the concept of cure….this is the reward.
I’m still here.
Mike. Feb.2007
One beautiful spring day 25 years ago I woke feeling an exultant happiness. In the bathroom mirror I saw tears of joy. Every dog has his day, and I knew this day was mine, I had been anticipating it for three months or more, and knew that I would recognise it when it came, and inside my mind, some powerful spiritual-type voice was saying “This is the Day. This is Your Day, Michael.”
For me, the trials of life were over, and the solution clear. Kill yourself.
Twenty-four hours later, I woke up in a car filled with exhaust fumes, hundreds of miles away in the New Forest. A sense of failure, a sense of being cheated, and with serious carbon-monoxide poisoning, and with temporary brain damage. It was about a month before I could tell the time again, or count money.
In the Maudsley Mental Hospital, two days later, doctors told me “You don’t try to take your life when you are happy, you must learn to be honest.” I suppose they think if you are slowly burning in a fire, you relish the moment and want it to go on forever. For me it was crystal clear. I was doing myself and the world a favour. Ending the pain, closing it all down, was indeed a reason to be happy.
A couple of days later, a psychiatrist told my first wife, “walk away and pretend you never knew this man. Forget him. He will never leave hospital. He has totally withdrawn and nothing will bring him out.” I was out of hospital in six weeks.
Two years later, I took 50 double-strength aspirins, was very ill for a day, and went temporarily deaf. I told a doctor I took them “by mistake,” with no intention of harming myself. I would not accept that I had depression, because
I didn’t want to have that label, I had enough labels already, Abused Child, Introvert, Loner, Thief, Fantasist, Alcoholic, Recovering Alcoholic. Accepting that I had depression would have been like taking the hair shirt and crown of thorns, a self-sentence to failure and mediocrity.
I had to stop drinking to discover depression. I didn’t know. I knew there was “something wrong inside me” and became familiar with the idea of not wanting to wake up in the mornings. I found something I didn’t like when I got sober. Me. I had flimsy and fluctuating self-esteem, but protected the void sometimes with a large ego. That’s a real bad personality set-up, and the basis of an unmanageable life.
I felt like an impostor on the planet, although sometimes bursts of apparent normality shone through the clouds. Then came the rain again, the colours sapped out of life, I could feel the doors closing, the ton weight back on my shoulders, the separation, the oppression of the other self. Life, happiness, acheivement, love, all became laughable, the spark flickering and dying once again.
Long-term friendships, and work, became almost impossible. Periods of huge elation intervened sometimes, which I know now is called a manic high. A bliss of infinite proportions, reckless love for life, unstoppable flows of ideas, a sense that the true Genius was surfacing. Delusive grandeur, an overblown sense of significance, an impatience with the uninspired around me, and the severing of actual relationships. My second wife thought I was schizophrenic, she wanted to have me sectioned to protect me from my compulsive overspending, lack of sleep and food, wild geographical sprees, all symptoms of what is now called Bipolar Illness, or Manic Depression.
Then, the roller coaster would stop, I’d have a few days perhaps sensing a coming change, then down into the black pit. Days, weeks, months. From the highest high to the lowest low, it’s a long way to fall, and it hurts beyond belief.
Eventually, maybe twenty years later than one might reasonably expect, I finally get diagnosed. Only because I chanced on a book by Spike Milligan which listed all the symptoms of manic-depression, and I had all of them. The round of doctors and therapy began, thin and spare, cursory and indifferent. Leaving consultations with an empty feeling, astonished that the self-adulated science of psychiatry concerned itself only with whether I slept and ate adequately, and was I taking the medication. It seemed if I could turn up, that was evidence of wellness. “He is a well-dressed bespectacled man” reads one report. I found out later, if I didn’t turn up, this was also evidence of wellness. To these people, lack of wellness would probably be defined by foaming mouth and secreting axes about one’s person. If im not a danger to myself or others, it seems I am not hardly worth a second look.
Somewhere along the line it occurred to me, that if alcoholics can keep each other sober, maybe depression sufferers could help each other manage their illness. Those who have not been there, with the best will in the world, simply have no understanding whatever of the extremes of the illness, and though medication can smother the symptoms, it cannot touch the deep-rooted causes.
There seems to vague theory sometimes that we do it to ourselves. Well, I didn’t.
My parents taught me to dread and fear life, a philosophy that seemed also to be freely available at school. The violence was bad at home but the scorn and ridicule, judgement and apparent hatred did the real damage. 50 years on, I still hear the echoes of those messages, but I no longer buy into them, I try to set them aside. My childhood was appalling, but no worse than many others, but extreme sensitivity and vulnerability made very day a risk, every goodness suspect, and drove all my hopes and expectations into a shoddy panicky corner.
I learned to pretend, lie and cheat, and became addicted to any substance or behaviour that made me feel better for a few moments. Where my friends seemed to grow and progress, I felt like I was hanging by the slenderest thread, scrabbling in the dirt with my fingernails looking for a moment of recognition, hoping only for some miracle to come along and snatch me out of the loneliness and misery. Sometimes a period of normality would come along, teasing and insulting, like a bright new toy waiting to be smashed. Walking a tightrope for a while as if I didn’t know it would fray and break.
With bipolar illness undiagnosed, I scrambled and tumbled through life, and tasted some victories, glided and soared, inevitably nose-diving into The Black Pit, sometimes numbed out and anaesthetised by a refusal to feel, and learning to play the game of apparent normality, acting like Everyman, some masked tragi-comedic figure in a Mediaeval play. Like many others, I learned to tell doctors the bits they seem to be able to understand, and tell friends and employers some kind of cover story. Paste over the cracks, move on, play the game as best I could, still lacking the basic needs of survival, like Honesty, Balance, Real Human Interaction, Care, Responsibility, the real tools of an adult life. (see Scott Peck…The Road Less Travelled.
In 2003, it began to change when Jean Arnold, a friend, asked me if I thought we could start a group for local depression sufferers. For me now, change was no longer an option, since commitment and responsibility, never really available to me, were obviously going to be required.
We started our group that September, four people drinking tea round a table, simply happy to be there. The group story has its own chapter in this book.
Let me say that the group is the love of my life. It’s real, whether there are two or twenty of us, and it works. It keeps me as well as the confines of my illness will allow, and it often holds the power of my illness at bay. Despite some of my previous theories of life, (One Man Against theWorld, the Ice Man, The Reclusive Genius..etc) I have found that people are the best medicine for me.
People who share their pain, their hopes and their hearts in order to help others survive. People who attain some recovery to pass on to the new person.
I found out that even I can sustain friendships, and be part of something, and that illness can be put into perspective, and managed.
I am not a guru, I am not a natural leader, I’m still a flawed and damaged man.
I cannot tell anyone what to do, but I can tell people what I did, where I am, and what is in me. I can’t do that with medical professionals.
I am sustained by the love, generosity, and spirit of the others in the lifeboat. I have seen qualities in some of the group that astound me continually, unselfishness that I have rarely seen elsewhere. Honesty and goodness have an infectious quality, as does the will to survive and grow.
This is no miracle story. It’s a long partnership of Time and Care. There have been days, one or two, where I have practically crawled to the group, or when it has been the only thing I have managed to do within that week.
However, the overall process of getting better and managing better, the gradual recovery which is harder to accept than the concept of cure….this is the reward.
I’m still here.
Mike. Feb.2007
first group sheet
Daily thoughts:
A bad wake-up can cause a bad day. Try, however difficult it may seem, to stand aside from the depression. Decide to not let it take over and damage your whole day. Depression is part of you; it may even be a large part, but it is not the whole you.
You owe it to yourself to give the day your best shot, no matter how you feel. Refuse to listen to hopeless, repetitive thoughts. Think of the support and strength that you know is available from the group; remind yourself that you yourself are a source of strength to others in the group. Think about the last meeting, and think about the next meeting. Think how far you have come by joining the group at all....a positive step towards a better life. You turned your back on isolation, and you never have to go back to that.
Today, try to claim part of your life back from the illness. It might help to make a short written plan for the day, and try to carry it through. You are probably doing things right now that in the past have been difficult or impossible.
When it’s hard, divide the day into three parts, morning, afternoon and evening and plan to get something for you out of each part, some small task, a phone call, a letter or some small job that needs getting out of the way.
Think of the goodness in the group, and remind yourself that you never have to struggle by yourself unless you choose to. Think back to when there seemed to be no hope at all and remember how much power you have to help those worse off, perhaps people who have illnesses that are never going to improve, and people who are totally cut off from sources of help.
Don’t be alone, be a friend.
Michael February 2004
A bad wake-up can cause a bad day. Try, however difficult it may seem, to stand aside from the depression. Decide to not let it take over and damage your whole day. Depression is part of you; it may even be a large part, but it is not the whole you.
You owe it to yourself to give the day your best shot, no matter how you feel. Refuse to listen to hopeless, repetitive thoughts. Think of the support and strength that you know is available from the group; remind yourself that you yourself are a source of strength to others in the group. Think about the last meeting, and think about the next meeting. Think how far you have come by joining the group at all....a positive step towards a better life. You turned your back on isolation, and you never have to go back to that.
Today, try to claim part of your life back from the illness. It might help to make a short written plan for the day, and try to carry it through. You are probably doing things right now that in the past have been difficult or impossible.
When it’s hard, divide the day into three parts, morning, afternoon and evening and plan to get something for you out of each part, some small task, a phone call, a letter or some small job that needs getting out of the way.
Think of the goodness in the group, and remind yourself that you never have to struggle by yourself unless you choose to. Think back to when there seemed to be no hope at all and remember how much power you have to help those worse off, perhaps people who have illnesses that are never going to improve, and people who are totally cut off from sources of help.
Don’t be alone, be a friend.
Michael February 2004
Wednesday, 28 February 2007
Welcome
Hi
we are in the process of building a site for all forms of depression !
it hopefully will be a place that you can visit in time of need but also a place where you can make new friends that have a understanding of how you actually feel .
over the weeks, I'm sure a lot of content will be added IE links,forums etc .... and we look forward to welcoming you with open arms.
don't forget to save us in your favourites :)
we are in the process of building a site for all forms of depression !
it hopefully will be a place that you can visit in time of need but also a place where you can make new friends that have a understanding of how you actually feel .
over the weeks, I'm sure a lot of content will be added IE links,forums etc .... and we look forward to welcoming you with open arms.
don't forget to save us in your favourites :)
The Ten Points
1. Choose life.
2. Use the group as a source of strength.
3. Try to get a true understanding of our illness.
4. Try not to get depressed about being depressed.
5. Find solid, manageable ways of handling the illness.
6. Have a clear knowledge of the past but avoid living in it .
7. Turn depression and fear into positive action.
8. Be aware of others worse off and try to support them .
9. Use the telephone.
10. plan to go to the next meeting
2. Use the group as a source of strength.
3. Try to get a true understanding of our illness.
4. Try not to get depressed about being depressed.
5. Find solid, manageable ways of handling the illness.
6. Have a clear knowledge of the past but avoid living in it .
7. Turn depression and fear into positive action.
8. Be aware of others worse off and try to support them .
9. Use the telephone.
10. plan to go to the next meeting
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