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