On Realising Tomorrow is Another Day

Life in a Nut House


You have a room of your own, three meals a day and all the tea you can drink. If you are not on section you can pop down the local shops for a packet of fags. Tele in common room and OT classes to keep you occupied. Nursing staff vary in attitude depending on whether you are freaking out or not. Always someone to talk to or play a game of cards with.


Rules are simple - arrive on time for dispersal of meds, always take your meds, do not ask about meds, any aberrations of behaviour will be curtailed with extra meds, if you need meds to sleep you can have them, if you want more meds you can have them.


Drawbacks-Other patients


They steal your clothes from the washroom, your cup from the cupboard and anything you happen to leave laying around. They watch the same video on the tele over and over again. They play chess like drafts and are sometimes incontinent on the seat you want to sit in. Some of them are a bit strange. Others keep you awake at night with their screaming.


On P Docs


Every time you go to see one they aren't there anymore and a complete stranger asks you questions. Sometimes you can't understand what they are saying cos they mumble and have strange accents. They have never read your notes so really you can tell them anything. I always rehearse in advance what I am going to say, depending on what I want to achieve. They have two maybe three stock questions which you can work on. The one about suicide can be adapted depending on if you want more meds or want to start coming off them. But coming off them is never an appropriate suggestion to make.They will always seek to reassure you that they have your best interests at heart. This is a little joke they like to have with you.


Crisis Team


So you are out of hospital and drugged up to the eyeballs. You take pills to help you sleep, pills to keep you calm and pills to relax you. So you lay on the sofa all day wrapped in a blankie watching but not absorbing day time TV. Every day two different people who you have never met before come into your home and give you INFORMATION for an hour. They ask you what you are thinking about. When you say death they shuffle awkwardly in their seats. They ask you are you eating, are you sleeping, and what are your plans for the future.  When you ring them in the middle of the night they tell you are not alone. After two weeks they drop their support to once a week and then a phone call and then nothing.
Suddenly you are on your own with you, and you are frightened - terrified even. You are the last person you want to be left alone with.


Community Psychiatric Nurses


Mine was female (still is as far as I know). She was in appearance short and sweet. She gave me my "up the bum jobs". She would vary which cheek she used each month and I began to worry that, in time, my bum would come to resemble an overused pin cushion. After a couple of months she became disturbed by me returning to my blankie having let her in the front door and trying to catch up on my sleep in her presence and my tongue living a life of its own in my mouth. She stopped giving me Depo injections then and I was, and still am very gratefull to her. Guess she saved my life really.


more to follow.....

BIPOLAR – The brilliant madness or JOAN OF ARC SYNDROME

I wrote this piece early in 2009 as a response to a request to address a group of volunteers for DGS Mind. It was hard for me to put the realities of my illness down on paper.

– The brilliant madness or JOAN OF ARC SYNDROME

Many famous high achievers throughout history have of late been recognised as suffering from Manic Depression or Bipolar Syndrome

Some of The Most Famous and Documented are

Winston Churchill

Spike Milligan

Ludwig von Beethoven

Edvard Munch

Virginia Wolff

And others equally famous but with a hypothetical diagnosis

George Frederick Handel       Theodore Roosevelt

Michelangelo                                   Chopin

Bach                                                     Mahler

Liszt                                                 Handel

Charles Darwin                           Edgar Allen Poe

Picasso                                           Gauguin

Gabriele Dante Rosetti            Vincent Van Gogh

Jackson Pollock                          Henry Matisse

Oliver Cromwell                         Napoleon Bonaparte

Leo Tolstoy                                   Ernest Hemingway

Charles Dickens,

The list goes on and on. We don’t know for certain that these people suffered from Bipolar, but one thing they have in common is their DRIVEN OBSESSIVE BEHAVIOUR. Many had grandiose visions which they pursued relentlessly and seemingly tirelessly. And many had bouts of deep dark depression. People with Bipolar are often multi talented, artistic or creative.

In fact, so large has the list of high achievers with the illness become that the illness has attained a certain glamour.

Hence the term “The Brilliant Madness”

There is nothing nice about having Bipolar. Its characterised by extreme mood swings or cycles from manic euphoria to deep dark depression.

I use the term manic euphoria because in this phase of the illness a sufferer can experience extreme feelings of well being coupled with supreme self confidence and the certainty that one is capable of achievement. This can escalate into delusions of grandeur in which one sees oneself as being on a mission. You might think you have the gift of telepathy, or you have been singled out by a supreme being to undertake a task. Hence the coined phrase Joan of Arc syndrome. One can have auditory and visual hallucinations. i.e. relentless voices whispering in your ear and lights signalling you from space. You can read messages in everything, from cloud formations in the sky to the way a house spider spins its web. Along with this goes restlessness, an inability to sleep and Obsessive Driven Behaviour. A breakdown quickly ensues without proper medical attention. Behaviour unless curtailed can become intrusive and potentially dangerous to others and oneself. People who have Bipolar are known to take risks like spending large sums of money they don’t have, becoming promiscuous, driving recklessly and taking their clothes off in public.

At the other end of the scale, is the depressive stage. This is much more difficult for me to describe. It’s like living at the bottom of a well. If you can try and imagine that with me. It’s dark and dank, and no light or sunlight penetrates from above. The walls of the well are covered in mould, which is slimy to the touch and you are standing in stagnant water, beneath which is mud that your feet have become stuck in. On the water float putrefying carcases of little animals that have become trapped. Its cold in the well and you have known for some time now that there is no way out. You wonder how long it took the little animals to drown and whether they suffered much. You visualise drowning and wonder how long it will take you.

You go to bed with the assumption that if you go to sleep you might never wake up again. When you wake up the day is as grey as it was yesterday. You drag yourself through the day with only one saving grace in sight. You can go to bed at the end of it and sleep. But you can’t sleep because you are too frightened of losing control. Death is always present. Horrendous dreams stalk your sleep in which those you care about most are horribly tortured or being duped or used by someone who is evil incarnate.

Because not much is known about the illness other than its effect on the sufferer, drugs are employed by the professionals in an effort to stabilise the moods (stop them cycling). Help is given by The Crisis Team who will instruct the sufferer in techniques, lifestyle changes and the correct use of medication. The drugs administered all have side affects. These side affects can be as bad as or even worse than the actual illness. They can amplify the mood. So you can see that in the depressive phase it is quite common for the sufferer to become suicidal. However these drugs are known to have a success rate in stabilising mood swings.

I would like to give you an idea of my personal growth through the experience of Bipolar. Many people who experience the manic phase of Bipolar speak of it in religious terminology. They feel they are God or they have special powers. Justin says he is an atheist. I hope he means he is an atheist and not an agnostic for I myself have been an agnostic for much of my life. Through Bipolar people can grow. It changes for good ones perception of everything and yes it is akin to a spiritual awakening.

Media perception.

There is a trend in the media to try to address stigmatism of people with mental illness by casting them in soaps, and what they portray is their suffering. We saw very recently “Jean” on Eastenders go through a Mental Breakdown and we were made aware of her and her families’ fear of hospitalisation. This fear is not unfounded. Disruptive behaviour in mental hospitals can lead to Sectioning which then leaves the patient ostensibly unable to control any aspect of their own lives. Drugs administered, sometimes against the patients’ wishes, numb emotional responses to all external stimuli. One can feel like crying but be unable to cry and the same goes for laughing. They become actors without emotions, or automatons in their own play which is their life. It used to be called lobotomy.

There is a feeling of isolation that can be counteracted by an acknowledgement of the persons’ illness. A simple “how are you feeling today” will work wonders. We will not however tell you at this stage how we are feeling as it may lead to further isolation. One is aware of the affect on those closest to you and may try to hide the inner turmoil to protect them. We do not want others to experience our world, for it is too dangerous. So we exercise restraint and censor our replies to well intentioned questions. If we sit all day in clothes that aren’t clean and seem to take no interest in diversions it’s because we are fighting a battle. A battle that takes all our strength and willpower, and from which death is perceived as a welcome relief.

I would briefly like to talk about stigma. At first I didn’t like having a label. It seemed to be a way to discriminate against me. But with time I have learned to accept my label and now view it as a badge of honour. For it tells anybody who is bothered to find out, a lot about my nature. It is not what I am it is who I am.

Finally a little quote that I find inspirational

“Our lives begin to end the day we remain silent about things that matter” - Martin Luther King