25 th.October.

25 October
Got up this morning and turned heating on having spent a cold night in bed.
Sky is greyed over and it’s chilly.
I sit in chair hugging cuppa and try to decide what to do today.

A part of me is saying nothing and other parts are mentioning the washing,
food preparation and general tidy up which would make a difference if done.

I have a couple of smokes and remember Tony in hospital.
Sitting for hour’s everyday, smoking his life away whilst doing absolutely nothing.
Only exercise was to move from one chair, walk 20 ft and sit in another chair to smoke.
Morning till night, day after day, same routine.
Very seldom moved away from ward and never far from his two chairs.
Looked after by his ageing mother this 47-year-old man had become institutionalised.
A diabetic to boot who couldn’t understand why it was bad for him to take sugar in every of the many cups of tea he would consume.
Not a great conversationalist was Tony.

If you asked him anything or tried to engage in conversation he would first take a few minutes to decide if he was going to answer you and then take several more trying to think of what to say!

Like pulling hen’s teeth!

Some inmates found a comfortable piece of wall or floor and stood or sat there all day.
Others paced up and down, up and down the worn, stained carpet.
A lot of inmates spent all of their time in their room if lucky enough to have one.

Some brave hearts used to break into a sprint and could often reach the end of the corridor before being pounced on by three or more members of staff.
If I chose the correct, moulded orthapedically designed geriatric chair I would be able to witness several of theses races between inmates seeking freedom and members of the staff,
some of the staff were physically handicapped by their stature and weight problems,
others were sleek and quick out of the slips.

The radio, a local commercial station was the preferred form of entertainment.
Several inmates would sit, dull eyed listening to the repetition of bathroom and carpet offers.
The radio, complete with fork for aerial was seldom touched,
apart form switching off at night.
I did manage to get a digital radio instead and helped set it up to tune into the vast new range of stations.
Even tried to widen people’s horizons by playing Classical and easy listening.
But no they wanted their radio station on!

I gave up and retired with my own radio into the smoke room.

The smoke room is a filthy room with dogends and debris all over the floor.
Sometimes a dipper,
desperate for a smoke comes in,
surveys the array of dog ends on the floor then selects the likeier looking.
He then tries, but fails to pick them off the floor without been seen,
impossible with eagle eyed smokers watching,
he’d then skulk off, often after asking to borrow a rollie paper.

There was a room with a television but that wasn’t used too much till afternoon.

Mornings were get outa bed, have meds and breakfast and sit and listen to radio.
Smokes in smoke room, ventilation system seldom used,
unless by me to wind some of the occupants up;
it was very noisy and draughty when in operation.

Cups would be littering the floor, most with varying amounts of content.
The cleaners did put two or three silver foil containers on the floor each day but they were seldom used.
I couldn’t understand everyone’s behaviour at leaving litter and unwanted goods on the floor until I realised it served a purpose.

One of the female residents, which I’ll call, Toots for no other reason than she reminds of someone who should be called Toots.

She is a middle-aged woman, literate with a vivid imagination,
which makes for a great storyteller.
Her stories were so bizarre and diverse I’d spend perhaps half an hour engaging her in general conversation then sit back and listen to whatever came out.

She is also famous for picking everything and anything up and secreting it on her person,
down her jumper, rompers or jeans front, anywhere she could get it.
She’d collect all the cups and contents and mix them together,
often with a liberal sprinkling of tab ends and drink through a straw the contents thus mixed.

If she got her hands on any fruit it had to be boiled and she was the one to do it,
She would preach cleanliness to anyone who’d listen,

The times I told her off for standing containers of liquid on top of the stereo!

The majority of the bulk she was carrying would often be stuffed newspapers,
which gave her the impression of being pregnant,

Any remark mentioning pregnancy and she would launch into telling you about the babies she’s lost and the footballers she was married to.
She didn’t smoke, only when I gave her one.

She had a habit of wetting the seat,
sometimes by spilling the contents of the many cups she’d try and balance,
other times she simply emptied her bladder,
So choice of seat was often important,
and only selected after a quick search over with back of hand!

Winding her up was simple and to choose a subject for her to talk about was as easy as making a selection on a jukebox.
I spent hours listening to her fairy tales, often stoned out of my head and needing an excuse to sit comfortably while being entertained.

Often I’d have the company of the oldest resident in the place.
Pop I called him,

He was only in his 60’s I believe but looked a lot older.
He carried a pipe with him, always, and would hassle everyone for some baccy to put in his pipe.
I’d break a couple of tab ends into the bowl and top if off with some rolling tobacco and he’d sit, light up, get chastised for smoking in a non smoking area.

Sometimes I’d get him involved in Toot’s conversations, he’d look at me, silent but his eyes were getting wider and wider in amazement as he took the time to listen to her increasingly unbelievable stories.

Often pop himself would go back to the old days and I’d have to draw upon all my knowledge of the working class life of yester- generation.
I’d have him telling me about his family his jobs and the conditions in which he used to live, before his wife died.
If I remember correctly he’s been in institutions for 19 years now,
I did a quick calculation one day and worked out he mustn’t have been far off my age when he went into care.
I was worried for myself for a while.

Perhaps I should explain that when a person like me gets sectioned we don’t always now why.
So we look at the others and try to find someone with similarities, hopefully some one who can help in any way clear away the mist of uncertainty.
You soon find out you are as unique as your problem is.

I did find one guy about my age and intelligence level but all he wanted to talk about was his wife, family and work
None of which are my favourite topics.

People told of disputes and stabbings in their family,
some having been told by voices to kill their family,

Been told to head for the coast followed by huge black birds,
One had just had major heart surgery;

others had just lost partners or the will to look after themselves.

One or two had personal fixations;
they were expecting life-changing events to happen like coming into money or being famous.
One caffeine addict was glued to the TV.
He drank one after another, cups of strong black coffee.
Some were hyper when brought in and often this would fuel violent behaviour to anyone in proximity.

There was a refugee, whose mother supplied us freely with cigarettes in an attempt to make her sons life more pleasant.
A Muslim who had a seriously large chip on his shoulder,
felt everyone was against him and wondered why he couldn’t afford things like everyone else.
He would often go into the courtyard, sit in the corner or pace around chanting his prayers.

I’d skin up and listen.

The intensity of the emotions in the people was such that they seemed to radiate them.

I soon learnt to sense these feelings and could quite accurately predict if and when a certain person was ready to "kick off".

Just had a program try to download adware and spy ware onto my hard drive,
Norton or I overreacted and a multitude of options were available, too many.

This relates to black holes,
in that orbiting around a black hole would bring one to very high speeds,
close to the speed of light,
causing the time in that person's view to seem normal,
but to everyone else very slow.
The person moving that fast would feel as if he were travelling ordinarily,
but would to himself be moving forward in time faster than everyone else,
thus creating time travel.

As an adult, I experienced milder depressions, but just took it as being part of the experience of doing a pressurised job; and I fought back against the depression by becoming very busy, without any sense that this might be a form of hypomania, or raised mood.

Have made several serious suicide attempts, some laughable in their miscalculation of how many pills it would take or how deep to cut a wrist.
With others, it was a miracle I survived.
And I have acquired labels.

I’m bipolar,
I’m manic-depressive,
I’m psychotic,
I have severe and enduring mental illness,
I had breakdown/have breakdowns.

There are others.
I’m a patient,
a client,
a mental health service user.

Fortunately, bipolar is not too bad a label to have because people associate it with creativity and intelligence, and much has been written on the subject on the Internet and in books.
Psychotic, on the other hand, is a word often best avoided, because people often aren’t sure what it means.
I’ll tell you later about what it means for me, as well as how depression and mania affect me.

A better day, a few enthusiastic thoughts, and the anxiety sets in: am I going manic?

When hypo manic, I have gone for long periods on little sleep, been enormously productive and filled in so much of my time with activity that I didn't need an easy chair to sit in at home because I never had time to leave it.
My mania can also be mixed with depression, giving me the negativity of the depression and the energy of the mania.

It's so very easy in this state to do something I may regret.
That isn't to say that there isn’t a positive side to mania.
But the negative side often outweighs this.
I exercise poor judgement in my decisions and my usual obsessive planning gives way to impulsiveness.
I lack consideration for others and become angry.

I'm sure that I am right and everyone else is wrong,
and I’m going to make sure that they know it,
because they are all so infuriatingly stupid.
I bet there are a lot of "patients" reading that and laughing to themselves.

Depression can be such a very difficult thing to describe.
We all have our ups and our downs, our good days and our bad days,
but severe, chronic depression is something different.

It's often easier to explain in terms of what it isn't.

It's not seeing the colours and sounds in the world around you, it's not feeling the breeze on your face or the spattering of rain on your hair.
It's not finding pleasure or interest in things.
It's not finding the motive or the meaning to do anything, even to get out of bed.

Thinking becomes distorted.
Negative thoughts keep popping up, and simply deciding to think positively isn't enough - you have to fight each negative thought one by one until you become completely exhausted in the endeavour.

There's the pain that goes with it.
It's worse than any physical pain I have experienced.
Imagine toothache or a broken bone or a migraine spread throughout your body.
You know it's in your head, but it's still very real,
and you can't get away from it.

Try to do something, however little,
try to make the effort to wash and dress and go for a walk every day, which helps one to feel in control of life.
In my bleakest moments, I often look at the flowers outside my door.

I’m sitting quietly at my computer and the odd word pops into my head.
Just random thoughts in the quiet.

But I’m uncomfortable, because there’s a fine line between what is normal for me;
and what is a sign that something’s amiss.

When I’m unwell my head just seems to get rather crowded.
This is rather tiresome.

For example, I can imagine a conversation with someone.
Surely we all do that.

I can get involved in my part of the conversation.
So far so good.
I can forget the other person isn’t really there.
Um, not so good.
They can sound very real and hold their own in the conversation.
Quick, give me the pills before I wear myself out completely arguing for hours with them!

When I’m not well, I can take things very literally.
There’s also the paranoid thinking.

Again, this is on a spectrum from being a bit suspicious or worried,
through to being convinced that there is a specific plot against me.
When it’s mixed with mania it becomes exhausting,
as everything seems to be interconnected and I frantically try to work out who is behind the conspiracy against me.

It’s also a very lonely experience.

At the one end of the spectrum are those who think that if we simply took our pills every day, everything would be fine.

At the other end are those who say that medication destroys the brain without doing anything positive to help.

And I’m stuck in the middle, taking my pills.

Maybe they’ll damage my brain, and they also give me side effects, can I try to manage my mental state, and try to learn from experience what does or does not help?

It makes an enormous amount of difference how much sleep I have and how regularly:
when I am unwell my sleep patterns go completely to pot and they can take months to stabilise after a bad episode
I can’t make it so that I never get ill, but I can make it so that I’m as well as I can be - and that makes the difference between having some quality of life and giving up.

There are the professionals.
When we are fragile and the essence of ourselves is at its most vulnerable,
we want professionals to make the decisions that we would be making if we were well enough and well-enough informed to make;
and when we are still distressed but well enough to make decisions,
we want them to respect those decisions.

When I turn up to see my psychiatrist in a mixed manic and depressed state,
I'm desperate for help but ready to bite her head off at everything she says.

There was my family, who give me the love and support making me feel that life is worth living,
Most friends did not want to know when I got really ill,

Now, what once I would have done in my spare time occupies most of my time.

This improvement is slowly and painstakingly achieved, with setbacks along the way.

It is both satisfying to know that I have recovered so far,
and frustrating not to have recovered more.

Months and years disappear whilst I do very little except survive
Trying to envisage a future in which I can once again be useful.