It took me a while to adjust to the reality of being back in the real world where I was not being constantly monitored by nursing staff. I could lie in. Eat what I wanted, not what was given to me. Small mercies. My mum had drawn the short straw and kindly gave me a place to stay on my way down from a long period of mania. The nursing staff had forewarned that it was very likely, almost inevitable, that I would crash through the floor and depression would replace my elevated mood.

This wasn’t immediate. I stayed with my mum for a short while and I insisted that I return to work. I was feeling more like my old self. It was premature, but we could be forgiven for our approach as there was no manual for this. My thinking was becoming more rational, and I was more reflective. Since my mood had been high, I hadn’t cared or considered how my behaviour throughout this period of my life had impacted others. I thought a lot about my previous relationships, friends and family I had hurt, and I dwelled on the embarrassing things I had done. I had shown little or no regard for those closest to me for years, sharing things that were extremely personal and private online without consent, and without consideration. Saying and doing things I now regret. Some still occasionally haunt me in my darker moments.

I hired a car and one night decided to drive to Oxford for a walk around the university. For no rational reason. I wasn’t through the woods just yet. When I returned, the police got in touch once again. I had filled up the hire car and not paid for petrol before driving off. It was an honest mistake, highlighting the state of mind I was in. I returned to the petrol station and made the payment. I craved my old life and normality, as did those around me, this whole experience had been extremely traumatic. Sadly, the worst was still to come.

Once the insurance company had paid out the claim for my car which I had written off in Kent prior to my hospital visit, I was keen to use the money to buy a replacement. I am forever indebted to the policeman that attended the accident on the M2 and kindly wrote on the crime report, ‘swerved a fox’ instead of the actual reason for the car crash.

I bought a new car quickly and foolishly paid too much; I was still impulsive. I returned to my mum’s house, and she was shocked to see a new BMW on the drive. She was noticeably apprehensive about my desire to return to work so quickly. I was asked to meet a Senior Manager, to work on a new proposal for a new contract with a public sector client. My uncle offered me a room in his house in Shipley, West Yorkshire for a short stay. I can still remember the exact moment when I walked across the divide and the depression started to slowly set in like the inevitability of an encroaching tide. It had turned. I was in my Uncle Séa’s house, sat on his stairs. I suddenly had an overwhelming feeling of sadness and dread. I had felt something similar before when I was travelling in 2008 and prior to that when I was at university in 2006, but this was more pronounced. Deeper. Darker.

The feeling of dread coursed through my body and my mind flooded with sadness. I couldn’t function. I called my family and spoke to my mum and younger brother. I was meant to be heading down South the following morning for work. My younger brother had returned from his trip to Australia, cutting his trip short to help out. He offered to drive me to meet my colleagues first thing as I gathered my thoughts and prepared for the meeting. He returned home by train across the country so I could at least try and put on a brave face on for my colleagues.

It didn’t play out as we had all hoped. I attended the meeting at a hotel in Berkshire, but I was useless. Making up the numbers. I found it hard to concentrate, work was suddenly no longer important. The dip in my mood cut to the very core of me. I started catastrophising everything. The plan before my mood had changed was to travel down South, to Reading and then onto London to visit an old friend for the night. I continued to Twickenham to see Adam, but I wasn’t myself. He let me have his bed and he slept on the sofa. I hardly spoke. I made my excuses the next day and left returning to my mum’s house. I managed the drive back to Doncaster which was, looking back equally as dangerous as driving when manic. I called HR and said I would be taking more time off.

Over the next couple of weeks, I deteriorated. It was mid-February, cold, dark and I became more and more insular. I lost the ability to enjoy time with my family, speaking to friends, listening to music, watching United, food, a cup of tea. I couldn’t find solace in anything. I was constantly thinking of the ruin and devastation I had caused people over the past few years. The darkness became self-loathing and self-hatred, and it was a vicious cycle where I would play out horrendous scenes over and over, cast in the lead role on an endless film reel. I was embarrassed by the culmination of years of stupid mistakes, stupid actions and complete disregard for the people I loved. The only way to describe it would be to imagine the fear and dread you feel when you wake up with a thick head after the work’s Christmas party knowing you’ve done something foolish after too many drinks, having said or disclosed the wrong thing. It was like this but magnified a hundred-fold; colleagues replaced by people you cared about the most in the world, and the party a catalogue of real events over years.

My family recognised I was getting worse as I distanced myself from everyone and everything. Over the next couple of months, I was only able to answer my phone on a handful of occasions when it vibrated into life during the short window when it was switched on. When it did and I answered, I couldn’t hold a conversation. I wanted to be left alone and I thought about the spitting incident from my time in hospital. Again, a shiver of shame made its way down my spine. Join the queue. My phone would remain switched off for weeks at a time. I was off the grid and my friends tried in vain to contact me. Depression can be an extremely selfish illness.

The Mental Health Team started visiting every couple of days once my family had updated them on my decline. The visits were short. I would be asked questions about my mood, and I had to provide a score out of 10. This must have been painful for the nurses and my family. I found it excruciating. Having people, strangers, see me in this state, a shadow of the person I was, was in short, impossible. Monosyllabic, I had to work hard to muster up my response of “two” for each question. I reasoned “one” would be catatonic and I wasn’t quite there yet.

The Mental Health Team persevered with different combinations of meds over this period, like a team of psychiatric mixologists. Initially, I continued on the highest dose of 15mg of Olanzapine, an anti-psychotic that I had been prescribed in hospital which helped me to sleep through the night, it had successfully slowed my mind to the point now where I was struggling to keep my eyes open in the morning. Without the noradrenaline running amok when manic, I was now slower, walking deeper into the fog of depression each day, lost. They had mentioned amongst other side effects, that the Olanzapine would likely result in weight gain as it increased appetite. They also forewarned the chance of higher cholesterol and potential kidney damage. I couldn’t give a fuck. I’d have eaten glass in that minute if it would have loosened the stranglehold depression now had on my mind.

Prior to all this, I had been taken off Citalopram when I was sectioned at the beginning of January. It was prescribed as part of the misdiagnosis of depression back in 2008. Taking only Citalopram for the best part of four and a half years had been exacerbating my heightened mood. Pouring petrol on the fire. Looking back, it had contributed along with my mind’s own agenda, to produce extended periods of hypomania, impulsivity and chaos. I would have given anything in that moment to be manic again. Instead, I laid on the bed staring at the wall motionless in my mum’s spare bedroom. Curtains drawn and the darkness swallowing me.

The next medication I was prescribed was lithium, a mood stabiliser highly effective at treating bipolar disorder. The Mental Health Team explained that it would take time for this to be effective. I would have to have my lithium levels monitored by blood tests every three months. Not a problem. I wasn’t sure how much time I had left to fight this. I was having to battle to get through every minute. I hoped the lithium would finally help.

They assured me it would get better, but I had to ride it out and fight. Sadly by this point I had no fight left in me. I couldn’t face waking up each day because as soon as I did, the dread in my chest would set in within seconds. The emptiness was killing me. I couldn’t feel anything. I would try and force myself back to sleep each morning for a reprieve, but it was no good. I would lie in bed until one of my family walked me to the bathroom, where I would be asked to shower and brush my teeth. This took an enormous amount of effort and after some encouragement I would comply. Returning to my bed or the sofa downstairs, the daytime TV providing the backing soundtrack for a very sad boring drama. I would lie there all day everyday, my life on pause, unable to focus on the programming. My mum would make me a cup of tea and a sandwich when she returned home at lunch, which I forced down, simply so I could be left to face my demons in self-imposed solitary confinement. February slowly became March, and the days began getting longer. Unfortunately for me the brightness of the evenings was still failing to make any impression on my mind. My mum would take me out into the cold winter afternoon on walks on the odd occasion in an attempt to break the cycle. She would hold my hand trying to comfort me, it wasn’t reciprocated, I had nothing to give.

I was meant to be going to the Cheltenham Festival for the Gold Cup in mid-March with the lads. I had organised tickets in November which had arrived at my mum’s address a couple of weeks before the event. I couldn’t go. Not a chance. Writing this now it is remarkable that I made it over to one of the lads’ houses on the other side of Doncaster. I handed him the tickets as he opened his front door, mumbling something inaudible, I remember him looking puzzled before I retreated to the safety of the car and my brother drove me back to my mum’s. He didn’t have to say it as I could clearly see it from the expression on his face, “Who are you and what the hell have you done with Stenty?”

When I had turned on my phone to get his address before the drive, the messages came through along with countless emails and voicemails. I couldn’t face it; how could I speak to my anyone in this state? Who would want to spend time with me? I was beyond miserable. Embarrassed and ashamed. My family were obligated, but they were as desperate as I was, and they helped me out of love.

I came to the conclusion after weeks of willing my mind to get better that this was the new me. My brain was completely fucked after years of driving with the needle on the rev counter permanently in the red. It wasn’t going to get any better. When the Mental Health Team visited, I didn’t fake a smile anymore. I didn’t sit up. I just laid staring into space as they spoke quietly to my mum. It was apparent to everyone I was getting worse, not better. There wasn’t much further to fall. In a final throw of the dice, they decided after consulting the psychiatrist to prescribe Fluoxetine (Prozac). This is typically something psychiatrists aim to avoid with bipolar patients because of the risk of mania, but they were out of ideas and both me and my family were facing a brick wall, our foreheads bleeding.

Another risk with Selective Serotonin Reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), is if they are effective and the patient is considering taking their own life, they can enable the patient to act. Studies have shown a slightly improved mood provides the motivation to mobilise and execute the end game. I had lost all hope. Up until now there was part of me deep down at the back of the room quietly mouthing, ‘this could work, hang in there’. Not anymore. This voice had fallen silent. All hope was lost.

In the following days my mum continued to head to work, leaving me in the house alone. I had visitors but I no longer put a brave face on it. My ex-girlfriend arrived at the front door one evening and my mum politely turned her away as she knew I wouldn’t have wanted her to see my sad sunken eyes and the shell of a man laid on the sofa. A shadow of my former self. I would have been ashamed, and this would have made the situation worse. She is an incredible person. After what I had put her through, she still cared and tried to help, forgiving my catalogue of failures.

There was only one way out of this scenario and whilst it would be the worst outcome for the people who loved me, love wasn’t enough to keep me here any longer. I couldn’t face waking up and having to endure hell for another day. Depression is an extremely selfish illness.

My mum headed back to work for the afternoon after coming home for lunch and I got dressed. It had been a good while since I’d been outside, and I felt a little calmer walking along the road beside the canal. I remember it was wet underfoot and there was a cool breeze, a typical quiet weekday afternoon in a market town just outside of Doncaster. I made my way to the A614, there was no pavement, I walked on the side of the road with the ditches and fields either side of me. I walked purposefully up to Tudworth Roundabout, up onto the fly over that crossed the M180. I climbed over the railings and slowly positioned myself overhanging the motorway, looking down at the blurred vehicles passing quickly underneath. I had to find the courage to drop from the concrete ledge and time it so an articulated lorry would put me out of my misery. I didn’t spare a thought for the driver. Depression is an extremely selfish illness.

I hesitated. I tried a couple of times, counting down in my mind but as I willed myself to push off the edge, I caught myself and held on.

“You alright mate?” A voice from behind me asked, just audible above the humm of the traffic passing beneath us.

I turned around and looked at the roadside. Two cars had pulled up in a lay by with their hazards flashing. One guy was sat in his car on the phone and the other stranger in his shirt and tie speaking to me.

“No” I replied, dejected.

“Do us a favour pal come away from there and we can have a chat. Yeah?”

A minute passed as tears ran down my face. The first emotion I’d felt in too long. The stranger continued:

“What’s going on?”

“I’m sorry mate, I’m really sad and I can’t stop it”

“Don’t be sorry. What’s your name?”

“David”

The police arrived. I can’t remember exactly what they said, they were great with me. It wasn’t their first time. I knew my destination; I was being returned to sender. I cannot thank the two strangers who pulled off the motorway cancelling their plans when they saw me on the bridge on that wet March afternoon back in 2013. They saved my life. I never got their details; I didn’t have the presence of mind at the time to ask. The kindness of strangers is never wasted on me.

I was on my way back to St Cath’s three months after I had first set foot into the Cusworth ward. I was the same person by name and appearance only. My older brother left work immediately when called and drove across to Doncaster from his office in Scunthorpe to sit with me, as I waited for my assessment. I narrowly avoided being sectioned. The nurse (Jarvis) spoke at length to my brother and got the assurance she needed. In the weeks that followed my mum arranged for someone to be in the house every minute of the day. Mostly it was her and my brothers. But my cousins, my uncles, my aunties all put in a shift to keep me safe when they needed to. My mum was determined to prevent what happened to my Uncle Cliff all those years ago, happening to me. Knowing all too well the devastation losing someone to suicide, does to a family. She hid the keys, she hid the bottles of bleach, the painkillers, the knives and got rid of anything else she didn’t immediately need that posed a risk. If she had to go out, she would take me up the street to my Uncle Keith and Aunty Lynne, they would watch over me.

I missed our Phil’s 30^th birthday in Edinburgh at the end of March, which was a shame as it would have been great to spend it with him after what he and all my family had done for me throughout this period of my life, but I was still struggling.

Then, a couple of weeks later, I remember it like it was yesterday; a Friday afternoon, mid-April, I walked into the living room and asked my mum and our Tom who were sat chatting,

“Shall we go out for a curry? We haven’t had one in ages.”

They both looked at me startled and couldn’t believe it; it was the first positive thing I’d said in three months. My mum’s prayers had been answered, she had been living this nightmare with me for too long. Since my dad died back in 2002 my mum at 39, had always been the constant for the three of us being Worlds Greatest Mum and Worlds Greatest Dad. Sacrificing herself for her children, the rock we all needed as we set out on adulthood. This whole episode of our lives had required every ounce of resilience she had. I stood in front of her, and it was clear I had turned a corner. The relief was palpable. We had turned a corner. That night we went for a curry together, it was bloody awful, but it didn’t matter, my family were there and for the first time in too long, I was in the room, present.

I recovered slowly from this point and come the end of the summer; I was stable.

Mental health treatment isn’t a perfect science. I am lucky that the psychiatric team found a combination of drugs that keep my mood within a healthy range. I still have periods of depression and periods when my mood is elevated, they are difficult, but they are manageable. It was explained to me that if my normal range without medication is from the floor to the ceiling, the floor being taking my own life and the ceiling full blown mania, so reckless, misadventure would probably kill me. Taking the medication ensures the range is curtailed. The lows and highs are not as extreme. I know some people prefer to live through the highs and the lows without medication. They don’t numb their emotions or their creativity, I honestly don’t think I could ever live through this whole experience again. I certainly wouldn’t want to put my family and friends through it again.

Recently a friend asked me if I worry that I will have another episode as bad as the mania and depression I experienced in the years leading up to and including 2013. I said without any hesitation, no. With the medication, therapy, correct lifestyle choices and the love and support of my family and friends, I am confident I will never be back walking that road. I am very lucky.

It is definitely a case of the ‘the first cut is the deepest’ this was my first real experience of depression. Many men don’t make it through to the other side to share their experience. Death by suicide is still the biggest killer for men under 50, seventy six percent of all suicides are male.

Bipolar is not miraculously cured by medication. Sadly, no mental health conditions are. Mood stabilisers, anti-psychotics and anti-depressants help me; however, everyone is different. Some people don’t respond to treatment. These drugs aren’t what penicillin is to a chest infection. They of course do a lot of good, but bipolar is a lifelong illness that must be constantly managed. Being bipolar doesn’t define me but it is certainly part of who I am, and despite how hard this has been to write, I wouldn’t change it. I’m a better person for it and I hope it goes someway to helping others.

If someone you know hasn’t been their self lately, reach out to them ask them how they are.

Thanks for taking the time to read my story.