Mental Health |

It has been over 10 years since I was sectioned under section 2 of the Mental Health Act. It was the most difficult experience of my life. The deep resentment for myself after a period of mania was debilitating. Back in 2013, I found myself at the mercy of a cold Psychiatrist, a warm Nursing team and dated Legislation that has been in use in the UK since 1983.

It was a long road that led up to me losing my freedom. A road leading all the way to St Catherine’s Hospital – in the town where I grew up, Doncaster. Looking back now, it is sobering and frightening to think about the situations I found myself in. I was always one second away from irrationally lashing out. Putting my foot down and undertaking on the hard shoulder. Spitting an insult at anyone that crossed me. An eventful period but for all the wrong reasons. I hurt a lot of people and I lost a lot but eventually, I have gained an insight into something at the time I was ignorant of.

In the time since the Mental Health Team in Doncaster found a combination of medication that relieved my symptoms, the world has continued to recognise the importance of good Mental Health. Recently my Chief Information Officer was out of the office for two days on a course, Mental Health First Aid Training. Knowing what his salary commands, two days of the CIO not on email or available by phone shows how seriously businesses are now taking Mental Health. This is positive. We met up and had a chat about my condition and he has been extremely supportive.

It is of course Mental Health Awareness Week and I wanted to make sure I shared my experience. Of late I have read articles online about anorexia, depression, crippling anxiety, personality disorders and the experience of being sectioned. I felt the need to write down my experience with Mental Health, which explores the danger of mania and depression. Having had seven healthy comparatively incident free years, now feels like a good time to detail an account of what it was like living through a mental breakdown, the chaos of mania and the living hell that is depression. I hope you the reader will think about those around you, that friend or family member that is having a tough time and hopefully if needed you will encourage a conversation.

The black Labrador, my Churchill reference, first wandered into my life when I was a teenager. I didn’t know what this was in my youth, I would go through periods where I would struggle to motivate myself, struggle to find enjoyment, struggle to sleep and overthink almost everything. It didn’t have a name, but it was there. Whilst I was travelling after graduating from University in Newcastle the dog appeared again in my life. Depression hit me hard. I knew the trigger but I didn’t know what to do. As I lay awake in a backpackers hostel in Cairns Australia, I felt broken and wondered what the hell was happening to me? I couldn’t snap out of it. It wasn’t sadness. More a feeling of emptiness. Uncomfortably numb. Considering I’d spent the previous nine months saving up for the trip, working two jobs paying barely more than minimum wage, the timing was unfortunate and expensive.

What had been a routine call to my mum to update her on my trip left me feeling lost. The 8^th of May my parents’ wedding anniversary. I had called to say I remembered and to see how she was, having lost my dad suddenly back in 2002, I felt it important that I recognise what to most was just another day. Out of all our family, my mum being one of eleven and my dad being one of seven, sadly no one else had remembered. This wasn’t intentional of course, I know life moves on. My mum was upset. This hurt and in turn it hurt me. I hung up the phone and covered myself with a dark cloak. I couldn’t take it off.

For weeks, I tried in vain to pull my socks up, get it together to hold my chin up. I failed. My friends who were having the time of their lives, grew increasingly frustrated by my despondence and they didn’t know what was going on. I didn’t know. I had to get help. I hadn’t slept in several weeks and I felt like I was stumbling through each day and enduring each night. A shadow of the lively lad excited to see South East Asia and Australia. I was now unable to experience new places and meet new people. I couldn’t find enjoyment in anything. Chatting to my friends was all of a sudden alien to me. I had lost the ability to communicate, I was ashamed. I felt as though I was wasting my opportunity and I didn’t know what to do. United won the Champions League against Chelsea in Moscow back in May 2008. I watched the match on a boat in the Whitsundays, but I didn’t enjoy it. I watched out of habit if anything because it is what I always did. The result should have seen me running amok, shirt off hugging strangers chanting ‘Viva Red Army’. Instead, for me at least it was another sombre affair. A live production I was an extra in.

Encouraged by the strongest person who in time would become my girlfriend, I decided to leave New Zealand which was next on the travel itinerary. My family were as always great support and asked that I speak to my GP. I did and he prescribed me Citalopram. It was remarkably easy. A concern really looking back. It took time but after a month of lying in bed through the summer days, darkness around me. The sunshine started to light the fabric of both the drawn curtains and my mood. The first thing that suggested the medication was helping was when I began looking forward to things again. I can’t remember what it was thinking back, but the event was probably something trivial to most like a meal time or seeing a friend. My recovery from this point was quite remarkable in hind sight. I went from being bed ridden with debilitating depression in June, living my days in my mum’s spare room staring at the four walls. To starting a Graduate Programme in October. Travelling to London and then a further two weeks training in Chicago. I felt positive. I was a little apprehensive and sad to be leaving those who had supported me, but it was only five weeks and I would be home at the weekend when I was back in the UK.

I completed the training meeting some new friends and started work at the company’s offices in Manchester, my first client was HMRC in Newcastle. What a stroke of luck. I had friends in Newcastle and it was a second home for me. I jumped at the chance to return there with a few quid in my pocket. My dance with depression was a distant memory now and I thought Mother’s Little Helpers were the best thing since John Terry slipped on the penalty spot on that famous night in Moscow. Viva John Terry! I was back. As with most mental illnesses often the first diagnosis requires a review, I didn’t have one. As much my fault as that of my GP. I surpassed what was normal, my mood heightened for long periods. Over the next four years I flirted with Mania on an almost daily basis. I was susceptible to depressive episodes but for the most part I lived through hypomania, long periods of mania that could go undetected to those around me. For those times when my synapses weren’t devoid of serotonin, I would continue to flood them with my morning’s dose of SSRI’s. Overloading my brain. The best comparison I can give is it feels a little like taking MDMA, but for days on end, no let up. I could run 5km in under 18 minutes after only a couple of weeks training, boundless energy. Gym every day. I could talk and drink for England. I would bounce out of my bed in a morning and find myself throwing up after a run around Regents Park in London trying to beat yesterday’s personal best, before heading into the office.

I don’t have the time and you certainly don’t have the patience for me to document all the stupid things I did. It was a very precarious time. I tested my own resolve, the resolve of the people who loved me. Thankfully I didn’t find myself in front of a magistrate or worse. I had my jaw broken by a delightful fellow after picking a fight on a football pitch. I stole a car whilst dressed up as a 1970s Australian rugby league player on a night out in Manchester to get home from Stockport. I found myself scrapping in the toilets of clubs on several occasions when a stranger would marginalise a friend. I pushed the envelope, turning up at work with bruises and cuts on my knuckles. My family and friends became accustomed to irrational outbursts, embarrassing displays of me losing my temper. On one occasion I was ready to go toe to toe with a guy in the middle of a dual carriageway after slamming my brakes on, he had cut me up at a roundabout, how fucking dare he! Did he know who I was!? My mum who was sat beside me talked me down. A collectors item. All this complimented by impulsive thinking and my speech running at a hundred miles per hour. Promiscuity ran with me as did drinking, gambling and recreational drug use. It did tune me in when I chewed my chin or so I thought. I was a ticking time bomb.

I ruined the relationship with my girlfriend. She wasn’t aware of my indiscretions, but I decided in my heightened mood that she wasn’t the one for me. I wanted to be single. I moved out of the flat we rented in Leeds where I was now living in 2012 and looked forward to a trip to the US with friends across the Southern States. The mania was becoming unmanageable. Having a gun pulled on me whilst stumbling into the wrong RV at 4am in a campsite in Houston Texas, dressed as a Tour de France cyclist certainly sobered me up. Sadly it didn’t sober me up for long enough. The next day I was unloading a compressed Uzi and I wouldn’t recommend it in the midst of mania. I would get very down and cry most evenings aghast at my behaviour then recover, sleep for a few hours and do it all again. I returned to the UK and continued to self-destruct.

Over the festive period in 2012 I ran out of fuse. For those of you reading this that have experienced mental illness yourself or know someone who has battled with it. You will not be surprised to learn a huge issue in my life was social media when I was manic. I am not proud of my actions, but I disclosed indiscretions with no regard for those reading online. Facebook posts would be my downfall. I disclosed things that left me distraught once my mood dipped. I still to this day shudder embarrassed to my core when I think of what I posted online. Girls I had slept with. Girls who were close friends of mine and my ex girlfriend. Some tales I thought were true, which turned out to be fabrications and at the very least exaggerations. Laid bare for all to see. This set off a chain of events that I was never able to recover from. I lost many good friends.

I was sleeping very little as I have mentioned during this period and my brothers took me one night to A&E when I flirted with psychosis, thinking I could hear my late uncle who took his own life at 18. A week’s worth of zopiclone for sleep then back to it. Back to drinking too much until I hit reset and then up at 4am absolutely wired. Writing nonsense online. I was unable to listen to a rational point of view. This was my new normal.

Having destroyed several relationships, I had little remorse. I was in the right. They were in the wrong. It was from here things unravelled. Paranoia from lack of sleep and my deteriorating mental state saw me making more stupid ill thought out decisions. Psychosis was setting in for the long haul. In one final attempt to atone for my infidelity over the Christmas period in 2012 I visited a supermarket and attempted to buy my ex-girlfriend several boxes of champagne, pathetic isn’t it like some sparkling wine would do it. Christ himself pouring it into a chalice wouldn’t have done it. This plan didn’t materialise as my gold corporate Amex was declined, I’d hit my limit in more ways than one. The £1400 leather jacket I had bought the previous day in a department store in Leeds wasn’t the best way to spend the best part of a month’s disposable income, nor was laying the draw on a football match for 3 bags as the liability, it of course ended 0-0. I was out of luck and out of time.

Over the years that led up to this I had been the master of disguise. Taking my daily anti-depressants but now my ability to mask what was going on behind the eyes began to wane. I decided in a second one morning to visit the tomb of Oscar Wilde in Paris. Alarm bells would have been ringing had my friends and family not been accustomed to ridiculous behaviour previously. Anyway they didn’t know this time and I could no longer trust them. I’d never been to Paris after all. Into the car I jumped on New Year’s Day after waking up in a living room in Leeds City Centre following a night out. The living room I had stirred in was owned by a friend of another former friend. She walked away like so many others because she did not want someone so volatile to be around her and her little girl. I couldn’t argue with this and have never tried to. I was far away. The girl whose flat I woke up in enjoyed wearing what I thought was a lot of makeup. Before I left her flat I scrawled in large letters using her eye liner on the bathroom door. “You need makeup like I need a psychiatrist!!!’. Ironic. This went down like a shit sandwich as you might have guessed.

I started to think someone was following me. For my trip to France I wouldn’t take the obvious route down the M1 to Dover. No, stupid like a fox I would take the A1. In the grip of a panic attack I thought they would track my phone. I pulled over next to a post box, in went my phone and then ripping the number plates off the car I continued to drive south a little calmer. Invisible. I thought I was being covert. I was a flashing alarm siren blaring. I was in a Black BMW travelling as fast as the car would allow me to down the A1, no number plates and quite honestly no chance.

Paris had to wait. I got as far as the M2 near Maidstone when I totalled the car. The attending traffic Police Officer did me a big favour in writing the write off was a result of ‘swerving a fox’ on the Crime Report. Thankfully the Insurance paid out. I was taken to hospital in the back of a mode of transport I would get accustomed to, ambulance. I was lucky, the fact that I walked away from this was a miracle and thankfully I didn’t hurt anyone else. The Doctor’s face when my blood and urine samples came back clean there was an expression of surprise and confusion. I was in the grips of full blown Mania. What happened next could have had repercussions for the rest of my life and had it not been for another incredibly astute policeman, I think it would have. The experience would have seen me surrender my career at the very least. I can only think he had already attended the course my CIO had recently been on. I was discharged from the hospital in Kent, I had no money, PP Pat and Jess had my phone and my car a crumpled mess kissing the crash barrier. I was past the point of no return, oxygen masks deployed, going down quickly. Finding a dual carriageway near the hospital I wandered down the hard shoulder until I found a 24-hour petrol station. I walked in and politely asked the attendant working if I could have a glass of water as I was thirsty. It had been a long time since I had drank anything, a simple thing you forget to do when manic, the mind is such a powerful bit of kit. It was days since I had eaten, simply hadn’t had time to give it a thought.

The only phone number I could remember was that of my ex-girlfriend. It was the early hours of the morning on the 2^nd January. Considering I had humiliated this girl and betrayed her several times over. Broken her heart then rubbed her nose in it. The fact she answered the phone in the first instance without telling me to get fucked was a small victory of sorts. I begged for her to come and collect me from Kent. Her family thankfully helped her see how ridiculous this request was. My overactive mind served up a memory to me as the phone line went dead. The police officer that attended the car accident did offer me transport back home if I needed it knowing my predicament. Now, what he offered me and what I heard were two completely different things. I asked the attendant in the petrol station if I could again make a phone call. She was extremely polite and handed over the phone.

I dialled 999 and got through to the Police. When I explained the situation, the lady on the other end of the phone abruptly cut me off. ‘Stop wasting my time’. I used to think the police were a lot of things but a glorified taxi service they are not. I called back. A different lady answered, again I made my case for a lift home, citing the police officer from earlier in the day. I was met with the same response. At this juncture I threatened if she did not oblige, next time I called, I would get someone to come and collect me. She cut the call. For the third time I punched in 9 9 9. I got a response.

One of the officers that attended the petrol station with several colleagues from the Emergency Services noticed my behaviour was erratic. I wasn’t quite grasping the enormity of the situation, claiming I was in possession of an explosive and then trying to make small talk was rather unsettling. I chatted at length to the two officers who took me in the back of their car to the police station. I remember one of them was a West Ham fan. ‘They won the World Cup in 66 for us they did!” I spent the night in a cell. Wasting so much of the Emergency Services time and resources wasn’t my finest hour.

In the custody cell I didn’t sleep despite being exhausted. Falling further into psychosis. The officer attending the cells gave me a book to read. I stayed up all night and ripped pages into small pieces and placed these around the floor of the cell, creating messages for the camera lens above me. No one was watching. I could hear them and see them. In the morning my older brother and mum arrived, they had travelled through the night driving 200 miles to pick me up. The journey back home was tragic. I was erratic, shouting, crying, laughing, hysterical, hearing things, seeing things. It took us over four hours and I can honestly say they were probably the most harrowing four hours. There was no manual for this.

I would scream at my mum when she tried to reason with me. I wouldn’t trust anyone not even my closest family. The police were called again as soon as I was home. When the police arrived, my family asked them to take me somewhere where I could get help. I went in the back of another police car with my brother to Doncaster Royal Infirmary where my family sat waiting for a Psychiatrist to attend. It felt like five minutes to me but it was hours. I heard a pair of teetering high heels at one point, I knew these were those of my ex-girlfriend outside in the corridor, she had come over from Leeds. My mum kindly asked her not to come into the room as it would be too much emotionally for me to deal with. Even with my behaviour, what I had done, the people I had hurt my family and friends were still in my corner fighting for me when I couldn’t. I was single handedly taking my life apart piece by piece. When the Psychiatrist arrived he informed my family there was nothing he could do. The beds were all taken.

Think about this for a second. Think about this when you cast your vote. In my hour of need our health service were having to turn me away. How many people each day get turned away? I will never forget my brother breaking down in tears when he heard this. He was desperate. We were all desperate. On seeing his tears the Psychiatrist left the room. He returned a short while later when he had managed to pull whatever strings can be pulled in the UK’s underfunded, oversubscribed Health System. Some other person was turned away. He had found me a bed. For the first time in a long time I was safe.

I lost count of the number of Police Officers that saved my life. The numerous nurses I met along the road that saved my life. The Psychiatrist in Doncaster Royal Infirmary and the Psychiatrists at St Catherine’s all played a part in saving my life. Not for the first time my family and friends saved my life. Not for the last time the Mental Health Act saved my life.

I resent myself a lot less these days, it has taken years. I am not trying to absolve myself of the pain and hurt I caused a lot of people throughout this period of my life by writing this, far from it. I was a horrible version of myself. When I came out of the other side sorry simply wasn’t enough for a few people. It would be wrong for me to blame my illness and medication for the mistakes, a joint effort combining the hedonism of youth with a trauma response that kicked me out into the world and I couldn’t cope. I am responsible and where I wronged people I have tried to make amends. In many cases this has meant walking away as I said, leaving people to move on with their lives. I have good memories of times before my mind unravelled. This whole experience serves as a reminder to myself to be vigilant. To make positive choices. To speak to my psychiatrist. To speak to my friends and family. To exercise. To give that pub lunch after the big night out a miss. To look after myself for the alternative is a reality I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy and believe me, after this period of my life I have a few.

Why write this at all then? Writing it down is cathartic and it keeps me honest. Sharing is what is encouraged to remove the stigma of mental illness. I know I am extremely fortunate to be in a position to do so. I work in a company that is extremely forward thinking, to be able to share my journey. I hope it goes some way to helping someone. Please share if you know someone who would benefit from reading this.

I made it to Paris a few years ago and no, I didn’t drive.