Black Dog Days

 Here's a piece about my struggles with mental illness that'll be in the new issue of TQ, out this Friday -:

The first time I attempted suicide was 10th February 1981. Having left school the previous summer, I was almost exactly 16 and a half years old, working as a YTS warehouse drudge for £27.50 a week at RH Dinning Electrical Wholesalers in the Team Valley Trading Estate in Gateshead and miserable beyond words. I hated the job, which I’d been forced to take because my father wouldn’t let me do A Levels at Gateshead College “because they all take drugs and have discos on a Friday dinnertime,” hated the peer pressure to conform to the regional masculine stereotype I despised and hated the prospect of a life constrained by petty conformism.  I found release in the usual things; music (John Peel saved all our lives and I’d recently bought Reward by the Teardop Explodes and I’m in Love with a German Film Star by The Passions), alcohol (safe havens were The Cooperage and Red House on the Quayside and the criminally forgotten gay / punk friendly Senate, opposite the Civic Centre) and books. I read voraciously and found in the poem An Irish Airman Foresees His Death by William Butler Yeats, the perfect words to summarise my bleak condition -:

 The years to come seemed waste of breath,

A waste of breath the years behind…

 So, on a mild Tuesday morning, I vowed to find release and stole a strip of codeine-based tablets from home and chained them on the 7.35 bus to work, washed down with a can of Tizer.  By the time I arrived at the job, I was beginning to slur my speech, my vision was semi-hallucinatory and I had issues with my balance. Within minutes I was drifting in and out of consciousness. Someone called an ambulance and I was whisked to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Gateshead. In the austere confines of the A&E Department, I had my stomach pumped. To this day, it is one of the most unpleasant experiences I’ve ever had and entirely responsible for my highly pronounced gag reflex.

 The questioning about my motives for the overdose wasn’t sympathetic to begin with and it became even more censorious when I repeatedly justified my actions by saying I was so miserable and just didn’t want to be here. I don’t think I wanted to die, but I didn’t want to be here and certainly didn’t want to live the life I’d been allotted. This sense of despair, rather than spuriously claiming it to be an accident, was enough to have me detained as a minor under the Mental Health Act of the time. I was stuck in a side room, as I fell in the gap between the Playschool with beds of a Children’s Ward and a roomful of vasectomies, haemorrhoids and ruptures in the men’s section. I was reading Roads to Freedom by the recently deceased Jean Paul Sartre I recall, which was something I had to talk about with the shaggy haired, chain smoking Maoist psychiatrist who interviewed me, to see if I needed sectioning or help.

 Dr Donohue was his name. He pretty soon realised that my immediate misery was situational; he advised me to get out of the job, get back to study and get away to University. I agreed with him entirely and managed to do so the year after. It didn’t cure me, but it made me safe. Donohue also realised that my underlying, long-standing mental illness was the product of childhood trauma. Now, I’m not prepared to go into details at this point, but suffice to say I was emotionally and sexually abused by my mother, sexually abused by my sister and physically abused by my father. Over 40 years later, I’m still dealing with the impact those experiences have had on me as a person and how my life has been affected by such trauma. However, back in February 1981, I had to deal with a more imminent threat than my poisoned mind.

 The next morning, judged sane but damaged by Doc Donohue, I was allowed to leave hospital, discharged into the care of my family. My father came to collect me and, while I was getting ready to leave, Donohue took him to one side and summed up what the situation was with me. Obviously, I don’t know what was said, but a nerve must have been touched as, once outside, my father beat the shit out of me in the car park of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital. Having previously suffered his malevolent ire by being  hit in the bollocks by a golf putter, having my head smashed off a television stand (I still have the scar above my eyebrow to this day) and been punched so hard it knocked me over the fence into next door’s garden, I was used to his volcanic explosions of rage. These days, he’d be in jail; back then, it was seen as my fault for being “difficult.”

 In a sense, such an opinion, which is classic victim blaming, has remained a constant response by the less sympathetic and unenlightened members of society to physical child abuse and, on a personal level, to repeated incidents I’ve been involved with over the years. Being honest, my enduring mental ill-health has cost me innumerable friendships, contact with anyone from my extended family (no great loss there mind), put enormous strain on personal and professional relationships and regularly left me feeling so lonely and miserable that I’ve harboured a detailed suicide plan, which involves drowning myself off Tynemouth pier, for over a decade now. To be frank, there is nothing remotely romantic or alluring about living a life scarred by mental illness. Take it from someone who has been almost beyond help between 1994-1999, 2014-2016 and 2020 to the present.

 It seems to me, though without supporting empirical evidence, there is an assumed link between creativity and, for want of a better word, insanity. Most populist considerations of the work of van Gogh or Munch, for instance, focus on the tortured personal lives of these renowned painters and how such events supposedly impinged on their body of work. It isn’t just the critic who seeks to establish the dominion of the insanity trope, as innumerable examples of the Victorian novel, from the Brontes, to Dickens to George Eliot, are replete with stock characters that tick the boxes of the crazed woman in the attic, to the rambling, ranting madman on the moors. Even in the recent past, music has often exploited the wraith-like signifier of the tortured artist, suffering for their work: Syd Barrett, Ian Curtis, Nick Drake, Richey Edwards and so on. We could have an alphabet of those who were brought down, impeded or otherwise hampered by mental illness. Any decent record collection will offer up the legacy of a thousand lonely suicides, which gives further credence to the belief that great art, in whatever form, is created from the very pit of human misery. Over 42 years since his death, the lyrics of Ian Curtis, allied to some of the most glacial, fragile rock music imaginable by Joy Division, present a compelling and almost addictive soundtrack to a life disintegrating and, with the benefit of hindsight, hurtling to a final, unavoidable, tragic end.

 And yet, for so many of us who suffer with mental illness, and I speak as someone who has been “well” for perhaps only a decade in the last 45 years, our life has not been one concerned with the production of achingly beautiful poetry that examines the human condition, but a series of endless petty, struggles to stay alive. For many people, having a roof over their head, a steady job that puts food on the table and a loving embrace from an understanding partner are the most basic of human needs and expectations. However, when incapacitated by a combination of symptoms ranging from overwhelming self-loathing, auditory hallucinations urging self-destruction, wildly oscillating moods, delusional interpretations of ordinary events, manic and confrontational encounters in everyday life, utter inertia and a fear of the outside world, there isn’t much scope for artistic endeavours.

 Sadly, the various symptoms I’ve just described are very real and very distressing indicators of a range of mental illnesses. These various conditions have a variety of causes, from the physiological, in the shape of chemical imbalances in the brain, to the social, whereby the cumulative effects of negative life experiences simply grind someone down. There is, of course, the unsympathetic cliché of the ranting loony on the bus or in the shopping centre. Whatever the causes of such anti-social behaviour, and I’ve been there and done that, there is little if any sympathy for the howling psychotic, who is perceived as a danger to ordinary people and a figure of derision and contempt. The sad fact is, the lonely and dislocated person screaming blue murder into the ether probably has no insight into their conduct, believing that what they are doing and how they are presenting is perfectly acceptable. Let’s not beat around the bush; this is a manifestation of madness. We should, as a society, protect these people from themselves, instead of recording footage for shits and giggles on social media.

 I would remind you that such “manic” manifestations are prevalent among only a small minority of the mentally ill. These are conditions caused, in the main, by chemical imbalances in the brain and can only be effectively treated by medication. In the good old days, hospitalisation was a decent solution, but as any mental health professional will tell you, psychiatric units are dangerous places, where violently psychotic patients have the run of the place like a scale model Colombian jail.  While remaining at liberty in society, the main trouble with manifestations of such conditions is that they leave the sufferer both vulnerable and ostracised from society. When one has absolutely no insight and even less control of one’s condition, it is painfully clear how easy it is to lose any grasp of reality. This being the case, it becomes almost impossible to hold onto a job, a relationship and, often, a secure place to live. Once marginalised and reduced to living outside the parameters of normal society, the sufferer loses contact with any authorities or agencies that could offer help. With the NHS stretched beyond breaking point, it seems that those who are thus marginalised and, effectively, of little or no use to capitalist society, are cut adrift. The vicious cycle of mental illness, homelessness and criminality repeats itself ad infinitum. These days, the police are more likely to extend a hand of friendship to those they have been asked to intervene in than baton charge them, but they can only do so much. Speaking personally, after one particularly unpleasant confrontation, the nicest copper I’ve ever met gave me a couple of granola flapjacks to tide me over after I’d somehow lost or given away all the money I had and couldn’t pay for anything in Sainsbury’s.  As someone whose dissociative episodes are generally short lasting, a return to normality was, on this occasion as with all others, accompanied by a deep and abiding sense of shame that my life had been reduced to this. Then again, it isn’t really my fault that my brain doesn’t regulate chemicals so well these days. Is it?

 By far the most common kinds of mental illness are “depressive” conditions. Those suffering from such illnesses tend, in the main, to be the invisibly mentally ill. Being extra quiet, a bit withdrawn, lacking the energy or desire to socially interact does not always acquaint with depression. Some people are naturally reserved. Others may opt to take a breather from the world around us, but if such behaviour is accompanied by workplace absences or a disinclination to seek work, a decline in standards of personal appearance, or living conditions, weight gain and / or significant increases in the consumption of drink, junk food or other indulgent behaviour, then the indications could be this person is feeling really low. Negative self-image and a diminishing libido are other indicators, but you’d best leave discussion of the latter to medical professionals. In essence, depression is feeling shit about yourself and the whole world, multiplied to the extreme. The glass isn’t just half empty, it has been smashed and you’re poised to saw away at your wrists with the ragged end.

 As regards treatment, NHS cuts post-2010 mean that there are so few mental health workers able to help with talking therapies, that GPs are basically obliged to repeatedly hand out SSRI medication, such as Sertraline and Citalopram, which kick starts the brain into producing serotonin, the brain’s happy chemical. However, this can also be done by taking plenty of fresh air and exercise, keeping active and alert. Unfortunately, being depressed means you are less likely to be able to do the very things that can make you better. Consequently, long term depression is a danger, as many people are unable to break the cycle and end up in a lower mood with an even more negative state of mind than when first diagnosed. It is a crying shame, workplaces can’t pick up the slack and keep those who are suffering depression in work, perhaps on reduced duties, as routine helps massively by giving a sense of purpose and self-worth to the potential patient.

 What I would say is, if you have a friend or a loved one suffering in this way; make it your business to help them. Look after them. Take them out for walks with a coffee at the end of it. Take them to a gig. Take them to the football. Love them, support them.  Tell them they will get better.  If you are there for them in their darkest hour, they will be there for you if the need ever arises. Believe me, the worst thing about mental illness is the profound, bleak, inescapable sense of pervasive loneliness and isolation. Isolation? Bloody Joy Division…