Happy Happy Happy.

MY LATEST ARTICLE...

(Has been Published on 'The F word' today- a prominent contemporary feminist website. Apologies for lack of blogs here but a combination of getting the above edited, a bad couple of weeks MH wise and then going down with tonsillitis has made me rather quiet! One or two more blogs are in the pipeline though, so hopefully October will be a more fruitful month for Syncopated thoughts.)

Jx

Let's Push Things Forwards.

This photo is troubling me:

In case you didn’t realise, it’s of my husband, and a little girl.

He met her when we went camping in the Lake District. She was called Neve. Owen was sat on top of the rock near our tent just doing some reading and thinking. Then he heard a call; ‘hey smelly pants!’, and there was Neve, grinning up at him with a cheeky smile. She poked her tongue out and came and sat next to him.

She was quite a character, about four or five years old and the oldest of her brothers and sisters. Utterly bossy, compulsively cheeky and very playful.

Owen’s heart melted, I could see in his eyes he was won over completely. He played with her for hours, and they connected. They laughed and joked and climbed and ran and explored and giggled and jibed and jived and made each other happy.

And oh, my god. I felt so fucking broody it’s untrue.

I had never realised, up until then, just how much of a good dad Owen would be. I had always, because of the way he generally spoke about children and because of the relationship he has with his own father, assumed that he would be, in his parenting style, very awkward and detached and grumpy. I figured somehow that he would never quite enter into the spirit of a family fully. Then Thomas, my nephew came along and he started to prove me wrong. He is very good with him, reading books for hours and helping Sophie bathe him. That was nice, seeing that, but I’m not really a baby fan. They cry too much and I don’t understand why. I am so scared of breaking them. HHhhhhhHHowever, I do admit to being wholeheartedly a five-year-old fan especially when they’re children who are confident and funny and yes, quite cute. Seeing him react and interact like that with Neve was so intoxicating it was almost primal. I just wanted, for the two or three minutes when this photo was taken to drag him to the tent and make a baby. I wanted to ride him long and hard and have gruelling explosive sex. I wanted…well…sperm rather than cock. My oh my I have never felt anything quite like it.

Now every time I see this photo I get an echo of the same feeling. I want to delete it, but somehow can’t bring myself to.

This is doing my nut for three reasons.

1) I have always stated that I don’t want children

2) We can’t afford one child, let alone the two or three I would want if, hypothetically we did have children.

3) I am severely mentally ill and don’t know if I’m well enough to cope with a family.

Yet, after Neve came into our lives, albeit briefly, something has changed between the two of us. I never mentioned my feelings, but I knew Owen could tell. Also, I could tell that something in him was changing, like the way he was looking at pregnant women and young mothers in the supermarket. Last night it all erupted and we had a funny ‘hypothetical’ conversation that boiled down to discussing parenting styles and school preferences (as in types of rather than specific ones) and the best age for us to do it. It was all very strange, like totally new territory, peppered with phrases like ‘well we never said definitely never,’ and ‘I’m not saying we will, but if we do then what do you think about…’ The whole thing was just very strange and weird and oddly exciting. This is just stuff we have never ever discussed because it was never important to us. I don’t know what’s changed really.

However, we would be stupid if we refused to ever think about the possibility of a family of our own because we are so family orientated already, and I’m never going to be career driven, I’ve accepted that already. I want to categorically state that I don’t have a tick tock sense of time passing. Nevertheless, it would be sad if we didn’t even properly discuss the issue until we were thirty-five and then it was getting on to being too late. Also, for us getting pregnant is going to be a huge, long and dangerous process because it will involve me gradually coming off my medication and proving that I can live drug free- a massive step that could take years- before we could even think about going ahead and actually trying to make a baby.

Like I say, the whole thing is rather troubling. Not simply because it’s a 180 degree turn around from even a month ago, and not only the annoying fact that both of our families told us that exactly this would happen, but because it’s a part of a wider picture.

I am having to really accept that I have a future.

Ever since I had to leave my OT course because I wasn’t well enough to cope with it, and then the suicide attempt, where I gave up on life altogether, I have refused to face up to the fact that I could have some semblance of a future ahead of me. I have constantly frustrated my Doctors, nurses and shrink by remaining bleak about my prognosis. ‘Ten percent of us die from this fucking illness’ I said, again and again. My death wish is so strong at times I just knew I would be one of them. Despite the fact that I am happier now than I have been for years, and genuinely healthy and loving life, there is so much of me that thinks each day that passes like that is a fluke. Sure, today was fun, and I enjoyed it, you could even say I’m doing well but how long until the next breakdown, the next relapse? For months after my hospitalisation I refused to even think about my options, and every time my CPN, Nick, would gently prod me about my future, I would laugh in his face. ‘I have no future.’ I would say. ‘Haven’t you read my diagnosis, haven’t you read my notes? I’m totally fucked. I’m doomed to go round and round in this eternal mood swing cycle of elation and depression. I will deteriorate further and further. The illness will destroy my functioning and relationships until one day I will crack and it kills me. That is my future. I am resigned to that. Now just leave me to my fate and go and spend valuable NHS resource on someone who actually has a chance of getting better. Someone you can actually help.’

They would sigh. And disagree, in the strongest terms. But I wouldn’t listen.

Now, something is shifting within me. I still have bleak moments, and I am still resigned to the fact that I have bipolar disorder and my life is never going to be the easiest.

BUT,

It doesn’t have to kill me. I don’t have to be one of the 10% who wind up swinging or jumping or slashing themselves into an early grave.

It doesn’t mean I have to be housebound, or dependent on my husband for everything.

It doesn’t mean I can never work.

It doesn’t mean I can’t be happy on a long term basis.

It doesn’t mean my marriage is doomed because he will get sick of me eventually.

And, I suppose:

It doesn’t mean that I would inevitably be an awful mother.

That’s the scary thing about seeing Owen with Neve. That’s why it has been playing on my mind so much. Because in a way, it’s all about me facing up to my potential and doing the brave thing with my life. I don’t mean whether or not we have children. The point is I have to face the fact that unless I get hit by a bus or develop a malignant tumour etc. then I’m not going anywhere anytime soon. I have to accept that deep down. I can’t afford a repeat of last October, and I know that now. It’s about realising that, yes, I love life and also about realising I am worth something. Not just to other people but to myself.

Neve was a symbol more than anything else. In some senses a symbol of hope, yes. That I have come a long way and have a future, a life ahead of me that can bring me a lot of fulfilment and happiness, in whatever form I choose. But she was also a symbol of the fact that I am now tied to this earth and along with all the happiness comes a shitload of pain. I will lose people close to me, I will have relapses and crises, and other illnesses and heartache. Neve is a symbol of the fact that now I can’t deal with that pain by drowning it in booze night after night or jumping off a bridge. Not anymore, that time is passed forever. I’ve moved into another phase, one with much more happiness but also much more risk. I have to process the pain, I have to feel it, I have to let it go.

Also, with this idea of a future comes the responsibility to make the best of what I’ve been given with the talents I have. I can no longer use my illness as an excuse. I have to face up to the fact that I am a talented, loving human being with a lot to say who can really contribute to society be it through writing, teaching, working, campaigning, or… you know… raising three kids in a radical way. Or a combination of the above. I have to face up to the fact that I do have some control over my moods, they do not just come out of nowhere. My lifestyle, attitude, honesty and compassion for myself are key to my happiness rather than just pink pills and ‘the luck of the draw’. It’s all about taking control and my responsibility seriously.

I didn’t expect to be alive today. Now I’m thinking about in ten, twenty, fifty years time.

We are talking about the future again. Houses, kids, countries, jobs, ideologies, dreams, golden wedding anniversaries and book ideas. That’s simply something we didn’t dare to do for a long time. It’s a testament to Owens faith in me that we have got to this stage, but also to my own determination and hard work that I’ve got this far so quickly.

I’m half excited, half terrified.

Thank you, little Neve. You’ve opened my eyes to what could be and helped me and Owen more than your five-year-old brain could ever possibly comprehend.

Fructose Intolerant

Why is it I can look into somebody’s eyes and tell if they’ve been there?

To the place where the air is too heavy to breathe, time sticks to your shoes like treacle and the pain burns brighter than the sun in the midday sky.

I read people like a book, I decode their suffering like a secret language. I can tell its depth, its duration, it’s lasting damage. From looking into their eyes I can see the scars in their history, how far they have fallen and how fast. They could be telling a joke, they could be giving me a hug or dancing on five pills. If its in their eyes, I know. There’s no escaping, no need to hide. I read it in an instant, it transcends body language or clothes or the silly words we all say. If it is there, it’s all in the eyes and I will see it. Don’t ask me how but I can just tell if they’ve ever sailed that ship. I can tell if they haven’t come back yet; if the air in their lungs still feels like steam in a pressure cooker. Sometimes I think I can see that they will never return, but predicting the future is the only thing I wouldn’t swear to. Everyone can change, after all.

Sure, you say. You recognise intense suffering. Big deal. Who in their life has not known that? You could see it in everyone if you tried. It is true, there is a lot of pain in a lot of people’s lives. But there are some people who remain untouched, more than you think. Call it water off a ducks back, call it numbness or ignorance or luck. Whatever your label; I meet them in the street, they are in my family and amongst my acquaintances and I can’t relate to them. Not the happy people, the ones who know true joy. I don’t mean them, I spend a lot of time being in a very good place with a lot of very happy people. I mean the people who even when bad things happen, they have never engaged with their pain, who have never wrestled with their dark side, who shrug off depression as easily as tossing the damned black dog a stick when it is their turn to walk him in the park. I don’t wish them harm, it’s a wavelength thing; I just don’t understand how you can exist in this world without having a relationship with pain, with this darkness.

When I look into someone’s eyes and the pain’s not there I feel a moment of panic. It’s like a woman who falls in love with the guy in a cubicle opposite her at the office and then one day on her way to the coffee machine she glances downwards and sees a ring on his finger. The future comes crashing down there and then. If I’m talking with someone and then I look into their eyes and it’s like looking at a blank slate, if I’m getting serious vibes that this person ‘hasn’t been there,’ I tend to make my excuses and leave. It’s not that I want my friends to be a big bunch of depressives to hang out with and all slit our wrists together in one morbid jamboree. I just need people around me who understand, who have had a taste of the darkness, no matter how big or small. This black dog plagues me, I need people around me who are experienced animal handlers and it’s very rare you get an dog trainer who hasn’t got a dog himself at home.

Of course, having suffered yourself doesn’t automatically make you an empathetic person, that’s where other clues come in; conversation, history, body language etc. But having been there yourself: it’s definitely a starting point. Life is a journey. I need people in my life who, with empathy and understanding, can help me wrestle my demons and find inner freedom. I promise all my friends I will do the same for them in return, as best I can. But if, as a friend, your reaction to seeing your first Jen demon is being so shocked you hide under the bed or run away then what use are you to me? And believe me I have known people like that. I haven’t always been so adept at reading suffering. There have been people who in the past when I let them into the big bag of crazy that is my inner world, they can’t handle it. It short circuits their wiring, it scares them, they don’t know what to do. The black dog can be a scary beast with all its teeth bared. To this day, there is only one man who knows everything about me. It took a long time for me to be honest with him and sometimes I think even he is frightened by it all. He is a brave man, trust me. To befriend someone who is shackled to a beast is true courage. To marry her, well that’s just plain dumb.

The hidden code was something I had to quickly master. I learnt to know, without asking, who to trust and who would understand. There’s nothing worse than giving someone a big slice of your home baked crazy pie only to find out they are fructose intolerant. Why then, give it to anyone? It’s a valid question. My answer is simple. Call it selfish, call it needy, call it whatever you want, but I always believe that a problem shared is a problem halved. I try not to burden people unnecessarily but when it hurts too bad sometimes you don’t have a choice. You say something, you reach out, or you die. It’s that simple.

Sometimes in the throws of the darkness the very worst of you surfaces; the real nasty, twisted, horrible, ugly parts. When, (not if), you find there are people; friends, good friends, who can’t cope with this side of you and run for the hills it’s important that you don’t hold a grudge. You must understand; people have their own shit, sometimes a big black dog barking in the room is too much for them to deal with. These are not fair weather friends, give them some credit; the kind of problems that fair weather friends abandon you for are things like a lack of money or drugs, a change of musical taste or a bad haircut. Then there’s the shit I put my friends through: visiting me for the second time on a locked ward, having to spend a whole night talking me out of cutting my arms to ribbons in the toilet with a carving knife during the fresher’s Christmas ball, or spending hours on a mobile stopping me jumping in front of the next train. It’s just a different league. I mean, if people don’t want to be a part of that, you mustn’t hold it against them, you mustn’t think them fickle or callous. Think about it, they just have their own shit, really they’re just being sensible. You wish them well, you smile when you see them awkwardly coming down the high street towards you, you send them a Christmas card at the end of the year, but ultimately you move on.

Why is it, then, that I can look into somebody’s eyes and tell, right away, if they’ve been there? To the place where the air is too heavy to breathe, time sticks to your shoes like treacle and the pain burns brighter than the sun in the midday sky. Why is it, that if they haven’t, I give them a fake phone number and walk away?

Because I’ve lost too many friends who just didn’t understand. Each time it happens, it hurts like a bastard.

And I don’t want it to happen again.

More Poems from the Archives

The following poems were all written in the second year of my university course in Lancaster. It was a tumultuous time for both me and O, with my mood being all over the place and although we had some really good times we also went through some of the toughest times in our relationship to date. I do not claim that the following poems are some of my most technically competent or well written, but I am publishing them here because I think they have something to say, and capture something of this part in my life.

Pregnancy Scare

He sits in his cage
day and night.
A small box
full of his own shit.
I'm scared of him:
scared of his teeth,
scared of his tail,
scared of his potential
to run away from me.
More than just an impulse buy
guilt on legs.
If I am too scared to love a rat
then how can I
love a child?
Brittle bones
and tiny hands
she will break into pieces easier
than the cornflakes
on the kitchen floor
underneath my feet.


The Truth of the Matter.

Having a mental illness is not about slashing your wrists and rocking backwards and forwards whilst grown men hold you down in four point restraints.
No,
It’s wearing knickers that are fifteen days old.
It’s your jealous friends not being jealous of you, but full of pity.
It’s realising you can’t do something that you could do when you were five, like eat a sausage roll without thinking you were going to choke and die.
It’s being full of self doubt twenty four seven.
It’s not being able to ever participate fully.
It’s not being able to remember a film you watched last night.
It’s cringing with shame for the next week when you get somebody’s name wrong.
It’s cutting your leg with a screwdriver because you haven’t and will never finish that essay.
It’s ruminating for hours about what the last thing you eat will be before you die.
It’s going around in circles and recycling old epiphanies again and again and again.
It’s knowing in your heart of hearts that you are boring.
Its knowing you are a cliché, so clichéd you can’t even write a book about all this one day.
It’s not ever being able to think as clearly as you did the day before.
It’s over idealising yesterday and fearing everything about tomorrow.
It’s never being able to live in the moment.
It’s eating a whole chocolate cake without even feeling guilty.

It's killing time watching “A Place in the Sun” when the sun is actually shining and you sit in your gloomy living room.
It’s not being able to enjoy a kiss because you’re obsessed with the way your chin looks.
It’s not being able to think of anything artistically except illness and death.
It’s watching torture victims on the news and feeling nothing.
It’s wanting to die and being terrified of death.


Born Lucky

Right now
in this, our beautiful world
someone is taking their last breath,
someone is doubled up in agony,
someone is crying, but more than that
millions are crying at this very second.
People are starving.
People are burning.
A man is hung on a rack in a torture chamber,
A woman is spread legged on the gravel
being taken, foreign hand over her mouth.

A boy’s balloon pops.
An old man is having his teeth removed.
Some poor nurse is having to say the terminal words
I’m sorry you’ve got cancer,
I’m sorry there was nothing more we could do for him,
I’m sorry, you’ll never walk again,
Would you like us to turn the machine off?
And I look at my trainers
I think of brown hands stitching
the child at the machine
the beads of sweat along their brow.
A gun is being aimed to kill,
a needle is sliding into a vein.
Vomit is hitting the ground with a splash,
a woman is fondling herself alone in her bathroom.
Brakes fail,
hearts fail,
rain fails,
appendixes rumble.
There is mud and dirt
and endless hunger.
People are thirsty
desperately thirsty
yet on this Tuesday morning
over elevenses
you snap your head up
from your grainy cup of coffee
pick up your cupcake and growl
“What the hell are you
grinning for?”

Free Willy?

'Voluntary : Preceding from one's own choice or consent. Free of coercion, including any sanctions for not taking part.'

It was in the news this week that chemical castration is being proposed as the latest measure in the war against all things paedophile. The authorities insist that this would be a voluntary measure, naturally, as we are not the kind of country that goes around hacking off the balls of sex offenders in a response to the will of the lynch mob. No, we are far more civilized than that. We give them little pills, or a shot of Depo Prova in each buttock and of course, it’s entirely their choice. Isn’t it?

So this story got me thinking about the term ‘voluntary’. How it is used as a weapon to control people by those in authority. I want to explore the psychology behind it and highlight how in many cases, voluntary choices, as defined above, just don't exist.

I guess most people who can remember their childhood can relate to the kind of ‘voluntary’ decision making that adults imposed on them. I remember clearly a time in my early childhood where I was first made aware of the ambiguities of this ‘voluntary’ concept. It might be a rather frivolous example compared to castrating paedophiles but the psychology of the situation is the same.

My parents were the first to pull the voluntary trick:

‘Tidy your room or don’t tidy your room, it’s entirely up to you’, they said. ‘Go on, live in a pigsty, it doesn’t bother us. All your toys will get spoilt, your clothes won’t get washed, but we don’t care. It’s your choice, Jen, you do what you like.”

So I called their bluff. I thought I was being clever. I was fooled that I actually had the power of this so called voluntary decision behind me. I refused to tidy my room and went outside to play cricket with my brothers. When, several hours later, the sun had set and I came back inside they were both waiting, arms folded, by the bottom of the stairs.

“You haven’t tidied your room, Jen. “

“You said I didn’t have to.”

“Yes well…. (exasperated eye roll)…. I know we said that but your auntie Mary’s coming over tomorrow and you don’t want her to see your room all messy do you?”

“I don’t care. I’ll shut the door if you care that much. Can I have that ice cream left over from tea?”

“No. Not until you’ve tidied your room.”

“But you said I didn’t have to.”

“Well, you do if you want any ice cream.”

“Well, (exaggerated nonchalant shrugging of shoulders) I’ll go without then. It’s only Kwik Saves raspberry ripple anyway, and that goes all gritty between your teeth. ‘

“(audible sighs) Jennifer, stop being difficult. That room is getting tidied, tonight, whether you like it or not. Now do we have to drag you there and sit with you whilst you do it? Do you really want us to see what’s lurking under your bed? Or can you be a good girl and do it on your own?”

(Cue violent stomping up the stairs, tears, slamming my bedroom door and other general tantrumish behaviour.)

Then of course, one dirty sock at a time, in between the sobs and the foot stomps; I tidied the goddamn room. So much for voluntary decision making.

That is why I am always suspicious when I am presented with a choice and it is described as voluntary. This is why I am deeply against anything that curtails civil liberties and freedoms even on a so called voluntary basis. These things always start off as free choice, but end up mandatory. It’s the nature of the system: of power and control. When somebody demands you should make a choice, I find they usually have an agenda themselves and the chances are its not going to be so voluntary after all. The very fact that you are being told to make a choice kind of goes against the voluntary thing in the first place, doesn’t it? I mean, in a totally free world, if I wanted to live in an environment without clutter, I would just make the spontaneous decision to tidy my room, vice versa if I didn’t care about my possessions I would just leave the mess be. The very fact that my parents brought the subject up at all just highlights the fact that they have the power to make me do it. Simply by saying ‘we don’t care what you do’ they are drawing attention to the power dynamic and implying that if they did care, there’s not an awful lot you could do about it. The fact that you are being given a voluntary choice speaks volumes when in fact that voluntary choice should just go without saying; it should be part of your human rights. The fact is that most so called voluntary choices are badly disguised ultimatums. Failure to comply with the ‘right’ voluntary choice leads to further sanctions until you make the decision the authorities deem is right. Of course, if I hadn’t gone upstairs and tidied the bombsite that was my bedroom, there would have been a whole other range of escalating threats, pleas, and measures of force on the part of my parents until they got their way.

As an inpatient in a psychiatric hospital last winter, I heard person after person tell the same story- that at their crisis meetings with doctors and social workers they had been given a ‘choice’- they could enter hospital ‘voluntarily’ or be sectioned against their will. To anyone who knows anything about mental health, you avoid a section at all costs. It is, in effect, to be deemed insane. Your human rights are taken away, the fuckers can do pretty much anything they want. You have to take what they say, and comply to whatever treatment they deem is appropriate, which can include electro shocking and in some countries, a lobotomy. So when their Doctor popped the ‘voluntary’ question, were these people really being given a free choice that ‘preceded from one's own choice or consent?’ Of course not. Some people gave the shrinks a big fuck you and said ‘The only way you’re dragging me into that place is under section, I am not playing a part in this.’ However, most people I spoke to were neither as brave nor stupid as that and acquiesced. They said no to the section and went ‘willingly’ without need of police escort.

It is in this example that you see the beauty of the voluntary technique. It is effective because it seemingly passes the onus of the decision making from those in power on to you. This is no more than a smoke and mirrors trick to make them looks like the good guys. When you are ordered to do something against your will this generally causes deep wells of resentment which sometimes blossoms into rebellion. However, when you are coerced in the form of a loaded ‘voluntary’ choice (even though you were, in actuality, in the same situation as those who are forced), the process acts upon you emotionally in a very different way.

Expanding on the above example; when these ‘voluntary’ psychiatric patients entered hospital I noticed they were generally easier to control than the sectioned patients- not because as common mythology goes, those under section were actually much iller (although some were) but because the voluntary patients had gone through a process where part of them felt like they had got themselves in that situation. They felt tremendous guilt about agreeing to their treatment even though many of them had huge reservations about it and felt somehow responsible. They got angry at themselves for caving under pressure rather than getting mad at the system for the weight it piled on them in the first place. Even though, later, some of them were angry and recognised that they had been coerced, many of these people at least partially believed the lie the authorities told them; that they had come there of their own free will, they had been given a choice, they had chosen this and now they had to live with the consequences of their actions. What were they complaining about anyway? Of course, once they had entered as a voluntary patient, if they wanted to leave they would again be threatened with, or actually, sectioned, showing how empty the ‘voluntary’ label is. You can see through this example how the act of giving someone a choice makes them complicit and then less likely to rebel further on down the line.

I’m not trying to say there’s no such thing as a voluntary choice. When Owen says to me ‘do you want beer or wine?’ or ‘what shall we do tonight?’ Even though factors might complicate and influence these choices, as in I might know that he prefers wine and wants to go to the cinema; because the power relationship between us is the same, the voluntary choice is not loaded and I am free to say what I really want. I think voluntary choices only become coercions when there is some kind of power imbalance and then it’s hard to ever be truly free. As the power imbalance becomes more extreme, so can the demands of those in control. So the most vulnerable people often have the least rights. The mentally ill are drugged and shocked into submission. The paedophile is castrated. The old person incarcerated. The asylum seekers are detained, the immigrants repatriated, the Jews are exterminated. All of these horrendous things have been done under the guise of free choices, (remember that entrance to the Warsaw Ghetto was, at first, ‘entirely voluntary’) making it palatable to the public until they get used to the idea and then, eventually, it becomes compulsory.

It can be argued (and often is) that laws and regulations are necessary for preventing the system collapsing. I’m not going to get into the arguments for and against chemical castration of paedophiles. I object to it, but my real beef today is with the delusional idea that these paedophiles, who at the end of the day are considered to be the scourge of our society, the very lowest of the low, the very bottom of the power scale, are going to have any ‘choice’ in the matter at all. Yes, they may technically be allowed to turn the treatment down, at least at first, until a bill that makes it compulsory is sneakily passed in parliament ten years down the line. But, I guarantee you, behind closed doors, in the meeting rooms and on prison review committees the pressure for these men to comply with the treatment will mount and mount until the word ‘voluntary’ rings as hollow for these men as it did for the Jews, squashed together like stripy sardines on the train to Auschwitz.

Serve the Servants

The 11th to 17th of June is national carer’s week here in the UK. I’m not usually a fan of weeks for this and days for that as I think they can often provide a pinnacle of focus for that week’s highlighted charity or issue which then gets forgotten about until roughly the same time next year. They are horribly media centric – perfect for journalists and bloggers who need a prompt for something to write about that day (self obviously guilty here). The activities that surround them are usually very cheesy or horribly decadent, designed primarily to pull on heartstrings and generate direct debits from as many people as possible. However, then I start getting into my feelings about charities in general which I surely will another time but not now. For the time being I am going to take the sound bites I’ve heard on the news and Woman’s hour as bait and talk a little bit about carers and caregivers rights in this country.

I feel qualified to talk about this as it is a subject that is deeply, deeply close to my heart, even though I wish it wasn’t. In an ideal world it wouldn’t be me who was writing this blog at all, but Owen- he’s the expert on this subject and I would love for him to guest blog on this page. I’m sure he, circumstances permitting, would have gladly obliged. Like a lot of people in his position, he’d love to have time just to write articles about things for fun, too. However, for his sins Owen is my long term carer. As well as being an ambitious full time PhD student (sans funding) with a two hour commute to his University, he additionally has to look after me and work two jobs spread over thirty five hours a week to support us both enough just to scrape by. Today, Owen got out of bed at six am, started work at seven, and isn’t planning on stopping until midnight or so. It has been this way for a long time now; he barely even takes a day off. He usually falls asleep at the keyboard sometimes around one o’ clock and staggers to bed after I have spent ten minutes giving him a list of reasons why he will make himself sick if he doesn’t at least get some rest.

We don’t get any help from the government, nor have we ever done, for many complicated reasons, not least the fact that he is a student and financial help for those in higher education is pitifully hard to come by, even if your wife is so sick she can’t get out of bed and doesn’t know what day of the week it is. We don’t get any support, despite the fact that, as part of the army of unpaid carers, Owen and those like him are saving the government billions of pounds in labour costs – for the government to actually pay these carers the same as paid professionals the work they do would involve spending the same again as the annual NHS budget (57 billion). In terms of carers, Owen is one of the relatively lucky ones. Most of the time I am fairly high functioning, and can do things for myself, even if they are within a limited sphere. However, for the last five years I have been unable to work for more than a few weeks at a time and several times a year we will have a bad spell where Owen has to really take over.

During these times, which can last from a few days to a few months, Owen suddenly finds me incapacitated to the point that he has to do all my domestic jobs; the cooking, the shopping, the cleaning etc which are time consuming and annoying, but that’s only the tip of the iceberg. For twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, for long stretches of time I might go into ‘I want to die’ mode, which (as I guess the name gives away), means I am actively suicidal. So, not only does Owen have to do his studies, his teaching, papers and conferences, as well as everything around the house and his mundane paid employment in museums and cafes but he has to spend countless hours watching and caring for me. On the days he doesn’t call in sick at work because he’s too scared to leave me (I think most of his employers think Owen’s immune system is pathetic when in fact it is steely) he will phone me from his desk and we will talk in code every fifteen minutes to make sure I am still alive. It is embarrassing for me to admit, but during these times he becomes responsible for everything about me; from making sure I eat, sleep, wash, dress, brush my hair, and clean my teeth and all the other things that most couples don’t think about. It is not unusual for him to take hours in the morning just getting me out of bed and looking like a human being. At night time, he has stayed up all night, for days on end, just watching me, making sure I don’t do anything daft. He takes me to appointments, liaises with doctors, psychiatrists, nurses, he learns names of drugs and therapies, negotiates what medication I should be taking when and makes sure I take it, even though this can lead to some blinding rows. He sits with me whilst I cry, listens to me for hours moaning about what an ugly bitchy shithead I am. He eats microwave food with blunt cutlery because all the knives are locked away. He accompanies me on bus and train journeys because I can’t face them alone, he walks with me in town because all the people can trigger psychosis on a grand scale.

These are just a small selection of the daily sacrifices Owen will make to give me the best life he can. Our relationship turns, (sometimes overnight) from one of absolute equality to total dependency. My personality is transformed and my functioning is grossly impaired. Yet Owen just gives and gives and gives. He does all the above and more, and has never, ever complained. Sometimes he gets tired and down with it all, sometimes he can get very upset, but has he ever snapped at me or lost his patience? Never. Not only does he do all this but he tries to give me a good quality of life; despite being so tired that he needs twenty five cups of coffee just to get up in the morning, he tries to do this all with a laugh and a smile, a hug and a kiss, a joke, a giggle and lots and lots of sympathy. He tries, whenever possible, to keep me out of hospital. He cares for me with dignity and respect and makes sure my wishes as regards my treatment are upheld as much as is humanly possible. He slaves away to make an awful situation bearable, and every night before I go to sleep he says to me ‘I believe in you, this will get better and even if it didn’t I regret not one moment: I would do it every day for the rest of my life.’ And then he is asleep before his head hits the pillow.

I know. I know. If there ever was such a thing, I am one lucky manic depressive.

But, as special as he is, Owen is not the only one.

Up and down the country there are friends, relatives, neighbours all caring for people they love not for monetary value or job satisfaction but because they feel it is the right thing to do. Many have given up well paid jobs to do so, and have to eke a living out of the pittance that the government provides for the ‘lucky’ few carers it deems eligible for financial help. At the moment, the maximum weekly carer’s budget is around £48.68, (for a minimum of 35 hours a week- equivalent to £1.39 an hour) which is significantly less than many of the other benefits going and many carers find themselves in financial dire straits. These are real people with real lives every day losing their houses, jobs, cars, and possessions in order to give their sick loved ones a life away from institutions and the slow decay they bring. The support they generally get from the system is laughable. Their hard work is often unrecognised or treated as a nuisance, their relationship with the patient undervalued. When they ask for vital support, for respite care, for some kind of state provided home help in addition to their unpaid labour, for some much needed money or equipment, it is usually an uphill struggle all the way. Forms are piled upon forms for even the most basic means of assistance and the lists of excuses soon mount up as to why you are not eligible for this or that. Many carers feel like the authorities are entities they have to constantly fight, rather than vehicles they can turn to for support. The strain is enormous, the pressure huge. Yet many of these carers are themselves are vulnerable people. A huge percentage of them are elderly, often hardly able to move properly or fully function themselves. On the other end of the spectrum, some are mere children who find themselves looking after their parents and siblings instead of concentrating on their schoolwork or social life; terrified that if they, as a ten year old child, don’t keep the family functioning then social services will get involved and split the family up. These are truly the unsung heroes of our society, for those people who have never had to care for someone day in day out then all I can say is you have no idea what it is like. I have no idea what it is like and I’m a lot closer to the action than most.

I sometimes ask Owen; ‘what do you get out of this?’ After all when we met he was just turned eighteen. He was barely an adult with patchy facial hair and a passion for computer games. He is not a super stud but he is not a bad looking bloke and he has a great personality. I think at university even if he couldn’t have pulled the Julianne Moore look-alike that he dreamt of, he could have at least chosen someone whose idea of an evening in wasn’t drinking a bottle of whiskey and locking herself in the toilet with a razor blade for three hours. To this day it mystifies me why he didn’t go running for the hills. I would have done. I have asked him this question a number of times. Sometimes I am genuinely curious, sometimes I do it when I beat myself up. He has only ever responded with these four words: ‘Jen, I love you.’ and refuses to be drawn any more on the matter.

It is, clearly, not all one way. I support Owen in many of the things he does and bring happiness into his life in many capacities other than the ones I have mentioned. Most people who care for someone deeply love the person involved and find caring for them rewarding and fulfilling, even if it is sometimes a soul-destroyingly exhausting and strenuous process. But it seems to me that it is precisely this love and devotion that the government are exploiting. They know that Owen and the six million others like him are not going to just turn their backs on their loved ones. It basically boils down to this, why pay someone for something when they are willing to do it for free? They know that Owen means it when he says ‘Jen I will do anything for you’. Even if that means year upon year of little sleep, no money, overwork and battle after battle with the authorities. When the alternative is to see their loved ones go into hospital or residential care, out of their lives and control, often putting them at risk of abuse and exploitation many carers simply say ‘over my dead body’, and battle on. That is what Owen and the rest of my family have done for me and I owe them my life several times over.

Carers, in my experience, are not asking for much.

They are asking for:

a) Enough money to provide them and the person they are caring for with a basic standard of living where crippling financial worries do not make an already fraught situation 1000 times worse.

b) Recognition of their efforts and respect of their own wishes and needs as well as the patients.

c) Respite care and more short term intensive inpatient services for when times get really tough. When they judge the situation to be unmanageable, that is, not some government crisis team’s checklist.

d) Specialist help for the things they cannot afford to provide themselves, or are not trained to do.

There are other things, but these are the main complaints I find most carers have. Of course, as a patient myself, I do realise there is a debate around giving carers too much power, in that I believe as a patient it is me who should always have the final word, if I am able to do so. Some carers may have ulterior motives and it is the authority’s job to ensure abuses do not happen. However, the truth of the matter is ‘what’s the alternative?’ If, as a patient you are not supported by those around you then there might be some limited care in the community stuff, but if you have a time of crisis or get too ill to cope, you will end up in an institution. Enter a hospital or a residential environment and you relinquish all control anyway, to people who are much more likely to abuse and neglect you than your own friends and families. Ask most patients who’d they’d rather have the power over them and I’d hedge a bet it wasn’t the syringe wielding electro-shocking multidisciplinary team at the hospital, but their loving husband, or their mum or dad or their grandparents. In most cases, patient’s rights are the one and the same as carer’s rights. These devoted caregivers are sacrificing so much and getting so little in return. That’s why we, (especially those of us who are on the receiving end of their love and attention) should be fighting together to get these unsung heroes the rights and privileges they deserve.

Pants on Fire

4. I undertake the precept to refrain from false speech (lying).

{OK, I admit it. This is the big one. The one I was nervous about facing, the one I’m a bit reluctant to delve into. Not only because I have friends who read this thing and I’d hate for this to affect their trust of me, but because sometimes there are things about yourself that you don’t like to dwell on. But, I decided to write this blog in the spirit of honesty, and on a subject like this it would be irony of ironies that it was now that I shied away from the truth.}

I’ll start by saying this:

I was instantly attracted to my husband for three main reasons.

1) He had long hair, a big brain and a nice, kind face.
2) I could talk to him about anything and felt immediately that I could trust him.
3) He didn’t tolerate my bullshit, and my lies.

Of course, as time went on, the list of ‘things that are great about O’ got larger and larger, but these initial three were the reasons that I went on when I decided to ask him out. In some ways, Owens’ love and devotion to facts, truth and honesty can mean he is a difficult man to talk to and get on with. He is rubbish at sycophantic smalltalk or polite niceties for their own sake. But in those first few days of the relationship, it was the thing I fell head over heals in love with and the thing I knew I needed to be a central guiding influence in my life were I ever to be a happy, well adjusted person again.

Back then, my head was more concerned with fantasy than facts. For many of my teenage years I had been best friends with a pathologically compulsive liar, and some of her behaviour had, over the years, gradually rubbed off on me. Although, unlike my friend, I don’t think my lying ever got to the stage of illness, I was certainly not grounded in reality. I was deeply in love with melodrama, exaggeration, daydreams, fiction. I was not into the hard hitting truth, I was not into mundane existence, as I saw it. Unlike my friend, I would rarely invent things that were totally not true but I was very fond of embellishing things, polishing them, editing them to my favour. I am a perceptive, imaginative woman and was generally pretty good at doing this realistically without getting caught (although like many liars I could have been delusional that I was fooling everyone).

I had been a very honest child, and I think I am fairly honest by nature, but during my teenage years I somehow lost the spirit of telling the truth. At the end of the day, it was just more interesting, more exciting to say you had drank ten pints than two, told your teacher to fuck off rather than ‘yes sir’, to say you had kissed five boys, rather than none. I’m not saying I had a serious problem, and I know that many teenagers do the same thing. It’s just that for me, I have always prized honesty so highly in my life, my family and other friends are very honest people, in fact most of the people I have been close to over the years have had painfully honest, self aware streaks. Yet I developed an unhealthy habit of deviating from the truth and each time I did so, I got a bit further away from myself. After a few years of this, it got to the stage where realised I would need serious help in breaking the habit and finding my way back.

Then Owen came along. We met on the first day of university and from the word go he would just call me on my bullshit. He stamped it out as soon as he saw it, whenever he recognised it. He both encouraged and praised the times when I was honest and chastised my deceitfulness with great force. He was acutely perceptive at telling the difference. He shaped me; he was both firm and plain speaking in his demands; ‘if you want to be with me, if you want this relationship to go the distance then you are going to have to put love of truth, rather than excitement and drama, at the centre of your world. I just can’t be with someone who has it any other way.’ I am not used to ultimatums and God, it sent shivers down my spine (the good kind). It made me sit up and listen.

He claimed, and stands by this claim to this day, that despite what I might think, I am actually ten times more interesting when I’m sweating it out and wrestling with the truth of a matter than when I’m off in fantasy land. He said that he loved me more when I was just being myself and hanging out with him; even when life was humdrum, rest assured he didn’t find me boring in any way. That to seek truth and love honesty might not always be the easiest path, but was always the right, more fulfilling way. That my own personal truths when I discovered them would be more thought provoking and impressive than any half cooked exaggeration or tall tale I could come up with.

That was pretty much the nicest, most inspiring vote of confidence that anyone has ever said to me and I took his words on board. I did this, not because of his ultimatum, although by then I wanted to be his lifelong partner more than anything I have ever wanted, but because I recognised that following his guidance would make me a better, happier person. Because more than anything I was terrified of winding up like my friend, who was getting more delusional by the day. I would speak to her on the phone and she didn’t even know who she was anymore, and her lies had escalated to the extent that she was claiming ridiculous and scary things: that she was giving blowjobs to serial killers in prison, had a heroin addict stalker and was working for the government as a spy. It sounds strange to say this now, but Owen’s upfront truthfulness was the antidote to what could have been seriously dangerous territory. It was like the lighthouse beacon warning me off the rocks, a guiding light to save me from the course I was set on. His integrity was to me back then the most important and challenging thing I had ever witnessed, and to this day, it is the thing I treasure and value most about my husband.

His plan to make an ‘honest woman’ out of me has (mostly) been successful, and despite the odd setback I continue to grow in truthfulness and integrity everyday, but the path hasn’t always been easy. I still fall into old ways sometimes. I find myself saying the silliest of things, like the bus fare was four pounds instead of three pounds fifty. Or saying I’ve done things when I haven’t. It’s stupid, petty, and basically a bad habit that I am still working on.

Like I say, I very rarely out and out lie these days but one of the remaining problems I have with false speech revolves around the way I handle my health. As I’ve mentioned in previous blogs, I have suffered mental health problems for years and until very recently I’ve dealt with them, basically, by lying my ass off. “I’m fine” was my mantra, chanted to everyone I met in the street, to my friends, to my family… even to Owen. Unless I was drunk and banging my head against a wall, or so depressed I could hardly breathe, I would basically try and put on a smiley front. I think a lot of people who know me think of me as a ‘happy depressive’ and that, my friends, is because I lie. I’m not saying I always succeed in convincing people. But I always try. This ‘coping’ method that I would halfheartedly defend (who wants to hear all my fucked up twisted thoughts? I’ll have no friends left) was exposed for the sham it really was last year.

When I attempted suicide in October, ten minutes previously I had been on the phone to my own father, saying the same hollow phrase; ‘I’m fine’. My head was in pieces, I was literally tearing my hair out, but I simultaneously laughed at all his jokes and the conversation was light-hearted and normal. We talked about the Sheffield Wednesday scores, what I was having for lunch and the relative merits of crackerbread over ricecakes. Then I put the phone down and emptied the contents of my lithium bottle down my throat. That, right there, is the danger of false speech. That is because when you are not honest about your feelings, when you lie, when you do the whole bottling/ stiffupperlip/ braveface/ bullshit, it always ends up badly. Maybe not always as dramatically as that, but always badly. After that incident my relationships with those closest to me were damaged hugely, as none of them really knew anymore whether what I was saying was anywhere near the truth. It is only now, months later, that the wounds are even starting to heal and I think in the case of my father the trust between us has been damaged almost irreparably. I should have just faced the truth, and confided in those around me; the many friends and family who love me dearly rather than relying on my acting skills and my lies in a vain attempt to cover up the truth. Painful as it is to admit you’re not coping, it is more painful to die of liver failure, surely?

So, taking this precept is of vital importance to me, in fact I would take it tomorrow. I have already made gigantic strides in this area, and I work hard every day to become a more truthful person. I would say, out of all the precepts, this is the one that makes the most sense, speaks to me most powerfully and is ethically not much of a dilemma. I have learnt the hard way that lying is damaging, that your own false speech hurts both yourself and those around you. The ones you love the most are always at the epicentre. I have witnessed that those who tell lies, even white lies, lose the trust of those around them and this eventually brings them great pain; the loss of a friendship, or even a partner. Lies are corrosive and manipulative by nature, and even when they are well intentioned often do more harm than good in the long run. Personally, I am proud to say that I am more truthful than I have ever been, but I seriously have to learn to tell the truth about the shit that’s going on in my head, my mental state. I have to stop trying to protect those around me by telling cushioning lies and be open about my feelings and my thoughts. I guess you could even say my life depends on it.

The Birthday Blues

Oh God, how much I love The Guardian. Or The Observer as it is called on this long soapy showering, real coffee drinking, should be eating hot buttery croissants (but actually eating lukewarm ready break) day of rest. And God, how much I love the fact that it is free for me to read on the internet. I truly hope it always stays that way. There are some thought provoking articles in there this Sunday, including this article about Prozac, which got me thinking:

Prozac is twenty years old this week. Somehow I didn’t think it was as old as that, but then don't listen to me, occasionally I still go to write 1999 when signing in the date box next to my name. Sometimes I think I might, on some level, not have fully left behind my A level years. Part of me, somewhere, still longs for a headspace free of responsibilities. I hark back to a time when I carried around volumes of my mispelt stoner poetry that, naturally, was on the verge of getting published. Back then, everything that was happening to me was the first time it had happened to anyone. I was so irresistible that my religious studies teacher was about to leave his much loved wife and kids for me. I just knew I could get straight A’s without doing any work. Of course I could single-handedly bring down conservative Christianity, Patriarchy, and Right wing politics in general just by reading Bukowski, Nietzsche’s ‘The Antichrist’ and Greer’s ‘The Female Eunuch’ like they had only just been published and were written for me alone. Back then, consuming Marlborough reds, tenner deals of petrol laced ‘rocky’ and whole bottles of Jack Daniels comprised the highlights of my tiny self absorbed existence. Delusion was piled upon delusion but I never quite managed to kid myself. Inside me a tornado whirled and consequently the year 1999, the last of my school career, was also the date I first got treated for depression.

The doctor’s appointment was short. That’s mostly what I remember. I was very nervous, my hands were shaking. I think, although I am embarrassed to admit it, it might have been the first time I had been to the doctors without one of my parents present and I was terrified. In hindsight now I know my symptoms were pretty mild. I wasn’t sleeping well, was feeling agitated and distracted, couldn’t concentrate on schoolwork and was off food. My thoughts, although often intense, had been getting darker and bleaker in nature. In short, I just wasn’t feeling my usual chirpy self. It was like I was trying to run a race with treacle on my shoes. I also was worrying a bit obsessively about some stuff that had gone on in the past, and this was manifesting itself in some ways even I knew were strange; like not being able to sleep unless I counted to a hundred twenty five times without missing a count and if I did then starting back at the beginning (hence the not sleeping). But in no way was I chronic. I was not suicidal, I did not self harm, I was functioning in my day to day life. I wasn’t crying non stop, my mood wasn’t all that low a lot of time, even my attentive parents hadn’t really noticed a dramatic change.

In other words, the weird counting thing aside, most of my symptoms could have just been put down to A’ level stress or teenage angst. Maybe in a different age they would have been. But there are three key details I remember about that doctor’s appointment:

a) There was a Prozac clock on the wall tick tocking away as we spoke.
b) The doctor was writing with an Eli Lilly pen.
c) Her coffee, which smelt nice, was contained in a mug that proudly displayed the word ‘Prozac’.

And less than five minutes later, I left her room, clutching a piece of paper in my hand that said words which amounted to the same thing: ‘Fluoxetine: 20 mg (one to be taken twice a day)’

Questions asked to me in that interview:

What’s the problem? (I told her the above symptoms)
Are you feeling suicidal (I laughed and said no)

Diagnosis after that literally three minute assessment:

Mild to moderate clinical depression. Possible obsessive compulsive disorder.

Treatment:

Prozac for six months to a year. Then come back and see me.

I don’t even think this is a bad diagnosis in terms of our health care system. Something wasn’t quite right with me and I think many psychiatrists and doctors up and down the country would have made the same call. As skeptical as I am about the psychiatric classification system you have to have some kind of guidelines for diagnosis, I suppose. The real beef I have is with the thoroughness and type of treatment that was offered to me and the care that was available. First of all, taking three minutes to diagnose someone with a mental illness, even if it is one of the milder so called common colds of the mental health spectrum is simply not good enough. The patient education and aftercare system was appalling, after being diagnosed with what to me was quite a significant problem, I was just left to get on with my life. Not even a fucking leaflet or a Samaritans phone number. This is worsened further by the fact that I was, technically at this time, a child. I had just turned seventeen years old and I was very confused about the whole thing. I was somewhat educated, I knew from reading bits and bobs on the internet and from knowing friends of the family with similar problems that having this diagnosis didn’t make me ‘nuts’. But no one, not even the doctor checked to make sure I knew that.

When I left that appointment, and for months afterwards, I felt dramatically more ill than I had done before I went in, simply because my symptoms had been given a name and had been categorically brought into the realm of ‘sickness’. It reminded me of when, as a kid, you went to the doctors with a sore throat thinking you might, if you’re lucky get given a day off school and then are told you have tonsillitis and need antibiotics. From that moment on, even if previously you had been feeling okish, for the next week it takes a crowbar to prise you from the sofa, you feel like you have swallowed sandpaper and all you can eat is ice cream and tomato soup. It's genuine, but it is also, to a certain extent, psychosomatic. Firstly, this is a very common reaction to being diagnosed with any illness, but especially mental illnesses, and someone should have been there to talk me through that. Secondly, I’m not saying my symptoms should have been ignored, but by medicalising them and giving me a diagnosis when I was so young, sending me into the wider world with a label (always a dangerous thing to give a teenager), rather than to a counsellor to talk about some of the stuff that was bothering me and thoroughly assessing my case, was, in my opinion, wrong. Also, unhealthy aspects of my life that I now know were having a massive impact on my mental health, such as my bad diet, my excessive alcohol and drug use and lack of exercise, were never even mentioned, let alone explored. If all the ‘common sense’ stuff had been dealt with before telling me I was sick and pouring Prozac down my neck, well things could have turned out very differently.

They talk about cannabis being a gateway drug for heroin and crack. Now, I don’t personally follow that logic, but if I did then I’d have to concede that Prozac was my psychiatric gateway drug. Since that day I got written the prescription, nearly a decade ago, I have not been off psychotropic drugs. In a typical dealer fashion, they have got harder and harder, pushed with more and more force and coercion. As my mental health deteriorated further over the years following that appointment, I moved from Prozac and Seroxat to Lithium and Valium to Risperdone, Stelazine, Beta Blockers, and dozens more. It’s got to the point now where I’m practically a drugs connoisseur.

There are, it seems, two ways of looking at this:

1) The official line. My episode, at the age of seventeen was clearly worrying, with the potential to develop into something disastrous. The experienced doctor who had seen this thing many times before was good to pick up on these signs and treat them accordingly. Drug treatment is the most quick acting and effective treatment for depression recommended by the NHS, and Prozac one of the most effective in this family of drugs, especially considering the OCD type symptoms I was displaying. The doctor followed what was the recommended course of action at the time. It was simply unfortunate that I was resistant to Prozac, and many of the other drugs she and subsequent doctors threw at me, My illness, now rediagnosed as the more chronic and lifelong bipolar disorder is notoriously difficult to treat, and with hindsight, it is unsurprising that a small dose of Prozac didn’t make me better. However, the doctor, not knowing those facts, acted correctly.

Or

2) My line. If I had been offered counseling in that first appointment which had been the course of action I wanted (I was, in fact astounded that it was that easy to get a prescription) rather than the tablets that the drug pushing companies pressure their GPs to prescribe, then I may have got to the root of the problem a lot quicker and never needed drugs. Also, If my symptoms had been treated as normal and teenage, rather than sick and mentally ill, at least in the first instance, then I may have thought of the situation in a whole different light and who knows where it would have ended up. I just have this nagging feeling in my head that without all the mind fucking chemicals that were relentlessly pumped in experimental cocktails and huge quantities into my head at such an early age, my brain could be a very different place right now. Also, from a psychological point of view, without all the confusing (and often conflicting) diagnostic labels being stuck on me like superglue, maybe I would have a better self image and be leading a healthier, happier life. There is something fundamentally damaging to be told your brain and personality isn’t working right before you even hit your eighteenth birthday. After all, self perception is of paramount importance. As a young woman to be told by those in authority that you are sick in the head, with all the stigma and implications of such a diagnosis, could be something that, in itself, makes you sicker. In other words, maybe I’d be better if I’d have never gone to the damn doctors in the first place.

I’ll never prove it of course. The establishment will always argue that I needed the medicine, that it has been good for me, that without it I might even be dead. And maybe they’re right. But I will never forget that doctor sipping from the Prozac mug, and the way she didn’t even pause for thought before signing the brain of a child away to a chemical that, I later learnt, was surrounded even back then by controversy and doubt. So happy birthday, Prozac. You may have saved a lot of lives, but you’ve also helped trivialize and oversimplify a complex and dehabilitating illness, and have changed the face of psychiatry to one dominated by branding, advertisements, and false, false promises. Once, back in 1999, I believed them. Now I can’t help but feel a little bitter. Forgive me if I don’t sing whilst you blow out your candles.