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.

No Ripple

I have grown to like being still.

I have taken to sitting in silence, especially in the daytime when Owen is away. Sometimes I play a record on softly in the background, usually an old favourite: Nick Drake or Leonard Cohen. Often even that is overwhelming. I dislike too much noise. I sit, with my thoughts on mute; sitting, breathing, just being.

I can do that for a long time, sometimes hours. I can’t explain why, or how but I find such beauty, such depth in silence. I feel a stripping away of the layers, a crumbling of the barriers until all you’re left with is a pure and calm stillness. Sometimes, my body rebels. It gets bored and restless, it longs for the shiny, for the new. I persevere. Still I sit, still I breathe, in and out, in and out. The boredom, too, eventually melts away.

I focus on the breath. I count to ten like I’ve been taught. One to ten and back again. Just me and the breath. Everything else disappears. I count to ten. I breathe in and out. Until the thoughts are still and all is quiet within.

Sometimes, when I am feeling this calm, I take out pad and pen and let myself write. This is a true joy. I write spontaneously. I have never done this before. I don’t know where the words come from, but I don’t think them first like I usually do. I do not edit, I do not delete. They sometimes make sense, they sometimes don’t. I don’t care what happens to them. They are not my words, they do not belong to me. They are pure: free from ego and competition and paralysis. I like writing this way, although it feels more like channeling than writing. When I read the words back though, I can tell they came from somewhere inside me. I am no medium, except of my own subconscious. It is so different when you let the words form on the page without worrying about them. You learn that they usually take care of themselves. It’s like a mother finally having the courage to let go of her child’s hand as they cross the road. It’s all in the act of letting go that things become pleasurable, really pleasurable and that you become free. The stress disappears, the knots unravel. The words on the page do not belong to me, nothing belongs to me, hell, there is no me! It’s just all good. Really good. And it makes me smile.

But that’s the writing. I do that because I can’t not write. I’ve never been able to live a life where I don’t write. But the day is long and mostly I just sit. I sit on my stool or I sit on the sofa. I sit on the park bench, I sit by the river. The water flows like time passing. You never put your foot in the same stream twice.

Home again: I stare at the white wall. I see so much peace and beauty there. I walk into the garden. I smell a flower. For a moment, that flower is the universe. I watch the bees and wasps fly around the garden. I wish them well. I breathe, I breathe, I breathe. I go inside. I brew a cup of tea in my old china cup. It is white with a golden rim, and a chip in the top. I pour the water slowly, watch the leaves diffuse. I blow. I sip. I swallow. The tea becomes part of me. Water becomes blood. Hydrogen and Oxygen along with everything else. I wash the cup, the soapy bubbles pop on my arm. I rinse. I dry. I place the cup back in the cupboard. I am aware of every movement in my hands, the feel of the rough tea towel against my moist knuckles. I walk back to the sofa. I sit. I stare at the white wall. I see such beauty there.

Later: I smile. It is colder now. I pull my blanket round me. I don’t know the time. I don’t want to know the time. He is not here, but will be back. Until then, I sit. I make Nick sing some more. I don’t listen to the words, just the melody, the sound of his instruments; his guitar and his voice. That’s how it’s always been with Nick and I. The sun sets, I watch it on the horizon through my window. I do not ignore the building site opposite. I try to see the beauty in the cranes and the scaffolding. It is not difficult, although it was at seven o’ clock this morning. I yawn and stretch my arms into the space above me. I sit, I light a candle. I stare into the flame, I don’t know how long for. Soon, I don’t hear noises, not even Nick. I stare at the candle, I stare at the flame and its many different colours. My eyes softly, gently close.

There is a smell of smoke. I open my eyes. The candle has blown out. Its plumage spirals towards the overhead light. I lick my fingers and pinch the wick. It fizzles but does not burn.

I stand, fully awake. Nick has long stopped, the disk ejected. Outside there is darkness. I shut the curtains, turn on the light. The stillness remains within me, unshakable. My stomach rumbles. I walk into the kitchen, open the cupboards, ponder quietly what to create for us today. Whilst I am thinking, I hear the front door slam. He is home. I smile: another day over and not a ripple in the pond. What joy I have known today, what more could I want for? The door opens, he is wet with drizzle and his nose is red. He kisses me, throws his arms around me, says; ‘It’s good to see you, it’s great to be home.’ Here, you see, I have everything I need. Here, you see, I want for nothing. After all, this is my home. Not this town, not this house, not this man, not even this body. Home is the stillness, the rich beautiful stillness that lies here: deep down inside me.

Teacher

Yesterday I had a weird experience. I sat for half an hour and had a wonderful meditation full of peace and joy. I was totally serene and happy, even after quite a stressful day. Then, (as I often do) I looked at a photograph of the monk who despite the fact I have never met him, I consider to be my teacher, the venerable Ajahn Brahmavamso. I don’t know why I get the urge to do this, I just always have, since I first heard him talk the Dhamma. Anyway, yesterday I got out the photo and I just spontaneously burst into tears. My eyes welled up with water and I felt such happiness and such pure overwhelming love for this man who has touched me so deeply. I just sat there, for a few minutes, just crying and smiling at the same time, feeling blissfully calm and loved and content.

Now this is going to sound like the biggest load of hippy crap that has ever come out of my mouth to date, but I must relate to you my weird experience in full. I stared at his image and clearly felt his love radiate out of that picture, almost like ripples from a stone that has plopped into a pond. It was that real I could almost see it. I stared at the photograph, transfixed. His posture, his smile, his silly double chin all just seemed to me to be the image of absolute love, and kindness. It seemed to me the perfect symbol of all that is right with the world. I felt so devoted to this man that if I had been actually in the room with him I would have wanted to throw myself at his feet. I seemed to be looking at goodness and truth itself. I felt almost like I was in a room with him, and he was speaking to me, not in words but in emotions: he was moving me, comforting me, healing me.

And I was moved. For the rest of the evening I walked on a cloud.

Man, this religion stuff is some powerful shit.

In the cold light of day, my rational side comes into play and I woke up this morning and thought to myself, yeah, nice projection there Jen. You want to be real careful messing with that. That’s fertile Bootham territory, right there. One minute you’re crying at a picture of a benevolent monk, the next you’re hearing spiders talking to you and you’re back on the ward.

So this train of thought naturally got me thinking about religion and madness. Historically, the two have been intertwined, with many religious people having the accusatory finger of madness pointed at them. Jesus and Mohammed were repeatedly accused of madness as well as their many followers from Joan of Arc to, more recently, footballer Glen Campbell. There is certainly a large grey area where the two overlap and in Britain, in our increasingly secular society those with strongly held religious views, especially of an exotic nature (i.e. not your cucumber sandwich eating C of E garden party variety) are often treated with suspicion. Certainly, to talk of visions or voices, of ecstasy and higher plains of experience has people either running for the door, reaching for the phone to the hospital or at least raising their eyebrows with contempt. In hospital I have met many messiahs and prophets. I even met a guy who had given away all his possessions including his house because he had read a secret code in Revelation that told him the world was going to end tomorrow. Myself, I have had an admission to a psyche ward that revolved around delusions I had that God was communicating with me through animals and insects.

So to me this raises some interesting questions:

* How can anyone with a mental health diagnosis be sure that any spiritual experience isn’t just a symptom of their illness?

* How can we distinguish psychosis from genuine visions/ enlightenment etc?

* For that matter, whether you officially have a diagnosis or not, how can anybody be sure that their religious experiences fall within the realm of sanity?

* With my history, that I have blogged about here, How can I, of all people be messing with this stuff again? What is the appeal of it all for someone whom in the past the spiritual has had such a negative impact on their life?

I know I can’t really answer this for anyone else, as I can’t get inside their head. For sure, I have seen the conviction on the face of a fundamentalist Christian arguing that the world was created in six days, and thought to myself; ‘are they absolutely bonkers?’ It is true, their eyes glaze over with a passion and in the heat of the debate I find them claiming the strangest things: that carbon dating machines are the work of the devil, as are the planted dinosaur bones that might as well be the skeletons of red herrings rather than huge prehistoric reptiles. It's bizarre really, what a religious faith can make you believe, in my lifetime I have heard the strangest arguments come from the mouths of impassioned believers, desperate to defend their faith.

However, I think our understanding of mental health has developed enough to realise that beliefs that we consider to be wrong, even passionately, ignorantly, flying in the face of common sense and science and laws of reason wrong do not in themselves equal insanity. I didn’t agree with the principles of Tony Blair’s government, but calling the man insane? That’s a laughable concept to me. I have spent many years in the company of seriously mentally ill people and many of them struggle to get their groceries together on a weekly basis. If you are mentally ill enough to be termed insane, you can hardly remember your name let alone run a country. Yes I know world leaders have dealt with bouts of depression and mania, (Churchill for example) and I’m not saying that mentally ill people can’t achieve great things in their life, but here I am drawing a distinct difference between being depressed and being psychotic or insane. Insanity doesn’t just mean holding an irrational belief- however wacky, it is a total breakdown of reality within your life.

Wrong or irrational doesn’t equal insane, then. But then that of course brings us onto: what does?

Yes I know: the DSM-IV diagnostic system, yada yada. These days we all know the twelve signs of depression, we all know our schitzos from our elbows. Yet if I write down on paper two brief case studies who I have personally come into contact with over the years I think the point I am trying to make will become obvious:

Linda (Met in hospital)

Believes that Tony Blair is the devil incarnate. Believes that Tony Blair speaks to her on a daily basis and tells her that she is going to hell. He tells her to do things, from what to wear everyday, to what to eat for tea. She has intricate visions of the future and hallucinations of things she believes will pass. Is hospitalised indefinitely on a section because of her relationship with “Tony” and for fears that she might one day, attempt to harm either him, or more likely, herself.

Steven (Met at a Church in Sheffield)

Believes that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. Believes that Jesus talks to him, personally on a daily basis and gives him intricate instructions on many details of his life. He has sold his house and possessions to work as a youth worker in the church and lives only on the donations of the congregation. He sees actions of ‘the devil’ everywhere, from the new civil partnerships for gay people, to abortion laws to the promiscuous behaviour of today’s youth. He spends his time pleading with young people to ‘repent’ or else they will go to hell. He speaks in a divine language, has prophecies and visions and believes that the end of the world is imminent.

Of course these are just two hastily constructed case studies. You can believe them or not. But I am sure you will have met or read about people who resemble these two in your own experience. The overlap in psychology is clear, the main difference being to me that whilst Steve’s views and beliefs are equally as unsubstantiated (if not more so!) as Linda’s with the weight of the church behind him he is a prominent figure in the community whilst she languishes her 2nd year away on a locked ward.

So what am I saying here? That the billions of people worldwide who all follow a religion worldwide are in actuality insane?

Well, no: it is clearly more complex than that.

I can only speak for myself but having experienced both intense religious experiences and psychotic episodes, all I can say is that there are similarities, for sure, but there are also vast, vast, differences between the two.

For example the first one that springs to mind is that a psychotic experience at least for me is usually accompanied by a whole host of unpleasant things; a complete breakdown in day to day functioning, a lack of self care, an all consuming sense of paranoia, a total detachment from reality and a serious mood problem as well, at either end of the spectrum. I am quite obviously ill, sick, loopy loo, round the twist, whatever you want to call it.

Spiritual experiences are not like that at all. (I’m not going to get into the authenticity of spiritual experience full stop, I think that is too big to tackle right here and now, lets accept for now that spiritual experiences do exist, whether they be caused by altered states or mass hysteria or the goddess divine channelling through you, lets leave that for another time.) But as for them differentiating from madness, I would say that although they might involve beliefs and behaviours that seem hard to believe or odd to the casual onlooker they are usually contained within a system, a framework. Within religious traditions there are people who have trod the path before you and these spiritual phenomena not only have strict guidelines but are not seen as particularly unusual. Followers of mainstream religions will often be well versed in what to expect from a religious experience before it happens to them, and in this sense they are ready for it when it happens, and can cope with it when it occurs.

Most religious people, even after undergoing a pretty significant spiritual experience within their chosen framework, whether that’s receiving a prophecy from Allah or reaching a Jana within Buddhist meditation or collapsing through the power of the holy spirit at a Christian rally, will dust themselves down, talk to the minister for a few minutes or go for a walk in the rain to clear their head. Then they will fairly quickly get back to their day to day lives, albeit from a renewed perspective. They go back to their kids and their jobs and talking about football on the bus with their friends. I’m not saying these experiences don’t change you, indeed they can have a profound effect, but if it’s a spiritual experience, it shouldn’t leave you in a corner banging your head against the wall for weeks on end or swinging at the end of a rope. Your life may be transformed absolutely but these changes should not leave you sick and poorly. On the contrary, most people who undergo these experiences often appear to be in great health, approaching life with a new strength and vigour. In my experience some of the most spiritual people I have met, whether I agree with their beliefs or not, seem to be some of the happiest of all of my friends.

So, in a nutshell I think mental illness is when your mind works abnormally causing you great distress. Spiritual experience also involves stepping outside of everyday emotions and perception but in a much more controlled, less random, and consequently much less disturbing way.

Are they two sides of the same coin, well, who can say?

All I know is this: my psychotic experiences make me crippled and broken. They leave me hospitalised and in need of strong medication even to get dressed properly in the morning. My buddhism and spiritual practice on the other hand gives me great strength, energy, clarity and hope. It leaves me feeling healthy, happy and focused. Sometimes I feel challenged, sometimes confused. But never suicidal, never bedridden, never hopeless.

If you don’t think there’s a difference between a religious vision and a psychotic one, then all I can say is go visit a Pentecostal church then a psyche ward. Both places will shake you out of your comfort zone, but any great ideas you have about them being one and the same will be dispelled in an instant.

So maybe that’s the reason I feel able to continue down this spiritual path. I trust that I know my own mind enough to know what is healthy and what is not, to explore my mind’s potential without breaking it. Sometimes, it feels like a gamble. Sometimes, I think ‘girl what the hell are you playing at?’ But mostly this sense of inner peace that grows daily as I go through the daily rituals of chanting, zazen and kinhin, the strength that is blossoming within me calms my doubts and leaves me thinking this can only be a good thing. So to go back to the whole weird experience thing, maybe it does seem a bit odd that I would cry at a photograph of a man who I never met. But before you write me off as a religious nutter, or even worse just a nutter full stop please bear in mind that I have tried every drug under the sun and every therapy on the market to get rid of this black hole in my life. None of them have ever had any lasting effect. Ajahn brahms teachings on the other hand are turning my life around at a rate of knots and giving me a chance of genuine happiness and stability that I thought I’d never have. So is it any wonder then, that staring at his peaceful smile (and silly double chin) can make me shed a few tears? I may not be able to give a definitive answer to the ‘what is madness’ question that has puzzled academics, doctors and patients alike for centuries, but I can tell you certainly what it is not. Madness is not rising from your zazen stool after half an hour’s silent meditation, making a cup of green tea with jasmine and sitting quietly all evening feeling content, like you are glad and so, so happy to be alive.

If You're Happy and You Know It.....

On Friday, my CPN commented that, right now, I seemed happier and healthier than he had ever known me to be. I thought about it and realised he was right. A smile spread across my face and we sat there for a couple of minutes beaming at each other. He asked me why I thought that was, what had changed? I said that I sort of had the feeling that everything was beginning to make sense, when for a lot of my life it hadn’t. He asked me what I meant by that. I said I just knew how to be happy. How to really be happy. Was it, he suggested, (the CPN in him shining through) because I had learnt through all the intense work we had done since I left hospital how to manage my illness better? I said, yes I am managing my illness a lot better these days for sure and that is helping immensely but that’s not it. It's about a lot of different threads of my life coming together and creating a coherent picture.

I’ve had all these sets of beliefs, often conflicting and not very well thought out that were random and disjointed. These days they’re all fusing and I’m starting to have an actual worldview. It’s been very influenced by my Buddhism, of course, but there’s more to it than that. I have done a lot of thinking in the last few years and I now have, or am starting to have a framework to hang my life on like a clothes horse on laundry day. This is creating this feeling of immense balance and stability. It’s giving me a sense of contentment and freedom and for the first time in my life a realistic picture of who I am and what I stand for. Sure, I’ve always had the general gist that I am left wing, and a feminist etc. But there were so many gaps and holes in my thinking. Now I feel like a complete picture, even if it is a rather surrealist one.

As a teenager and an early adult, there was one word that could describe me and that is ‘confused’. I didn’t know who I was or what I thought about this or that. I didn’t know how the universe fitted together or how my mind worked or how to control my emotions. I didn’t know jack shit, basically, but rather than be one of these self assured people who were convinced they had the answers, when they really knew nothing, I could see with a stark clarity how little I knew. It went on like this for a long time, through some very bleak years. But now I have the sense of it all coming together. That I know who I am, where I belong, what my role is, what the meaning of all this is.

I’m not saying there are no grey areas anymore. There certainly are. But part of my new acceptance of myself is to love and accept my own ambiguities. That grey is the new black, so to speak: to accept fully that I am never, ever going back to that clear cut time of fundamentalist Christianity and nor would I want to. This ever present questioning is part of me, part of my identity. The fact that I can see things from a multitude of angles should no longer be viewed with absolute negativity but as a very beneficial thing. I see my doubt and scepticism as something that pushes boundaries and helps me examine the world, rather than a negative hindrance to ever fitting in or finding peace.

I say this at the risk of sounding smug but I think I am learning how to be happy. This is something that many people take for granted, but for me it’s something I’ve really had to work at hard. And now I am starting to have a sense of payoff. As one of our exercises this week, my CPN has asked me to write down in concrete terms, for a bit of fun, a sort of practical guide to my new found happiness. So I could know in future, if the sky were ever to cloud over again, where the path to sunnier climes lays.

So here you are, in all its glory is the document I have cobbled together for next weeks meeting: I did it like I was a guru or something because I thought it would be fun. I actually am not suggesting anyone do the same as me. Think of this as a kind of self help manual, literally written for myself. This for my purposes only- though if it helps you, I do individual sessions of life coaching for $300 an hour! Email me for details.

Jen’s Practical Guide to happiness.


1. Body: All the common sense advice they say is true. Sleep well. About 7-8 hours a night, no more, not much less. Keep bedtime regular. Eat healthy meals, not junk food. Exercise, preferably out in nature. Drink a lot of liquid, not so much beer and coffee. Go to the doctors and dentist regularly.

2. Mind: Read a paper every day, but not the same one. Keep connected with the world from a variety of viewpoints. Think about what you’ve read, process the information, form opinions. Read books, watch films, listen to music and interact with culture. Challenge yourself in your choices. Never stop learning. Express yourself creatively through whatever medium suits you. Stretch yourself. Try new things. Meditate daily or whatever helps you wind down. Keep a journal or blog and reflect on your life.

3. Friendship: Be close to the friends that matter to you. Ditch the ones who don’t. A few good close friends are better than many fake ones. With those who you keep, make an effort to maintain contact. Rebuild burnt bridges. Surround yourself with people who love and understand you for who you are and appreciate your talents. Reach out to them when you are struggling. Be honest. Be a good friend in return. Listen to others problems. Be happy for your friends when they are successful, rejoice in their achievements. Phone them even when you’re feeling antisocial. Be generous with time, money and hospitality. Let them know how much you love and value them. Try not to compare yourself with them- everyone has their own suffering. Don’t try and solve other peoples problems for them or encourage other people to become dependent on you, help your friends help themselves.

4. If you have a partner: put their needs above your own in everything you do. Give them the biggest plate of food, the largest glass of wine, fulfill their fantasies in the bedroom, dress in clothes you know they like. Try in everything you do to make them feel like the most special person on the planet. They deserve it for putting up with you! Apologize first, make peace, don't hold grudges. Realise, above all else that (like all your friends and family) they are just another person passing through on this great cosmic journey and whilst you love them with all your heart you really can’t make them the centre of everything. Avoid dependency. That whole thing about letting things go and they come back to you is pretty much the truth. Just love everything about them, farts and all, and remember it is not your job to change them! Only they can do that!

5. Attitude: Learn to let go of the past and the future. Try to live in the present. Be peaceful. Treat everyone equally. Be kind to people, especially if they are suffering or rude to you. Try not to attach to things: to people or possessions or feelings. Develop contentment and learn to love where you are now, not where you want to be. Try to see things as they really are: avoid lying, avoid delusions. Try to contemplate and come to terms with death by looking it straight in the face, but without seeing it as a solution to your problems. Remember the path to enlightenment as a better solution. Be mindful in your actions, try to not ever behave thoughtlessly. Walk the line between doing your best and being a perfectionist. Don’t ever let your fears stand in the way of your dreams.

6. Don’t compare yourself to other people. Don’t judge others. You never know why or how until you’ve been there yourself.

7. Laugh. A lot. It really is the best medicine. Take risks with laughter, never sit on a joke, share it! Even if nobody laughs you’ll most likely get a groan.

8. Time: If possible, strive to get a job that is also your passion. Fill the time you have free with what you really want to do. Never kill time even if you are tired. It only makes you feel bad afterwards. If you have to rest, take quality rest : meditate a while or sleep. Don’t watch Junk TV.

9. Cut yourself some slack: Don’t make the standards too high. Be kind to yourself. Love yourself. Don’t overwork.

10. Find balance and harmony in everything you do. An excess of anything nearly always leads to bad things. Take space. Build in quiet time. Take delight in peace and stillness, even if only for half an hour a day. Don’t dwell on negative thoughts, just let them go. Equally, delusions of grandeur should be abandoned for a more realistic worldview.

11. Finally: Sing in the shower, every day, at the top of your voice. It lifts the spirits, whatever the weather.

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.

Zazen under the Covers.

Yesterday was a good day in so many ways. I did a lot of great things and spoke at length to some old friends. I didn’t stop speaking until gone eleven and so by the time I came to bed I was totally wired. I like to go to bed at the same time as Owen, as the pre sleep snuggle is of the highest quality (it just cannot be beaten). However, I was finding it really hard to wind down, and was getting more and more stressed about the night ahead.

We have a “once I’m there I’m there” rule which means that no matter how frustrated I get, once I have committed to being under those covers, that is where I stay (loo breaks aside). We do this because if I don’t have this rule then when I am this stimulated I will simply sit up all night on the internet drinking huge cups of black coffee or watching subtitled films on TV for weeks and weeks on end. By the end of the period I am high as a kite and it starts to get into this dangerous territory that often ends in a right old pickle.

So, the thinking goes, if I at least am in bed, then the chances are I’ll get more sleep than if I’m not. It may sound a bit fascist, but the rule is a good one and that’s why we keep it. If I get very frustrated I can maybe take a valium midway through the night, but we think sleeping tablets are a very last resort. So last night I was tossing and turning, arranging the bed clothes every seven seconds, partaking in many frustrated attempts at masturbation; you know the story. It was just once of those nights where sleep was so tantalisingly near, with the blackness and the comfort surrounding me, yet my brain synapses were firing off at an alarming rate and my thoughts just wouldn’t stop, or slow down.

I lay there getting angrier and angrier, yet without really thinking about it my mind started to drift into some of the mind quieting meditation techniques that I’ve been learning over the past few months . Although I wasn’t sat on my little stool and that felt strange, and of course this wouldn’t be how I normally meditate, it felt like there was no harm trying.

Well, it worked a treat. I did “Zazen”, laid down, under the covers for only a few minutes and by the end of it I was so relaxed and peaceful. I felt big waves of calm wash over me, and I was soon like a different person. It was so nice just to have a technique in my armory that quietens the mind and stills the body. I watched the breath, my muscles relaxed and soon I was asleep.

In the end, I got six hours, much better than I feared I would. Now I feel great. I am ready to face another day of treadmills, phone calls and washing up.

I so often struggle with sitting. It is often so hard to focus and usually turns into a battle against all the bad habits engrained in me since birth. I sometimes look at my meditation stool and think of it as a war zone. It is nice then, be able to relax into practice and gain some real peace from it. Even if I was clutching a teddy!