Funnies

 What? Funnies? On the psych ward?  Well yes actually. While I don't wish to downplay the the unpleasantness and pain of mental illness for many. , I actually enjoyed my stay on the ward. I came in presenting with manic symptoms which gradually subsided over a couple of days. Mania, subjectively, makes you feel like you have done a couple of fat rails of coke which last for days. And so it was that I came in with a swaggering confidence, like Jack Nicholson on One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest and got them to tell me their stories, some of which were intentionally amusing, some unintentionally, and some tragically sad.

Amir:

Amir: So who is da best at philosophising and all that stuff now?

Me: It depends what you are into. I like the whole consciousness debate. Dennett vs Chalmers.

Amir: Aight. I know these guys.

Me: What you've read Dennett and Chalmers?

Amir: No man.  mean I know them.  I used  to feed them, aight?

Me: You knows these are philosophers, Amir, not cats, right?

Amir: I know. Not feed them. I mean FEED them. I used to sell dem crack and smack, like, innit?  All the best philosophisers are on coke and heroin. Get yourself back on the good shit. You come to me when you get out. No word of a lie man. I'm outta here. Take care brother.

Nazeem and Lydia
Me: Is there a list of rules somewhere, like, 'do's and 'dont's?
Lydia: There is but they never tell you. You have to work them out. It's a good idea to make notes like you are doing. I have thousands, I still don't know what's going on.
Me: I see.

Lydia: You'll be all right. You'll break the rules and not care. 

Me: How can you tell?

Lydia: I just can.

Nazeem: The main rule is that we are not allowed to play near the cliff. On no account are we to jump off of it.

Lydia adds this to her notebook.

Me: There's a cliff? Sounds very dangerous! Where is it?

Nazeem: (smiling knowingly) I don't know. I've not found it and they won't tell us.
She seemed intrigued by the fact that I was writing her comments down.

Nazeem: Why are you writing this down.
Me: It's for a blog. Don't worry. I'll change your name, my name, the name of the hospital the town, etc.
Nazeem: (pauses, thinking) I might have a cigarette. I might not.
Me: Well, I'm not going to write that down. It's neither funny nor interesting.
Nazeem: I see.
Me: Anyway, do you smoke or not?
Nazeem: I don't wish to comment on that.
Me: (writing) Now it's funny.
Nazeem: (blankly) I know.

Flashback: Sats on the floor.

 December 2021

    My third trip to A&E as a result of an overdose, this one, by far the worst, hanging on to life by a gossamer thread. This near-death experience, while fascinating, was not what I expected. There was no white light, ushering me through to the next phase of my existence, just blackness, neon pink flashes and a hideous humanoid gurgling, like a high pitched Doctor Who monster: gliblublubliblunimflupnimflup. I remember thinking, with my philosophy hat on: 'Is this the true nature of reality? Is this the Kantian thing in itself? If it is, I'm not sure I like it much.'
    Two days later I woke up to a surly nurse. He didn't actually say it out loud, but his body language and tone said 'For fuck's sake. We've got enough  to cope with with covid, never mind twats like you ending up here through sheer stupidity.' I was about to launch into the defence I always use against such people, and those who oppose recreational drugs use in general when he vanished. And I mean that quite literally. I mean one minute he was there and 'ping' he wasn't, like the shopkeeper from Mr Benn in reverse. If I'd been doing the sound design I would have use an open piano chord of 4ths, 5ths and 9ths, reversed a reversed cymbal and reversed reverb. So I didn't get to say:
    "Would you say the same thing to someone who ended up with a broken neck from playing rugby league or a sprained ankle playing badminton?' "or perhaps more aptly 'or someone who shattered their pelvis and spine while mountaineering' Because condemning recreational drug use is petty moralising. One is far more likely to end up in casualty after three hours of horse riding than three hours of clubbing on mdma, which is not among my favourite drugs. Besides, it wasn't even my fault I'd ended up in A&E. It was the arsehole who had cut my dope with fentanyl and not mixed it evenly through the bag. They could pump naloxone into me until I was blue in the face and it would make little difference. Actually, scrap that. I was blue in the face when they took me in. Point is, for some reason which makes no sense other than mob mentality, exploring inner space is stupid and selfish. whereas exploring the great outdoors is utterly wholesome. I remember once having a conversation with a doctor at SDAS (Southwitch Drug and Alcohol Service) as I tried to get him to admit that the illegal elements of my passtime was less dangerous than horse riding. 

'Look here, Mr Southey. It's just the way we do things here. This is not the time for a philosophical discussion. You've tried baclofen and it didn't work. Now we try antabuse'

If that wasn't the time for an ethical discussion on drug use, speaking to a GP who is about to write a script, I don't know when is. 

Anyway give me ketamine any day. Which they did, incidentally, to sedate me for the ventilator. A rather large dose. I often wonder if the doctors and nurses who lay heavy doses of K on patients, especially children have ever tried it. It's a bit like a dreamy smooth acid trip, or for those who haven't done that, rather like the time before wakefulness and sleep, but while it pretty much paralyses you, it can be utterly terrifying. The dosages used therapeutically are enough to put patients in what a rec user would call 'The K hole' a state of semi aware detachment from reality. Doctors and nurses think it's an analgesic. It's not. Painful things still hurt like hell; you just don't really mind the pain as much.

Anyway. To our story, 'Suicide attempt was it?'. I agreed groggily. A few days later, I worked out it wasn't. But I just agreed with her. Because I knew I'd been feeling suicidal and I'd woke up in hospital after what I'd been told was an overdose. I later worked out it was a mistake, but 'intentional overdose' suited my narrative as much as theirs so I didn't worry.

As I used my WhatsApp messages to piece together what I had happened, how it had been a mistake with bad batch of smack, I also worked out that this was different from the other ODs'I'df had. I couldn't speak except in a sort or drooling spastic burr. My nose had a huge scab on it from a pressure sore when I passed out. Oh, and I couldn't walk. Double oh, I needed a pacemaker. It took a couple of weeks to get over it. Which was actually a relief. For a while I thought that I was going to be like someone who had made a half hearted suicide attempt with pills and succced in becoming a cripple. 

    And my glimpse of the afterlife? In retrospect I think the pink pulsating lights were my brain's way of interpreting the cpu I was being given, and that the garbled voices were my dying cerebral cortex doing its best with very little to go one from a sensory point of view.

    It was Sputnik, the love of my live, trying to hammer some life back into my dead heart and shouted at me:
    'Don't you dare die on me you cunt. Breathe, you fucker, breathe!'

 

An Admission

My admission to hospital was fairly standard. A visit to A&E. Triage within about 30 minutes. Doctor a couple of hours later. Bloods, CT scan. Results an hour later. Everything was clear but it was decided that I should wait to see a specialist. That happened about 7 hours later. This is not a post complaining about the NHS being on its knees. Although,at one point, the waiting room packed full and patients moaning and grumbling about how long they'd been there, asking when they would be seen etc, I really did feel like standing on my chair and shouting 'Anyone here vote Tory? It's your fault, not the staff's, that loads of us have been here for 9 hours,' but of course, I didn't.

But there were 'non-standard' things abour my admission to hospital too. They didn't just wheel me along to a ward, they sent me onwards, with Sputnik giving me a lift, to another hospital I hadn't heard of called St Elvis. A staff member in green scrubs showed me round. There was a TV lounge, a pool table, a nicely landscaped garden where, surprisingly, the patients were permitted to smoke, sometimes joined by the greenscrubs. My room had a bed and wardrobe. Nothing else. There was nowhere to hang my suit, not even the corner of the wardrobe which sloped off at 45 degrees. As we went round, I was introduced to staff and patients alike. All were pleasant but one or two had odd quirks, like an elderly lady called Uzma who shook my hand for too long saying 'Dave, nice to meet you....how nice to meet you....'

The decision to admit me was not based on the usual  examination with stethoscope, needle and blood pressure monitor. They did not palpate my abdomen or ask me to push against their hands. Instead, we sat, their three on one side of a large desk, Sputnik and I on the other, holding hands, like a weird job interview. And the questions were a bit odd too like 'What was your social experience like at school?' or 

'Your eyes seem to be flitting around the room. Can you see anything that, perhaps, the rest of us can't?'

'No. I'm just feeling a bit stressed out. I find it hard to remember to make eye contact when I'm nervous'

'To remember to?' he asked, quizzically

'Oh, it's like a sort of Asperger's thing, I think.'

He asked if I had an ASD diagnosis, and I said that I hadn't, but that I'd read a fair bit about it, and I identified with a lot of the markers. He nodded, before explaining that while this was not a formal diagnosis:

'High functioning autism. I'd bet my house on it' as the other two nodded and smiled kindly at me. But anyway, that's not what I was there for. I'd been stumbling around Sputnik's house, shouting, breaking glass, wittering away to her at 100 miles an hour, 5am having had no sleep, the subject of my sentence changing every few words without really breaking the flow:

'What was I saying again? Oh yeah. No I'm fine. I don't need to go to hospital. I feel fucking fantastic. I think that you would agree, my lady love, that I am in excellent spirits, am I not? Behaving unusually? I think not. I wish I felt like this all the time. This is me on normal mode. Sleep is for losers 'YOU HEAR THAT YOU BUNCH OF SAD FUCKERS! SLEEP IS FOR LOSERS! Ahahahahahahahaha. That's a good one. Has that mark on the wall always been there?'

But that was hours earlier, and now I didn't feel like that. Now I felt scared, nervous, pacing as they left me and Sputnik in the room to discuss my case' Worried that they would admit me. They did, explaining on their return, that I would benefit from a spell on the ward. I kissed Sputnik goodbye, and moved to a new room. I had no idea what to expect on the psych ward. Muzak and a huge Native American silently sweeping the floor? Who knows.

What's it all about? Resist trite memes.

This is my first blog post, prompted by a brief stay on a psych ward. This was not, however my first personal experience with mental health issues. I will write about things as and when they occur, week by week,but will gradually add backstory when nothing of much interest has happened.

But this post is to introduce the tone and likely content, a mixture of where I am on any week, and recollections about how I got to where I am. Coping with a mental health condition concurrently with a non-neurotypical personality is many things: difficult, frustrating, terrifying. But also edifying, rewarding, and, yes, laugh-out-loud hilarious.

Why do I say 'resist trite memes'? If you have ever visited a web forum or physical facility why has anything to do with mental health, you will surely have encountered the Trite Mental Health Meme, or TMHM. Well intended gems, they are, varying from the merely naive to the downright idiotically irrational. You know the sort of the I mean. Firstly, the image: a sunset, a beach, a view looking up through trees. Perhaps a stone circle at dawn. 

And then the text. Oh yes the words. 'Remember that every time you felt you couldn't go forward, you did go forward. Reflect on that.' Bollocks, actually, literally nonsense. Almost every time I've felt that I couldn't go forwards, guess what? I didn't. I went backwards. It's a great example of well-intended TMHM which is just obviously factually inaccurate. Or perhaps 'Being depressed doesn't show that you are weak. It shows that you are strong!' This is a whole subgenre of the TMHM in its own right. 

Now, while it is not particularly constructive to point out that depression probably actually is a weakness, neither is it very helpful to suggest that it is some sort of superpower. Finally, one of my favourites, which I only saw for the first time the other day: 'Don't forget how far you have come!' I was waiting in a room, scanning the walls of sort of interview room in a mental hospital, while five or six medical health professions discussed whether I needed some time on the psych ward. I did. For the first time in my life, I was admitted to a mental hospital when they came back in. The irony of the don't-forget-how-far-you've-come sentiment was not lost on me. 'Look how far gone you are?' would have been more apposite.

Of course, we need to put a positive spin on some aspects of mental health care. But well-meaning disingenuity, if that is not an oxymoron, is not helpful. Mental health problems may not always be a curse, but are they really ever the blessing some TMHMs suggest that they are? These conditions are illnesses, not superpowers. In fact, I rather suspect that if I claimed my psychosis gave me special powers, I would have been on the psych ward quite a bit longer.