Electroconvulsive Treatment (ECT)

I knew I need to come off the drugs. I was still on one tiny dose of, of one antidepressant, but it wasn’t helping. It was actually having the opposite effect, because it was a stimulant and it was contributing towards me, towards me, my inability to sleep. And my feeling of being over energised. But the problem was, if ever I tried to come off it, coming off it, itself, withdrawal, would then trigger an episode. So I was sort of caught in a catch 22 situation.

And I thought maybe if we combined the beginning of the treatment, when the treatments are closer together with kind of, with the withdrawal from the drug that I was on, then that might counter the beneficial effects, the ECT might counter for the negative effects of the drug and so we put together a plan.

I did a lot of research into it. It’s not a treatment when is widely used and so I, yeah, I did a lot of research. I contacted people in America. I contacted people over the UK to try and find people who were experts in the field and I was very lucky because I got put in touch with the, sort of, the leading UK expert into ECT and he, yeah, he’s an amazing man, I mean, he lives up in Scotland and he gave me, he called me, and we, you know, he gave me some advice by email and stuff and then he actually called and sort of took a very brief case history and I told him what was going on, and he suggested how to do the maintenance ECT in terms of how many treatments and how… And what he said to me was that, “You need to do one a week for two weeks, then one every fortnight for two fortnights, one every three weeks for two treatments and then go to one every four or five weeks. One every month, but the key was, that he said to me, because I’d had such a rough few years and I was so sort of vulnerable in my system I needed to continue the treatment for quite a while to build up the strength.”

But he also that because I’d had a long period in my life when I’d been symptom free, it, he didn’t necessarily think I would need to continue it for sort four or five years, you know, or continue it kind of forever. But you know, it’s possible, if I could get well enough, that I could have another period of remission. A long period of remission again and that’s a possibility, although he couldn’t guarantee it, but he said, you know, looking at my hospital it might be possible. 

So, at that stage we thought, you know, this is the right thing to do, and I, you know, discussed it with my consultant and he thought it was a good idea. So we started it and I did it, I started it in February of 2011 and I, and it was, it was an amazing success. It was absolutely incredible. 

Yeah, the first couple of months were really hard going, mainly I think because of the withdrawal effects from the other drug, but all of a sudden, once that was out my system, it started to get, it became like a virtuous circle, rather than a vicious circle. My having the drugs out of my system, I started to be able to, be able to sleep. I even came off the sleeping medication. After a few months I was able to sleep naturally for the first time in four or five years. You know, my appetite returned, my physical strength returned, and that contributed so much to my wellbeing. I went down to having the treatments every sort of four or five weeks, which I did for kind of 12 month period and really I just got, I just got better.