Colin - Interview 26

Age at interview: 40

Age at diagnosis: 19

Brief Outline: Colin was 19 when he started getting 'strange thoughts' and 'slight paranoia'. Since then he has had a handful of admissions to hospital, and has had varied experience of medication. He is now living in a flat, doing creative writing and is looking at doing some courses.

Background: Colin is currently unemployed, living in a flat, is single with no children. Ethnic Background' White Scottish.

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Colin went to school in Edinburgh, got his ‘Highers’ and thinks by then he was probably ‘smoking too much hash and drinking too much’. He says that his Mum had serious similar problems that involved several hospital admissions. He got a temporary job, and a few weeks in he started getting ‘strange thoughts’ and ‘slight paranoia’. When this started it was only a ‘few things’ but as it progressed he would just walk in the hills to ‘get away from everything’. He wanted to go for a long walk, and on the way to the coast he started to think that ‘strange things were happening’.

He returned to Edinburgh and stayed with his parents. When he visited a friend’s house, his friend was concerned that he had ‘done something’ such as taking an overdose, so they took him to the infirmary where he had his stomach pumped. Then he had a florid ‘pseudo-religious’ experience in bed, and when the doctor saw him she wanted to admit him to the psychiatric hospital. He says it is a very difficult experience to describe, but it is like a ‘rising’, as if ‘you’re not really in your body’. He thought he knew what ‘time itself’ was about. He felt that this ‘florid eruption’ wasn’t something about which he could really confide in to anybody.

 

Colin can’t really remember what happened for the first few days of psychiatric hospital, but knows he was ‘very distressed’. He was only in hospital for eight weeks, and was ‘all over the place’ after a Depixol injection. He was given accommodation in a hostel for six months and was taught ‘how to behave’, ‘how to cook’ and ‘how be a bit more social’. He was getting used to the ‘way of living’ on Depixol as it ‘slows you down’. He had no problem taking it but he felt he couldn’t stay on it long-term.

 

Subsequently he stayed at his sister’s and didn’t sleep for about 2-3 days. He had a meeting with a psychiatrist, ‘broke down’, and was readmitted about a year after his first admission. He was ‘whacked on Largactil’ and Chlorpromazine but was on a ‘silly dose’ and ended up in IPCU after ‘freaking out’. He was experiencing paranoia, but, more than that, he experienced a ‘deep entrenched fear’. He also describes the difficulty of telling hallucinations apart from the weird things that were going on, such as being visited by Church of Scotland ministers who were like ‘an exorcism team’. He found himself lying in bed wanting to die but ‘thinking it was already too late’. He doesn’t know how much of this was drug-induced by the high dose of Largactyl or how much by his state of mind.

 

Some time afterwards he was sectioned again, but he felt that this wouldn’t have happened nowadays. However he had developed a ‘patient mentality’ and he couldn’t get on with the rest of his life. He lived with his parents when he was ‘hyper’. He persuaded tutors to take him on to a course at a local university, but was admitted to hospital again before he could attend. He had a drunken incident in which he assaulted his ex-girlfriend, and ended up in prison for the weekend; he then went to a homeless hostel and then into a flat. However, whilst in a hostel, the sleep deprivation kicked in and ‘set up’ the last period in which he ended up in hospital. He was both aware of what he was going through and was unable to stop it. He walked around a great deal and drank heavily, even though he didn’t have much money.

 

Colin has had general counselling in a homeless hostel and found it ok, but it didn’t stop him going ‘full-blown’. At the hostel they had an ‘adult conversation’ about his drinking he ‘never got much benefit’. He would like to get a job that wouldn’t mean he was on less money than his benefits, but finds it difficult explaining the gaps on his CV. He feels a bit ‘jaded’ by his experience of psychiatric services, but will try cognitive behavioural therapy. 

Colin had a pseudo-religious experience in which he thought he was 'bigger than world power structures', and another time he felt he knew the meaning of 'time itself'.

Well it’s almost like a sort of, I mean it’s almost like you get that, if you get a sort of euphoric sort of it's not really connected, it’s just like a sort of, a sort of rising... it’s like, almost like an opening out of your sort of being, in a way you feel, you know, you’re in a sort of psychic realm where you’re thinking about, like you’re thinking you’re, you’re bigger than all this sort of, all the world power structures. Just think it. It’s like this whole thing about being, almost being contained, only it didn’t be contained, because your soul, your whole sort of being seems to be, you know, flying all over a place. I was just kind getting that.

 

It’s hard to, it’s to get a real picture, because I’ve tried to write it down a few times and its, its just a really, it’s like a religious thing. A magic realism something. You’re basically thinking out your body, you know, you’re not really in your body when you’re going through this.

 

And that was something that the stayed with me was there for, well not the stayed, but it was that type of things. That was the first instant that it really…I mean I had a time before that, just before, I went into hospital, went through it once. I had a similar thing but I hadn’t… it’s like you’re … it’s like a bit, or some imagination taken from reading the science fiction or science fantasy or some ridiculous thing. But it’s like that, sort of, you think you’ve got this really massively profound idea that you think you know what time itself is. And Mother Nature and this and that. It’s almost like you think you’re aware of these sort of, you know, fundamental aspects of existence.

 

Without really being very philosophical there, how they really know, you know, they’ve had any like, you know, education in that area but it’s just something seems to flood out and there’s no real, really sort of control mechanisms about it. 

 

So that was the first, that was what the first real florid, eruption

Colin didn't want to get involved with service user groups and found it hard to concentrate.

No, it’s as I say, I think I’ve got better. I met a few people in hospital, you know, that I did no wanna get like, because you get like you know, you know, I mean there are all these committees and groups that one can have, you know, patient input. [tapping noise] and stuff, but I don’t really want to go down that road. I like thought, I don’t really need that much that. I don’t really go in there. Initially because I wasn’t really in any way thinking I was able to be, you know. That’s why I fought to get off the drugs. I didn’t really think I was able to, you know, to focus on anything that much at any given time. So just really, you know, just wanted to get. All my friend used to say, just try and, you know, to get away from it. But it took me a while. No I just read on more of the wikipedia last night [laughs]. Doing that with the phone like, we both want that. Its just not… and I’d probably read a bit about it. I mean we’ve got information centres and up town like. But what I was I was doing, I was going up there, typing up my story like. Obviously we could get all the information like leaflets and everything like that. I mean I get better, when I get well, or just fairly well for a long time, I just, I don’t really you know, as much as possible.

Colin was short of a couple of tablets one weekend and found that he was getting 'elevated'.

Eventually if I do decide to come off this quetiapine , which I take at night, because if I don’t take it, which I did last weekend, not there, but the weekend before that, I’ve been too late to get my repeat prescription and I was short of a couple. The first night I think, I think I got really pissed and then managed to sleep, but the day before I was do to get a new prescription I took I didn’t sleep all night. I got up in the morning and I was like pretty elevated. It was ney just…but it was obviously caused by the.. but it triggered something like and I was getting the vibe again like, where this is going vibe and I thought right, because it was weird because it was after, it was after your day, you know, I’d arranged this meeting and I was so… this is a good one, this will be a refresher like, a little bit, but it was interesting because it is, it’s almost like it knocks out all of the, you know, things that you worry about and stuff, it just goes [whistles] so its like you’re wiped the slate clean, but I don’t know it wasn’t that much, otherwise … I’d managed to read the whole of the Guardian in about three hours. 

Collin had some chats with some guys in the homeless hostel he was in but didn't get anything much out of it; it didn't stop him getting unwell.

I was fairly functional for most of the time in the hostel. It was just, it wasn’t really off, it was more just the general just sort of counselling. It was no really. It was just, I not very sure what it was. But it was that kind of thing where you go into that, if you go into that sort of environment in a hostel, you know, the guys there, a lot of the people are paid to sort of, that’s their job, I mean, to sort of get you through. You do that, and I’ll just go out, or I’ll do that or I’ll do this, and it was like, you know, I don’t know what… if I got anything. But it was a lot of just once a week you know, I would have a word with someone, so I’m not sure, basically it didn’t stop me going you know, full blown. It didn’t really. It never stopped it doing that obviously but … As I say we just talked about, you know, a bit like this, you know, briefly going through going your history etc and so on and talking about drink and that. I said we like had adult, an adult conversation about drink, because it was basically about… I mean they would say why, you know, why do you drink, and I’d say you know, it’s like a sort of, its not Scotland obviously but its may be slightly more, well not really I suppose, but it’s traditional in Scotland [laughs]. I suppose like. It’s just not healthy obviously, but, but yes, to be honest I never really got much benefit, I never got much from that. As I say it was only for a few weeks and it just was what it was.

After leaving hospital Colin stayed in a hostel where he was taught to cook and was helped with his social skills.

But I was [clears throat] as I say only in for eight weeks and it just seemed to be, you know, I got back and sort of fairly coherent mindset and I was taken up to a hostel, like a hostel for... to just like a social work, house, hostel in Edinburgh and it was, it was, yes, I was just there for a six months and they teach you how to behave you know, cook, be a bit more social. It was interesting that. I mean it was like, you know, I mean I was pretty fragile and as I say it was a weird thing because sometimes I’d be okay and other times it would be, you know, and it was almost like sleeping. You know, I would go to bed at 10 o’clock at night and probably struggle to get up [coughs] at nine, you know, so it was like, you know, it was like sleep therapy, but it was like taking it too far. And I was just like, I was... but anyway, but that was, that did knock, knock the psychosis pretty much on the head. 

 

So what was it like living there in a hostel?

 

It was fine. It was good. It was it was it was a good place to sort of you know, recuperate. Or convalesce. At the start, I mean, the doctor said, “At the time you were probably were unwell for a long time.” How long? I’ve a feeling there’s not much point thinking too much about that.