Psychosis

And I think it was about a year into that job, just everything blew up in my face big time.

 

I was seeing things that people say weren’t there. Voices came back big time. I was depressed. Oh it was horrible. It was horrible. And the head technician in my department in the end said to me, “You’ve got to see the medical person.” So I saw the medical person, who said, “You’ve got to see the psychiatrist.” 

 

In the meantime as well as this was going at work, at home I had gone to the GP and said, “Can I have some tranquillizers. I can’t cope.” And of course she started asking questions and ended up giving me antidepressants, when I actually wanted some Valium. And she had at the same time referred me to a psychiatrist, but I didn’t actually know this. 

 

So I saw the psychiatrist. About three days later, took a huge dose of these antidepressants and ended up in a psychiatric ward for the first time. 

 

 

Yes, it was nice. To see my parents and brother again. Just a break from what I was doing every day really. And I drunk, drunk a lot less and that helped a lot.

 

Well I didn’t really want to be drinking that much all the time. You get liver damage and so all the rest of it. So I cut down.

 

 

Yes. So I got prescribed diazepam by the doctor, and that helped, that’s helped a hell of a lot.

 

 

Yes. That’s actually taking all the voices and stuff away actually.

 

 

Well, I was put on medication and I was I went to hospital for, not for not for, for about a month. Yeah, I went to hospital for a month and I was put on a course of medication [sniffs] called which was chlorpromazine at the time and a medicine for, to cope with the side effects of chlorpromazine.

Which is also known as Largactil I think.

 

It wasn’t very good. It was for the first, I could barely get out of bed for the first couple of weeks in hospital. It’s a very, very heavy sedative.

So I couldn’t I mean I couldn’t do much anyway, but I could do even less. I was just I was made into a bit of a zombie really, you know.

 

But it did deal with the voices and things, not entirely but some in some way. You know, it went some way to doing that and I did, and for the first few years, after my diagnosis, I went from medication to medication to changing, always changing round and I had some really bad ones.

 

Some but this and it was some while before I was what I can, good medication, which is which is what I’m on, which is what I’m on now because I think it hadn’t come out at the time that I was ill.

 

It hadn’t, you know, they just it had only come out a year or so after I was ill so I as soon, which can and does happen, you know, they.

 

And it’s a much, which it was a much better one and it’s the one I’m taking now.

 

Which is called sulpiride, which, which is fine, you know, which is which I’m quite happy with, you know, but I did have to go, I had to try a few of the old the old fashioned ones.

 

They started me on antipsychotics, and that didn’t work and he told me I’d be ten days before the drugs would work and I’d start feeling better and, the, the ten days went past and I was still feeling awful and I remember trying to leave then, I thought to myself ‘well I’ve been here for ten days it obviously doesn’t work I’m getting out of here’

 

And that’s, and that’s when I discovered the Mental Health Act, you know? 

 

So I was sectioned, and my life just became a, then for ten years I spent six and a half of that next ten as an inpatient, being treated with all sorts of drugs but still hearing the same voices.

 

And they would never ever ease up, and it didn’t matter what they pumped into me it was, I mean I remember when I was in the community, you know, whatever that was, I used to take a thousand milligrams of chlorpromazine at night just to get to sleep because that was, that would somehow seem to, I used to think it got rid of the voices I think what actually happened was that I was so stoned out my head I didn’t care, and then I was, I was given ECT because I started getting depression, which was one of the effects of neuroleptics, I became a mess for ten years I actually came to the end of those ten years not wanting to be alive any more, and this is in a system that you’re meant to, recover in, you know? And I guess I became non-compliant and I was one of those patients when nurses heard I was being admitted would go, “Oh no not him again.” And, [sighs] it was a never ending cycle of in and out of hospital and, they, they, they always tried to blame me, they said that, you know, I was non-compliant but the drugs didn’t work and I didn’t see how the drugs not working made me not, me non-compliant I think it made them, made the, the drugs not work. 

 

Well basically... I mean it was just, it was, I mean it was awful. You just felt like you had no contact with your emotions. You had no contact with your thinking. And one medication I was on, I just kept, literally just nodding off to sleep. Even if I were on a bus. And I did nod off to sleep on a bus, and somebody stole my bag. So I said to the doctor, “I can’t be on this medication. This is what it’s doing to me.” And he said, “Well, you know, you look calmer when you are on it.” [Laughs].

 

 

[Laughs] Yes, I was so calm, I can’t stay awake, so, not helpful, and still going through the kind of the distress actually.

 

But eventually what I did I had to, I come up with this strategy to come off them, my last consultant that I had when I was in the system, and I had a lot of time for him, I had a lot of respect for him, because you could have a conversation with him and he was dictatorial, so what I would do is, I’d got no money and, and everything but I thought ‘I need to replace the drugs with something’ so, what I did, every, one, once a morning, once, sorry, every, every morning once a day I would get up, I’d get dressed, and I might take a small percentage of the drugs off, but I would walk, if I get the endorphins going. I was self-stimulating and I’d blank me mind or think about what I want to do for the future and I might just do it for thirty minutes, but by blocking the voices for thirty minutes I was extending time as the drugs came down otherwise I’d just sit there and think ‘oh me drugs have gone down what will happen?’ and the anxiety brought the voices on. But then I saw, there was an old man I used to live next door to and I noticed every Wednesday he went walking and he’d be gone for hours. So this one Wednesday morning I followed him, I weren’t stalking him I just wondered where he was getting to you know? And he went out into the countryside and, when he got back I asked him, I said, “[Name] could I come walking with you on a Wednesday?” He says, “Of course you can.” And I would walk with [Name] but I, that was the only day that, that I would drop a bigger percentage off me drugs. And he would tell me what his wife was like, what he’d done in the war, what businesses he’d had, and we’d walk for four or five hours and I wasn’t focussing on the voices, and that’s how I started to replace it with time, and company, and endorphins and eventually I got I, eventually I got them off them all up here for a period of time.

 

 

Yeah, yes

 

 

I came up on me own I thought ‘I’ve got to replace these drugs with something’ ‘otherwise I’ll just sit around and I’ll get anxious and worried and the voices will come back’ so it was just something I developed myself. 

 

Then the warden there, said if I wanted to go and do a course, to do youth and community work. So they got me on a course doing youth and community work at the [name of institute]. So I did that for two years and then I was on my way to do my exams to be a youth and community worker, but what happens was, at that time I wasn’t living with my Mum. I was in my own flat in the community, which the mental health nurse got for me with the warden and with the Day Centre organising. 

 

So I lived there and I was at college. But what happened was that was my own fault, I thought, oh Devon, you don’t need no more medication, you’re at work, and you’ve college, and you’re doing this. So I stopped my medication. I didn’t take it any more. And then I got ill again.

 

So the nurse realised that, and he said, “Devon you’ve got to go back to hospital.” So they took me back to hospital again and I went back on the wards again. But the same thing happened, after being on the ward for a while, I responded to treatment again. So they said you can leave after a while. And then I went back to day hospital and then after doing that I went back to my Mum’s place, no back to my Mum’s place, then back in the community again. And that was in 1983. And I’ve never been back to hospital since. o that’s my early years. 

 

And I know in particular the injections, you tend to lose your dignity to, I mean you do to an extent in a psychiatric ward anyway, although it’s not going to be as bad as prison. But yes, the injections, sometimes you, you know, you do tend to feel that you’re not in control at all, but yes. 

 

I mean, now, I have no problems, no problems about taking my medication at all. But, at some points in the past I’ve been very suspicious of it and that you know, sort of, so I’ve not taken as much as I should, or, you know, completely ignored something. Although it’s happened the other way around, where I’ve been discharged or sent home on weekend leave without any medication. And become physically quite ill, and that, and you know, had to ferry myself back in and that to get something back in my system. Yes.