Ron - Interview 04

Age at interview: 51

Age at diagnosis: 23

Brief Outline: As a child, Ron was abused by a priest. He first heard voices at work and over the following ten years he spent six in in-patient care. He went to the Hearing Voices network in 1991 and began his recovery journey. Ron now works in the field of mental health.

Background: Ron is a trainer and consultant, having worked in the field of mental health for several years. He is married with seven children. Ethnic background' White British.

More about me...

Ron grew up in a working class Catholic family and describes wanting to be a priest. However, he was abused by the parish priest, and he explains how this made him ‘lose his faith’. Ron describes not having a childhood as a result. Later when he was a teenager he met and married his first wife. He says of this time that she ‘taught him what love was’ as he had no concept of love after the abuse, and that his family weren’t the ‘touchy-feely type’. Ron describes how she introduced him to many things' the desire to learn new things and to understand spirituality. His wife died suddenly and he describes how he couldn’t understand it and ‘didn’t even really grieve’. Ron moved first to the Army and then to work in the City in London. He describes how he ‘ran away’ and felt a ‘deep sense of guilt’ at this time. He explains how he later went ‘on this spiral downwards’ after he broke his hip playing rugby. The doctor told him he would never play rugby again, and Ron remembers that it was not long after this that he heard a voice for the first time, and that was the beginning of his ‘descent into madness’. Now he sees the ‘journey into madness’ as a part of the ‘recovery journey’ as they are ‘interconnected’. When Ron played rugby, he explained how he put the face of the Catholic priest on the opposition and that this may have been a coping strategy, resulting in ‘allowable violence and self-harm’.

After returning to work, he says that he heard a voice saying ‘You’ve done it wrong’ when he was inputting some data' he looked around and there was no one there. He then says he went to the pub to get completely drunk. He describes hearing one voice that said it was Ron’s fault, Ron had led the priest into sin (he identifies this as the voice of the priest) and another saying that he should kill himself so they could be a family again (this he identifies as the voice of his previous wife). Ron describes how he was eventually given a ‘golden handshake’ at work as he ‘couldn’t get his act together’. From there he moved into a studio flat and spent three months ‘totally off his head on drugs and alcohol’. One morning he recounts how he couldn’t take it any more and went to the GP, who got him an appointment to see a psychiatrist the same day. At the end of the day, Ron remembers the psychiatrist telling him that he had a serious mental illness and that he needed to come into hospital. He remembers being put on anti-psychotics and being told they would work in ten days and he would start feeling better. However when this didn’t work and he tried to leave. Ron then describes his first encounter with the Mental Health Act and how he was sectioned. He outlines how over the next ten years he spent six and a half of those as an in-patient, ‘being treated by all sorts of drugs and still hearing the same voices’ and at one stage taking a ‘thousand milligrams of Chlorpromazine at night just to get to sleep’. He was also given ECT as he started getting depression, and understands this now as one of the side effects of neuroleptics. He describes feeling really angry and ‘fighting the system’ as nobody ever asked about the voices or his abuse, and instead they were just not ‘asking the right questions’. His support worker took him to the Hearing Voices Network in Manchester, and Ron describes this as his ‘road to Damascus’ as he felt people were really listening to what he had to say. He explains the process of looking at the ‘different characteristics of voices’ and ‘breaking them down’, and how this was similar to identifying the different characteristics of God. This work eventually became the ‘Working with Voices’ work book. Ron later became the National Coordinator of the network.

Ron describes how the only time he didn’t hear the voices was for a three-month period after a heart bypass operation, and says that he would now be extremely lonely without the voices to talk to. Ron now does dialoguing work with people and their voices, and finds the one-to-one work he does as most satisfying ‘get[ting] a buzz out of seeing people reclaim their life and, suss[ing] it out’. He explains that he is not anti-medication but thinks that people have to be honest about morbidity and the long-term use of medication. Ron is interested in various projects and continues to do work promoting recovery in mental health services.

Ron used a technique he had learnt in church to look at the different characteristics of his...

I started looking at the different characteristics of voices, and people I think sometimes wonder why I manage to do that and I think it’s because, even though I, I wasn’t involved in the church for years and years and years, I still remember that one of the things in church that we did was that we looked at the characteristics of God and that each part of the Trinity, if you believe in the Trinity, had different characteristics and so I started using that stuff on my voices, that my voices had different characteristics that some were male, some were female, some were positive, some were negative, some were abusive, some were non-abusive, some were advisory, some were commanding and I started looking at those characteristics and I started breaking them down, and that formulated I guess the, the start of the Working with Voices workbook started then, and, you know, and it didn’t come out till much later but that’s when it really started. And I guess I started it on myself by, by looking at those, and I found by looking at the characteristics I was able to start naming my voices properly and saying, “This is [name] this is the Priest, this is my father. This is other people in my life.” And, and I was able to do that with all but one voice. Yeah.

 

So the voices were people you would known in your past?

 

Yeah, or like people, not necessarily, [clears throat] sort of voice that was like a teacher a guide, so I called it teacher and, and because it had a name it, it wasn’t scary you know when it has no name and no substance and no characteristics it’s scary but once you start putting all these things in place it’s not scary any more and so, yeah, I guess that’s how I went about that. 

 

After the first time Ron heard voices he got ‘completely drunk'.

I remember sitting in my office and this voice behind me saying, “You’ve done it wrong.” I was in-putting some data into a computer and in those days computers were still on tapes.

 

So it used to take ages for it, them to wind around and bring everything together for you, [coughs] and I looked around and there was nobody there and so I went to the pub and got absolutely drunk, and I guess drink then became my second coping strategy.

 

And then when I was drunk of course I would do stupid things and, get into really weird, situations that, and I thought that the voices would disappear, well the voice initially, but that it didn’t the, I got more voices and I ended up that I was going to work and, but I wouldn’t work I’d just sit there and listen to all this nonsense going on and, some of it quite, vile. 

 

Ron describes learning to live with his own voices, and how this became the start of a...

I started doing things with people like Terry McLaughlin, with and Sandra Escher, where what I started doing with the voices was to start breaking them down and, and even on my own I started looking at the different characteristics of voices, and people I think sometimes wonder why I manage to do that and I think it’s because, even though I wasn’t involved in the church for years and years and years, I still remember that one of the things in church that we did was that we looked at the characteristics of God and that each part of the Trinity, if you believe in the Trinity, had different characteristics and so I started using that stuff on my voices, that my voices had different characteristics that some were male, some were female, some were positive, some were negative, some were abusive, some were non-abusive, some were advisory, some were commanding and I started looking at those characteristics and I started breaking them down, and that formulated I guess the start of the ‘Working with Voices’ workbook, was really started then, and, you know, and it didn’t come out till much later but that’s when it really started. And I guess I started it on myself 

At one point Ron was very successful in the City, yet at the same time he was very lonely.

And I didn’t like relationships because people either abused you [laughs] or died on you so I just didn’t do relationships and even today I can count the number of friends on one hand, although I’ve got lots of people I know, the people that I let through that, personal space are very few and, people have to earn that so I guess before I was diagnosed I was, almost setting myself up for it, by not having that social interaction, not, not doing that, I lived for work. I started my life in a very Marxist family, quite left wing, quite a lot of social conscience, all those kind of things, and in the Eighties I became a child of Thatcher because that idea of, the not having any society worked for me, so that actually appealed to me her policies never appealed to me but the, the idea of the cult of the individual really appealed to me and I worked in the City of London, doing in the Finance Sector and earning quite a nice living , part of those that, that, I guess I was a bit of a Yuppie, and quite enjoyed it, and I was good at my job I did buying on Futures and things like that and I was quite successful and I was pretty good at guessing the market. So that, so my life was a whole load of contradictions, I had a, quite a successful career and yet at the same time had, nothing. I had the trappings of prosperity but not, any peace of mind I didn’t, I didn’t go out on Friday nights, I didn’t meet up with everybody after work or any of that kind of thing, I lived and breathed the job. So, so if anybody was setting them self up I guess it was myself at that stage 

Ron thinks that staff are moved from psychiatric institutions into the community without being...

You see we talk about institutionalisation as if it’s part of being in the hospital but I think institutionalisation in the community is as big an issue I think I, you know, I think when we move from hospital-based care to community-based care, what we did is we created trans-institutionalisation where we transferred the institution to the community and that is still as bad an institution as the thing, and, and, and the thing a, the biggest thing about that is we moved loads of staff out of the institutions and put them into the community, without trying to work on any change programme with them, so you can take the staff out of the institution but could you take the institution out of the staff? Which would have been a question that should have been asked in the Eighties, you know, it never was asked so it was probably too late. and I think this trans-institutionalisation means that people for instance will stay on community nurse’s books for years and they don’t need it. But it’s almost like a community, I’ve met Psychiatric Nurses and other people that have fifty-five on the caseload, but when you actually go and work through their caseload with them there’s twelve active you know, and the rest they, they’re are either doing a Depot or phoning once a month to make sure they’re okay but they’re on their caseload so they don’t get any more work. And rightly so because I think you can work with much more than twelve active anyway but surely we should be able to discharge them you know, and get them off caseload and say, “These are the, these people are no longer on the, in the system.” You know? so I, I guess for me that the hardest part about this going back and forward was breaking that institutional thinking in my own head. That I, because you’re socialised into being a patient, you know the system creates more than just the diagnosis it creates this, patient that’s a patient whether they’re in hospital or out of hospital, like most people when they go to Out-patients don’t consider themselves patients you know? They’re going to get normally get discharged you know, there’s, it’s a follow-up after an operation they’re going to get discharged, don’t think to yourself, you don’t think ‘I am a heart patient’ you know, whereas in Psychiatry you know? And they need that illness because that’s reflects for them then who they think they are. Yeah. For me it’s about moving beyond that, thinking ‘I, this is not who I am, this is who I am, I’m all these different parts, you know, I’m the four faces of men or man’ or whatever, however you want to describe it. 

Ron was kept hearing voices despite taking higher and higher doses of antipsychotics so he wanted...

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. 

 

Ron rediscovered spirituality, finds church a good place for reflection and has many Christian...

And I guess the last thing I’ve rediscovered is my Spirituality I’m now in a, I’ve started going to church, not that I believe everything in church is saying but I think it’s nice to have a place where you can just reflect and I, I find church is particularly good for just sitting being quiet for an hour and being able to reflect differently. so there’s that sense of being able to explore my own spiritual being again which is, I know, I’ve got some friends that are quite strange for me, because they’re people that don’t drink they don’t smoke, they’re, they are Christians very much and quite a lot of time when we get together we, we argue about scripture and, the characteristics of God, you know? so it’s, so I guess my life’s come full circle because I started my life wanting to be a Priest, and, and I’m coming to this point in my life where I’m probably going to study Theology and maybe never become a Priest because I can’t imagine [wife’s name] as a minister’s wife she’d kill me but I can imagine me doing that just for myself and just something for me because I’ve been travelling on the road now for, what? Seventeen years? And, I don’t think I want to be doing it after twenty I think I want to stop and become a farmer [laughs] you know, or something. 

Ron speaks about the passion he and his wife share for recovery and the work they do one-to-one...

I guess we, we share a vision and a dream of being redundant in Mental Health and that’s, that’s our vision. we share a passion for recovery, we both work with people one-to-one and we enjoy that that’s probably the, the thing gives me the most satisfaction. I enjoy people recovering, and I get a buzz out of seeing people reclaim their life and, suss it out and work out that they can do something and then doing it. I’m always amazed at the process of that, that, that there seems to be this bit, you’re, you’re running ahead and you’re getting on great and then it’s almost like you need to go back to the system to check it out again and that actually that now is just part of the journey, and so when it happens I don’t worry about it I just say [dismissive noise], “Well they’ll get through it.” And I’ve saw many people do that and I did it myself so, I guess I, I think since ninety-three I, I’m seventeen years now without medication and I guess that twice in, in the last twelve years I’ve went to my GP feeling really down and twice my GP’s given me a packet of anti-depressants and twice I’ve went back and looked at them and put them in the medicine cupboard and never ever opened them, , [pause 3 seconds] because I think I’ve realised that those times when I, I did go on them, I was down, it was just a normal response to living it wasn’t illness, it was, it was just a normal response to what was going on in my life at the time. Yeah.

 

And would that be a similar attitude towards your voices or is it different?

 

Nah it’s the same with voices they’re just there they’re part of who I am and that, that, that, I guess that’s the thing I’ve discovered, I’ve discovered who I am and I’m comfortable with who I am now. Although I still have my moments, you know, like everybody where I go through and I, struggle with how I’m feeling about things and, you know, but that’s not illness that’s living.

 

Ron describes the importance that the idea of ‘trauma-induced psychosis' has for psychiatry.

 

I suppose we’re seeing now, the work of the Hearing Voices Network being taken on by services and like everything services take on changed, changed to fit a medical construct, changed to fit, it’s still a disease, it’s still this, it’s still the next thing, and, [sighs] my biggest issue with my whole history now is, in an era of evidence-based practice surely we should start with an evidence base for the illness?

 

And if there’s no evidence [laughs] base for an illness, where, where are we going?

 

You know, well why do we focus on this evidence-based practice all the time? When I’ve not seen one piece of scientific evidence that proves it exists in so many of the major mental illnesseslike Schizophrenia, which is why I think the Japanese are being very bravein saying, “Okay this actually doesn’t fit, this does, so let’s call it that.”

 

And I think the great thing for me about, Integration Disorder and the, this idea of trauma-induced psychosis that’s floating around now is it means the treatment mentalities will have to changeyou know, and I think that’s where the hope lies in Psychiatry is, see I don’t want to destroy Psychiatry, I sometimes get the, I used to have this reputation of being anti-Psychiatry and I’ve never been anti-Psychiatry, I’ve always been anti-bad Psychiatrybut I think that’s allowed and I’m never anti-medication I, I’m always anti-the bad use of medication but again I think that’s a, a, a good position to take, because I think one of the things about reflective practice is that reflective practice should always be critical and so when I look at myself and reflect on myself, and I reflect on this thing that was called my illness, I’ve got to do it in a critical way myself I’ve got to look at where my responsibility lay and I think that’s one of the hardest things, to accept your responsibility, that you can change it, that you can do it differently from now you know? You didn’t need to wait six months, and I hear this, people saying, “Well it takes time.” Well why? you know, well once we know what the root of the problem is we can deal with it.

 

Ron stopped doing work as he heard voices that were ‘vile', was made redundant, sold his house...

I got more voices and I, I ended up that I was, I was going to work and, but I wouldn’t work I’d just sit there and listen to all this nonsense going on and, some of it quite, vile [sighs], Well I did, I’d a voice telling me it was my fault I led him into sin, I deserved to burn in hell and, and that was the voice of the priest, and then I heard [NAME]’s voice telling me to kill myself so we could be a family again and, oh it was, it was awful and then of course what happens, my boss pulled me in and told me I’d , you know, a couple of weeks to get my act together and I never got it together, I got a golden handshake which is how, how it works there. , and, I had to sign papers saying I wouldn’t no work with a, another firm for two years or something but the, the size of the golden handshake covers

 

All that. I sold my house and moved into a sort of studio flat. Which is a posh way of saying a bedsit I think it shows you how middle class I’ve become.

 

[Laughs].

 

Yeah? and then I spent three months, totally out of my head on drugs and alcohol.

 

And I went through thousands over that three months in, in money, I spent nearly everything I had, I had loads of friends then but the [laughs], you know, they were only there because there was drugs and alcohol on the go. 

 

And then one morning I just could no take it anymore, I went to my doctors and I told him, and he got me, I saw a pychiatrist the same day and the pychiatrist had told me at the end of it that he thought I might have a serious mental illness and I needed to come into hospital.