Below is a blog post that I started yesterday. It's a post that I have been meaning to write for a long time and have decided to finally post. I must warn you that it gets very personal and as such comes with a trigger warning for:
Trigger Warnings: alcohol abuse, self-harm, suicidal thoughts, suicide plans, binge eating
Yeah, it's not an easy read I'm afraid. But if you stick with it you will understand ore than ever why I do so much to support Mind, and why it is time that we need change. We need to talk and break the stigma. Anyway here's the post...
Sorry that it’s been a few weeks since my last post. As
always, Cambridge has been very intense of late, but this time life has decided
to join in with that. For those of you who haven’t heard, I lost my grandmother
last week, and hence the last fortnight hasn’t been easy (as if dealing with an
episode of depression was ever easy). That said, I’m writing to you now on a
train on my way back to the Cambridge bubble after a beautiful funeral. The
never-ending grind that is Cambridge again drives on relentlessly. Anyway,
tomorrow is time to talk day. This is a campaign run by time for change, where
we get people to talk openly about mental health in order to help break the
stigma. Last year I wrote a very personal post on this day. What I am about to
write below is going to be a lot more personal and hence I must warn you now
that it will contain references to alcohol abuse, self-harm and suicidal
ideation. Basically I’m about to lay down the truth of my depression in a way
that maybe 2 people truly know.
Before I start this I want to explain why I’m doing this.
This is a post I’ve been meaning to write for over 1 ½ years but I’ve never had
the staying power to finish. But this is a story I need to tell if I really am
truly going to help do my bit to change the perception of mental health.
Especially, we need to break the stigma about suicide and feeling suicidal.
This is still such a taboo topic, and yet in staying silent we are slowly
seeing the number of people taking their lives increase. This is not something
we can keep hiding away as ‘that thing we don’t talk about’. I’m also telling
this story because at Student Minds Cambridge we are running a campaign ‘Not
Just Five’ with the aim of changing how welfare is dealt with in Cambridge.
There is a lot to be said about this on our facebook page and I won’t repeat it
as this post will be long enough already. Suffice to say, in trying to add my
story of the difficulty I had in Cambridge at my worst, I found it was far too
long for anything but a blog post.
Before I start I must apologise for two things. Firstly, if
you are a close friend of mine and this whole story is new to you, I’m sorry. I
hid behind the realities of my darkness for a long time, and it’s only really
now that I feel like I can talk about how bad it really got. I’m sorry I didn’t
tell you, but maybe when you read below you’ll see why it was so hard for me to
speak about this. Secondly, I’m sorry if this post isn’t the best written. This
is a very personal story so it’s hard for me to structure it nicely and
rationally as the wounds are still very real to me.
So as I return to the bubble I should say that Cambridge is
a place that will also be bittersweet for me. Whilst it has given me some of
the best times of my life, it has also given the darkest, most awful ones too. Whilst
it is now clear that I have been living with some form of depression for most
of my grown life the story of how I realised this and started to make a
difference started in my third year at Cambridge. Up until this point I'd gotten
by in Cambridge, mixing work and fun and having a pretty good time. During
third year I'd decided to trial for the university lightweight rowing club.
This was a long-time dream of mine. In November 2013 it all seemed to be going
pretty well, and on the outside I looked like the guy who had it all. However
not all was as it seemed. It was in the weeks before Christmas, when I was
still in Cambridge for training, that the signs of something not being right
first started to show. Things didn't feel the same as before, I didn't find the
pleasure in things that I used to love doing. Everything was a chore. I knew something
wasn't right, but I kept on going and thought maybe it would get better. In
fact, just 3 days before Trial 8s (the big event of the term) I was so ready to
quit that I’d written the email and was ready to send it to my coach. I decided
to hold off on this until I’d done our test erg (rowing machine test) before
hitting send. It took all of my force of will to drag myself to that erg and to
stick it out. Turns out I set my personal best (ironically in some ways it
remains my PB to this day) and so I deleted the email, saw out the week and
then went home for the break hoping things would get better.
Christmas came and went and I don’t really remember much,
but I seemed to get by. After the break things even seemed to get a bit better.
When I came back to Cambridge I threw myself back into work and rowing. Things
seemed to be much the same as before. I spent most of term being incredibly
tired. The kind of tired that no amount of sleep can fix. The kind that I now
know all too well. Whilst I was still achieving and keeping on top of work
(just), I just found myself feeling at a bit of a loss. I didn’t connect with
things in the same way as before. Life didn’t really feel like it was real. I
kept on going, even as it got harder and harder to do so. All this time I still
looked, from the outside, to be this guy who had it all going for him. I got
really good at putting on a fake smile to hide the numbness that I felt within.
Slowly this started to show in my performance, academically and in sport. I started
to slowly fall behind in work, and I just didn’t have the same resilience in
training. Eventually, at the start of March I was told I was probably going to
be the 9th guy and should prepare to be a spare for the crew. This
wasn’t easy to hear, but after a few days I managed to bounce back up and kept
on training with the other spares, preparing to race the Oxford spares. I still
felt numb, and work was getting more and more of a problem, but I still had a
purpose and a reason to grind on. It was only one month more. Or so I thought.
On Tuesday 11th
March 2014, in week 8 of Cambridge Lent term, I was hit by a car on my way to
lectures and my whole world was thrown into chaos. I remember being incredibly
calm immediately after this happened. I reasoned to myself that it would be
fine, I could rest up for a day and then get back into the rowing. I thought
there was a lot of fuss being made about a simple topple off of my bike. I was
adamant that I didn’t need to go to A&E, but someone still called me an ambulance.
When the crew arrived they got me to try to lift my right arm, and boy did that
hurt. So I reluctantly agreed to go with them to A&E. I was still
incredibly calm, reasoning the pain was just some form of shock. I actually
scared the ambulance team because I was so calm, that with the gas and air my
heart rate was settled at a very low 36. I was just sure all was fine, they
thought I may have bleeding on the brain. Turns out we were both wrong.
When in A&E I was rushed to the X-ray room to check my right
shoulder. I still couldn’t lift it without breaking into tears, but I was still
sure it was nothing. I was sent to a bed to wait and was told I’d hear soon
about what would happen next. I just sat calmly planning how I could move my
schedule to deal with this unexpected set back. It was only 30 minutes later
when the doctor came back to me that I first realised how bad things were. He
told me that I had suffered an acromial-clavicular dissociation. Basically, my
collar bone wasn’t sitting properly with my shoulder blade. He showed me a
mirror, and sure enough, my shoulder had dropped about an inch and my collar
bone was poking out as a big lump on my shoulder. I was then told that it
looked like it could be very severe given the distance that bones had moved so
I would need to wait to see a specialist to see if I needed surgery then and
there. It was about then that I finally realised everything wasn’t okay, and it
was almost as if something broke inside of me. The doctor left and I was there
waiting for about an hour.
The moment the doctor left, I broke out into a huge stream
of tears. Everything that had kept me going for so long was gone and I didn’t
know what was going to happen next. It felt as though the carpet had been
pulled from beneath me. I just sat there crying and crying. Everything I had
been clinging to in order to keep me going was all gone. I couldn’t deal with
it. Eventually the tears stopped, the doctors returned. They decided that the
bones weren’t so awfully mangled so I would be allowed to go home. I would
need to come back in 2 weeks to decide if surgery was still needed or not. I
was sent home and told to take all the paracetamol and ibuprofen I needed to
control the pain. So I went home, and just cried. No one knew about this. I
didn’t really understand why I was crying, but I couldn’t stop. When I finally
stopped I realised that all of my plans for the coming months were all messed
up. I couldn’t see how the future could happen. Nothing felt real to me
anymore. I decided to stop this rumination and just live in the moment. To make
the most of being able to eat and drink what I wanted again. This is what I
would later learn is called maladaptive behaviour.
So here I was, suddenly with so much free time and free to
eat anything I wanted. So I ate all the things. Like seriously, all the things.
I didn’t stop eating. I would be full, and yet I would still eat. I would feel
sick, but that extra mars bar couldn’t be left just as was. People noticed
this, but it was shrugged off as me enjoying myself and having a bit of fun
after all the dieting. I wish I’d realised then just how textbook a symptom of
depression this is. It’s like binge comfort eating, and it’s a now all too
familiar feature of my depression. This continued onwards towards the day of
the lightweight boat race (March 30th 2014). I managed to gain 14kg
in 3 weeks (this is not something I recommend you try doing). Now race day was
a tough day. I watched the guys absolutely smash Oxford, screaming and
cheering, but also unable to stop the floods of tears that I didn’t understand.
Oh, I should mention that as this point I was now out of the
sling that my messed up shoulder needed. I was still in a lot of pain, but I
was told that by some miracle I hadn’t snapped the ligaments that hold my
shoulder together. So I now have a messed up shoulder, where physio has helped
to compensate. But I will forever have a weak shoulder that twinges and hurts
in the cold and when I sleep on right hand side. Not great, but I got off
lightly considering I was run over.
I don’t really remember much of the race day that year. All I
really remember was just how drunk I got, having desperately felt the need to
get a drink in me once the racing was over. This would start to become a habit;
we shall label it maladaptive behaviour 2. This was probably the last time I
was truly sociable and ‘me’ for quite a while following. I vaguely remember
going to watch the heavyweight boat race the next weekend, but I can’t honestly
say I remember much of it. This is another symptom of my personal black dog. I
really, really struggle to hold anything in my memory when I am in episode. If
it wasn’t for google calendar, I have no idea how I’d survive.
Anyway, this all happened in the Easter break. Apart from
the rare outings to watch some racing, I spent most of this break curled up in
bed, either asleep, or virtually comatose, staring blankly at the wall. This is
of course the all too familiar cultural trope of what depression is. Believe
me, it is no fun. I was so bored and yet didn’t have the energy to reach out
even to my phone. I just lay there waiting, hoping something would change. It
was at about this time that it finally dawned on me that something was clearly
not okay. I did a bit of googling and realised a lot of what was going on
seemed like it ticked all of the boxes for depression. Yet somehow, me being as
blind as I was, I convinced myself that I couldn’t be depressed. Why would I
be? I hadn’t lost a family member, nor had a life-changing event (did I forget
getting run over) so why should I be so sad? This is exactly what goes through
the mind of all too many people with depression, believing that they are just
faking it, that somehow other people have ‘real’ depression and that I must
just be pathetic. This is of course wrong, but it’s hard to see things
objectively when you’re in that dark abyss. Somehow in all of this, no-one
really noticed how bad things were. Maybe it was mentioned that I was obviously
tired, maybe a bit ill, but never anything like depression.
At this point I should add that depression is not ‘feeling
sad’. It is perfectly normal to feel sad, we all do at times. Depression is
much, much more than feeling sad. I can’t speak for everyone, but my depression
is much more like numbness. It’s like knowing something should make you feel a
certain emotion, but instead you just feel nothing. There are days when I would
give anything to be sad and be able to cry. At my worst, I just can’t connect
to, nor feel anything about anything. I’m just a husk of a person floating
around, exhausted, emotionless. And what no one tells you is that the worst bit
is the boredom. The lack of any emotion leaves you in this emotionless, numb
limbo. On my worst days I desperately want to want to do something, but instead
I just get frozen wherever I am, unable to find any ability to do anything.
This normally means lying fetal on the floor. I can do this for hours. Just
lying, looking at a wall. There is nothing fun, no glamour; just emptiness.
This is how I was by the time I returned to college to start exam term.
When I came back to Cambridge at the end of Easter (late
April), I was worse yet. I remember this being the first time I wasn’t excited
to return to college. I think mum knew something was wrong when she dropped me
off, but I suspect she was hoping the change in scenery would make things
better. Anyway, I moved back in, and proceeded to spend the next day lying in
bed staring at my ceiling. I knew exams were that term, and that I should be
thinking about my preparation, but there were so far removed from my reality
and thoughts that the whole idea of my degree didn’t seem real. The only thing
that was real was my emptiness, and that was the only thing I could think about
or see in my future. At this point I didn’t see a future, so how I was supposed
to get up and start working was a mystery to me.
The next day I saw my then partner for the first time in a
few weeks. I had been rubbish and completely dropped off of the grid over the
break. In all honesty, sending a message was beyond me at that point so I just
stopped trying. This was obviously not a good thing to do, but at this point I
had lost any connection to the emotions that would make me get up and do
something about this. She told me that we needed to break things off (and I
didn’t nor don’t blame her, I was in no state to be in a relationship). In all
of this I sat silently staring at the floor for 4 hours, finding words too much
of an effort to say. After this was over I returned to mine and crawled back
into bed. I’d maybe said 10 words in all of this. I just wanted to curl up and
go to sleep, never having to wake up.
It was later that day that my now ex, and my roommate,
decided that they couldn’t stand by. They made me call my mum to explain that
something was not right. Under this pressure I did as they asked (thank god
they made me do this, I’m so grateful). I remember the phone call going
something like this:
Are you okay?
No
Do you know what is wrong?
No
Do you know what you need to do to be better?
No
That’s about as much as I can remember, all I remember was
breaking out into tears for the first time in a long time. This was oddly
comforting, but also scary as I still couldn’t feel the emotion that was making
me cry, just that I couldn’t stop. It’s at this point that I will now be more
open about my depression than I ever have before. There was one more detail in
this phonecall.
On the phone mum asked me something to the effect of ‘Do you
want to be dead?’. After a brief moment of thought I realised that yes I did,
so I told mum. This was the first time that everything made sense. All of the
numbness, the inability to see a future. I didn’t see a future, because I no
longer had one, I wanted to be dead. Everything was too much, and I deserved to
die. I know this sounds completely irrational, but in my world that was the
only thing I knew. I knew that the only way everything ended was with my death. This
is the bit of depression we are still too scared to talk about. It’s the
suicidal feelings, and suicide that is the ultimate taboo when it comes to
seeking help. At this point I had no intention of ending my own life, but I
didn’t see a world in which I wasn’t dead within a year. Unsurprisingly, mum
realised that things needed to be done immediately. She promised to come to
Cambridge the next morning and got in touch with my GP. This was on a bank
holiday Monday, so of course the GP was busy the next day. Mum explained what
was going on and how urgent the situation was and sure enough they could fit me
in to see the nurse clinic the next day.
I still have very strong memories of that appointment. I
remember sitting in front of the nurse, barely able to confirm the details she
needed to confirm who I was. I sat, arranged like a limp rag doll in the chair.
Mum sat opposite me and explained everything I had told her the evening before.
The nurse quickly picked up on the obvious symptoms of depression and made it
clear I would need to see a doctor. To determine how urgent it was, she asked
me a very common set of screening questions. To all of these I very gently
nodded, unable to take my eyes off the floor. Eventually she had 2 final
questions. First of all: ‘Do you have thoughts of your death or ending your own
life’. I nodded and the tears began again. I then remember her final question
so vividly. She asked me what she could do to help. I spoke for the first time.
‘I don’t know anymore’. And with that the tears became a full on waterfall and
I just completely broke down. It all hit me at once. I realised just how bad
things were, and that I couldn’t see a way out. The nurse re-assured my mum
that if I came back in 2 hours I would be seen by a doctor and that was that.
Two hours later, we returned, and sure enough a doctor was
ready to see me. He told me he was aware of everything earlier. He told me all
about how many people in Cambridge have issues with anxiety and forms of
depression, or depression-like symptoms. He made me do the NHS screening test
(9 questions every depression-sufferer probably knows by heart). He decided I
had moderate depression and prescribed me a course of 10mg citalopram. He
warned me about the nausea I might have to expect, and that it could make any
thoughts of suicide worse, and said to get in touch if there were any issues.
That was that, seemingly problem solved, he was all done, I was on my way to
recovery. What he didn’t tell me was that the dose he had prescribed me was one
you would normally give to someone to help with anxiety, and for depression you
would normally expect a larger dose. Also it would later turn out he had
decided I was probably just anxious about exams. I still find it amazing that I
turned up to GP surgery saying I was thinking about ending my own life and
somehow ended up with a diagnosis of mild depression/anxiety. Oh and I was
given meds that are known to make suicidal thoughts worse, without a referral
for follow-on care (apart from telling me to sign up at the University Counselling
Service). There are many, many doctors out there who would have asked me to go
on to a psych ward at a hospital, and then would have sectioned me if I had
said no. But apparently I was just a bit worried about the exams that didn’t even
feature in my reality anymore.
This is one of my biggest issues with mental health care in
the UK. GPs are really the front line staff for dealing with mental health
issues, yet my story and countless others, shows how bad this can be. This is
one of the big areas where reform is needed if we really are to achieve ‘parity
of esteem’. The other areas being community care and education. I promise I’ll
stop ranting now and get back to the story.
So here I was, with new medication that I was told would
help. Mum made sure I got something to eat and got me to email my tutor and my
Director of Studies to explain what was going on. My DoS was fantastic and told
me not to worry about work, to get well first and then deal with the
consequences as and when I was ready to. He passed on a subtle message that I
was ill to my supervisors and took care of everything else. My tutor asked to
meet me in the coming days, so I agreed to this. Mum was then happy she had
done all she could so she left me to it. She left hoping that now I had a
diagnosis, I could start to move forward. Even I felt some slight glimmer of
hope that this was the turning point; maybe it didn’t have to always be this
way. The next day I took my first pill, with food as recommended.
I have to say, they did not kid about the nausea. The first
few days were mainly about my crippling nausea. It was like being constantly
punched in the stomach. I reasoned that this was a good sign though, because it
meant that the pills were obviously having some kind of effect. During all of
this I met with my tutor. He told me he could put in a warning for my exams to
explain what was going on and that was the best way to go (as far as I am aware
no such thing actually formally exists in Cambridge). I believed him so set
about trying to focus on breaking out of the darkness and to move forward,
agreeing to come back to see him in a week or two. It all sounded so simple,
all I had to do was get better.
ALL I had to do was get better. As it turns out, this is not
an easy thing. What instead happened was that I started to have incredibly
erratic sleeping patterns. This is of course a side-effect of the medication.
Up until this point I had been sleeping a lot, but at normal times. Now I still
needed about 12 hours of sleep a day, but when I went to bed I could not go to sleep.
The thoughts inside my head wouldn’t shut up. I would lie awake for hours and
hours until exhaustion finally forced me to pass out. I know how this sounds,
like the cliché of depression. I was this empty, numb shell who was tortured by
my thoughts. How artistic and poetic.
NO
OH HELL NO
This is not what the media make it out to be. This is not
something to be craved, something edgy and artistic. This is pure and utter
hell. I am lying awake until 5 am every night. I have no ability to feel
emotions. The only thing that is real in my life right now is the voice that won’t
stop saying ‘I hate myself and I want to die’. It doesn’t shut up, it’s the entirety
of my existence right now. I have to make it stop. I can’t cope. It has to shut
up.
At this point I would say this is about to get very, very
personal. I need to warn you that the below contains my suicidal thoughts and
plans for my suicide as well as self harm. If this is something that will
trigger you, please skip ahead or stop reading. It’s really not easy reading,
so please do stop now if you don’t feel comfortable.
Eventually, about a week after starting my medication I find
ways to at least quiet this endless self-hatred loop. I start to drink every
evening. By the time I am alone with just my thoughts, I’m drunk enough to pass
out and sleep through to the next day. This seems to work (cf maladaptive behaviour
2). The thing is, each day it takes more alcohol for this to work. And of
course, alcohol is a depressive substance, so it only makes the feelings of
hopelessness worse. This is when I first realise that I actively want my life
to end. I no longer have a passive acceptance that if I died I’d be okay with
that. Now I want this to end. It’s the only way I can see out at this point.
The pills haven’t made anything better, everything is worse. I start to make
plans. I work out a list of who I need to leave notes for and what I need to
say to them. I think long and hard about how and where I can do it in order
that it will work but that I minimise the effect on other people (because I don’t
want my death to ruin someone else’s). Oddly enough this thought chain seems to
calm the voices. I quickly come to learn that this is the most effective
technique yet. I finally feel like I have some control again.
The only problem with this is that it’s not a permanent
solution. A few days go by, the cycle of drinking gets worse and worse. I still
can’t sleep, but at least I now have a way to control the thoughts in my head,
even a little. But soon enough this isn’t enough. By this point I’m drinking a
bottle of spirits a night. This is not healthy, but I can’t stop. One evening I
realise that maybe pain is what I need to shut my thoughts up. Now they are
telling me that I should go through with my plan, so planning my suicide is no
longer effective. I’ll spare you the details, but
suffice to say that self-harm is not
glamorous, it’s not edgy, it’s something I did to myself to try to escape the
scariest thoughts I’ve ever had in my life and I still wish to this day that I'd never let myself start.
The thing is, even this wasn’t enough in the end. I found,
just like the alcohol, the self-harm only got worse and worse every night, but
the voice telling me to go out and kill myself didn’t go away. This all came to
a head a couple of nights later. This particular night I had already drunk a
whole bottle of Jack Daniels, and I had already been at it with self-harms. But
come 5:30 in the morning, the voice was louder than ever before. I desperately
wanted to end my life. At the point I was the most determined I’d ever been. Forget
my plan, I had to do this now. I had the means. I was so alone. I was ready. But something deep within made me
pause just before the last step. To this day, I don’t know why, but
apparently I picked up the phone to home. And Dad answered. And thank God. I
don’t know what could have been, and the thought scares me, but it didn’t
happen.
The next thing I remember was being woken up by mum the
following morning. Somehow I’d ended up in my bed. I was in a state. There was
evidence of my drinking around my room. I still hate that mum had to see this.
But am I glad she came to get me. She took me home because it was clear I
couldn’t be left on my own. I’m so glad that my parents understood that the
worst thing at that time was to put me in a psych ward. Instead they kept me at
home, stopped me from being able to drink or harm myself. They got back in
touch with the doctor and got me onto a proper course of anti-depressants to see
what that might be able to do.
Eventually, after about a week, my parents decided I was
ready to go back to college. This seemed like the best way for me to start
moving forwards. As I came back, exams were still not in my reality, but at
least the voices telling me to end my life were gone. I emailed my tutor to
explain all of this. He re-assured me that all was in hand and even offered me
space to work in his office if that would help (I’m not sure he understood the
reality in which I found myself). It’s at this point that a great story would
close with how magically everything got better and I got my starred first and
all was well in the world.
The reality of recovery is nothing like this. Not long after
I got back I had my first appointment with the University Counselling Service.
My counsellor was fantastic and was a huge part of my eventual recovery.
However, it was through reporting my experiences to her that my path to
recovery took a worrying detour. For the first week or so of being back in
college I ended up drinking and self-harming again. This time it was less
serious than before (as if it is ever not serious), but I think it was more of
a gentle (albeit flawed) coping mechanism as my ability to feel emotions
started to return. I was finally able to start to connect to my world again.
This should have been the end of it. It wasn’t.
What happened next was that I went to the opposite extreme
very quickly. Suddenly the world was so vibrant, and things so amazing. I could
hardly deal with it all. I had rushing thoughts that I couldn’t keep up with.
My brain started to fire on a thousand cylinders. I didn’t need sleep (averaging
about 3 hours a night) nor did I need to eat. I was invincible and had to do
all the things (well apart from the things I actually had to do, ie revise).
This phase thankfully only lasted for a few days. This was a huge relief to
just about everyone close to me (and especially my counsellor).
‘But why does that matter?’ you ask. Well, what I have just
described is what is often referred to as a hypomanic episode (had it lasted
longer and not been a reaction to medication). This would have led to me having
an altered diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder. This was a particular worry given a
family history means I am at an increased risk of having such a disorder. Lucky
for me this particular episode could be chalked up to my medication finally
kicking in. In the end I finally settled down and was able to focus on work
about a week before my exams. I ended up being able to do a couple of hours of
focused work a day and managed to sit my exams. I got a 2.2 somehow, and
because of a whole bunch of reasons I ended up taking a year out of uni, but
that’s for another post. The real message here is that it can be scary to have
a mental breakdown like mine, but that it can and will get better. I’m hardly
great at the moment, but that’s the nature of my condition (I now officially
have major depressive disorder as I have recurrent episodes of depression).
I hope you found my story uplifting by the end. But I really
just want to stress that recovery is not something that just happens overnight,
nor is it a smooth ride. Recovery is also not something you can just make
happen, no matter how much you want it to. Recovery will not be easy, but it
will happen. We need to open up about when we aren’t okay, because only by
having those discussions (or making those phonecalls) can we stop things before
they get to a point where we can’t come back.
Only when we can be open and talk about things like suicidal
thoughts can we truly start to heal things. Luckily my physical scars are, for
the most part, healed, but I will carry the mental scars with me for life. It’s
by breaking the silence that we can give people the room to get the help they
need. SO please, I urge you, have these conversations. The silence has claimed
far too many lives, don’t let it take any more. It’s time for change.
It’s time to talk
