Paralysed in the South American jungle waiting to be eaten by cannibalistic ants

So, life’s been pretty shitty lately.  The project that was going to save my bacon vanished into thin air and then the back-up plan obviously figured that looked like jolly fun and promptly followed suit.  My body decided this would be a good time to throw a hissy fit so exercising, my usual happy place, was a no-go area.  The kitchen ceiling is leaking.  The dog bit me (again).  And, to cap it all, one of my eyebrows decided to emulate Denis Healey’s.

But, worst of all, I lost my spiritual mojo.  Gone. Vanished (probably following the money). Effed off.  And I found myself…bereft.  No, not bereft, because that implies a depth of feeling that I simply couldn’t feel.  Numb. Empty. Blank.  Not comfortably numb – not blissfully distracted; but numb in the way I imagine one might feel if one became paralysed from eating wild honey in the South American jungle and were awaiting death by cannibalistic ants.  Did any of you ever read that story, by Horacio Quiroga?  No, thought not.  J

You know me…I love to meditate, to hike into the universe, to shimmy my chakras, to walk through the woods and go, ‘Ooh, look!’ imagining oneness with leaf and stone, finding supposed meaning and synchronicity and surprise and wonder.  And, instead…meh.  Nada.  Just the numbness and that sense of waiting for ants.  An eternity of ants.

And the mind starts mocking…well, aren’t you the prize numpty?  So bloody arrogant with your fine spirituality and…for what?  You have burned your bridges with the mundane, the ordinary, the everyday and you are left with…nothing.  A cosmic joke?  Except there’s nobody playing it on you except yourself.  All your worldly ambitions seem…stupid, childish, pathetic.  And all your spiritual ambitions seem…boring.  There is just a creeping apathy that spreads over your will.  

I’ve been here before, of course.  But before I’d have been racing through that jungle, stumbling over lianas, flinching at giant spiders.  Or I’d have been violently sobbing into some innocent pond or flailing my puny fists at a bemused bystanding tree.  I’ve never been quite so numb. 

So, what do you do?  Well, I suppose everyone finds their own way but I have been doing…nothing really.  Just reading mindless books and watching mindless TV and drinking wine and eating toast mindlessly. And sleeping. Lots and lots of sleeping. And then more sleeping. Mindless sleeping.  And laughing my head off at really deeply silly things on the Internet.  And I have been avoiding people who would, I know, offer well-meaning solutions. And yes, there are tons of people in far worse situations. And yes, one can live moment by moment, in the Now, being terribly Zen about it but really…(and yes, of course, nothing is real except when one feels it) there are no easy pat solutions. No Battersea Dogs' Home for Lost Psyches. And that word…solution…made me think about chemistry which made me think about…well, Breaking Bad actually…(and isn’t that a bleakly mesmerising series?) but then it made me think about alchemy and it occurred to me that one could - at a push - think of this state as a kind of fermentation. 

And if it is fermentation (and not just a common or garden state of depression brought on by being a washed up fifty-something with a sagging jawline) then the next stage should be sublimation, followed by radiation.  Well…beam me up, Scottie. 

Just more mind games probably but still...What else can you do, right?  

Btw, I'm still sort of fermenting (thank you kindly) so any suggestions for good mindless (as opposed to bad mindless -  you get the distinction, right?) TV series or movies or books are welcomed.  Along with any funny mindless Internet thingies...

Oh, and if you're wondering...yes, of course a fermenting fifty-something woman can still be a holistic hero! For pity's sake (if nothing else) - do vote for me...see right for the voting button thingy. 

Stories told in the body

It’s been a strange week.  A lot of sadness, a fair amount of anger, a few laughs, many tears, and a few moments that were totally madly surreal. 

I clocked up a few firsts this week, like doing push-ups and shuttle runs in church, having my arse appear in the media (twice on one page), sharing a bath with a photographer on a ladder  and giving Liz Jones feature ideas. 

But above all, one encounter stuck in my mind.  Yesterday I drove down to Minehead to the college.  The omens weren’t good.  Solitary magpies kept flying across my path and my head jumped into my mouth (interesting typo there) when a blackbird (male) suddenly flew right out and under the car, like he was hurling himself into oblivion.

I couldn’t really afford a makeover (even at the college’s crazy low prices) but I figured what the hell? I’m off to London for a week and I don’t want to scare the horses.  So I looked at Visa, raised my (unshapely shaggy) eyebrow and said ‘You up for it?’ And Visa winked.  So lovely Charlotte gave me a facial and a massage and then we howled with laughter as she rolled up her sleeves and attacked my bodily hair.

‘I’ve become obsessed with my right armpit,’ I told her. ‘I mean, look at it! The photographer yesterday said you’d have to trim it before you waxed it.’

‘Actually, I think I might,’ she said, with awe.  ‘That’s a first. Unless you want it plaited of course.’

‘With beads?’ I said with a grin. Then sighed. ‘Honestly, I don’t care. I’m in your hands – do with me as you wish!’  Her eyes gleamed. The little sadist.

But then, funny thing.  They had to switch people around and it transpired someone else was going to do my tinting and manicure.  And this ghost came in and started silently fixing my eyelashes. And my antennae went up; there was something there.  At first I thought it was typical teenage ‘can’t be arsedness’ but then I stopped thinking and started feeling – and the feeling was utter total desolation, way beyond sadness.

When we moved from the couch to a table for her to fix my manky hands, I got to look at her and she was the most beautiful girl ever. A pure pixie with a heart-shaped face, almond eyes and a short dark crop.  ‘I like your hair,’ I said softly, to break the silence. ‘I used to have mine like that when I was young.’ 

‘Well, it’s easy,’ she shrugged.   Oh, that sadness again.  Waves of it.  The ‘I don’t care about no nothing’ feeling. I resolved to ask Charlotte about her story when I saw her next – because there was a story, I just knew it.

But I didn’t need to.  ‘Do you think stress and sadness can cause physical illness?’ she said quietly after a while.  And slowly, so slowly, it came out.  Her father had died a few months ago.  And she was in the dark dark place.  The angry and sad and hurting place.  One I know all too well.  So I listened.  And listened.  And listened.

She said she didn’t talk about it.  Just tried not to think.  But that her body was shouting and screaming – in a million and one ways.  I didn’t tell her what to do – how could I?  But it seemed to me that she came to a fair few conclusions of her own during our hour together.  

No big farewell. No demonstrative hugs. Just a quick shy look. But she touched me. And, who knows, maybe I touched her.  

What doctors don't tell you...

Remember Accutane (Roaccutane), the treatment for acne? In 2001 it was selling in its billions. It seemed like a miracle cure. But not for everyone. The father of a young man who’d committed suicide after taking Accutane approached Dr Doug Bremner, Professor of Psychiatry and Radiology at Emory University in the US.  He asked if there could be a link between the drug and severe depression. Dr Bremner investigated and found that, yes, the drug did indeed have an effect on the brain and could cause depression, so severe that it could lead to suicide or psychosis, in some people.

‘For those who suffered from extreme scarring acne it was something of a miraculous treatment,’ says Dr Bremner. ‘However the evidence started to mount that for others it was a death sentence.  Over the next few years it was estimated that between 300 and 3,000 young people on Accutane had either committed suicide or killed others.’

I met Doug Bremner on the writing website Authonomy.  I read his book, The Goose that Laid the Golden Egg about the Accutane case and how he played a key role in having the drug withdrawn from the US market, not just for its potentially depressive effects but also because it seemed it could cause birth defects and stunt growth.  I remember him being harassed and harried for his brave stance – taking on the might of a vast pharmaceutical giant takes one helluva lot of guts.

It touched a chord with me as I have always been concerned about the way pharmaceutical companies rule the medical industry.  So I asked Doug if he would answer some questions and he kindly agreed.  If you’re remotely concerned about your health (and particularly if you have children) do read through and follow the links - you might like to buy his books too. It's a long post but it's important. You simply can’t stick your head in the sand over this stuff – and, sadly, your doctor won’t always give you all the information you need.

EJ: Your first book was Before you take that Pill: Why the drug industry may be bad for your health.  Which drugs cause you the most concern? Which should we be wary of taking?

DB: The drug I get the most negative feedback on from patients is isotretinoin (Roaccutane in the UK, Accutane in the US until it was taken off the market in 2009 and is now sold as generic isotretinoin). This drug can cause depression, suicide, psychosis, mania, irritable bowel syndrome, cognitive problems, sexual dysfunction, and a range of other problems. At its peak 80% of people on it were taking it for non-cystic acne, i.e. acne that would not lead to scarring. I recommend using retinol cream first (not much is taken into the bloodstream) and using Roaccutane as a last resort and then at doses half of the recommended dose.

EJ: That’s damn scary – and good advice. Any others?

DB: The antibiotics in the fluoroquinolone group like ciprofloxacin (Ciproxin in the UK and Cipro in the US) and levofloxacin (called Tavanic in the UK and Levaquin in the US) can have some pretty nasty side effects. They are used incorrectly in 81% of cases, usually in the form of an overkill form of first line treatment for urinary tract infections in women. These drugs can cause cartilage and tendon damage which can lead to a snapping of tendons. If you are a runner you should exercise extra caution. I also get a lot of feedback that they cause strange psychological and neurological symptoms and can interact with withdrawal from psychiatric medications like benzodiazepines.

The third drug I have gotten the most feedback about is the birth control pill or oral contraceptive (OCP) Yaz or Yasmin, also known as Janya in the UK (generic is drospirenone and ethinylestradiol) which is associated with psychiatric side effects like mood swings and depression. All of the OCPs can do this but this one seems to be particularly problematic. I recommend using an IUD or other form of birth control, because I do not think it is natural to flatten out a woman's monthly variation in sex hormones estrogen and progesterone.

EJ: The pharmaceutical business is a vast moneymaking machine. Reps target GPs in the hopes they will use their products.  How can we be sure our doctors are giving us the right medication? 

DB: I think consumers should educate themselves about their medications. That is why I wrote my 'Pill' book. I have heard from a number of people who said that having the book around literally saved someone's life when they realized a problem was related to a med the person was on. I also think patients have the right to ask physicians to give full disclosure about any money they receive from the pharmaceutical industry, whether it is payment to give talks or be in studies or free meals or gifts. Many "studies" are actually marketing campaigns to pull in doctors to a new brand of medication-- the industry calls them "seed studies".

EJ: I agree. Any suggestions as to what we should do, as ‘patients’ when we’re prescribed a drug?  I assume you’re not saying we should avoid all medication?

DB: No, of course not. I prescribe medication myself. I'm just saying to educate yourself, don't passively rely on your doctor. That way you can avoid unecessary medications and recognize bad interactions within yourself. Remember that 400 years ago Paracelsus basically said that the goal of medication treatment is to offset the negative side effects with positive outcomes.

EJ: A lot of us go online to check out health conditions and medication. But there is simply so much information out there and it’s easy to become confused and lost. Any sites you recommend?

DB: Studies show that over half of medical websites contain misinformation (including one we did on websites about psychological trauma and mental health). I have a couple of hundred articles on my website and on ezine 

I also recommend community forums like medications.com because that is a great way to find out if other people are suffering from similar side effects. Sometimes the medical community takes a while to catch up to what patients are telling them.

EJ: You also target vitamins and supplements. What are your major concerns? Should we not take these products?

DB: I am not against all vitamins and supplements. Many supplements are beneficial for a variety of conditions and women and vegetarians, in particular, could benefit from a well-balanced multi. The main vitamin I am concerned about is mega-doses of Vitamin A, since it can lead to thinning of the bones and does not prevent cancer, in fact it may increase the risk in smokers. My main point is they can have side effects just like prescription medications can -- they should not be considered risk free.

EJ:  In the UK, there is a strong move towards regulating natural medicines – herbs, homeopathic preparations etc. What are your feelings about that?  Is it sensible or is it a case of the pharmaceutical companies not liking us taking medicine into our own hands, potentially taking away business from them?

DB: In general I am not in favor of increasing government regulation. If you grow catnip in your garden do you need government inspections? A possible exception might be a supplement like the weight loss aid Ephedrine which has been linked to sudden deaths.

EJ: A lot of my readers have young children. What concerns should they have? What particular advice would you give?

DB: A lot of children get ear infections and antibiotics are overused as in many cases the infection is not a result of bacteria, and even if it is, a "wait and see" approach will lead to resolution.  Antibiotics at best reduce by one day the time period of the infection. "Wait and see" has been shown in research studies to be the best approach since it avoids bacterial resistance which can increase the number of subsequent infections. Wait and see involves giving tylenol or aspirin for fever and using topical medicine for pain relief.

I also am concerned about the over-extension of vaccines, especially Gardasil and flu shots.
Another big problem, especially in the US, is overuse of antipsychotic medication in small chilren.
You can see a link to my posts about medications in children here.

EJ: Going back to your books, I was amazed at how personal your accounts are. The Goose that Laid the Golden Egg is certainly not a dry medical read – it’s as much about you, and your search for your family and identity, as about your battle with the pharmaceutical giant, Hoffman-La Roche. Why is that?

DB: I had an agent (who later died) who warned me that some people might not like the "two story thread" of the book, and in fact the people who didn't like it complained about the personal part of the story. In fact it made some people very uncomfortable. For me it was a story about honesty and emotional integrity, and for me coming clean about my past was very tied in with coming clean about the risks of a particular medication (ie Accutane). In both cases not doing so could be potentially lethal.

When I wrote it, it was also a time when a lot of stuff was coming out about what is essentially the corruption of leaders in academic psychiatry (which is where I do my "day job") by the pharmaceutical industry, and I felt like I wanted to make a clean sweep. In summary, if you are looking for a knight on a white horse story, this isn't for you, but it is a more accurate description of what it is like to be in my shoes, and there are a lot of other people out there like me.

EJ: You talk, towards the end of the book about alternative forms of healing. Do you now favour an integrated approach to healing? 

DB: I think people take the spiritual part out of healing and recovery at their own peril. We don't fully know how or why people get better. Our own treatment studies for PTSD these days are focusing on effects of meditation training and a program for promotion of mind and body. I personally have used acupuncture and found it helpful.

EJ: I remember from Authonomy that you had a lot of persecution from the pharmaceutical industry. Is that continuing?  Any thoughts on how we might get away from this situation whereby our health is being potentially comprised by big business (supported by government)?

DB: Not so much since Accutane was taken off the American market in 2009. They've moved on to other big money makers that I am not called as an expert on. I think the US court system is out of control in terms of drug litigation. They are allowed to spend way too much time and money trying to discredit experts against them. Also, sunlight is the best disinfectant, that is why I came out and wrote openly about what happened, while in the beginning I mostly kept it to myself.

EJ: What’s next for Doug Bremner? Any more books in the pipeline? Where are you in professional terms? Hopes for the future?

DB: Since the 'Goose' book I have been writing screenplays and one of them called 'Catania' (about five Italian sisters who return to their home to divide the family art and furniture) got to the quarterfinals of the PAGE competition for screenwriters in 2011. I am planning on producing that as a film with my daughter this summer. I am currently working on a novel called 'Hearts" about a cardiac surgeon who can fix other people's hearts but not his own (being posted on twitter @heartnovel, my twitter name is @dougbremner). I just sort of move to whatever interests me, but am not ready to give up my day job, which is as a psychiatrist and researcher in the area of posttraumatic stress disorder in women abused in childhood and in returning soldiers from Iraq.

EJ:  Good to hear all that and huge good luck. Before you go, could you give us your top ten tips for maintaining good health?

DB:  Sure.

1.      Don't smoke

2.      Drink in moderation (or not at all if you choose)

3.      Cook your own meals and grow your own fruits and vegetables, if possible

4.      Eat fish at least once per week.  It’s more about lessening reliance on red meat. Vegetarians should be fine – gaining protein from beans, pulses, nuts, seeds.

5.      Exercise more than three times a week (even if just brisk walking)

6.      Practice stress reduction (yoga, meditation, etc)

7.      Know everything you can about your prescription medications

8.      Have supportive and nurturing relationships

9.      Use psychotherapy if you have depression or anxiety or unresolved issues from the past

10.  Get your blood pressure checked

I'm tempted to add make your own beer and wine (which I do) since I saw your husband is a beer writer

JA: Ah, that takes me back to childhood, when my parents made their own beer and wine. My husband just likes to drink the stuff! J  Huge thanks, Doug…

Okay, so there you have it…for more detailed information on all this, do buy Doug’s books..and check out his website and blog.

Breaking the Silence

I haven’t done one of my ‘favourite blog’ posts for absolutely ages but when I saw this new one I had to do whatever I could to push people its way. The blog is called Breaking the Silence and it’s important.
Breaking the Silence is different in that it isn’t written by one person. It doesn’t have gorgeous artwork or stunning pictures (and hellfire I’m a sucker for those). But this is a blog that, in my humble estimation, really needs to be read. It’s about mental illness. But not dull statistics and worthy doctors spouting research. This isn’t about numbers (though those are frightening – one in four people suffer from some form on mental illness), it’s about people. People like you and me telling their stories. They’re doing it in an attempt to stop the stigma that still exists around mental health issues.
As many of you know I battle the black dog. I had a bad bout of post-natal depression and then a few other bouts of general ‘what IS the point’ depression. I’ve recently come off medication and hoping I can keep my head above water.
Do read the blog: follow it, tell people about it. Together we can shift the way society feels about us – yes, a large number of us.

To give you a taster, I’m including here one story from the blog, written by a wonderful woman in New York City who has become a good online friend. Janine Crowley Haynes is a stunning writer and I have to say that when I first read her book My Kind of Crazy, I ended up with tears pouring down my face. Having said that, at other times she had me laughing out loud. My Kind of Crazy is self-published so you can buy it – but if you know an agent or publisher who’d like to take it mainstream, do please get in touch with Janine.


THE following article was written by Janine for the women's writing community Judith's Room. Here are her words.

"I AM crazy.
There, I said it.
This is the opening line in my book. Now, I know it's not politically correct to use the term crazy when referring to someone with a mental illness, but I wear the label like a badge of honor.
I feel I've earned it. The first commandment in writing is: Write what you know. Well, I know crazy. My kind of crazy is known as bipolar disorder.
I was diagnosed fifteen years ago. Within that time, I've experienced relentless cycles of severe mood swings and psychotic episodes. I've been committed to a psych ward more times than I can count. I've been treated by various doctors and have been on countless medication regimens.

During my last episode, I sank to a new depth — I attempted suicide. I swallowed a bunch of pills to put myself out of the never-ending misery which had become my life.
This all sounds so depressing, right? Not really.
There are lessons to be learned when one is diagnosed as crazy.
I also inject humor into my story to help wash down the jagged little pill of mental illness. In fact, I believe that one must embrace their inner-craziness in order to heal, evolve, and move forward to help change the perception of mental illness and dismantle the stigma.
Just like any other organ, when the brain gets sick, it exhibits symptoms and should be managed and treated. I began writing as a form of therapy to work through the enormous guilt I felt over my suicide attempt. I decided to share my writings via email with close friends and family.
The feedback was amazing. They kept asking for more, and I obliged. I took them on a journey inside the locked psych ward and gave them a taste of what it's like to be crazy. Sharing my experience, through writing, has been therapeutic for all of us.
Writing is an effective way be heard without being interrupted. By opening up via email, a flurry of cyber-dialogue ensued. It helped us laugh and cry. It healed emotional wounds. It humbled me to receive such an outpouring of love and forgiveness. Little did I know my scribble would later turn into chapters of a book.
My doctor suggested I convert my manuscript into book formation so he could circulate it amongst patients and staff members of the hospital. At first, I went the traditional route of seeking out literary agents, sending query letters, researching publishers, etc.

It wasn't long before I learned that if you're not a doctor, celebrity or a well-known anybody, it's virtually impossible to have a memoir published. So, I chose to self-publish. Self-publishing is not for everyone, but it served my purpose. I wanted to get my message out and did not want to wait around for the next-to-impossible publishing contract. From start to finish, it took me a total of six months to turn it into a book. I then listed it on Amazon.com.

What followed was a strange and beautiful outcropping. Psychology professors now are using my book in their classes. I'm guest speaking for mental health organizations. My book rests on a library shelf in the psychiatric hospital where I used to be a patient and am now a volunteer.
Recently, My Kind of Crazy was chosen as an Honorable Mention in the Writer's Digest 17th Annual International Self-Published Book Awards. And, strangely enough, a Hollywood producer read my script based on my book and is interested. I guess you can say this is crazy at its best.

On the 17th day of March 2005, I attempted to take my life. Through writing (and, of course, staying on my meds), I found a way to turn my darkest day into light and shed that light on dismantling the stigma attached to mental illness. Like so many, I suffered in silence, but, today, I am out of the “crazy closet” in a major way. Yes, I am bipolar, but I no longer allow my disorder define me. I define it for all who will listen to my tale."

Thank you, Liz Jones

Back to school. Eventually the interminable summer holidays ended and James returned for his last year at primary school. Trousers too long and baggy, hair amazingly neat after the wild mop of summer. New bag, new pencil-case, new school shoes, new (well, new to him) blazer.
Of course the sun came out and laughed at us. It always does.
I’ll miss summer: the lie-ins, louche time-keeping followed by late nights to hit looming deadlines; sitting by the river watching the boys bodyboarding down the Barle while we sip Moscow Mules; dashing off to the beach at the faintest hint of sun. But I also love September, that crisp new start.
New Year doesn’t really do it for me but Autumn ticks all the boxes for a fresh beginning. And it does feel like that, this year, it really does.

As regular readers know, it’s been a tough year, following on ten tough years, if I’m honest. When mum died in December, I plunged into yet another depression and the world felt very bleak indeed. If I’m brutally honest, there were days when there just didn’t seem any point to anything and only the thought of my little family kept me going.

But now it feels as if I’m slowly, cautiously, emerging from the sludge. My detox has segued into healthy eating (rather than binge retoxing) and I’m planning to get back to aerobics, fitball and circuit training. I’ve been playing squash again and, while I’m hopelessly unfit, it’s huge fun. I’m going to get sociable and have friends round again (I’ve neglected them for far too long). Above all, I’m going to get everything in perspective and be grateful for everything I’ve got.

Two events really rammed the message home in the last week. Firstly a good friend told me she was going into hospital for what would be a life-saving operation. If she didn’t have it, she would be dead by the end of October. Now that really does concentrate the mind.
Secondly, and I barely like to put the two people on the same page, let alone paragraph, I recorded Woman’s Hour in a head-to-head with the Daily Mail writer Liz Jones. To cut a long and exceedingly boring story short, I had written about LJ in the Telegraph in response to her columns in which she kept running down Exmoor. Apparently we’re a bloodthirsty lot; our farmers are negligent; our men are toothless and decrepit; our teenagers are feral; our pubs are crap and the people who work in the local Co-op all have special needs. I suggested that maybe this wasn’t the most tactful way to ease oneself into rural life. Liz objected, implying she was singlehandedly supporting our local economy with her expensive lifestyle and we should be damn grateful. So we went on Radio 4 to debate how best to make the shift from city to country.

It was supposed to go out live but the producer said that, having spoken to Liz Jones the day before, they would have to pre-record as Jones was seemingly incapable of keeping calm and holding a rational conversation when it came to me.
Sure enough a large part of the recording was unusable as Liz just ranted and poor Jane Garvey could not stop her for love nor money. Most of it was just silly, such as asking why, if I cared about Exmoor, I didn’t employ twelve full-time builders (er, because I can’t afford to). But one point was really interesting.
‘I’m the best thing that’s happened to you in ten years, aren’t I Jane?’ she spat.
At the time I was so flabbergasted I couldn’t have replied, even had she given me the opportunity.
But it made me think. What IS the best thing that’s happened to me in the past ten years? My son, James, is the obvious first answer. Followed by moving to Dulverton. Followed by meeting and becoming friends with some fabulous people. Yes, I suppose I should include Asbo Jack and the mad, crazy, still half-finished Bonkers House. And the fact that I still love my husband to pieces and have a hugely happy marriage (even if he does bore for Britain on the joys of beer).

And, at that point, I felt sorry for Liz Jones, I really did. Poor little rich girl who says she has spent £400,000 on clothes, who has a drop-dead gorgeous farmhouse (albeit NOT on the moor where she claims it is) and feels the need to preface every household and item of clothing with a designer name. I suppose she thought that going on Woman’s Hour was the pinnacle of my career but, to be honest, I work to live rather than live to work. My career is certainly low-key nowadays but that’s the way I rather like it. I’ve done the newspapers and the glossy mags, I’ve sat at fashion shows and been flown first-class and interviewed rock stars. I’ve been on TV and radio. It was fun at the time, it was a hoot but it was just a job (albeit a very privileged one). Would I want to do it now? No, I wouldn’t, because it would mean being away from my home and my family.

She doesn’t have that. I know you will say it’s her own fault; that if she stopped writing about everyone she meets and didn’t dismiss everyone who isn’t gorgeous and rich and young and vegan, then she could probably find happiness (and even a man) relatively easily. But I still think it’s sad.

So, back at the Bonkers House, I’m counting my blessings on this lovely autumn day. Would I change my life for all Liz’s trappings of wealth? Would I want to see my face plastered over the dailies? No, not in a month of Sundays. Would I even want to be that thin (had to think about that one for a moment but, um, well, not if it meant cosmetic surgery and a vegan diet). She’s certainly not the best thing that’s happened to me but she has reminded me very forcefully of what the best things really are.

So, for that, thank you Liz.

Neck-deep in sludge

Riddle me this. How come I’m on antidepressants and yet I’m still revoltingly depressed? It’s been two months now and I still feel as if I’m neck deep in a monochrome swamp. Thinking is an effort, even breathing is tough – every so often I realise I have been living on the shallowest whispers of air and have to take a huge gasp. There’s a fog in my head and my limbs feel like lead. My immune system has taken a crash and so the weird palindromic rheumatism I suffer has returned and is proliferating, a bit like a Russian vine, thrusting shoots all over my body so everything aches. I just get rid of one pus-laden spot and another one appears. On my face of course.
I sit at my desk, day after day, and watch my life passing by and just want to shake myself. I try all the old tricks – thinking of things to be grateful for; remembering all those who are far, FAR worse off than I am; taking it moment by moment. But sometimes I could slap the people who write the self-help books (and that would include me – the irony doesn’t escape me). Every night I go to bed and think that ‘tomorrow I’ll be OK. Tomorrow will be different. Tomorrow I will get my act together and get my life back on the road.’ Then tomorrow comes and the day passes and every evening is a fresh failure.

‘Don’t be so tough on yourself,’ people say. They point out that my mother died just six months’ ago (it seems like yesterday) and that the last few years have been extraordinarily tough on many counts. But the brutal truth is that I can’t afford to lie on the sofa and stare at the ceiling (as I would dearly love to do).
‘Oh, don’t fret. Everyone’s on happy pills,’ says a mother at the school gate, bright as a button, neat as a pin (swirling around managing a family and two jobs AND fund raising AND looking gorgeous).
‘Even you?’
‘Yup, even me.’
Yet hers are obviously having the desired effect and mine aren’t.

My doctor phoned up the other day.
‘Hello,’ he said, brightly.
‘Hello,’ said I, bleakly.
Pause.
‘How can I help you?’
Eh?
‘Er, I don’t know.’
‘Well, were you phoning about your results?’
‘I didn’t phone you.’
‘Oh.’
He sounded a bit disgruntled.
‘Well, your liver is fine.’
‘Great. Back on the booze then?’
‘Ha ha ha. Your chest x-ray showed up a little abnormality so we’ll get another one done. I don’t think it’s anything to worry about though.’
‘Oh. Good.’
‘Anything else?’ Still acting like I’d called him.
‘Well, I’m still not feeling great. Pretty grim really.’
‘You’re better than you were.’
Well, true. If not bursting into tears all the time is better. Now I don’t cry but I’m not sure that’s particularly healthy either. Grief has to go somewhere and if you squash it down it lays heavy on the heart.

Instead of crying, I read. All I really want to do is curl up in bed, or in a chair by the window, or lie on the sofa and lose myself in other people’s words and worlds. There is nothing as comforting as a good book and this last fortnight I have read some absolute stunners.

A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz – which took me right out of myself (a good place to be) and had me marvelling at his imagination and dark humour and use of language. So effortless. So sublime.

Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh – backdrop the Opium Wars, cast a motley crew. Again, the language is remarkable (if sometimes difficult – a glossary would be useful) – an epic of a book (the next two instalments eagerly awaited).

The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry – a 100-year old Irish woman details her pitifully harrowing life, alongside the testimony of her psychiatrist. I struggled with this to start with – and soon realised that its themes of memory, motherhood and betrayal touched particular chords.

I’ve now started Philip Hensher’s The Northern Clemency (yes, I’m working my way through the Booker shortlist) and holding out great hopes for it. He was one of my tutors on the Arvon course I went on and just fabulous – funny, generous, scary, inspiring. If you haven’t read The Mulberry Empire, grab a copy and give yourself a treat.

I was also sent review copies of a couple of books in the Sookie Stackhouse vampire series by Charlaine Harris (Dead Until Dark is the opener). It seems our appetite for sexy vampires isn’t remotely sated – though don’t expect the dreamy teen landscape of Twilight – it’s far more earthy and tongue-in-cheek, with a bit of crime plot to boot. I rather like the calm matter-of-fact way that Harris handles her alternative reality. Vampires have ‘come out’ and some try to rub along with humans (drinking synthetic blood and keeping their fangs to themselves). The heroine (a small town waitress) has her own ‘disability’ (she can read minds) and it soon transpires that half the town is ‘different’ in one way or another. Total nonsense of course but huge fun and wildly undemanding.

So I sit and read, or lie and read, and let the housework go hang, let everything go hang. Presumably I will surface at some point or another. But right now being inside other people’s heads is a much nicer place to be than inside my own.


PS – I’m not entirely sure that seeing my books (look on the sidebar) being sold for 1p on Amazon is helping my mood. How depressing is that?

If you want to read something a little cheerier check out my other (far more professional, far less self-absorbed) blog –http://brutallyfrank.wordpress.com/

Chalk and cheese, yin and yang……ah whatever.....

Swamplands of the Soul, Infinity and Revenge

I’ve been living in a daze but I think I may finally be starting to wake up. I had a fallout with a friend just before the weekend and it triggered a surprising response in me. I realised, very suddenly and painfully, that I’d been projecting a huge amount of my deeper ‘stuff’ onto her. She was carrying all the tough, dark, difficult parts of me: the depression, the anxiety, the loneliness, the fear of rejection and frequent feelings of despair and worthlessness. She also held all the more interesting parts too: the intellectual enquiry, the spirituality, the psychology, mythology, poetry, music and art. While she was there, doing all the work, I was able to hide away and numb myself with a frenzy of social networking, of Spider Solitaire and other distractions. Foolish me.

So over the weekend I turned off the computer and made time to start a bit of work on my self, on my soul. A small start, for sure, but a valuable one. I pulled an armchair into a corner by the window, where I could look out and watch the wisteria blowing in the wind; where I could see the exclamation marks of day-glo azaleas amidst the green on green. I played Nick Drake, Ray Lamontagne, Davy Spillane, Sean Tyrrell and Conor Keane. I re-read James Hollis’s amazing book Swamplands of the Soul and started re-reading another of his books, The Middle Passage.
In the last ten years since I had James (like many mothers, I suspect) I’ve ignored my soul. I’ve abased it, abused it and neglected it. No wonder it is sore. No wonder my body is causing me pain. When one neglects the soul, the body reacts too and flinches and cowers from the abuse.

Jung said that ‘the goal of life is not happiness but meaning’. James Hollis reaffirms this and states that:

‘There is no sunlit meadow, no restful bower of easy sleep; there are rather swamplands of the soul where nature, our nature, intends that we live a good part of the journey, and from whence many of the most meaningful moment of our lives will derive. It is in the swamplands where soul is fashioned and forged, where we encounter not only the gravitas of life, but its purpose, its dignity and its greatest meaning.’

So yes, I’m in a swamp but I think that is OK.

‘You think too deeply, that’s your problem,’ said Adrian with a sigh.
‘No. I don’t think deeply ENOUGH,’ said I with a grimace.
‘Well you worry too much. I don’t know anyone else who worries about infinity.’
He’s right. I do. I can make myself dizzy thinking about forever. My head spins (not literally, that would be wrong) when I try to trek out beyond the known universe. But doesn’t everyone do that?
‘Er, no.’

James, meanwhile, is worried about school. He came home looking shifty.
‘Did you hear?’
Hear what? About how he had been accidentally knocked into a puddle by a boy a year younger and had waited an hour to take his revenge stone cold - which entailed carefully placing all said boy’s sports kit in the showers? Er, yup, had had a call from the headmaster about that one.
I smiled ruefully and he smiled back.
‘I’ve got to write apology letters.’
‘Sounds reasonable.’
‘Yeah.’
He took it on the chin and I confess I was impressed – not least that he actually wrote more than:

‘Dear X

I’m sorry.

James.’

Things are looking up. However this morning, over breakfast, he was low again.
‘I’m worried about what people will say. I’m worried about what the teachers will say.’
So we sat on the sofa and had a bit of a hug.
‘You know what? There is no point in worrying about something until it actually happens. So, I’d suggest you don’t even think about it – until it does (and it might even not). Makes sense?’
‘Sort of.’

It does make sense. So today I am going to try to follow my own advice. I’m going to watch the rain, trace the auras of the trees and watch the blackbird making another nest, this time in the jasmine. Infinity still worries the hell out of me, but I figure I’ve got plenty of time to worry about it….


btw, have posted the piece I wrote for YOU magazine on blogging as therapy on my other blog

Plus pieces on EMDR and whether detoxing is dangerous.... click the links to read - and please do comment as I'd love to hear what you think - whether you agree or disagree or have any new, better ideas. This is a new venture for me and I'm aiming to get up a whole ton of my old features as a resource, now that so many of my books are out of print.

Ghost town London

Sometimes this whole recession thing seems a bit unreal. I say recession but the language changes all the time, as we venture deeper into debt like Dante plodding down further and further into Hades. For a long while it was an itty-bitty credit crunch (sounding like a new variety of chocolate bar). Now it’s a recession (hissy and spitty like a snake) tottering towards a depression (heavy and hopeless). Way down the bottom, in Satan’s pit, the spectre of bankruptcy is rattling its chains.

Cocooned here on Exmoor though it’s hard to see the reality in any certain terms: people are carrying on much as usual. But London is a different story.
I went up to London for work (yup the nice kind of work that entails being pampered for free – and even being paid for it – sometimes, just sometimes I DO love my job). Pootled over to Knightsbridge and thought I’d amuse myself by looking in the smart shops and cackling bitterly at the ridiculous women who think nothing of spending ten grand on a handbag. But the ridiculous women weren’t there. Knightsbridge was empty. Harvey Nichols was a ghost shop. I wandered, lonely as a lumpen little frowsy cloud, around the fashion floors and wondered for a moment if the fire alarms had gone off. All the nice new frocks were hanging on their plump little hangers but not a soul was plucking or stroking or trying on. Not a lollipop-head woman in sight. Not even a lone burqa, let alone the usual flotillas. It was eerie and weird.
However up on the fourth floor the medi-spa was buzzing. It seems that no matter how deep a recession/depression we’re in the one thing that can’t be abandoned is Botox. Probably a good thing as it really would be depressing (or amusing, depending on your point of view) if all those taut blank faces suddenly collapsed en masse.
Anyhow, I wasn’t there for Botox, I was having the all-singing, all-dancing bespoke facial. This started off with ritual humiliation by some super-duper camera which takes photos of your face and shows up every single spot and wrinkle, every tiny bit of sun damage, every enlarged pore and can even sneak on you if you have untoward bacteria lurking around. Surely every face has bacteria? I thought we were liberally coated in billions of the things? Ah well. It also compares you to the other women your age on its database (in other words Botox Knightsbridge woman) – the results weren’t going to be pretty. But, get this, I have less spots than 87 percent of BK women. I have no bacteria (well, no horrid ones anyhow) and I have less open pores than a whopping 91 percent of the lollipop brigade. How gratifying is that? Now just whistle quietly amongst yourselves while I mutter that I didn’t do so well on the wrinkle map and the poor therapist tried to sit on the picture of my sun damage to save me the pain. She also tried to gloss over the texture and the, er, red areas (yes, yes, on the nose and under the eyes, typical Exmoor face – too much wind and booze).
Anyhow, my skin was then peeled (it stung) and lymphatically drained (the machine sounded as if it were heavy breathing). State-of-the-art unguents were pushed into it via a machine that did a great imitation of a drunken bloke with thick stubble nuzzling you in the corner at a party. It was all impressively high tech but did it do the business? The therapist thought so, but then she would. I wasn’t quite so convinced and when I fetched up at my mate the barrister’s flat, she was equally unimpressed.
‘You look as though you’ve been up on the moor, trying to find the dog.’ ‘What, fresh and dewy, and romantically windswept?’
‘No. Red-faced, blotchy and cross.’
Ho hum. Never mind. We sank three bottles of wine and agreed there were better ways to spend your money and decent burgundy was probably one of them.
Next day I wandered off down to Chiswick to see Margot Gordon who had given me one of the most amazing treatments I’ve ever had (about ten years ago). Margot’s been living in Australia but had come back to London for a few months and offered me a belated top-up. She didn’t look much different to be honest and, whatever she’s up to in Australia, it’s obviously doing her more good than a £200 facial. It’s really hard to explain her work in a few sentences – it’s called Seiki and it has a touch of Shiatsu in it (but it works more on the energetic than the physical level). She’s trained with a Japanese master and has also been learning aboriginal healing in Australia. She knew I’d been having a tough time and that the last year had been foul beyond all measure but, when she sat down opposite me, I was a bit shocked to find her welling up with tears.

‘I didn’t realise it was that bad,’ she said. ‘I can feel it, here..’ and she gestured to her chest. Goose pimples ran all over my body and I swear it felt as if she had reached into my chest and pulled out a huge wad of grief. After that she had me lie down on a large padded mat in front of the fire and she gently moved and stretched me. Time becomes elastic with Seiki and I went off into dream worlds, floating on a cloud of wellbeing. When she brought me back to earth, it felt as if my whole world had shifted. I felt lighter, younger, innocent somehow (I know that sounds weird and flaky, but that’s how it was). We hugged and I had to run off to catch my train and it was only as I was jogging down the road that I realised something else. I was jogging. My back wasn’t hurting and the aches in my feet and shoulders (I have this weird condition called palindromic rheumatism) simply weren’t there. When I caught sight of myself in the mirror I looked totally different, about five years younger – less stressed, less mean and grouchy. So, all the results I should have had from the fancy facial – but at a fraction of the price. If you get the chance, go have a treatment with Margot before she vanishes back to the outback in May….and send her my love.

Black dog, red dog, yellow dog, blue....

It’s time, I think, to introduce you to my own black dog. The more we haul these dogs out into the bright light of day, the more control we have over them. Obedience classes for black dogs. Muzzles on, choke chains checked, heel! Sit. Good dog. Except, of course, it doesn’t really work like that.

My beast first appeared at my heel when I was ten years old. My father died of lung cancer – at a time when death wasn’t discussed and counselling wasn’t offered – everyone (children included) were expected to take a deep breath, brush themselves down and get back on with life. My diary page has drawings of tears all down the margin, my writing very wobbly, slanting wildly down the page. ‘My dear Daddy is dead. Poor Mummy didn’t know how to tell me.’
I suppose we cried then. I suppose we comforted one other but I can’t remember any of that. What I can remember, clear as day, was being taken to see Born Free by a neighbour on the day of the funeral. I’d seen it a few weeks before but didn’t like to say anything and politely sat through it, watching the parched plains of Africa, sucking the salt off stale popcorn, cringing away from the neighbour’s kindness. Then I was sent on a coach trip to a safari park (more bloody lions) with some Sunday School kids and I can still see one organiser talking to another, glancing over at me, and muttering ‘Yes, she’s the one whose father died. No, don’t say anything to the children’. But of course it spread like wildfire. They avoided me like the plague, as if by associating with me their fathers might die too.
After that the black dog bit me hard. I developed asthma and would sit in my tiny damp bedroom, staring bleakly at a line of gonks that seemed to belong to another age, to another child. I went from being a bright, bolshy, even a bit pushy, girl to a silent shy ghost. I didn’t mention my father. I got by. I didn’t cry. Not until I was eighteen and at university and I met a girl whose father had died when she, too, had been ten. She spoke about it openly and frankly and that night, in my room, I drank half a bottle of gin and sobbed until I felt sick.

Those were the ‘don’t care’ years – when I would walk around the toughest areas of Manchester, deep in the night, figuring I would give Fate the chance to finish me off. Sometimes the whole world seemed so unreal I would cut my arm or face to feel something, anything – even pain is better than not existing.

I left college but the dog came with me back to London. However I found that, if you pushed yourself hard enough, if you worked hard, played hard, took the right amount of alcohol and the right drugs, you could pretty well kick it out of the way.
But it crept into my dreams. A dark shape, sometimes a dog, sometimes a cat-beast, sometimes just an amorphous shadow. A sick feeling would wash over me and I would just know it was waiting in the shadows, waiting to bite. I had one of those dreams a week or so ago. I was standing at the top of a flight of stone steps leading down into somewhere dark and frightening. I heard the tick-tack of claws clicking on stone and the familiar sinking feeling washed over me. Looking down I saw a small black dog climbing, slowly, in no hurry. It knew I wasn’t going anywhere. It’s always pointless to run. It drew level with me and grew, stretching up and out until it was the size of a Labrador. I could feel its breath on my hand, hear its breathing and then, oh so slowly, it took my hand in its mouth. I could feel the damp softness, so gentle as if my hand were a gamebird, perfectly retrieved. Then with a horrible sense of the inevitable, I felt its teeth sharpen and draw back and it bit, hard, deep, straight through the sinews, crunching the bones of my hand.

As many of you know, I suffered from post-natal depression after my son was born. In retrospect, I had pre-natal depression too – born of moving out into the middle of nowhere when I was pregnant, away from all chance of support. I was working furiously and did so up until a week before the birth. There were complications, I had an emergency section, then got an infection and ended up on a drip with a blood transfusion. Nonetheless I was back working a couple of weeks later. My doctor was pretty dismissive when I told him how low I felt: how I was barely sleeping; how I was so paralysed with anxiety that every time I left my baby I thought I’d come back to see the ambulance with lights flashing outside the house, Adrian’s face trying to form the words that my child had died. ‘Welcome to parenthood,’ he said cheerily. ‘You’ll get used to it.’
After nine months I diagnosed myself and asked a different doctor what she thought. She plonked me on Seroxat and, luckily, it helped. It pulled me out of the hole. I came off it after six months though as I was terrified of becoming addicted. Since then I have battled the dog with a mixture of herbs (Magnolia Rhodiola complex), exercise, positive self-talk and long lists of gratitude. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. The last few months have been really hard – life has hit me on several sides at once and the dog has been having a field day.

However, I am noticing something interesting. A psychologist once told me that depression always hides other emotions. That it’s a kind of coping mechanism for when other emotions might overwhelm us. Of late, I’ve noticed that my black dog is being joined by other dogs, by a whole pack. There’s the red dog of anger and pure fury, snapping, snarling, biting back for once….. The yellow dog of fear, cowardly, cringing, sideways glancing. The blue dog of grief, of sudden sobbing tears, welling up like a huge wave threatening to break over my head. Anything can set it off. I was reading Cait’s blog a few days back and Halleluyah was playing. I felt a catch at the back of my throat and that was it. I howled for about an hour, great wracking sobs.

This is written, by the way, not for sympathy or even empathy. It’s written for me (because I can’t write about everything that is happening in my life but I figure I can still write about how I feel about it). It’s also written because I truly believe that keeping depression, and all forms of mental illness, hidden and secret only increases the taboo, the shame, and stops other people from seeking the help they need. My black dog is, like my real life dog, pretty badly behaved – but at least I can own it, stick a microchip on it and a name tag on its collar. What is known is always less frightening than the unknown. Just maybe, if I can own my anger, grief and fear, I won’t need that black dog so much.

Inanna

I’m not really in a blogging state of mind. Have been feeling a bit flat. Not quite depressed but just a little sunken, shall we say. Not sure why. Maybe it’s the total lack of any perceptible movement on the move - silence reigns from all quarters apart from our mortgage company who are inundating us with bits of paper telling us of another fee or a further insurance we don’t need. Maybe it’s the fact that my new computer is languishing upstairs – large and gleaming and totally out of touch with the larger world (hence pretty much unusable). Maybe it’s because my ‘author’ has taken off to Moscow leaving me drumming my fingers and hacked off as, if I’d known, I could have planned nice things to do with James (but instead he’s booked up in the way of all eight-year olds nowadays). Or maybe it’s because I’ve just heard of another friend with a serious life-threatening condition.

Or, then again, maybe it’s just one of the down times. I truly believe that it’s impossible and not even really desirable to be totally UP all the time. It’s the main gripe I have with the New Age movement – the insistence on relentless positivity at all costs. You cannot afford the luxury of a negative thought and all that. Yes, I do think it’s good to keep positive on the whole and that our thoughts can and do affect our reality but (and it’s a bit but) I don’t think anyone should expect to be on a permanent high all the time. It’s not natural. Nature has its highs and lows, and its sort of in the middles too.

When I was doing art therapy I became fascinated with the myth of Inanna, the Sumerian goddess who was one heck of a feisty woman. She loved life big-time, juggling the roles of queen, mother and red-hot lover with all the ease in the world. But she realised that there has to be balance; she felt the need to descend, to go down into the underworld to meet her sister Erishkegal, queen of the dead. As she went down, she was divested of all her earthly glamour and glory. When she finally met her sister she wasn’t exactly greeted with open arms and a cream tea – she was slung up on a meat hook and left to rot for three days. Psychologists looking at the myth often say it’s a vital process, this going within, this going down, this putrefaction.

Spring, of course, should be an up time. When everything is going bonkers outside, it feels like being a bit of a party-pooper not to join in. But it’s hard to feel totally joyful at an overly warm dry spring when the spectre of climate change is whispering over our shoulders. The house martins have arrived but, as Adrian pointed out, how will they repair their homes under the eaves without any mud?
But over and above all at the moment I keep noticing the blackthorn – frothy flurries of white, like bridal veils all over the hedgerows. And, as all country-dwellers know, the pretty dainty flowers hide a nasty crop of thorns – scratch yourself on blackthorn and the cut will frequently go septic. So up and down, sweet and sour, pretty and putrifying go hand in glove. I’ll probably be right as rain (yes please) tomorrow.