20-10-2021: Day 132
The rain was lashing it down, a torrential typhoon of tears in the black night sky outside. The window was rattling in its frame, and for a fleeting moment I thought it might shatter under the pressure of the October monsoon rains. Inside, gratefully, I was checking what condition my condition was in, before my hearing voices group assembled over the internet.
We are all survivors here, but one woman stands head and shoulders above. As she popped up on the screen, the pain was etched on her face, furrowed in the frown on her forehead, and glassed over her mole-like eyes. She lives in a constant war against the demonic Voices and battle against the lure of the overdose.
The hearing voices community lives in the long shadow of the three A’s. Addiction, to psychotropic drugs fed by the fistful by an intolerant society keen to medicate the problem away. Alienation, pushed to the margins of society. Voiceless, loveless, and lonely. Archetype, in a society spellbound under negative stereotypes, with no asylum for the sufferer.
We live amongst you. We don’t mean no harm. We’re just trying to get by.
23-10-2021: Day 135
The clock is ticking on my ticker-tape parade to recovery, and the finish line is but a miniscule spotlight at the end of a long winding tunnel. I am, for now, hooked on these psych drugs, and suffer their ill effects through gritted teeth. Having reduced the dose, shaved off 2.5 mg to a more respectable 12.5 mg, I feel it is time to reflect on the bigger picture of the Big Pharma comedown.
Coming off pharmaceutical grade anti-psychotics is no picnic in the sand dunes, and there is a long shadow lurking ahead in the shape of akathisia.
Akathisia occurs, usually in the low-level tapering off measures of pill reduction and can cause a sense of restlessness and intense need to move. There are horror stories all over the internet about akathisia, of the hell of withdrawal from these Dr Frankenstein medications, and the co-morbidities that have in some cases led to suicide.
Cold comfort soup then, for navigating the rocky road to recovery ahead.
24-10-2021: Day 136
I was strolling up and down the touchline, feeling the early bite of winter, watching my son’s U15 team getting a tanking in a local derby rivalry. There was a cloud of political in-fighting and drama hanging over the game, of old scores to settle, but most of this flew over my head like the assembled crows. And, as the wind swept across the pitch, I watched a lonely outcast crow swoop down and settle on the centre spot, as the football action moved to a corner at the opposition end.
As the wizened old boy standing next to me muttered something about crows and the onset of winter, I felt a grave shiver of deep existential loneliness. In that moment I was lonely as a crow. Or should that be a cloud. Either way, all I could sense was the brazen barking orders of the away coach on the opposing touchline.
A thought occurred. I had been shedding friendships like a snake shed’s it’s skin, year-on-year, since the Voices dramatically took reins of my life fifteen years ago. Lonesome blues, indeed.