Category: Mental Health

Diary of an Elderly Schoolboy: Part 5

Vegan graffiti in Southsea

 

New teaching block, new Reporting teacher, and we’ve been tasked with writing a short piece pondering whether or not the year of our Lord 2023 will be good. Good for whom? Define truth. Answer me, dammit. I don’t know.

Personally, I’ll be finishing my first year of this Journalism degree; that is unless my breakdown becomes more physical and disruptive. I’ll begin the second year in September but then I won’t receive funding because Student Finance England’s chaos algorithm has reached the singularity and replaced all numbers with squirrels. Continue reading “Diary of an Elderly Schoolboy: Part 5” →

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Without Form and Void

wfav blog lrg

Here we go again.

What began as All But One of Those Lights in the Sky are Dead and very nearly became Fucking Danish Girls sorted itself out once I’d started pretending to be an unhinged lesbian living in the future. I hope it’s as enjoyable to read as it was to write.

Paperback out now; eBook too (with dodgy looking preview—cheers, Amazon.)

Thanks for reading xX

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SNRI Discontinuation Laugh Riot

...all your brain are belong to us sprach die möwen. "My brain hurt like a warehouse," sang Bowie.
Depression is the single most expensive disorder faced by Western societies and antidepressants are among the best selling drugs; yet modern antidepressants are no more effective than the first generation and electroconvulsive shock treatment remains the most effective treatment for turning that frown upside-down. *

Pinocchio! So this is where I find you! How do you ever expect to be a real boy? Look at yourself. Smoking! Playing pool!

– Jiminy Cricket

Sex during SNRI discontinuation is like the first time – if you lost your virginity concussed, held up against an electric fence in a rainstorm. During the relationships, flings and longer first dates of the last six years I’d gotten used to the numb pounding of dutiful copulation; I knew I should have been enjoying it more, and sometimes a girl would go the extra mile, but more often than not sex was there just to remind me what a worthless bloated addict I’d become. Continue reading “SNRI Discontinuation Laugh Riot” →

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Stealing Fire From the Gods to Beat the Winter Blues and Big Pharma: A Happy Review of a Sad Box

Strapped down and receiving a good healthy dose of less SAD
Strapped down and receiving a good healthy dose of less SAD

It takes eight seconds for light from the sun to reach our rock; although if you live in Britain you might question that figure. In fact you might snort: “Ha! Eight months more like!” and grin inanely like a child expecting validation before realising that even if it did take eight months we’d just be getting our sunshine a bit later. Like receiving our Christmas cards in September.

Although saying that – and assuming we’re not reducing the speed of light itself – it’d be a hell of a lot colder here as at current speed/distance light would travel from the Sun to Pluto and back 430 times in eight months which is using the figure for the farthest distance the two bodies get from each other as Pluto has an eccentric orbit which means that sometimes it’s closer than Neptune but by then I’d realise I was staring off into the middle distance whilst eating the skin next to my fingernails and the distance between my date’s body and the barman’s would be rapidly decreasing. Continue reading “Stealing Fire From the Gods to Beat the Winter Blues and Big Pharma: A Happy Review of a Sad Box” →

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Safe. Secure. Reasonable. Informed: Coming off Sertraline

DISCLAIMER: The following post took place over the course of several days of teeth gnashing. Its contents are intended for my own amusement only. Any medical advice adhered to that results in your own suicide and/or the murders of your loved ones in the most bloodthirsty and inhumane way conceivable is neither my responsibility nor anyone else’s, you fiend.

Bruce Wayne had other rather more exotic coping mechanisms than psychotherapy.
Bruce Wayne had other rather more exotic coping mechanisms than psychotropic medication. He also had Vicki Vale and the Batcave.

If you get treated like a patient, you’re apt to act like one.

– Frances Farmer

So I made up my mind and will not be going back to Teesside, nor will I complete the year. From here on in, this guff comes straight from the heart.

I’m going to mention mental health now but I promise I will touch upon it as briefly as I’m able; then we can get back to talking zoo animals, gig reviews and reasons why the white man will be the death of us all. Continue reading “Safe. Secure. Reasonable. Informed: Coming off Sertraline” →

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Lukewarm Turkey and an Ode to the Single-Bed

The height of Summer 2000 in the north of the great State of Victoria. Cells like these were home for itinerant farm workers. On moving in to this one I discovered my bed was home to a Redback nest. It was too hot to cry.

Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure that you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes.

– William Gibson

It’s good that, isn’t it; I love that sentiment. Saw it on a t-shirt the other week and looked it up. Not familiar with William Gibson, but from scanning his wikipedia entry he sounds interesting. I think Rickerby told me about him, back in the day.

Anyway, it was with this thought in mind that I decided to radically cut down on the little white pills proffered by a long line of GPs with an angle on going straight. None of them have ever been able to adequately explain what is ‘wrong’ with me anyway; and, oddly, most seem to lambaste my desire to find a label, calling them ‘unhelpful’. Continue reading “Lukewarm Turkey and an Ode to the Single-Bed” →

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