Broken

2018. Now that was a tough year. I am not sure how bleak this blog will be, plus, you might find there are a lot of misstakes, as I won’t want to reread this, so I apologise in advance.

I had been in a downward spiral for 17 years or so. I had survived them using will power, my OCD and my relative youthfulness(!) but for some reason, going into this year I felt old. No, actually, I felt spent. All those years had taken their toll and I was barely functioning anymore. Yes, I was drinking to medicate my way through life. Yes, I was taking promethazine ever more regularly, with ever increasing dosages. Yes, I was doing both of these at the same time. I just wanted to escape from being awake, being anxious, feeling terrible. I would get home from work, share a bottle of wine with TheWife and we’d do our Beavis and Butthead routine on the couch, mocking some unfortunate T.V. show. I would live for a couple of hours. The rest of the time I merely existed.

I would go days without sleeping. Nights where I could get an hour or so of uninterrupted sleep were seen as successes. Going to school each day was tough. Having to teach was really hard. I would start to panic that I wasn’t clever enough anymore to do the maths in front of the classroom. I feared logarithms (hey, at least I could sympathise with how the students felt!). I would always be anxious that I was about to have a laryngeal spasm.  I was heavily depressed. Rarely would anything positive come from my mouth. Everything was dumb and gloom. Misanthropic to the max.

The school year ended. I’d made it. Surely the school holidays would bring a bit of relief. Sadly no, it got worse. I remember during the World Cup time going to see the Descendents – a band I’d spent my whole life hoping to see one day. It should have been a great night, but all I remember is trying to keep going. I’d not slept for a few days. I would lie awake during the night crying. Body and mind felt like it had had enough. I can’t really explain the feeling. Like an injured animal I just wanted to go off on my own somewhere hidden and curl up and then give up. This was the first time I felt like this but not the last….

So, I went to the doctors and got myself put back on SSRIs. This time it was Citalopram – the standard dosage 20mg. I also got hold of some Zolpidem, or Ambien as it’s known in America. This was my first real hardcore sleeping pill. It kind of works. After 20 minutes you are no longer here. I would then be unconscious for about 5 hours – on one occasion I managed to get my CPAP machine on in time but was out of it before I could turn out the light. The quality of sleep was still pretty poor though, according to the machine. Actually, it is not advised that you take this drug if you have sleep apnoea – whoops! The next day you feel pretty ropey and the chance of getting any subsequent sleep is pretty poor. This means I have developed a love/hate relationship with this drug. I’ve become quite addicted to its power of knocking me out, of taking me away from life for a while but it does increase my feelings of depression and is a highly addictive drug.

The summer came to an end and I returned to school. I struggled during the in-service week, managed 1 day of teaching having spent a few days without sleeping and then….I simply broke.

My dosage of Citalopram had been risen to 30mg (fairly high) and I’d had a night on Zolpidem. The chemicals in my brain were having a field day. I was no longer totally in control of my thoughts. I would fantasise about having general anaesthetics and just being put to sleep; about running and jumping off buildings – this wasn’t so much a question of wanting to die, just to be free, the idea of what would happen on the landing didn’t come into it. These thoughts were flowing, repeating, driving me crazy. I would close my eyes and see these images or flashing colours. I became fixated with a picture that was on a Black Flag flyer. In other words, I’d lost it.

I knew I was in trouble, so I did one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do in my life. I phoned my wife – who had gone to work at this point – and said, “Don’t worry. I am not going to do anything bad, but I am going to accident and emergency. I am having strange, dark feelings. I will call you when I am there”. The walk to the A&E was hard. I wanted to curl up and give up. I felt so bad for what I was putting her through but at the same time, it was my thoughts of her that kept me going. 

It’s seems so weird to try and sum up that morning in just one paragraph, it was so much more than that.