WE HAD TO DESTROY IT TO SAVE IT
Chapter One of the book
Listening
to the silences
In
a world of hearing voices.
By
ROY VINCENT
(Abridged)
“We had
to destroy it to save it.”
Such was the bizarre reasoning given by the U.S.
Authorities to justify the annihilation of a village during that most bizarre
of conflicts, the Vietnam War.
As
I have begun to write, I have trawled through my own memory, and read, and come
to terms with, the copious notes and correspondence that form my medical
records.
When you read what I shall write, I think that
you may agree that the same ‘justification’ could be applied to the
almost-achieved outcome of the treatments that were brought to bear to ‘save’
my malfunctioning mind. The treatments
were applied with good intent, I have no doubt, by people who were established
in their professions of medicine and psychiatry. In the process of being treated, my mind
was almost annihilated.
So
what went wrong? Well, to start with, at
the outset, there was nothing wrong with my mind - it was functioning
well and I was in control. But something
must have gone wrong and to describe it is the purpose of the first part of my
tale.
The path ahead may at times seem a little tortuous,
but I am sure that you will find the journey interesting.
In
the past, I have always enjoyed writing, although my authorship then had a
different purpose in my professional rôle - reports, papers, proposals, were
the offspring of my love of language, constrained by the accepted forms of
technical writing. A fellow Welshman,
whose evocative use of language has never ceased to please me, is Dylan
Thomas. When I listen to a recording of Under
Milk Wood, from memories of people and places locked in my mind in my
youth, I can ‘see’ all the exquisitely drawn characters, I can ‘walk’ down
Cockle Row, I can ‘look’ through the mind’s eye of blind Captain Cat.
For
me there is only one recording - the first made by the BBC, with Huw Gryffudd
as Captain Cat; the Reverend Eli Jenkins was spoken by Philip Burton, the
English master at my school, and the one who set in train my love of
language.
But most of all, and no matter how often I listen,
guaranteed to produce the same thrill of anticipation are the opening words
spoken with his unique timbre by long-ago schoolmate Richard Burton.
I can do no better than to recall his voice and echo
it as he speaks......
TO BEGIN AT THE BEGINNING...
A
high flyer was I. Was I? I shall never know now. No self-vaunted Icarus was I, flapping higher
and higher on phoney wings, only to crash to destruction when the deceit was
uncovered by the harsh sun of scrutiny.
No: by dint of the steady wing-beats of hard work, dedication and
loyalty, I was rising and being lifted from time to time on the up draught of
peer approbation. So: how did I lose my
feathers? Why did I crash? Why did I have to learn to walk again?
How
is it that such destruction can be visited on someone in broad daylight, in a
civilised society, in his own home, in the midst of a caring family and, at
work, under the gaze of a solicitous employer?
And
what did I lose? I lost a home which was
still being carefully built up and consolidated; I lost my wife and, effectively,
my daughter; in time I couldn’t sustain my job and retired prematurely; financially,
in today’s (2013) values, I have lost almost a million pounds, while each
year I receive in pension about one third of what I could reasonably have
expected.
But
of greater worth, a worth which can not be measured in cash, I have lost a swathe
of my memory; memory of a time when life was very good; when I had a wife whom
I loved and who was yet young; when work was very rewarding and successful;
when my daughter was blossoming. Do you
know, I cannot remember how she used to talk when she was little; the things
she said; bath times; bed times; Christmas; picnics and holidays; ponies…. I can barely remember the Sunbeam-Talbot that
was the family’s pride, or taking my mother and in-laws for ‘runs’. I am fortunate in that I have a former work colleague
whom I meet from time to time, whose reminiscences remind me of the highly
successful and rewarding times we had as vital players in a cutting-edge
project that was a world first, otherwise that memory would also be
lost.
So,
how did I lose so much? How did I lose
it uncomplainingly, trustingly?
Surprisingly, and sadly, I lost it at the hands of, or perhaps more
accurately, I had it all stolen by, the very people whose prime intent and
professional purpose was to care for me.
I lost it through the intervention of medicine and psychiatry.
There
is only one way for you to understand the extent of my loss - the actual loss
over the years and the potential of what might have been - and that is for me
to take you sufficiently far back in my life and career to find a convenient
staring point.
So
how about 1947? I was 21 years old, in
transition between life as a Petty Officer Radar Mechanic in the Royal Navy,
and life as an undergraduate electrical engineer in the University
of Wales at Swansea
Three
years and an Engineering Degree later saw me, in 1950, make what was for me a
very desirable move to the Lake District in Cumbria
The
Works developed and expanded, as did the science and technology, and my
responsibility - which led to a further promotion at the end of 1960. Thus, in what turned out to be an exceedingly
crucial year, 1961, at age 35 I had the grade of ‘Principal’, and a salary (2013
equivalent) of £80, 000. I had been to France as an advisor during the commissioning of
their first power reactor, and to Stockholm
To
mention ‘diarrhoea’ in the context in which I am writing may seem an
unnecessary and unpleasant irrelevance: unfortunately, it became very
relevant. We lived in Seascale, and in
the late summer of almost every year the notorious ‘Seascale Bug’ would strike,
bringing stomach upsets, sickness and diarrhoea to the populace at random.
When,
thus, in 1961, I started with my episode of the ‘runs’ it just seemed as if I
was one of that year’s unfortunates. But
this was no ordinary visitation of the ‘Seascale Bug’. Soon it seemed as if the whole of my inside
had turned to fluid - the mediaeval term ‘the flux’ was probably very
appropriate. Day after day after day it
continued, defying all the usual nostrums and quick-setting cements that were
commonly effective. My ‘samples’ yielded
no known bacteria. My weight dropped by
over a stone; the lavatory pan was my boon companion.
Then,
one day, a visit to my G.P. produced something new, something different. My medical certificate sported the letters
C.A.N. in place of the usual ‘enteritis’, and a prescription which, when dispensed
at the local pharmacy, produced a bottle of black and green capsules coyly hiding
behind the label bearing the legend ‘Librium’.
Now, remember, this was 1961; Librium was brand, spanking new; the word
'tranquilliser' was not in common parlance.
No warning bells rang in my mind - and why should they have? Like most people, I believed implicitly in
the medical profession, in what they said was wrong with me, in the ways in
which it should be put right. The
average layperson has no base from which to query or dispute the medical opinion;
one’s view is often met with the slightly tolerant smile that seems to say, “
The patient has an opinion, humour him and it will go away”.
I
promise you this: there had been no discussion concerning my nervous state, nor
was anything said about Librium, its purpose or its side effects. I had to deduce, yes deduce, that
C.A.N. meant ‘chronic anxiety neurosis’, and that I was ‘on’ a tranquilliser. You may wonder at the lack of
communication. All I can say is that I
was very debilitated and unsure of myself, and that the doctor in question was
very reserved, almost taciturn, and did not open himself to discussion.
One
former colleague at work even now reminds me of the response that he got
when suggesting an alternative to his continuing treatment; whatever he
was then told was prefaced with the put-down “We in the learned
profession...”. (I must emphasise that I
am not recounting this to denigrate in any way the doctor in question, who was
immensely appreciated in the community both as a person and G.P., but simply to
emphasise something to which I will no doubt return many times in this account
and the other parts of my ‘story’, namely this communication gulf between
medical professional and lay-person).
So,
dutifully, I took my Librium in complete and blissful ignorance of the most
common side effects - of confusion, drowsiness and inability to control
voluntary muscular movements - and physical dependence! How, I wonder, would my employers have
reacted had they known, for the Department at work of which I was head
was responsible for every one of the measuring and safety devices in the whole
nuclear power station of four reactors and eight turbines?
No
doubt everyone has those events in their lives over which they groan internally
and long to extinguish the event and its consequences; this is one of my most
desperate, as must be that of anyone who has started to take an addictive
substance. How many clocks would be put
back if given the chance?
My
anguish is made all the greater with the 20/20 vision with which all hind sight
is blessed, and the knowledge, gained some 25 years after the events, of a
newly identified parasite that can inhabit the lower gut and produce uncontrollable
but self-limiting diarrhoea. Such
a parasite one can acquire from polluted water or milk, or from animals - a
route that the family hobby of riding and horse-work made readily available.
Cryptosporidium is the name
of what it is now believed was the cause of my illness - one of a group of
parasitic protozoa.
Looking
back at the events covered by the next two years, much of what I did, felt and
suffered can now be understood and many things fall into place. First, there was the growing addiction. My very first act on waking was to pop a
pill. If I didn’t get my noon ‘fix’ on
time I started to get the shakes. It was
while I was doing this one day at work that I received my one piece of
cautionary advice. It came from a former
G.P. who had given up medical practice to found a firm which made endoscopes;
he was visiting to supervise the installation of one of his industrial size
‘scopes. When he saw the pill going in,
he advised me instead to unwind at home each evening with a glass of
sherry. Kind man that he was, on his
next visit he handed me a brown wrapped bottle - “ Special varnish” he said,
“Don’t open it here in daylight”. I
still think of rich, dark port wine as ‘special varnish’.
How
I wish that I had been able to take his advice, but by now I believed
that I had a C.A.N. How else could I
explain the shakes that were cured by my next ‘fix’? How else to account for the drowsiness that
was besetting me in my office, the ‘numbness’ which enveloped my midriff and
radiated outwards, the confusion or slowness in understanding the developments
in computing, which specialist members of my department were engaged with? How else could I explain to myself the
frequent malaises that had all the hallmarks of ‘flu without the temperature?
Life
at work was getting difficult, particularly the drowsiness - but how can you
explain to your next senior something that you didn’t understand yourself, and
which he didn’t confront directly? (The
problems contained in that one sentence, and all the other examples that emerge
of the inability to address or articulate a difficulty or problem, of the
impossibility of admitting or communicating to one’s partner, friends,
colleagues, medical advisers, more than an inkling of the gut-wrenching,
mind-warping fears and fantasies which emerge, are topics to which I must
return somewhere in the discourse if I am to draw meaningful conclusions and
offer advice to others on ways to cope or support; but how difficult it is!).
In
the main, I was still doing a good job; no catastrophes, and many innovations
at which I was particularly good. I remember,
too, delivering a lecture to the Engineering Society on the subject of
computers in general, and the ones in particular that we were then incorporating
into the plant - the last major, positive event at work for some time to
come. Such changes as were happening to
my life and demeanour were yet acceptable and bearable compared with what was
to come as 1963 was settling into autumn.
The
G.P. who had made the original diagnosis and prescription had moved back to his
beloved Scotland
After the encounter with Librium, the
meeting with the psychiatrist has become another of my life’s great ‘I wish it hadn’t happened ’ moments.
From
this point on, I have copies of all my medical notes for the next thirty years
- both those of the consultant and those of the local practice. The reason why I acquired them is revealed
much later in my saga. Reading the notes
- not an easy experience to cope with - it is revealing to see oneself as a
‘he’, a third person, almost a specimen with a label.
To
me, as an engineer, the most glaring difference between my profession and that
of the psychiatrist, is the latter’s lack of certainty, of objectivity. I was used to dealing with a reality - my
whole purpose in my work was measurement - the complete delineation of the
state of being of a piece of plant or an operation as it was then, at
that moment. I had seen my devices - the
nerves of the plant - put in place (nearly 50 years on, I have the personal and
professional satisfaction of knowing that many of them, those completely
inaccessible inside the nuclear reactors, are still there, still functioning). Their characteristics were known, for we had
calibrated them; they told the operator exactly what was going on in the remote
reaches of his plant; if anything broke down outside the reactor I had to know
exactly why it had failed, and could only replace it with apparatus that had
been thoroughly tested and calibrated.
My
Consultant (MC) appeared to be thorough, no question of that. We talked, he arranged tests, e.g. was
hypoglycaemia a possibility? But to the
outsider, there appear to be no certainties in psychiatry, only opinions and
educated guesses based upon the personal experience and training of the one
particular practitioner; possibly even the ‘school’ of psychiatry to which he
subscribes; no precise measurements or standards. Labels are put on ‘bottles’ of symptoms - but
the contents of the bottles seem to change at the whim of one school of
research or another.
Take
for instance Alzheimer’s disease. I can
read the standard, original definition of a ‘pre-senile dementia’, which, when
originally identified and defined by Alzheimer himself, applied essentially to
persons under the age of 55. Yet in a
recent paper describing research into the prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease
amongst professional footballers, the author states that the condition is
rarely experienced in persons under the age of 60!
It
is only in later years and being outside the maelstrom that I was then in, and
fully in charge of my life and mind, that I can look back and be critical. But let me emphasise again, as I do through
all that I write, that apart from those whose reasoning and lack of perception
I condemn, and who will emerge later, I am not critical of the intent of
any individual: I appreciate most deeply the care and concern which were lavished
upon me by all the people whom I encountered.
But
I am a professional in my own right; my training and experience were on a par
with most of the medical practitioners in their profession, and so I
justify my own right to be critical of analysis and results. All this, of course, looking back with the
benefit of the records in my possession, to let me see into the thought
processes of those who were examining and analysing mine.
My
perception of the lack of objectivity begins in the letter to GP2 sent after my
first consultation. I was seen effectively
as a 'garrulous, bespectacled, Welsh hypochondriac’. Welsh and bespectacled were irrelevancies
that I couldn’t alter, but who would not be a garrulous hypochondriac
after two years on a continuous and substantial intake of Librium (which modern
professional medical opinion now recognises as having been totally
inappropriate and unnecessary!)? The
fact that he rated me as of above average intelligence mollifies the personal
affront to my self-image, which itself pales into insignificance before the
recollection of what else appeared in the letter, and its immediate
effect.
After
two years continuous use, at 10mg tds, my Librium was stopped forthwith and
replaced by Tryptizol.
Oh Boy! - Does anyone want to know what
‘cold turkey’ is like?
My
advice: don’t try it! Recollect - I had
been taking Librium in substantial dosage for over two years. Information readily available and unequivocal
says that it is for short-term use.
There is also full information about withdrawal after use - in my case
after such dosage for so long my withdrawal might have taken over one year!
Mine was overnight!
The
bizarre reactions and symptoms that I experienced are only partially recorded
in my notes, but it was enough that when food was put in my mouth I lost
contact with it, for I had no taste, no feeling down my throat. My stomach might not have existed for there
was no sensation when I pressed that region, and I had no pressure sensation in
my bladder. It was as if everything from
my mouth to my fork no longer existed.
The symptoms which I was experiencing were in fact so ‘global’ that in
the correspondence between MC and GP2, they were referred to as ‘..this
remarkable set of symptoms’ and 'multi-various physical symptoms’.
The
possibility that they might be the effects of the instantaneous withdrawal from
Librium was just not considered; everything I was experiencing was put down to
a never-before-recorded idiosyncratic reaction to Tryptizol.
Time
off work and a return to Librium produced a measure of stability. ‘Stability’?
Huh! Work was becoming a daily
nightmare, if that isn’t too paradoxical, while what was going on in the minds
of my wife and daughter, I would not like to examine even after all this time.
If
you don’t succeed in flattening him at the first go, why, just have
another. A couple of days on Stelazine -
immediate disaster - then a second bash, this time with Melleril. Same result; bizarre symptoms; brief
flirtation with Nardil; reduced to quivering jelly. Hospital?
Yes please. Refuge. I could, with relief and without feeling
guilty, put aside my responsibilities at home and work.
E.C.T.? -- If you say so.
“Sign here” - as a voluntary patient.
Bang!
The next assault on my precious mind
began.
Isn’t
it amazing how docile we are? Or maybe
then we were more docile, accepting, than people are now. Perhaps people nowadays are better informed,
or demand more information; also there are patients’ support groups, and others
active in attempts to outlaw E.C.T - it is, after all, a bizarre and dangerous
‘treatment’. Whatever the analysis,
there I was, good little Indian, ready to accept what the kind gentleman said
because it would make me better. I am
sure that you want to know all about it, for it is done in your hospitals, and
by people who, indirectly, you employ.
Three
times a week the Ward went into its well-rehearsed routine. You wake and get up as usual, but have no
breakfast. Shortly, you have an
injection of a belladonna (deadly nightshade) derivative whose purpose is to
dry the mouth and prevent you choking on your saliva. Meanwhile the nurses are playing trains with
the beds, pushing them end-to-end in the corridor outside the treatment
room. Next, as your turn approaches, a second
injection, this time of a curare derivative.
Curare, as you probably know, is the poison that South American Indians
put on their blow-darts; the object of its use in this situation being to cause
complete muscle relaxation and minimise the risk of vertebral fractures (after
all it is electro convulsive therapy) - no mention of the
possibility of these when I gave my ‘informed’ consent!
Let me quote from The Oxford Companion
to the Mind:
E.C.T:
Applying a voltage with surface electrodes on the head
across
the brain. This is done under
anaesthesia or muscle relaxant, as it produces convulsions which can be
dangerous.
E.C.T
is extensively used as a convenient and quick treatment for depression, though
there is no theoretical basis to justify it.
There
is considerable criticism of its extensive use because it may produce permanent
brain damage, especially losses of memory and intelligence, though the evidence
is not entirely clear.
I want you to take particular note of
the last sentence for reasons that will become pertinent later.
You
lie on the bed, shoes off and tucked under the mattress end. Chug - chug, the train moves on and your
‘carriage’ is manoeuvred into the treatment room. Dentures out and into a glass. An anaesthetist tries to find a suitable vein
in your arm and, when successful, dribbles in Pentathol, or a similar
anaesthetic. Gentle bliss and
oblivion. Next, electrodes are placed on
your temples and a burst of electricity is switched into your lovely, delicate,
unsuspecting brain.
You
don’t know this, of course; what next you are aware of is gradual reawakening,
bemused, head not present, an aching void in its place and sticky jelly clagged
in your side hair. You gingerly get up,
reclaim your shoes and teeth, and emerge into a pointless day. Nothing has really gone away -
although it is at this point, and from now on, that your memory starts to be
eroded, never fully to return.
The
staff were all immensely kind. I joined
occupational therapy and became adept at basket making (“In front of two,
behind one” was the oft repeated cry!), washed the dishes, and
whiled away the evening in the quiet room.
Then welcome bed, sans teeth, sans mind, and with hope of oblivion. Of course, there were sleeping pills -
Soneryl, Sonergan, Seconal, Amytal, Mogadon - all have gone down my
throat. But they were never effective at
the time when I wanted them to be.
Three
in the morning. Someone once said that 3
a.m. should never have been invented; how I and many others would fervently agree. Wide awake, and staring into the void of my
mind - not a place for exploration - torch flash on face as the ‘night watch’
passes. Finally, and inevitably, get up
for a pee (do all hospital ward toilets have such an unpleasant odour?).
Lovely,
kind Nancy, wife of Keith, a foreman at work, sitting in the night-station;
brief chat; Sorry, I can’t give you another sleeping tablet; here, try a
Paracetemol; back to bed, maybe fitful sleep until the dreaded, but welcome
day dawned again.
I
do not want to remember too much detail of such a drab time in my life. Nor, I suppose, will you want to read about
it - but you should, for I am sure that unless it is to visit a close relative,
or as a patient, you won’t enter a Psychiatric Ward. You won’t see the uncontrolled misery and
loneliness in faces; you won’t see the eyes glazed with drugs or E.C.T; you
won’t see the hopelessness of a person cut off and isolated from a welter of
problems that will still be there on discharge.
But like you, no one will want to visit.
People can’t cope, don’t know what to say (Except, perhaps, “It’ll be all right if you
pull yourself together - yes, that’s it - pull yourself together”). Great original thought; how many times did I
hear it being said - often by husbands to wives, or wives to husbands,
themselves full of woe at the disaster that had befallen their lives and homes.
My
own wife was magnificent. Never missed a
visit; even later, when attending an evening class to prepare for employment
should I become incapable of returning to work, she made sure that she came
during the day. But she was the only one
in a total of about twenty weeks in hospital.
Nor were there visitors to the home when I was there and recuperating,
apart, that is from a good friend and colleague from work and our Parish
Priest. Not one.
When,
later, I became involved in complementary cancer care, I heard the same story;
very few people, even close relatives, will chat. Most go out of their way to avoid even simple
contact, conversation. There seemed then
- I’m not sure about now - to be a stigma attached to someone with mental
health problems, and a reaction that almost seemed to say that it was the fault
of the ill person. (Many times have I
heard people say, and I have said it myself, “I wish I had a crutch or a leg in
plaster so that folk can see that there is something the
matter!”).
But
don’t you think that you have a duty to learn more, to be compassionate, to
understand, to be able to talk to people about their problems? For, after all, people are now being discharged
to ‘Care in the Community’. Well, for
God’s sake, you are the bloody community; they are there with you - in your
care, not conveniently isolated, socially sanitised in some distant
Victorian pile. The only time you want
to know is when someone has an intractable
‘personality problem’ i.e. someone who might be a sexual deviant, a paedophile. Then, Geronimo!, get out the vigilantes;
hound them out of the community; castrate the buggers; lock them away even
though they haven’t committed a crime.
They
used to burn witches and social undesirables, didn’t they? Not much really changes; the hysteria is
still there. It is your duty to
‘get real’, to understand fact and not mob panic. After all, not every schizophrenic is an
axe-wielding maniac; most of them are very sensitive, isolated people. Statistically, you are just as likely
as the next person to succumb to a nervous condition, a mental illness; if you
learn more about it now perhaps it will never happen, you’ll recognise the
warning signs!
In
writing this account, I have started what has become, for me, a very
interesting process. I have, until now,
only read my medical notes in a very tentative way, just enough, really, to be
able to compile a coherent account for my lawsuit. What little I read disturbed me and brought
back such painful memories, un-bottled such nasty genies, that I hastily put
the stopper back in the bottle. But as I
now have a worthwhile reason for analysing that past, I am delving further and
further in as I search for actual dates, actual events, actual drugs and
treatments, actual dosages.
Memories
of events, sequences, dates and people are emerging, but, apart from the
recollection of some individuals who did their utmost for me, I am finding much
to cause me serious disquiet, and some to make me so very angry - even after so
much time has passed. So angry that I
can’t yet begin to write about it, but shall confront it later when I finally
summarise.
In
total I had ten E.C.T.s as an in-patient and, after the greater part of eight
weeks in hospital, I was discharged home ‘much better’, still taking
Librium and Seconal. I am not a pharmacologist,
but I can read, also I have or have had a number of friends in medicine
and some in psychiatry, so an appreciation of drugs and their effects, alone or
in combination, is not beyond me. While
I intend to summarise and comment upon my various ‘therapies’ during my conclusion,
it is worth noting a few facts as I go along.
Thus, Seconal is a barbiturate from which there can be severe withdrawal
effects similar to those seen in alcohol abstinence. Librium, on the other hand, is a
benzodiazepine, which also can cause dependence and withdrawal symptoms,
and is prescribed for the short term (2 to 4 weeks only) relief of
anxiety; its use should be reviewed regularly and should be discontinued as
soon as possible - and other cautions and side effects too numerous to list
here – except that benzodiazepines and barbiturates should not be taken
simultaneously!
At
this point in my story, I had been taking Librium for thirty months.
For
some reason the notes and correspondence in my file are a bit sketchy over this
period, don’t ask me why. What I next
see recorded, is that I had thirteen E.C.Ts as an outpatient between 14th April
and 24th May 1964. I look at the copy of
the form that I signed indemnifying the hospital against any injury that I
might suffer in treatment, and at the form listing each session - the voltages
and duration etc. - and memories come back of the breakfast-less journey to the
hospital, crammed in a Social Services car, and the return journey,
zombified. And I weep inside now, as I
must have done openly then.
Thus
fortified, I finally got back to work.
While I had been off there had been some logical organisational and
staff structural changes. Calder Hall
had become just another power station.
The cutting edge of technology had transferred to the up-and-coming Advanced
Gas Reactor, and staff of my grade were being dispersed, some to AGR and, in my
case, to create a brand new department.
Because of my innovative skills in the field of measurement that had
come to the fore during the commissioning and experimental phases of the Calder
reactors and plant, I was to be involved with experimental instrumentation.
But
where had I put my mind, my technical knowledge and expertise? Who were these people? I couldn’t put names to faces or faces to
names. I was isolated - physically in an
office high in a new, tall building, and mentally because I had no base from
which to think. At work I paced the
office, bemused and feeling trapped. I
couldn’t express what I was feeling to anyone at work, for apart from the fact
that you feel ashamed of your own lack of purpose, lack of achievement, people
get embarrassed when you talk about personal, particularly nervous,
suffering.
(It
was only later when I was competent again and people saw me working and coping
with the aftermath of what I had been through, that their confidences came pouring
out, because they knew that I had been ‘somewhere’ - somewhere akin to where
they were in their heads and lives.
Gradually, I began to learn that behind practically every second door in
this peculiar artificial village in which we lived, there was a little hell,
disguised from the world by the special face that was kept by the door and put
on when going out).
When
your mind is empty, incapable of constructive thought, it is very wide open to
all the anxieties, doubts, and uncertainties concerning your present and
future. What future? You can’t even face the present, this
day. Night is awful. Whilst bed is so desirable, such a refuge,
the effects of the sleeping pill soon wear off, and you lie there sweating,
almost seeing the entire board of management in censorious array like vultures
on the bed-end.
One
reason why there was not a lot written and my notes are so sketchy at this
time, is because I wasn’t talking about what was actually in my mind,
what I was planning to do. I was
planning to take my own life. But I
couldn’t talk about it - it had to appear to be an accident, and if I showed
premeditation, I thought, my insurance policies would not pay out; but I
couldn’t ask anyone if they would pay out because that might show
premeditation and my insurance policies might not pay out. My planned method was electrocution, but that
is difficult to stage in the home in such a way as to appear to be accidental,
and my ingenious mind just was not functioning.
As
I walked to the train each morning, I used to look at the wheels of the school
buses and wonder if I could find the courage to stumble under one; or, on the
platform, whether I could contrive a fall in front of the train as it came
in. At night I used to wish fervently
that I had been killed along with the thirty-five friends and shipmates who had
been fragmented or incinerated within feet of me when the destroyer, HMS Saumarez,
in which we were serving, was mined. Obviously,
I did not succeed or even attempt, (though it has only struck me as I write
that in the Seconal at home I had the ideal ‘remedy’ - easy to overdose, but in
my state of mind I couldn’t even see that possibility).
There is, however, something that I can
tell you without fear of contradiction: there is no place on earth more lonely
than the mind of someone who wants to die, to achieve oblivion (unless
it be the mind of someone facing execution).
The most isolated Siberian tundra or Gobi
desert wastes would provide more solace than the domain of your mind.
Before
I contrived my ‘accident’ or otherwise achieved my own destruction, I was saved
by Pentathol. Have you lost the
plot? Let’s get up to date. We are now at the end of July 1964, and a new
strategy was being proposed. I may not
be giving them enough credit, but MC, GP2, and the medical staff at work were
individually and collectively concerned about my state of mind and future, and
discussing ways and means. The Pentathol
strategy applied the relaxing anaesthetising properties of the drug to achieve
within me total bodily relaxation, in the hope that my mind would respond as
well. (In case you have forgotten, I
still had no mind). So, three times a
week I was driven to the hospital in a Works’ car and had Pentathol dribbled
into me as I slowly ‘blissed out’, as my Buddhist friends would say. There was one Indian registrar who could
dribble it in very slowly and actually inject two syringe-fulls -
oh! the ecstasy (and the agony - for nothing goes away, and the let-down on
waking is so bleak).
But
fear not, dear reader, (sound of bugle, yet far off) help is on the way. MC has been to a conference, and come back
bursting with new ideas. For me there
had been a paper in which excellent results had been achieved in some creatures
- possibly wild dogs - in which large doses of Valium (or Librium, I am trying
to recall a memory) had been used to good effect. Well done!
You’ve caught up with the plot! I
would have large doses of Librium (or Valium).
There
is nothing that I can find in the notes that relate to this particular trick,
but like some other ‘special’ memories that have stayed with me, this one is
particularly vivid, as is the memory of the reaction of GP2. He visited me at home almost every day, in my
darkened room from which I wouldn’t stir.
After several days, he stared into my eyes, realised where I was (or
wasn’t) and said “You’re drugged out of your mind!”.
Before you can say ‘benzodiazepine’, I
was back in hospital.
All
of my files, notes and correspondence were obtained by my Solicitors as we
sought to make a case to sue the makers of these drugs, an abortive venture, as
it turned out, so fickle is blindfold Justice.
In making the case, I had a long session with a Consultant Psychiatrist
who was retained by the various law firms.
He started interviewing me in the usual manner, but as my story unfolded
he just sat there, silent, a sad, sympathetic little smile on his face, his
head sometimes shaking from side to side in sheer disbelief that so much could
have been visited on one person.
But
don’t go away, psychiatry has so much to offer. The time has come to introduce you to yet
another form of shock treatment - insulin shock treatment, or, as it now is, modified
insulin treatment (it was modified so that there is now a smaller chance of
killing you). This form of shock
treatment relies on the injection of increasingly large doses of insulin with
the object of reducing the blood sugar level and bringing on a coma.
This
is how the modified form works: you are woken at about 5 am and given an
injection of insulin. You continue to
lie in bed for a couple of hours and soon start to sweat and shake
uncontrollably, then, while still in bed, you get placed in front of you a tray
with a dish of corn flakes heaped, and I mean heaped, with glucose
powder, and a full fried breakfast plus toast.
No problem eating it, you are ravenous.
A little while longer in bed then get up and have a shower (compulsory). I became so inert and depressed that I
couldn’t even bother to shower, sweaty and niffy though I was – sometimes I
just used to shut myself in and pretend.
I
had in all twenty-six such episodes that, at five a week, took me into the
sixth week. How depressed I got, so
very, very depressed. I used to pace the
corridors feeling utterly lost, pointless and empty; sometimes I went into the
next-door geriatric ward just to see people who had less mind than I had. I craved exercise, but when I asked if I
could go to the older, former hospital not far away where I knew there was a
rehab gym, I was fobbed off and got no help - “Just go for a walk”. Where?
In the wet, featureless lanes with their potholes and puddles, just
behind the hospital, in the autumn? So
drab, so weary, so empty - the name ‘Sneckyeat
Road
One
day, MC said to me “You were referred originally with an anxiety state, now you
have a full blown clinical depression”.
Well, we were making progress, that’s something.
When
it looked as if I was in for a long haul, the occupational therapist suggested
something that I had always wanted to do.
Weaving. There was a table loom
as yet untried. Great! I’d have a go. What to make?
“ Why not place mats?” said my wife who occasionally came in to OT. So off she went, and came back with some bright
orangey Courtelle, and I started. Things
that I had only read about before began to become realities - making the warp,
the poree cross, and whatever the other one is called; heddles, shuttle, and
beater all became realities. Then,
entering the warp. That could have been
difficult, but one of the nurses had worked at Coates’ thread factory where she
had been involved with just such a task in making up thread samples for display
and advertising. So, with one at one end
and the other at the other end of the loom we were soon ‘entered’ and I was
away. While my days weren’t ‘swifter
than the weaver’s shuttle’, they nevertheless received a boost from this particular
shuttle. I had to overcome some
difficulties of technique, but eventually I created six place mats, a
centrepiece and a tray cloth. I still
have them, a little worse for wear.
One
hears so much these days in our new
‘consciousness’, our new awareness, of ‘body, mind and spirit’ - the
totality of being human. My body was
still there, recoiling from the many attacks made upon it; my mind had a
certain ephemeral quality, though, on reflection, it had the reaction of a lead
balloon showing sudden half-hearted attempts to lift off. My spirit?
Now there’s a thought; if I ever had a spirit, where was it now?
Becoming
a Catholic when I married I had become a very diligent follower of my new
‘brand’ of Christianity, but in my depressed state, where indeed was my
spirit? Had I just been going through
the motions? Had I ever had anything of
the sort? Must find out. The church not far away was manned by
Benedictine monks, and so, remembering one whose words one Sunday at Mass had impressed
me, I rang. With not a moment’s
hesitation, he jumped on his Noddy bike and put-putted over to see me.
I
still have a little book which he gave me (Funny, his name was Father Little;
the book - They Speak by Silences was a series of meditative
thoughts by an anonymous monk of the silent Carthusian order and is one that I
still, more than thirty-five years later, use for ‘provocative’ meditation) in
the hope that I would find solace in its words, and to this day I am grateful
for his earnest attention and compassion.
But in spite of his help, what I now know as ‘spirit’ never materialised in me, and never
did until I experienced the events that I write about elsewhere.
Here
is a thought, though; if you want to know what it is like to be in deep
depression (no, it is not just being ‘fed up’!), read Psalm 88 - at least that
is its number in the Jerusalem
It is called ‘Lament’: as he cries out to his God...
...hear
my cries for help;
for my soul is all troubled.
my life is on the brink of the Underworld;
I am numbered among those who go down to the Pit,
a man bereft of strength;
a man alone,
down among the dead,
among the slaughtered in their graves,
among those you have forgotten....
...You have turned my friends and neighbours against
me,
now my one companion is darkness.
But
soft! What is happening? MC is beginning to have self-doubts. Would I like a second opinion? - He would.
So ‘twas arranged, and one November morning I was driven with others who
had a variety of appointments, to the ultimate seat of learning; me to see a
Big Wheel (BW), one who went on to become a Very Big Wheel, at the mention of
whose name a young psychiatrist, to whom I quoted it many years later, visibly
genuflected.
But
no, such is the way that things work, protocol etc., I did not immediately see
BW; instead, at first, I was taken to his Registrar or Little Wheel (LW). For about half an hour, possibly forty minutes,
he interviewed me as if it was my very first encounter with a
psychiatrist.
Now,
there is an unkind saying in education that
“those who can, ‘do’; those who can’t ‘do’, teach; those who can’t
teach, teach others to teach; while those who can’t teach others to teach become
either education administrators or researchers”. I feel that there must be an equivalent
gradation in psychiatry. I don’t know
what had brought LW into the profession, and into research in particular, but
it certainly wasn’t his human interplay.
He exhibited not one glimmer of concern or sympathy for my condition or
experiences; he had about as much empathy towards me as a gardener has towards
a green fly.
He
was hostile, sarcastic and belittling.
Just one example will suffice: I tried to explain the depths of my
desire to die, to commit suicide. Had I,
as one does, gone to a high place to throw myself off? No?
Well, I couldn’t have been all that serious, could I? It may not sound a very great put-down, but
in the context of the others, the sarcasms and negations of what I was telling
him, it was.
However,
he had been well primed in his negativity.
The letter from MC itself was so negative, but not only that, he seemed
to go out of his way to be negative.
Take, for instance, his comments about the state of our marriage: he
records that both my wife and I said that we were happily married; however, he
knew better, he had got a snippet (apparently from GP2) which cast doubt
upon our understanding of the situation, doubts that he reinforced, but
did not specify from a source that he didn’t identify. One wonders why he had to put in yet
another negative, unsubstantiated, keyhole-peering remark. Why did he not rely on what my wife
and I said? After all, we were the main
players. Throughout this period, she
could not have been more devoted, more caring; ‘TLC’ might have been coined to
describe her attitude.
In
our wider life, and with our daughter, we were fortunate to have a family
interest - almost obsession - in riding and horses. We rode whenever possible, had riding
holidays, took a deep and intelligent interest in improving our riding skills,
mixed with like-minded people and made many friends outside the works environment,
outside the peculiar Seascale society.
Many of these friends we still have.
Yes, we! For although, as
I shall describe, we ultimately parted and divorced, we have remained excellent
friends, a friendship manifested in a variety of ways that are not here
relevant.
Before
my life was so bludgeoned, I frequently rode a particular horse that was being
looked after by some friends.
Smokey. Such an eager, willing
horse; black; not very big; but he took me everywhere, from the miles of beach
to the fell-tops, and along all the many bridle-paths with which this area is
blessed. He was a boon companion and I
can still recall his moving body under the saddle. When I was recuperating after the first spell
in hospital, my wife told me what she had been keeping from me - Smokey was
dead, killed by lightning in his field.
She also told me that she had been saving up to buy him for me. That reflects the marriage that I knew
at that time, not the almost evil representations or half-hints that the letter
contains.
I
have tried since, indeed, I am trying now, to deduce why things were being said
about our marriage that at the time were patently untrue. Since we are in the domain of Sigmund Freud
perhaps we can get a little Freudian. I
have observed in many men, probably in myself also, the in-built, virtually
unconscious belief held by each that he is the one who can take over this
female’s life, protect her, sort her problems, give her better sex than she is
currently getting. To do which, as in
nature, he has to expose the weaknesses, real or invented, in her current
husband, partner, boyfriend; particularly if the latter is in any way
vulnerable. I see a manifestation of
this occurring among the fifteen or so rams that are sometimes held in my field
in the autumn. If one has any defect,
first one ram and then all the rest in turn or together, will butt and harry
him persistently, all, no doubt, responding to the in-built behaviour of their
evolution. We are the sum total of our
evolution, nothing lost, nothing taken away, and we have it within ourselves to
behave just like the rams.
I
am not in the remotest way suggesting that anything improper was even thought,
but my wife was a very attractive woman, not only in her looks, but also in her
vivacity and openness of speech, and the marriages of GP2 and MC were under
stress. Remarks made to me by GP2 during
his consultations showed a certain disillusion, while MC in a short time parted
from his wife and they ultimately divorced.
In my analysis, I am suggesting their own personal situations were
unconsciously being played out in mine, and in my ‘vulnerable’ state I was the
ram being ‘butted’ - and once one starts everyone joins in. A bit convoluted, but I know what I
mean.
You
may think that I am being selective, or that I have an agenda of vindictiveness
against the people whom I perceive as having perpetrated wrongs upon me in the
past. I can tell you this; if anyone has
proper credentials and a legitimate reason for wanting to see the letters and
reports, they can come here and I will willingly show them and put them in
context.
What
I find hard to reconcile are the two images that I now have of MC - the man who
sat, as I shall describe, urbane and friendly, tying salmon flies in a little
hand-held vice, while I had my fortnightly ‘psychotherapy’, and the man who
wrote the letters and reports that contain nothing to indicate that I
had any achievement or standing. In fact
the reverse; his whole thrust seemed to say that I never had any potential and
never would. I know that he had only
seen me from the outset under the influence of Librium; I know that when first
seen I had a label around my neck which said ‘Anxiety State’, but I would have
thought that he would have had some discernment, and would have realised that I
wouldn’t have got where I had without talent.
We
were roughly of an age, and had reached about the same level, each in our own
profession, and, indeed, I had reached at thirty-five a grade that many
engineers in public service didn’t reach in their whole careers. As I wrote earlier, I had represented the
Company in France and Stockholm , and, big disappointment, I was told when I was
making recovery that it had been intended that I should be seconded to Japan
However,
now I realise as I read deeper and deeper in my files that what I thought were
personal confidences were, in fact, incorporated into the next progress report
to my GP, and retained in my personal file where they remain yet, colouring the
view of me of every subsequent GP who has read them.
When
LW had completed his interview, he went to see BW and was confined with him for
about twenty minutes, after which I was invited in. Neither sat; I don’t remember whether or not
I did. I was not put at my ease, nor
made to feel welcome - I felt I was an irrelevance. I still had my raincoat folded over my arm;
such was the extent of the courtesy offered to me. I remained in the room for no more than ten
minutes, and can only remember one question or remark. This was to be asked what my greatest concern
was, to which I replied that my memory had been so affected that I feared it
would not fully return. I was assured
that it would - and that was that. Back
to the hospital and await the verdict.
When it came, I was told that Pertofran and Valium had been recommended,
and that the recommendation would be accepted.
So began the next phase of my drug regime. I was eventually to take Pertofran for ten
years and Valium for twelve.
I
don’t know whether MC knew, or even guessed, that the letter that he received
analysing my consultation had not been written by his Guru. I know now, having read it several times,
that it may have been signed by BW but was definitely drafted entirely
by LW. There is virtually every
undermining remark, put-down or sarcasm that he had spoken to me appearing in
black and white. This letter, too, has
its niche in my surgery file. Therefore,
MC was, in reality, relying upon the analysis and opinion of someone
effectively of lower standing, and one presumes, less experience than himself.
I
recollect when, early in my career, I attended a junior management-training
course. One of our group exercises was
to conduct a court of enquiry into a site accident. We were given the ‘official reports’, witness
statements and other corroborations that we studied, and then we called and
interviewed every one of the parties, admirably role-played by staff of the
Training Department. We questioned and
re-questioned and then we deliberated and finally reached our conclusion. But where had we gone wrong? What had we missed? Well, I’ll tell you. The accident had happened on a day late in
November, at 4 pm. It had been dark!
So obvious when you see it, but it
had eluded some eight or so budding young managers.
So
what relevance does this bit of philosophy have here? Well it concerns the analysis essentially by
all three, BW, LW and MC, of the reasons for my loss of memory and my great
concern about it. I won’t rehearse the
reasons given other than to say that the word ‘hysterical’ appears. Now, can you recollect that earlier, after
the description of E.C.T and the definition quoted from my reference book, I
asked you to note a particular sentence?
Hands up who can remember. Read:
learn: memorise:- There is considerable criticism of E.C.T because it may
produce permanent brain damage, especially losses of memory and intelligence.
How many E.C.Ts had I had? Well done,
that’s it:- twenty-three. I
rest my case.
No, I do not rest my case! Just where had they come from, these three
‘soothsayers’ who, each like an ancient Etruscan haruspex, were picking over
the entrails of my life and mind? I have
related how it came to pass that I was suffering this ‘disembowelling’
process, but how was it that they came to have such jurisdiction over my
mind, my precious mind? Were they part
of a self-selecting, self-perpetuating ‘priesthood’?
The
next time that Stephen Hawking appears on your television screen, pause a while
and reflect upon that contorted body, the twisted face and head; read some of
what he has written, and reflect further that this is one of the most brilliant
minds of our time contained there in that pathetic shell. When you have done that, see whether you can
disagree that one’s mind is the most precious of one’s possessions. I was in grave danger of losing mine, of
having it destroyed; I know how precious it is and I defy you to disagree!
Some
years after the time of which I am writing and, as I shall relate, I made my
way back up the recovery ladder, I was, for a time, in charge of training for
the whole of the Sellafield complex. As
part of my self-education in this post, I took myself off to a conference at Cambridge Bristol University Dental
School Dental
School
Is
there, one wonders, an assessment process for aspiring psychiatrists, one that
seeks to determine whether they have the necessary skills and talents to
be allowed access to the most precious possession that anyone can have? Do not treat this as an irrelevance, a
hypothetical question, for statistically you are as likely as the next person
to have the ‘entrails’ of your mind picked over, to have your
brain corrupted by some mind-altering drug, potentially with side-effects far
worse than many ‘conventional’ illnesses.
I
have only, within the last few days, noticed a small letter ‘hiding’ in one of
the files of my records. It is the
letter written by MC to BW following receipt of his advice with respect to my
further treatment. He thanks BW for his
advice and taking the trouble, then goes on:
‘I must
both thank you and apologise to you for the trouble you have gone to with the
cases I have referred to you during the year I have been over here. They have, I am afraid, run to this sort of
pattern and you will appreciate that this is the result both of the difficulties
that they present and, I fear, lacunae in my own training.’
Yes,
I have looked it up, just to confirm what I believed the definition to be: a lacuna
is a gap, omission, hiatus; lacunae obviously are these in
plural. Imagine what would have been my
thoughts had I been aware at the time. I
had been a patient for just one year and was, therefore, one of the first patients
of the consultancy; there had been other second opinions; had we, by any
chance, each fallen through a lacuna?
Let
me look back at the end of this ‘formative’ year in my life. When it began, I had already been taking
Librium for two years; I continued for virtually the whole of the year, with a
mid-point interval at a double dose rate, before changing to Valium. There had been brief interludes with
Tryptizol, Melleril, Nardil and Stelazine; there had been Soneryl, Sonergan,
Seconal, Amytal and lastly Mogadon to pacify my nights. I had suffered twenty-three sessions of E.C.T
and twenty-six episodes of modified insulin shock treatment. In total, I had received forty-three
injections of Pentathol, plus twenty-three each of belladonna and curare
derivatives, and now I was going to start on a regimen of Pertofran, Valium and
Mogadon.
(Dare
I ask you to remember that at the very outset, I had no episode or history of
nervous or psychiatric ailments - I had uncontrollable diarrhoea, nothing
else?).
In
time, all good things come to an end and I left hospital and recuperation, and
started back at work. My employers were
very supportive, and placed me with congenial people in work that was quite
undemanding. So slowly I settled. The gradual restructuring of my life began
and the building of confidence was real.
After a time I was asked to take over Engineering Training and, eventually,
the Training Department covering the whole of the establishment. At one time, had I been taken to a high place
and, with all of the possible jobs in the Works laid out before me, asked to
pick one, the last, the very last choice would have been Training! However, I was more grateful than I could say
to the Works’ management for the way in which I had been reintegrated into
work, and, anyway, it is said that in every Welshman there is a latent preacher
or teacher, so maybe I had met my destiny.
Many interesting developments were taking place in the world of
industrial training and I was soon absorbed.
At
home, I found in time that my wife had carried the burden of my condition for
too long, and she herself became ill.
There came a time when it felt as if we were two drowning people
clutching at the same straw. MC, who was
aware of what was developing, urged me most strongly one day - “For God’s sake,
get out - go and camp somewhere, but get out”.
And so I did. I took a flat in a
converted farmhouse - and by one of those quirks for which fate is so famous,
the flat below me was taken simultaneously by the Clinical Psychologist from
MC’s department.
Once
one has separated, it seems to be virtually impossible to reunite and rebuild
what had been before, and so, inevitably, my wife and I divorced. In time, I was lucky in finding this house
with its land suitable for horses, moved here in 1971 and have lived here ever
since. Again, giving the lie to what MC
had said about our marriage, it was my former wife who actually was
instrumental in my finding it in the first place.
Almost
without a break until about 1970 I continued with psychotherapy, although, at
the time I wasn’t aware that that is what it was, so little did the ‘medicine
of the mind’ figure in one’s everyday considerations; all I knew was that it
was ‘good to talk’. However, coping with
a solitary life and the increasing demands of work (ironically, because I
became enthusiastic and could see the potential of the new moves in industrial
training I was placing the demands on myself), because of these factors
I found myself ‘going backwards’ at work.
Whereas I had had much support following my initial return to work, and
when I took up my role as Training Manager, now I found that patience seemed to
have run out, and my absences were seen in a different light.
It
was not realised, probably wasn’t even addressed, that the continuous drug
regime was taking a devastating toll of my faculties. I was even now taking Pertofran and Valium,
and had recourse to Mogadon at night, so you may perhaps judge that the start
of each day was a little uncertain. I
had a most marvellous Girl Friday at work, Val, who could look at my eyes
first-thing and then decide if she should stall callers until after 10 am.
In
time, the constant struggle became unbearable, and one day, in late summer
1976, I set out for work and didn’t arrive.
Instead, I turned off my normal route and took refuge with a friend with
whom I holed-up for two days. That,
essentially, was the end of my working career.
In time I was pensioned off at fifty-two and then a new phase in my life
- indeed, a new life - began.
But
what sort of new life? The very state of
not going to work was in itself a new life, and I knew within myself that I had
had enough; nothing was worth the growing loss of ability and status, and the
struggle to do well things that previously I could have done in my sleep. If I had known how this new life was going to
unfold, what would I have thought, what would I have done? But I wasn’t yet in the state of mind to ask
myself “What am I going to do with this freedom now that I have made my
escape?”. I was rather more like the
survivor of a shipwreck who has only just made it to a shore - he didn’t care
what shore - all he knew was that he wasn’t fighting something alien
anymore.
When
I look back at that time, it is quite startling to recall how a new life
developed almost by spontaneous combustion.
I marvel at the expansion - expansion of my circle of friends, expansion
in the range of my activities; activities and contacts that opened up an
entirely new world - a world that I hadn’t previously explored or even thought
much about.
And
my spirit? I had never, not since I
posed the question in hospital twelve or so years previously, found an answer -
never really given it much further thought.
Just five more years down the line and I was to have some enlightenment. It was as if in me there was taking place the
metamorphosis of a former caterpillar, now in its cocoon, waiting to emerge to
make its destined flight. But I knew as
little of what was involved in flying as did the caterpillar when it started to
spin the silk of its cocoon.
All
of this lay ahead. I still don’t know
whether I would have taken a different path - too often in life we never have
the option to choose, or never realise that there is a choice, until we
have committed ourselves. As you read
further, perhaps you will have an opinion; for myself, I shall leave the
analysis until I reach it in the logic of the narrative.
At this moment, I have just been cast up
on the shore and I am so grateful that I have survived.
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