And sometimes you get extremely kind voices as well. I got reminded to take my medication when I came out of hospital at one point. I was having difficulty, I didn’t have a, a proper system for sorting out my medication, and I saw a friend of mine on the bus, and he was going up to the psychiatric unit to see some friends, and he was like, Oh hi. How you’re doing I said, Yes, fine. But I keep forgetting to take my medication and that And I suppose that was half past one, two oclock in the afternoon. Around came 5 oclock and I got in my head the voice, medication’, which was the call at the hospital at 5 oclock for people to come and queue up for medication, you know, so, they can be, you know, that’s a really practical salvation as well. But they can boost your confidence or whatever, you know. Sometimes obviously they can boost it a bit too much and you get on your high horse, but you know, they can be extremely useful and kind and helpful as well, yes.

Nowadays as I say the voices say, hang yourself, cut your throat, you’re evil, you’re damned. And I say do it tomorrow and not today. Cut your throat, hang yourself, tomorrow. That’s the way it works for me. I still, I still hear the voices all the time, very dimu Dr [Name] said the drugs will prevent the worst and he was right after 76. Nowadays hang yourself, cut youI think I’m damned because I said, There’s no God. it’s all your fault to Mum in October 69 when I hitchhiked to India. I can’t help that. I’ve never touched anyone and always been very gentle and that’s it.

And have the voices changed over the years?

Well in [place name] as I said I was hearing the voice of God, Beethoven, Jesus, the Devil, the Virgin Mary, Samson, Mao Tse Tung, Capablanca, Brahms, Bruckner. Nowadays’ just hang yourself, cut your throat, you’re evil, really damned’ because I’m on the injection and the injection has curbed them down, but it doesn’t take them away completely that’s why I have a poor prognosis.

Yes, you hear voices in third person, and that feels from a male. And you believe that, not inside your head, outside your head. They don’t control you, and you don’t control them. They don’t tell you to do things. Don’t give you orders. And they are there constantly, when I’m sitting here with you, I’m distracted, but as soon as you leave I will hear them. Or on the bus I will hear them. And it’s generally like just a form of commentary. Sometimes it’s positive, sometimes it’s negative. Sometimes it pejorative, sometimes not so. And, yes, pretty much constantly really.

And what are the voices talking about?

Usually a running commentary on what I’m doing. But I also think I can hear the police, or I’m under surveillance or I can hear my Father, or I can hear. SAS or security services. But I do have excellent hearing, so you never know. And they’re certainly not voices coming in from inside my head. Like now I can’t hear any voice. I can’t hear any voices up there or here. So when you get distracted when I’m talking to you, or socially with friends or family I don’t hear them. When I’m by myself, I hear the voices again. I might just have excellent hearing, who knows?

And what do you think about the voices, do you ?

Well I try and ignore them as much as possible. Although it’s difficult, very often I usually end up responding to the voices. So if you’re by yourself you’d hear the voices and respond to them, which is always tricky. That’s borderline schizophrenia for you. It’s difficult. The most acute stage of course is up to 20 or 30, up to 30 or so. But post 30s, I don’t think it’s because the voices go, it’s just as you get better at handling your existence, and handling the pressure, and knowing not to respond to them, if that makes sense.

I started looking at the different characteristics of voices, and people I think sometimes wonder why I manage to do that and I think it’s because, even though I, I wasn’t involved in the church for years and years and years, I still remember that one of the things in church that we did was that we looked at the characteristics of God and that each part of the Trinity, if you believe in the Trinity, had different characteristics and so I started using that stuff on my voices, that my voices had different characteristics that some were male, some were female, some were positive, some were negative, some were abusive, some were non-abusive, some were advisory, some were commanding and I started looking at those characteristics and I started breaking them down, and that formulated I guess the, the start of the Working with Voices workbook started then, and, you know, and it didn’t come out till much later but that’s when it really started. And I guess I started it on myself by, by looking at those, and I found by looking at the characteristics I was able to start naming my voices properly and saying, This is [name] this is the Priest, this is my father. This is other people in my life And, and I was able to do that with all but one voice. Yeah.

So the voices were people you would known in your past?

Yeah, or like people, not necessarily, [clears throat] sort of voice that was like a teacher a guide, so I called it teacher and, and because it had a name it, it wasn’t scary you know when it has no name and no substance and no characteristics it’s scary but once you start putting all these things in place it’s not scary any more and so, yeah, I guess that’s how I went about that.

I started seeing things, I ended up thinking I was Jesus Christ. Yeah.

What types of things were you seeing?

Well… well Jesus Christ, only a face really looking like Jesus Christ appeared in front of me and said, You’re just like me And so I, in the end, I ended up believing I was Jesus Christ. Yeah.

And what was your experience of seeing things? What did it feel like?

I thought it was natural, you know, it was, I thought it was all part of reality. Yes.

So were you surprised when somebody said that you needed to see a psychiatrist?
Yes, I mean my first thought was oh good, someone wise to talk to, and yes, I didn’t think anything of it, you know, I thought I was, I think I thought I was Jesus Christ and yes.

And then I guess the delusions still carrying on so the first day that I get put into a room, in there, this is when I actually start kind of hallucinating a bit as well I suppose, and I haven’t slept for I don’t know how long by this point as well really and I see like people kind of bashing those sort of gratings on the ceiling and I can see loads of people like trying to bash their way through like with whatever they were armed with. Trying to get in to attack me and they looked pretty real but it is an hallucination because there

can’t be that many people fitting into the small kind of grating do you know what I mean and I know I have tripped a lot and stuff but this is none drug related you know what I mean and as, you know, it’s almost more, it was almost more real than a lot of the tripping experiences I had.

I was going to say how did it compare?

I’d say even more vivid in a way but there was still some detachment there, you know, in the fact that just sort of perspective wise it can’t quite fit, you know, there can’t actually be people in that space but it looks like there are loads, you know what, I don’t know if you have, well from my experience of tripping before, I have often seen ghouls and kind of like you know what I mean like sort of beings and stuff that you know, so it was almost that kind of thing I suppose but they seemed more human than, than other [laughter] if that makes sense.

Well it’s almost like a sort of, I mean it’s almost like you get that, if you get a sort of euphoric sort of it’s not really connected, it’s just like a sort of, a sort of rising… it’s like, almost like an opening out of your sort of being, in a way you feel, you know, you’re in a sort of psychic realm where you’re thinking about, like you’re thinking you’re, you’re bigger than all this sort of, all the world power structures. Just think it. it’s like this whole thing about being, almost being contained, only it didn’t be contained, because your soul, your whole sort of being seems to be, you know, flying all over a place. I was just kind getting that, it’s hard to, it’s to get a real picture, because I’ve tried to write it down a few times and its, its just a really, it’s like a religious thing. A magic realism something. You’re basically thinking out your body, you know, you’re not really in your body when you’re going through this [coughs]. And that was something that the stayed with me was there for, well not the stayed, but it was that type of things. That was the first instant that it really mean I had a time before that, just before, [coughs] I went into hospital, went through it once. I had a similar thing but I hadn’tit’s like you’re it’s like a bit, or some imagination taken from reading the science fiction or science fantasy or some ridiculous thing. But it’s like that, sort of, you think you’ve got this really massively profound idea that you think you know what time itself is. And Mother Nature and this and that. it’s almost like you think you’re aware of these sort of, you know, fundamental aspects of existence. Without really being very philosophical there, how they really know, you know, they’ve had any like, you know, education in that area but it’s just something seems to flood out and there’s no real, really sort of control mechanisms about it.

So that was the first, that was what the first real florid, eruption,

Yes, well, yeah, sure my [sniffs] the delusions I underwent during that year when I was ill, which was sort of an experimental time, you know, just experimenting without, trying to live without medication, you know, so including, yeah, I was quite religious at that time so to an ordinary Christian say believing that believing in the resurrection and that believing also in the end of days and the last the last trumpet and the sea throwing up it’s dead and stuff, that that’s all part and parcel of being a Christian. But you could say that was a bit, that could be a bit of a mass delusion in itself but my delusion my main delusions at that time was that I was made, that the last judgement, you know, the when every when all the dead come back was happening. And I was everyday I was meeting I was sort of finding proof of that.

I was meeting usually, artists from the past like people like Goethe, Shakespeare, Beethoven, Liszt, great, Schubert, great composers, you know, or poets or artists or painters and that that kind of thing. And I was, you know, if somebody had just the slightest resemblance to say, I so I live in [place name] and just a couple of doors along, is a man looks a bit like Rachmaninoff and so, he had similar hair as well to Rachmaninoff had so for example, I’d, you know, I’d believe that that was Rachmaninoff coming back from the dead and because I was an artist I was believing they were they were trying to communicate with me and that’s why I was seeing so many of them.