I finished up having a mental breakdown, tried to take my own life, put my head in the gas oven. So I was put into a mental hospital, [hospital] I think that must have been gone a long time ago now. I was there for about six months and eventually I got slung out for my, the, my psychiatrist because I wouldn’t talk to him, so we weren’t ever making any progress and I was in trouble being violent all the time. So they told me that, to leave and that was it’

I mean I remember the doctor gave me Val-, gave me a prescription for Valium one time and I thought oh I’ve had enough of this life, I really have and I just went home, bought a bottle of vodka and took the whole bottle of tablets and drunk a bottle of vodka. Well they said it was the vodka that saved my life because I brought most of the tablets back up [laughs] but I still wouldn’t stay in hospital and get the help needed because I just didn’t trust people, I’d never trusted people, you know. If it, when, when I was young and I can remember being examined by a doctor after I’d run away, a physical exam down below and he said, ‘Oh she’s sexually active. In those days they didn’t talk, but I wasn’t sexually active, I hadn’t had sex with anybody with consent it was what had happened with my brothers and my dad, my stepdad so, you know. And when I was in the mental hospital they did have me on Lithium and things like that but most of the time you just try and dodge your medication anyway, everybody did it if they could. So

Why, why did you do that?

Because you didn’t want to be a zombie, you know, most of the time you’d be falling asleep you’d just be, it’s like, it’s a chemical cosh, you know, and you don’t want that. You want some control in your life and that is probably why a lot of people like schizophrenics whatever when they come off their medication they don’t realise what a danger they’re committing to themselves, you know. You don’t realise, because you don’t want that chemical cosh in the hospital

Oh yeah I used to get beaten up and slung in the pads but that’s going back, you know, that was, in those days that was just natural for it to happen in mental homes. You’ve got to remember that’s going back to, that’s just the early 60s.

To everybody?

To every, but mostly to me, to me this is what I’m saying because I was the only black person in, no there was another black man in there but’

So more so for black people?

Yeah I felt, I felt yeah, yeah. Because I mean when I got slung out it was for, it was for beating up this, this Salvation Army girl who used to blow her trumpet in my ear and really piss me off, you know. and I beat her up and, and he said to me, I can remember his words, what the doctor said to me, ‘You black people are nothing but trouble, you bring violence,’ he said ‘I’m telling you to get out of the hospital. And that was that.

Yeah I’ve got a book on, on what do you call it? On herbs and I do yes I, you know, I eat natural organic foods and I’m very health conscious now about what I eat. I kind of never was interested, I mean I’ve been anorexic and bulimic and, you, you, you know, you go through the whole spectrum when you’re, you’ve gone through the illnesses and especially when you’ve been boozing. And now I haven’t got any sense of smell left or any sense of taste at all, I have to use a spray from the doctor to clear my nose in the mornings so it’s kind of difficult [Laughs]. I mean I really want to enjoy the food but I can’t taste it [laughs]. But I do I eat healthily and I go to the health food shop and get different herbs sometimes as a substitute, you know. I mean I used to take sleeping tablets, come off of the sleeping tablets and I started using the herbal remedy. I don’t need to use anything now but that’s, that was an alternative.

And I spoke to, obviously you have to speak to your doctor because of your, your medication, you have to be careful also whether you’re going to be using herbs or any alternative medicine you’ve got to talk to your doctor because it could go against your medication and you could make yourself ill so you have to be really careful. But I was okay with, with the thing, you know, I just take like a cod liver oil tablet a day, that helps your bones and blah, blah, blah. Yeah alternative medicine is good but I wouldn’t kind of depend on it as a complete medication, you know. Unless I was really sure, you know, of what I was doing because I think you, that’s another pitfall you could fall into as well [pause] because we’re all looking, we’re all looking for answers and sometimes we’re so desperate, you know, to just get a little bit of normality into our lives that we’ll do anything to experience it. But sometimes you’ve just got to take it slowly and take advice from others if you can especially others that have been in the system and, you know, been there, done it, bought the tee-shirt, you know, and all the rest of it yeah.

Rethink will have some of the information for people as well if they want to join any of these groups and I think joining a group is a big help. You’ll find that you make friends, you make the odd friend here and there and it’s up to you if you want to continue the friendship outside which we have done with our, when we had our black and ethnic group going here we all made friends and we all had each other’s telephone numbers and we’d go out independently as well. I’ve still got one friend that I see quite regularly and that’s quite enough for me because I’m not used to having friends anyway so just having one or two friends is fine.

But just that small group it makes you feel like you’re being cared about and cared for and [my key worker] does a great job with that I think yeah. He can be a pest at times making sure that you, I’ve got to go out with him, ‘Come on [Mae] you’re coming for a cup of coffee,’ that’s only to get, make sure that I’m getting out. But he was, he was the one who really helped me able to get on buses and [get out?] because that was a big issue for me, I couldn’t get on buses, I couldn’t mix amongst crowds but now we go to town and we go out and it’s fine. You know, I go out with him about once a week usually and it’s fine and I’m really enjoying my life for the first time, yeah’

But sometimes you’ve just got to take it slowly and take advice from others if you can especially others that have been in the system and, you know, been there, done it, bought the tee-shirt, you know, and all the rest of it yeah. So I always listen to other people’s, so that is why these group help, you know, when we used to have groups it was, you know, it’s, it’s good that you can sit down and you can compare notes with other people and, you know, what you’re saying to them, you know, they’re not going to go out on the street and chat you and say oh nut, nut, nut or whatever. You know, you’re completely, so you’re completely at ease and you could have a couple of hours away from, you know, the rat race and just enjoy yourself with these other people. And it’s amazing, when you think about it, it is amazing the people that you meet, you know. You can go from the top person right down to the lower level, you know, on the street person but basically we’re all the same when it comes to our mental health issues so everybody should take a bit of heart from that, yeah’

But no I do, I feel I’ve had help from Rethink, it’s been bumpy at times obviously, we’ve all had our differences but if I hadn’t had them where would I be, I don’t know, I couldn’t tell you that, probably not anywhere’ Just show us a little bit of care and, you know, good attitude and I’m sure most people respond to that. Well I’ve found it coming here anyway, you know, will respond to that.

Yeah because I used to have really violent bouts, I didn’t know that I was manic depressive, I know I was, it was diagnosed on paper but I wasn’t actually told by the, anybody outright that I was a manic depressive. And to me that was a big word when I did find out. But yeah completely, you know, I could be as high, like as high as a kite at one moment and then the next moment totally down so, you know, and very, very violent with it, you know. So it wasn’t advisable for anybody to kind of get near me when I started feeling low so that is one of the reasons why I used to lock myself away because then I wouldn’t have to deal with the outside world and they wouldn’t have to deal with me. And that was really basically the only way to keep myself at a certain level

But my, my behaviour was so erratic, you know, people were actually frightened of me, yeah that’s why they used to call me Mad Max, yeah they were frightened of me.

I hadn’t had a lot of help you know. this service is okay in the fact that, you know, there is some help but I don’t get any other help from anywhere else, I don’t, well I don’t want a psychiatrist anyway and I don’t want a CPN either because I just feel that sometimes they, they do things behind your back, they’ll write things down about you and you don’t know about it and you’re merrily going along thinking well everything is okay and it’s not, you know, from their reports.

And that can do you a lot of damage when you do find out and you think, well, who can I trust? And they say well okay it’s because you’re mentally ill, you’re just making this into a big thing. Well if it’s, if they know you’re mentally ill they shouldn’t be putting you in that position anyway where you’re thinking, you know, those paranoid thoughts. So yeah I don’t trust them and I haven’t, as I said I haven’t had a lot of help over the years. I did, on and off I’ve seen different psychiatrists but to me they always feel, they, it’s always felt like they’re sitting on a pedestal, you know, or they’re putting themselves on a pedestal and I’m just there as part of, well as part of their job really, you know, and so whatever they say goes and who am I to argue with them? And I think well okay I could do without that, you know. And part of it is getting a good doctor, if you haven’t got a good doctor then you’re in a lot of trouble, you really are. But I, I have good doctors and I can go, women doctors and I can go there and actually sit down and talk to them if I’ve got a problem or whatever and I’ll feel like I’m being well look after by my practitioner. But I can say that I haven’t had a lot of help from, apart from coming here to [mental health organisation] from any other mental health teams at all, you know.

So I moved into my flat in 1999, in the June, and I decided in the May of the next year, because I was coming here and I was getting support from here, I stopped seeing my CPN, we fell out, I couldn’t get on with her and in the meantime coming here I started doing cooking, you know, cooking for all the, we used to have a kitchen downstairs and we cooked for everybody once a week and so I started doing that and then just generally getting into a good recovery with the people I was meeting was letting me know that I wasn’t alone at last and I was able to reveal all the layers that were underneath the real me, as I’m talking now, the real me.

And I decided to stop drinking in the year 2000 and I haven’t had a drink since. I didn’t go to AA or anything, which I’d done previously in my life and it had never succeeded but it was because I decided. And from tiny, tiny steps, as I was telling me friend on the phone last night, from tiny steps I made big strides and here I am today, 62 years of age, gone through lots of different things in my life but come through the other side and the feeling that I get about recovery is just every day I’m glad to be alive. Now I’m currently suffering from cancer, I’ve had three operations but I never, I’m one of those who has never give up so it’s something that I know I’m going to beat the cancer as well. So, and I have great help from [my key worker] who I see once a week and I know that if I have a problem I can just pick up the phone and, you know, as long as it’s within working hours he’s here. But apart from that I’m very happy and I’m so glad that I live own my own and I’m completely independent of any wife battering man who can drive you absolutely mental.

I wouldn’t say that it’s all his fault, I would that I was from, a very young age, you know, from what happened to me, because there’s parts of my life that I cannot remember at all, it’s completely blocked out and with the help my brother who I’ve now met forty years later, because we hadn’t seen each other for forty years I’m able to piece together small bits of my previous, you know, my life growing up. So that’s a, that’s a big help but also, you know, just living every day for me is, it’s fun, I just love it. You know, I look forward to being somebody, you know, just living every day and okay to other people it might not seen like much but it’s something never had in the past, I would never go out, I was, before I came here I couldn’t even get from my front door most of the time, like months I’d be indoors, you know, and just nervous all the time and worrying about other people.

I did, you know, because one time I though well, you know, living on my own and my family weren’t talking to me and of course I didn’t know my brother was still alive then, I thought well what happens as I get older, what’s going to happen to me, you’ve go to think about those things. And I did ask somebody from my mental health team if it was possible to have like a social worker and she said no, she didn’t know how I would access that. I asked my doctor the same thing she didn’t know how I would access anything like that so it just leaves you vulnerable. So the medication is dealt with but your peace of mind, thinking well I’m going to die alone and perhaps like that old fellow who died in our flats he was in his flat for three months before they realised, you know, is that going to happen to me? Well obviously it’s not going to happen now but for other people who live on their own yeah there’s got to be a network where these people can actually get the help they need. Even if they don’t want to chat to somebody, somebody that can, you know, say well okay I haven’t heard from so and so, I know that on the other hand that you’ve got a problem it might be intrusive, you know, the person might think you’re being intrusive but if they agree to just like have somebody, like a carer who would say can I just make sure you’re okay every now and again, you know, I think that could help so many people because there’s so many lonely mental, mentally ill people’

Also with the police as well I think there should be a lot more help in police stations when mental, when people with mental health issues get arrested. I mean I’ve been arrested so many times and you’re just handcuff-, their idea of keeping you under control is to handcuff you with your hands behind your back and leave you in a cell which is not right, you know.

Then I think a psychiatrist or somebody, somebody with a mental, you know, if they realise that somebody is, you know, is not particularly a drunk, that there’s something underlying with that person as well, mental health issues, then I think a mental health team should be available, a crisis team of some sort should be available to help that person while they’re at in police custody, yeah. I never had any of that and so you can’t, you haven’t got access to your medication, you’re off your medication, that’s only going to make you worse. You’re locked up and you’ve got, the, you know, like still the handcuffs on because they haven’t got the time to put you on suicide watch all the time. A lot of the times they do but, you know, so there’s that part as well, you know. So I’ve experienced it a lot of times so yeah. So I think the professionals need to look a lot more into what, you know, each individual case you can’t lump everybody in together, you know, to say oh this is, these people are manic depressives, so their behaviour would be blah, blah, blah. Everybody is different. You know, I might act different to the next manic depressive or whatever and, you know, perhaps I might not show my symptoms because there’s one thing about manic depression, depressives you really are clever at hiding your symptoms and very good at manipulating people, they know that and you’re very good at manipulating things your way, you know, to your way of thinking so yeah, that, that, there is that. But everybody has got their own illness, it’s like anything they’re all individuals, we all are individuals and so we should be treated as such, not just lumped in together and well you can go to this group because you’re manic, [laughs] you can go to that group because you’re schizo, you know. No [laughs]. Just show us a little bit of care and, you know, good attitude and I’m sure most people respond to that. Well I’ve found it coming here anyway, you know, will respond to that.

And I was told by somebody, I think it was somebody here, that you have to be selfish in a way, not selfish to be mean but selfish where you say nothing must get in the way of my recovery. Everything I should do should be for me and in a nice way, not a selfish way but to make sure that, you know, you’re living your life how you want to live it and it’s, you know, you’re not being controlled by anybody else in your life’

But yeah it’s very complex all of it. If you, if you try to sort it all out [at] once you never will. So it’s just like a strand at a time, you know, like I said earlier small steps turn into big strides and then, because it’s amazing the way my life has opened up, it’s, it’s amazed me and I’m not easily amazed, I’ve got to be truthful I’m not [laughs], I’m usually the one who always sits there going, ‘Oh yeah what, yeah right,’ [putting on sarcastic voice] you know

And I think once you cater for all the small needs then the bigger issues kind of start sorting themselves out anyway, I think so, yeah. I think with anything you do in life if you, you kind of, you know, if you, like for instance if you’re at home and you’re cleaning up you just make your food and you clean up after yourself instead of slinging everything around, then you’ve got to go back and clean up a big mess isn’t it? So that’s the kind of thing that we should be doing with our lives anyway is, you know, kind of sorting ourselves out just a little bit at a time.

That’s a really good way to think about it I think.

Well I think so yeah definitely because then otherwise it becomes, because I know from the past if you leave everything like money issues and you haven’t taken your tablets and you just think well sod the lot then, you know, I’m not doing well today and sod it, I’m going to go in my bed and lay down and I’m not going to, and so then you start getting ill again and you can’t afford to let yourself get into that situation in the first place. So when you do start recognising your symptoms hopefully there will be somebody there, on the other end of a phone or perhaps a group you can go, even if it’s just another mental health, mentally challenged person like yourself and sometimes they’re better than the professionals I’m telling you, and give you better advice [laughs] that’s true.