So, tell me about your local church?

Oh yes, I got involved with the local church after leaving the hospital, after leaving hospital and I went to the Day Centre and that closed down. And not much doing then. So what it was, I was in my flat, I was in the flat for a long time, day in, day out, nothing to do, you know, I didn’t want to go to the local resource centre because that’s all they do, is sit there, and give you a meal, and play scrabble and cards, that weren’t no good for me.

Anyway what it was it was really raining heavily, and the wind was blowing one, one Christmas and the place was dark. I looked through the windows, darkness everywhere. I was thinking this is it, this is hell. Anyway I screamed out of the flat, I said, Someone help me This is true. And not long, the next day the Minister from the local church came round selling calendars. And he said to me, if he was going to see me in church on Sunday. And I said, Of course I’ll come to church I only said that because he’s a minister. Anyway I bought the calendar anyway.

And the funny thing is I said to myself afterwards, I said, Hang on Devon, there’s only one person that can help you, and it must be God. Because the doctors can’t help me. Because I’m still the same. So I said, let trying going to church and see if it’s any different. So the next Sunday came and I went to his church, but I never went in. I didn’t have the bottle to go in. I went up to the door. Oh no. So I went straight back home. And then I tried again a couple of weeks after that. And I went in this time. And I felt ashamed. As soon as I got in there people were nice to me, yes, people were nice. They said, Hello. How are you Shook my hand. I’ve never seen that for a long time, you know, and they said, Oh you’ll be fine And they I start singing hymns and they were preaching. But I remember at the end of the service, there was a minister from Africa there that Sunday, and he said, Anyone who wants to be prayed for, come to see me at the end, at the end of the service So at the end I went up to see him, and I said, Oh can you pray for me, I’ve got mental health problems So he took me downstairs into a little vestry room. And the local minister was there. Both of them came in and I told them what happened to me. How I got mental health problems, and they both laid their hands on me. On my head and prayed for me. And they said, Will you give your life to Jesus Christ tonight I said, Yes And I gave my life to Christ there and became a Christian.

And I guess the last thing I’ve rediscovered is my Spirituality I’m now in a, I’ve started going to church, not that I believe everything in church is saying but I think it’s nice to have a place where you can just reflect and I, I find church is particularly good for just sitting being quiet for an hour and being able to reflect differently. so there’s that sense of being able to explore my own spiritual being again which is, I know, I’ve got some friends that are quite strange for me, because they’re people that don’t drink they don’t smoke, they’re, they are Christians very much and quite a lot of time when we get together we, we argue about scripture and, the characteristics of God, you know? so it’s, so I guess my life’s come full circle because I started my life wanting to be a Priest, and, and I’m coming to this point in my life where I’m probably going to study Theology and maybe never become a Priest because I can’t imagine [wife’s name] as a minister’s wife she’d kill me but I can imagine me doing that just for myself and just something for me because I’ve been travelling on the road now for, what? Seventeen years? And, I don’t think I want to be doing it after twenty I think I want to stop and become a farmer [laughs] you know, or something.

And have you had any thoughts of the therapeutic role of religion at all?

I don’t think it’s therapy. I think it’s true. I don’t believe in religion as a therapy. I think it’s true. That’s why I became a Catholic. Also I think if you are mentally ill or have a chronic condition. Whatever you’ve got diabetes you need the service, you need God’s help and you need the help of his son and the Holy Spirit. So yes, I am. I don’t think it’s therapy. I think it’s true. That’s why I becameI could have gone on being a schizophrenic without going to church. I decided to go to church thirteen years ago. And now I became a Catholic eleven years ago. And no oneit’s a wonderful family for me. I’m [name] my friend to whom a toad started speaking in 1968, he said to me, The Holy Family’s my family I like that.

And can you remember why you first went to church thirteen years ago?

Why I realised it was true. I never denied it, but I realised it was true. So I thought if you’ve got one of these conditions. I read the Gospels and I thought this is all true, no one could have made this up. Jesus is the Son of God, while he will come again. He will come again into this world. That’s why I became a Catholic.

There’s more and more, there’s more and more spirituality in that coming through at the moment and things which is a bit weird [laughs].

Well tell me something about your spiritual side?

Well there’s a lot, there’s like a lot of the Buddhism and stuff and that coming through and meditation and things. And that’s on the NLP and everything as well. I’ve always been more sort of into paganism and what they call the left hand path and the right hand path but I’m more into the left hand path, then slightly Ancient Egyptians, Samarians, Paganism, Nordic, African American. Native American. And then there’s Aboriginal. Everything from that sort of world. I’m more in touch with like nature and that, but I also recognise like the advances in even that as well. Like the 1900s and stuff. I think a lot of that’s just ignored these days.

But I’ve been exploring itbut it’s kept my brain active.

Yes.

and it’s enabled me to just think and especially doing the psychology and that, I can like look at things in the critical way and like dismiss certain things in that as well. So like I can do that.

Are you a spiritual person at all?

Yes, when I was getting on well, I got into meditation and Kundalini yoga and stuff like that, and apparently when you become unwell like this, you turn to those type of things. But I never, I’ve heard stories, like people thought they were God, and people think there’s some kind of spirituality going on. But I wasn’t really like that, but now that I’m better I do go to a Gospel church and I think that there’s a lot to be said for believing in God, because it’s supportive and that’s a good thing, but like, yeah, yeah.

And so does anything like prayer help you or is it more like the community in the church or…?

I just like the music, because they sing really happy songs, and that kind of suits my personality. I don’t think too much about it, and I don’t go to the Bible talk or anything like that. But I just like, I don’t really like talking about God that much in like a group, but I might help, like I go with my friend and she, I like talk to her about how God’s helping her to improve her life kind of thing, because she likes to improve things, just like I do. So yes, that’s nice.

I do now, believe that there’s a lot that exists outside our current understanding. Like I was saying, you know, I think it’s very wrong to assume, because we don’t see it, doesn’t mean, it’s not there, you know, because we can’t touch something doesn’t mean it’s not there. I think, nothing’s very wrong, I believe that I have had a lot of psychic experiences, as you’ve just seen the film of my grandfather, doing stuff where he was known for using the powers of his mind, and going beyond the current understanding of the mind.

I believe those things do exist and it’s very, very wrong to psychiatry to assume, assume that anything outside the box is potential mental illness or psychosis. And I mean, I believe that a lot of stuff, may be psychosis and psychic is much so one in the same. And but I, a lot of confusion has come in my life where I, I’ve tried to speak to psychiatry about psychic experience and they’ve just told me, it’s a mental illness.

And I think that’s just very, very ignorant. You know, we know nothing.

We know nothing of the mind’s capabilities. We may, what our brain is there for, is to receive information, maybe, psychic experience is the brain doing its natural job and receiving information, but because that information that’s been received is not currently understood it’s wrong to say it’s mental illness. In my book but it’s very wrong. And that is not progression, you know, but that’s not progress to me. Maybe we’ve really start looking at certain experiences of schizophrenia and rather than just saying it’s mental illness. May be, you know, unless it’s been investigated, what is this experience about? You know, and may be some voices, you know, I’ve heard, you know, a lot of people that hear voices, may be some voices may be psychic. Many psychics have voices that speak to them, and they pass those voices on. Sometimes that’s happened to me. Other times I can recognise my voices have been caused by stress in life. And I’ve worked out what those voices are. I don’t think that they’re not psychic, you know, those voices I recognise have got nothing to do with being psychic, they are, they weren’t myself expressing anxiety and fears in life and they came out in voices. You know, but I don’t think all voices are mental illness.