It was my desire to reduce the fear and sense of isolation associated with diagnosis, increase awareness and reduce stigma sur

Joanna’s Story

Fragmented Cuts
I have been diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder traits and have written the following passages that depict the way I feel during particular emotionally challenging moments in my life.
Obsessions
Why is it that I must always have an obsession?  Without one my internal world feels like a flat desert shroud by grey sand looked down upon by grey sky, not a cloud in sight because even that would add character, something to grab hold of.  Both sand and sky occupy my eye's vision, never changing, never asking if there is anything else out there.

 

The obsession with obsession began as early as I can remember.  As a very little girl I wanted people to like me - other pupils, my parents' friends, my few friends' parents, but most of all I wanted my parents to like me, my mum.  It was my obsession to be as important to her as my brother was.  He didn't even have to try.  Unfortunately he was born having one sickness after another.  We had been given this small bird with long spindly arms and legs and a beak that never closed, not to take in food but to scream; a bird with a domino effect of illnesses.  Well of course my mum didn't have any place in her life or heart for me anymore.  The time and love I was given seemed pretend, like something she had to do because it was the right thing.  It was like a mother burying her child's pet and having a mini funeral because 'it's the right thing to do'.  So from the droplets of nurturing and real love I managed to squeeze out of my mum when the little bird wasn't around, I encountered the obsession of willing my mum to like me.  I would try to do everything my parents wanted - do well at school, go to Sunday School, keep my clothes clean and my socks pulled up, my shoes shiny, and eat those putrescent brussel sprouts with my roasts and shepherds pies.  Even though I tried to be the perfect daughter because I really did think I was so lucky to be born with the most perfect parents in the world (they even had perfect Mum and Dad names) I don't think they saw me as the perfect child.  With all these thoughts and idealisations it is no wonder my poor little head was tormented by interludes of unhealthy images and afflictions.  I became obsessed with people vomiting or not vomiting, and never wanting to vomit myself, although I would worry myself so much into it I actually would vomit.  I had routines.  Forty scrubs each time I had a bath; three times to check my bedroom everywhere for ants and spiders; counting my teeth three times so I would never have to wear braces (it actually worked and my teeth are now surprisingly straight).  These routines were my obsessions, my key to opening the stiff door to satisfaction.

 

And then my obsession was wanting to do well at school.  I wanted to make my parents happy and I thought that as I was quite the opposite of popular and had bullies instead of friends, I would focus on being a good student.  That idea spiralled though.  I was the kitten that scratched and climbed the fly-screens that grew into a placid, quiet and good-natured cat, in reverse.  When I went to university I did as my dad wanted me to even though I knew I didn't want it myself.  My brain became overwhelmed, not with obsessions but with words, methods, phrases I couldn't understand.  How could anyone?  And then came my next obsession.  How was I going to tell my parents I couldn't do it anymore and that I had more than just hating uni as my deep dark and sordid secret?  These obsessions ate away at me, at my mind like a toothless lizard slowly gnawing away at the insides of my brain.  I couldn't tame the lizard any more than I could tame the revolting flavour of brussel sprouts.  In a borderline rage I tried to do the apparent unthinkable even though I don't think it really is unthinkable at all, not when you enter the realms of the subconscious; that dungeon area of the brain I think all borderlines are blessed with; the dungeon where you transform into an entirely other being and hit, thrash, punch, pierce, kill.  It's not a pretty dungeon at all, rather ugly in fact.  Something pulled me away from that window on the twelfth floor but I never actually managed to meet the force that did, or at least I didn't get to know it well enough to name it.

 

It was then that my next obsession popped up like the berserk head of a Jack in the box.  It was not something new entering my life but something I needed to explore with full vigour, full verve, to mollify an intense need in me that was draining me to my last drop of normality.  I questioned myself constantly.  Was I or wasn't I?  It was a question that burned incessantly in my mind, branded its copyright on the grey matter of my brain.  So I researched in secret.  No-one knew of the alternative newspapers I kept hidden under my bed, the 'abnormal' books I read but my obsession was finding out more about the world I desperately wanted to be a part of, the world I knew I belonged to, the world I knew I didn't belong to.  It was something I had to find out though, whether I belonged there or not, or whether the constant empty feeling of abnormal was purely because I was different to other human beings.  I was convinced I was an outsider, from another planet even though I don't believe in aliens.  I looked human, the rejected human, but I was still human.  I had to find out if I was gay or not.

Emotions
You crave emotion; you crave feeling, anything to take you away from the realm of numbness, the realm of being frozen within your own mind - your neurotransmitters at a standstill in your brain, at red traffic lights that refuse to turn to green. You are in a world not of sadness, not of anger, not of happiness but one with no words to describe the boredom of bleakness.

 

Then when something enters your world to turn those traffic lights green it does with such force, such vigour that the neurotransmitters accelerate with speed and avidity.  And that emotion you craved is so powerful you are sure you never experienced it before. You want nothing, no-one to take it away from you, the emotion that burns a flame inside of you, a flame ablaze with passion, intensity and happiness.  The flame takes over your body, encapsulates your mind and captures your soul.  It kneads away at your stomach, glows through your heavy pumping heart.

 

But it takes just one tiny trigger to erupt that flame, a trigger not noticeable to anyone but you, something anyone else would miss but which you seize and squeeze, mould into all obnoxious proportions.  And the flame is on its journey to explosion.  Your heart glows furiously, your stomach kneads rapidly, your head pounds with obsessive phrases replaying over and over in your mind - 'how could you?' 'you're pathetic' 'you should be dead'.  How could you have let it get out of control? How could you have felt too much? Why are you so stupid for allowing the flame to ignite in the first place?  You are so fu**ing stupid!

 

You know you have come too far. Your emotion is quickly entering the realm of the unrestrained.  It will jump swiftly over that wall and take you to a world you know only too well but where you know you shouldn't be.  A world where you don't care what you do to yourself, a world where you want to hurt yourself, a world where there is no turning back once you are there.  And once you are in that world and abide by its rules you are taken back to civilisation.  It is the only way you can turn that green light off, the red light on indefinitely.  It is the only way you can tame that rampant flame, and for a moment that world is your comfort, your saviour, a place only you can enter, a world just for you.

 

You ask yourself if it is better to live with the traffic light at red or the traffic light at green.  The red is safe but you crave more, you crave that intensity.  Your mind is boring at red.  The green is electrifying but can spiral out of control.  All or nothing.  Everything and nothing.

 

I write this as you rather than me because it is difficult ascribing emotions to myself right now but I write instead of entering the forbidden world.

Boredom.
For want of a better word, what do we call this?  Is it boredom?  Anxiety?  Restlessness?  How do I describe this feeling of wanting, needing to be still when the fidget takes over my being, possession of my body?  The fidget touches my mind, tenaciously caresses my thoughts and inveigles its way in, only to intertwine the thoughts and send them into disarray. My body frets, is uneasy as the thoughts protrude in all directions - no pattern, no order. How can the body, the mind cope without order, without organisation?

 

The thoughts rapidly change from one to another.  Boredom with repetitious tasks.

 

Same repetitious keystrokes.

Same repetitious mouse clicks.

Tedium.

Boredom.

 

My heart tempts the fidget and watches in awe as it struggles through restless agitated veins. Veins, arteries, capillaries filled with nervous blood staggering to required destinations.  My heart clobbers against the wall of my chest, each beat sending chemical angst to the cells of my blood.  My throbbing heart sends angry pulses armed with flurries of trepidation to all areas of my body and drums an all too familiar beat in my ears.

 

Move in my chair.

Restlessness.

Grind my teeth.

Restlessness.

Flick my pen.

Restlessness.

 

To my stomach the fidget spurs, sending an occupation of lively butterflies. They flutter blindly into each other, into the walls of my stomach, directing waves of nausea throughout.

 

Check my phone.

Boredom.

Grind my teeth.

Anxiety.

 

And down to my legs the fidget travels, spiralling out of control.  Pins and needles stab my muscles from the inside out.  My legs demand movement, a haven far from calm.

 

Move my legs.

Turn my ring.

Boredom.

Fatigue.

 

What is this fidget?  It is me.

Loneliness.
Again, for want of a better word I don't know what to call this feeling of being completely deviated from the norm, an anomaly in a world where most others have their place.  I often feel like everyone is their own piece to a huge puzzle and all match, merge nicely.  Then there's me, I am the piece that has nowhere to go.  My edges are broken and uneven, and I am just all black and burnt.  I am picked up, sneered at and tossed under the rug.

 

I have felt this way for as long as I can remember.  Since the days I was called football head at school.  I was the tall girl with big feet whose head covered the TV screen when we watched a history drama 'How We Used To Live'.  I only sat in the front row because all the other seats had been taken by imaginary friends or friends that were never going to sit there anyway.

 

It was being pushed over into the muddy slush that made me realise how hopeless it was telling my mum about the kids who not only didn't want to be my friend but who also thought it was fun to go through my school bag and throw my lunches in the bin. When I told my mum it was a boy in the final year who pushed me to the ground and made all my clothes muddy she insisted I had done it deliberately and told her friends how naughty I was for getting my tights and skirt dirty.

 

I could handle the kids throwing my usual lunch of cheese and pickle sandwiches in the bin, but when it was my nan who had made my lunch all specially for me, it really upset me.  Seeing that brown bag with the sandwich delicately cut and the Mars bar that my nan knew I loved so much in the bin broke my heart.  Not only were they throwing out my lunch, they were throwing out my nan's too.  They only did it because they knew I hated school dinners and wanted to watch me squirm and cry while sitting on the teacher's lap as she tried to force the mash and meat into my mouth.  They sat opposite with their own packed lunches and laughed.

 

The taunting didn't end in primary school.  It extended to secondary school where I had one good friend who was also teased endlessly and another who thought nothing of putting her hand around my neck until I did or said something she wanted.  There was a time when I was playing with a friend's hamster at her party and her protective dog leapt at my face only to give me a nosebleed and cuts.  I didn't want anything to happen to the dog.  It was only protecting the hamster, but the kids at school the next day called me a murderer and ganged up on me because the parents were talking of having the dog put down.  Of course that was not what I wanted.

 

Then there was the time in Germany when the boys covered my best friend with tissues and tied him to the bed.  I had to sleep in the same bed with the friend who put her hand around my neck on that trip.

 

And it didn't end there either.  The teasing and ridiculing lingered steadily through high school in Melbourne.  I thought I could have parted ways with the bullying by leaving the UK but no such luck.  No longer was I called football head.  I was honoured with names like 'makeup face' and 'Coke can fringe', and asked if I did my makeup on the jolty bus.  Kids said they would need a shovel to take the makeup off and a truck to carry it all away.

 

Only once did I cry at high school though.  It was when one girl, who knew I was gullible, told me to turn my Maths paper over in an exam before commencement time.  Quite stupidly I did it only to be told off by the teacher and to have the same girl tell the teacher I was cheating.  My next class was English.  I sat at the front of the class as I always did, and the teacher said I looked beautiful with my hair down.  I usually wore it up.  It was her kindness that made me cry.

 

In these taunting times I felt like an anomaly, an alien or outcast who was trespassing.  Now, I am always this anomaly or peculiar object that once tried to fit into the puzzle but who has since given up.  I am resigned to being different, being that tall creature that watches other people laugh, joke and play, not knowing how I could ever intercept those conversations with my own dull and boring presence.  I would sooner stand on my own, watch from a distance.

 

Yet that weird creature that is me doesn't know who she truly is.  She knows what her passions are.  She knows her weaknesses.  But she doesn't know what is at the core of her being.  She doesn't know how to interpret what she feels and how to act on those feelings.  She knows anger but is it truly anger that she feels?  Or something else that takes her to that forbidden world?  That world where only she belongs, where she can placate intensity by self-harm to induce satisfaction.

 

As she cannot interpret and understand the being of her core, she blindly acclimatises herself to the personalities of those surrounding her.  Not always, but often when it means she has to make decisions, or having her boundaries overstepped.  The questions, the deliberations, the unknowing invoke a foreboding ball of fear internally.  A dark raven ball that resides deep in the hollow of her stomach and chokes her when the questions and unknowing overflow and thrash her mind.  She would sooner die than feel this black void.

 

Who is she?  She is I.

Validation.
You never feel truly validated.  Not when praised or given phrases of affection, endearment.  Why do these words, these phrases not travel towards your heart and penetrate it like the painful words do? Why do they not seep into your heart, pump in harmony with your blood, force your mind to feel them, believe them, embrace them?

 

They are words not of an uncommon language, a language frozen to the heart, numb to the soul. The ears hear them but they drift easily into the nearby air, into the nearby aura.

 

Without belief in these words, faith in this love, your heart travels from paralysis to pain.  From pain to obsession.  From obsession to rage.  From rage back to pain.

 

The obsessive questions emerge and your mind scratches away furiously at the answer it wants you to believe - no, they don't really care.

 

How do you allow these words of love to grasp your heart?

Abandonment.
Abandonment. Thought to be the epitome of BPD, a trait I never thought I possessed but undeniably I do. A trait I wish I didn’t possess but which when it comes into loom it possesses me.
When abandonment first emerged I can’t be sure but there are glimpses of memories of childhood.
Like the time when I pretended the couches were my parents, and I sat on their wide laps while they wrapped their big brown arms around me.
Like the time when I cried in front of my mum telling her about the bullies at school and all she said was that I needed to make more friends and not cry for myself.
And then there were the times at school that infuse me with such guilt, saturate my mind with self-blame, fiery fingers bleeding through the skin on my face. I had no friends to call my own and there were times I tried to take possession of others. Once, I was the first to be asked to pick a partner for the boat trip the next day because I had scored the highest in my class for spelling. I chose the most popular girl in the class, or rather the most intriguing, because she was the new little Japanese girl who owned Hello Kitty stationery. The hatred in her eyes when I asked if she would pair with me I will never forget. Why should she be paired off with the tall, quiet, picked on, unpopular kid? The Japanese kids were only ever paired off with the popular girls. I wanted to take it all back when I saw that relentless frown, that insulted stare. Who or what gave me the privilege of asking this girl?
On the trip she left my side as soon as she could and stayed with one of the popular girls. I was alone again.
Now, the fear of abandonment evokes feelings so excruciating it is difficult to know what to do with them, how to accept them and live with them.
Abandonment is like I am thrusting a knife into my stomach, penetrating the flesh, turning, and cultivating a deep dark hole in preparation for emptiness, the forgotten.
Unbearable neglect like the child no-one wanted to play with or even partner on a school trip.
The rejected child whose mum couldn’t care less about the bullies at school.
The pathetic imbecile teenager who believed the person who told her a rumour at school was genuine, only to find out it was a rumour spread throughout the whole year about her, the pathetic fool – the rumour that she was apparently wearing holey underwear, so completely untrue.
When the kids hated her so much, spread untrue rumours about her, picked on her best friend too, when her mother did nothing, didn’t listen and told her she was selfish for crying, how could there really be anyone in the world who truly loved her? Who deep down understood her? Who wanted her as theirs? There couldn’t be.

She was the abandoned anomaly who would stay abandoned forever.

Kate’s story: Schizoaffective Bipolar
I had a mostly happy childhood; however during secondary school I would fluctuate between being subdued and quite melancholy to being outspoken and zany. As a result I never really got close to anyone. My marks were ok; in year 12 I didn’t really know what to do so I enrolled in an Arts degree.
First year Arts saw the onset of a major depression: I slept a lot, started missing classes (not that there were many to attend) and felt even more lost. My previous love of literature was scrubbed at Uni: I hated having to write about The Feminist Marxist viewpoint of a text and not just discuss the text itself like we had in year 12. I loathed what I saw as the pretentious side of privileged university life, so at the end of 2^nd year I deferred and went to work full time in a bank as a teller.
I already was experiencing mood swings at this stage but put it down to the complexities of being unsure as a young adult and where I stood in the world. Aged 20 I had a minor psychosis for a couple of weeks where sequences of ‘amazing’ occurrences happened, such as going to the pool hall off Chapel St with a friend and playing quite a few games where I would hit incredibly good shots, way above my normal ability. At one stage an Asian guy slipped by me and lifted a fifty dollar note in and out of his shirt pocket very quickly and subtly; I saw this as him wanting to surreptitiously have a wager with me. I didn’t take up the bet, but felt like I had super-human abilities.
After a year or so I switched courses to being enrolled in a business degree specialising in marketing; I’d been watching the ads on telly and thought to myself ‘there must be a science behind getting people to want to buy brand X over brand Y’, and that fascinated me. I tried working at the bank during the day and studying at night, but fell to the pressure and ended up quitting full time work for casual as a deli chick. Meanwhile I had been living in share houses for a few years and had some happy party times with my housemates. I supported myself financially throughout studying and on several occasions felt the strain of being able to afford food, rent and other expenses. This along with expecting myself to get top marks and have a rip-roaring social life. The pressure cooker was building.
By 1992 (second year into my course) I was starting to develop chronic insomnia; I went back and forth to my GP for help. Try walking an hour a day, he said: I did this, and it helped with anxiety, but I still struggled to sleep. When warm milk, no caffeine, lavender baths and soothing music failed to make inroads, my GP simply looked at me one day and said: “I think you need to see a psychiatrist”.
My first psychiatrist diagnosed me as clinically depressed and put me on Prozac. Suddenly I had oodles of energy. I was powering towards the end of my degree, getting mostly credits. In 1995 I did my last exam, and finally passed. Within a few weeks I had secured a position with a major market research firm in the city. I looked set. Then it happened.
In the week before I was to commence the job, I’d been getting irritable and irrational with my housemates. I had a car accident (my fault). I thought I had fallen in love. So much was going on, and I ended up face-first in the hallway carpet at home sobbing hysterically. My housemate called my sister who drove me to an emergency appointment with the psychiatrist; I wore dark glasses because I thought I was famous and the paparazzi were following me. The doctor hastily changed his diagnosis to Bipolar and put me on Stellazine, Cogentin, Epilim and Prothiaden.
Stellazine was an awful, awful drug (an older anti-psychotic): one night I was watching telly and my head started to turn to the right; it kept twisting like I was Linda Blair from the Exorcist. The only way I could get it to ease up was to adopt a yoga pose, haunched over on my knees with my head atop my fists. It was not a nice experience. I felt relieved when my doctor put me on Risperdal instead (a newer anti-psychotic).
Fast forward a couple of years: living in a share house in Nunawading, working part time as a deli chick, on a part disability pension, hardly socialising, drinking a six-pack of beer a day along with copious pizza and fish ‘n chips, ballooning from 65 to 85 kilos within months: in short very depressed with suicidal thoughts not eventuating to actions. I would spin out drunk on my bed each night wishing never to wake again. My housemates banned me from smoking indoors so I would smoke in my room, staring at the window sometimes imagining a pair of red glowing eyes staring back; daring myself to smash my fist through the glass.
I was complying with medication; by this stage I was seeing a new psychiatrist who had revised my diagnosis to being schizoaffective bipolar with mostly depressive features. I had tried to resurrect my market research career without success; the only job I could get part time was that of a casual phone interviewer (those pesky survey people). I felt a massive failure. I could never use my degree. So I escaped my less-than-happy reality through drinking each night, which made things worse.
My mum and sister were particularly concerned with my deterioration, thus they organised for me to go to rehab. I completed a 28 day stay at Warburton in Oct 2000, where they championed the need to attend AA meetings regularly (ie: at least 3 times a week). I struggled with this, particularly when I compared my drinking efforts to the majority I heard (ie: a six-pack versus a bottle of spirits per day). What I failed to take into account was that my medication made me a cheap drunk, intermixing and causing me to fall asleep.
For the next two years I remained depressed and struggled to stay sober for long, going in and out of rehab. I decided that being a deli chick wasn’t for me and started doing domestic cleaning for an agency instead. I started out doing 20 hours a week; within a year it was down to 2, with me calling in sick (hungover) too often. My lack of employment meant I couldn’t afford to pay rent or support myself, but my parents were adamant that I wasn’t welcome at home. I ended up in supported housing, such as the Salvation Army, and shared with some eye-opening people. I witnessed a suicide attempt one night and had to call the ambulance; one of my housemates had taken an overdose combined with alcohol. The thing that got me was seeing her elderly parents come by the next week to pick up her belongings: “We had really hoped she wouldn’t do this again” her Mum said, shaking her head and wiping her tears.
I was back in rehab in 2002 when my new psychiatrist decided that, although he thought I was schizoaffective that I might be overmedicated, so he began tapering my off my antipsychotic (Risperdal)and mood stabilser (Epilim) and just had me on an anti-depressant (Avanza). My mood had begun to alter but I was totally unaware of the warning signs; I started getting phobias. When I walked home from Chirnside park shopping centre one day along Manchester Road I had to pass a paddock which had long grass; one day I discovered a black snakeskin at the edge of the paddock. I feared walking past lest a snake come out and bite me. One day my housemate was driving me home from a party we’d been at; I looked down at my shoulder only to see a huge hairy huntsman there. I shrieked and flicked it, whereabouts it scuttled into the centre console. I kept flicking at imaginary spiders on my bare legs when I would try to fall asleep during the hot summer nights; I Baygoned my room so much that the fumes were extreme.
One day, I went to a women’s AA meeting and was asked to share. I rambled on about being sorry for my appearance and that I knew everybody hated me and aped the sayings of various other members’ speeches I had heard- it was really jumbled. After the meeting, a woman came up to me and told me off for sharing inappropriately. I bounced from person to person, yapping away at the top of my voice. When I got home, I quietly sat down. I realized I had an overwhelming impulse to go out, get back in my car, and drive it at high speed into a brick wall or pole. I took my car keys and gave them to my housemate, telling her not to give them to me because I wanted to kill myself. Then I rang Maroondah Psych Triage, asking for the CAT team to see me. They told me to come in and see them, so my housemates drove me out to Maroondah.

We sat in the triage section for about two or three hours; every now and again I would lean over and hiss “snakes and spiders”, giggling to myself.

Finally I saw the duty nurse; he sat me down in a room and asked me a few questions; I rattled off all sorts of stories about my history and family; some were true, some weren’t. He ended up giving me a couple of plastic sample bottles which contained medication. “Take the green ones at night; the white ones every few hours. Then ring your doctor Monday morning.” With this we drove home.
By this stage I had begun to demonise my parents, so I stayed with my uncle for a couple of days. I went to see my Psychiatrist and he looked shocked; I had reams and reams of writing to show him about all my various conspiracy theories. Eventually Mum let me stay with her and Dad; within 48 hours I had attacked her, they called the cops twice (I have no recollection of this) and I ended up in St Vincents as an involuntary patient for 6 weeks. This was around the time that “the War on Terror” had been announced and Australia was at war with Iraq. It seemed like some sort of Apocalypse was happening, as always is the case when I become psychotic: the lens I view world events through becomes magnified and distorted. The only two other times I have since developed significant psychosis (Jan & June 2009) I have viewed world events as ‘amazing’, like the world recession and the death of Michael Jackson. I guess the best way I can described my fully-blown psychosis is that it involves Reading Significance into things that have no significance.
Once I stopped feeling like I was going to get bashed up any second when I was in St Vincents (I believed that everyone in there could read my mind and that I was an evil person who deserved to be punished), I did get a lot out of the occupational therapy sessions, like art, walking, gardening, mind limbering sessions (eg: who can spot the article in this paper); it helped pass the time and make me feel more at ease. That and the Largactil shotties I would get. Upon discharge I lived in a couple of boarding houses which were very expensive and somewhat frightening for someone still with the lingering edges of psychosis. The psychosis didn’t fully go away for several weeks; I found my co-ordination was hampered by the heavy meds and me being spaced out; things like being fast enough with your hands to pay for items at the cash register of a supermarket was hard, or being co-ordinated enough to pull the tram cord and navigate your way to the door without falling over. I used to have fears that I wasn’t welcome places, even at a café where I had paid for a coffee, I would be in and out within five minutes, lest someone come out and bellow at me for overstaying my welcome.
I gained solace from sitting on park benches, or on the grass, having a precious smoke (I’d had to ration them to 15 a day due to the high cost of the boarding houses) and a bottle of water. I knew better than to smoke at the boarding house, where the ongoing requests of ‘Gotta smoke? Gotta light? Gotta Smoke” were incessant (as at hospital).
The other places I felt welcome were the PDRS’s (like Neami, Terra Firma etc) where talented staff would engage me in rebuilding my life. A housing outreach worker got me to put my name down for my own flat via a community housing scheme. I also got relaxation though drama and art projects, along with being taken to various interesting places like CERES, The Ian Potter Gallery and Lawn Bowling. It helped me put my consciousness back together, as well as giving me something to look forward to for a gold coin donation.
I eventually got my own affordable community flat; by this stage the psychosis had subsided (3 months later), unfortunately the post-psychotic depression hit like a Mack truck. The best way I can describe it is like having sh#t-covered filters across your eyes while trying to wade out of emotional quicksand: bloody horrible. Unsurprisingly, I drank daily again.
With the help of some amazing support workers I got out of the quicksand and into a return-to-work program doing filing for my local council. I put the cork back in the bottle and attended (reluctantly) AA again. At work an opportunity came up to join the department doing document management (scanning, registering mail using a database program), and I was successful in getting the job. I stayed there for over 3 years, no relapse in either mental health or drinking. I switched councils in 2008, where I currently work, doing the same type of tasks. It’s not a dream job but they were very understanding when I became unwell in 2009, allowing me a return to work program which I appreciated.
Having work means I have structure in my week which is good for me; I also feel good on days when I know I have gotten though a lot of registering. Overwhelmingly, the thought that I am needed there helps me. Part of me misses going to drop-in and having outings to interesting places for next to nothing. I still get help from support workers; an employment consultant (helps me turn up to and stay working), a psychologist, a drug & alcohol counsellor and my psychiatrist.

I’ve learned that my mental health is fluid and largely dependant upon my self-management, such as;

-taking meds (Lithium, Epilim, Zyprexa & Cymbalta) on time; these days I use a dosette so as not to miss or double a dose accidentally;

-trying to eat healthily in spite of hunger pangs from the meds; I never lost those evil pizza kilos plus have found that my metabolism has slowed as I age along with the Zyprexa slowing it more;

- walking as frequently as possible (better than any anti-depressant)’

- monitoring my caffeine levels (this can act like speed for me if I overdo it; it’s a type of self-sabotage I have to fight against inducing mania);

- keeping a daily mood monitor in a Word table to track how I’m going and to report this to my doctor;

- being mindful of a “Traffic lights’ list I have on my pantry door: Green means signs I am doing well; Yellow lists signs that I am becoming unwell and what to do; Red means I am unwell…shows a list of signs…and lists emergency steps to take; eg: ring Eastern Psych Triage; ring my doctor, if I have to go to hospital arrange for neighbours to take in the mail etc;

- trying to be sensible about bedtimes (aim for in bed 10.30pm, asleep 11pm, awake 8.30am…however this rarely happens…more like in bed 11.30pm, asleep 1am, awake 10.30am);

- trying to stay abstinent from drinking; I have made a leap of faith away from the AA juggernaut which places so much importance on unbroken sobriety; over the past 11 years of attempted recovery I estimate I’ve been sober around 9 ½ to 10 years, just not all in a row; I’ve had many one-off ‘busts’ (AA term for getting drunk again), which is viewed dimly by most in AA. I’m not going to beat myself up if I have a few Jack Daniels & Cokes every 4-5 weeks, it could be worse.

Can I just add that I am rather anti-social, tending towards being alone more often than not. My phone rarely rings, I’m lucky if I meet up with a friend more than a few times a year…basically I live a pretty solitary existence. Even when I’m in hospital I tend to isolate. My doctor mentions this as a concern, but I’m tending to think this is just me, and that it’s not the end of the world. There are worse things than being a hermit of sorts, as long as you can distract yourself with things to do, which I generally can. Things like writing, reading, watching DVD’s, doing some housework, gardening, listening to the radio (I love 3AW which may sound tragic but it’s a comfortable chatter in the background) and walking.