‘Don't push me cause I'm close to the edge I'm trying not to lose my head’
- Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five
‘Now he's gone and joined that stupid club. I told him not to join that stupid club.’
-Wendy O'Connor (mother of Kurt Cobain)
Kurt Cobain’s musical legacy is slight, I don’t mean that disrespectfully. By the 1990’s I was losing interest in ‘the next new thing’ whatever it happened to be - like Billy Joel 10 years previously who shared the opinion that, ‘everybody’s talkin’ ‘bout the new sound funny but it’s still rock and roll to me’. I bought the first Nirvana album Nevermind, largely on the strength of the brilliantly provocative and eye-catching cover, the now classic image of a baby underwater chasing a dollar bill. I thought the album was OK, or at least the first four or five tracks. There might have been a time when I would rant against the hype, and the over-estimation of the latest thing, but that seems churlish now at least in Cobain’s case. Celebrity has always been an aspect of popular culture, but in the early days the job of the PR was to sell the record, increasingly the celebrity status or soap opera of the artist became a product in itself. However, the merits or otherwise of Cobain’s oeuvre, is not my subject for today.
On Nevermind there was a song called Lithium. I thought, ‘why is he singing about lithium’? I didn’t I didn’t know much about Cobain then, and I couldn’t image why anyone would bother to write a song about ‘lithium’. I’d never heard about lithium before it was prescribed to me. I’d never heard any cultural reference to lithium, apart from chemistry lessons at school, and it was kind of intriguing, like a message to those in the know.
I can’t remember exactly when I stopped taking lithium, whether it was before or after the song. I was putting on weight, lithium apparently stimulates your appetite. It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that I was at war with psychiatry. I’ve written a lot about it in the past, sometimes I vow never to write about it again, but it’s a scab that I can’t and perhaps never will be able to stop picking at.
At various times during the 80’s and 90’s I was hospitalised by compulsion (sectioned), at other times voluntarily, that’s when they say to you, ‘if you don’t go voluntarily you will be sectioned’. I resisted as best I could, even refusing medication, on 3 occasions I was forcibly injected, that’s when 5 or 6 people hold you down and inject you (you can guess where).
There comes a time when you realise that you’re up against a force mightier than you are. I still continued to make my feelings known; on one occasion a harassed psychiatrist said to me, ‘why are you on this crusade?’ I was really taken aback, she was holding me against my will and forcing me to take potent medication that I did not want to take, but as far as she was concerned I was the aggressor. I’m not appealing here for sympathy, you can make up your own mind, you might wonder ‘why were you there?’ or ‘they wouldn’t detain you for no reason’.
For a while I was treated in the community, I was as uncooperative as I could be, aware of the risk of being sectioned. On one occasion I told my community psychiatric nurse (CPN) that I would stop taking my medication but would take it for a few days before my periodic blood tests. I exasperated him which was fine by me, I didn’t want them to look forward to seeing me.
Around that time there had been a series high profile incidents, including a particularly violent killing, by released psychiatric patients. There was a campaign around increased sanctions for non-compliance. There was a real threat that measures would be introduced to force, care in the community patients to take prescribed medication or face compulsory detention. Given the climate at the time I was surprised, but relieved that this did not happen. Probably it was unworkable, without the resources to implement these kinds of compulsory measures.
Eventually I was assigned a social worker who I managed to get along with, when I told her I was giving up my medication she advised that I should make sure that I did it gradual and under supervision, that’s how I stopped taking lithium.
Lithium is quite mysterious, no one seemed to know how it worked exactly, but I was told that it had had favourable outcomes with some patients, and over-eating aside, it didn’t seem to have any serious side effects.
I’ve looked at mental illness from many perspectives, there are nuances and caveats. It seems to me that ‘mental illness’ is experienced differently by every individual and treatments that work for one will not work for another. Personally, treatment without consent was my main point of contention, but I recognise that even this may be required in some circumstances.
My own view is that ‘mental illness’ is not a legitimate concept. It a manner of speaking or a metaphor, which in many cases is incidental, but the belief that mental illness is literally akin to physical illness is damaging and misleading.
Things have changed Since the 1980’s when I was tricked on to a locked war and introduced to psychiatry. For all the talk today about ‘breaking the stigma’, people seem eager to obtain diagnoses, or to demand therapeutic intervention as a right. A range of disorders have emerged in that period. Such attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism and Asperger’s as a spectrum, social anxiety and various other anxieties and disorders. My own experience of treatment without consent as a battle against state tyranny (psychiatrist unlike therapists are all employed by the state), seems anachronistic today.
When I was first sectioned in 1982, most of the other patients on the locked ward were young black men like myself, and it was scary (yes the patients were scary). In the UK there was ongoing tension between ‘black youths’ and the police and/or society at large. I grew up in South London, a few miles away the Brixton Riots exploded in April 1981, subsequently riots broke out in major cities throughout the UK, largely involving young men of West Indian origin.
Today so many aspects of our society have become racialised. Idon’t believe that this has been a positive development. Radicals today argue that psychiatry is racist or needs to be ‘decolonised’. Not only did I not accept that I was not mentally ill (lack of insight is a symptom), but I disputed ‘mental illness’ as a legitimate concept (possible grandiosity). I wanted to be free of psychiatry not to be subjected to an alternative culturally appropriate version.
It was the late 90’s when I had my last involvement or treatment with or from psychiatrists (alt-rock was looking up too with Radiohead’s OK Computer and The Verve’s Bittersweet Symphony). There is plenty of evidence to show that I was right and that the treatment I received was not helpful to me. However the official version has not been changed, there is a file somewhere showing me to be bi-polar, personality disordered and whatever else. No psychiatrist has ever conceded to me that they were wrong about anything.
For anyone who is struggling or receiving therapy, I wish you well. It might even be the case that if I had received a more suitable therapy earlier, things may have worked out better. These are life or death questions which present us as, patients, clients, friends, relatives, practitioner sand society with difficult challenges.