As one familiar with long-term depression, the findings in this article don’t surprise me. Most of the artists I’ve known in my life have been troubled with some mental malady or other, and that includes writers, sculptors, painters, musicians, photographers, actors and craftspeople.
It’s good that famous people are being more open in talking about their personal struggles, as it helps to reduce the stigma of being diagnosed with depression, bipolarism, borderline personality disorder or schizophrenia.
Just as we need a bit of grit in our lives to create friction, so we can get purchase and progress through being creative. Some of the best books, records, paintings, photographs, sculptures and films come from those who’ve been through the turmoil of mental tribulation.
I found this interesting article in the Daily Telegraph today. Matt Johnson is an ex-policeman, who suffered Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and turned to writing violent crime thrillers as therapy to aid his recovery.
I’ve met several ex-soldiers with PTSD over the years, including a couple of Vietnam veterans who were still trying to cope with trauma forty years later. Knowing them, prompted me to write of a serial killer with PTSD in my first novel The Perfect Murderer.
Writing is undeniably therapeutic, and organisations such as Lapidus, the Writing for Wellbeing organisation do great work.
My fictional serial killer has PTSD, and knows that he does, using it as an edge to stay on the fringe of society. I link his shadowy world to the online homicidal activities of players of violent video games, young men who are often alienated from society. There have been several real-life examples of mass murderers using video games as training for their intended attack, including Anders Breivik in Norway.
I’m not suggesting for one moment that all PTSD sufferers are potential homicidal maniacs. Nonetheless, there’s always a huge increase in violent crime when conflicts end, as there’s inadequate therapy for traumatised veterans. It’s a sad fact that more Vietnam veterans died from violent acts after the war than were killed during the conflict—including by suicide.
Boy soldiers are commonly used in revolutionary warfare. The atrocities in Africa, the Middle East and Slovenia featured children as warriors—often kidnapped and brainwashed youngsters; it’s still going on. I once worked with a man who’d been snatched from his classroom by the army of the Ayatollah in Iran. He was 14 years old, and with minimum weapons training, he found himself in a firefight using a machine gun forty-eight hours later. He killed people and became the victim of chemical warfare. Twenty-five years later he was struggling to cope with the guilt of what he did. He tried to make amends by working with refugees in London.
He was one of the kindest men I’ve ever met. He had the wisdom to seek counselling, but hearing of his experiences made me wonder what would happen to a disaffected and traumatised warrior with no family or friends, someone who’d been turned into a killing machine—hence my novel, with a serial killer who’s been fighting since childhood.
One of the things that I’m most grateful of, is that I never had to fight in a war, and now I’m too old! It troubles me greatly that not enough is done to deprogramme veterans from violent ways, and to help those who are tormented by trauma. Any outreach project offering support is welcome.
When winter begins to descend on wild and woolly Cornwall, I start to dread the cold days ahead. My flat in uninsulated, so while I enjoy 90-100 degrees in the summer becoming the nude novelist, I’m swathed in twenty garments to get through the months from December until April; it’s dropped to 39 degrees overnight.
It’s just as well that I’m hardy, but I stumbled across the answer to my frozen nether regions. It’s called a Kotatsu and is a Japanese device that combines bedding material with a table that has a heater beneath. If I can buy one in the U.K., I might just hibernate for five months!
We all tend to take our hands and feet for granted, and it’s only when something goes wrong that we come to appreciate how they function.
This was brought home to me in 2014, while writing my first novel which featured a serial killer, that caused me to have a nightmare in which I kicked out at a shadowy attacker, hitting the bedroom wall and breaking a big toe in my fury.
Our hands really are one of the key tools of our trade as writers. I take care of mine, manicuring the nails and rubbing in moisturising skin cream regularly.
All the same, it’s still possible to pick up the occasional injury to the fingers. One of the most painful is a burn, usually from cooking activities or clumsiness with the kettle. Immersing the wounded digit in cold water is a well-known and effective remedy, but in the absence of cooling water, try this: simply press your burnt finger to an earlobe – preferably your own!
This trick was taught to me by an ex-girlfriend, who was a Cordon Bleu trained chef. Gripping your earlobe with the fingertips that you’ve burnt helps to draw the heat away, limiting damage without harming the ear itself. There are a lot of tiny blood capillaries in the ear, as anyone who’s had an ear pierced knows, and they help to disperse the heat.
Try it, by carefully pressing a finger to a hot mug of tea or coffee, then giving your ear a fright!
Anyone who has suffered from depression knows how debilitating it can be. I was laid low with it from 2009-2013, recognizing it for what it was from previous experience. I’ve sought treatment in the past, with mixed results. Counselling sessions were very helpful, but medication less so. One of the problems with antidepressants is that there’s often a long take-up period before one notices results, and then if things don’t alter much, it’s recommended that a gradual tailing-off of the dosage occurs, rather than just stop taking them. It can all take a long time to find the right chemical for your system.
With the last bout of depression, which started in 2009 and lasted for four years, I chose to use it as an opportunity to confront a few issues about self-belief and what I really wanted from life. I’m a firm believer in the effectiveness of counselling and have trained as a marriage guidance counsellor, also working as a volunteer on Samaritan and Rape Crisis helplines. I previously saw the same counsellor for sessions five years apart, and talking to her was invaluable, and each time I was left with the conclusion that I wasn’t so bad a person after all. I thought that this would be the result if I went through counselling again, so decided instead to work on what was hampering my self-belief.
It took me a few years and was much helped by the resurgence in my creativity which welled-up out of me in 2013. It was almost as if I’d been denying myself the thing that I most wanted to do.
Moodscope is a test that can be done daily to measure how one is feeling. If you are in the depths of depression, I’d advise you not to do it every day, as it can have a negative impact on morale to see that you’re still at 0%! I do the test about once a month these days and have been at 100% for ages. https://www.moodscope.com/
Psych Central discusses all sorts of mental health issues, including depression, though I’d caution anyone about self-diagnosing. http://psychcentral.com/
ADDENDUM
My life has been transformed by writing. My creative resurgence was an irresistible force, with ideas for stories, poems and songs coming to me in chunks. I must admit that I’m a bit surprised to be feeling so positive, as to quote a book title by Richard Farina I previously felt like ‘I’ve been down so long it feels like up to me.’
One of the problems with depression is that it sneaks up on you, and once it has a hold your thinking has been crippled so much that it feels like it’s your well-deserved fate to be this way.
I have no embarrassment in talking about it, especially if my experience helps others. Fortunately, there’s been a greater openness about depression and other mental health problems, as celebrities including Stephen Fry, Ruby Wax, and many actors and sports people have opened up about their struggles.
Exercise certainly helps alleviate depression, though I’m not sure that aching buttocks from my recent 40 mile journey on the unyielding saddle of my bicycle is a fair exchange! I’ve just bought a safety helmet on eBay, perhaps I should search for some titanium cycling pants…
ADDENDUM
Apart from exercising, learning something new is a good way of evading the blues. It all helps to get parts of the brain firing that short-circuit whatever is bringing you down.
Actually, I’m not that keen on depression being referred to as the blues, as that sounds more like an entertaining song. Depression is darker than that – blues becoming purple, then mauve being absorbed by darkness. It makes me think of the Mark Rothko room at the Tate Gallery.
I had a minor stroke ten days before Christmas, 1995. It was a hell of a year, the worst of my life, and the stress contributed to my brain temporarily conking out. I hadn’t helped matters by having been a heavy drinker for 27 years. Watching men die around me in the intensive care ward was one hell of a wake-up call—most were alcoholics.
Stubborn as I am, and determined to heal myself, I went through a period of recuperation which included researching why strokes happened. I found that the flu pandemic of 1918-1920, which killed 50-100 million people, had a knock-on effect in that victims who’d seemingly recovered from the infection later succumbed to heart-attacks and strokes. I’d suffered a nasty bout of flu a few weeks before my stroke.
I recalled that Roman soldiers supposedly ate garlic, to help to ward off coughs and colds when stationed in damp Britain. I also remembered a lovely film that I’d seen in the 1970s about the wonders of garlic, which was called Garlic Is As Good As Ten Mothers.
As the old saying goes ‘an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure’, and as garlic is known to be an effective blood thinner, something that I was supposed to do to prevent another stroke, I started to eat it daily.
I have a lunch of pasta with a few cloves of raw garlic chopped up on it, along with a decent amount of olive oil. I haven’t had a cold fortwenty-three years! I find that fresh garlic is less noticeable than garlic capsules and pills, which make me burp. No one has ever commented that I stink of garlic.
I also haven’t been bitten by any vampires. Mind you, a gay, gourmet werewolf followed me home one night, saying that I smelled nice…Stupid werewolf!
After my previous post on eye dominance, I’m at risk of sounding like I’m obsessed with eyes by talking about them again. I must admit that my greatest fear is losing my eyesight, for, after all, any other part of the anatomy can be replaced with a man-made prosthesis, but not one’s eyes…
Spending a long time staring at a backlit laptop screen is not good for my eyes, I know that, so I take precautions such as adjusting the brightness and contrast of the screen in the settings. It helps to alter my focus from time to time, rather than staring intently at something that’s only two feet away non-stop. Looking around the room and out of the window at sights nearby and on the horizon gives my eyes a workout. This article in WebMD sums up the problem and the solutions very well: http://www.webmd.com/eye-health/computer-vision-syndrome
I came across some empirical proof that Computer Vision Syndrome affects techies, nerds and geeks when I lived in Atlanta. My ex-wife was a network administrator for a multi-national telecommunications company, and her office was located on a site alongside lots of other technological and research firms. When people left for home, the roads became gridlocked – Atlanta is famed for its smog and traffic jams, and drivers become expert at driving very slowly.
All the same, there were hundreds of fender benders, or low speed collisions, in the proximity of the business park. The police and insurance companies issued a statement after examining drivers’ statements about what caused the accidents. They were blamed on drivers not being able to shift their focus from the instruments and dashboard after spending hours staring at their computer monitors. Their spatial awareness was poor too, as their brains had become attuned to tunnel vision. The advice was issued that people recalibrate their eyes by having a good look around them, before stepping into their cars and driving off like a robot.
I’ve been wearing spectacles for about nineteen years. I discovered that I needed them in an unusual way. I used to help to manage a community centre, which rented out rooms for various activities and that had a free-to-use computer suite. So far as I knew, my vision was fine. One Christmas I was asked to stand in for the man who usually played Father Christmas, as he was recovering from knee surgery. Although my beard was turning white, I had no idea that I was sufficiently ancient, portly and trustworthy to play Santa Claus, but was honoured to be asked.
A red and white costume was provided, along with a fake cotton-wool beard, but I decided that I’d look more convincing wearing some grampa/John Lennon style glasses. I acquired a pair at a charity/thrift shop for a mere 50 pence. They didn’t look like they had strong lenses, but I tried them out by looking at a newspaper—thinking that the print would be blurred. Instead, the words jumped into sharp focus! D’oh – I needed to wear glasses after all, as my brain had been working in overdrive to compensate for the deterioration of my cornea.
Any spectacles wearer will know what a pain they are to clean. I don’t like the idea of using contact lenses, and the thought of laser eye surgery makes me queasy, so I’ve stuck with glasses. I clean them each morning and have tried a number of different ways, including commercial glass cleaner sprays, vinegar and lemon juice. I’d try rubbing alcohol, which is freely available in America but hard to source in the U.K. (no idea why) unless bought online.
All of these methods kind-of worked, but the lenses soon became smeared, as if I’d wiped them over with a greasy rag. Looking online, I found that the best way to remove marks is washing-up liquid or dish soap. Rubbing a dab of it between forefinger and thumb on each side of the lens, followed by rinsing off beneath a running tap and polishing with paper towel sees the glass gleaming. It works better than anything else that I’ve tried.
It makes me think of the amusing question, Where would you have a third eye? The end of a finger would be quite useful, provided it came with a reinforced eyelid to protect it from harm. Just think of the things you could see! At the very least, it would make finding things in a pocket easier.
Some of you may have seen reports in the press earlier this year, which picked up on a report in the journal Stroke—which reports news on strokes and cardiovascular diseases.
This report highlighted the importance of being able to balance on one leg, and its relevance to the information that’s sent to the brain. Unsteadiness could indicate problems, which might lead to strokes and falls in old age.
I have a particular interest in this area of health, for I had a minor stroke in 1995, at the age of 41. In a way I wasn’t surprised that it happened, for 1995 was an extremely stressful year, what with the end of a long-term relationship, business failure, homelessness and all round nastiness and sadness. Having a stroke almost felt like my brain telling me it had had enough of this rubbish, and to clean up my act!
I was fortunate to get away with only a few after-effects. The main one was a strange and erratic tendency to miss out certain letters when I wrote something. Some days I would omit the letter ‘b’, the next day the letter ‘g’ would be missing from a page of writing. I didn’t notice that I wasn’t penning them while I was writing – it was only when I read things out. This was in pre-computer days, without the intervention of a spell-checker to highlight mistakes, when I wrote everything in longhand.
To retrain my brain, I copied out hundreds of pages from novels and non-fiction books, reaching a point where all of the necessary letters were there.
My balance is OK, which may be partly helped by having ridden hundreds of thousands of miles on motorcycles and bicycles.
N.B. CAUTION! Do these balancing tests in a clear area, especially if you’re going to close your eyes. Having a bed or a sofa to fall onto nearby is a good idea – I don’t want you putting an arm through your television or computer screen.
In the interest of reassuring blog readers who fear they’re losing their marbles when they become forgetful, I thought that I’d post a link to a report on the effect of moving from room to room.
Any person of a certain age starts to fret that they’re succumbing to early-onset Alzheimer’s, when they can’t recall someone’s name or why they came into a room. I’ve wondered if absent-mindedness was more commonly found among writers. After all, we sit staring at our computer screens for ages, lost in the lives of our created characters, then we’re expected to magically return to reality as if we can instantly recall what it was we’re supposed to be doing.
This happened to me a few months ago, when I found myself standing in the bathroom without an inkling of why I’d gone in there. It wasn’t for my normal business, for I was running on empty, so I returned to my laptop to continue submitting to literary agents. After several minutes of typing, I cottoned-on to why I’d stood looking at my bathroom cabinet, for I had a painful hangnail that was catching on the keys as I typed.
D’oh! I went back through to get the nail-clippers to ease my discomfort. This jaunt takes me through two doorways, which is more than enough to disrupt my memory banks, at least according to this report :
Treating myself like an idiot, and heading the problem off at the pass, I now keep a spare nail-clipper hooked over the edge of my pen jar next to the computer.
This test was mentioned in several British newspapers recentlyand is worth doing. Follow the instructionsand give yourself 15 minutes of free time to do it. Don’t panic if you don’t complete a page of the test, as they really are designed to change before you’ve finished – as a rough guide, I got about halfway through before it changed.
I’m surprisingly normal (for a weirdo!), but seemingly need to eat more vitamin B and do more exercise – just as well I’ve bought a bicycle. I did a 40-mile round trip recently in pouring rain and 60 m.p.h. wind, to attend the funeral of a friend, surprised to make it there and back…though I think I need to buy a gel saddle, as I couldn’t walk in a straight line for a week!
