Next Week is Queensland Mental Health Week, so in order to raise some awareness and hopefully help out anyone struggling with mental health I have decided to share some thoughts based on my experience and hopefully some lessons learnt.

I am not professionally qualified in mental health. I am not a psychiatrist, psychologist, nurse or councilor. However mental illness is a huge part of my life and I have international experience within the mental health system.
• I have racked up about four months as an inpatient and four years as an outpatient spread over three specific psychotic episodes.
• I have emotionally abused my parents and wife saying the most hurtful personal things I can think of.
• I have spent days in a padded cell.
• I have spent a week strapped to a bed.
• I have run up the main street of a city in broad daylight naked.
• I have robbed a man for cash.
• I have caused tens of thousand of dollars in damage.
• I have stolen and been stolen from.
• I have drunk a whole bottle of rum in the space of two minutes in an effort to pass out.
• I have operated for weeks on about 2-4 hours sleep a night.
• I have ‘spoken with god’ and ‘communicated telepathically’.
• I have been certain that I would be killed and that it would be framed as a suicide, I begged and made my bother promise to look after my wife after I was gone.
• I have broken out of hospital.
• I have wandered the streets aimlessly talking to myself.
• I have cried in despair at AA meetings and RSLs.
• I have charged down cars head on.
• I have been physically subdued by security for lying on a footpath, and had pain and damage inflicted to my body, meanwhile refusing to give any inkling of satisfaction to my subduer.
• I have propositioned men older than my father for the kindness they have shown.
• I have been falsely accused of making verbal sexual threats.

I have been broken.

Of course, this stuff is shameful, mental health is shameful. I share it for two reasons, one to explain my experience to the reader and the other to continue the healing process through openness and personal acceptance.
Having said this, there are also things I am proud of:
• I have never attacked a non-combatant.
• I have treated all security guards equally regardless of race, sex or size – this can be shocking considering I have reportedly broken a security guards ribs, and I have encountered female security guards that are about 30 kg lighter.
• While screaming every explicit I can think of and sprinting at the reinforced glass head first in a padded cell with the intention of knocking myself out, I never reduced myself to a racial slur when a large negro nurse came to take me down. I would have loved to have fought him but he came at me passively with a rugby tackle pad. Instead I called him Michael Vick as I felt like I was being treated like a dog.
• I never cheated on my wife despite roaming the streets with an uncontrollable erection and being propositioned by women.
• I never resisted arrest although I did try to avoid detection and to escape once detained.
• I have given the jumper off my back in the middle of winter.
• I have given away my last dollar, and I have been found wanting.

During the course of this illness I have held down a professional job, received promotions, married a beautiful, intelligent woman and brought a son into the world. I have also started a consultancy employing three people part time, moved continents and supported a mother in law.

I am now off the drugs, but I will never be “cured”.

The timing of this Mental Health Week is pretty pertinent, I will be turning 30, at the same time as I continue to operate on 2-4 hours sleep per night due to my newborn and try to hold together my mental capabilities and continue to work in order to support my family.

My wife is concerned, my parents are concerned. No one desires regression. We are all working together to make sure that doesn’t happen.

I used to think those seeking help were weak or those using drugs were pathetic. I believed drugs were a crutch and those using them were a burden on society.
It is not how we evolved. It is not how God created us.
I was wrong. Like a crutch, help is a tool that is necessary from time to time. But a crutch isn’t a fair analogy. Help is like suspension and each drug just a different technological advancement.
If you drive a car without suspension at any sort of speed, you’re going to have a bad time. High performance vehicles require advanced technology. A person can go off the grid or “get by” with no help or drugs, but they cannot perform to the level required to thrive by today’s high benchmarks.

Quitting for me is never an option. However, taking a break and seeking help is a must for all high stress situations. Differentiating between quitting and having R&R is extremely difficult for me, and I have worked myself insane.

Thus, through experience and trial an error I have come up with the bellow as a self-assessment check list in order to determine if I am emotionally compromised:
• If you have been unable to sleep for 48 hours – seek help
• If you have slept on average of 4 hours a night for over a week – seek help
• If you have publicly berated someone – seek help
• If you are having arguments with three or more separate individuals – seek help
• If you are breaking stuff – seek help
• If you are crying any time you are alone – seek help
• If you are feeling persecuted by everyone but have no proof – seek help
• If you are aggressively speeding – seek help
• If you are desiring a physical confrontation – seek help
• If you are having suicidal ideations but see light at the end of the tunnel – Keep going your doing a great job!
• If you are having suicidal ideations and you don’t see a light – seek help.

Seeking help means talking about your feelings/situation with another person. This is a must! For two reasons, they may have a solution you haven’t thought of, but more importantly, they will be your advocate if, god forbid, you end up in the system. Because once you are in, you have lost your free will and the system will no longer let you make decisions for yourself.
So what does help look like, I recommend sharing a drug (not abusing a drug), that can be a cigarette, a coffee/tea, alcohol, weed if its legal, anything that you and your helper enjoy. They must listen to you, get them to repeat what you said in their own words if need be. You must listen to them, if they are saying put tools down or seek a professional and you disagree, get a second separate opinion. If they too are saying the same thing LISTEN & OBEY!
Try as hard as you can to stay out of hospital, from my experience a psychiatrist’s job is not to help you optimally perform (optimisation always has a risk) their job is to make sure you don’t harm anyone else or yourself. They have seen a lot of shit, they are callous, they are allies with big pharma, and they have a very low tolerance for risk.
I am of the opinion that with the help of the internet, the educated individual is in the best situation to look after themselves, but you simply CANNOT do it alone. For no other reason than the fact that you need an advocate if you end up in the system for whatever reason. Think of it as an insurance policy.

Finally, asking for help. Once you get to the point of actively and deliberately seeking help. You cannot pussy foot around. Don’t post publicly or try and casually bring it up. Be deliberate and direct, select someone you trust and respect and start the conversation like this “Hi, hope you are well, I need help, can we catch up for a <insert drug of choice>?”. Simply asking to catch up is not good enough, if you trust and respect them, they will probably be busy in the first instance and when you do meet up, they will not pry into a place you do not want to go. If you start with I need help, they will most likely drop what their doing and patiently probe until you explain your situation. If you don’t have anyone, call a hotline.
I hope this helps those in need of help and prevents them from going through the same ordeal as I have had.
I hope this gives some hope to those that are in the system.
I hope this helps my family, friends, colleagues and health care professionals gain an insight as to where I have been and where I am at.
And most importantly, I hope I can follow my own advice!

Originally published on facebook.com on 4th October 2018