Misadventures In Medication

Misadventures In Medication

Continuing Tribulations Of A Middle Aged Man Battling Beerbelly, Baldness, BPD And Heart Failure

Looking into mirror I realise the only thing I am doing is depriving a village of their idiot…….

Still shaking as I type and this blog has taken roughly twice as long to write as normal because of a brain still trying to unscramble itself and begin the physiological process of detoxification from the regular nightly large cocktail of prescription medication .

Often wonder if it’s worth writing about my misadventures with medication….. Yet if even one person reads this and it makes them stop and think at that crucial moment before chugging down a fistful of medication or allows them to understand why a loved one has done something similar I think it is worth it.

What even remotely rational thought process can lead me to greedily gorge like a wild boar at 3 in the morning on Diazepam,Quitiepene, Vensir XL , and a healthy selection of non prescription meds? It is an important question not just for me but for society because of the growing issues surrounding prescription medication abuse.

The problem is a huge one. In the United States, drug overdoses are the leading cause of accidental deaths, eclipsing even car accidents. And the UK joins the United States in the grim statistic that overdose deaths from prescription opioids outnumber those from heroin and cocaine combined

So in what parallel universe is it understandable that a human being of reasonable intelligence can even briefly entertain the deeply selfish and potentially lethal notion of playing Russian roulette with an exotic cocktail of medications?

If it was someone new to mental health problems and the dark cul-de-sac world of medication overdosing the intention could be a desperate bid to end it all or a ‘public cry for help’ as Society so dismissively and mistakenly describes that might be one explanation. Yet I am nearly a decade down that line so neither of the above even enters my mind. And yet after a certain point can I hand on heart say I knew exactly how much I had taken?

The answer is obviously no, it will always be a worrying and potentially lethal bloody no.

When you are this far down the line, for me at least, it is all about escape. Even if only for 24 hours. An overwhelming need to just blot out all the struggles and pain for that 24 hours during which you gloriously feel nothing. Your brain is briefly and beautifully numb.

Obviously there is a price to pay. You are a shaking, nervous and guilty excuse for a human being usually for up to 48 hours at least once the medication cocktail has worn off.You are shaking mostly because of the physiological effects, you are nervous because your senses and emotions are coming back up to speed . Mostly though you feel guilty because you have piled on yet more needless worry and concern to the constantly decreasing number of people who actually genuinely care about you.

The disgusting levels of selfishness are staggering and by christ as you sit alone shaking in the aftermath you are painfully aware of that. You remember how such selfish and self destructive behaviour has destroyed so much of what was once your life.

In my case relationships, contact with three of my four children, a home and even a career which was more a way of life than just a job in the ambulance service…All utterly smashed and wantonly destroyed by exactly the same selfish stunt I have just pulled again.

All to get 24 hours escape and release from days spent in the most brutal sort of toe to toe fist throwing street fight with the Black Dog. To give yourself relief from the mental exhaustion. The sheer amounts of emotional and mental energy that is sapped from you when you have gone through what experts call ‘an acute’ episode is completely off the scale in any normal sense of the word. You have to understand that. No I mean you truly have to understand that level of mental exhaustion and desperation when discussing abusing prescription medication.

For myself I have that BPD led constant negative inner narrative scrolling like an auto cue machine through my mind.It tells you with great authority you are lazy, useless, weak, a waste of space ,not worth five minutes of anyone’s time…..and so it goes on.

A pathetic attempt at a brief escape from all of the above is what it boils down to. Doesn’t reflect too well on me but it is the brutal truth behind my motives .

Obviously if you or a loved one has taken an overdose on any scale medical attention should be sought out straight away.

#bloggingformentalhealth2019

#willlunnwriter2019

Continuing Tribulations Of A Middle Aged Man Battling BPD, Beerbelly , Baldness and Chronic Heart Failure

Continuing Tribulations Of A Middle Aged Man Battling BPD, Beerbelly , Baldness and Chronic Heart Failure

‘Fear there is a slightly disreputable, I would go as far as seedy, down at heel 80s style Hotel missing the centrepiece heart shaped waterbed from their optimistically entitled grubby Honeymoon Suite.’

Mostly because I feel like said half full heart shaped waterbed which has escaped from a seedy 1980’s Hotel Bridal Suite. Sloshing awkwardly around place. Very probably why, apart from half hour for those pics last Monday I haven’t left the bolthole in well over a week.

I never thought my 40s would include me swelling up with fluid in such a visually arresting manner that I could feature on a David Attenborough TV Special.

(Famous Attenborough Whisper)

‘Viewers take note especially the amount of fluid build up around the abdominal area. Our experts estimate there is at least two and a half stone of fluid now bloating this particular specimen. Look at how his breathing is becoming more laboured as the pressure from that sheer amount of fluid on his lungs begins to take a toll.

As we have already discovered Brian the half filled waterbed has Chronic Congestive heart failure. Unfortunately for Brian the most common cause of pulmonary edema is congestive heart failure (CHF). Heart failure is when the heart can no longer pump blood properly throughout the body. This creates a backup of pressure in the small blood vessels of the lungs, which causes the vessels to leak fluid.

We would urge well meaning viewers to approach Brian with care and even if you have the best of motives do not, we repeat do not tell him about an Aunty,Granda, Granny or Great Uncle Cedric who had a heart problem, had an operation and is now right as rain. Please bare in mind Chronic Congestive Heart Failure does not have any surgical cure, nor does it have any cure with meds. Yes the meds can slow down the symptoms, but ultimately it is 100% terminal.

You must remember our subject Brian has suffered/suffers from Borderline Personality Disorder, a condition which has validation or perceived validation its very ugly pernicious core. In simple terms that means when you approach Brian and tell him about the miraculous heart surgery your Great Uncle Cedric had he doesn’t hear a friend trying to give hope….no what he hears when filtered through his cruel mischievous BPD is someone belittling his heart condition and telling him he’s not really that ill at all. Or even worse he is deliberately making his illness sound worse than it is.

Perhaps on reflection we should advise you to avoid him on the increasingly rare outings he makes from his Bolthole.

#bloggingformentalhealth2019

One Day More

Tribulations Of A Middle Aged Man Battling Baldness, Beer Belly, BPD And Heart Failure

One Day More

‘Tomorrow we’ll discover

What our God in Heaven has in store!

One more dawn

One more day

One day more!’

When you have a terminal illness you become aware of ‘being on the meter.’ With it running worryingly quickly through the time you have left like those old versions which took 50p pieces we had in Thornhill with the actual wee metal wheel. Except the wheel is spinning so fast it could cut diamonds.

There are very few positives in this whole haemorrhoid cluster of this early death mess. So I am clinging to any said positives I can find with knuckles white with the weary but steely determination of a Liverpool Fan (of which I am one) holding on to the hope and belief that at last the title is ours this season.

One of those positives I am enjoying most is the heady sense of complete liberation from normal social expectations, norms and even self imposed rules which have governed my entire adult life. It’s a little bit like the last day at a job or last few days at school.

A good example that will unfortunately leave those friends with more discerning musical and theatrical taste cringing is how I start each day now.

For past few weeks I have changed my morning routine and, obviously after the first life giving ration of bean to cup fresh coffee , I start first few hours of the day listening to West End musical numbers booming out from Bluetooth Speaker system completely unapologetically.

For no other reason than they cheer me up.

They make me think about the joy those tunes give Toby and Annie so in a weird way feel little bit of them are here with me every morning, instead of away to school and work respectively, with the huge smiles on their faces just like they have every time we walk into a theatre to watch a show.

As I write Hugh Jackman as Jean Valjean and the rest of the Les Miserables cast are lustily belting out ‘One Day More’

VALJEAN

Tomorrow we’ll be far away,

Tomorrow is the judgement day

ALL

Tomorrow we’ll discover

What our God in Heaven has in store!

One more dawn

One more day

One day more!

I mentioned there are surprisingly more positives to this omnishambles of Heart Failure causing me to exit stage left even before when the intermission should be. Yet I think will save telling you about them until another day. Not so much for the benefit of you my little FB Chums but because on my lower mornings describing said positives to you will help me remember them.

Bloggingformentalhealth2018

Willlunnwriter2018

‘Tomorrow we’ll discover

What our God in Heaven has in store!

One more dawn

One more day

One day more!’

When you have a terminal illness you become aware of ‘being on the meter.’ With it running worryingly quickly through the time you have left like those old versions which took 50p pieces we had in Thornhill with the actual wee metal wheel. Except the wheel is spinning so fast it could cut diamonds.

There are very few positives in this whole haemorrhoid cluster of this early death mess. So I am clinging to any said positives I can find with knuckles white with the weary but steely determination of a Liverpool Fan (of which I am one) holding on to the hope and belief that at last the title is ours this season.

One of those positives I am enjoying most is the heady sense of complete liberation from normal social expectations, norms and even self imposed rules which have governed my entire adult life. It’s a little bit like the last day at a job or last few days at school.

A good example that will unfortunately leave those friends with more discerning musical and theatrical taste cringing is how I start each day now.

For past few weeks I have changed my morning routine and, obviously after the first life giving ration of bean to cup fresh coffee , I start first few hours of the day listening to West End musical numbers booming out from Bluetooth Speaker system completely unapologetically.

For no other reason than they cheer me up.

They make me think about the joy those tunes give Toby and Annie so in a weird way feel little bit of them are here with me every morning, instead of away to school and work respectively, with the huge smiles on their faces just like they have every time we walk into a theatre to watch a show.

As I write Hugh Jackman as Jean Valjean and the rest of the Les Miserables cast are lustily belting out ‘One Day More’

VALJEAN

Tomorrow we’ll be far away,

Tomorrow is the judgement day

ALL

Tomorrow we’ll discover

What our God in Heaven has in store!

One more dawn

One more day

One day more!

I mentioned there are surprisingly more positives to this omnishambles of Heart Failure causing me to exit stage left even before when the intermission should be. Yet I think will save telling you about them until another day. Not so much for the benefit of you my little FB Chums but because on my lower mornings describing said positives to you will help me remember them.

Bloggingformentalhealth2018

Willlunnwriter2018

Continuing Tribulations Of A Middle Aged Man Battling Baldness Beer Belly BPD And Heart Failure

Continuing Tribulations Of A Middle Aged Man Battling Baldness Beer Belly BPD And Heart Failure

The Ferguson Show

Becoming increasingly convinced my life is actually an elaborate black comedy with the scripts written by a team including Samuel Becket, Harold Pinter and Kafka. With all three given the brief to write a comedy as black as your boot. Comedy so dark it makes their usual nihilistic work read like a Carry On script in comparison.

Came to this startling epiphany as I sat in consulting room in the old Banbridge Polyclinic when it took all my powers of physical control to stop me throwing my head back and allowing a maniacal laugh to slip from my lips in response to the question I had just been asked.

Quarterly routine psychiatric review and for the first time in years I actually got the Consultant himself instead a Junior Doctor who normally I have to take through the finer points of BPD condition and DBT training. Yet here I was with the head buck cat himself who actually knew what he is talking about.

We settled in the consulting room when he lifted his head from my file, looked me straight in the eye and hit me with it..” So Brian how have things been going for you over the last three months?”

On reflection glad didn’t laugh hysterically in response to his innocent question because suspect I would be writing this from single ensuite room in Bluestone. All of my little fb chums out there will know most of what has happened to me during past three months so will hopefully appreciate why that was my first reflex .

Took roughly ten minutes to give him a brief run down of the heart attack, the fall leading to large gash in my forehead requiring seven stitches, the stents, the news I was now in stage three Chronic Heart Failure with prognosis of two to three years left, oh and yes last week when felt forced into wading thigh deep in public controversy uncharacteristically going all Liam Neeson and Dad, because it was being brushed under the carpet as I publicly warned the parents of children in E2A Theatre Group about one of it’s founding members being a self confessed abuser of children currently in custody on remand.

Can honestly say never seen a senior Psychiatric Consultant with such an open mouthed , slack jawed look of stunned disbelief on their face in my life. Now I am guessing as an experienced Psychiatrist having spent years in the trenches on the frontline dealing with mental health patients it takes a lot to shock him but there he was sitting at the other side of the desk giving a perfect impression of a man who has just been tasered in his genitals without warning or discovering the earth is in actual fact flat after all.

To be honest I felt sorry for the poor guy because he was so obviously desperately attempting to regain composure and think of something to say. All credit to him after a few uncomfortable minutes he responded with..”so a fairly eventful few months then.”

I nodded my head and agreed I have had indeed a ‘fairly eventful few months.’

#bloggingformentalhealth2018

#ITSOKNOTTOBEOK

Empty Stump

Experimenting with slightly different narrative style and remember chums writing my way of coping. Nothing more or less.

Empty Stump

It’s only a bloody bog standard unremarkable tree stump Ferguson. Granted might be in picturesque surroundings in the shadow of Hillsborough Castle wall, apart from that it’s nothing but the remains of a long cut down oak tree. How can very sight of it it hit me with the powerful thud of a crossbow bolt in my chest?

It’s a golden Sunday afternoon and you’re out walking with your two favourite girls. The Duchess and Rosie the Jack Russell through the park you have called your ‘Soul Place’ since being an obnoxious insufferably pretentious teenager. Can’t you just let the past fall away or at least temporarily squeeze it into an air tight secured box marked ‘Not To Be Opened Today?’

Let’s be honest about it you are lucky to be here at all after the whole heart carry on last month. Have you forgotten already the promise you made to yourself lying in that Daisy Hill hospital bed with needles and wires hanging from you like some modern Frankenstein’s monster gone wrong?

Try your damnest to live in the present. Fight the Black Dog to focus on the right now instead of rhyming on about the past or catastrophising nightmarish multiple versions of the future.

Talking about living in the present, look at that young couple over there. He is running about visually distressingly without a top on while she is disappointingly not following her boyfriend/lovers/friends with benefits example.

Nice try at channeling the inner perv Ferguson but yeah you know far too well that is the stump where the picture was taken with all the boys crowded onto it over eight years ago now.

The bloody photograph that has haunted you. The image you have stared at with tears running down your face at 3 in the morning. The picture you clutched in your hands during last moments of consciousness in at least two of the most serious suicide attempts because in the warped thinking brewed up in what was at the time your emotionally punch drunk excuse for a brain the faces of your boys smiling out from the picture was the last thing you wanted your eyes to relate back through optic nerves to a brain struggling with the overdose of meds and about to shut down.

Ben and Rory at the back because they were the eldest. Ben holding on to Ewan, Rory steadying a wee Tobster and Scott helping out with Ewan. My four sons and Scott who I treated as a son for all those years. Scott and Rory partners in crime wearing the overpriced outdoor jackets I had bought them…always had a thing about coats. First attempt at taking the photograph ruined when Rory reached around the back and shoved Scott off the stump for sheer badness.

Right that will do Ferguson! Back to the here and now and be quick smart about it you fucking wingnut. It’s a gorgeous Sunday afternoon and you are dandering along hand in hand with the human being you were somehow lucky enough to meet who has a generosity of spirit, razor sharp intellect and is the reason you are still alive today without question.

Two dazzlingly white swans beating their huge powerful wings on surface of the water at Hillsborough Forest Park Lake. One following the other down the length of the water until enough momentum is built up to take temporary flight. The life affirming scene illuminated by an early June sun shining benevolently down.

The heartbreaking natural beauty of Hillsborough always takes you by surprise after a long absence and this is no exception. The young Geese and Swans of the season are well up already. Only a light smattering of brown feathers visible on the young swans giving away their not quite adulthood.

Anyway the children captured within that photographic moment in time don’t exist now. Ben is 18 and despite what all my well meaning friends had predicted wants nothing to do with me even after hearing I might not be around much longer. Rory is third year at the Academy and seems likely to follow Ben in not wanting anything to do with their ‘not right in the head’ aul Dad. Ewan is still at Donald doing well according to what information I have been able to pick up. Toby about to turn 10 and the absolute joy of my life with barely a day going by without us at least talking on the phone. As for Scott… I couldn’t even tell you where he lives never mind what sort of young man he is becoming.

Rosie panting dramatically as if she has been running following Lawrence Of Arabia on his camel. Better get her back to car for a drink of water and an ice cream for Annie and myself I think.

Bloggingformentalhealth2018

Willlunnwriter2018

Rebirth In Atlantic

Rebirth In Atlantic 
He grasped the rails on his BIC 8”6 Magnum board with his new winter 5mm surfing gloves with extra grip built into the palms bought as a present from the Duchess. Steadied himself and began to give the four powerful strokes with his arms he knew he needed to reach the speed of the incoming breaker.You know instantly when you have caught and harnessed the natural force of a wave straight away and this time he had lucked in.
Now remember pop up skill, straight up onto feet with none of this knees first untidy sprockling which was for old men and kids. Feet placed perfectly leaning slightly forward with weight of head closer to front of board. Knees bent and arms helping with balance.
He was up. Actually up and riding the natural oceanic power of an Atlantic wave. 44 and he was surfing, not in a lesson on a foamy board with a helping push off hand from the instructor but on his own. He had spotted this wave, tracked it coming in and judged his push off right on the money by himself.
Depression and BPD left in his wake with only riding that wave mattering. In the jargon he had been taught in his DBT six month training he was truly ‘in the moment’ as Marshal McLuhan repeatedly described the state we needed to be aiming for in her seminal DBT workbook which had been our bible during the classes. Fully committed to one fleeting minute in time.
He was just another guy in a wetsuit catching waves on a winters January day on the East Strand in Portrush. Wasn’t the BPD basket case with a decade of depression and pain. Wasn’t the car crash of a Dad who hadn’t been able to see his three sons for years, not the ex ambulance man who had been forced to retire because of mental health giving up not just a job but large part of his identity, he wasn’t the pathetic and lost soul who had been in and out of mental health hospital five times following breakdowns or suicide attempts.
Was it even a minute he had lasted riding the wave? Who knows? Who cares? As the breaker began to lose power reaching the beach and began to dissolve into white froth the board slowed and he didn’t just allow himself to fall off as the momentum ebbed away. He dove off in a spectacular wipe out disappearing momentarily right under the icy cold ocean.
Resurfacing he could feel a strange sensation on his face. A smile of the purest innocent childlike joy. With no disrespect to Christian friends he felt surfing and the Atlantic Ocean had combined to give him a full emersion baptism. In his own way his soul and troubled mind had been born again.
#bloggingformentalhealth2017