Category: Depression

Booze and Depression

Ok, first of all I will stress that these are only my opinions and experiences.

For me I think my depression and alcoholism run hand in hand, like a lot of people I started drinking “down the tip” at about 14, cider, thunderbirds, something I think was called Scotsmac and I remember one particular bad decision one night to get pissed on QC Sherry (still can’t smell the stuff without feeling sick!). I don’t really remember when it got out of hand, probably from day one. When I went to Cavos with the lads when I was about 19 I had the temporary nickname of Olly Reed, to be fair I think another one of the guys was Keith Chegwin and there was another one tagged with an alcoholics name, I cant remember what that one was, probably George Best.

It is fair to say a lot of booze was drunk on that holiday and to be honest every time we went out. All the lads were drinkers, but if i’m honest I think I was different because I was the one getting the “Drunk and Disorderley’s”. The first time I was arrested was for trying to steal a policeman’s hat outside a local pub. I was later to be banned indefinitely from that pub and the next time I went in, while the land lord was on holiday, I got the shit beaten out of me. I don’t remember the beating at all, it involved 3 people from what I have been told one of them “karate chopped” me in the throat and then a fat C**t sat on my chest and beat me unconscious, which lead to all my front teeth having to be capped. There are many other stories that still to this day cause me a lot of shame, but I think the above is enough to demonstrate it was out of hand.Roblox Robux Hack 2017

I think I knew by the age of 20 I was an alcoholic it took me 10 years before I went into the booze clinic to do something seriously about it. I class that as 10 wasted years.

So why do I say booze and depression run hand in hand. I remember being a very shy kid, to the point that if I was washing my dads car on the drive and people were walking up the road I would hide. At 14 booze gave me some confidence, by 18 I was on antidepressants and by 20 I knew I was an alcoholic. Of course I may have suffered with depression even if I wasn’t an alcoholic but I feel the abuse of alcohol made things worse. Yes I dealt with the booze issue 10 years ago but I then just plodded on with life and the depression. Now I am 40 and have had what I can only describe as a mental breakdown, I don’t think the doctors use that term anymore but that’s the only way I can describe it. 10 years on from sorting out the booze issue I am “clinically depressed” with people using phrases like “disability”, “Mental Illness”, “Mental Health” (which I find very scary!!). I am waiting to see a psychiatrist (a very long wait but that’s a story for a different time!!!), waiting to see about other types of therapy, I have people from mental institutions calling me to give me “crisis numbers”, I am speaking with mental health charities. Its fair to say life is not a lot of fun at the moment and I class this 10 years after the booze clinic as another 10 wasted years.

During the 10 years from 20 to 30 I did things like not drinking for a couple of weeks to prove I wasn’t an alcoholic, but this is bull***t, all that does is it gets people off your back for a short while. All through the time I wasn’t drinking I knew I would be able to drink again soon. I also knew I would have to be cleverer and drink a bit when no-one was watching, try and behave a little better, it’s all bollox. It is said you have to hit “Rock Bottom” before you get off the booze, this is probably true, but let me tell you if you know you are an alcoholic “Rock Bottom” is fu**ing horrendous do something about it before you get there!!! They also say “you have to want to give up” i’m not sure that is true, I didn’t want to give up, yes life was hard at the end but the bad bits disappear when you are pissed off your box, there is no better feeling than being completely out of it. Booze owned me there was nothing more important to me than booze, nothing!!

I believe the reason I am where I am now it because I plodded along, yes I had accepted the depression, I had accepted life was miserable. I kept fighting it getting more and more tired, struggling harder each day to get out of bed and getting on with it, putting on my “Jon” mask every morning over and over again and eventually something just exploded in my head, I couldn’t fight it anymore. I believe if I had been more direct with my doctor and asked for more help sooner I would still be doing the job I love.

Please don’t let booze and depression begin to own you because when it does it will f**k you up!! You can give up the booze even if you love it as much as I did, I still miss it. From what I read now on Twitter and Facebook and plenty of other websites you can still have a great life with a mental illness but if you let it own you life will seem pointless, don’t get to the stage that you purposely get out of bed and get dressed for the sole reason to go and say goodbye to the cats before you throw yourself of a car park.

Get some help, help on the NHS will be hard and slow to get and the “system” will drive you mad, but keep going. When you are thinking its never going to get better it will seem real, it seemed real for me a couple of months ago. Now is still horrible for me I had to leave my brothers bonfire party earlier tonight I walked up the road in tears, but I do know I will come out the other side sooner or later.

Keep smiling 🙂

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Thoughts and feelings

This could go on for a while and probably make little sense???

It is my guess that people who know me will be surprised at some of this stuff. Recently the same person has said to me twice “you don’t looked depressed”. The guy who said it meant no harm by it, in fact I think he meant it as a sort of compliment but it does make me think. “What does someone with depression / mental illness look like?”

I was diagnosed with depression when I was about 18, I think initially I was embarrassed and ashamed for having depression but for a long time now I have been open about depression and my alcoholism. I think I hoped being open might help other people and also take the pressure of me.

I say I have been open but only on the surface, what I mean by this is I could be having a laugh and a joke with you at work but inside I hated myself. One guy fairly recently at work said to me “I’ve never met anyone who slates themselves as much as you do” we laughed it off but I knew this was the real me coming to the surface fighting with the “Jon” who people see. There is a lot of acting when you are depressed and it is very tiring being something you are not on the outside and something your are on the inside. It is a huge battle and I think finally this battle destroyed me. Now I can act like “Jon” for only very small periods of time before it makes me feel like i’m going mad.

My uncle John used to say when he was really down “that the way we saw him at that moment was the truth and that everything else is play acting”. I am sure there will be a lot of people that understand this.

I accepted my depression a long time ago, I accepted that I would probably have to take pills for the rest of my life and I tried to keep going, I accepted that on the outside life looked good but on the inside life was f**king miserable and pointless. I had my ups and downs and always got over the downs. That is until June this year I couldn’t fight it anymore I had now had a down that I couldn’t beat. The silly thing is that it was something very small that pushed me over the edge, my company car had a light bulb out and a tyre that needed changing, all I had to do was make a phone call and drive down the road from work about 2 miles and get it done,  but it just blew my mind!!!!!

I’ve gone on more than I had planned so I am going to finish with a list of thoughts and feelings: –Watch Full Movie Online Streaming Online and Download

  • Suicidal Thoughts – They are real and they are painful!
  • Buzzing in the head that leads to crippling lows that make me unable to move
  • Child like, Unmanly, no control
  • Useless, pathetic, pointless, waste of a life, waste of a human being
  • Very poor concentration
  • Very poor motivation
  • Things I used to enjoy no longer interest me
  • Everything I do is crap – In July/August my camera pretty much kept me sane, I cant pick it up now because every picture I take is crap and I don’t understand the settings and how to fix problems.
  • Very little energy – a month a go I could only do 8 press ups :(, I started doing them on a regular basis and got up to being able to do 25 :). I haven’t done any for a couple of weeks because I just cant find the energy or motivation to do them, pathetic!!
  • A thousand thoughts running through my head but I don’t know what any of them are and I cant control them
  • “Normal” life is over
  • I want to be in hospital
  • I’m never going to have another meaningful relationship
  • Do I hear voices or are they just my thoughts?

I cant think of anymore at the moment, it has taken over an hour and a half to write this and my concentration has gone!! I hope some of this makes sense, I am now fighting the “this is sh*t thoughts, just delete it, no-one is interested” but if it is sh*t who cares its just my thoughts as they are now, tomorrow they will probably be different anyway.

Please feel free to leave a comment and even subscribe to get updates when I post something new.

Keep Smiling 🙂

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A bit about booze

As the title of the blog suggests booze has played a part in my life, although it does’t now on a physical basis it definitely still does on a mental basis!! I still miss booze a lot, but I know I cant handle it. We will speak about booze a lot as we move forward, if you have read the “About Me” page you will know I was fortunate enough to be in BUPA through a company I worked for for many years.

I spent a month in The Woodbourne Priory, so basically for an excess of about £250 I received £15000 worth of residential treatment, mainly group therapy. A lot of the therapy was based around “The 12 Steps”, I struggled a lot with these steps for reasons that don’t really matter at the moment but eventually I got Step 1: –

We admitted we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable

Step 1 for me is very important, I miss alcohol, I love alcohol but I cannot go back there.

I don’t know if my abuse of booze is why I am now labelled with “Clinical Depression” don’t get me wrong I am happy to be labelled as it makes sense of so much. I think this is an important point, I have been soba for 10 years and I feel if I went back to booze it would destroy me, one phrase I got from AA is “I have another drink in me but I don’t have another recovery in me”. With this in mind a few months ago when I was changing my medication from Cipralex to Sertraline I was a complete mess and wanted to die and this thought came into my head “Start drinking it will ease the pain and it will give you the strength to kill yourself”.

I’m going to leave it there, but please you HAVE to know if you want to give up booze IT IS POSSIBLE, it’s painful but it is possible.

Intro Post

Hi, check out the “About Me” page for a little about me. I thought I would start with some sort of disclaimers: –

1. I will contradict myself, if you suffer with mental illness I assume your thoughts and feelings change on a regular basis as well?

2. Everything I post will be honest, some things you may find disagreeable, that’s cool we can’t agree on everything, sometimes I don’t agree with myself!!

3. I am currently coming out (slowly) of a horrendous episode of depression, I think for the first time (I could be wrong?) the phrase Clinical Depression is being used, so obviously everything I do is crap, I am a waste of space, and I have had lots of suicidal thoughts.

I may have to add to these disclaimers later on because I can’t remember the others I had thought of (memory and concentration do not exist at the moment and every time I try to write thoughts down they make no sense, again if you suffer with a mental illness I assume you know exactly what I am saying?)

I think the last paragraph sums up why I decided to do a blog, to help me and hopefully to help others. For me “is what I am experiencing the same as others?” and For others “that guy thinks the same as me” (I hope so anyway).

I’ve just remembered another disclaimer: –

4. I will be using “politically incorrect” words like “Bonkers”, “Mad”, “Loony”, I mean no offence this is how I deal with it (right or wrong!!). For years I have called my antidepressants “Loony pills” have considered myself “Bonkers” and refer to myself as “As mad as a box of frogs”. I know people will disagree but I personally think we should use words that others use, to take back the words that are used to hurt us. Stigma is a big discussion point and so it should be, there shouldn’t be a Stigma about Mental Illness, it’s just an illness. Personally I have a Stigma against myself for my Mental Illness (not sure that sentence makes sense??) I fight daily with the turmoil in my head “am I ill or am I just lazy and pathetic?”

I think that will do for now, I hope you managed not to get bored I do tend to talk a lot of bollox, soz.