The new Work Capability Assessment Does Not Care About Your Medication

The WCA is now not going to take the debilitating physical effects of your psychiatric medication into account.

Hey! Do what I did!

Keep working when you’ve just been released from hospital and spent six weeks with the home treatment team watching you take your medication every night. I mean, you’ve been totally stripped of your autonomy as a person and your life has fallen apart and you’ve been hit by a missile but you can work! Keep working when you start medication because you can’t claim benefits as you live with your partner. Keep working and then realise that your work colleagues think you’re an alcoholic because you can’t hold a phone because your hand is trembling so much because of lithium. Because your speech is slurred because of antipsychotics. Keep working or get a job because they don’t care and then stop taking that medication because you can’t work through the side effects and because people are laughing at you. Because you can’t get time off anyway to attend your appointments. When you do you’re too ashamed to tell them about the effects it’s having on you. You want to look better and healed. Don’t tell them you’ve come off your medication, just carry on looking more and more unstable. Then take it again. Your body weight has changed and you get Lithium toxicity. And you shake and vomit at work and obviously, the medication isn’t working because you hadn’t been taking it. But you’re taking it again! And then stop taking it and just get ill over and over and over again. And because you got ill again, you lost your job. But get a new one! And keep working! In your next job, get fired because you can’t wake up in the morning because your antipsychotics. And then stop taking your antipsychotics and get sick again. On top of this is the self loathing you have because you got fired. Again!  And you’re sick! Again! Up that dose of antipsychotics, then. But that’s okay!  Not all jobs mean getting up in the morning, yeah?  Shame you’re really drowsy the rest of the day, too. Move out of your partner’s flat and leave his mum to pay the rent because that’s the only way you can get benefits. Scorched earth policy, and now you’re single, too, and you’re still ill. Damn. But keep working! KEEP WORKING because you WILL NOT GET HELP FROM THIS GOVERNMENT. Like I did in the end.  Which I wouldn’t have gotten now.  If I were as exactly as ill as I were then, I would have died instead.

Oh, and by the way, if you don’t take that medication, you’ll get sanctioned.

So keep working until you die and they don’t have to worry about you anymore.

KEEP WORKING.

My husband has become a slum landlord.

Moneypenny Homes Infomercial.

(Used the phrase my husband to lure you in so you didn’t think I was posting random stuff. Also, he is very funny and silly while making a valid point about housing in London).

The Existential Crisis: Zombie, zombie, zombie

So, I was asked for an update on my, “fascinating” life.  Which is not at all fascinating.  For the past few months, my life has only existed internally.  I have barely gotten dressed in the past four weeks, and have been- though trying on occasion not to be- at my quietest and most reclusive.

I am in turmoil about my life choices, and I feel at a crossroads but have no idea which way to turn.

This will be a serious and extremely naval-gazing entry. Better out than in, and it would probably be best to write it privately, but the desire for a human connection is partly fuelling this.

Me on Radio 4 discussing welfare with Big Issue founder John Bird

It can be found here, about 14 minutes in:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01pnlt0

It was on BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House last Sunday (6th January).  Sorry I didn’t post a heads up beforehand!

The discussion was very brief.  The gist of his argument was that benefits trap people and keep them in stasis.  The gist of mine is that that isn’t true- for example, with Jobseeker’s Allowance alone, only 1 in 4 people are even on it a year later, let alone five.  I am also, “one of those” for whom benefits have been invaluable in helping me get my life together.

Anyway, have a listen and tell me what you think.  Sorry for the radio silence here, I’m still in the mud at the moment; will post more soon.