I voted Lib Dem

And I wish I hadn’t. I hate this government.

And here’s a lovely piece of propaganda, from the BBC, of all people.  Saints and Scroungers.  About benefit claimants. Yep.

Dead Set / Pitchforks out for Kerry Katona

As I write, I’m listening to Gnossienne No. 1 by Erik Satie. I’m very fond of Satie, who is an incredibly imaginative writer, as well as a wonderful composer. However, the room appears to have shrank and, try as I might, I can’t seem to squeak out a crumb of humour as it’s playing, which is a disservice to the man himself.  My mind has been clouded over with Royal Dalton.  There’s something about classical piano pieces that render the listener hypnotically earnest. I couldn’t fathom a having a dinner party while this kind of music was on in the background. I’d imagine that even those not from England would lapse into affected Sloaneyisms. They’d voice opinions that they don’t even have on modern art, and I’d be stood there, out of my depth, wondering if its impolite to chain smoke in my own flat, ashamed of my Northern Irish accent that makes everything I say sound like a threat. I can’t ever say the word “knee” in any context because people stiffen and ask, “Did you say you were going to do my knees?” Jesus, of course not. I have family members to do that for me.

(I couldn’t have a dinner party anyway, unless everyone wanted to sit on the floor picking cat fur off their trousers and drinking warm Londis wine from an ancient cracked mug that was sprouting pale green downy fur).

Ah, Pulp! Much better.  

Yesterday, Rob, myself and my rather fetching facial herpes toddled down to Piccadilly Circus to attend the premiere of Charlie Brooker’s Dead Set. Some people had come dressed as zombies but I had no desire to relive the four days of utter discomfort in which I was so saturated in fake blood that I had to use a jack to prise my legs apart every time I got a spare second for a wee. I hung around in the foyer with my head in a trough of popcorn, occasionally having, “Oh, that’s her” moments when my eyesight wasn’t obscured by hot butter.

Dead Set is a short horror series starting tonight on E4 (watch it or I’ll burn your family) and gorily climaxing on Halloween. I had my reservations about it; the setup consists of the end of the world with what may be the last survivors battling for their lives in the Big Brother house. There’s the plucky runner, the bastard producer and the hapless housemates whom we hate on sight but then eventually grow to care for, or at least not break into rapturous applause when they’re ripped in half.

It could have been a compendium of amusing verb-noun swearing (“You fucknut! You complete shitbasket!”) self consciously signposted with clunky satirical swipes. As it stands, though, I’m surprised that E4- home of American exports like Desperate Housewives and uselessly frothy list shows- agreed to make it. It starts off as sharp commentary on the underbelly of television and then descends into brutal, kinetic gore. It’s relentless, tense, hopeless and genuinely horrible. With the occasional amusing verb-noun swearing. It also featured newsreader Krisnan Guru Murphy, who seems to be my generation’s Patrick Allen.

What always irks me about zombie films is that they never use the word zombie. If you’re setting a zombie film in 2008, then your characters would know what a zombie is. The skipping around it with “the undead”, the “living dead” and, “Oh fuck, it’s THEM!” is lost on me. Likewise, Dead Set followed the 28 Days Later school of shaky camera work, which is distracting and irritating because you can’t actually see what the hell is going on. Maybe that’s the point, but a few times last night I was confused when zombies poured in from nowhere and became a blur of blue skin and bad teeth while I struggled to grasp who, if anyone, they were eviscerating.

I really enjoyed Dead Set, if enjoyed is the right word for leaving the cinema checking the irises of people’s eyes. Oh, and if you want to see me in it, just look for a flash of pink hair at the end.  It was also a testament to the power of television.  I hadn’t had a fried egg sandwich in six years.  I’ve had two today.

After the premiere, we stopped by the aftershow party to sample its free bar. Through the glaze of wine I had more of those, “Oh, it’s her” moments. I haven’t watched a series of Big Brother in five years but I still recognise the housemates as most of them spent a while plastered on the front cover of Heat magazine. I strolled up to a few of them to say hello and they were all obscenely friendly and sweet, even though next to their blonde, designer litheness I felt like a full stop, given that I was dressed particularly badly at the time. I met Andy Nyman, who I admire an awful lot, since I’m a fan of triangle headed modern day witch Derren Brown. He’s about five foot five tall and I was quite grateful to drape myself across his shoulder for a photograph, feeling like I’d stumbled into the land of My People, those without thirty yards of legs separating their oxygen starved heads from the ground. I said hello again to the make up girls, the director and Charlie Brooker, and was quite flattered that they all remembered me, even though it was hard not to since I was sporting a pink mohawk and my breasts had been determinedly wriggling out of my dress all day.  They were also effusive and lovely.  I said hello to Kevin Eldon, too, who I can’t look at without imagining in a nappy (not a weird sexual fetish of mine, just something from The Day Today).  I don’t get star struck and generally speak to everyone in the same way but I was a little by Kevin Eldon.

Saturday was a good evening, too, being the first of two days in which I found myself pleasantly tipsy. I’ve actually been in a good mood throughout the weekend. Yesterday before going out I watched “Boy A”, in which a former child killer tries to rebuild his life, and cried my eyes out. It’s one of those dramas where you find yourself pounding your fists against the screen howling, “WHY? YOU COULD HAVE BEEN ALRIGHT!” and your neighbours ring the bell and ask if everything’s “okay”, and then you fall into their arms mumbling something about bridges. In my actual day to day life, I rarely cry, even if I’m very depressed. I’m one of those depressives who gets the classic “flat affect” rather than bawling. When I’m depressed, I look like this:

and my vocabulary extends to grunting and gesticulating. But sad songs and films make me cry like a twat. Even not sad ones. I cried when I watched Ratatouille. Something about a cartoon rat not being accepted by humans, I don’t know. It’s a METAPHOR isn’t it. Likewise, I laugh when I really shouldn’t. At my grandad’s funeral, the priest was straight out of Father Ted, dully intoning something or other about god. He occasionally hiccuped and kept referring to my grandad as “she” and I burst out laughing. When we were given the body of Christ (a wafer thin mint), it got stuck to the roof of my mouth and I was uselessly trying to prise it off with my tongue. It finally dislodged and fell into my hand with a tiny wet slap, so I had to shove it back in a swallow it. Regurgitating the body of Christ like a mother bird. Then I performed the trick that all Catholics forced to sit through endless masses in their childhoods know about; bow your head as though you’re overwhelmed with piousness and laugh into your lap. If people behind you see your shoulders shaking, they’ll assume that you’re so overcome with love that you can’t control your emotions.

You can’t do that in America, though. When I was there on an exchange trip, rather than pretending to pray on my own, they made me hold their hands in the air and stand up so I felt like we were in the Wicker Man and that the alter was going to split open like Predator’s mouth and reveal a giant wicker Jesus. Aged twelve and precocious, I had written an exasperated note to myself in the bedroom talking about how I didn’t believe in god anyway, and I had told them as much. They found it and subjected me to an angry tearful lecture. Ah, happy memories.

In today’s non-news, Twatty Britain has been dusting off its pitchforks and driving themselves into a judgmental (quite literally, in this case) frenzy over a TV appearance by Kerry Katona. She’s a singer and reality TV star that appeared on a magazine show called “This Morning”. It’s broadcast at about 10.30 after the Jeremy Kyle show so is therefore watched by those who like the sensation of being repeatedly punched in the face.

Kerry has manic depression and is being treated for it. This was the appearance:

To me, it’s immediately clear that she’s still under the influence of medication. She takes an antipsychotic (which are taken at night time) and got to bed late. It’s early in the morning and of course she’s still going to be doped up. I am exactly the same at that time since I also take an antipsychotic. In my past job, they thought I was an alcoholic as I’d arrive at 9am and still be slurring my words. You have to take that type of medication really early if you want to function in the morning.

Kerry even responds to the presenter’s tactless questioning by naming the medication she’s taking. And yet, even with this, she’s being lynched over here, being called a drug addict, alcoholic slut and bad mother. The video is on Youtube in different guises and each one contains a ream of astonishingly ill-informed, abusive crap. Here she tries to speak out and says that people are prejudiced against those with bipolar disorder, which, as we all know, is bloody true (and in every sense; we can’t do jury service and those of us with the severe form of the illness can’t adopt or foster or work within certain places like British defence organisations). And yet the article is still rollseyes. Even the more rational people who accept her explanation are saying that bipolar disorder isn’t an “excuse”.

I don’t have much affection for her given that she’s a vapid, frozen food hawking popstrel with the voice of a haunted five year old but I feel really sorry for her here and angry on her behalf. People are ignorant, and some of the abuse (like calling her a slut and slag over and over- isn’t it great to be a woman?) is like a bad day out in BBC’s Have Your Say (the internet home of, “Get back to work you fucking scroungers!”) and makes me want to gouge my eyes out.

As her protests aren’t really endearing herself to anyone, I’m expecting a sobbing Jade Goody-esque TV appearance sometime soon in which she apologises for somehing she didn’t do.

Labels and language

Bipolar disorder is “just a label”.

Not to me.

I know mental illness is culturally and personally complicated. A faction, a rather large vocal faction, don’t believe in the existence of mental illness. There’s another debate about this over at Mental Nurse. I stayed out of it.

It’s fair enough to hold your own opinion but to me, it’s insulting when people refer to bipolar disorder as a label. The same is true of schizophrenia, some people refer to it as a label, but, more often than not, there’s a little get out clause stating that “oh, but schizophrenia, that’s an illness” because it is more obviously destructive and indiscriminating than bipolar disorder. “Learned” types don’t make this distinction but the laymen do.

One of the problems is that bipolar disorder is seen as a middle-class illness. Its famous sufferers are by and large educated, artistic people. Schizophrenia, on the other hand, is an illness that is known for affecting people from working class backgrounds. Its very image is of the mad bag lady, or the unwashed black man gibbering on the bus. This is a stereotype, not from me but from society as a whole. Schizophrenia is the poor man’s disorder, and manic depression is the rich man’s disorder. Because manic depression tends to be publicised as an artistic disease, it’s easy to see it as a label that auguments this image, rather than an illness like schizophrenia.

I can see why some people prefer to see mental illness as a label.

Mental illness, particularly schizophrenia and personality disorders, come with stigma attached to it. The public’s perception of schizophrenia isn’t a sympathetic one. It’s wrongly associated with violence, and people fear those affected by schizophrenia.

Because of the stigma attached to mental illness, it’s better to see it as just a psychiatric label with no real meaning to the individual. Being “a schizophrenic” or being “a manic depressive” says something about you, something that might be seen as negative. Labels you can get rid of. Labels are interchangeable and unreal. The causes of mental illness are unknown, so maybe it isn’t worthy of being called illness at all, and sometimes diagnosis can vary from person to person. There’s no way of proving that somebody has a mental illness. A label that says, “Something is wrong with you” is insulting and unnecessary. Lots of people believe that psychiatric labels are just imposed on someone because society doesn’t know how to cope with them. In my own experiences, some people have considered me to be arrogant because I explained that I had manic depression. Implying that I have a real problem, and am not just a contrary, melodramatic woman.

I see this as real. As real as any other illness.

I think seeing mental illness as being as real as physical illnesses is the way forward in reducing stigma. A lot of people don’t agree with me, though. If mental illness is real, then your diagnosis does mean something. And you can be defined by it. And people are defined by mental illness, far moreso than they are by physical illnesses, because a mental illness lives in your control tower, pulling the switches that make you who you are. But if mental illness is real, then it’s not the fault of the person who has it. They didn’t do anything to make this happen to them.

But if people just dismiss mental illness as a label, it devalues those problems. It implies that any suffering the person is experiencing is not real. It’s all part of a disposable label. If someone kills themselves over a label, well, that’s just stupid. Mental illness can be treated. (Although the actual wanting to be treated for it is another problem altogether). And, although there’s no real scientific evidence of yet that shows that mental illness is hardwired into the brain, there are a lot of physical illness that cause symptoms of mental illness. Dementia, epilepsy, MS. So there is something in the mind that causes hallucinations and mania. People suffering from hallucinations that have been triggered by a physical cause aren’t fashioning coping methods, so why are people with mental illness supposedly doing just that?

I don’t think that I’d be “free” if I thought of manic depression as a label rather than an illness. I don’t think I’d be liberated from all that manic depression implies. This feels like an illness to me. It feels like an infection. It swept through my body eleven years ago, it weighed down my bones and dissolved its sickness through my body and mind. This feels absolutely physical to me. I don’t just become depressed sometimes and manic at others. It’s not an isolated syndrome. It affects everything and it is not a case of “letting it”, no more than a person with cancer can “let” their cancer destroy their body. My energy is affected by it. My perceptions and my abilities are affected by it. Days I can’t sleep, and days I can’t wake, and days I can barely walk more than a few yards, and days when my hands shake so badly that I can’t hold a cigarette, and ash is confetti. It isn’t “all in my head” because it’s not confined to my mind. It’s in my body, too.

There is a theory that people develop mental illness to cope with unbearable stresses in life. There is one illness in which I support this theory: Dissociative Identity Disorder, because, overwhelmingly in those who suffer from it, there has been a massively traumatic event that has happened to them, and I can see and understand why someone would want “alters” in order to escape, in order to cope.

I don’t believe that other mental illnesses are caused by stresses in life. Certainly worsened by them, as any human emotion is affected by the life around them. In my case, I’ve had those traumatic events. A lot of my life was a nightmare. But, in a way, I deal with that well, just like I’m good at dealing with emergencies, I get on with it, and I always have. Nothing “triggered” my first episode, the same way that nothing has triggered all my episodes since. And I did not just “become” manic depressive when I was twelve. I can see its roots stretched back as far as my childhood, which makes me believe even more so that this is just an illness that I was born with.

If mental illness is real, then the people who suffer from it are not just burdens on society who got there on their own volition by being fucked up and reckless. It just happened to them, like cancer happens to other people. Because a lot of people with mental illness drink and do drugs to cope with it, well, the image of mental illness is unfavourable because we’re all alcoholics and druggies, on the bottom rung of society. They didn’t do anything for this to happen to them. It’s not their fault.

If mental illness is real, it can be treated. Maybe one day cured. If I saw this as a label, a label that was destroying my life, not because I let it (believe me, I try, very hard, every single day, to not let it do anything), I’d have no hope. I probably wouldn’t have accepted the diagnosis in the first, probably wouldn’t be treated for it, probably wouldn’t have a CPN, probably would never have spoken to Rob about it, probably never would have started this blog, probably would have killed myself the second I left hospital.

I don’t believe in the “Big Pharma”. All huge businesses are corrupt, and a lot of people shouldn’t be on psychiatric medications. But some people should, and for some people, it does help. Of course, because it’s a label, psychosis, mania, depression, it’s all good, it’s all someone “experiencing” stuff. But those experiences can be so destructive. And sometimes, people need a drug to pull them out of the depths and heights of these experiences. It’s not coercion (although I do agree with detractors that in the past, “inconvenient” people were put into hospitals), there is a need for antipsychotics and hospitals to help stop someone ruining their lives, or taking their lives. Of course people should be allowed to, but it’s unlikely that once you help someone ease back into a more rational frame of mind that they’d want to.

Another thing is that being “ill” grants you a “victim” status that those who espouse the label theory don’t like. I’ve written before about the survivor/victim mentality so I’ll just let you read that instead.

And there is, of course, the language of mental illness. Words that you are not supposed to use, lest you be a “victim”:

• Mental illness, as opposed to mental disorder/mental distress/fantastic thing that makes me so unique
• “Suffering”. You’re not allowed to “suffer” from mental illness because if you do, you’re a victim
• “Medication can be helpful”, no, medication is EVIL.

I understand the reason people refer to mental illness as a label. But it is insulting to me. And it’s insulting to me when people comment here and tell me to take a bit more exercise and eat my greens and do a bit of yoga and I’ll be fine, as if I did this to myself by sitting around, did this to myself by not eating enough leafy vegetables. Over eleven years, I have done all the good stuff, done the exercise, got my vitamins, had a “positive attitude” and it didn’t help. I did not do this to myself. If I did this to myself, I would undo it to myself. Oh, yeah, and if you want to be in my bad books forever, do come here and tell me three things:

1) Pull yourself together, I did, it’s just a label, think positively, your diagnosis doesn’t mean anything, etc etc

2) DIET and EXERCISE? Oh, and YOGA and REIKI and other bollocks? It worked FOR ME. You don’t need ANY OTHER TREATMENT AT ALL. In fact if the above doesn’t work for you, YOU’RE WEAK, AND BEING CONTROLLED BY THE BIG PHARMA!

3) Your illness is an EXCUSE for you not to live a NORMAL LIFE because obviously due to your EXCUSE you must not ever tell anyone that you LOVE them or PLAY WITH YOUR KITTENS or ANYTHING since you spend ALL DAY just being MANIC DEPRESSIVE.

4) How dare you use the words SUFFERING and MENTAL ILLNESS. It is “MENTAL DISTRESS” and saying that people SUFFER from it makes it sound BAD.

For those people, I can use other words, like “fuck” and “off”.

The only thing that my illness is an “excuse” for is for my slurring my words occasionally on medication. I’m not defined by my illness, even if I don’t consider it a label. It’s part of me. Part. It does hold the reigns on my life, but hey, whatcanyoudoaboutit. Not much more than I am doing, really. I think therapeutic exercises like yoga and whatsit are important as supplements to actual medical treatment (indeed, I am getting a prescription to exercise to help my energy), but not the be-all, end-all. I don’t like to be made to feel like a failure just because I’m in psychiatric treatment, and just because, so far, I’m not better yet.

It doesn’t mean that I define myself as “manic depressive”. I don’t. I think of myself as someone with manic depression.

I still don’t feel very well so that may account for the tone of this post, and the fact that it doesn’t make that much sense. Although at least I managed to get out of bed before 4pm today.