Right, I have decided that I should be able to open up about most shit that is now in the past. Personal shit, that may worry/scare or make people wonder, but that I own as my history. Whichever way, I think I’ve gone out of it not too badly. I’m not sure where I will start, I’m not sure where this will go. It will be a two-parter because you could consider there were two major crises (aka involving hospitalisation), but obviously everything is probably a little more complex/subtle than that. And it will possibly be among the toughest things to write/revisit.
I can’t not start with childhood, but I’m giving no key there. For many many years I’d always considered I’d lived a sort of blessed childhood, no problem, etc. Probably because of my tendency to shut down/ignore the negative things or trends. It only came to light about ten years ago to me, when my sister was talking to the psychiatrist in my presence and mentioning that I didn’t grow up in an emotionally fulfilling environment (sadly I don’t remember the exact words she used now, but I think that was the general meaning). And I think that’s the key. For all the material relative comfort of most white middle class families (something that is the reality, I’m not claiming anything, and certainly feel no reason to feel guilty about that), and the fact I didn’t want for anything material, and in fact, I didn’t want for love either from my family to me, the whole emotional environment was tense and pretty much wrong. Not one to grow up harmoniously in. Now I can only speculate, so I’m not saying it was the reason of everything, beyond genetics (there’s a lot of that at play, no doubt, though nobody has a clear idea about that in our family I suspect, but depressions have been known, and the odd hospitalisation for mental healh reason), but I guess it was a big factor in me very much having an extremely slow emotional development (mental?). Not badly so, but enough for me to live most of my life in a kind of sheltered/isolated world from that point of view. Anyway, and I’m aware I’ve dealt with some of the things that follow in some page or other on this website already, but I thought I’d try what I hope is a different approach, by focusing a little more on a timeline of crisis rather than hints of this or that there. So I shall be pretty much jumping straight to December 2001, because it’s when the shit really badly hit the fan.
Most of that month, I was in a state of elevated happiness/elation. I have now learnt you could probably file that under ‘hypomania’, though I’m not quite sure it was at that level or the correct technical term. I was certainly feeling some new freedom, on a mental ‘high’, trying to see positive in everything and perhaps over-enthusiastic. I had the best/happiest family Christmas ever. I guess I had two weeks of holidays planned. I went to see Arsenal beat Chelsea (had to check that, for some reason my memory thought it was Villa) in a pub on Boxing Day. Most friends were away but I was with a mate who used to play football with us. Very happy and I had agreed to go for a lunch with a couple of colleagues (Marc and Aymeric) from work the next day to celebrate the end of the year. So we got to the Chinese near work, had a spliff and then, basically, my brain started to mentally collapse. I got sucked into a mental void during the meal and it all started from there. There was a long way down to go, but despite hopes, unlike previous mini-collapses, I was at no point able to get a grip there. So what follows are memories that may not be chronologically accurately ordered but are witnesses to the chaos that was happening inside. I remember being practically on the ground in the car park outside the restaurant with my mates, some stranger went to ask if I was OK and if he could help (of course in my state, stranger meant danger, what did he want there?) and eventually, Aymeric drove me home in my own car and tucked me into bed. Normally, I’d just have recovered and be fine the next day. But it was the holidays, I had not much to focus on (side story that may be mentioned later, I was also in the process of changing jobs, well the process had just been initiated anyway), and I went into overthinking mode. Thinking of everything. Being totally unable to sleep. So the next few days were spent in that state at home I think, and NYE approached, don’t think I had plans, but no idea to be honest, maybe it was meant to be at the good old bar near Bastille. Actually, no, I remember also going to meet Manus and some of his friends in a pub one night. But my mind was a mess. Taking the metro was a panicky slightly paranoid experience, I found myself there in a bar drinking and trying to have a conversation but clearly feeling/being wrong to the extent that it couldn’t be not noticed (‘Is he al right?’), and I got home. I still couldn’t sleep and the next day (NYE then?) felt even worse. Sleeping has always been an issue to some extent for me, my brain having trouble switching off. Even now, any sleep analysis (for whatever the Withings tool is worth) shows that my sleep depth is practically invariably filed as ‘bad’, the odd time when it is ‘average’ feeling like a triumph. I seem to have an initial but short deep sleep and then only various levels of light or REM in not very big proportions, and I wake up a lot every night. Sometimes I do have a slightly better end of night. Yet, these days, it doesn’t get worse, and it’s been years since I’ve last truly had series of nights when something occupies my mind and prevents me to sleep at least a life-survival amount. Also I am generally tense in life, always have been, something else that I don’t know the origin of, childhood ‘trauma’ or else. But I manage it better these days, and it’s not really a huge obstacle to my quality of life, though it could be better. Anyway, once more I’m digressing. Back to NYE, I felt so insecure, needing reassurances all over the shop, called a very old (not in age, but in longest I’ve known) friend who was lovely and supportive, but still I didn’t feel OK. Ended up calling my parents, talking to my Mum also seeking some reassurance (feeeling I was an accident, an unwanted child….not sure why though something came up many years later, reminded me words that were said and that I’d totally blanked out of my memory but one of my sisters related to me when I was talking about a horrible evening at home between my parents that had marked me so much), and still it wasn’t enough. They offered to get me home for NYE and so my Dad went to pick me up, but I just remember him driving in a state of relative panic at my state (he never felt like the calmest/safest driver, mind, despite never having accidents). NYE I spent mostly lying down I think, I was there, but I wasn’t there, moments of better but they never lasted, I was very much without consistency (in every sence of the term, French or English). I eventually ended up at my brother’s place not far. It was very snowy and cold that winter, I got given a sleeping pill, but that didn’t stop me from not sleeping. I was seemingly resistant to any sensible solution, any attention, care, whatever, my brain was gone. I remember there waking in the middle of the night and checking the clock and it said ‘6.66’. I mean, of course it didn’t, but at this stage I think I was pretty much hallucinating through lack of sleep turning into psychosis. The next few days were a bigger mess and the sequence of events I am really not sure. Think my brother drove me back to my parents. I ‘slept’ in my old bedroom. Except I didn’t. What I did next was……properly mental? Yeah. I basically got out of my room through the window and found myself on the street wearing just pajamas bottoms, barefeet by negative temperatures. I vaguely remember holding on to the cold metal bars on my balcony (I was on the first floor, but it wasn’t all nice and flat below), and not sure how I lost my grip/fell down, but it turned out many days later that I had only badly sprained one ankle. I’ll be honest, if luck (or a survival instinct?) hadn’t been on my side, it’s not impossible that I’d have just fallen awkwardly, broken my skull and died there and then: there was a lot of concrete and the ramp down to the garage on one side. Yet it’s not a realisation that occurred to me until much much much later. What next? I remember entering into the neighbour’s car (weird thing, just opened a door and sat in the car…), obviously the neighbour in the car was terrified(as you’d be) so I felt unwelcome and just walked away gently in the streets of Poissy. By what I heard (the next day? ) I was taken by a police van only a couple of hundred yards away. Well I remember being in the van, because one of the policemen (I think he asked me my name and where I lived, I assume I was still able to answer that though possibly barely able to speak) remarked that I looked very inoffensive and gentle, and that was kind of sweet. I’ll come back to that later, but one thing is that, however fucked and lost I felt, having some kind of mean or violent reaction seems to not be in my nature at all. Much later when going out, I did consider that I should become meaner or less kind as it might have been a factor that had got me into this mess, but I very very quickly realised that it felt like a personal impossibility. Now it’s just something I could not ever even want to be anyway. I’m not sure what came next. I can’t remember whether there was one or two visits to the hospital and how they came about. I do remember being in the Poissy hospital in the corridor and feeling like a retard and my Mum saying ‘stop this!’ (not in an angry way but in an educational ‘Olivier, don’t act like an idiot’ way, in fact I’m pretty sure that’s what she said rather than ‘stop this!’). I was in such a messy state that in a very confused way I DID feel like I was acting that way, but it was also completely the way I felt. Lost, without any sort of functioning mind or being. I can’t remember at what point the ‘interview’ with the person I still call the ‘fake’ psychiatrist happened. I felt like I was being in front of a judgment panel. I tried to explain what I felt issues were (‘I’m not in the right work, I wanted to be a writer’ – ‘what things do you want to write’…. ‘er, I don’t know, etc.’), and the guy’s perfume was unpleasant and, I don’t know, as some point I got injected with something, and eventually I found myself in the ‘Protected Room’ (‘Chambre Protégée, I remember reading the panel on the door), and that was the worst moment of my entire life to date. I can’t explain it. Also for context, remember 9/11 happened a few months earlier. It played its part in my mental state, that and trying to make sense in scriptures or such. It felt like some apocalyptic hell was happening though mostly in my head (I’ve sworn to avoid anything too religious in the future, I could probably qualify as an agnostic, I’m not going to be ashamed of my catholic heritage or education, but I’m afraid I’m not good at blind ‘faith’, I’m more like St Thomas) and yeah, that night in that room, pretty much mentally fighting wit myself….I ended up screaming my head off and feeling like it was exploding. In a probably less physical way, the closest I can feel this is to, is Leyland Palmer/Bob’s dual state in that cell (Twin Peaks reference there). Except I didn’t smash my head to death on the walls, and the ‘evil’ part of me never gets a chance with me so don’t worry). But yes, I think it was THAT kind of mental violence inside.
And then I don’t know. I guess something had to give. I probably collapsed and woke up eventually. Not sure how this works though, because I think things calmed down and I was allowed to go home but had to come back or something for an appointment or tests. In the middle of that, a few more memories, no idea whether they were before or after. One was seeing someone who, I think, was a female psychiatrist, wearing a big cross around her neck. But I don’t remember saying anything, just feeling numb and powerless and let her decide what was next (I probably owe her a lot, assuming she made the right decision as I’m still here). Also I remember at one stage being in one part of one hospital (was it in Poissy or already in St Germain then? No idea, probably still Poissy…) under IV drip (why? I’m not sure I refused food, and I wasn’t in a physical way that would have prevented me from ingesting food, was it to sedate me? but what I relate next suggests that didn’t work well), in a medical chair, not even in a room for myself, craving water, and so I tore it all up to be able to move (there was a sink nearby) and drank at the tap. To the obvious irritation of the nurse who told me forcefully to get back in my chair. But I was just restless. I just needed ‘away’ though not sure what from. Me, maybe. Also I remember hearing screams and asking who was suffering/being attacked like that, only to be told it was a woman giving birth. So somehow I may have been near the maternity ward? Weird again. I remember (but that must have been a few days later when I went back to hospital for that), when I was being made an electro-encephalogram, electrodes on my head and stuff, hearing the absolutely mundane conversations of the people who were in charge while this was happening. It was so weird as I obviously couldn’t speak or take part, but I think at some point they were aware that I could hear. It made no sense and it’s just normal but at the time it felt oddly trivial that you could have these weird conversations while running test on patients. A bit surreal.
Anyway, the next big memory checkpoint, when things at last started to get more linear, from like point zero in a new life was waking up (mentally) in a bathroom, being given a cloth and pyjamas and being told (very much an order) to have a shower and wear these. I felt I had to relearn everything. I didn’t know where I was (CATDB in Saint Germain en Laye it turned out, that is Centre d’Accueil et de Traitement à Durée Brève, which is pretty much the antichamber of psychiatric hospital, you could say the triage station, I only truly understood how it could work and the whole point of it about 12 years later, but that’s for part II), not sure who I was, where I could go or if there was a future for me.
I was put in a bedroom with someone else (Vincent, who I got on well with, we did quite naturally talk about books and music, but while jazz is not my stuff, he introduced me to Pharoah Sanders, which was interesting/enriching), started to relearn basic things. I got a few visits from family. One day one of my brothers travelled all the way from the Pyrénées just to see me. I opened my eyes and he was just there and it felt like one the most peaceful moments ever, he didn’t need to say a word. He went back home the same evening. One of my nieces came with one of my sisters and offered me the first Harry Potter book (in French then) to read, and it was sweet, and I actually grew to like these books even more later. I remember (not precisely) some words from one of my sisters-in-law (RIP) that still feel a bit strange and I’m not sure of but were meant to be quite encouraging (something about some powers and having that in the family, but not sure it means much, I mean, at times I feel I have some gifts or possibly strong mental ‘strength’, but what’s the point if you don’t know what it is, how to use it, etc.). I remember playing tarots (the -mostly French?- card game, not reading anyone’s future…), somehow remembering the rules, enjoying it and finding out that I actually still had a brain that could function.
I remember there was another moment (I put it here now because I find it hard to break back the flow that was written above, but I think it happened either in hospital or at home but in the first phase possibly pre-Protected Room even?), when I was asked (can’t remember who by, but there were several people at the time, don’t know if there was a doctor or just family) if I wanted to die. Not in such brutal terms perhaps, more like ‘what do yo want? do you want to die?’ as in ‘are you suicidal, fed up with life?’ perhaps. For once I’m not sure I even thought much about it, but the ‘primal’ response was just ‘no, I want to live’., a bit in desperation. Despite the confusion, I think I felt I hadn’t lived at all and that there were so many (unindentified) things I still wanted to do with my life. You could also argue I was just afraid to die and still am, I’m sure it’s true to some extent. But it was quite telling and possibly an illustration/proof that in my darker moments even when I think of the possibility of ending it all, I’m unlikely to go through with it. Well, I don’t know, but I believe I don’t want to, ever, however dark the feeling ever gets, before or after that.
What happens next you could argue cost me a few years of development. But I didn’t know any other way, mental health was not something anyone seemed to be familiar with around me, and I felt I had to test myself, and I was also worried about ending up in psychiatric hospital proper (well this was it already, the locked door at the end of the corridor marking the seemingly unattainable path to freedom) or how. I had visions of a life in isolation, some kind of sadness, a sort of eternal prison without the bars in the room, but with a nice garden. So yeah, I read the sign on the room’s door. And it said something about stay in the CATDB being limited to five days or so (yes it all happened quite fast, the above is a mess but was also very dense), and that to go out (in my mind ‘escape to freedom and control of yourself’), you had to ask for it before then, get the support of your legal custodians and get signed off by the chief psychiatrist. Did I mention that Christmas/New Year is the worst time of the year to fall ill, whether physically or mentally? The chief psychiatrist wasn’t back for a couple more days….Anyway, I was determined so got that, convinced my parents and all I remember from the psychiatrist signing this off (was he the returned chief or a deputy? he wasn’t young) he had no way to refuse, legally, even if his advice was against letting me out) is his trembling hand when putting something to the effect that I risked being ‘institutionalised’ at a later stage or something). I was given a prescription that consisted just in Lepticur (it’s an antiparkinsonian, presumably to counteract the effect of other medicine in this case) and Valium. I assume it is what I was given in liquid form during my stay (of course I learnt a lot more about the medical process 12 years later), but there I was, free to go home again. I only stayed a couple of days at my parents I think. I remember my eldest brother popping by one day and on finding I had managed to get out of hospital going into an angry rage (i.e. ‘shouting’) at my parents. While there, I only wanted to do simple things, learn new things, new recipes (my Mum gave me some of her own recipes I liked, and a nice little book with others a little while after) and er, learning to iron clothes (something I’ve completely given up on, I never had the patience for it, though I tried a few times and still bought the gear…). I was back at work maybe on the fifth of January or something? It sounds absolutely insane, but I think that was about that, a couple of days later than that at worst. Valium or the just lived experience meant I could be a little too talkative (well mostly with Marc and Aymeric, as they were there at the start, they are the only ones I feel I could open up to to some extent about what happened, but to be honest, I’m sure I talked a lot more than would have been reasonable, I didn’t have much of a filter). I got the ankle attended to, I worked pretty much normally, not taking any extra days off (or I did to have a brain scan that revealed nothing at some point?). One part of the plan was also to try and make an appointment with a psychiatrist. But I completely failed at that as I had no experience or no guidance (and one thing with me, though I hope I have changed a bit, though it’s still not natural to me is I’m not good at asking for help, even on small things). I basically called one, and I think I was fairly passive/aggressive about it or something, basically intimating that he should fix me. The truth is I had absolutely zero idea how to approach that, how to explain what had happened or why, how I felt, what I think went wrong or whatever. So I gave up, hoping I’d just sort myself out. I got the family doctor to make me another Valium prescription or two and worked it out from there. I progressively weaned myself off it within less than a year, espacing the doses and diminishing them (they were never very high to start with). I remember one moment in the canteen at work when I felt my world in danger of collapsing again (again that vision of living in a cosy ‘prison’-asylum, that must have come from a film), took half a valium and then everything was OK again (I’m not sure it’s supposed to be that efficient that quickly so there may still have been a huge psychological placebo effect there, not just chemical). I didn’t touch any alcohol for over a year, obviously not any spliff either (but more on that shortly), but a lot of positive things happened. The job change worked out fine, and leaving the old work team was a happy/emotional moment (even ended up writing a song about it), finding fitness again in the Pyrénées (the uncertainty/madness of me going there on my own for a couple of weeks with just music instruments and recording gear for company is related elsewhere I think, in my music page I believe, so I won”t go through it again)and then playing football again with old and new mates, meeting a lot of people, going to gigs etc. (possibly that was a little later). The social life picked up again and one year later in May, my friend Thierry (sadly passed away since) recommended some holidays plan, so I went to Crete for the first time, enjoyed it, indulged in a little Ouzo, and I felt, yeah I think I can handle having a drink again. Life felt great again, to the point that in the summer of 2004 I even felt good/foolish enough to have a spliff again. In one way you could think it was a risk or a truly stupid thing to do given what had happened in December 2001 (oh yes, reminds me, of the things I forgot to mention, my Mum bringing me ‘Euros’ in hospital, yes the new currency started on 1/1/2002 in physical form, which added to the whole sea of weird changes around the time of my crisis, but brought home the fact that life was going on outside of my little world-bubble in hospital), but the thing is, a trigger is just a trigger, and you can wisely avoid them, but you can also learn to make them not have the same effect. Because your mind can only be controlled by yourself. Either way, I felt I knew enough to take that calculated risk. There were plenty more in the next few years though I was never a very active consumer anymore, never bought any and when I gave up for good, it was very much a non-event, just realising it brought absolutely nothing into my life but a little trouble. Arsenal also became the Invincibles in 2003-2004. 2004 was a rich year, but sadly also the last one for my Mum on this planet. The new Arsenal stadium opened in 2006, which led to a big shift from concerts to the Arsenal, and also kind of put paid to my playing football on Sundays. But more great people, more happiness. Oh it wasn’t all perfect, but a lot of fun, culminating in an incredible number of away matches, both domestic and in Europe in season 2012-2013 in particular. 2012 when my work team got dismantled however meant that the ‘work’ part of my life was becoming distinctly unhappy again, 2013 saw different work trips, and then something/someone happened, eventually leading to the second, much longer-lasting (in a way…) crisis. The root, as I still see it, was very much because crisis number one had not been correctly and personally solved. I had found ways to carry on, I had built on better sand, but it was still mostly sand. Try explaining that when you voluntarily get yourself sectioned (because that’s what happened) 12 years later. But that’s for Part II.