Left without any footholds, over the next three months I spiralled until after a frustrating work meeting where I was once again denied a return to the office, on a weekend in Bootle, I first experienced extreme psychosis and maybe nearly died.

My frustration was doubled by my gorgeous heavy drinking friend disapproving of a man who was being wonderful to me purely on the basis of him having a coke habit whilst she was having an affair with a man who had a partner, behaviour I can’t abide. I loved sex but with single or open consenting adults.  With the stress and booze, and a strong desire to get her into bed again that I was resisting because I didn’t know if she wanted it, things were starting to get weird.  I was sensing her dead parents in the hallway and feeling like I was unravelling a universal theory on human psychology, that sadly I can remember none of now.

I knew I was in desperate need of sobering up fast so I started pounding the streets on a hunt for cocaine.  Sober? Cocaine? It counteracts the effects of alcohol, and it would have helped.  I’d however NEVER bought drugs before and I was terrible at it. Frustrated, I gave some random people £60 and left empty handed. By the time the ambulance arrived I was apologising for the torrential rain that I was sure I was the cause of. The hospital I arrived at only existed as far as I could see it. I was building it as I experienced it. I was told I was at Liverpool hospital but I could have been anywhere, another realm.  I begged the staff who seemed to appear and disappear with my thoughts not to let me die and they assured me I would not, but at one point, walking towards a door to the most beautiful sunset I had ever seen, the clothes I was wearing started transforming from jeans and a t-shirt into a beautiful scarlet red dress. At this point the psychosis was too much.  Physical objects do not just transform themselves in the human realm. Withdrawing from the illusion, I collapsed onto the nearest hospital bed. The doctors kept telling me I needed to sleep, but I felt that if I slept without eating I would cease to exist. I begged for a drip and they told me they had installed one but I could neither see nor feel it, so I could not sleep and the psychosis continued to build till I could sense what I felt was the devil.

Who, who, who, who is he? 

The one I close my eyes and see? 

The one who’s always there but never comes 

Who beats the sound of knocking drums 

  

Raggy doll why do I let you in? 

You’re the serpent, the snake I want within 

The snake that slithers up my thighs 

Promises me paradise 

  

The serpent fills my loins with lust 

Resist, resist his silky touch 

And push him back towards the dust 

  

But I can feel and it’s left a stain 

A nest of darkness planted deep 

Ready to burst and through my body seep 

The snakes invade and turn my hair to blazing flame 

  

They’d win if I was on my own 

Temptations inside every bone 

I’d cave, I’d crawl, I’m scream, I’d moan 

I’d find you under every stone 

  

But I am stronger than you think 

And time will soothe with every blink 

Not alone, I will survive 

The thoughts inside will soon subside. 

I do not gripe about this second sectioning the same way I do about the first, because unlike the first time, my thoughts and mind were unravelled, but by the time I had survived the night in the hospital it was over and a month locked up with noone talking to be about what had happened, just made the trauma worse. 

I had committed no crime, 

yes I had been a drain on the NHS and attempted to commit a crime, but one time dangerously drunk in my life, days after I was refused a return to the office is not too bad.  I was detained for a month.  And then just weeks after release detained again this time being brought in by the police after being caught trying to steal a can of red bull and a pint of milk .  What though would I have got through the courts of law for that?  A slap on the wrist, probably not even a fine.  I certainly would not have been locked up for four weeks.  

Four weeks of sitting and waiting, with no therapy and no explanation.

I’m like a warrior poised for battle

Sitting

Waiting

Sitting

Thinking

Knowing that i might die

Weary from the war already fought

Thinking that this may be the time I don’t come back

Sitting

Waiting

Sitting

Thinking

Ready

Planning

It’s been so long

It’s been so hard

The battles fought

The battles lost

The glimmer of hope

Here we go

Over the top

One last push

Fight

Onwards

Stand

Shot down