In case you weren’t aware, it’s nearly the end of Mental Health Awareness Week, he wrote, milking yet another piss poor joke beyond its shelf life. I’ve been reflecting on what the week has meant to me and the honest conclusion is that it has meant nothing at all. I suppose the coming week, starting tomorrow (Monday 22nd May 2023), should be called Mental Health Unawareness Week, just like any other week, really. Honestly, what’s the point of it? I guess that depends on who you are.
I’m in a pretty weird position on the mental health front. My GP – well, the one that was dealing with email replies at the time: I’ve never met him – has reduced my antidepressants by 50%, despite there being no improvement in my condition in recent years. The ‘Prescribing Team’, whoever they are, called to confirm the reduction in meds, repeating what the GP said my previous level of meds weren’t good for me, but obviously not why. In case you’re wondering why I didn’t query the decision at the time, I wasn’t able to think quickly enough. That can be what happens when you have clinical depression and a confirmed diagnosis of ADHD. You submit, you give up. I gave up.
During Mental Health Awareness Week (I’m going to call it MHA week from now on), I planned loads of activities, although this was purely coincidental. Since my mental meltdown in 2017 at the hands of my evil employer, those bastards at the British Red Cross, and the subsequent madness of the pandemic, it’s been a struggle of worthless basic counselling provided by private providers to the NHS assisted by the drugs which have been increased and, to an extent, have worked. I met with a dear friend for a coffee, I had a golf lesson but was unfortunately struck down with a virus which meant I couldn’t play a scheduled game later in the week, I went to two gigs and, on Friday, I went to the Severn Valley Railway (SVR) Spring Diesel Festival.
I don’t know whether it’s the effects of the drugs reduction but at the second of this week’s gigs, the brilliant Louis Cole at SWX, I bailed out long before the end. I was right at the back, there was as ever at SWX a terrible din where people talk incessantly and loudly throughout the gig which really pissed me off (why pay good money just to talk?) and I just wanted to be at home. It was a bit of depression, a bit of anxiety (this year’s MHA week theme by the way) and a minor, if there is such a thing, panic attack. Friday, it was train time.
I took the rattler to Kidderminster – change at Worcester Foregate Street – and found the place to be unexpectedly (to me) packed, so packed that the queue for scran was too long for my ADHD levels. I took the first train to Bridgnorth, some 16 miles away. The sun, shining brightly in Bristol, had long gone by the time I got on the train, to be replaced by a drab drizzle. I walked the full length of the train to find somewhere to sit, eventually joining two couples in an old compartment. They were welcoming, unlike, I have to say the numerous trainspotters (they hate being called that) who spread themselves out across the tables and compartments who, in my paranoid state of mind, would not want a stranger anywhere near them.
The 16 mile journey took over an hour and a half and by the time we reached Bridgnorth the drizzle had turned to torrential rain. I got off the train to try to find something to eat – yes, you guessed it: the queue went on forever – and having not brought a coat decided not to walk into the town and go back on the train I arrived on.
I managed to get a seat but was surrounded by 50-something spotters with whom I spent a tiresome two hours, talking – no, shouting – about trains, although the most used word was fuck, or some version of it. I had basically spent three and a half hours on the same train, which had no refreshments for sale, and ended up back in the now sun-drenched Kidderminster. I had some excellent chips from the nearby chippy and a glorious pint of Bathams in the King and Castle at the train station and that was me done. If I could have teleported myself straight home, I’d have done it in a heartbeat. When I finally got home, locking the front door behind me represented the happiest moment of the week.
God, this all reads so self-pitying, probably because it is. It feels like the road goes on forever and, increasingly, road blocks appear. And not only that, these days mental folk are meant to treat themselves, there being nothing the NHS can do in the area between basic counselling and being sectioned. Most of us are somewhere in the middle of what is a huge place, destined never to leave it.
I tried going out loads in MHA week, with mixed results. I’ll be reconsidering my attitude to going to gigs on my own because it’s often quite a pretty joyless experience and I certainly won’t be doing another solo outing to a weekend railway festival.
I can visualise my depression, as if I am looking in on it from another level of my brain. I always can. And I know that it’s never going away. MHA week is here this week and gone next week. For the organisers, it’s to publicise mental health. For most people, especially the government, it’s a bit of a nuisance but they will soon forget about it. Unaware again.
