It was toward the end of my school days that I had my third experience with sex. The reason I mention this one and not the others is that the others did not seem to matter and this one changed things somewhat…..I was invited to a party (well there were only 2 lads and 3 girls there, house to ourselves and no parents and plenty, well, to much alcohol available, it was basically an excuse to get drunk and have sex) I got there in an amorous mood and we had a few drinks. The girl I was there for didn’t seem interested so I had a few more drinks and a few more drinks and a few more drinks. I was ***! then the two girls got in the bath together (use your imagination) and I sat talking to them. Next thing I knew, I had decided that I was Casanova! And ended up in bed with both of them only to find out that I had bitten off a bit more than I could chew. The next morning I was introduced to what was to become one of my demons, unadulterated pure paranoia! Paranoia in its purest form produces pure terror and the adrenaline responses of fight or flight (usually flight) the need to get out of there, suicide if possible after all, death is preferable to dishonour, and I would have done anything not to face life or people and have to be humiliated by my failings. Fortunately on this occasion I was able to hide and it all blew over… this time! I was 15 years old. It was around this time I started to have problems with insomnia.

Now I couldn’t pretend that I was going to school anymore, I had to get a job. Getting the job was the easy part, keeping it, something else. I started work at an engineering firm after charming the boss at the interview, this was a skill I was excellent at, manipulating people to make them think what I wanted them to think in the short term. In the long term however, I was not equipped to form relationships with people, I just wouldn’t let anyone in and found it impossible to form friendships. Then there was my long standing problem with paranoia. They are picking on me, they are out to get me, my work is crap, they are going to sack me, better get another job. Needless to say, I wouldn’t do any overtime and would only do the bare minimum, it was not long before my services were dispensed with. This became the norm, and a sort of game, charm the boss, get a job, lose a job, get a job, lose a job…..and so it went on, until I realised my real problem, I did not want to be around other people…solution? Work by myself, how? Drive a truck, then I am completely alone, so I got my HGV licence, and worked as a truck driver. This worked out well, the demand for truck drivers is so great and so few people have the necessary qualifications that if you don’t like something about one job, you can walk straight into another. This became the pattern, until a recent breakdown in 2004.

Relationships? Well, personal relationships fell foul to much the same demons as work relationships, if any of you are guessing about sociopathy, yes, in later years I was diagnosed as a sociopath. However, I am going back to when I was only 16. I happened to go to the shop on one of my breaks from my evening shift (I had a few jobs already and that’s in a few months) and I bumped into one of the VERY few close friends I have made in my life. We had been out of contact since high school and had lots to catch up on so we decided to go for a drink, at which point I met his long term girlfriend (in fact they were engaged to be married) we used to go out as a threesome for a night on the town, and basically all became close friends, in fact I was responsible for saving their relationship quiet a few times. Remember I said I can con people to think whatever I want them to think in the short-term?

Now things started to go wrong in a big way!

Her parents went on holiday, we all stayed at the house, partying etc. now my mate was an addicted gambler, what followed happened so quickly I still have trouble with it. One day she just finished the relationship with him, within the hour, I had decided I was in love with her, charmed her, and was going out with her, much to his distress. And that was the end of that friendship! We enjoyed a very good and remarkably close relationship even though she was very sexually reserved, we still somehow went from strength to strength, got engaged, and in the fullness of time got married. All in all we were together for around 8 years, before my depression, anxiety and paranoia (not to mention my problems with continual employment) proved to much and she divorced me…… this resulted in mental meltdown. It would also be fair to her to mention that a few months before our relationship ended I developed the beginnings of what was to become a drug and alcohol problem, I was drinking for my depression, every day, not heavily, but everyday and smoking dope at parties and weekends.

We split up, I moved out, that was when the real problems started. I told you I was good at short term cons, well, it was promiscuity gone crazy! One woman after the next! Looking back, I do not even regret it, it was part of my life…. Then the voices started, coming out of nowhere, coming from objects, coming from the TV, coming from strangers, in my head from nowhere, the list goes on. My paranoia went off the scale! I handled this by training in martial arts, weight training, using steroids and getting huge, fighting anyone who would take up the offer (it wasn’t long before I could empty a pub just by walking in there, I’m not proud of it but I had gone completely haywire) then I started to really use drugs and I mean I made a career out of it for the next few years, cannabis, amphetamines, mushes, the list goes on, in fact with the exception of heroin and crack (dirty drugs) anything I could get my hands on each and every day and I would only say someone must have been protecting me because I was driving in this state day in and day out for years, how I did not kill myself only god above knows. I think this could be considered my first real full blown breakdown.

I was working at a factory at the time (the only job I ever kept for any length of time, maybe accounted for because I was drugged out of my head all the time) it was during this time that one of the women I was working with suggested that as I was single, I take out her daughter (to protect the innocent I will refer to her as mary) worst mistake I ever made! I fell in love!

We went on holiday to Blackpool for a long weekend. I did not have a good time, all she did was gripe and moan (guess who paid!) however one weird thing did happen in the course of the holiday, we went to see a clairvoyant (I have never been a believer) and the clairvoyant gave me a reading which at the time I thought was all bs. She told me ‘this relationship you are in will not work, in a few years time, you will meet a woman with blonde hair, older than yourself with a good heart and children and this will be your soulmate’ yeah, I thought, right here’s the five you conning old fart! Little was I to realise her prediction exactly to the letter was to come true, and in doing so perhaps save my life.

I followed mary around like a lovesick puppy for the next two years while she mentally abused me, she only ever wanted my money and used me until I was all used up. During this time her mother who had set up the date decided to fall in love with me, just to complicate things. And in my drugged haze she kept giving me glass after glass of wine, until I didn’t know a good idea from a bad one and I made the mistake of sleeping with her, this resulted in my drug problem becoming drastically worse overnight. And with my inability to cope made my first attempt on my life by way of an overdose. I ended up in A & E drinking charcoal to absorb the god knows how many paracetamol I took. They sent me home. I decided I still could not cope. I tried to hang myself. This failed however as I had long hair at the time and it got caught in the slipknot and I ended up dangling unconsciously with the rope around my jaw. Couldn’t even get that right! Or did I have a guardian angel? Either way, I awoke in the psyche ward (the first time of many) and not the normal ‘nice’ ward either, the ICU the ‘chemical cosh’ lockdown ward. During this time I heard voices coming from the atmosphere, voices coming from objects that did not talk. Voices coming from people whether they had or had not spoken… voices voices voices and my paranoia level went into orbit! And because of all the speed I had taken, mania was the obvious conclusion. And I was informed that I was manic depressive schizophrenic, a diagnosis which does not any longer exist (it has now become schizoaffective disorder) and over the coming years my diagnosis was heatedly debated and changed many times (which was probably why I had no faith in the system and subsequently wanted nothing to do with it) consequently I failed to attend appointments and discharged myself.

Over the next year or so I gave up drugs and most of the drinking, don’t ask me how or why, just stopped, just didn’t bother anymore. It was around this time that through work I met a girl, we got talking in the canteen and she just ran up to me one day and gave me her number. She was also a professional singer, when we got together I thought great, we were instantly inseparable. Together all the while proved to be to much though, we used to finish the relationship every week or more and get back together at the same frequency (this was very detrimental to my mental health too) she was also a druggie, stoned all the while which may have been the cause of some of the fights as could be her foul temper and very antisocial personality. I however resisted the urge to get back involved with the drugs, I had been there and done that. We didn’t last much above a year and in that time the stress and depression took me again.

It was a while later that the fortune tellers prediction came true, I met the person who I am with to this day, supportive, loving and truly kind. With children of her own, and a heart of gold. At this point I guess I have to cut the story off, as it is still being written one day at a time, I have decided however to include a few of the main events that bring us up to this day. When we got together we were so happy, then a couple of months later, we were both confronted and attacked by a local psychopath, this event was blocked out and to this day I do not recall the events (the shrink refers to this as dissociative amnesia) it resulted in our leaving the family home for our safety that same night, we all stayed in a caravan for 3 weeks, couped up with the police doing nothing even though they knew where this guy worked. Then we moved into a 2 bedroomed house (with 3 teenage kids) and no heating and nearly no money. Around this time the schizophrenia began to cause problems for me. My thinking went seriously out of whack and so did my behavoir, to give you a couple of examples (related to me by other people as I suffered with blackouts at the time due to not being on medication) one example was going into my very small backyard, stripping off completely naked and setting fire to all my clothes. Another example was that I climbed into the loft and would not come down, I just sat up there screaming. There have been many more but mercifully I have fairly good control since I have been given medication. After a few months we got a new family home, and since then I have had my breakdowns and my hospital stays, my diagnosis has become (and stayed) paranoid schizophrenia.

For a while at the time, I had been hearing voices, and one voice stood out from all the rest, this one called himself Gerry. We have spent many hours talking through many things and to begin with Gerry was what I considered a friend and advisor but over time this had changed and gone sour. He became a malevolent presence that commanded me to do things that I deemed to be wrong, but he somehow overrides my conscience and controls my thoughts to the point that I no longer ask questions, I just do as I am told. The psychiatrists later referred to Gerry as a ‘command hallucination’

I have never talked about this with anyone. It was one particular day, 14th march 2006, I had a petty row with my partner and Gerry seizing the opportunity, made me take a knife from the kitchen and leave the house. I was panicking and tried to phone several people from my mental health team and the crisis services, telling them what he was telling me to do, but no-one wanted to help me. What follows was mercifully another dissociative amnesia, thankfully nobody got hurt or injured, just scared, and the police were quick to act. I found myself again in a psyche ward.

I take each day one day at a time. I no longer smoke, I no longer take drugs and never will as long as I live, I enjoy a drink but only ever socially. I have my good days, and my bad days, but I never forget to count my blessings and thank both the fortune teller and my guardian angel. I now do voluntary work for the NHS mental health services going onto the wards and helping the inpatients. For the first time my life has purpose and true meaning.

As I write this I find myself functioning the best I have in a long time, however, I still have my issues to contend with. For a long while I have been talking to a fellow whom I consider a close friend. He has always advised me but never commanded me to do anything, strange statement you think? I used to bump into him nearly everywhere I went, we used to stand chatting, but he never seemed to talk to anyone else and no one else seemed to acknowledge him. This did not strike me in the least as strange. Then he started turning up out of thin air, in my house in the middle of the night, popping up in the back seat of my car, in my bathroom in my toilet… I think you get the picture. But the penny still didn’t drop! Until this day, I hid a tape recorder to record for evidence my appointment with my tdoc (CPN) and Alan was in the waiting room and we got chatting as usual, and my tdoc came and gave me a really odd look. After the appointment I checked the tape and my conversation with Alan was on the tape, imagine my horror when I heard only MY voice and no responses.

Mind you, Alan gives me advice but he does not tell me to, or make me do things. There is another one at****s that comes to me and has done for some time, he is obviously not human and to begin with I thought he was an alien or a demon, after all he does not even look human, he is small and bald with little ears and big black eyes. He does have the ability to control me, I spend my time running from him and trying to hide from him. I just hope one day to be free.

It sounds like you must have gone through such terrible times in your life! It must be horrible for you to have to deal with all these things because of your illness. Keep pressing on!