Well the negative stuff really prior to seeing my new psychiatrist the services were quite appalling really. I didn’t get much help, I didn’t seem to have my problems taken seriously. Nobody seemed to have a clear idea of what they were doing about my illnesses. And I seemed to go from one different specialist to another. Even recently I’ve just finished a course of CBT and even these talking therapies, they don’t work. The only thing that seems to really work for me is my medication. Now my medication for my mental health because I’ve also got diabetes, I’m taking two tablets of fluoxetine a day. So I believe that’s 40 milligrams. I’m taking one haloperidol a day and two lamotrigine. The lamotrigine was a new recommendation by my new psychiatrist for, for stabilising my moods in the day and it’s helped a lot. It’s taken a lot of the pain out of my day. So that’s been a pretty beneficial and good thing. All the, all the other negative stuff I mean is, is just , you know, try this, try this therapy, try that therapy and, and none of them really seemed worked. There seem to be two schools of thought on this. One is that, I, by just working on my personality I can change it, and the other one is that, his personality is in place and the only thing that’s really going to help him is to have medication and some pretty, shall we say, some heavy duty treatments. And I fall on the side of the heavy duty treatments because I’ve tried all the soft stuff. Like different therapies, meditation, exercise all of that and it just doesn’t work. Whereas since I’ve been on my medication I really have felt like a different person and it’s, it’s been a real lifesaver for me.

And have you got the, the dose right for your medication now or do you have side effects and that sort of thing?

At first when I was put on one fluoxetine a day I had. I had severe headaches and I felt nauseous for a day. But I decided to stick with it because I thought that’s a small price to pay. And then, as the weeks went on I started to feel a lot calmer and lot more relaxed. As I’ve reported back to my psychiatrist and told him how I’m feeling and I’m behaving with, they’ve come up with this, this regime of tablets and medication that seems to work OK. It’s been a very good approach because it’s, it’s been gradual. Give him a little bit of medication and see how that works. If he’s stable that’s fine, if not just keep on increasing the dosage and maybe reduce the dosage of something else. So it’s been a bit of a trial and error but I don’t think I’ve been a guinea pig or anything like that.

And is the medication that you’re taking helping?

It gives me a limit of going down. It’s like a threshold. I wouldn’t go down below that. I wouldn’t feel worse than this. It’s’ Yeah, simply yes, it does help me. But it kills my, I don’t know. I’m a very expressionful person, but it sort of kills everything. It’s, it makes you a bit more bland. But yes, it does help me, in terms of bad mood swings. Yes.

Levels you out?

Yeah, yeah. I think that’s what I wanted to say.

Does… Because you seem to suggest as well that it, it stops you from dipping down

Yeah

but it doesn’t necessarily bring you up?

No

Is that right?

Yes. Yes. That’s exactly what I wanted to say. Yeah, yeah, it definitely doesn’t bring you up. It doesn’t make you happy. No. But it doesn’t, it doesn’t let you become sad. That’s I think what it’s doing.

Over the years I’ve come to realise that it is very, I mean at first, I mean yeah I’ve always been trying to sort of get back to normal, like I said you know, people always you know, telling me you know, I, first of all they’re telling me ill because I hear the voices, then they give me medication you know, to help me get better and to, you know, but I, and then I think to myself well but if I’m really and truly better I won’t be taking this medication. So you know, I’ve been sort of struggling with it for years to try and come off it, but it hasn’t, it hasn’t, so far it hasn’t worked and I’m looking at homeopathic remedies now but [Rubbing hands together] yeah so but I mean I’ve always, I was always sort of like trying to say well if I really do get better and I am back to normal then I won’t be on the medication but that sort of hasn’t worked yet’

When I get very tired on the medication, I get very tired you know, I mean you know, after I get very tired, I don’t sleep well as well either, I suffer from insomnia, I have done for the whole of the fifteen years that I’ve been taking this medication which means that you know, I’m, quite often don’t, you know, don’t sleep well you know, and I’m always tired. as I think I’ve mentioned before I, sometimes I shake, I can’t sit still I, you know, at night time I have dribbled, you know, just saliva, just you wake up and the pillow is wet and all that kind of thing if you are sleeping. You know, you get terrible side effects and the doctors don’t like to, I mean I have to say this they don’t like to hear, the doctors and professionals in mental health they don’t like to hear you know, that the medication is, you know, there’s anything you know, sort of detrimental about the medication. When not only does it give you terrible side effects but I mean seven out of ten I mean because I wanted to change my medication a while ago and I said to my doctor, ‘I’d like to change my medication,’ and he’s very good, you know, he’s not too bad for you know, a white middle class man you know, attending a Caribbean woman, well you know, second generation Caribbean you know, he can be understanding but he just you know, , you know, so you know, I give him credit where credit is due. But , so he brought in a load of information about other medications and I just surprised to hear that seven out of ten of them cause, you know, affect the heart, cause murmurs in the heart and all other kind of things and three of them actually cause you know, stroke or heart attack or something like that. And you know, they’re giving you this and you know, it just, I mean you know, they’re just, I mean you know, they’re just, I know they’re just sort of handing out death to really and I mean. And there are I think, I think people with mental health problems apart from suicide live something like that 10 to 11% shorter lives than the average person in the population. So you know, it’s just, it’s, it’s you know, and you’ve got to take this knowing that it’s possibly doing some good to you, giving you some kind of normalisation to your head but it’s destroying your body and you know, how long are you going to live on it? And you have to take it for you know, the rest of your life, that’s what people are saying. So you know, I mean you’ve got all this to cope with and first these crazy episodes when you’re doing mad things, it’s a very depressing world.

So I was down in the hospital on all fours, very badly treated. Either because of institutionalised racism, because of my long hair and smoking dope. Being sectioned for no reason. I responded to treatment and that’s why I got better. The other thing why I got on to the responding treatment I worked with the people that were helping me, the doctors, where other folks, other Black guys who didn’t, they gave them the medication’ Oh it affected me physically, I was like this on all fours. But because I wanted to get better, and get back out into the community and do my music. That is what gave me the driving power, the will to get better. Because people said to me, ‘Devon you are a good musician. You write songs, your band. So that made me really want to better and get out there and do my music again.
So I listened to what the doctor was saying to me. I never disregarded. They used to say to me, ‘We are going to give you this medication. Some of the guys would say, they would fight them. ‘No way. I said, ‘Give it to me. Even though it was making me bad. Because I knew that was the right thing to do. I said to myself, ‘These are doctors and nurses. They’re not trying to harm me. Because when you are paranoid you think people are trying to hurt you or harm you. It did seem that way to me at some point, that they were trying to hurt me, or trying to harm me. But something in the back of my head said,

‘They have been trained. They wouldn’t want to harm you. They’ve been trained. If they have been trained as doctors and nurses why would they harm me?’ But other folks because of their paranoid mentality, it seems that they are trying to have a go at them and that is why I responded to the treatment I was getting.

Well a lot of time the joint, joint paining or something, you need a massage, [frowning] or head is burning or itching, all those tablets is doing that.

Oh you think it’s side effects?

Side effect [nods] but you have to, you can’t take another tablet to, not to have a side effect, then you’re taking too many tablets so therefore I try and, well my GP is a very friendly person, my doctor, he advise me try to take as less as possible the sleeping tablet and depression tablet. Well if you have to you can’t help it, you take it. And I think it’s same thing because all this year I’m taking a drug, well tablet is a drug, I mean I take pain killer, I take sleeping tablet, I take depression tablet I take cholesterol tablet, I have to take aspirin for the circulation [circles arm] of blood, this is a lot of tablets, you know.

You’re not very keen on taking so many tablets?

Well now I’m old man I have to take it because, I have to it take it because without tablets I can’t do.

So you’ve resigned yourself to having to take them?

Yes from 60, you see when I have a problem, a depression in 1967 I take it, then I get better but I keep on taking, taking, taking and then I give up a few years. And some of the problems come as I told you before, you know, so, [pause] you see I don’t want to take a tablet for nothing but when I have to do it then I have no other choice. Instead of getting worse in my health, my mind and my , for running business, or running life it is better to have a tablet to take a, have a stable and not too aggressive way to talk and things like that.

Do you take any medicine for depression?

No, for depression the doctor’s medicines were giving me side effects so I read a herbal medicine in some magazine that you can take from Holland and Barrett’s.

Ginseng?

Not Ginseng, St John’s wort. [section removed] German doctor has done a survey in Germany and they work well, [section removed] when I went to psychiatrist there was that magazine. When I tried those pills, they suited me and then I told the doctor that I have tried this medicine after reading in the magazine. It works well and it has no side effect then the doctor told me to buy it and take these.

What was the side effect of doctor’s medicine?

With that medicine water was coming from your mouth and your mouth smells when you are eating bread or you were feeling giddy or blood in the toilet or a smell from your urine. These were the side effects but the Holland and Barratt medicines suited me to the extent that I bought and take them myself.

It was a time when the bus took me away, fell asleep from downtown, the number 5 right back into [district]. I got awoke and then the surroundings wasn’t familiar so I saw the driver looking at me and smiling and he said to me, ‘Where, you, you have lost your stop?’ And I said, ‘Yes. And he said, ‘Where, where are you supposed to get off?’ And I said, what’s the plaza name again’ I can’t remember the name of the plaza but it’s in [district], [district], [plaza] and he said ‘No worries I’ll take you back to [plaza]. Came, told him thanks, but I was a bit frightened because in the back of my mind, it’s coming to me now, the bus is empty, suppose he had taken me further and suppose he had taken, suppose he was not a good busman and he taken me to rape me or kill me or rob me, nobody would know because I was living alone in [district], it was a bedsit. That’s before I met [my husband]. So I walked home and I say, I have to tell my doctor this. So anyway she took me off the 5mg and kept me on three 1mg. Still sleeping. So now [caseworker] took it up and he investigated it and she recently she has now halved me on two 1mg. A day like today I’m not sleeping because I went to bed early last night just to get in gear for you.

The only positive thing is they’ve got me medication right and that I’m feeling a lot better at the moment.

Right

But it doesn’t last for long.

OK so can you tell me a bit about the medication that you take?

Yes I’m on an antidepressant called venlafaxine and I’m on diazepam and I’m chlorpromazine which I take three times a day.

And how do you feel about taking your medication?

Well if I don’t take it I know I’ll become so unwell and that I’ll cut and I’ll want to hurt my baby so I make sure I take it every day.

OK and do you have to follow certain instructions for taking the medication?

Yes

What?

They’re in, they’re in blister packs because if I don’t have them in the blister packs I wouldn’t remember to take them because I wouldn’t remember if I’d took them. So the chemist has done them in blister packs for me.

And you mentioned that you tried before this medication that you have now, 22 others’

Yes

What was it that wasn’t right? How come you got through so many do you think?

Well either they didn’t work at all or they were extremely sedating, you know, I think, I can’t remember which medication it was, but I would sleep like twenty hours a day. Well the doctor said to me, ‘Well at least your symptoms have gone. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘But I’m not alive really. I’m just sleeping twenty hours a day. And he said, ‘At least your symptoms are gone. I said, ‘You don’t get it, don’t get it that every person should have a life, you know. Or it, it gave me kind of really bad physical side effects. So that’s why I have gone through so many. And some of that have worked but only for like a year or two, and they have stopped working, so, that’s how I’ve gone through so many. Also I have been, like, you know, been in the system quite a long time as well.

And this one that you’re taking now, do you know the name?

It’s quetiapine. It’s an atypical antipsychotic. It also has the name Seroquel. I mean that has been the most helpful. I am also on an antidepressant called citalopram and I take other medication but that is for physical ailments. That has been the kind of right balance and that has kind of helped me I would say, this last year or so.

So that controls the symptoms that you normally experience or?

It really helps with paranoia. I’m not as paranoid as I was. The voices are there, but they feel like they’re in the other room, rather than right next to me. I mean it just feels like the distance between me and voices has been widened. So that’s how the anti psychotic drugs have helped, in that way. The antidepressant, well I don’t know if it, it works. I do suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder, so during the summer I’m OK, but you know, in the winter I do get very low and I don’t feel like the antidepressants are working then. So I think, you know, on the whole, it’s a good balance.

And do you get, I mean do you get any side effects or anything from those?

I sometimes get a dry mouth’ that’s it. I mean they are quite good for side effects as well, you know.

And you’ve got the dose right?

Well I’ve been kind of told by my doctor if I feel like I need a bit more, I can give myself a bit more. Not many doctors will say that to their patients [Laughing]. So I have, when I feel like I have gone slightly a bit more paranoid, I will increase it myself. Well just only, you know, not that much, just one more tablet. So for the most part, yes, I am on, you know, the right dose, but I do increase it slightly when needed.