I was diagnosed as bipolar in my thirties. There are thought to be three million people on the bipolar spectrum in the UK. I am now in my fifties and still prone to believing the delusions I’ve had, despite trying to resist their influence on me.
Whilst being transported between psychiatric hospitals in a small cage in the back of a van, I thought I was in the midst of an international conspiracy. I had become sport, I had to be managed.
I imagined the van was being chased by terrorists, hell bent on killing me. I also believed there were police and the army involved trying to protect me. I had uncovered a plot to secure the world’s resources by every means possible. The public were being hoodwinked through a sinister bias in the mainstream channels of communications, kept in vacuous bubbles, distracted, with no time to question what was going on. My mind was spinning but I could not relate this.
Why were the first news reports the most truthful and unmediated?
Why was good information expensive and only available to a few people?
I write this as I sit on a bench in a railway terminus looking at a completely empty station. Everyone has left. Only you have given me your valuable time. Thank you.
As a psychiatric patient I had time to think – when not being stunned with prescribed medication. I am now back with my family, working and studying like I’ve tried to do throughout, but I still can’t help thinking differently and that everything is connected.
These words are obviously only a glimpse into my thoughts and beliefs. I would encourage you to also think differently occasionally, as this can be an outstretched hand of comfort. I believe delusions are a direct expression of the pressure of life events and as such we are all prone to them. But be careful not to cross the line, as I have done, and end up between asylums, convinced fellow patients conspire to keep you mad and shut you up because you’ve made too many connections.
I am preoccupied by peoples’ delusions, the way we can think when we perceive pressure in our lives, when our comforting bubble bursts, looking up at the night sky and thinking it is finite, totally frightened. Religious and spiritual themes can be a focus in many delusions; time can get sandwiched; our bodies can morph, and we can make connections through our creativity and the desire to find a way out of the maelstrom. Above all, we can believe these connections will save us. We are the lucky ones.
The following poem was written to illustrate how some people, years ago, were not so favoured with their mental health and had major issues adjusting to the Industrial Age and even the politics of the day. Bethlem Royal Hospital in the Borough of Bromley in South London is the modern institution that originates in the Priory of St Mary of Bethlehem in the City of London, the old institution became known as Bethlem or Bedlam and was first recorded as caring for those with mental distress in 1403. My poem, however, is set in Victorian Brighton.
The Bethlehem Tax
Luna-tics up by the Workhouse
exercise in the yard,
wondering their displacement
seems a little hard,
for not observing the gaffers'
factory clock - bad examples,
tic-tok
tik-tok
whirly-whirly
cuckcoo
Bloody Clock.
One world time is now what we chime, no time to pause
Earning money,
Some of it yours.