Reconsidering the Genetic Component

 

I know a guy who has been through a lot of shit. Yet, outwardly at least he doesn't appear depressed. He is witty, highly intelligent and works hard but I repeat, he has been through a lot of shit. This stoicism must come at a cost surely? I wonder to myself, why hasn't he had a nervous breakdown? Why isn't he depressed? Wrong headed thinking on my behalf. Comparing Mental Healths? Talk about keeping up with the Jonesessss. "He's on more opiates than me, it's not fair"

When somebody goes into their GP with a list of their symptoms, they have between 8 and 10 minutes (if they are fortunate to get a face to face consultation) to persuade the Doc that they are to be taken seriously. You've been preparing your script, you know that something isn't right. You look in the mirror and adjust your cravat before sauntering down the avenue swinging your umbrella to be greeted by a big sign on the surgery door. "Closed due to patient abuse" Oh dear my fellow patients have not been very patient.

Mental 'Fackin' Health mate!!! We all suffer from it, with it? Surely? Or maybe not.

I have been merrily convinced since my World Beating Diagnosis in January 2006 of Bipolar Disorder that it was caused by the environments that I had been living in. The dog eat cat, neo liberal, capitalist council house buying utopia that Thatcher ushered in, in 1979 when I was 13 years of age. The age that I distinctly remember that something went wrong. The clockwork workings of my childhood teddy bear being had been given a shake and I wasn't the same after that.

My confirmatory bias says that we are living in toxic, insane societies that make us ill. Nature or Nurture? I have always been on the nurture side of the debate but having heard the life story of this guy, it appears that there is something in his genes that stops him from reacting to life and world events.  

Now we can all go off on one and fetch the family history out of the drawer. Go and draw those lines of relationship from Great Uncle Tarquin or Great Auntie Henrietta from Chicago and then we can put a pin or sticker on the name that we consider 'the weakest link. This is the person who has weakened our blood line. They are long gone however and what are you going to do with this information? It might be comforting to think that none of this is your fault. The mental patient records for such and such an asylum would have no mention of you three to five decades down the line. Blood is thicker than water bruv and we don't drink enough water.

So this little Wednesday morning ramble is me fessing up that there might be more to the genetic component of mental illness, emotional distress, depression and anxiety than I was first prepared to admit. I still blame Thatcher but maybe the blood lines of larger families also have to be given serious consideration.

Here endeth the lesson          

Temperance Town

 

“You’re a time tourist, are you?” The words penetrated Ken Frane’s skull like a homemade arrow. “I’m not a tourist, I’m a private detective”

“You best be on your way chummy and let me tell you now, if we have the misfortune to even so much as see your ugly blaspheming drunken mug around here again then you will be acquainting yourself with the desk sergeant’s boot and they are new Size 11s as well with steel toe caps”

Terry Heston was a problem gambler and Ken Frane was a problem drinker so they made a fine pair. The team had worked well and they kept each other apart from their respective addictions but when they were apart the demons would come out to play and until Frane walked back into the office Terry Heston would probably end up playing the slot machines, the dreaded FOBTs in the Bookies.

“Sergeant, here is the man we told you about the other night. He was under the influence of hard liquor and was blaspheming in Temperance Town. He has come to our attention again by getting involved in an incident on the corner of James Street and Bute Street today.”

Frane’s eyes begin to be accustomed to the cell with two wooden beds. There are two iron buckets at the bottom of each bed. There is a ceramic bowl, underneath is water taps and a blue enamel jug. There is another prisoner in the cell. It is the Sudanese man that was escorted out from the Atlas buildings earlier in the day. The spyhole is opened and the desk sergeant puts his eyeball to it. He smirks to himself although the prisoners do not see this.

 “Sailors have gone missing from there. The police did you a favour! They should have shut the place down years ago. I tell my girls not to visit clients in there. You’ve heard of the Burke and Hare murders in Edinburgh?” “Of course,” “Medical experiments, I’ll say no more than that”

Sid lights a cigarette. “I know all the men on the Red Star because I work on the Dock and I’m loading and unloading all the time. Punch Drunk and Ronnie Ronaldo wouldn’t accept them at the Bute Dock Hotel putting the prices up because people have been starting to ask questions about the disappeared.” Lilly mutters the word ‘Bastard’ under her breath.

“Thank you, Councillor Mayhew, point of order. This is not an open forum for discussion. This is a meeting so that the police can outline the best way forward and for us to discuss afterwards in Committee and Sub-Committee. Gentlemen of Cardiff Constabulary would you outline the predicament before us.”

Bulldog on the Bus

 Bulldog on the Bus

It had grey eyes and a grey coat  

It was a French Bulldog

She was being held like a baby by her owner.

I loved the way it looked at the other passengers, with disdain.

“How come that one has a pass?”

“some disabilities are invisible ma chérie ”

I had my sunglasses for that but Brigitte Bulldog didn’t hide.

She looked with ferocity at Mrs “She said to me and I said to her”

She swung her head around to bead the moaning minnie 

with her langurous ‘I hate you look’.

This dog was from the 20s alright. The 1920s

She was a flapper disgusted by lovers.

All she needed was a cigarette holder and a string of pearls.

She alighted with maman at Victoria Park 

who despite a lower middle class bearing said 

“Cheers Drive” with the best of them.

Dog waves paw at Cardiff Bus Driver

Canton's Josephine Baker

They both did a little Charleston 

as we sped off down Cowbridge Rd East

into the fumes.

Bipolar as a response to repression

 

They say that Bipolar Disorder is a response to trauma but while making toast and coffee this morning, the thought popped into my head as the toaster popped its two cherries, that Bipolar Disorder is a response to repression. Of course it could be both! You are repressed and then you experience trauma. Double whammy! There is nowhere to hide then. 

In my experience moods develop from frustration and an inability to articulate that frustration because who after all in this kind of society really wants to listen to your frustration apart from your nearest and dearest but what if they just can't or are absent.

Long waiting lists and horror stories about Mental Health Services are the propaganda that keep us walled in, that keeps adding to our represssion. "I better not say anything or bother anybody because of British reserve." Then we take to the bottle and the hard drugs and then because our minds are traumatised by repression we become addicted to the chemical substance that aleviates for a short while, the emotional pain.

The way we live, the way we are schooled. Some laughably call it education. These are all forms of repression. Our emotional lives have to be worked out ourselves. That's a big ask for a 13 year old, let alone a 33 year old. Work is a repression that we have to undertake in order to pay for the cost of our living but the cost to our living repressed lives is Bipolar Disorder. An inability to 'naturally regulate moods. So you go and catch whatever highs you can with your butterfly net and then you get addicted to the highs and then you want those highs to continue by whatever means possible.  

As we know from painful experience that after every high comes a corresponding low because life and that dreaded word 'reality' is not an escape room or a Mills & Boon romance. It's down and it's dirty and we drink from whichever glass is presented to us. I usually go for the half empty one even though the positive psychology movement and the glassy eyed, white toothed automoton presenting you with said glass insists that it is half full.

Bipolar Disorder once diagnosed in an adult and often after many years of dealing ineffectively with trauma and repression is then treated by the mantra 'shake your meds'. Yet more propaganda to keep your repression in place. After all who wants to see somebody shake off their trauma and repression. It could get ugly and messy and none of us are equipped to deal with that after our regimented lives. Any sign of alternative living has been smashed by the repressive British State. From the Travellers at the Battle of the Beanfield to the Miners at Orgreave. From the inner city youth of Toxteth and Brixton to the modern day 'Kill the Bill riots.

Repression was woven into the very fabric of the Industrial Revolution. Repression disguised as oppression. Now we have a statue of Queen Victoria in every Working Class City in the UK to look up at to remind us of our oppressed and repressed histories. Groups within groups have it worse than others but when you suddenly lose the plot and become a lunatic or mad man, it's off to the Asylum with you. 

"Here is an individual who couldn't cope with the stress and oppression of a large family living in poverty in a society that was divided on class, wealth and gender lines."

Bipolar Disorder is at epidemic levels. It is the catch all term nowadays. We do nothing but medicate it. Tell people who have been diagnosed with it to take long walks, go to the gym, sleep, eat healthily and all will be well but what about the repression? What about the trauma?       

Loud French Girl on the Train to Bath (un poème)

 

Loud French Girl on the Train to Bath

(un poème)

 

You got on at Bristol Temple Meads.

You and your beau.

It was quite obvious that you wore the pantalon,

even though he was dying to pull them off you.

You proceeded to ask out loud to everyone sat on the carriage

“Is this the train to Southampton, the train to Portsmouth?”

Why ask, if you were getting off at Bath?

British reserve had disappeared out of the window

when you plonked your derrière on the seat.

Your lover, like Gomez to Morticia was all over you like a rash.

You both gave me a disgusted look as I dared to peep over

hoping for a bit of voyeuristic action.

Get a room then or a Pullman Sleeper

Like a WelshNationalist to a tourist I felt like standing up and shouting

“I was here first”

He was getting all Charles Asnavour and Gilbert Becaud as you were giggling

I was getting more and more pissed off.

You both looked up when I shouted

 “NON!” 

after receiving a request

from a friend as to whether he could stay over!

Extrovert behaviour gets no brownie points from me mes amies!

Loud Alouette ‘descendue’ at Bain which is Bath in French.  

Bath Part 2 #bathcity #psychogeography #flâneur

Bath Part 1 #bathcity #psychogeography #flâneur