Description
This book describes the author's (to date) 2 periods of psychotic illness, both of which occurred during the 1980's and, whilst not originally intended as anything more than a personally satisfying way of expressing his vivid memories of these episodes, hopefully serves to evoke such illness in a manner to which sufferers/former sufferers can relate, whilst at the same time rendering this from the outside baffling state a little bit more intelligible to those who have not personally experienced it. (This tale is not in any way fictional, but some names have been changed.)
About the Author
The author was born and grew up in north London where, shortly after turning 25, he was first admitted to hospital with mental health problems. Two years later (in 1987) his illness was diagnosed as schizophrenia. He has he is glad to say now maintained fairly good health for over 15 years.
Book Extract
" INTRODUCTION
My present life, so I'm told, and maybe it's my first? Began in Chase Farm Hospital, London, England. I have a picture in my mind's eye of sunlight on a wall that seems to attribute itself to my first days in the hospital, but it is probably just a fantasy that I've built up since, for I have no other 'memories' of the first three or four years of my life. - And it was to Chase Farm that I was 'recalled' a quarter of a century later, though at the time I barely recognized it as a hospital, besides which I was sure I'd died, and had moved to some other plane of consciousness.
I have little idea where to begin when speaking of the development of my insanity, partly because I am, even now, pretty much in the dark as to the time of, and reasons for, its inception, and partly since many of the people I had come to know during the twenty five years preceding my admission to the Psychiatric Unit were of the unequivocal opinion that I had 'always' been 'a little touched'. So I'll not try to trace the evolution of what 'blossomed' into a raging disorder of the mind, but instead simply begin at the point at which I myself became aware of a distinct change in my perceptions, or rather, a change in the feel and appearance of the world I perceived as being external to me.
