Here is a black pen drawing I made one recent afternoon while sitting inside Cottenham Dissenters Cemetery. I was in Cottenham on another errand but had to wait until the end of the day before I could catch the bus home again, so I wandered into the village and chanced upon this delightful cemetery along the way. It looked inviting, so I opened the tall metal gates and let myself into the most wondrous sights and sounds. The gravestones were mostly Victorian with ornate marking on them, and the greenery was lush and undisturbed. Nobody was around and the birdsong from the trees was enchanting. I found an old twisted and rusty metal bench and sat down there and got out my sketchbook and drew the sights. The experience was like meditating in utter peace and contentment.
I found it an ideal opportunity to remember the people that have been lost to me over the years. Eg. my dear husband, my dad, and many friends who all died young. All of them, except my dad, died in tragic circumstances either by suicide or by illnesses related to taking lifelong psychiatric drugs. I thought of the injustice of it all, and how the psychiatric profession was not kind to all those people. My husband and my friends who all died young suffered a lot before they went, and the suffering was due mainly to side effects from psychiatric drugs.
For instance, my husband had psoriatic arthritis and suffered psoriasis all over his body for many years. The related pain caused him agonies. His doctor said it was probably due to being prescribed lithium for many years – psoriasis can be the result of that. The maximum recommended for lithium usage is 5 years, but my husband took it for 20 years and nobody questioned it even though he was being seen by the mental health team. He never went into hospital in all that time, so I wonder if his diagnosis of ‘bipolar disorder’ was wrong. But he took his own life at age 69 because he had had enough. I was heartbroken but I trust his soul is at peace now.
Many years previously a boyfriend of mine took his own life. He had been a serving officer in the RAF in Saudi Arabia but when he returned to UK he was put into a civilian psychiatric hospital and treated for supposed ‘schizophrenia’ with high doses of ‘antipsychotic’ drugs. However, my opinion is that he was undoubtedly suffering from ‘PTSD’ related to his service in the forces and he should have been treated in a RAF hospital which would have understood his suffering. He was 27 when he took his own life dosed up on ‘antipsychotics’. A tragic loss of a highly intelligent capable man.
Other friends have just dropped dead suddenly in their 50’s and early 60’s – all of them taking psychiatric drugs. No explanation except for the medication effects causing their short lifespan.
I’m 69 now and I have no way of knowing if I’ll be dead tomorrow as I’m on psychiatric drugs too, albeit a low dosage as I’m tapering off it. A huge advantage of tapering my medication down to a tiny dose, soon to be stopped altogether, is that my creativity has returned to me and I am able to draw again. The brain fog has gone. That is a huge asset to my lifestyle and I feel that creating art on a regular basis is helping me to stay well.
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Mad in the UK hosts blogs by a diverse group of writers. The opinions expressed are the writers’ own.