Alcohol & Mental Health

it’s not social media anymore, it’s downright spyware, used by your nearest and dearest. No one genuinely gives a flying fig about you on there, they just crave the inside scoop so they have something to gossip about with other people.

Since logging off Facebook a month ago or so, I’ve had more people through my front door or physically phoning me to check in on how I’m doing. Before that, the odd ‘thinking of you’ message but no calls or visits.

I can’t deny, I was hooked and feared I’m missing out if I don’t check in and have a look around. Now I realise it truly is fakebook, where all the fake friends hang out… the real friends know where to find you and how to reach you.

 

I know i am only a bird, not a bloke, but I mean what i say. My door is open and my kettle is always ready to boil. My fone doesnt always have a signal coz its rubbish, but i can and do listen without judgement.

 

I'll pop this up again. Very supportive group - worth a look for giving as well as receiving help.

https://mhmotorbike.com/

 

That’s about the same time as I deleted it (covid finished me off I think) and yes can safely say it’s done more for my mental health than anything else ever could and as you say these people aren’t your real friends and it’s not a real world. Same as on here/twitter etc., by and large.
Not to say you can’t have friends on SM but if you find yourself thinking about people you’re never likely to meet and an argument you’re never likely to win , know when to step away. It’s not healthy.

 

I stay on FB to keep in contact with a very few people, some living a long way off, plus I also follow few racing, TD and cycling groups.
However, when you're reading about yet another mugging or stabbing in your hometown maybe it's time to leave it alone. The scamdemic was a whole new level!
One has to be mindful of what one consumes, whether that's food, drink or content, it all has an effect. I exercise the 'block function' more these days rather than arguing with fucktards and trolls.

 

I find a lot of people forget what a large amount of truly horrible shit we’ve all been put through the last number of years (pointing no fingers) and how people have dealt/had to deal with it differently (on top of whatever they were dealing with prior to it).
There’s a lot of very scarred people walking about , you only have to see some of the nutty tik tok vids to witness it. Starting with the kids. Scary stuff.

 

Absolutely.
It's difficult enough sometimes without another 'crisis'. It's knowing how to keep informed while 'cultivating one's own garden'.

 

Well said sir !

In just a dozen words you have hit the nail on the head ...... well and truly .

 

Facebook has some good groups for particular interests, and I've found some good advice re bike repairs or bits forsale etc. Same with sailing & now mini clubmans too...

I never think of the people on FB as my friends, they're more like people I bump into in the pub or on a flight except we have a common interest in VFR Nc30 bikes.

Now I will admit that I think this place is a little different. There are some people here I do consider friends, and I look up their posts, regularly exchange private messages and would certainly like to meet them were I to be in their part of the country. There are also a bunch of others who I feel like I've come to know over the last few years who are clearly genuine good people.

 

wow, amen to some of these posts, much respect

alcohol is my enemy, cant live without it, not an everyday drinker, but sometimes its too easy to nip up pub and get on it

i used to blackout 3 or 3 times a week, got into some mental situations, like falling off a night ferry pissed up, plus more

stopped drinking badly at 40, haven't blacked out for years, but as we get older and hangovers effect us differently, to me its seems the toxicity of booze can bring on dark thoughts, anxiety, combined with a hangover makes it worse

i can go 2 or 3 weeks without a drink, normally due to work stuff, and i have to say during that period you generally feel better about yourself

the thing about the open door is true, we would all bend over backwards to help someone if they asked but men generally dont act like they would

 

It's important that we all make the effort for our buddies. If I think something is amiss with friends or family I bang on till i find out what. When you get to a certain vintage we've all been though some sh*t, whether it's work, heath, addictions or relationships, these are life lessons that can be shared.
Male suicide <50 y.o, is/was the biggest killer in the UK. Hiding your feelings and 'manning up' doesn't work.

 

But where else would you find videos of scantily clad women doing manual labour? Literally this very morning I’ve been directed to someone who posts videos of herself building furniture (I presume, I wasn’t paying too much attention if I’m honest) in nothing more than a bikini, I tell you, the number of health and safety violations were almost as incredible as her tits

on a serious note, social media really is just a total waste of time and mostly drivel, I only stick with FB because of the marketplace, local free giveaway groups and reading the local community groups, they can really get their knickers in a twist over stuff that really doesn’t matter?

 

Another aspect to this is that many people use alcohol to self-medicate other conditions which have never been diagnosed. The alcohol then creates more overt problems of its own and the assumption is made, by the sufferer and observers alike, that you are troubled/sick/unhappy because you drink, when in fact it's just as probable that you drink because you're troubled/sick/unhappy and the additional layer of problems created by alcohol blinds you to underlying causes.
I became teetotal for about four years ten years ago and quitting drinking revealed problems rather than solved them. Sure, I felt so much better but the absence of drink laid bare other issue which I didn't understand at the time and it became clear that I'd only got into the habit of drinking of the first place as a reaction to something else. I drink again now and recognising old patterns I'm beginning to understand that drinking and addictive behaviour in general is for me a symptom rather than a disease. In a way that's worse to deal with.
I'm pretty sure I'm either bipolar or have adult ADHD. I heard a programme about adult ADHD (which is totally different to childhood ADHD, seriously debilitating and will never go away or be controlled without medication) a while ago on the radio and listening to the experiences of a featured sufferer was like looking in the mirror. Every single thing he described was like he was talking about me.
My thoughts tumble in a way that I liken to trying to run very fast down a very steep hill. I can't control them nor stop myself. I'm carried along on mental momentum of an avalanche of thoughts which rapidly overtake me and cause extreme agitation that is only relieved by displacement activity which interferes terribly with normal rational life. I cannot concentrate on problems for more than a few minutes without extrapolating wild and ridiculous outcomes and feeling the need for escape. I conceive wild ideas that monopolise my thoughts 100% for a few hours and the next day are forgotten. I've no idea why. I just get these obsessions that erupt out of nowhere and then vanish as quickly for no reason. I spend money as a form of therapy. I throw it away as a distraction from my thought processes.
A few months ago I was convinced that my life could only be made right if I moved to the Shetland Isles. I'd inherited some money recently (there's very little of it left after 18 months) and a few months ago found myself out of nowhere within a toucher of making a wild offer and placing a deposit on a house on one of the remotest islands in the Shetlands without seeing it or doing the any research whatsoever into living there or thinking it through to the slightest degree. I'd got as far as booking a flight to go and buy it. I was prepared to put every penny I had on the table with no rational analysis. Unable to get a flight on the spot, the matter was laid to rest for the night and the moment passed. The next day I had forgotten all about it till I saw the website bookmarked on my laptop. I wasn't drinking when I did that. That isn't rational.

I don't know where I go from here but I have noticed that as I get older the triggers that produce these behaviourel patterns are becoming smaller and more frequent. I'm 56 now and I'm pretty sure I'll end up destitute or dead (or probably both) before I'm 65 unless I can get a handle on this. If it is adult ADHD or bipolar disorder, getting a diagnosis on the NHS can take up to ten years.

Anyway, this isn't a cry for help or an appeal for sympathy. All I'm saying is, people made miserable by drink should not automatically assume that alcohol is the cause of their problems. Very often it is but it might also be a symptom and when you quit, be prepared to be confronted by a reality you hadn't realised existed.

 

I’m going to post this here rather than in my RIP post Mrs Slingy, because I think it’s important for other men and woman to realise the magnitude of mental health.

The day that nearly wasn’t.

Very short run down for those who don’t know, 6 months ago today, my wife was killed by an elderly driver on her 848, I was with her, it was a catastrophic accident and she died on scene in my arms.

Friday, like most Fridays the police, coroners office and solicitors all thought it was the perfect time to update me. They sent over her full PM report which outlined her death was far far more brutal than first implied. I won’t go into details but one example is she actually broke 22 of her 24 ribs , so badly her lungs were full of rib debris, not the 10 ribs I was initially told.

Im already seeing a private psychologist to try and get over the PTSD and other associated mental illnesses that developed after that day, but it proved too much for me. The darkness crept in and the mood declined minute by minute. I had a 3pm session with my psychologist on Friday and the second I walked in the door I fell to absolute bits. We couldn’t carry out the EMDR therapy in that state so we tried talking me out of the darkness, that’s the only word I can describe it as. It feels like a cloud that comes over on a sunny day, when the warmth suddenly disappears and you long for it to pass quickly so you can carry on enjoying the sun.

By Friday evening I was a wreck, total total wreck. I had to phone my sister to come do suicide watch because I was the closest I’ve felt to losing the battle since this happened. The thing is it’s hard to explain, but it’s not a conscious choice what you as a person or entity is thinking is different to how your brain feels or is reacting. I didn’t WANT to kill myself, I just didn’t want to live… seems daft to those not in this position but there is a big difference. My sister drove a 100 miles and has spent the weekend with me since. I broke down Friday night worse than ever and went to bed.

Yesterday morning I woke up, walked downstairs in my old tracksuit and croc’s neither of which I would ever be seen in prior to this , picked up Emma’s keys and told my sister I’m going for a drive. What followed can only be described as a suicide run down the M20 in the rain maintaining between 140 and 150mph the whole way, including passed a Highways Officer and a marked police pickup without easing off at all. Coming out the tunnel by Hawkinge there was loads of standing water and I aquaplaned across two lanes before fancy BMW electronics pulled me straight again. Even at that moment there wasn’t the smallest flutter in my chest that I could have died in fact I drove a little faster. I drove to Dover cliffs and went and found the highest ledge I could and sat on it with my legs dangling over the sea. I texted Leah at the funeral home who looked after my Emma so lovingly for us and asked her to promise me she will look after me like she did my Emma and to make sure I have a black coffin with silver handles to match Emma’s. She didn’t realise I was talking about now and promised she would , but pointed out she was older than me so it would probably be her daughter who looked after me.

I sat on that cliff edge for about 40min ,my phone and car keys next to me in the mud, sitting where no one dared to walk that close to the edge , sitting in the mud in pyjamas and not one single person thought that was odd or that I was in trouble. About 20 family’s and walkers all walked passed me , not a single one even nodded or muttered a ‘hi’ , not one thought this bloke is taking a chance, is he ok ? . In fact one guy actually commented when walking passed me “ooh fuck me, there’s a cliff there !” As he suddenly realised the drop near us.

Eventually I bottled it and started to slow trudge back to her car and began the drive of shame back home. Soon hit the motorway and the carelessness returned, 140+ the whole way home again before walking in the door and smashing a handful of pills. I slept 12 hours and woke up today.

What I want to say is none of this is a choice or conscious decision, when you experience a trauma like this. The best way to described it is when you get to the end of the week after working on a massive project on the PC, your just about done and everything is 99% finished….. fuck, power cut !!!! Power comes back on, but now it’s corrupted because you hadn’t saved everything. The hard drive is buzzing and beeping away as it frantically tries to startup correctly in the right sequence scanning file after file and then restarting, again and again as it can’t get passed the corrupted files. Eventually you call in a PC tech who has to go in the BIOS and manually segment files or whatever they do, good ones from the corrupt ones, restart the pc and put everything back in order and deleted the corrupted files.

Well that’s what happens to a perfectly ‘normal’ person. The brain shuts down, the left side stops communicating with the right side, your thought process is scrambled, you emotions are up and down like a yo-yo, you can’t reason or make sense of anything. You effectively become bipolar as your biggest fight is no longer with the world, but with yourself. Why do I feel like this, why am I so angry, why am I so sad, why haven’t my friends called me, but when they do you ignore the call because the anxiety of picking up the phone and having a conversation is too much. You hate people for not understanding you, but are equally so so grateful they don’t understand, because it means they have never had to experience this level of trauma. When the darkness descends, it’s inexplicable, you can’t really describe it as anything other than a darkness. It’s not just a bad mood or a hurt mood, it’s total blackout of the lowest possible feeling you could imagine, and that is when you do stupid things. Not because you want to, but because the darkness has taken you there. It’s like you’re holding its hand and following it to the cliffs and then it’s standing back egging you on saying ‘go on then.. do it, do it, do it’

I am fighting my damn hardest to stay here, be here for my family and friends , not give in. The honest truth, I fear the darkness will win, if not now… some point in the future.

I’ll leave you with a picture of what mental illness really looks like. This side by side picture was taken yesterday 2 hours apart. The left pic is AFTER I tried to end it. The right pic is me before I got in the car, and the same every single morning before work

 

Slingy, how you manage to haul yourself up in the mornings, or back from the cliff edge, is beyond me. Your words describe unbearable desolation & its impossible for me to really reply with anything meaningful to help.

But haul yourself up and back from the edge, you do. And I am really glad that you do.

 

this is probably the hardest thing to read, and maybe the hardest thing to reply to without it landing badly.

I’ve got a question for you though, are you located in the south? Would you allow some people off here to come and speak to you! To do anything to try and help you?

 

I don’t have a choice, my kids depend on me, the business depends on me, my family depends on me… and all the while I fight, fight every single day to get out of bed , have a shower and go to work. The word desolate is a good one, it’s pretty accurate as I can have 20 people around me and still suffer unimaginable loneliness

I am in the SE, nearest junction to me is JCT 9 of the M20 as an idea. I have no issue with talking to people, there are a few on here I talk too via call or messages. Sometimes it’s even easier than with close family and friends as they are too close to the subject themselves.