This afternoon I was honoured to received the Canadian Mental Health Association’s Mental Health Voices Award for 2008, which is given out to those whose efforts have helped raise awareness about mental illness.

To be honest with you, I feel entirely unworthy of the award being that all I did was tell my own story. There are literally thousands of volunteers, professionals, and advocates that deserve recognition for their work on a daily basis, making receiving such an honour entirely humbling next to their tireless dedication.

This evening I received an email from a fan and, after asking her permission, wanted to share it with everyone. I was profoundly moved by it, most likely because when I was in the psyche ward last year the one person that I thought would show up didn’t. The email’s author won’t be attending the upcoming show in Regina, and for good reason, as her email explains…

“Hi,

I bought Hospital Music a few weeks back because it was your new release. Although, at the time it had nothing to do with the reality I have now been confronted with in my own life and I would like to express to you how much this CD has captured what I’m presently going through.

I was to be attending your concert here in Regina on the 7th. But now, I will be unable to attend. The venue changed and so did my life. My boyfriend was admitted into the General Hospital here on the 4th. He has been diagnosed with Bi-polar disorder and acute anxiety. I cannot in good conscience attend the concert without “my partner in crime.”

I had no idea that when I purchased that CD it would be passed through my hands, to his.

He had what I will call for lack of better words an “episode,” while drinking and I took him to the hospital the night of the 3rd and he will be there for the next month or so. During these last few days I wondered what I should do. I wondered if I should stay with him, and I wondered if I could let him go.

I went to visit him the following day and wound up looking at what I’ll call the most pathetic room in the world, as he lay facing the wall, in hospital gowns and all. Probably the worst but most insightful day of his life. I told him I did not know if he could come home. Last night I came to your site and saw the profile for hospital music and decided that I would slip it into the player. She’s In It for the Money came on. I may not know what you were talking about and I may not know the extent of what happened to you to write that. But I know what it meant for me.

I remember when I was 16 lying in a similar room after my Mom admitted me and wondering why everybody left. I remember when she signed me over to the government soon after and left me to my own demise. And though I conquered the tyrants within, since then I remember thinking that I would never leave anybody alone in that situation. And so when the lyric “build your heart a diamond and it don’t need no ring,” came on I realized that I was becoming what I never wanted to be if I chose to walk away. And I thank you for that. I don’t want to be that girl. Or that person for that matter.

And so I will not be attending, because my priorities cite otherwise, due to you.”

That’s one very lucky guy.

An email like this is worth more than all the money, sales, and accolades in the world. And I am deeply honoured to have received it.

Given the contradictory nature of numerous eye witness reports regarding the events that led to the shooting of Paul Boyd on the 13th of the month by Vancouver City Police, I concur with the position taken by The Pivot Legal Society’s John Richardson in response to Vancouver City Police Chief Jim Chu’s statement about the incident.

From the CBC…

“This happened in a matter of seconds, our officers are trained quite well and they took what option they had to take,” said Chu.

The Pivot Legal Society’s John Richardson said Tuesday the chief should not be commenting on the police shooting of a man before an investigation is complete.

“These investigators report to the chief. If he is already saying that the amount of force is justified, how are those investigators going to feel the freedom to find otherwise, if their boss is already telling them what the outcome is?” said Richardson.

The chief’s comments have renewed calls for the formation of an independent body to investigate police. High-profile Vancouver defence lawyer Phil Rankin said police should not be investigating police.

“I think there needs to be a special force which is independent of any provincial force, [which has] the legal right to subpoena and does an external investigation. I don’t believe the internal investigation is satisfactory,” said Rankin on Tuesday.”

One of the crucial aspects regarding this incident is that numerous witnesses have claimed they heard between six and nine shots fired at Boyd, who had, according to one witness, Christine Adkins, run out into traffic. One eye witness, that did not want to be identified, claimed that the officer that shot Boyd was composed. Interestingly, in their statement, they could not accurately identify the sex of the police officer, yet could comment on their composure.

Another aspect that has to be taken into consideration is that the officer that shot Boyd did so in an urban setting in which, given the number of alleged shots fired, could have endangered others. It has since been learned that the officer that shot Boyd has a mere three years of experience on the force.

Rod and I were talking about this last night and both of us concurred that a public inquiry should take place with regards to the conduct of the police in this matter.

There is no questioning the fact that, when in a tight spot, police officers will commonly react in a certain way when one of their fellow officers has been injured. In this case, though the officer that shot Boyd didn’t know it at the time, only one of the other officers would be taken to hospital after the fact to be treated for non life threatening injuries. That said, I still fail to see how someone can justify the use of overwhelmingly deadly force in this instance.

One detail has come to light about the incident, in which Boyd was brandishing a chain with a lock on it with which he struck two officers trying to confront him, one of whom was knocked unconscious , is that he suffered from bipolarity and, according to his family, was in the midst of a pronounced manic episode.

Boyd was a noted Vancouver animator who had been diagnosed some 20 years ago and, according to his family, was able to keep the illness under control for the most part. Unfortunately, in this instance, he was in the midst of a manic episode and, according to the pathology passed on by his family to the Vancouver Police, had in the past experienced “vivid paranoid delusions that made him fear imagined threats”. That said, it should not be overlooked that people who suffer from bipolarity, and similar mental illnesses, often go years without having their drug regimes altered. Unfortunately, over time, the body can get used to the affects of various drugs, allowing symptoms to return. Being that the individual thinks that because they’re on a regiment designed to help them there is a slim chance that the problem will become as amplified as it once was is sometimes a very real danger because the problem isn’t dealt with in a timely fashion. Of course, I have no idea if that was the case in this situation, but being someone that suffers from bipolarity himself, I can see how, after a number of years, various symptoms might become more pronounced because of the reduction in the affect of certain drugs taken to counter the illness.

All of that said, I plan to follow this story very intently.

My sympathies go out to Boyd family.

I went to bed early last night, around nine. My internet has been complete crap lately, and it’s made me unbearable (it has to be Shaw too, because my Airport seems fine). Isn’t that ridiculous, that a snail-like connection speed can affect a person to such an extent that they’re unbearable? The truth is, and I’ll not lie, the net is probably my best friend. And when it’s not reliable, it really pisses me off.

So I went to bed at nine. I was tired anyway. I have been tired lately in general. I usually have to sleep these days at some point in the afternoon because of the medication that I’m on, but I didn’t yesterday. So last night I hit a wall and, besides the clorazipam that is included in my nightly drug regiment, popped a few Tylenol Suddenly Sleep’s and continued watching the first season of Rome, which I have probably now watched ten or eleven times, before my eyes started to sink and I put my laptop on the side table and fell asleep.

I dreamed of something last night that I have been dreaming about a lot lately. About the disappearance of people from our lives – as if they never existed, as if like some random holiday photo that has become too worn in your wallet to make out properly, they represent something that might have happened but you’re just not sure it did. Three floors below me, Rod spends his nights dreading his phone ringing, wondering the same things, wondering how we ended up here, in this building, as if in a foreign country.

I dreamed and woke up and, as is always the case since I moved here last October, did not recognize where I was. Every morning it takes a few minutes for it to register, for me to remember where I am, for the ceiling to make sense. I lay there rubbing my eyes, the dogs clawing their way from beneath the covers, and find myself asking them if they want to go out – in a foreign language.

A friend visiting last week said that I seemed like I wasn’t really ‘there’, like I was a series of levers and pulleys, cranks and cogs, springs and wires, but not controlling them. Like a Frankenstein perhaps, or John Malkovich inhabited by strangers destined for that grassy sloped ditch on the New Jersey Turnpike.

I didn’t know how to answer, nor how to feel about it. Up until that point I had grown so accustomed to ignoring the possibility that it had come to make an incredibly comforting amount of sense.

Because I don’t own a television, and have generally come to detest watching it, I only buy entire seasons of those television series that I enjoy. Besides Rome, my most preferred show is, by far, Deadwood, which I think is one of the best written shows in television history. Like Rome, I have watched both the first and second seasons of Deadwood ten to twenty times each.

I watch films in bed. I have no idea why, but I have always preferred it. In fact, when it comes to most things, doing them horizontally is preferable, and that includes eating. The Romans, the nobility anyway, tended to eat whilst laying, and I have always loved them for it. They got that right, beyond several other hundred things that were lost during the Dark Ages – like the actual celebration of a liberal society. Obviously it had its drawbacks – slaves and bloody conquests and what not - but I simply can’t fault them for the openness of their society in general. In a way, I feel cheated I suppose, as if humanity were, in some ways, a river flowing backwards rather than forwards.

So I sit here and smoke and read and look out the window. Sometimes I take the dogs to the park so that they can run around, or walk them around the neighbourhood to get some exercise. It has all become an alien landscape though, despite the fact that I spent my twenties in this part of town playing shows and sitting in the basements of run-down clubs listening to the aspirations of a music community that had no real definable cohesion. I don’t know, maybe it was an alien landscape then as well.

They say that ignorance is bliss, and I am slowly becoming enamored with the possibility that that maxim is true. Maybe, when all is said and done, the only reality that we must eventually face is that when we wake up each morning that we are alone, even if there is someone next to us. And that even though you can understand what they’re saying to you, they will forever be speaking another language. Perhaps that is the way of the world, perhaps not.

Diagnosis

I wasn’t diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder until last October, at the age of 35. At the time I had been on anti-depressants since 2003 primarily because I had, for some years prior, experienced episodes of extreme anxiety that would result in my losing consciousness. At first it was thought that I might be epileptic, but after undergoing numerous tests is was discovered that I wasn’t. I was then, after an extreme manic episode in the late winter of 2003, referred to a psychotherapist that recommended that I try taking an anti-depressant to deal with what he believed was simply an anxiety disorder.

The demise of the Matthew Good band and my responsibilities with regards to my relationship primarily created the majority of the stress that I felt, and because of that it was suggested that I seek permanent, ongoing therapy for the problem. At the time, which was a tumultuous one in my relationship and career, I attempted to stick with it, but as in many cases, the perceived effects of the medication, and the belief of those around me that didn’t want to really face the fact that something was truly wrong, led me to believe that I didn’t require long-term therapy.

Thus, I remained on the same dosage until it was eventually increased following my separation last February. As in 2003, I was also prescribed Ativan, which, in 2006, I would become addicted to. My dependence on it to counter the mania and anxiety that became extremely prevalent in the spring and summer of 2006 would eventually lead to numerous instances when I abused the drug, that last of which resulting in me being hospitalized and time spent in a psychiatric ward.

The Devil’s In Your Details

As a young child I was hyperactive, or that was, at least, what my parents were told. There had been episodes in my early childhood that pointed to bipolarity, such as an incident at the first school I attended as a young boy, Our Lady Of Lourdes, a Catholic school that my mother sent my brother and I to, despite not being Catholic, because of their French immersion program.

In grade one I lit the garbage-can next to my teacher’s desk on fire. Being that it was a Catholic school, I was disciplined with a ruler by a Nun for what I had done and shortly after my mother chose to pull both me and my brother out of the school and transfer us to one that promoted a more flexible academic philosophy. Unfortunately, that particular school was devoted only to kindergarten through grade three, meaning that a move to a public school was required. After finishing grade two I was enrolled in public school and the hyperactivity that I had displayed throughout my childhood continued.

In the 1970’s the common solution to hyperactivity was Ritalin, which I was put on until my mother could no longer stand the near zombie-like state that it placed me in on a daily basis. Thus, I returned to exhibiting varying states of hypo-mania, ones that were often countered with long periods of time spent in seclusion, immersed in the imaginative and creative. During that period of my life I started writing, and spent hours on end behind a closed door penning fantastical tales, dreaming of impossible worlds. I also fell victim to frequent night terrors, during which I would often sleep walk or wake up screaming.

During secondary school and parts of high school I turned to drinking as a method with which to deal with the extremes I felt. I did it primarily in secret, taking careful precautions to ensure that I wasn’t found out. Luckily, by the age of 19, it became more of an amplification of ill feeling rather than a distraction, resulting in a decision to abandon it altogether. I wouldn’t drink again until I was 30 and often lied about my reasons for not drinking during my twenties by claiming that I was allergic to alcohol.

By the time I graduated high school I found myself immersed in both creative writing and painting, the latter of which I briefly went to a community college to study. It was then that I began to notice that my social skills were somewhat different than others, that I was often uncomfortably forthright with people, and that I was irritable with what I perceived as the lackadaisical attitude exhibited by those around me. There were times during those days that I would remain awake for days at a time, sometimes catching a few hours of sleep here and there, while spending most of my time living in the unfinished basement of a townhouse working on various projects - paintings, stories, and, for the first time in my life, music.

It never really struck me as being odd that I smoked incessantly, constantly paced, and was usually highly irritable unless I was immersed in the creation of something. Nor did it strike me as odd that I would spend hours exhaustively pacing in the living room in the middle of the night with clenched fists, grinding my teeth, unable to calm myself down. Only when utter exhaustion set in would I be able to collapse and sleep.

During my late teens and early twenties such behaviour was largely responsible for how I was viewed and dealt with by others, something that I recognize now. It also formed a codependent trait within me with regards to long-term relationships, a trait that made me feel at ease and in control. In hindsight, the reality is that I identified with women that could tolerate my misgivings largely because they had considerable misgivings of their own, producing situations in which erratic behaviour was the norm.

I Am Not Safer Than A Bank

It has been suggested more than once that, in the past, because of my physique, I must have been a drug user. I am six feet tall and, for most of my early adult life, weighed anywhere between 135 and 145 pounds. Eating was something that I rarely did with any regularity, as I would spend most of my time consuming coffee, tea, and cigarettes. My mania also contributed to my lack of weight, something that changed significantly when I first started taking anti-depressants.

During the band’s rise to notoriety, my drive and work ethic were also largely effected by my mania. There were times when we would rehearse for six to eight hours at a time only for me to go home and spend another eight hours working by myself. I was, in a way, possessed during that period, constantly writing material, constantly focused on refining it, and then spending whatever time I had left penning short fiction for the band’s website. There were even times backstage at shows where I would write on my laptop right up until the moment that we were due to go on. The great irony during those years though was that I loathed self promotion, considering it almost rude. Thus, I never attempted to impress myself upon people in the industry to a large extent or promote myself. In fact, the very idea of it often caused me considerable anxiety, even when others were doing it on my behalf. That outlook largely resulted in the exposure of a very forthright attitude with regards to the press, one that has, as many of you know, followed me throughout my career.

The years spent touring Underdogs and Beautiful Midnight are a blur to me now. During them I was confronted with one of my worst fears, the requirements of popularity, a reality that was totally alien to me and something that made me feel extremely uncomfortable. For many, fame is something that is looked upon as being desirable, but as my fame grew I found myself in a cage that I perceived as ever-shrinking, even in the limited context of Canadian music.

The fall that Beautiful Midnight was released the band did a co-headlining tour with Moist, though we would do the whole tour playing before them as years of smoking, constant touring, and fatigue had taken their toll on my voice resulting in a nodule on one of my vocal folds. In January of 2000 I had an operation to remove the nodule, which was successful, and spent three months with a speech pathologist learning to properly vocalize. But one of the remembrances of that fall was that those around me did not attempt to pull me off the road or suggest that we do anything but forge ahead despite the fact that during the days I could barely speak. It was during that period that I first began to see what came with fame – the realization that you are a commodity, and that the relationships that you have with those around you tend to become more focused on that fact than any other. This realization quickly led to a cycle of self destructive behaviour, one in which I would spend days alone in a small apartment working until five or six in the morning, dating numerous women that I had little to no heartfelt interest in, and lurking the streets of my neighbourhood in the early hours of the morning listening to demos on my walkman.

Eventually, as is always the case with such things, there came a breaking point. For me it was when I began to vomit on a regular basis, sometimes four or five times a day. I would get in the shower on my hands and knees, my head near the drain, and let the water run over me for hours as I struggled not to convulse. It was then that I turned to food supplement drinks and energy bars rather than proper food. In fact, the only thing that I could keep down on a routine basis was, for some strange reason, apples. I also took Gravol on a daily basis, both to knock myself out and to try and stop the vomiting.

Again, not realizing that the root of the problem might be mental, I went to see my doctor and was put on ulcer medication, which he believed was the cause of the problem. Of course it didn’t work and, thirty minutes after drinking it, I would just throw it up. It was around that time that I experienced my first major anxiety attack resulting in unconsciousness.

Over the months that followed the attacks came and went. In some cases I fell unconscious, a problem that remained with me up until the fall of last year before being properly diagnosed and agreeing to adhere to a drug regiment. My greatest fear was that I would pass out while vomiting, which, thankfully, only occurred on one occasion, and luckily someone was there to make sure that I didn’t choke. For some bizarre reason the thought of it happening while driving didn’t cross my mind until after the problem had finally been confronted.

All of that said, this state persisted throughout the writing and recording of The Audio Of Being.

I’m A Window

After the dissolution of the band I underwent a period of heightened anxiety and depression followed by several months of mania in which I began penning new material for what would later become Avalanche. Being in a committed relationship at the time provided stability in that it gave me a sense of familiarity with which to identify. Unfortunately, the pressures and responsibilities placed upon me by that relationship would eventually extract a much greater toll. But at the time my focus was on trying to placate those left in my life that believed that I needed to maintain the same presence that I had with the Matthew Good Band. This, too, caused me a great deal of anxiety, producing further bouts of mania and depression depending on what was happening at the time.

If one dissects the lyrics to Avalanche they will, given this entry, probably find new meaning in many of the songs. At the time it wasn’t something that I was comfortable talking about, as I had just only started on anti-depressants right before the tour for the record and felt ashamed that it had come to that. With regards to my relationship I also felt like less of a man because of it, because I had ultimately exposed my problem and was worried that it would result in the loss of someone that I loved.

The following three years showed some improvements as I remained on the anti-depressants, though on a relatively low dosage. For the first time in my life I began to gain weight, sleep better, and eat properly. And while I found that the medication did, at times, make me feel as though there was a pillow wrapped around my head, most of the time I felt more stabilized than I had been in the past, though my energy level certainly decreased and I found it harder to be as active as I had been in the past. Unfortunately, the answer to my problem was not simply one pill, and I continued to, at times, exhibit bipolar traits and suffer from panic attacks that resulted in unconsciousness.

99% Of Us Is Failure

Following my separation in February of last year I spent four weeks living at my parents place before heading out on tour, something that I should never have done given the state that I was in. But rather than cancel and let people down I decided to go through with it and was able to convince myself that once I got out there things would even out.

During those four weeks at my parents I began taking Ativan on a regular basis coupled with Gravol. During the days I would do my best to focus on trying to work out acoustic versions of songs and the nights in either a state of mania or severe depression. I also began to vomit again on a regular basis and pass out more frequently. Because of this, my family doctor suggested that I increase the dosage of my anti-depressants and prescribed more Ativan to deal with my heightened anxiety.

And so I got on a plane to Calgary with a bag full of pills.

Were someone to ask me how I made it through last year’s acoustic tour I probably couldn’t give them an answer. For the most part I took in excess of four or five Ativan a day, in some cases no less than an hour before performing. During the course of the tour I was monitored by a few close friends, but there was gap in the middle where I was left to the governance of a young assistant that was, by no means, prepared to deal with the situation, nor should she have ever been placed in that position. By the time we reached Thunder Bay I had reached the point where I was no longer able to cope with it all and, several hours before the show, swallowed a handful of pills.

As Stephen Fry pointed out in his series, I didn’t do it for attention or retribution. I did it simply because I felt that I just couldn’t take anymore. Thankfully, no less than a few minutes after taking the pills, my stomach turned and I ran to the toilet and vomited. Obviously some of the drugs were able to enter my system, which caused a great deal of concern amongst those with me, the majority of whom wanted to cancel the show as I wasn’t very lucid to say the least. But stubbornly I told them not to and played anyway. Disheveled, I walked out onto stage and wandered through a set that I still can’t remember playing.

Then and there it all should have stopped. But this time it was me that refused to go home. I had the full support of both my manager and agent to pull the plug, but waking up the next morning the thought of giving in seemed incomprehensible to me. Maybe I had something to prove, maybe the depressive state that I was falling deeper and deeper into caused me not to care, but the tour continued, and with it my growing addiction to Ativan to get me through.

It was then that I went and bought myself a notebook and started trying to put down what I was feeling. For some reason the idea of typing it on a computer and saving it as a file didn’t seem real enough to me. I have since discarded that notebook, though on more than one occasion in the weeks that followed Thunder Bay it kept my mind distracted from other things, probably ensuring that something like what had happened in Thunder Bay didn’t reoccur.

And so the weeks passed and the shows continued. And then came Kingston.

I’m not really sure what brought it on to be honest. That morning I had taken an Ativan and was relaxing in the back lounge of the tour bus when I stood up and felt my body flood with heat. Beyond that all I remember is waking up with paramedics surrounding me, asking me my name, asking me what medication I had taken, that little voice in my head whispering to me that they had been told of what had occurred in Thunder Bay.

I was taken off the bus, put in an ambulance, and spent the remainder of the day in hospital. I remember being sedated, I remember Raymi showing up and sitting there with me, as she was scheduled to meet me in Kingston and travel with me the rest of the tour. I remember the calm sensation of IV fed Ativan being pumped into me and the slow, wobbly sleep that it induced. I remember being wheeled to the front door hours later and returning to the bus. I remember being told that shows were being moved around to accommodate a few days off.

But like the morning after Thunder Bay, I chose not to go home. In the past I had experienced the backlash from fans for canceling shows at the last minute, one in Montreal in particular comes to mind, and it was something that caused me just as much stress as staying out there. So we plodded along, Raymi and I spending the majority of our time talking and watching the first season of Carnivàle, and, of course, my continued reliance on Ativan to make it through each day.

I’ll not bullshit you and say that the shows in Victoria and Nanaimo weren’t cancelled because of the deterioration of my mental state and sheer exhaustion. Despite the reasons given, which in my line of work are always fibbed, the reason those shows were moved was because I was physically incapable of doing them. After taking those few days off I struggled through the Vancouver shows, checked into a hotel, and spent most of my time in bed for the better part of the week. Despite the Ativan and my best efforts to fight and hide it, I had succumbed to having a nervous breakdown.

Metal Airplanes

The events that occurred in the months that followed won’t be discussed here because they are of a highly personal nature. That said, by the end of August I had come to the conclusion that the best thing for me to do would be to leave North America for a while and try and level myself out. During that month the dosage of my anti-depressants was again raised and my daily reliance on Ativan continued unabated. After giving away the majority of my things (I actually gave a homeless fellow my wrist watch), and putting the rest in storage, I spent a week at my parents before leaving for England. The plan was to spend five or six months in Europe, mostly in France, writing a book. Little did I know that I would be back home in less than 10 days.

I flew first to Toronto where I had a meeting with my record company about recording the new record, and where I spent the entire time without leaving the hotel. I then flew from Toronto to London where I did the exact same thing at a hotel in Soho, with brief jaunts out to dinner with a few friends. After that I traveled by train to Bristol where I had planned to stay with my friends Tim and Rachel Baker and finalize my living arrangements abroad.

And that’s where it happened.

One night, while laying in bed, I was struck by something that even now I find impossible to describe. It was a despair, a loneliness, a helplessness that I had never felt before. I barely slept and the next morning Tim knew something was wrong. We spoke for a while in his backyard before I made the decision to go home. After contacting my family, my mother, being the woman that she is, told me to stay put and that she would come and get me. Instead I told her that I would just get back on the train to London, catch a Lori to Heathrow, and fly home. Thankfully my ticket status allowed me to do it.

Again, given that I was blogging at the time, invention was used to conceal fact. I spent most of the flight home looking out the window, tears streaming down my face. I would pull out my camera and look at the places in Bath and London that, not a year before, I had visited with someone who had since become a complete stranger to me. I thought about my life, my music, my family, and everything that had transpired since that winter. I told myself to focus on the good things, the accomplishments, the laughter, and that this, like all things, would ultimately pass. I wished then, sitting in that airplane, that my Nan was still alive. But being that she wasn’t, I just sat there, looking like a madman, having a conversation with my dead grandmother.

A Single Explosion

At this point, given my experience in England, I’d like to tell you that things got better when I returned home. Unfortunately they didn’t. My dependence on Ativan grew to a steady seven a day, I teetered between manic episodes and depressive evenings when I would retire at eight at night, drugging myself to sleep with a combination of Ativan, Gravol, and, at times, Nyquil. Slowly but surely a deep depression began to take over. For a few weeks I struggled with it like one might a constant tapping on their head, an endless echoing as if I were hollow and the reverberations would bounce through me in seemingly slow motion from my head to my feet and back again. I couldn’t concentrate, I couldn’t see myself the next day, I couldn’t see myself later that same day.

And then, one night in October, I had a few beers and climbed the stairs to the tiny room that housed my bed and my mother’s home office and put Gangs Of New York in my laptop. I had taken a few Ativan prior to that, but as I lay there watching the film and drinking beer the echoing inside me began to grow louder and louder. And each time that I felt it peak I would reach over and take a few more in an attempt to stop it. Eventually, somehow I ended up sitting in the dark in the shower. My mother came in and asked me what I was doing. I remember asking her to get me another beer, which she did for some unknown reason. I finished it, got out, put a towel around me and walked back into the bedroom and put on my pajama pants.

And that’s all that I remember.

When I woke up my sister-in-law was beside me and my mother was talking to a doctor or nurse, I can’t really recall. Seeing that I had woken up she came in and both of them threw themselves on me. At that point I had never felt so despicable, nor as happy, as I had in my entire life.

In all I had taken in excess of fourty Ativan that night and was revived at the hospital. According to my mother, during the journey from the house to the hospital I had asked the paramedics attending me to let me die. That, and given the state I was in prior to that night, resulted in me being asked to willfully commit myself to the hospital’s psychiatric ward, which I agreed to.

The following five days I spent in yellow pajamas mostly laying in bed playing solitaire and drawing in a notebook that my mother brought in for me [1]. It was also during that time that my drug regime was slowly changed and I was able to, for the first time in my life, actually sit down with a psychiatrist and talk about everything. One very important thing that I found out is that Effexor, the anti-depressant that I was taking, can, at high dosages, amplify bipolarity. Prior to being admitted to hospital, I was taking 500mg of it a day compared to the 75mg that I had taken for the better part of three years.

I won’t lie to you. The overwhelming shame of being in a facility like that is immense. It’s as if what spirit you had left abandons you completely and you are left feeling like half a person. It’s a long road back from feeling like that, and part of that road is having access to professionals that can help you come to terms with what it is that’s making you feel the way you do. Discovering that I suffer from Bipolarity has, thankfully, allowed me to begin gaining a new perspective on life, one in which I realize that it is a part of who I am and that I will have to live with it for the rest of my life. But knowing the root cause, believe it or not, is an immense comfort in many ways.

True Love Will Find You In The End

There is little doubt that my conveyance of this information may cause some to laugh, others to think that my illness played a predominant role in the demise of the band, and that it made me too difficult to work with or live with or whatever. Being a public figure and being open comes with the risk of knowing that people will form their own opinions based on their own limited knowledge – and that’s fine. The purpose of this entry was to hopefully make those that suffer from this illness feel a little less alone and a little less hopeless. And if it only really impacts one person, then that’s enough.