I used to feel funny in the head. And its not because my friend Rindra hit me over the head with a mallet when we were playing croquet. It’s because I used to have mental health problems. I used to be a cannabis addict and I developed psychosis and depression from the stuff and it took me years to land back on planet earth and feel vaguely normal upstairs. I haven’t used drugs or drunk alcohol for five and half years so I have recovered, luckily.
I don’t have anything as corny as a ‘message’ to tell from the experience, but I do wish others well who are on the same road. It can be tough. I lost my place at Oxford University and ended up jobless, directionless and without hope. I lost my friends. I didn’t have a normal late teens/early-mid twenties and I still feel the effects of that. But it’s worthwhile perservering on the road of sobriety and cleanness and goodness, even if it can be hard graft sometimes.
Nowadays things are rather fun. I have a cool job working for the Conservative Party (me, a Conservative, how the hell did that happen!); I write stuff for The Collective Review from time to time, contribute to a few charities with time and money and play lots of sport - cricket for the IZ and the Butterflies, tennis in Battersea Park, golf at Swinley Forest; I go on adventure weekends doing stuff like kayaking off the Dorset Coast and mountain-biking in the Brecon Beacons; trips to Madagascar and skiing in the Alps in recent years have been cool; next on my horizon is going to India soon to see a friend who I met when I was out there on my GAP year eleven years ago – that will be fun; and from time to time I hang out at my Mum and Dad’s house and get hit over the head with a croquet mallet by my friend Rindra …
Maybe its a bit self-obsessed of me to write an article about myself – lots of ‘I’, ’self’ and ‘me’ – but that’s hard to avoid when telling a personal story about a particular experience.
Onwards and upwards, trudging that road of happy destiny …. see some of you about.
