Depression is like walking across a mountain in fog where you can only see between 10 and 15 feet ahead of you. I first began to suffer from it in 1990. Life was good at the time. I was engaged to a German model and tax consultant and I had just started an apprenticeship with the European Commission.
Everything in my career was pointing upwards. However, our relationship began to suffer some minor difficulties and some business interests I had in Germany started to collapse because I couldn't give them enough attention. Things started to snowball and fall apart for me. I stayed on in Germany for nearly two years trying to put things back together again. This was just after the Berlin Wall was dismantled and the mood towards foreigners in Germany was changing radically. I found living there to be very negative, although I do acknowledge that my own personal problems were a major factor in that. I came back to Ireland in 1992 and I thought things would improve. But I was very negative and submissive. I found it difficult to cope with simple things, like having a conversation. I would panic if the phone rang. I stayed here for six months or so, trying to get my world together again.
I took a holiday in France in the summertime, when I was feeling extremely low and absolutely worthless. I remember I was staying in a hostel and tossed a coin as to whether I would come back to Ireland or not. I stayed and lived in France.
I met a wonderful woman in Paris and we lived together for five good years. However, during those five years, I suffered from continuous bouts of depression. I would say that I also spectacularly underachieved in almost everything I tried to do. Although I worked as an administrator with the French army's education centre, I found it very difficult to hold normal conversation. I could organise any number of things for people without a problem but when it came to having a working relationship with any one of them, I usually had a panic attack.
I muddled my way through life until my girlfriend, who was from London, wanted to go back to London. Once, we returned, I found London very difficult, cold and unfriendly and a hard place to get work. During this time however, I did work for the British Labour Party and was constituency press officer for Chris Smith MP (now Heritage Secretary). However, when depression hit, I was very self-destructive. And although I was very good at analysing how companies and organisations work, the depressive and destructive nature of my personality won out over the diplomatic side. When I was in London, I also used to drink quite a bit - just to get out of it, which was strange because I didn't normally drink alcohol at all.
In the end, I had an adventure with some sleeping tablets and was taken through Islington in the back of an ambulance. In the past, I had seen the world from the top of a fire engine, the captain's table of a cruise liner and the cockpit of a private jet. Being in the back of an ambulance was certainly the low point of my travels, although there was also a strange sense of relief.
When I came out of hospital, I felt a sense of numbness in my face. I was walking past King's Cross tube station where a lot of junkies and down-and-outs hang out. I gave them my last £2 and thought that things could be worse. I returned to my family home in Dublin to take things easy and put my life back together piece by piece. This was Christmas 1996.
For quite some time, I was imprisoned by feelings of negativity and inward aggression. I had the complete belief that I had no business trying to succeed at anything.
Things started to change for me in the most unusual way. I was playing in a chess competition against a doctor in the Mater hospital. Our game lasted 17 hours over three different days, so during that time we got to know each other quite well. In the end, he offered me a job on the condition that I attended an interview with two other directors. I failed completely to get on with these people, so that was that.
Some time later, the doctor phoned me again to say that the job was still on offer if I was interested. This is how I started working here. In the beginning, I made some incredible mistakes and I drove the staff mad. After two months, I resigned. However, I was frequently invited into the office to sort out any problems on the computer system, make calls to France or Germany for the company or even to play a game of chess. Then, that same doctor (who is now the medical director of the Wellman Clinic) put me on some medication for anxiety and depression. From that time, things have gradually got better.
I wouldn't say medication is the answer but it is part of the jigsaw. I came back to work. And now I'm getting back in contact with some of the people I knew years ago. I look back on those years of depression like I was in some sort of prison. I cope a lot better nowadays. I avoid moaners, whingers and manipulators like the plague. When people are depressed, they can be badly used by such people which adds to their own negativity. I have made other changes in my life. I don't work as hard as I did but I achieve double what I used to. I appreciate colour a lot more in the last couple of years and have renovated my room with a bright yellow and white.
WE SEE a lot of depression here in the clinic. It is something that needs to be viewed in the long term and it can recur at any time. Men often don't do anything about their health until it's too late. In my case, I didn't realise that I was suffering from depression until I really reached a crisis. Personally, I see myself as free from depression now, although there is always the danger that I will be caught again. When depression has its grip, you lose the ability to see the world in any other way. But, when you're out of it, the exhilaration is just incredible. If anyone feels they are depressed, I would suggest they should take a bit of a holiday from their everyday reality. Quite often, we are juggling a lot of balls in life. When we step back, we realise that they are still going around on their own. Secondly, I would advise anyone to seek professional advice and guidance and keep in touch with their doctor, because relapse can happen very easily.
In conversation with Sylvia Thompson
The Wellman Clinic can be contacted on 01-8600364. Its website is http://indigo.ie/wellman