I first started to feel depressed around 2 years ago, in this time I was working and living many miles from my hometown, Sunderland, in Medway, Kent. I would describe myself as a normal lads lad, drink plenty of pints, dabble in a few substances and generally be a nuisance from time to time, I went to Sunderland games whenever funds allowed, which was a canny bit, where my mates and myself would get bladdered on trains, again have a bit marching powder and play up to the typical football fan stereo type.
Also at this time I was working full time as a youth worker, and I think I was a pretty good one actually, didnt get a lot of negative feedback over this time at all, and socially I ran a football club called The White Horse, where I set up a reserves team too to expand the club. The club was quite successful, being promoted and winning a cup in my last season, while the ressies under my good friend, Gary, more than held their own. Myself and Gary also ran a Sunday team of under 18's, who were actually under 17's called Rochester City who again, I enjoyed being a part of and we had a fairly successful season after a frankly fucking terrible start. Through this time watching and helping a few of the young lads develop and even regularly play for The White Horse teams on a Saturday was a great buzz for me, to see them learn how I feel is the right way to play was class, I felt that I left a bit of a legacy at those 2 clubs and at present I miss them at times.
Although I was always busy doing this and that, mostly around football or with my wife, Alex and our quite wide group of mates I felt very isolated and alone, even surrounded by 25 plus mates at football, getting on very well with work collegues, who I loved working with, I started to self harm, just a little bit, and found that this gave me a quick release from the mental stresses, or so I thought they were at the time. After a while and feeling more and more alone and 'down' and having a chat with Alex I decided to go to see our local GP. On my first visit he sort of just dismissed me out of hand as going through a phase. I went back a couple of months later and I was put on a course of Amitriptyline, little blue pills, they basically made me want to fight the world and ended up with me on more than one occasion getting into fights with people while out with friends, again I visited the doctor and he decided that I would be given some extra help through telephone conversations with a psychiatrist. The first session lasted 45 minutes and it was just really a routine load of questions about what I enjoyed and what my daily routine was, from this she called me again and told me to 'do more stuff I enjoy' and keep a mood diary and 'see how I get on'. The psychiatrist never rang again and I felt that I should just deal with it myself and try and pick myself up through my own means.
By my own means would generally end up with me sitting in The White Horse on a Saturday early evening after a match (normally a win!!), drinking a few too many pints of Guiness and then going home and arguing with Alex about wanting to go out/ going out with some of the football lads and taking a few drugs and ending up in scraps. As I was doing this I knew that it wasn't the right thing to do and that it was detrimental to my health, the turning point was when I bought 3 grammes of powder and took them on my own in the pub while no one else was on it. It felt like some days like a Thursday say, I would be buzzing for the weekend, I wouldnt sleep and I would be fidgety and desperate to keep going and doing stuff, this would carry into the weekend and id chase that natural high with narcotics and booze, for a time I fucking loved it but then I found that instead of one day hangovers it was taking me 3 or 4 days to get over a drinking session, I felt 'detatched' from my own self, it was as if I wasn't me, it was then, late in my time in Kent, that I began hearing 'chitter-chatter' voices in the back of my mind, this isn't something that really came to the fore until after we had decided to move back to the north east and Alex had already left and I was staying with friends for a couple of weeks, in which time I spent a lot of time alone, I lied to work about something or other and left 2 weeks earlier than I was supposed to and moved up to Hexham.
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