I apologise for the shortness of this post in advance. Unfortunately, this week has seen a number of issues arise in my personal life, and hence to say my thoughts are numerous and fragmented would be an understatement. However, before these events here’s a thought or two that came across my mind.

Two weeks ago today I finished secondary school after 8 years. Aside from the expected sadness, there was a thought that I’ve revisited many times since that day. That thought was simple: where am I in life, and what am I doing?

The answer may appear simple: I’ve finished school and I am awaiting A Level results to determine wether I go to university of not. However, it isn’t a simple answer. Going to university has not always been my idea of a path in life.

Do I want to go? I can’t answer. What will I do if I don’t go? I can’t answer, but have an idea of where my life would go in an ideal world (if one existed, and if one does, please let me know where to find it).

Many of my life decisions have been contradictions, and time and time again I’ve found myself lost amongst my own contradictions. For someone who believes to a great extent in historical determinism I so often fail to believe in determinism for my own life.

Perhaps I’m just lost and tired. I don’t know. I’ll find out, even if I’m not aware of it.

Jamie

I've promised to keep this at least quarterly, and I fully intend to honour my promise. However, at the moment I'm incredibly busy with commitments. I therefore offer one thought:

Perhaps one day we will all be in harmony with each other despite our varied interests and the differences that set us apart. Will there ever be  day where we are able to all accept each other for the uniqueness that distinguishes us?  I dream of this world, yet I know I will never see it.










I will expand upon this thought in due course...

Jamie

A year’s experiences.

A year’s experiences.

“Here's to the good times, the bad times, the times that could have been,

to the wrong times, the right times, I know we'll breathe again, until then...”

Prime Circle – 'Breathing'

I've never opened something with song lyrics before, yet I feel it's highly appropriate to start this post with part of my favourite song of all time. In many ways it sums up this year from my perspective. However, it also relates highly to the message of this post. We all have experiences, and from my perspective, this is what this experience has taught me. 

 At the time I'm starting this post it is December 14^th and I'm sat on the fourth floor of Cardiff Library. Any shopping district is busy at this time of year, yet today this part of Cardiff is exceptionally busy, even for a December Saturday. Today the famous Coca-Cola Truck that has become a herald of Christmas is visiting Cardiff, and The Hayes below is full of happy, smiling people. Perhaps it sounds like I'm ever so slightly digressing here, but looking down at the street below makes me wonder what it would be like to always view life in a positive way. Of course, if you were to stop any one of those below and examined their life story, it would be very, very unlikely for anyone of them to have lived their life entirely happy. Everyone has their own story to tell. They'll have good parts and not so good parts, but everyone's life is interesting, even if they don't realise it. Each of them would have had unique experiences throughout their lives, and these have doubtlessly shaped them as an individual.

In my case, 2013 has shaped me as an individual in ways I never thought it could have. As Charles Dickens remarked, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness”. The A Tale of Two Cities quote is one of the best known quotes from English literature, and when considering this year from my perspective, it is a highly relevant analogy. This year has seen times of renewal, joy and happiness; however, it has been an incredibly difficult year in so many ways.

I've mentioned the winter and summer in previous posts, so I'll only post a brief recap. To go into great detail would surely require a long book (not a plug, I don’t have the time to write a full length book as of yet...).

January is a difficult time for many people as a new year dawns, yet my January was exceptionally difficult. January started and I was out of school to recover from Anorexia Nervosa and depression; yet it was still incredibly difficult. The psychiatrists realised that I could not tackle the thoughts that were preventing me from progressing, and they prescribed me the antipsychotic Olanzapine. The next two months were spent practically knocked out due to the effect of the drug, with large food binges as my body cried out for fuel. Most people await their 18^th birthday with great anticipation – I didn't. My 18^th birthday was a rather miserable affair as I was simply too unwell to enjoy it. To my family's credit they did all that they could to make the most of a bad situation, yet I was experiencing extreme sadness, and nothing can change that. It's not a case of being able to 'think positive and the world will be fine'. You're trapped amidst a growing mountain of melancholy and turmoil, and as horrible as the Olanzapine was, perhaps it helped prevent much worse from happening. However, after a holiday to Lanzarote that turned out 'interesting' to say the least, and one that I will write about in much greater detail in future to show how what was supposed to be a positive experience ended up being quite a negative, yet changing experience, things began to change.

The spring and summer of 2013 offered an extreme pathetic fallacy for me with the glorious weather that characterised the spring and summer of 2013. April began a new chapter as I was taken off the antipsychotics. Until the middle of August I enjoyed what was perhaps the best experience of my life, and perhaps it is best that I term this ‘The Grand Summer’ for reasons that will become apparent. I found myself full of energy, able to do 6 – 7 mile walks daily and wanting more. I spent money like there was no tomorrow; I felt on top of the world, taking on many different things; and I felt invincible and reckless, even possibly manic. I spent more time with friends than I ever had done in my life; and even I will admit my behaviour was at times, quite over the top. I deliberately used to see how little sleep I could go on; and took on multiple tasks, arguably, too many. I spent over a £1000, hence 'The Grand Summer', and I found myself experiencing my own little world in which few things could go wrong. As glorious as this may seem was at no point sustainable, and as great as the time felt, if it had continued then I would have almost certainly became gripped by the feeling and ended.

Although this is quite a negative view for what appeared a happy time, that particular experience did help me form qualities I never had before. Combined with the continued cognitive behavioural therapy I developed confidence and self approval of myself. Although it was over the top confidence, it was confidence that I had never had before. It was an unique type of happiness that finally seemed to offer happiness. However, it wasn't the first time that I've had such feelings of euphoria, satisfaction and invincibility. I had such experiences last year, around the February – April time after suffering from depression the year previous. However, that happiness was not as extreme as that I experienced this year, and, somewhat ironically, I enjoyed experiencing loneliness in that time, despite the fact that people became closer to me during this period. Yet this experience still didn't push me to true happiness. Anyway, I'm digressing a bit now...

However, mid August brought about a major change. Perhaps the uncertainties lying over my head finally reached inside my mind and triggered a descent downward, or perhaps the period of happiness ended naturally. When I say downward, I don't just mean the general 'feeling down' that every naturally experiences as part of life. The difference with what I battle is that it takes me down to the very bottom. It's an experience that I wouldn't wish upon my worst enemy. As controversial as anti-depressants are to those who are lucky enough to never have had any experience of them, it's at these times that they help pull me through.

However, perhaps September, October and November were three of the most normal months I have had in a long while. I define normal as lacking the relative over-the-top and rock bottom feelings of the extremities that have characterised my life over the past three or so years. However, even during these periods of normality I'm not stable. I experience fluctuations in my mood, however, these are not as prolonged as the long lasting episodes and can fluctuate wildly from day to day. I particularity remember one day in November when I woke full of energy and happiness, ready to take on the world, yet by the next day I was at the very bottom with incredibly dark thoughts. What had triggered them? As far as I'm aware, nothing. It just happened out of the blue, and it's the uncertainty that is so disconcerting. If I could become aware that I was dropping it could possibly make it easier to cope with; however, their randomness is scary, and catches me off guard.

By November, unfortunately, things had dropped back to rock bottom again. I spare details to prevent triggering; all I will say is that I required in increase in Fluoxetine, and have had to have had deadlines relaxed to ease off non-essential pressures. In the middle of December I had my first psychiatrist appointment since the summer. Although the previous appointment had mostly related to the possibility of me having Aspergers Syndrome, this appointment's focus was changed to calming down the extremities of my moods. Once again I had a new psychiatrist, and this psychiatrist's concern was levelling me out. However, when she wrote out a prescription for Quetiapine I immediately wanted to burst out crying. I knew exactly what that drug was – it was an antipsychotic, and following my experiences of Olanzapine with the weight gain and the relative zombifying qualities of it I refused to take it. My OT contacted the psychiatrist and, to her credit, changed the prescription to Aripiprazole, an antipsychotic they reassured me didn't come with Olanzapine's severity of effects. However, I've only taken it once, and following my negative experiences with Olanzapine, I'm too afraid to take it. Perhaps inside I cling onto the hope that one day I will experience happiness and confidence like that I experienced during the summer, and perhaps I'm afraid of flat-lining and not just not experiencing depression, but also not experiencing the extreme happiness. It was unsustainable, but it was a great experience.

At present I'm coming out of a period of deep depression. Yet people don't realise. I appear normal outside. Indeed, many people see me purely as a person who is always happy and smiling. Inside it's a different story: I experience pain and sadness that drives me to the very bottom and prevents me from living a normal life and experiencing the joys that others do. When looking at the people down below my in the library I didn't experience the festive joy and spirit that so many people did. I sat there in a juxtaposition of misery and sadness. I was experiencing a different world to them, yet we all experience life differently, and it's just who we are.

I suppose that one of the problems I face is that externally at times I can feel fine, yet inside I feel at the absolute bottom. Following a recommendation from someone who has been incredibly supportive during the last year, I recently shed my political disagreements with Alastair Campbell to read up on his work with mental health charities. Whatever your personal views on the politics of Alistair Campbell maybe, his work with mental health charities is commendable, and his book The Happy Depressive helps tackle one of the biggest myths that surrounds depression – that people with depression cannot be happy. I still battle clinical depression, and I probably will do so for the rest of my life. Yet I have spells of happiness, and sometimes these even come in the midst of deep depression. I may have more relatively over the top spells of happiness in the future, I don't know. It wouldn't come as a surprise if I had a further underlying disorder that caused these relatively extreme fluctuations. Yet even in the depths of depression, I can experience happiness. However, it is fleeting, and it cannot offset the darkness that surrounds the mind at these times. I know that I probably will have various mental health issues for the rest of my life, yet with time I trust I will eventually learn to cope with them, and I'm determined to achieve my own personal goals.

At the time of writing this I've just dealt with a major episode of severe depression, except this one was different than the previous episodes. This episode, quite ironically, seemed to come with a side of relatively over-the-top behaviour at times. Although nowhere near as extreme as the summer during these periods I have felt invincible, ready to take on anything thrown at me and more. Yet these have ended almost as quickly as they have begun and I quickly return to rock bottom. They were fleeting glimpses, yet, once again, they were unsustainable.

Fall all the struggles I've faced, and indeed, continue to face, I feel that this year has taught me a lot about the nature of life. I'm unwell, I can't help that. My GP has told me on several occasions about people who have been on anti-depressants for large parts of their lives, and I fully expect to be one. I will probably need antipsychotics at certain times for the rest of my life too. I experience the top and bottom at random, and I can't control that. As negative as that sounds this whole year of ups and downs has taught me many things. My own personal experiences have arguably been the largest contributor to the person I am now. Following all of this I'm a new and better person for this experience. Everyone's life is an experience, and this is just my own personal experience.

13 is an unlucky number for some, whilst it is a lucky number for others. This year and my experiences have changed multiple aspects of my life. Everyone around you has had their own unique set of experiences, and it is those experiences that have shaped them as individuals. I end on a final note. To all those who I haven't seen recently who have helped me along the way this last year, I wish you could see me now.

ADDENDUM: By the way, I don’t have a delay between the time I complete work and posting, this was finished on Monday 23^rd December 2013, over a week after it was started.

A quarterly affair.

When I started writing this blog back in March I intended it to be something that I updated fairly frequently to be of benefit to those suffering from eating disorders and other mental health problems. Of course, the best laid plans never work out as intended, and in terms of post frequency this blog has evolved into an unofficial quarterly affair for those who do read it, mostly the search-bots that scour the internet (hey, I'm sure they like my writing, and if not they can't complain...). By quarterly I mean every three months (twelve divided by four is three and all that...).

Anyway, it's the thirtieth of September today and I'm left pondering just how fast this year has gone. Of course, this year has been significant for me in many ways, and how it has been the most defining point in my life so far.

Let's have a recap of this time last year. I'm not going to go into much detail as I have previously explained this period in my first post. However, it was just over a year ago that I first went to the doctors as I couldn't take it anymore. I was mentally unwell, and my physical state was starting to decline. It was eight o'clock on a September morning and I was cold – very cold. I was turning purple just stood around outside the doctors surgery waiting for it to open as I had nothing to protect me from the low temperatures. I would sum up what I thought of that initial meeting, but I've decided to keep my language on here clean. All that came out of that meeting was that I was suffering from 'low mood', and I remember one of the useful suggestions that the doctor gave was 'to take up exercise' to boost mood – what a fantastic suggestion for someone with Anorexia Nervosa...

Anyway, overtime my condition worsened and eventually I was left as a fragile skeleton days away from collapse and hospitalisation by the time of my first appointment, and if I hadn't been seen, I was certainly weeks away from death. A few days prior in that dismal mid-November I was taken out of school as I simply was too unwell to attend. What followed from there could have an entire book written about it (don't give me ideas...) as I faced the turmoil of resisting my mind as I struggled to recover, but I've briefly touched upon it in my previous post, and I will probably write a more detailed account of that time in the future. By May I was discharged from CAMHS to the adult services, pretty much unrecognisable to how I was before, not just physically as weight-restored, but the strongest I've ever been mentally. Not only had I started to learn how to deal with my eating disorder and dark thoughts, but for the first time ever I had began to develop the social skills I had always lacked. Perhaps most importantly for me, I began to learn about who I am, and why I'm the way that I am. To quote my CAMHS psychiatric nurse, I'm starting to find out why I'm 'a square peg in a round hole.'

I last updated this blog back in June on a journey from Cardiff to Swindon, prior to the summer. I had mixed emotions about the summer as some many things were going to change once it was over. Not only would I be back in school instead of going to university, I was also going to lose all the friends that I had cared for, and that had cared for me back.

 

In reality, as the summer transpired, I really couldn't have asked for a better time. Call it a pathetic fallacy if you will, but the almost unbroken sun of this summer has coincided with what has arguably been the most glorious period of my life. Not only have I finally spent the time with the friends who I have neglected for so long, and then got removed from, but I have made many new excellent friends. I've done many things that I have always wanted to do: I've gone to parties, gone out with friends amongst others. Above all, I've had a great time. Following a decision in May that I did want to go to prom to have at least one solid night out with everyone that I've known (that and who doesn't like wearing a suit? I need more excuses to wear one more often, though, not for court cases preferably) I went. I've been out with my friends numerous times, and I've been loving life. I've got a volunteer job that I love doing, and one that has provided me with many skills that I did not have before. I had a nice trip away to Norfolk with a friend, and witnessed what was one of the most glorious sunsets that I have ever seen, and one that I would never have seen if I didn't recover. In a metaphorical sense I suppose it felt like the sunset of the old me giving way to a new period of my life, but that's just me over thinking things again...

Of course, it wasn't always a great time. In particular August 15^th (A Level results day) wasn't an easy day for me. What should have been my day to bask in achievement ended up being a day where I spent most of the time watching all my friends achieve (mind you, if it all went better I suppose it was better than the inevitable sorrow if it all went badly). Don't get me wrong, I was enormously proud of them, but I felt like I was missing out on what should have been my day to celebrate. I felt incredible sadness as they were all preparing to move on to the next stage of their lives whilst I was left behind in the same environment for another year. It had played on my mind greatly for the previous few weeks, and it had almost brought me to one of the lowest points of my life as I struggled with incredibly bad thoughts.

On that night I went out with friends to celebrate their results, and looking back I have achieved something this last year that I never thought I could achieve. I'm mentally stronger than I ever have been at any point in my life. I'm physically well, and apart from the occasional bad days, I mostly enjoy life. I'm no longer the loner who keeps himself to himself and suffers enormous paranoia and lack of social confidence. All these qualities were the things that I have always wanted, and I now have them, and surely that's all I could have asked for. True, I may not have achieved A Levels this year, and it's more of a qualitative result rather than a quantifiable value like a grade, but I've achieved a state of physical and mental wellbeing that is arguably much more difficult than any exam could ever be, and that deserves celebration.

The following  weeks were a period of mixed and hard emotions for me. On the one hand I was out with friends all the time enjoying life to the full; however, on the other hand the overbearing thought in my mind was that the next month of my life was to be incredibly difficult, and a test to my recovery so far. I was about to lose those who I was closest to as they progressed onto university. I would miss them all, but for me the biggest upset was that I wasn't doing the same. I wanted a fresh start to life, and university seemed like the perfect opportunity to achieve that. Indeed, the first week of September wasn't a good one for me. I missed most of my scheduled lessons as I just felt too awful to attend. Instead, I lay in bed or just went on long walks on my own to ruminate in my own thoughts - those dark thoughts had returned with a vengeance; and events in other areas of my life really brought me down to rock bottom again. I did try to write a post then, but I couldn't motivate myself to as I genuinely felt that low.

Three weeks later however, and I feel back on top of the world again. Amazingly, this isn't something you hear very often, but I love being back in school! Lewis School Pengam is one of the most supportive places you're ever likely to find, not just through the staff, but through the pupils as well, something that you wouldn't think about an all boys school in the heart of the valleys. The pupils I have met have been amazing, and I feel like I'm part of not just a community again, but almost a large family again. I now truly what an amazing place I've been in all these years despite the one or two whose sole purpose of being there seemed to be there to make my life a misery. On the staff note, I really couldn't ask for more supportive staff, all of whom are incredibly understanding to the difficulties I still face. I owe a lot to the school for being there when I needed them most, and they continue to stand behind me even though I'm in a much better place than I was before.

My friends from last year may have progressed onto a new chapter of their life, and next year, I'm determined to join them. I'm no saint by any definition. I still get days where I relapse into old thoughts and behaviours, but now I'm mentally stronger than I've ever been in my entire life, and I'm ready for the next chapter in my story.

For anyone who suffers from any difficulty, especially with mental health problems, as hard as it may seem to be to believe, life gets better.

Jamie

Thoughts from Coach D of the 10:25 Cardiff Central to London Paddington service.

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It's now been over three months since I wrote the first post on this blog. At the time I was intending to update it regularly to help other unfortunate people in a similar position to myself through their own personal battles. However, these three months have been rather hectic for me in many ways, and like every good blogger I've kept my mouth shut and haven't updated this since. Yet, I feel this is an appropriate time for an update.

First of all, you'll have to forgive the truly atrocious grammar on display in the opening post of this blog. It was a piece that was never really completed. Originally it was something that I wrote for ED Awareness week in February, but I never got around to finishing it. Part of the reason was is that it was really hard to sum up what I wanted to say. There were so many things I wanted to talk about, yet I just couldn't work out how to fit them all in, so I left it. It sat around on my Mac until mid-March gathering virtual dust not doing anything. One afternoon I went down the school and spoke to two of my teachers, and they said how people were wondering how I was and what was wrong with me. I decided that I could no longer really cover what I had been going through, and decided to just be myself and be completely honest about what really had been happening to me. I hadn't won the lottery and moved to Saint Lucia to top up on my tan whilst sipping martinis. The truth was, I had an eating disorder (and OCD, an anxiety disorder and depression, but they were caused by my Anorexia Nervosa). So I decided to be honest and just say the truth to them. Thankfully, everyone I know is incredibly intelligent and understanding, so like the top student I am, I found something that I wrote before and copied and pasted it straight onto the blog, and just posted it on Facebook to the people who I trusted the most. The only reason I didn't post it to everyone was because I was still anxious about everyman and his dog knowing how seriously ill I was. I was overwhelmed by the support that my friends gave me, and this is the reason why I believe that with any mental health problem, not just eating disorders, it's always best to open up to those closest to you. You'll be surprised by just how caring people really are!

Anyway it's now almost halfway through the year, and I'm completely unrecognisable to how I was just six months ago. My whole physical, and most importantly, my whole mental health has never been as good as it now. Weight wise I'm now bang on a healthy weight at a BMI of approximately 22. Climbing the stairs is no longer an issue for me; I can walk medium-long distances relatively quickly again easily (this time, fuelled by energy of course!); and I no longer get blown about in the wind.

Mentally I've never been as well as I am now. The whole depression and dark thoughts that plagued my life for months on end have now gone away, and I'm enjoying life more than I ever have done before. For the first time in my life I now have a relatively clear(ish!) path that I wish to take in life, and I'm now confident for that I can achieve it. Few would argue it's an exciting plan, unless the statistic that in 1800 there were twice as many doctors in Berlin per head than there were in the surrounding countryside gets your heart racing; but it's what I want to do.

In terms of how my recovery has gone, as much I would have liked to have said it was easy, I'm going to be completely honest again and say that it has been anything but! As anyone with a restrictive eating disorder will tell you, you want to be free of the horrible s**t in your head who prevents you from enjoying and living your life, but it's incredibly daunting. Every extra calorie sets your anxiety sky high; you will feel depressed as the bubble that protected your eating disorder from the world slowly bursts; and you will struggle from time to time. However, at the end, it's worth every upset, every tear and it's worth every second as the melancholic skeleton that you have become slowly becomes a healthy, strong and beautiful body again. Unfortunately the catch-22 with eating disorders is that to improve your mental state and cognitive functioning you must eat to provide your body with what it requires to rebuild itself, yet, your mental state does its utmost best to prevent you from doing so. An excellent analogy that I have seen by an inspiring male anorexic is that an eating disorder can be likened to an abusive lover. It takes you in saying 'I will love you', yet slowly destroys you mentally and physically, yet you're unable to escape as it says 'you're not good enough for anyone else, only I love you, everyone else hates you'. Of course, this isn't helped by the amount of catastrophic thinking that eating disorder sufferers exhibit. Every extra calorie seems a mountain for you to overcome, every fear food an obstacle. Shall I tell you what happens to a normal person when they eat a biscuit with their cup of tea? What happens is that the extra sixty calories goes into their body, makes very little difference to their total intake for that day, and it comes back out again about twenty-four hours late. They don't just pop up like an inflatable balloon! You only become overweight and fat if your total calorie intake exceeds the total energy you expend over a prolonged period of time, over many years in fact! As someone who was once clinically obese, I would never blame overweight people for being overweight, as it's an easy thing to become in this society of ours (if you want to hear what I think of modern food habits, or indeed, society in general, I can probably write an entire dissertation if you wanted me to...). One banana doesn't equal man tits, just as two and two doesn't equal thirty!

In any case, if you're getting help with your struggle, the last thing that your dietitian and workers will do is let you become overweight! The whole aim is weight restoration, not becoming fat! Something interesting that many people have observed is how a whole cognitive shift occurs as you recover and your body and mind begins to heal. When I first saw the CAMHS team I was petrified that I would emerge as the whole sixteen stone five 'fatty' I would be before. I didn't. I'm now bang on a healthy weight for the first time in years, and my confidence in my body and how I appear has never been so strong. Nobody can love you if you don't love yourself people! I don't mean to the extent that you build a little shrine to yourself and get people to come around everyday to worship and praise you, but to just have some confidence and pride in who you are!

Confidence and pride brings me onto what will be my last point, as I have no doubt I just appear like a mad tramp going off on one at this point! Anorexia Nervosa is fuelled by low self-confidence and low self-esteem. When I wanted to lose weight I thought to myself that I was too fat to be cared for by anyone. I thought that I only had a few friends, and felt that I could not be loved by friends or family because of it. What a load of b*llocks! I never realised just how many people really did care for me! Once again it's a classic example of thinking catastrophically. Some people think negatively and are horrible about those who are overweight, yet none of my friends think that way. Neither does most of society. Yes, people make fat jokes. That's part of life. Yet very few actually mean it. The people who could never care for someone because of their appearance are the people you wouldn't want to be friends with in the first place! Those people are called a word that rhymes with 'bats'. On the subject of friends, to anyone with anorexia nervosa I just urge you to think about all the times that you have missed out with because of your disorder. How many parties you turned down because you were embarrassed about the way you look, or were fearful of how much you could possibly consume; the trips out to eat because you'll become fat; or the all the good times you miss out on simply because you wish to be kept in that safe bubble of yours where the world cannot hurt you. I've missed out on too many to count. It's something that I will always regret. However, I have committed myself to several parties, the school prom, and a trip to an all you can eat with one of my classes. Why? BECAUSE I DON'T WANT TO MISS OUT ON LIFE AND TIMES WITH THE PEOPLE I CARE ABOUT FOR ANY LONGER!

Caps lock rage over, I only have about three months to see most people before they go away to study in university, leaving me in the rainy paradise that is the Rhymney Valley. I'm never going to be able to catch up on all the times that I have missed with them, however, provided they don't mind of course, I'm not going to miss anymore time with them!

That's about it really. We're just passing Royal Wootton Bassett now, and I'm getting off at Swindon (off the train that is, not off with someone...). I just thought instead of being one of those journeys where I do nothing but stare out the windows with music blasting, or try out First Great Western's relaxation techniques, that I actually wrote something that may benefit others, and help others see the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel. All I can say is, it gets better as you get better people!

If anyone wishes to contact me about anything that I've been through, and have links to excellent communities which encourage recovery and talk about having life with an eating disorder, feel free to drop me a line!

Cuidate!
Jamie L W 

(N.B I did just copy and paste this in from Open Office without checking it, if there are any errors, sorry!) 

About me.

Please note: I am fully aware of the many grammatical errors in this post. When I was writing this post many months ago I was a in very poor frame of mind, and I just wanted to get my story out there. Many months later reviewing this post I have taken the decision NOT to correct these errors. I feel that correcting these errors would be contrary to the whole point of the post, which was to get my story out there as fast as I could to try and offer support for those unfortunate to be in similar circumstances.

My name is Jamie. I'm a 5 foot 11 17 year old male from South Wales who aspires to study history at university. However, I haven't always had an easy scholar life. I was always a bit of a loner who was bullied constantly from multiple sources in school, with one of the reasons being my obese weight and my low self esteem. The fact that I have an autistic spectrum disorder further means I never really fitted in with people at school, despite having several really good friends, but I just didn't realise it at the time.

Back in September 2011 I was starting AS levels after a lonely and boring summer. I had only seen my friends from school once over the summer, and apart from an excellent and supportive friend who I know from outside of school, I had spent the entire summer lonely. Due to comfort eating and mild depression my weight had risen to 16 stone 5 and I was deeply unhappy with myself. Returning to school I was deeply unhappy with how I was compared to everyone else, and I decided to finally do something about it, and I chose to begin losing weight. Without even researching at first how to lose weight at first I immediately began restricting food intake and exercising, allowing myself two slices of toast with a small portion of low fat olive oil spread with one glass of apple juice for breakfast; a banana for lunch on a 'good' day, and a piece of fish or chicken with beans in the evening, filling myself up on water to try and prevent hunger. Alongside this I took advantage of the free sixth form periods and began doing 1 – 2 hours running intensively on the spot at home during the day when my parents and brother weren't around. The weight began dropping off at around 4lbs a week, but unlike dieting where it slows after a few weeks, this rate didn't slow down, and by December 2011 I had dropped to 12st 8lbs. My parents were extremely concerned, yet I chose to ignore them in favour of the 'voice'. My bullying had calmed down to an extent in school, and some were praising me for my losses; but I wasn't happy. A sign something was wrong was when I went on a geography field trip to a river in that month,where in the snow and freezing water, on 300 calories that day the inevitable happened, and I collapsed into the river. Yet I didn't take this as a sign that something was seriously wrong. Over Christmas week last year when everyone was enjoying themselves, I was out exercising in the morning on brisk walks in the cold, and restricting to soups in the day, dropping another 2lbs over the week.

I spent the entire Christmas holiday revising for a geography exam, which despite having 100 UMS in I was deeply unhappy with myself. However, I was also experiencing one of the common side effects of starvation, which is euphoria, kidding myself that everything was alright. My diet didn't alter much, changing to a salad roll at lunch time and vegetables for tea.

This pattern continued to April where I closely restricted, and carefully 'rationed' out food such as chocolates for my birthday, and only allowing myself to eat out of the house if I had lost weight that week; with the excessive exercising continuing. Once again my diet had changed, with lunch now consisting of a salad and a slice of bread and a thin cold cut of meat for lunch, and a small dinner. Apart from 2 glasses of skimmed milk in the morning (an obsession), I refused to consume liquid calories, even when it was obvious my blood sugar levels were low (my unpronounced record being a non fasting glucose level of 2.3). Yet as a consequence of my photography which requires a lot of physical energy, carrying heavy photography equipment around hills for up to 10 hours a day on Saturdays, a consequence was that on these days I tended to 'binge' as I viewed it, though looking back through the benefit of hindsight they only came to around 2400 calories per day. But the next day I would feel awful from it, and I would restrict heavily, starving myself from after a small Sunday lunch around mid-day to Monday morning. From the first week of April I locked myself inside the house revising for my AS levels, apart from an hour long brisk walk in the morning to satisfy the 'voice'. I revised solidly for 10 hours a day, not allowing myself breaks, with the consequence that my concentration was terrible, I had problems remembering things and I was deeply unhappy. I was withdrawn from all my friends and I was terrified of piling on weight from no activity.


After the exams my depression was terrible, now mostly down to the starvation that was occurring. I didn't want to be around anyone, spending as little time in school as was possible. My diet was changed again, as I began replacing more 'solid' foods with low calorie vegetables. My spare time, which I had a lot of, was spent researching food and nutritional information, basically with the sole intention of scaring myself off certain foods, until in the end my fat, carbohydrate, sugar and salt intakes were as low as I could get them. This summer I only saw one friend, who isn't even from my school. I lost all tolerance for the people around me, and wanted little to do with them despite them being excellent people. When I went on holiday abroad for the first time to Portugal I was constantly worried about my food intake and exercise level, only eating salads and fresh fish, with the consequence being on my first holiday abroad I spent the evenings wandering around an area of a country where I couldn't speak the language and didn't know anyone to be away from my family and sink back into my thoughts. When I had my AS levels back I had AAB, the B in my favourite subject history was only five marks off an A in what I can only say was a horrible exam, and despite the fact I had the highest in the school, even higher than someone who went to Oxford to study history several years back. Yet I felt worthless because of it; the one subject I enjoy the most and I thought I was crap at it, causing my depression to worsen. Once again instead of celebrating with food I only allowed myself a first trip to Nando's, my safe option of chicken.

It's at this point I would like to clear one of the myths surrounding Anorexia Nervosa, that people just don't eat. The average intake of a person with Anorexia Nervosa is 600 – 800 calories. With that you could technically eat a Big Mac, or 6 slices of bread. The extreme cases such as those who only eat an apple or less a day are the ones you hear of because they unfortunately don't tend to make it through recovery. I had lists of safe foods (basically any vegetables with the exception of starchy veg such as potatoes and carrots, with white meat and fish with wholemeal bread for safe carbs) and bad foods (basically fruits including apples for their sugar content and practically everything else). On my 'treat' day I would even allow myself something like a plain McFlurry, provided I exercised excessively after it or restricted heavily to compensate. Anorexia Nervosa isn't an eating problem in the sense that it's a physiological disorder. Also, people with Anorexia Nervosa do not dislike food. One of the side affects of starvation as noted in the Minnesota Starvation Experiment by Ancel Keys, the bloke who demonised saturated fat (basically the anti-christ of everything that tastes nice) is how obsessed people become with food when starved. I spent hours reading menus and calorie and nutritional information of restaurants I'm never going to go to, and playing around on KFC and McDonald's nutritional calculators of combinations I would never touch. In short, my life became consumed by food.


By September I felt rock bottom. I was frequently feeling suicidal, being fatigued, melancholic, withdrawn and suffered from a serious lack of motivation and concentration. I didn't want to be with friends in school, with some seaming to realise something was seriously wrong with me, although they could have put it better than 'why have you lost more weight, just eating a McDonalds'! It was all becoming too much for me, and I spent evenings crying on my own in my room. It was only then I decided to ask for help as I realised if I continued like this I would have ended up dead. Against 'the voice' in my head telling me that nothing was wrong I went and asked for help. My father was extremely concerned about me, and he quickly got me to the doctors. In the meeting she was vague about details, but said she would put a CAMHS referral in for me, which was dated for December 4^th and despite it being obvious in hindsight that I was suffering from a serious eating disorder, she only recorded me as 'suffering with mood'! It seemed as if she was implying that the reason for me losing half my body weight in no time at all was because I was a bit grumpy... All the time I was getting worse, with me experiencing more distressing and dangerous thoughts, and I felt close to fainting frequently as I continued to restrict heavily as I couldn't bring myself to eat for fear of gaining weight. We told the school and they provided a councillor for me, and put in another CAMHS referral. Yet still the appointment wasn't brought forward despite 2 more visits to the GP and more referrals. It was only after a very bad depressive episode after work experience in October half term where I will be honest and say I put a knife to my throat and threatened my family that we basically contacted CAMHS directly. They finally brought the date forward. Then in November I had a breakdown in school in English, and I was forcibly withdrawn from school, and have been off school as seriously ill since then.


When I went for a meeting with them I spent double the allocated time with them, and they brought in a doctor from a meeting as they were concerned with my symptoms. I was showing signs of severe starvation, my weight 9 stone 3, my blood pressure very low and showing signs of severe damage to my body as a consequence of the starvation. At the follow up meeting I lost another pound and the doctor basically said looking at my daily intake I was taking around 900 calories on average, and that if I lost another pound by the following week he would have no choice but to section me over Christmas. Yet only then did someone finally say to me that I suffered from Anorexia Nervosa (and OCD, anxiety and depression, with a very high probability of suffering from an autistic spectrum disorder).

It's at this point I would like to address people's misunderstandings about OCD. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder isn't just obsession with things such as cleanliness, but it an anxiety disorder that compels people to perform rituals to avoid situations that they would find distressing, in my case, gaining weight. My entire day was planned from when I got out of bed at 06.26 in the morning until I went to bed at 21:14, with specific meal times and times when I would go to the toilet. For years before the onset of my Anorexia I also had the feeling that made me think that if I didn't perform certain rituals in my everyday life something awful would happen, such as a family member would die. It seems ridiculous when looking back over it, but this is what OCD forces you to do.

That scare I'm trying to use as the force for change for me. With basically no other choice I was forced to eat 1500 – 2000kcal daily, but even still I was rushed into hospital 4 days before Christmas for vital tests to ensure that it wasn't likely that I wouldn't pop my clogs over Christmas. I was prescribed Fluoxetine (aka Prozac) to treat the depression, anxiety and OCD. I couldn't return to school in January, with my family now realising the seriousness of the problem when I went on a day out with my father and began crying and threatening to hurt myself all because I had a small portion of fish and chips where I didn't know the calorific value. My weight only increased by a pound over Christmas, and following my refusal to eat I was put on Olanzapine to basically force me to gain weight.

Nowadays I spent most of the time zonked out on cloud nine thanks to the Olanzapine. I am now close to a minimum healthy weight for my height and build (11 stone). However, the psychological aspect of my disorder is as strong as ever, and if it wasn't for the medication I would be in my old habits. Nowadays I tend eating wise to be on the other end of the eating spectrum. I find myself binging often as my starved and destroyed body seeks to repair the millions of calories worth of damage it has been done. I'm basically forced by the dietitian to eat 3000 – 4000 calories a day to repair the damage done to me. I miss all my friends from school, and I wish I could say sorry to them for how I become as my illness took over me.

I am writing this because the subject of male anorexia seems to be taboo amongst people, but it shouldn't be. It could happen to any unfortunate person. However, I'm lucky to have the supportive family and friends that I have. I urge any person suffering from eating problems to seek help, it may just save your life like it did to mine.