I was mixed-up
It was the end of the university term. God knows how I'd got through that term. I spent a lot of it in abject depression, weeping my eyes out for the love of a girl I'd left in France over the summer, smoking too many cigarettes and getting high on whatever was to hand: cough medicine, nutmeg, DMT and plenty of booze. Towards the end I would wake up hallucinating, my shaking body manoeuvring itself casually over to the whisky bottle, maybe pausing to sit on the edge of the bed and cry. But the worst thing was the paranoia.

Radio 1 was talking to me, my whole life was known to all my friends and acquaintances, people were whispering behind my back and hate was in the air. So to the end of term. I supposed I would be picked up and taken home if not hospitalised by those determined to blunt my awareness by force-feeding me drugs that stiffened my brain and my body. I decided to get over to France, see this girl. Maybe I thought radio 1 had suggested it. I travelled late at night and once a car passed me and I thought it made a ravens croak as it passed. I had been reading a lot of Edgar Allen Poe and things had gone very eerie.

Getting off the train at Euston, morale was low and I was confused, all the messages to my brain from everything around me were conflicting, I feared for my soul in this faraway place where I was absolutely alone yet surrounded by people and things recognising me in all my possible guises, which was scary. I bought a coffee for this Rasta guy and asked him to score some reefer, which was always on the agenda. He led me away and his hustler speech worsened things. He understood me, he told me about things in my life (and about how he'd been in a successful reggae band and made a million and blown it). He led me to kings cross. I got skanked of course. Then again, this time under threat of violence, by someone who was probably the Rasta guy's mate. I was confused again and rather stupidly and inanely standing around in the middle of Kings Cross. People were approaching me, trying to befriend me and I needed to talk to someone so I went of with a scrawny, acne-scarred girl who led me to someone's house steps where some pimp-posse were sitting and smoking weed. Again I was led off, and this time I was completely lost. Me, scrawn-girl and an aggressive girl in a puffa jacket went to some more steps, under some flats. We talked we smoked. We smoked some crack. Aggressive-girl started to feel me up and demand money while scrawn-girl went through my bag. I told them to fuck off and leave me alone and that no money was owed. A knife was pulled out and things got scarier. So I allowed myself to be led to a cash point, where 300 quid was taken off my credit card. Walking to the cash point I could have easily lost them but I didn't, due to crazy superstitions haunting my mind. Free of them, I had to find my bag. On the way I was accosted by numerous prostitutes, one of whom somehow managed to purloin my switch-card. I did find my bag and then somehow got to Dover by hitching and finally a taxi whose driver assured me I was doing an absolutely sensible thing by running away to France.

The boat journey started magnificently. I went up on deck and felt the wind in my hair and all around was sea. Then my credit card got stolen somehow and I left my bag in the lorry driver's bit of the ship and couldn't get back in until over an hour of arguing had finished and they almost kicked me off the ship with instructions to see the British consul in Calais. This I did, after finding out from a local tramp that it was quite possible to get to Paris with no money, travelling by train if you please, with free sandwiches. Somehow I actually went to see the consul though and he told me to get back to England. I fled, but became convinced he had my passport, which I needed to blag my way to Paris. So I returned and scaled the wall up to his window and threw a big rock at it. It broke and I climbed inside. While rifling through his papers I heard a noise and got out fast, jumped down and ran through the streets.

Someone was on my tail. I got about 500 metres and was then rugby tackled by a pedestrian vigilante, who held me down and took me to his office where he called the police. I tried to explain myself and some even feigned sympathy but the police arrived and the handcuffs were locked tightly around my bloody hands. At the police station I was insulted in the very worst French and when I tried to explain myself there was a lot of laughing over how I was going to see my bitch. It ended with being taken home by my parents and going to hospital, where the drugs did work, just about and I was released, only to get up more miserable infamy later on.
(lost, Wed 13 Feb 2008, 21:20, 4 replies)

ahemm...
is that really true? Just that it sounds like something I would do is all. Good story!
(trident, Wed 13 Feb 2008, 21:34, closed)

very true
In my medical notes it says "paranoid schizophrenic" and I take anti-psychotics to this day. The story could have been better - I copied and pasted from a confessional post I made on a message board years ago.
(lost, Wed 13 Feb 2008, 21:47, closed)

Depression
Glad to hear you've gotten through the worst of things. I got pretty depressed at uni, to the point of my personal tutor advising me to ask the GP for anti-depressants after I turned up at her office crying. Fortunately I managed to turn things around for myself (with the help of some good friends).

Take care man.
(ComplexStuff Was confused by life on, Wed 13 Feb 2008, 22:08, closed)

That story...
Was very very interesting, i enjoyed reading it. You told it very well, then when i learned it was true... well, my heart goes out to you!

I've never been in a situation like that, but that story gave me but a little glimpse, thanks :)

Good to see you're doing better now, and wow! Good luck dude.
( Axai is in Montréal, Canada O.o, Wed 13 Feb 2008, 22:12, closed)