My brother is about to hit a manic phase. He says the first sign is that his heart has started beating hard at night. So hard, in fact, that he can look down at his chest and see it palpitating. I tell him that he is imagining this. He agrees, he is exaggerating a bit, but he insists he can still see the palpitations. One can still that something else — some psychological trigger — has set him off. But it’s fairly clear that the first manifest stage of the descent (or, rather, ascent) into his psychosis is bio-(or neuro-)chemical. It starts with his nervous system, with his heart.
Between 15th May – 7th July, he was in hospital during a moderately severe manic episode. Since then he has been intermmittently depressed. There were three periods of depression he says — lasting 3 weeks, 10 days, and 2 weeks respectively. Now, after briefer periods of feeling blissfully “normal,” he is getting agitated, mildly florid, very afraid. Something is happening to him, and he knows what it is. Or thinks he does.
His psychiatrist, Professor Owens, disagrees. He says Archie is having anxiety (not hypomanic) attacks. He says Archie is doing well, and doing the right thing. Having not slept the night before last, Archie gave himself 50mg (five tablets) of the mood stabiliser/sedative, pericyazine. At their meeting today, Prof Owens tells my brother that Pericyazine is his friend. Over time, as he increasingly learns to manage his illness, Archie will, he says, come to see it like Beechams powder, treating a kind of severe cold. Last night the hallucinations began to set in. He saw a great, shadowy insect crawling up the curtains, and faces coming out of the wallpaper. It’s like getting the DTs, he says, and it turns out it’s the first night for a while he hasn’t had a drink. He’s not sure if the perizyazine helps brings on the hallicunations. He suspects they would be worse without it. His thoughts became more and more “analytical,” he says. “I can’t help myself trying to work out what’s happening.” He suddenly has a vision of getting ill again, and what that means. He fell asleep at about 3.30am.
Today he breaks down over the phone as he tells me about it. It’s the idea of pericyazine being his friend, “of being so close to a fucking drug.” He didn’t tell Professor Owens about the hallucinations, because he didn’t want “to worry him.” The meeting was a good one. Then he says he wasn’t deceiving him, because the pericyazine was what he needed to take anyway. And, he didn’t want to lose his driving license. He only just got it back. He goes to the gym to keep himself awake so that he sleeps properly tonight. He thinks he can control his heart.
