brainbomb excerpt:

the HIGHER end of the bipolar scale. good moods and optimism soar into elation. uncontrollable elation.

When I dip into whatever the priest is rambling about I hear, I am the resurrection, and the light, and assume he’s referencing The Stone Roses. I feel as if I truly am in the presence of God. This certainty lasts until I sense the remorseless onslaught of the hangover that has been lurking like a mugger suddenly enveloping me with the ferocity of trodding on a booby trap.

HIGH CHURCH 

​May 1990
 
After going to bed at 3 am I’m up again by 7 am. Emptying the remnants of a wine bottle, I finish writing the short story I started last night. Deciding my ending’s rubbish, I tear the A4 sheets into shreds, tossing them into the air like confetti. Ten minutes later I’m attempting to piece together the jigsaw of the destroyed manuscript, a task made thankless by my sluggish vision. I give up. Rummaging through packets of photographs stuffed in a drawer, I unearth a photo of me from 1982. Here I’m going through my Mark E Smith fanboy phase, complete with a grey blazer and argyle pattern tank-top. This was taken at a stag party for a colleague when I worked for Scottish Widows, my first full-time job. I recall a muted affair, tequila slammers and ogling pole-dancers replaced by lukewarm pints of McEwan’s Export and darts in a rugby social club. Perhaps the only stag do in history to feature a game of dominos. The most raucous part of the long evening was when someone scrawled “I suck knobs” on the prospective groom’s Adidas t-shirt in white chalk from the dartboard.

Struggling against the tremors coursing through my fingertips, I remove the other hard-partying insurance clerks to leave a gurning close-up of me. I pop this inside the letter I’ve composed to Cathy Dennis. I’m in my mid-20s but like some starstruck teen, I’ve decided to send her fanmail. While her music, chart-friendly House, is the polar opposite to what I’m otherwise listening to these days – post-punk, Madchester, or techno – her face and figure are alluring. And I’m sure her stage persona and sultry looks, balanced with affable smiles, are an indication of her approachability. She will answer correspondence personally. So the main thrust of my letter is to ask her to drop by whenever she’s touring Scotland.

Inviting a popstar to join me for drinks in The Balmoral in Dalry Road is by far the least eccentric of my planned activities for this morning. Forgetting to add a stamp as I poke the envelope into the post-box around the corner, I now make my way for St Mary’s, the Episcopalian cathedral whose three tall Gothic spires dominate Edinburgh’s West End. As I head towards Haymarket, the trio of steeples growing ever closer, I contemplate the reasons why people all over the globe congregate on their respective places of worship: church, mosque, chapel, synagogue, temple or forest clearing within convenient hugging distance of the nearest tree. There are times calling for celebration, or simple thanks. There will be occasions when comfort is required, particularly after natural disasters referred to, with a supreme irony that seems to evade the worshippers, as Acts of God.

As I make my way inside the cavernous building to clumsily ease into the end of a row, five from the front, I accept I fall into none of these categories. Instead of utilising the moments before the priest’s arrival for quiet introspection, I’m gawking, engrossed by the magnificent stained glass windows capturing the sunlight, the gleaming silver crucifixes. I am in awe of the lustrous ambiance of symbols, icons and gaudy trappings because I was brought up in the austere Church of Scotland. Sunday sessions during my childhood made watching paint dry seem a riveting alternative. This lurid setting is also a Protestant church but Scottish Episcopalian, closely allied to the Church of England with its archbishops and incense, and therefore much ‘higher’ than anything I’ve experienced. It must be akin to being inside a Roman Catholic chapel. But I’ve targeted this cathedral for that reason. The atmosphere seems so much more colourful, so much more intense than the stern services in drab surrounds I recall from Sunday School press-ganging. This is churchgoing on acid.

School lessons about the Reformation described how the semblance of freedom alluded to by this revolutionary new take on state religion defined Scotland as a nation, Presbyterian plainness a reaction to the corruption and hypocrisies of Christendom at that time. As for the Anglican thing, one reason all these worshippers are here today can be traced back to England’s King Henry VIII, spree killer of wives. He had required a quick divorce in 1527 and when this was refused by Pope Clement, he simply started his own, Anglican, church. There were other complex and longstanding political machinations but I’m thinking it all boils down to Henry’s sex life. Specifically, the lack of the single gene present in the Y chromosome of the spermatozoon when he impregnated Anne Boleyn: the tiny swimmer that would have granted him a coveted male heir. So the origins of this high Protestant church, with its ornate paraphernalia and artistic splendour, bearing such a close resemblance to its Roman cousin, is down to biology; a resemblance deeply ironic given the fathomless hundreds of thousands who have been violently put to death in the aftermath of the 16th-century schism for being on either side of something resembling something else. My freewheeling mind is now fixating on the arbitrary roulette wheel of life: one sperm differently programmed at that moment inside Klara Hitler or Keke Stalin would have prevented millions of deaths.

As one christened into the Scottish ‘Kirk’, I feel like a Trotskyite in a Tsarist palace. But my main reason for soaking in this ambiance, listening to the beautiful organ melodies piping over the congregation and swirling around the vast interior, has nothing to do with my demented political ponderings or even worship. I just needed an outlet for how I’m feeling right now. Because if this is a ‘high’ church, then I am surely the highest thing in it.

When I assumed this position a moment ago, grinning like the Cheshire Cat, it felt less like sitting down and more like melting into the furniture. I’m giving the women seated around me marks out of 10, discovering few below eight. It takes all my resolve to stifle a fit of the giggles when I realise my t-shirt still reeks of the grass I indulged in at the height of last night’s over-indulgence, enough to draw several knowing looks. But no more than that. I’m sure there are no “thou shalt nots” in their prized book about hydroponically-produced psychoactive drugs, although a lot of the stuff about feeding 5,000 with seven loaves of bread and some fish, not to mention the parting of seas, was surely scribed by someone out their face on some equivalent. This manic obsession with religion began when I bumped into a daughter of one of Mum’s friends, Rosie, who lived in our street and was part of the gang when we played outside as kids. Now a married woman in her early twenties, she enthused about St Mary’s. Like myself, she was christened into the Kirk but was drawn into the flamboyance of the Episcopalian service. As a diffident teetotaller, she must also have been attracted to its burgeoning social scene, with all manner of clubs run by the high percentage of under-30s forming the Sunday congregation. In my hyperactive condition, I just thought it sounded like a potential pool of untapped single, cheery, unsophisticated females.

There is surely a fine line between mainstream religions such as this and the numerous cults which have twisted off on more hedonistic paths. There’s a definite hippy vibe with a lot of the young women I’m clocking here, sparking my urge to congregate. Flanked by sub-ordinates, the priest enters the arena with much swishing of thick, velvet curtains. He raises his arms and his white robes billow. The congregation stands. Many of them raise their right hands to the heavens in what initially appear to be alarming fascist salutes, although when I study the gesture through ponderous eyes it dawns on me their pinkies and index fingers are subtly parted, referencing the crucifixion.

A few prayers, some chanting, and several inspired gospel-style hymns later, I am buzzing with visual, aural, and sensual overload. Satiating my senses with Christianity, my head is spinning. All the silver crosses capture the sun filtering through the multicoloured stained glass windows at the same moment to burn like fluorescent strip lights. Everywhere I look there are gorgeous-looking females, inanely smiling, eyes closed, their features betraying how much they have abandoned themselves to the moment.

I feel as if I’m being inexorably drawn into something I’ve never experienced before, some fantastical dimension. I study ornate tapestries, awesome stained glass windows, flickering candles. I grin at Christ on his cross, towering above us all, features as chiselled as a catwalk model, his dying moments presented as a thing of aesthetic beauty rather than a sordid public execution. As the service gets underway again I’m aurally assailed by the organ music piping through the immense Gothic structure, its rich, otherwordly melodies echoing with the communal voice of hundreds of worshippers.

When I dip into whatever the priest is rambling about I hear, ‘I am the resurrection, and the light,’ and assume he’s referencing The Stone Roses. This makes me feel joyous. Overcome with emotion, tears slither down my cheeks. This entire sensory experience is so overwhelming I feel as if I truly am in the presence of God. This certainty lasts until I sense the remorseless onslaught of the hangover that has been lurking like a mugger, suddenly enveloping me with the ferocity of trodding on a booby trap; instead of rupturing limbs it spears my skull. Behind my eyes, my pulse synchronises with the rhythm of the upbeat hymn everyone else is lost in, swiftly accelerating in tempo to leave it far behind. Paranoia overwhelming euphoria, my white knuckles shoot to the pew in front, gripping the cold, varnished wood.

I know everyone in the vicinity is aware of my predicament. That heartbeat is thundering now, pounding in my eardrums. My limbs tremble. I feel the sensation of blood seeping as if some invisible vampire is gorging on me. I know, with the alarming certainty that only this moment will bring, I am about to projectile vomit. Heaving myself up, I sprint down the aisle, past a sea of bemused faces, focusing on the sunlight bathing the entrance. I am immersed by Sunday morning normality. Tourists stroll by brandishing cameras and maps. Traffic flows. Sparrows chirrup from the trees. The only thing out of the ordinary is lurking just outside the doorway of this late 19th-century cathedral. Leaning into the ancient bricks, I fight against the urge to throw my guts up like a scene from The Exorcist, deeply inhaling the cool air as if from an imaginary roach.

​Nausea subsides. I’m already thinking of a million things to do now.

That happened to me in the days before I was admitted to psychiatric hospital in the summer of 1990. Religion is so often inextricably liked with mental illness. When I was an inpatient in the Royal Edinburgh Hospital the first time in 1987, the charge nurse in one of the wards chaired a weekly meeting. At the end he would declare an open floor in case any patients wished to air grievances or simply chat about anything. For painful minutes most of us would stare into the carpet. But one young woman, her voice lugubrious with medication, struggling to keep up with her whizzing thoughts, would always spout forth about the rapture of being possessed by the Holy Spirit, about how we were all pawns in God’s greater plan, how this spell inside hospital was a test of our faith. The charge nurse would roll his eyes and declare the meeting adjourned.
 
BIPOLAR DISORDER

According to my medical notes, my initial diagnosis in 1987 was schizophrenia, subsequently revised to BIPOLAR, the mental rollercoaster characterised by euphoric highs and devastating lows. Although they are never as awful as the mind-numbingly depressive lows, there’s nothing healthy about experiencing the highs either. It would be more apt to think of the ups/downs as different levels on the same scale.

Using the analogy of a scale of 1 to 10, most people live their lives in the middle, say between 4 and 7. The 1% of the population who are bipolar can slide down to 3 and below, into manic depression; or soar above 7, into mania.
 
Mania is characterised by restlessness, a decreased need to sleep, increased self-confidence (to the extent of grandiosity), being easily distracted, a mind racing with new ideas and plans, extreme talkativeness, loss of inhibitions, increased sex drive, risk taking, spending sprees.
 
In the short-term this is known as hypomania and will last for a few days. The more extreme version, mania, can last for much longer. Mania can lead to a break with reality, initiating visual or auditory hallucinations, delusions, and paranoid thoughts. When I was ill I ticked practically every box amongst those symptoms of mania, as well as inventing a few of my own.
​

BRAINBOMB is an autobiography detailing my experiences of mental illness between 1987 and 1990, although there are flashbacks to much earlier factors that led to my mind unhinging, as well as flash-forwards to my long period of recovery. I intend self-publishing this in the summer. For further information on its publication, or to add your name to the waiting list, drop me a line via the CONTACT FORM.

Read a comprehensive guide to bipolar highs/lows on the website of the mental health charity Bipolar Scotland.