A moment that changed me: realising, aged 16, that I couldn’t handle alcohol | Lou Sanders

I was 16, on holiday in Alicante on my own – my Aunty Sue was due to join me the next day. So in preparation for her arrival, I drank almost a litre of vodka, hit the town and passed out. A Spanish stranger called an ambulance and the local hospital kindly pumped my stomach. “Olé! Olé!” as they say (translation: Oi! Oi!).

I was in a foreign place, didn’t speak the language, and had no idea where my hostel was. I thought I was streetwise but I was a street idiot. Like many people my age, I was a turbulent sea of emotions: a mix of hormones, some unprocessed family happenings, and a classic case of a broken heart. Because of this emotional maelstrom, the male nurse thought he could drop me back to my hostel via his place and have sex with me, since I was too low on self-esteem, and way too out of it, to put up any sort of counter-argument. Turns out he was right. Muchas gracias, maaate!

I’d like to say that this was the moment that changed me, but I still needed another 117 occasions just as murky to decide that maybe drinking wasn’t for me and that, rather than saving me from my problems, it might have actually been causing quite a few of them, or certainly giving them some fertile ground in which to blossom.

A year later, when I was 17, I was working as a bartender in one of the roughest pubs in Margate. To give you some idea, a lot of the clientele had the latest jewellery in electronic tags, and some of the customers were working as local concubines. It was run by a couple called Pam and Bob and they, as you can imagine, had seen all sorts.

The establishment let you accept drinks as tips while you worked. Big mistake, Pam and Bob, big mistake. I’d had some super-strength lager on the bus over, so the double whiskies really topped off the trouble. By 10pm, I had burnt the arm of my jumper, I had one foot stuck in the bounteous fag bin, and I had smashed a whole dishwasher tray full of drinks into a wall. I was not winning any bar-staff awards that night and, of course, got asked to leave. Later on I found out that I was so drunk my bosses thought that I couldn’t have just been intoxicated – I must have been on drugs. I was not on drugs – well, not that night anyhow.

Around this time, I was also arrested for drink-driving. I was driving at 5mph, so as not to arouse suspicion. Then when I realised the police were tailing me, I thought I could trick them by indicating left, and, you guessed it, turned right. They saw through my plan and pulled me over, but drunk me had another scheme; I downed a bottle of lemon grass aromatherapy oil and told them I was “in a rush, so must be getting on”. Needless to say I was prosecuted, and quite right too.

I have lost count of the incidents through the years and the number of times I gave up drinking. But I did get better at controlling it. When I was younger I used to wet myself and pass out, and I’d often come to with a “friend” who had decided that he would try to remove my clothes and insert his penis in me. It’s a shame judges sometimes blame the women in these scenarios, because if a woman was passed out drunk and someone started punching her in the head (another physical violation) would they say – “to be fair she was drunk, so she was asking for it”? She was only asking for “it”, if “it” is a fully clothed snooze, thank you. Or indeed a nudey-snooze if she so fancies.

Anyway, I cleaned up my side of the street and bit by bit became stronger and started working on the trauma and shame. I do believe that if you are lucky and meet the right people, some horrific situations can be an opportunity to grow stronger, and every single person has a spectrum of events happen to them, which don’t have to define them. I’ve forgiven all the people who used me and abused me when I was drunk because, really, they were just as unconscious as me – just in a different way.

There was no knowing when the beast would be unleashed. But, at some point, the beast was always unleashed

I thank them for all the lessons they brought with them – through their “teachings”, as they all helped me to reach that well-documented rock-bottom, so that all I could do was build upwards. And year on year, slowly but surely, I built a rock-solid foundation. I’ve also forgiven myself for everything in the past (I think), and I hope that all the people who I’ve inflicted my pain on have forgiven me too.

Giving up drinking was a slow and gradual thing. In my late 20s, I drank a fair bit, and was for the most part a big, fun drunk without incident. But there was no knowing when the beast would be unleashed. And, at some point, the beast was always unleashed. I had so much shame and guilt that I drank to forget it. Which is a bit like saying you crave exercise so much that you cut off your legs.

Now, finally, I love not drinking. I love the clarity and simplicity of it, but it’s taken a long time to get here, via many, many mistakes. I used to think I was missing out, so inevitably I would always, slowly, creep back to the wine. Then, through a combination of being in the right place at the right time, meeting the right people and finally being ready – I gave up for good. I also read a great book called The Easy Way to Stop Drinking, by Allen Carr (not that one). It somehow made me realise that I wasn’t missing out; in fact, I would only be missing out if I started drinking again.

The word sober sounds so serious. I still love dancing till 2am and talking shit. I still love all the enjoyable things I did drunk, but there’s choice and power in my decisions now. And I’ve also given up drinking lemongrass aromatherapy oil; that was the big one for me.

• For information on all of Lou’s upcoming projects please visit lousanders.com

A moment that changed me: realising, aged 16, that I couldn’t handle alcohol | Lou Sanders

My twins couldn’t bear the sound of me eating lunch. Now we know why

When the scientific research backs one’s hunches, when the data strongly suggests that one is on the right side of history in a  family argument, it’s always encouraging, a morale-booster. So I was delighted to read on Friday morning of a report published in Biology Today of research conducted by a team of neurologists at Newcastle University confirming that misophonia does exist. It is that acme of modernity, a thing.

Misophonia, hatred of sound, is a 21st-century ailment, the term first being used by audiologists Pawel and Margaret Jastreboff in a paper in 2000. And it is a modern condition which caused no end of aggravation in my attempts to host a family meal in the new millennium. When our twins, Daisy and Freddie, were in their early teens, the serving of, say, Sunday lunch would be quickly followed by first Daisy – and, often swiftly thereafter, her brother – running screaming from the dining room.

In any list of parenting rules “the family that eats together stays together” is usually in the top five, often on the podium. It provides a reliable, and easy, chapter for the “how to parent” practitioner and reams have been written on the subject. With luck, Dr Sukhbinder Kumar’s report might give them reason to pause.

It certainly provides some solace for those of us whose attempts at starting, let alone completing, a Sunday roast for all the family unravelled – as they used to in our household – with the twins, heads in hands, attempting to evade the cacophony of sound allegedly emanating from my whereabouts as I attempted to complete my first mouthful of chicken.

A ridiculous state of affairs which made for, quite simply, impossible eating conditions and which chipped away at my fragile confidence in my cheffing abilities. No one wants the food they serve up to cause so much, and such evident, physical pain. Sunday lunch is meant to be a convivial affair.

But so it goes. All I was trying to do was serve up a roast chicken for my family, the minimum anyone can demand as their lot in life. But, at its most extreme, simple plating up was sufficient to trigger the twins’ misophonia. The mere prospect of my eating sometime in the near future being more than sufficient for at least one of them to get the hell out of Dodge. And while the twins being absent was preferable to them being present and in pain, the whole palaver was sufficient to render me incapable of eating.

Ninety-three per cent of people who were suffering from it claimed that eating, breathing and chewing were the trigger

Dr Sukhbinder Kumar

They had effectively neutralised what made them anxious, but the anxiety induced by the threat of what had been neutralised was so great that they were incapable of hanging around for long enough to discover that they had nothing to fear any more.

The fear of fear itself was so strong as to prevent them discovering that they had nothing to fear … but the fear of fear itself … of course. And so the mind goes.

Things are much better now that the twins are in their twenties. We merrily have Sunday lunch in front of the telly, watching MasterChef on the iPlayer, plates on our laps. A complete no-no in the parenting manual maybe, but it works for us. Watching other people cooking distracts from any gannet-style sounds that may, or may not, be being made by certain people eating.

Kumar sees further improvements to come. “In my laboratory we are interested in how the brain processes emotions, particularly from sound,” the doctor tells me as his findings are published.

“We started with a study published in 2012 in the Journal of Neuroscience into harsh sounds – like chalk on a blackboard – and recorded the subsequent brain activity in 15 or so people.”

The results were unexceptional: an unpleasant sound sounds unpleasant. It was the response that was interesting, because a swath of people contacted Kumar to ask him if he had also investigated the effect of eating and breathing and chewing. All of which are prime triggers for misophonia.

“My laboratory is headed by Professor Tim Griffiths, who is also a neurologist,” says Kumar. “So as a first step we invited a group of four people to attend the clinic he runs. After the interviews, we were really surprised to see how homogeneous the symptoms were and how similar were the triggers.”

They investigated further. “Ninety-three per cent of people who were suffering from it claimed that eating, breathing and chewing were the trigger, and anger and anxiety the dominating emotion triggered,” Kumar says.

For the misophoniac, someone eating can cause an intense fight-or-flight feeling. With hindsight, I can be grateful that one or other or both of the twins didn’t stave my head in as I was concentrating on my chicken rather than run screaming from the room.

Kumar carried out his tests and the results revealed that “the average age when people notice their symptoms is 12 and it tends to start with the focus on a particular family member, perhaps a daughter with her father, and then gradually expands to other people. It is not the loudness of the sound per se which is the trigger, but the way in which the sounds are interpreted and the meaning attached to them. It is the perception of the sound rather than the sound itself.”

The science is in. Bingo! I am not a gannet.

And, double bingo, neither of the twins’ misophonia is particularly acute, in that it hasn’t expanded to that many other people. They can, for instance, sit happily opposite a boyfriend/girlfriend open-mouthedly chomping away without flinching. Not all misophoniacs are so fortunate. Some cannot even go into work, so great is the distress caused by the trigger sounds that they might encounter. Others cannot go to the cinema for fear that, in the dark, someone might crack open the popcorn. They have no option but to see unpopular films at unpopular times.

They will be relieved, however, that their anxiety has a physical base, that it is caused by abnormal connections between this frontal lobe area and an area called the anterior insular cortex, which means that for sufferers a sound is amplified in both, whereas for others any increase in activity in the anterior insular cortex is balanced by a diminution in the frontal lobe.

“A lot of people will remain sceptical”, says Kumar, “but our data will help convince people that something real is happening in the brain.”

The next steps are to discover the exact nature of the activity being produced and to search for possible therapeutic cures. At present the misophoniac has to self-medicate via canny use of headphones or evasive action. God knows what they did before Sony Walkmans.

All data, of course, is double-edged and Kumar’s findings may well be taken advantage of by the nation’s gannets. There are people who cannot eat softly. And as lunch has moved, depressingly and relentlessly, from El Vino’s to El Desko, some think it socially acceptable to hover over their Tupperware – nearly always containing tuna – making the most godawful sounds. They now have an out: “Nah, mate, I think you’ll find it’s you that’s got the problem. Seriously, have you thought about seeing someone about your misophonia?”

MORE UNUSUAL SYNDROMES

Paris syndrome
A form of depression that affects some visitors to Paris. It is most noted among Japanese tourists, who arrive with a romantic view of the city, only to find it does not meet their expectations and that Parisians can be rude. In 2006 the BBC reported a dozen or so Japanese people having to be repatriated each year as a result of delusional states and depression caused by Paris syndrome.

Alien hand syndrome
Individuals experience sensation in both hands, but find one of them (usually the left) acting of its own accord. The syndrome can happen after brain surgery or a stroke. The “alien” hand can do complex tasks: undo buttons or remove clothes. Some individuals have been slapped or punched by their own hand.

Alice in Wonderland (Todd’s) syndrome
This condition, which sufferers usually grow out of in their teens, distorts perceptions, making objects or parts of the body appear smaller or larger than they are. Episodes normally last less than an hour.

Jerusalem syndrome
Visitors to the city experience religious delusions, such as the belief that they are a Bible character. In one case an Irish teacher arrived at a Jerusalem hospital convinced she was about to give birth to Jesus, when she was not even pregnant. The phenomenon can affect individuals of various religious backgrounds, but they normally recover after leaving the city.

Glass delusions
Sufferers believe they are made of glass and at risk of shattering. It was common in the 17th century, when clear glass was new and considered magical, but there are still rare cases today.

Foreign accent syndrome
Individuals suddenly find their voice taking on a foreign accent, usually as a result of a stroke. Between 1941 and 2009 there were 62 recorded cases.
Rebecca Ratcliffe

My twins couldn’t bear the sound of me eating lunch. Now we know why

My clients assumed I had a new job – I couldn"t say I had cancer

Some years ago I found a lump in my right breast. In the week between tests and diagnosis I prepared a contingency plan, not for me but for my clients. My intuition told me this was cancer and, if so, I would need to stop working with immediate effect.

The day after the diagnosis I agreed with my then employer a hand-over plan, and what I would tell clients. Therapists are encouraged not to disclose information about themselves to clients. Personal boundaries are essential to avoid anything that might distort and take away from the story of the other, who is seeking support.

Over the next days I met all my clients informing them this would be our last session, and what was in place for the continuation of the counselling. I started each session with the same statement: “I have had some news, which means I will no longer be able to continue seeing you or any of my clients.”

There was a common assumption that I had found something better, another job, been promoted; and disappointment that I did not honour my duty of care and finish the work we had started.

Yes, I had found something else and, yes, I would not stay on. I felt the hurt I had caused and we talked about it, how it might repeat past experiences and expectations of rejection, but I chose not to disclose more. I did not want to cause concern about me. But instead it appeared I had torn into existing wounds.

I left the two GP practices where I had been working without telling the practice staff why. I thought I was protecting my clients and did not want them to find out the real reason from a third party. I felt like a thief at night with an unsavoury secret.

A key support in my life was my own therapist. Three months into my cancer treatment I received an email telling me that due to health reasons, there would be no more sessions until further notice. Would I like to be put in touch with someone else? No, that would not do. I was shocked and worried for my therapist.

My cancer treatment continued and was increasingly debilitating – physically, mentally, emotionally. Doubts started to set in about everything in my life, including my therapist. Perhaps dealing with my cancer had been too much. Perhaps I was too much. Part of me knew it was not really like this. I had trusted this person with my life story for years; but the nagging remained.

Some months later, at the start of a new year, between my chemotherapy and radiotherapy, an email arrived with my therapist’s name in the subject heading. The email had been sent to all current and former clients. My therapist was dead. No more explanations. We were invited to get in touch with a named contact if we needed support with what had happened.

I was distraught and angry. I wanted to know what had happened. Initially, the request for further information was turned down. Eventually, I got the news I had expected: cancer.

I don’t know what it would have been like had I known the diagnosis while I was going through my own cancer treatment. Perhaps my therapist had been trying to protect me. Perhaps they had been too ill to do anything different. I would not have been in a fit enough state to converse with clients while I was undergoing my treatment.

But, on balance, I wish I had been told. The not knowing and fear of abandonment was tormenting. Telling me would have taken away that uncertainty and stress. The truth would have frightened me, for sure. But if I had been told calmly, that may have also calmed and steadied me at a time of my own crisis and uncertainty over life and death.

These are all complex situations and assumptions, and I do not doubt for a second that my therapist did their best and acted responsibly, just as I did with my clients.

Life’s experiences shape us. Knowing what I know now, if I have to do it again I would like to do it differently. I hope I will have the time and strength to be open. With the increasing incidence of cancer, most of us in the UK will be affected by it one way or another.

I believe that there are moments in therapy when not shying away from our own truth and our very human story can be of real value. It is therapeutic for all of us not to lose sight of our humanity, vulnerability and mortality, therapist or no therapist.

If you would like to contribute to our Blood, sweat and tears series which is about memorable moments in a healthcare career, please read our guidelines and get in touch by emailing sarah.johnson@theguardian.com.

Join the Healthcare Professionals Network to read more pieces like this. And follow us on Twitter (@GdnHealthcare) to keep up with the latest healthcare news and views.

My clients assumed I had a new job – I couldn"t say I had cancer

The Guy Who Couldn"t Cease assessment David Adam"s compelling research of OCD

Winston Churchill feared sea travel since of his “ego-dystonic” urge to leap into the water. Photograph: Bippa

“Only a fool or liar will tell you how the brain operates,” says the author, midway via this fascinating study of the residing nightmare that is obsessive compulsive disorder. And rest assured, Dr David Adam is neither. Without a doubt, he has written one of the very best and most readable scientific studies of a mental sickness to have emerged in recent many years.

What can make this book compelling reading through is its openness. I indicate that in every single sense. The writer is candid not only about the inevitable limitations of any guide on psychological illness, when we only know so considerably about the brain, but also about his very own knowledge.

For while Adam, a writer and editor at the science journal Nature, is well experienced to publish a scientific account of OCD, this is a lot more personal than an common research. Even though his book is not genuinely a memoir, it does stem from Adam’s very own battle with the sickness.

In 1991, as a younger school pupil, he became obsessed with the thought that he could have Aids. Panic enveloped him. He tore the posters down from his wall. “I gulped for air when I opened the window in my stuffy bedroom… I was so frightened, the ideas of my fingers tingled.” But this wasn’t a temporary panic assault. It was just the beginning of his irrational and crippling dread he would contract Aids.

And it is an ongoing battle. (“I see HIV everywhere. It lurks on toothbrushes and towels, taps and telephones… Dry skin in between my toes can force me to stroll on my heels by means of crowded locker rooms, in situation of blood on the floor.”)

But as presently noted, this is no memoir. This is a guide that includes many examples and situation research, of which Adam’s own illustration is just 1. We have Winston Churchill’s concern of sea travel because of his “ego-dystonic” urge to jump into the water. We have logician and mathematician Kurt Gödel’s dread of food poisoning and electrical power pioneer Nikola Tesla’s obsession with the quantity 3. Tesla felt risk-free only in the company of pigeons simply because of his fear of humans and their germs. Then there is Hans Christian Andersen, so petrified of getting buried alive that he had to leave a note by his bed pointing out that he was asleep, not a corpse.

The most compelling examples, however, are those of the non-famous. There is Bira, the Ethiopian schoolgirl, who ate an total wall of her own residence in purchase to cease pondering about it. In a chapter on impulsive behaviours, we meet Marie, the sexsomniac, whose husband as soon as woke up in intense pain to uncover three padlocks placed close to his penis and testicles.

These examples are integrated into a wide-ranging exploration of the illness, hunting at feasible brings about and cures. It requires in traditional psychiatry (Adam is humorously dismissive of Freud’s belief that OCD is a consequence of guilt above masturbation as an adolescent), evolutionary psychology, genetics, aversion therapy, philosophy, social history, religion, neuroscience, anthropology and even zoology.

There are no easy answers, or straightforward cures, and Adam’s book is stronger, not weaker, for acknowledging this, just as he acknowledges that his very own situation stays with him.

Even though this isn’t a guide total of conclusive solutions, you do discover oneself understanding a great deal far more than you did about items such as the basal ganglia and MRI scans, and perhaps much more than you genuinely desired to know about skin-selecting disorder. But what powers it along is the sense of a quest, the sense of Adam seeking for answers – for himself and for the other people who are imprisoned by this disorder. In that sense, it is a detective story.

In the ultimate chapter, he wonders what specific incident caused his sickness and runs via the possibilities in semi-serious type. “My childhood worry of dogs… the sore throat I had when I was six… that my mom had a stroke and could not hold me as a baby… the trauma of Stoke City’s relegation… the death of Sebastian, my pet rabbit. That fucking Aids advert.”

He goes on to talk about an early memory he thinks might have been the very first seed of his illness but admits this “could be a creation myth”. He is also adamant that The Guy Who Could not Quit isn’t a self-help book, but that if it assists someone, then his “unusual ideas will lastly have meant some thing”. He certainly enlightens, even entertains. Although OCD may possibly seek out a false buy in a messy world, the book itself doesn’t fall into the identical trap. This is what tends to make it such an honest and open and, yes, possibly daily life-altering perform.

The Guy Who Couldn"t Cease assessment David Adam"s compelling research of OCD

AOL"s Tim Armstrong couldn"t be more wrong about "distressed babies" | Janet Sheaffer Pickel

Cade, son of Janet Pickel when he was born (left) and now (right). Photograph: The Guardian.

On the day my twins were born, they racked up health-related expenses of $ 29,000 apiece.

They were delivered by way of emergency caesarean segment at 24 weeks’ gestation, meaning I was approximately five months along. Our daughter, Jaina, weighed just below a pound her brother, Cade, weighed 1 pound, five ounces.

They could not breathe on their personal. Their skin was so thin, their bodies so little, we could watch their hearts beat. They hadn’t developed cartilage yet their ears and noses have been flaps of skin. We didn’t inquire how a lot it was going to expense to deal with them we just wanted our infants to live.

Our several physicians talked about day-to-day survival, not lengthy-term payment strategies.

My employer – a newspaper not far previous a round of buyouts and price-cuts – did not inquire me how significantly it was going to cost to deal with them. My co-workers pooled money and bought us present cards so we didn’t have to cook as we drove back and forth to the hospital for months.

When I study AOL chief Tim Armstrong’s remarks blaming his company’s improved well being-care expenses on two “distressed” infants with million-dollar healthcare expenses, I wondered if that’s what every person imagined about our twins. Did we invest as well considerably of an individual else’s money to consider to conserve them?

I know my unplanned initial pregnancy (at 41) value a total great deal of money, a lot of which did not come out of my pocket. Insurance coverage and Medicaid picked up all but a handful of thousand bucks of the $ 2m we “invested” at the Harrisburg Hospital neonatal intensive care unit in four months.

Our Jaina lived only 49 hrs. In that time, she had x-rays, blood transfusions, IVs, a ventilator, an incubator, a devoted nurse. I never even know what else. All I know is she was quite sick and she died, and I would’ve paid $ 10m – any amount – to save her if I could have.

Cade appeared healthier at 1st, but had his initial (of 10) surgeries when he was two weeks previous. When he was 3 weeks outdated, struggling through his umpteenth infection, a doctor asked us if we needed hold making an attempt to hold him alive.

We did, no matter the cost.

Thanks to talented doctors and nurses who found the supply of the infection and fixed it, Cade turned the corner following that day. He was not out of the woods, however. He could not breathe on his personal right up until he was two months previous. He had sight-conserving eye surgical procedure at 3 months.

At one stage, we have been advised he likely had cerebral palsy and would be disabled in some way, perhaps mentally, maybe physically, possibly the two. Was a disabled youngster also expensive to maintain? No 1 asked that query. My husband and I in no way deemed it.

Cade was launched from the NICU when he was four months outdated. His very first week home, he had 7 physician appointments. He did not have cerebral palsy soon after all, but received government-paid early intervention companies to help him find out to stroll and talk and catch up with his non-preemie peers.

Today, Cade is a content, wholesome two-yr-outdated. He has mild asthma, but has not been hospitalized unexpectedly for a lot more than 18 months, which is trigger for celebration. He still sees a good deal of medical professionals, but not really frequently. His final surgery was only a month in the past, but his scars on his back, his belly and his arm never seem to bother him. Largely, he giggles and skips and asks to watch “Hi Elmo” (Sesame Street) all the time.

I wonder if AOL’s Tim Armstrong, who has apologized for his statements, understands how dehumanizing they were. Some have even advised his remarks violated America’s healthcare privacy laws. Remember when Obamacare opponents were speaking about grandma being subjected to death panels as an alternative of expensive care? It is the very same thing. It’s as if he wished price-benefit analyses to be done just before our daughter’s IV was place in or our son’s cardiac surgeon referred to as.

Thankfully, in our situation, my husband and I were capable to determine what was very best for our child with no worrying about the price. We have usually paid our insurance coverage premiums and taxes without complaint, believing that the frequent very good is well worth sharing the ache. We have tried to give back what we’ve been provided by means of perform and volunteerism.

Must I really feel guilty for possessing medically fragile babies? Was it worth it? Was it fair for other people to aid pay out for them? Must my son truly feel pressured to have a much better-than-common existence due to the fact his start price a lot far more than every person else’s?

Unanswerable concerns. I cannot put a cost on a priceless existence, and neither can any individual else.

AOL"s Tim Armstrong couldn"t be more wrong about "distressed babies" | Janet Sheaffer Pickel