It doesn't seem like that long since I logged in and started writing about what had been happening. It is really feels like only a few days since I last wrote about what I was doing but it’s about a month. I've been pleased on the whole with the last few weeks of my life - I haven't achieved anything special but I have at least stopped drinking and this has left me in a position where I can stop smoking, as the major problem was always having a few drinks and then smoking again when I didn't intend to.
Controlled alcohol intake has been rather new for me to say the least, I've had about 30 dry days of the last 35. This hasn't led to what I class as meaningful changes in my life but I have stopped doing something that was really just boring me shitless. Drinking wasn't really bringing me any pleasure - or at least hadn't for the last few years. I was doing it to reduce anxiety and to regain some feelings of normality. I wasn't doing it to completely feel normal, I have had some experience of drinkers who do that - there was one occasion when I was out drinking in Manchester when I was a student there when I noticed that I had started to feel 'normal' after about three or four pints, so I can relate to people who have to drink in order to feel this way. This only happened on one or two occasions over twelve years ago now.
Being on the verge of becoming teetotal does almost appeal to me in a way that I didn't think it would. I did waste a lot of time in the state of being so hungover that I couldn't function, but as someone who didn't relax in a normal fashion and largely couldn't put down the list of things to do that always grew at a faster rate than jobs were being ticked off: I did find myself being stressed by what I didn't have to do but was putting myself under pressure to complete, so hangovers provided at least some means of stopping myself, forcing a rest from the chores I had. They could be very painful affairs, leaving me in a state when I would want to sleep through the haze in order to avoid the pain that I had caused myself. What I've found interesting is that I tend to have a headache when I get up on a Saturday morning irrespective of whether I've drunk or not and I have had half days over the last few weeks while I haven't been drinking that I've had general feelings of being unwell, headaches and a lack of being alert enough to do what I want to do with myself. I had previously related this to alcohol consumption as there was a very strong correlation between having been out for a drink on an evening and then feeling very hungover the next day. One would assume perhaps very safely that there were no grounds to question this any further but I have felt drowsy, had headaches, been unable to concentrate and not been in the best of spirits on a few days while I've been free of alcohol when I would ordinarily have attributed these problems to alcohol consumption. It appears that alcohol is not the cause if this is continuing. Or may be my body is just tuned to alcohol consumption in a big way that I just have hangovers automatically.
One of the major feats I've achieved is to scan in many of the pictures I've ammassed while I've been dabbling in photography since my teens. I've mananged to get most of them online on my flickr site and there are some gems in amongst the dross that are worth checking out. For instance, there are shots of the round the world trip (1996-7) [the first 325 shots have some good landscapes amongst them - don't forget to use the full screen option click the box in the bottom right corner with the arrows pointing away from the centre of the box]. There's also a few nice shots of Aveiro where I attended a PhD workshop in 1998, and things like Masshouse Memories which just aren't good enough as photographs in some respects but still worth seeing. There are some great shots of the trip I took to France with Ian W in the France and Plymouth collection that have some great scenery in amongst the daft shots of Ian and me. Likewise, see the shots of Skye are okay for the period they were taken.
It feels like a great many of the shots are too good in terms of the quality that I achieved with an Olympus XA2 that I had for the bulk of the period that these photographs cover. I don't know if I was just lucky or I've been given someone else's photographs for the majority of the time I've been getting stuff developed. Maybe I've just had very good quality results from the places that I've had my photos developed - I used to pay more to get my film developed and printed by Jessops and generally speaking they do produce better results. The shots of Tiger Leaping Gorge in amongst the round the world photographs of Cambodia, Vietnam and China are the most breathtaking in terms of scenery and I am very pleased with what is in amongst some of the weaker stuff.
There is also the photo-essay that I worked on, which I assume made me look a little like the main character from Memento, the Guy Pearce film. Every time I have stated to a clinician that I have had no short term memory and I've been unable to function as a result I assume I've looked like someone mimicking Memento's lead. I think I've made the point before that there could be attempts to get some 'cultural products' into mainstream culture, including film characters and storylines, in order to use this as a mechanism of classing someone with mental health problems of mimicking fictional characters in order to get more attention when reporting symptoms should they relate their life to a fictional character's experience. I don't know how well founded this is as a principle however there could be problems for mental health practitioners who are subject to looking for confirmation of the theories they have rather than explore the alternatives. I assume it's more likely that the experience of being mentally ill can sometimes be so strange that there's a greater tendency to draw from the arts when explaining what type of experience an individual has had because there doesn't seem to be anything that similar reported in the media or that the sufferer would have heard of elsewhere.
As a result of how the individual with mental health issues is dealt with in contemporary society the experience I've had is that there is a tendency to engage in a certain amount of prejudice and disregard an individual with mental health issues as drawing from the arts when certain artistic or cultural products may be put in place to serve a purpose of rejecting the experience of some individuals - that they appear to be drawing from the arts rather than the arts have been manipulated in order to assist with disregarding some individuals so society can continue to be managed in the way that it has been for the last few centuries. Anyway the photo-essay Stormy Weather is online - which I think was shot before I saw any of Memento - there are other films that leave me with just a hint of this conspiracy - there's Dracula, Men in Black, Dr Jekyl & Mr Hyde, Manchurian Candidate, Invasion of the Body Snatchers and a few others that figure alongside Memento. I don't think I've really drawn from a single one, I've only recognised something similar in my experience and related it to what I had seen on the screen as it was the closest portrayal of the experience I'd had by far.
Whether certain cultural products are dropped into society because of their capacity to provide support to people with mental health problems or because there is a tendency for the storylines or characters to provide a means to later dismiss the individual because they have drawn from the arts when explaining their life experience, remains open to question - perhaps there could be clearer guidance on this matter from bodies that can guide the arts in future.
