Depression is a very popular "condition" to have these days, but I resent being branded as some pathetic sod "suffering from depression". It's such an inadequate word! I am not sad, melancholy, or sorry for myself - I am NOT depressed. That's why I refuse to take any more of antidepressants. They can't help me because I am not depressed. What I am is pure and simple - MAD.

Madness is when your brain gets into a vice that squeezes out of it the last drop of reason. That doesn't make you depressed - it makes you full of fury, impatience, fear and angst. You start pacing from the front to the kitchen door: back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. Your squashed brain starts forming destorted images and those images take life of their own, slither out of our brain, wrap themselves around you and tell you what to think. They are beyond your control. In fact, they control you. It's no good trying to talk over them. They may be only whispering but they're right there in your inner ear.

Madness happens to me. It's not a permanent state. It ebbs and flows like a tide. I didn't use to pay it much attention and it has now become more insistent. My Mother noticed it first (as mothers do - that's their job). So let's start from where it started.

I may have been about 7 when, upon hearing or watching some folk tale about vampires, I came across one in person. As I was walking merrily to school, a car stopped and a man in an unfortunate black suit and even more unfortunate wide rimmed, black hat, came out of it and proceeded to ask me for directions. I panicked. I saw him sink his teeth in me and draining blood out of my veins. I screamed and ran for my dear life.
Since I am talking to you now, you will realise that I had managed to get away alive, but for many nights following that encounter I had incessant visions of that man flying in through my window. I would get feverish, I would cry for help, I would sob as my Mother ran to the rescue to soothe me back into sleep. It had taken me months to come round.

Then there were my temper attacks - avalanches of unprovoked fury.

At last, My Mother took me to a healer. Don't laugh! Everything else had failed and she was at her wit's end. I still remember his name - Harris. He healed people by putting his hands on them. He had a very kind face. He didn't charge for his services, which was a miracle in itself. He put his hands around my head.