{"id":124574,"date":"2025-05-23T06:41:17","date_gmt":"2025-05-23T06:41:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/124574\/"},"modified":"2025-05-23T06:41:17","modified_gmt":"2025-05-23T06:41:17","slug":"i-was-young-successful-then-i-had-a-psychotic-break","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/124574\/","title":{"rendered":"I was young, successful \u2014 then I had a psychotic break"},"content":{"rendered":"

Again. Tell them again.<\/p>\n

The conveyor belt slams to a halt and an alarm screams. People rush away and rush forward, dive to my right and hop to my left, and now smartphone camera lights are flashing. Then I am surrounded by security personnel.<\/p>\n

The woman speaking is dressed as an airport official. But she\u2019s part of the sex-trafficking ring I fled weeks before in LA. I just know. <\/p>\n

What to do? Follow her to arrest, to interrogation? Or run? The guards flanking her are armed. They escort me, against my will, to a low-lit room where an injection is produced. A lethal injection.<\/p>\n

As it turns out, the injection was not lethal. And I was not in fact an accidental terrorist with a bomb in my bag being pursued by an international sex-trafficking gang who wanted to impregnate me for their ring. Instead I was a grieving woman in the midst of a psychotic break.<\/p>\n

Despite its prevalence \u2014 the charity Mind estimates as many as 1 in 100 people will experience psychosis in their lifetime \u2014 psychosis remains deeply misunderstood. Consisting of delusions and hallucinations that follow themes of persecution and surveillance among sufferers, psychosis is not a condition in and of itself such as bipolar disorder or schizophrenia but sometimes a symptom of those conditions. You can also experience it as a result of not sleeping, from taking illegal drugs or after having a baby. And you also don\u2019t need to have a family history of it. I didn\u2019t, although I\u2019d suffered anorexia as a teenager.<\/p>\n

In my case it was a response to severe trauma \u2014 the death of my dad from a heart attack at the age of 67, a death I was informed about on the phone by the police. The funeral directors advised against viewing the body \u201con account of the decay\u201d. It was late summer and he\u2019d been gently rotting in his home for several days before a neighbour found him. As I was living in London at the time, I went to Yorkshire to arrange the funeral alone, and waited for my mum to fly over from Brisbane, Australia, where she and my brother live.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Valdo Calocane: what is schizophrenia and how is it treated?<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

Suddenly, at 31, I had no next of kin in the UK. I was in a one-sided \u201crelationship\u201d with a guy who lived in LA (he wouldn\u2019t call it a relationship), and was spending most of my time and money flying back and forth between there and London, barely supporting myself with freelance journalism. In London I lived alone in a shabby rented flat, but I had regular work with Sky News and the BBC as a commentator and writer. In LA, where I did not have a work visa, I subsisted in a basement not far from where the Manson Family had committed some of their appalling murders. Occasionally I would see The Guy, but mostly I spent my days pitching for UK writing commissions while begging for crumbs of his attention.<\/p>\n

Constantly jet-lagged, emotionally abandoned and now grieving, I started to unravel.<\/p>\n

It began with paranoia about my relationship. Was the reason this guy was so unavailable because he was secretly seeing other women? I spent hours combing through social media, looking for clues. A trip to a conference in Vegas amped up the anxiety. He was working and too busy to see me most of the time, and I drifted about the airless casinos, deep in grief and burgeoning suspicion. I had also started taking the odd Adderall pill to combat the jet lag. Later I would be told by doctors that the Adderall had not caused my psychosis. But the drug, which contains amphetamine and is banned in the UK, had certainly not helped.<\/p>\n

Every morning I woke with an increasing jolt of panic. Cortisol rushed through my body. Was I in denial about this crappy relationship? Or was there more going on?<\/p>\n

As a journalist I am attuned to noticing inconsistencies. Why did that person say that? What is so-and-so hiding? And out of these inconsistencies I am always trying to stitch together the facts.<\/p>\n

In this case the \u201cfacts\u201d now rolled in thick and fast. A trip to NYC with a peculiar meeting in the Empire State Building? Must have been with the Mob. Prescription pills I didn\u2019t recognise in The Guy\u2019s bathroom? Must be antiretroviral medication. That\u2019s it. That\u2019s why he treats me so terribly. He is in fact gay, with HIV, and he is using me for some greater purpose I haven\u2019t yet figured out.<\/p>\n

\u2022 How I recovered from postpartum psychosis and reconnected with my son<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t remember the moment I settled on it being because he was part of a sex-trafficking gang and trying to impregnate me \u201cfor the ring\u201d. But I do remember one morning waking up so terrified that I simply caught the red-eye back to London without telling him and never returned.<\/p>\n

In London, meanwhile, I became ever more convinced that I was in grave danger. I\u2019d spent much of my career working on stories about male sexual depravity and the vulnerable women who \u201cknew too much\u201d. I was an expert here.<\/p>\n

Suspicious of my therapist, I instead went to the GP, who listened to my story and said, \u201cIt sounds terrifying. You need to go to the police.\u201d<\/p>\n

I did go to the police. Several times. On the final occasion I explained yet again about the sex-trafficking ring, and about being a journalist and knowing too much, and about how they would now find me and kill me, all at breakneck psychotic speed. And then I froze. \u201cPlease don\u2019t write that down!\u201d I cried. \u201cThey\u2019ll kill me!\u201d<\/p>\n

The police officer put his pen down and looked thoughtfully and then said, \u201cOK, I won\u2019t report this if you go round the corner [to the hospital] and get yourself checked out.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Portrait<\/p>\n

\u201cI left hospital feeling more terrified than when I had arrived\u201d<\/p>\n

LEONIE FREEMAN<\/p>\n

At the hospital, when I told the doctor there my story, he merely offered me beta blockers. I was so paranoid that I refused them, at which point he became irritated and I was discharged. I was feeling more terrified than when I had arrived, and the nurses took pity on me and let me sleep in their private room until the morning. And then I was back in the world, on my own and still psychotic.<\/p>\n

A few weeks later, petrified that I was going to be raped at a political party I\u2019d been invited to, I pre-emptively took the morning-after pill. I made an appointment to write my will for my family\u2019s sake, and decided to leave the UK.<\/p>\n

And then I found out I was pregnant.<\/p>\n

I told only one person about the abortion, and that was the close friend who accompanied me. I was barely speaking to my family by this point. Every morning I woke up with a new \u201crealisation\u201d about the Ring. Yet I was careful not to tell those I loved about these realisations. It would only endanger them.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Cannabis psychosis: how super-powered skunk blew our minds<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Mum had begun to sense something was desperately wrong. She called family friends, who prepared to come and get me from London. But before they could collect me I had booked a flight to Brisbane. I needed to make it home.<\/p>\n

Those 26 or so hours travelling to Australia while in the height of psychosis will remain some of the most traumatic of my life. It was at this point that I began to believe there was a bomb in my suitcase, somehow planted there by the sex traffickers I\u2019d managed to escape. When I realised this I duly informed the plane\u2019s flight attendants \u2014 already concerned about my mental health thanks to my distressed appearance \u2014 about the \u201ctraffickers\u201d.<\/p>\n

When we landed in Singapore to change planes I was approached by a medical escort who had been assigned to care for me. She gave me some kind of sedative tablet, which I slyly spat out, and I gave her the slip. I missed my connecting flight.<\/p>\n

Some time later, when the staff, who were by now aware I was very unwell, had found a seat for me on another flight, I placed my suitcase on the security conveyor belt by the gate and screamed, \u201cBomb!\u201d<\/p>\n

Somehow the staff managed to get my mum on the phone. \u201cListen, love,\u201d she said, her voice quavering, \u201cyou\u2019ve got to get on the plane home.\u201d <\/p>\n

Did I trust her? I didn\u2019t know. But something cut through in the moment. It was our mother-daughter bond. So I agreed.<\/p>\n

By the time the plane prepared for landing, I was having full-on visual hallucinations. I became hysterical. \u201cI want my mum!\u201d I cried over and over. I was escorted off the plane and rushed through security. And there, waiting on the other side, was my mum. I fell into her arms, both of us weeping.<\/p>\n

Once home, both my mum and my brother listened to my delusional stories. My brother began to cry silently. I was taken to my mum\u2019s local GP. In the waiting room I started to smell burning flesh. I looked down. It was me. I was cooking from the inside. But there was no point explaining to my family, I decided. <\/p>\n

Then I was called in to see the doctor. After listening to a minute of my story, without hesitation he diagnosed a psychotic break. I was given yet another injection to calm me. I collapsed and was then taken to Logan Hospital, where I was sectioned (\u201cinvoluntary admission\u201d it\u2019s called in Australia) for six weeks.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Recovery from psychosis was terrifying. In hospital I still believed my extreme theories, only now I was being treated as \u201ccrazy\u201d for simply telling the truth. The male patients were all potential rapists, I felt. But gradually, through a combination of antipsychotic medication and therapy, I began to realise some of what I thought didn\u2019t make sense. Bit by bit, day by day, I began to return to my \u201csane\u201d self. But now I had PTSD from my madcap adventures, and my body and brain were racked with fear. What\u2019s more, my visa was running out. I had no choice but to leave my family and return to the UK.<\/p>\n

After the psychotic high came the low. I was no longer \u201cmad\u201d but I was so depressed I was suicidal, and frequently had to take an extra step back from the Tube platform on my way to work. But with the help of an excellent NHS clinical psychologist, in time I got better.<\/p>\n

Integrating back into my London life was tricky. I wanted to explain to the editors and producers I worked for what had happened, but I was wary of them thinking I was now mentally defunct, no longer a \u201ctrusted voice\u201d on any of the things I\u2019d spent years researching and writing about. I also knew I had an incredible story to tell but it was still so triggering and so painful to recount that I would not be able to do that for many years.<\/p>\n

This month marks ten years since that experience, an experience that has permanently transformed my relationship with my mind. These days I have private therapy, don\u2019t drink and keep a strict sleep schedule.<\/p>\n

Most people take for granted their sanity. But what psychosis has taught me is that the line between reality and fantasy is much thinner than most of us realise, and anyone can become psychotic.<\/p>\n

These days I don\u2019t worry about entering psychosis again. For one, I\u2019d recognise the symptoms, were it to return. But, more important, having fallen down the rabbit hole of my mind and clawed my way back up again, what is there to fear?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Again. Tell them again. The conveyor belt slams to a halt and an alarm screams. People rush away…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":124575,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4317],"tags":[105,218,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-124574","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-mental-health","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114555786600735709","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124574"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124574\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/124575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}