shiftstigma
Al Alvarez, 72, writer
Photo and text from Mind Out for Mental Health's 1 in 4 project, 2002.
What do you know about anything when you’re thirty? All I knew was that my marriage wasn’t working and I was profoundly unhappy. That was the trigger. Even in the run-up to my suicide attempt I kept up the cheerful, bang-bang, life-and-soul-of-the-party stuff. It was what they call a 'manic defence', because inside you feel there is no way out. You feel shut in and nothing is going to get you out of it. If you go for a walk and it's raining, you think it's raining only on you, not on the other 8 million people in town. It’s a very egocentric state; everything is a personal attack.
My suicide attempt was in 1960 and the shame in those days was enormous. The idea that people have emotional problems was itself thought very dubious, and the idea of going to a psychotherapist for help was an admission of madness.
People are embarrassed by suicide and afterwards everyone pretended it hadn’t happened. I wasn’t shunned, but it was ignored. I was teaching at an American university at the time and when I went back I told them I’d had pneumonia.
Eventually my way of dealing with it was to discuss it with myself, through writing ‘The Savage God’. It was a study of suicide but it finished up – on the side of life, as a book that gave reasons for staying alive. It was my shot at clearing the problem up for myself, although I think I stayed depressed for a very long time after that.
Finally, thirty years on, aged 60, I started analysis. It’s extremely interesting discovering how the mind works and eight years of seeing a psychoanalyst helped a lot. One of the secrets in life is the ability to learn from experience. You see people make a bad marriage, get divorced and then marry an identical person. I learnt from my first marriage and made sure the second marriage wasn’t like that.
Depression, like divorce, is part of life; it happens to everybody. But I still think of my suicide attempt with great embarrassment when it comes to my three children. It’s never mentioned and understandably ‘The Savage God’ is the one book of mine they are reluctant to read.
Old age can get you down. I came into this world limping on one ankle. That one's in great shape now, but I had a climbing accident many years ago and, because of it, the other ankle is now playing up. So I’m going to limp out on the wrong ankle! I said to my wife the other day, “Old age sucks”. “Sure,” she replied, “But I’d like to see it out.” She’s right of course.
FACT: 6,216 people in the UK took their own lives in 1999 (Office of National Statistics, 2000)
Al Alvarez, 72, writer
Photo and text from Mind Out for Mental Health's 1 in 4 project, 2002.
What do you know about anything when you’re thirty? All I knew was that my marriage wasn’t working and I was profoundly unhappy. That was the trigger. Even in the run-up to my suicide attempt I kept up the cheerful, bang-bang, life-and-soul-of-the-party stuff. It was what they call a 'manic defence', because inside you feel there is no way out. You feel shut in and nothing is going to get you out of it. If you go for a walk and it's raining, you think it's raining only on you, not on the other 8 million people in town. It’s a very egocentric state; everything is a personal attack.
My suicide attempt was in 1960 and the shame in those days was enormous. The idea that people have emotional problems was itself thought very dubious, and the idea of going to a psychotherapist for help was an admission of madness.
People are embarrassed by suicide and afterwards everyone pretended it hadn’t happened. I wasn’t shunned, but it was ignored. I was teaching at an American university at the time and when I went back I told them I’d had pneumonia.
Eventually my way of dealing with it was to discuss it with myself, through writing ‘The Savage God’. It was a study of suicide but it finished up – on the side of life, as a book that gave reasons for staying alive. It was my shot at clearing the problem up for myself, although I think I stayed depressed for a very long time after that.
Finally, thirty years on, aged 60, I started analysis. It’s extremely interesting discovering how the mind works and eight years of seeing a psychoanalyst helped a lot. One of the secrets in life is the ability to learn from experience. You see people make a bad marriage, get divorced and then marry an identical person. I learnt from my first marriage and made sure the second marriage wasn’t like that.
Depression, like divorce, is part of life; it happens to everybody. But I still think of my suicide attempt with great embarrassment when it comes to my three children. It’s never mentioned and understandably ‘The Savage God’ is the one book of mine they are reluctant to read.
Old age can get you down. I came into this world limping on one ankle. That one's in great shape now, but I had a climbing accident many years ago and, because of it, the other ankle is now playing up. So I’m going to limp out on the wrong ankle! I said to my wife the other day, “Old age sucks”. “Sure,” she replied, “But I’d like to see it out.” She’s right of course.
FACT: 6,216 people in the UK took their own lives in 1999 (Office of National Statistics, 2000)