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A Light in the Dark

Author: Paul Reed
Published: 16 December 2005

Paul Reed has utilised his experiences of mental illness (including psychosis, agoraphobia and hearing voices) to enable him to become a successful published writer. In this brief account of his life Paul focuses on the things he believes aided recovery, including yoga, martial arts and self help books. Paul’s book The One is published by Mercat Press.

I was born in Muirhouse, Edinburgh in 1970 and had a pretty normal life until my early teens. I began to feel low mood and although I never knew at the time I was suffering symptoms of depression. I just thought that’s how everyone felt and it never occurred to me to tell anyone even when a school panel hearing sent me to a child psychologist for non attendance. After 1 session they decided that I was not sick and decided to punish me for my behaviour.

I can remember feeling awkward among my schoolmates even though I was well in with the most popular of my peers and certainly no loner. I left school having not even bothering to show up for exams and went straight on the dole.

In the next few years I was to start to experiment with drugs and at 17 was in to tripping on hallucinogenic drugs. I enjoyed the trips I had up until I had a bad one. That’s where it all really began for me. I took an extremely bad trip one night and I convinced myself that ‘I’d really done it this time!’ I lay for hours waiting to die and I thought my heart was going to burst it was beating so fast and hard. My brain felt like it was melting inside my skull. A complete mind bender.

It was at this stage I started to have panic attacks and was diagnosed with an anxiety state.

The years rolled by and I was sent for talking therapy after talking therapy. Some of it helped, especially cognitive therapy, but I still suffered constant symptoms. I felt like the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dike trying to hold back the flood. It was a desperate time. I started to avoid my stressors. Crowds, busses, the barbers and eventually I was having panic attacks every time I left the house. My bedroom was my safety. Pretty soon I was avoiding going out and I was suffering from agoraphobia.

More therapy, behaviour therapy this time and slowly I started to conquer agoraphobia.

Next came anger. I was losing the plot. The original ‘angry young man’ started to flare up made worse by binge drinking. More therapy. They managed to calm me down but I was still ill.

What got to me the most in all this illness was the amount of life I had wasted being ill. Wasted time trying to get back to ‘Normal’. I never knew I could make a new ‘normal’.

Stress was a constant companion during these years.

Then one day in 1997 my brother and I woke up to find my mother dead. She’d committed suicide after a long depression aged 47. We were blown apart. We tried to keep the family together and keep a roof over our heads, we received eviction notices from the council a couple of days after my mum died, and somehow we got through it intact.

My mental health was deteriorating all the time and after my family moved out the following august I started to really go down hill. Here I was left alone in the house where my mother had killed herself. I enrolled in college to learn my way out of my situation but began to suffer more mental symptoms. I was convinced that everyone was out to get me and I never really mixed much with the other students. College life and poverty went hand in hand and I was hardly eating and studying too hard. I became withdrawn and paranoid and stopped answering the phone and the door even to family. I began to study the things I’d missed out on in college. Psychology, philosophy, communications etc. I took an interest in Buddhist philosophy and this went hand in hand with my martial arts background. I studied hundreds of self help books and really got into the self improvement bit but I was still going down hill fast.

I locked myself away in an attempt to re train my wildness. I trained obsessively, day and night, mentally, physically and spiritually. I trained in the martial arts and I read book after book.

I stopped eating and sleeping and eventually I lost touch with reality.

Then one day my world caved in. After years of severe mental symptoms I decided I couldn’t take any more. I just had to escape the pain, to abort the body I was in. I took a whole months’ prescription in an overdose attempt and lay down to die. Looking back now I was pretty far gone.

I awoke angrily that I was still alive.

That’s when the voices started. I was sitting watching the film ‘Who framed Roger Rabbit’ when my head was taken over with the deafening sound of brass band music and I saw crystal clear visions of swastika’s burning into my minds eye. I was terrified. It was like being hit with a stun gun. I began to hear voices in my head and thought they had some how tuned into my thoughts. They told me to do strange things and I had to follow the wind they sent to guide me.

I walked the streets of Edinburgh guided by the wind on a mission for Scotland becoming evermore emaciated. After some weeks I walked into a police station and asked ‘In the interests of national security, could they put me somewhere safe till after the general election?!’ They took me to the Royal, Edinburgh’s main Psychiatric hospital. To cut a long story short I was diagnosed with schizophrenia in august 2001 aged 31.

When I got out I had no sense of purpose in my life, no direction other than a dream of writing books one day. As a result of the schizophrenia I had little energy and was sleeping 12 hours a day. I couldn’t even manage to go to the shops for essentials some days. It was around this time my family started to distance themselves from me. Scared of me becoming dependent, I thought.

I told people of my dreams to write. ‘You could never write a book!’ family members would announce. I stuck my fingers in my ears and started to write on an old Apple Mac given to me by crime writer Quintin Jardine, a family friend. This was only six months after I got out of hospital and I was still under section. I completed the manuscript in about 6 months and sent it out to publishers.

Meanwhile, my mental health was improving partly because of the medication and also because of my martial arts training, yoga and chi kung. I also had a purpose now, a goal: Writing. If you don’t have a goal to aim at then you are not playing football really, you just kicking a ball around in circles. You need a goal to aim for. When you have a goal, a dream and you take action to bring it about, then you get a sense of purpose. Your destiny reveals your purpose.

When you have a purpose you have hope. Light at the end of the tunnel. There is always hope if you look hard enough. Look at all the situations in your life. They’ve all taught you something. Each thing, good or bad teaches us something. These lessons give you experience. ‘Out of our sufferings we should learn something.’ Is how Thich Nhat Hahn put it in his book ‘peace is every step’. What could you do with the experiences that life has taught you? What do you know deep down that you are capable of?

I believe that we can be whatever we want if we take action to guide us in the direction of our dreams, like a ship guides itself with a rudder. Don’t sit in the harbour whining about how unfair life is. Take action to change it. The more action we take, the better our likelihood of achieving our goal. Don’t ever let anyone tell you “you can’t” when you know you can.

Also what I’ve learned is self reliance. When you rely on your own merits and learn about your own illnesses you can meet your doctor or therapist half way instead of searching for the magic pill or miracle cure. ‘Respect the gods and Buddha’s but do not depend upon them’ was what legendary swordsman Miyamoto Musashi said in his Book of 5 rings. We are responsible for our recovery as much as any doctor. Become self reliant.

I believe that as mentally ill people in recovery that we have a strength, an edge over those that have never had many problems. What you have learned has made you stronger, wiser and hopefully more compassionate than the average Joe out there.

‘Good timber is not grown with ease! The stronger the wind, the stronger the trees!’

Back to the book. I was sending it out to publishers and it kept on coming back with ‘sorry’ notes. ‘It’s just not what we do’, ‘We have no experience in mental health’ is what they’d say.

I showed a copy to Quintin Jardine who admitted he had poor initial expectations of the work. He was astounded after a few pages. He asked if he could show a copy to some publisher friends at Mercat Press in Edinburgh. They’d just been saying they’d like to expand. They read it and loved it and then they made me an offer. My first novel ‘The One’ by Paul Reed was published less than 2 years after I was released from the Royal Edinburgh hospital.

The book is based on my experiences of psychosis and voice hearing and was written from ‘Mind maps’, little thought bubbles with keywords in them. I jotted down these maps to remind me of each episode while I was in hospital. There was little else to do but stare at walls and smoke and I suppose I already had my mind set on my dream even though I was psychotic. I was still in there, seeing, feeling everything that was going on around me, all that was being done to me. My spirit, my personality, my life force was still intact and has grown stronger for my ordeal.

In the past couple of years I’ve done loads of exciting things I never dreamed I could ever do as a schizophrenic, anxious, depressed, angry, paranoid agoraphobic, hypochondriac. I did the Edinburgh international book festival last year and I also did a reading for the Royal college of psychiatrists in front of 120 psychiatrists among other public speaking events. Only the other week I was in Glasgow filming for Scottish Television and I’ve taught creative writing at a local arts centre. If you aim for the stars you’ll at least hit the moon.

On the whole my life is pretty good now but I still have dreams to act upon. ‘We must walk through the darkness to find the light!’

With my 18+ years of experience in mental health problems I am also involved with various mental health groups and have taught a recovery programme.

This proves without a shadow of a doubt that YOU CAN RECOVER.

If you’d like to share your thoughts or experiences of recovery then contact us on This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or 0141 240 7790 to discuss.

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Story disclaimer

The stories presented here are for information only. They are meant to inspire hope and show that recovery can and does happen. The stories highlight various examples of recovery and we do not advocate any of these experiences as the ‘right’ way to recover. Recovery is an individual and unique process, each person must decide for himself or herself what will work for them. Please carefully consider any decisions you make about your own recovery and consult with someone you trust if you feel unsure.

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