People fell away from me as soon as I stopped being happy, uncomplaining and demure – when I simply did not have the mental strength and energy to fake it 'till I made it. The mad, bleak, depressing person they met when I found myself in trouble was too much, and they found it scary. It was unexpected, and they did not know what to do to help, so, they didn't. For them, the problem – me – disappeared from their lives when I stopped drip-feeling them tidbits about how bad things were, stopped asking for help and went it alone. It was up to me to work out how I was going to guide my inebriated self out of the labyrinth. The message we are given is to ask for help – so if friends couldn't help, maybe the professionals could. But, since this medication is deemed addictive, in the UK it cannot be prescribed long-term. Once that little light in the full-dark of my recovery was snuffed out, local authorities and health authorities gave me unsuitable advice, negligent health care and, in the case of my local council, sent me away with the message that as a homeless, socially isolated, mentally ill , alcoholic single young woman, I was not a priority for any form of shelter. When I asked what I should do and showed them my bank account balance with less than £1 in it, I was told that I would have to sleep on the street.

Although I am grateful that I wasn't taken to a mental health unit when I had the most acutely draining and distressing psychotic episode, the police, who I called out to my apartment three times in the space of a few hours, did investigate what I had told them – or at least, they told me they had. While the cops were out at my request checking on my father, and I was wandering around my front garden trying to get the couple that were having sex to come out of the hedge, I received a call from the mental health crisis team. Of course, when you are having a psychotic episode you do not believe that you are suffering from a mental health crisis – you are angry and frustrated as what you are seeing, hearing and feeling is real. Just as you don't question the fact that your kettle exists or that cows moo and fire is hot, you know it is a solid-gold fact that the once benign alien overlord who was up until now grooming you for top-secret interstellar business was now stalking your home in the dark, throwing pebbles at your windows and threatening to decapitate your pets.

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