I Did Tell, I Did (25 page)

A few days after John moved out, I watched a TV programme that was to change my life. It was
That’s Life
, presented by Esther Rantzen, and it was about dependency on GP-prescribed drugs and the problems people have stopping them. For me it was a huge wake-up call. I had been on medication for twenty-four years by that stage, a lot of the time in a fog of confusion, as though my head was filled with cotton wool. The pills had originally been prescribed to deal with headaches but they had messed with my mind, making me unable to function properly and affecting my reason and judgement. Perhaps my relationships were doomed to failure because of my inadequacies and my drug-filled life, or perhaps the men I had chosen just didn’t understand me. I don’t know, but I vowed that this last marriage would be my last mistake. Life had to change and I had to change it. I had to come off everything—all the poison that was destroying my life—and live drug-free. Then, if I made mistakes, it would all be down to me.

The producers of
That’s Life
wanted people to take part in a survey and offered to send leaflets to help sufferers break the habit. I sent for the pack that was on offer and was hugely encouraged by it. Armed with their literature, a great deal of determination and little else, I went to my doctor’s surgery. It was the same practice but I saw a different partner to the one I had seen before. I told him what the other GP had told me, about having to remain on medication for life. I went on to say that although I would appreciate his help and support, with or without it I was going to beat the habit and come off everything. This was my last chance. Although he was a bit sceptical, he agreed to see me regularly during what he said would be a very difficult time. So he knew of the dangers! Why hadn’t someone told me?

I was taking huge doses of anti-anxiety medication and antidepressants, and I knew I would have to cut down slowly or I would suffer unbearable withdrawal. With the help of the
That’s Life
leaflets, I worked out a gradual reduction programme and, following their advice, I sat the girls down and told them what I was going to do. They were so supportive that I was very proud of them. They weren’t scared, but were very matter of fact as we discussed the practicalities and how they could help. I hoped it wouldn’t affect them adversely to see me in my worst state, but all I could do was protect them as much as I was capable of.

At first, as the drugs were reduced I began to feel very weak and had fits of shaking and cramps in my legs and arms. One evening, after about a week of withdrawal, I suddenly
felt terrified and ran from room to room, not sure what I was running from. My skin was clammy and sticky and I felt so ill that I rang a friend.

‘I think I’m going to die!’ I cried. ‘I can’t do this. I must take something.’

That was the last thing I wanted to do but the fear and the physical symptoms were so awful that I wanted to stop trying to stop.

‘You can do this, Cassie,’ my friend said firmly. ‘You know you can, I know you can. We’ll work through it.’ Encouraged by her strength and feeling safer because she was there, I saw it through. She held onto me while I shook violently and then slumped, exhausted, into her arms.

This was the first of many such panic attacks and bouts of terrible, inexplicable fear. A few days later, having reduced my dose very slightly by breaking the pills into pieces, I suddenly felt violently giddy and began to hallucinate, seeing black slimy things crawling out of the walls of my home. It was horrific. I was so scared that my whole body began to shake and jerk in rapid movements. I thought I was going mad. I thought I was going to die.

The physical problems that were part of the withdrawal included constipation and indigestion. I took herbal remedies for both, but to no avail. I couldn’t sleep because of the shaking and nausea I was suffering. As I reduced the dose of one particular drug, I suffered complete muscular seizures. My body went absolutely rigid and my jaw felt as though it were locking. I was terrified. Along with this, sticky yellow stuff was
being secreted in my underwear. It was the most horrible feeling, as though my body wasn’t my own. I would wash for what seemed like hours and still I never felt clean. Of course, this brought back all the fear and terror that I had felt as a little girl, when I had been sexually abused by Uncle Bill. I had vivid flashbacks to the times when I used to rush to the safety of the bathroom after his attacks, lock the door and scrub between my legs until it hurt. I might be a grown woman now but it felt the same, and all the memories and feelings of childhood came flooding back. Association is a very powerful force.

In between these times, I had severe panic attacks and would run round the house sobbing and screaming until I was exhausted and would fall in a heap onto the floor. Sometimes at night I would manage to get off to sleep but then I would wake, terrified, not knowing why. The walls of the bedroom would feel as though they were closing in on me and I was suffocating. I couldn’t breathe properly. I just wanted it to end.

I couldn’t eat properly and lost a great deal of weight. Melissa and Lucy would bring me raspberries or chocolate to try and tempt me to eat. Melissa took over the housekeeping and shopping while Lucy spent time with me, encouraging me to keep on with the programme I had set myself. Little notes would appear—‘You can do it, Mum’ or ‘We love you, Mum’—to encourage me to keep going. They really were stars during this awful time.

On Christmas Day, after I had been awake all night, I suddenly had the panic attack of all panic attacks. The hallucinations were horrible: I thought I saw bodies all over the floor,
oozing blood. Flashbacks of the abuse, memories that I couldn’t escape, were rushing through my mind. I was banging my head against the wall of the bedroom just trying to knock all the thoughts that were haunting me out of my head. I ran out of the house and began to make my way to my friend’s house, two streets away. The horrors I was feeling stripped me of any common sense or sense of reality. Several people gave me strange looks as they passed but I didn’t care. Then a neighbour saw me and stopped me.

‘Are you OK, Cassie?’ she asked with concern. ‘Are you sure you should be out like this?’ she continued, looking down at my clothes.

This stopped me in my tracks. I looked down and realised that I still had my slippers and dressing gown on. I hadn’t washed or combed my hair. Added to the terror I was feeling at that time, I must have looked demented.

She put her arm around my shoulder to guide me back home and I crumpled to the floor sobbing.

These withdrawal symptoms continued to one degree or another for eighteen months as I reduced the tablets little by little. I alternated between not being able to sleep at all or having horrific night terrors, and the panic attacks during the day rendered me helpless and distraught. I thought it would never end. I became afraid to go to bed because of the nightmares and sometimes sat in my chair all night. I wouldn’t answer the phone some days and definitely wouldn’t answer the door.

As I came down further from the original dose, I realised that my self-confidence was non-existent. At least whilst I was
taking the drugs, I was able to go out and do all the things required of me. At least with the medication I could function. Most people didn’t even know I had a problem. I don’t think I knew I had a problem, until I tried to stop taking the tablets.

But then some of the positives began to kick in. As the amount of medication I was taking reduced, I was surprised at how different I began to feel. I could taste food again, smell perfume and flowers, and feel emotions that had been locked away.

One of the most poignant times was when I was playing with my dog one day and I laughed, laughed out loud. My daughters stopped what they were doing and stared at me. I didn’t know what I had done. I just knew that something had either alarmed them or scared them.

‘What’s wrong?’ I asked. ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’

They continued to stare, not sure what to say to me.

‘You laughed, Mum,’ said Lucy. ‘You laughed.’ She sounded unsure how I was going to react. They both stood still. And then I cried and they flew over to me and hugged me.

‘It’s all right, Mum, it’s good that you laughed, isn’t it?’ Melissa asked.

I assured her that it was indeed good and that I was crying with happiness, but the truth was, I was crying because of the impact that my laughter had had on my precious children. I wondered how long it had been since they had heard it.

Then one day I shouted at them. They were mortified. I hadn’t shouted for years. I either didn’t have the strength or
just didn’t become so cross that I had to shout. I hadn’t become angry or stressed while taking the drugs; I didn’t feel very much at all, so when I shouted at them they were shocked. So there were downsides as far as the children were concerned, but they were safe in the assurance that this was good, this was what normal mothers do.

During the last six months of breaking my dependency I needed something to focus on and decided to look for a part-time job doing something interesting but not too taxing. I was in the throes of cutting down the tablets into the smallest pieces possible and I had terrific mood swings but my concentration was improving. I was incredibly thin but had started to take a pride in my appearance once again. I laughed more and enjoyed things much more than I could ever remember doing.

I was offered a job working for two young men who ran a marketing and design company and I decided to tell my new employers my story to enable them to understand my everchanging moods. They were incredibly supportive and suggested that I should wear a colour-coded badge: yellow on a good day, blue on a not-so-good day and red on a bad day. They wouldn’t even speak to me when I wore the red badge unless I spoke first. It worked. I began to see a funny side and get my sense of humour back. I had used humour as a defence sometimes, but now I could actually laugh at myself. Both of these lovely young men supported me in my endeavour to end the dependency by showing complete faith in my ability to do this and to do my job.

The hardest part of ending the control these pills had on me was to let go of the last tiny piece of the last pill. This took months and months. I think I was afraid of the fear itself, more than afraid of what might happen. Logically I knew that the tiny piece of tablet that I couldn’t let go of couldn’t make very much, if any, difference. But it was like a crutch—a crutch that I was afraid to give up. I continued to take this minute piece of medication every morning. I just couldn’t let go, couldn’t give it up until some eighteen months after beginning to cut down. I finally gave up completely in November 1984, a year before my fortieth birthday.

It had been eighteen long months since I made the decision to go clean and it was extraordinarily difficult, but when I came out the other side I soon began to realise just how much the struggle had been worth it. At last I was myself again.

A
s I got used to my new, drug-free life, the last thing on my mind was romance. I was done with that, permanently. I had been there several times and won all the T-shirts. Now I had a mortgage to pay, two daughters to feed and clothe, and several pets to look after, because we had somehow collected a little dog, three cats and numerous rabbits and guinea pigs. I needed to earn enough money to do all this, so that was my priority. I was promoted to a different job within the marketing and design company, and I now worked closely with the two partners who were the creators and designers. I loved the creative atmosphere and the fact that people would ask my opinion on ideas and themes for campaigns and adverts. At first I had been doing the books, then I moved into despatching goods and soon I was running the whole office. It was a very happy, productive little team.

One of the directors was a very charismatic man called Peter. I was fascinated by him right from the start as I really
admired his creative brain and the work he did. One day we needed a quiet room for recording a campaign for a new product and he suggested using a room in his house, so I went back with him to assess it. It was then, on our own and out of the office setting, that I had to admit to myself that I was very attracted to him. But surely it would never be reciprocated? Surely he wouldn’t look at me?

I asked the girls in the office about him and they all said that he was a very nice guy but a confirmed bachelor. He had girlfriends but he was quite clear that he would never settle down with any of them, because he liked living on his own with his Irish red setter. I wasn’t looking for any serious commitments either, so that seemed ideal.

Gradually, as we worked together, he began asking about my life. I told him about my battle to come off tranquillisers and, when I finished, he leaned over and kissed me very gently. Could something good be about to happen in my life? Still I didn’t dare hope. Was there no hidden agenda this time? Was God listening?

We went to a design fair together and at the end of the day we stopped for dinner on the way home—and again he kissed me. It was gentle and undemanding and I was ecstatic. I couldn’t stop smiling for ages after he dropped me off at my front door. Life seemed so much brighter than it had been for years—decades, even. I had a job I loved, two wonderful daughters and now
this.
A new chance.

One afternoon when we had closed the office early, Peter asked if I would like to go for a drink. Of course I said I would
love to and we drove to his house. He had the first CD player I had ever seen or heard—they were still a new technology—and as he placed the earphones on my head I felt tingly, almost drunk. Sometimes, his closeness was almost too much. The music sounded incredible and I was blown away. Up till then we had shared a few kisses but we had never made love. Again I hadn’t even thought about this; perhaps I didn’t read the signs or perhaps I didn’t understand my own feelings. For me, sex had always been at the bidding of a man, and it was sometimes bearable, sometimes brutal, just something that I put up with for one reason or another.