Being sectioned

[Edwin Strohacker]

I've just had an unsettling phone call from an old friend. A mutual friend, whom I've lost touch with was sectioned yesterday. It seems he's been living a chaotic lifestyle going from short term contracting job to contracting job, never settling anywhere, has lost contact with his child & has been taking lots of Cocaine recently.

I was told he's been telling people his computers are being hacked, his neighbour wants to kill him, he's being spied on and so on & matters came to a head yesterday in a row with his neighbour. The police were called & he was carted off to a secure unit AIUI on a 28 day section 2 thing for assessment.

I've not seen the guy for a few years & when we did knock about together, he was always a bit semi detached & always liked his drugs, although in those days it was nearly always a few ecstasy pills at the weekends. Things appear to have progressed from there & ended up like this.

I guess my question is supposing there's a few professional health care guys around here, what happens now? Is there a process? Is it possible to suggest a success rate for getting someone out of this hole or is it all too individual to say? What happens if he doesn't respond to the medical staff?

This isn't a world I've ever experienced & I obviously want to see a guy I've known for years & who is otherwise a reasonably hard working albeit flawed man get back on his feet.

[Edwin Strohacker]

Guys, I appreciate this. It's all come as a bit of a shock & listening to the story, my first thoughts were it was all around the coke. The guy's always had a touch of paranoia about him but nothing you would say even approaches problematic if that makes any sense, so I'm thinking forced withdrawal will alleviate whatever's got into his head.

FWIW, my mate who went along to the hospital says the staff were effectively asking questions designed to let him go home but he said while he was being rational & lucid, it was like a switch being flipped & he went off into paranoid delusions & that was that.

[Edwin Strohacker]

Even in the good times he was a bit of a liability but yep, I think it's time to recognise the party's over. I'm sure it's the coke that's tipped him over the edge, amplifying the worst aspects of his character.

Mate visited him yesterday & said he was agitated, wanting to go home & that the feeling was the realisation he'd been sectioned hadn't sunk in, so like you say, it's a journey but he has to take the first step.

[Edwin Strohacker]

I don't actually know, early forties I would guess. Wider point, like you allude to is I never knew anyone who was improved by sticking that rubbish up their nose.

[Edwin Strohacker]

For various reasons I won't go into, this lad is pretty incapable of hurting anyone either through character or physical capability, although I accept anything is possible when the balance of the mind is disturbed.

What I'm really saying is I agree that the sectioning was entirely for his own safety, he was apparently unable to pick up on questions obviously intended to reassure the staff he could be on his way & slipped back into the paranoia there & then, leaving the hospital little choice but to admit him, I am told by my friend who was present.

Same guy is visiting again & coming round for dinner tonight, so I should know more later on. FWIW, between us mates, we've decided I should stay away for the time being at least as I'm the friend who drifted away from the bunch & the fear is if I pop up out of the blue with a bunch of grapes & a bottle of Lucozade, I become part of the group in his head who's spying on him, so that's why this is all second hand reporting.

[Edwin Strohacker]

Already out six hours a day apparently. It's not going well. If anything he's deteriorated, demanded to be taken to a solicitor yesterday to file charges against the police for failing to stop enemies drilling holes in the walls to plant listening devices.

Asked the staff & they say he's doing well, we let him out for the day. We pointed out the latest delusions & they say they haven't seen it,so we have an intelligent guy on & off his nut learning to play the system. We (three of us) are talking about making representations to get him closer supervision & no outside access for his own sake.

[Edwin Strohacker]

paulmakin said:

are we totally sure that he's not still using when away from supervision ?

No, not at all. I still haven't been to visit but the lads came over yesterday to give me the latest & we know he's with his girlfriend outside of hospital so we will find out if he's still into the gear soon enough. The upshot is the lads managed a chat with the nursing staff but not a Doctor so not much in the way of a clinical update or feedback from their perspective.

This guy is from Lancashire & we're on the south coast, he has in effect cut himself off from his family for years - we are for all intents and purposes all he has, which is why we're persisting with him & the feeling from our end of it is he's in no state to be out of hospital based on his current state - they clearly feel differently.

[Edwin Strohacker]

Good stuff - without sounding like a record with a scratch, this is all new to us, so while I'm repeatedly sounding the alarm, the reassurance is pretty welcome.

We've started looking beyond this episode, wondering about the longer term. If you could see this guy's life, you'd be looking on a pretty chaotic picture - we always put it down to his being a jack the lad, living in the moment but in this new context, we're thinking we've had a mate barely coping with life & we never saw it.

[Edwin Strohacker]

To tidy this up, they kicked him out on Monday with some pills & a weekly appointment with the shrink. He's still banging on about listening devices, spies & god knows what else. One of the lads gave him a bit of tough love & none of it landed. We've agreed to keep an eye on him at arm's length for a bit, see how it goes. Maybe we should rig up some secret cctv in his flat

Cheers for all the input, it all helped & you lot were bang on the money.