John O’Donoghue: Sectioned, A Life Interrupted

Credits: First sectioned aged 16. ‘The humdrum reality of mental illness has rarely been so well conveyed. It’s less a story of locked wards than of hostels, soup kitchens, sheltered housing, drug addicts, well-meaning charity workers and relentless poverty.’ Blake Morrison, Guardian. ‘His poet’s fine eye for detail is a great advantage.’ Morning Star.Introduction: John was accepted at a CU meet because he had asked Jesus to come into his life. There was a strange incident involving a young woman at the meetings and John had bile extracted by a senior pastor of the group. They asked him: Who are you? John said he was Satan. Wind blew from his penis, he said: I am John. They showed him a bin half full of bile (I don’t fully understand this) and John felt he was delivered, but no, he was still in the grip of the Devil.Chapter I, Claybury 1975: John describes hallucinations of smoke coming from the wall, gravity pressing down on him, and he is the only person who can see the smoke. He was 16, and after 4 months in Claybury he was given ECT. He describes the corridors and the smells, like the food smells from the kitchens which in Hellingly had started work at 7.00 am. In conversation with the ECT doctor, he asks her if this is a sexual ceremony, which made him ashamed, and then John is injected and asked to count down. He awakes with his head banging and joins the lunch queue. He portrays the big metal cube lunch trolley. A woman tells him she fed him before ECT, and he can’t remember. A patient shouts that she is the Blessed Virgin Mary and the staff restrain and in inject her. John’s father never misses the Val Doonican show, like the programmes I had to watch in the 1970’s at Reg’s or on the ward. His father dies. This is about 18 months before his admission. His mother cannot cope and is taken

into Claybury, a large Victorian asylum, and this after she has been called to John’s school because of his truancy. John agrees to be fostered. John settles back and forth in time with his narrative. At a group therapy session where O1 and O2 wards are having a combined group, an Indian woman accuses the staff of having affairs – and she is a former doctor. He is afraid to escape as Claybury is a kind of institutionalised Neverland. Back to the foster home, where John is spending the night crying: ‘Oh Jesus! I’m in the grip of the Devil!’ An ambulance comes to take him away. At Claybury there is an RC chapel, and John continues to see smoke coming from walls and now it contains evil faces. He mentions a cookery group – like at Oakwood, not Hellingly. There is a painting on the wall with ‘YOU ARE HERE’ – (isn’t that from a John Lennon exhibition? (Me)). He goes out to a pub with another patient and the meds don’t mix with the drink. He is abandoned in the pub. The smoke continues along with smells of sulphur. His mother visits him but he feels he should be the one looking after her. She berates him. He is in a world of smoke, density and terror. Frank and Ivy, his foster parents, visit him, and he thinks of the French O Level he should be taking. He says he is fine but thinks of the meds, the ECT and the groups. He describes the shaking and rocking of the side effects on other patients. At Christmas 1974 he goes into temporary care at a vicarage. (Same year as me but he is younger.) He goes to Frank and Ivy’s. He describes Claybury’s area going all the way to Ilford over 235 acres, with football pitches, buildings and a manor house. It was an estate before it was an asylum. The smoke and also whispering are following him. He is now the man of the house since his father died (an Irish notion?) but is not man enough to keep his family together. (Like my feelings for the economy and taxi driving and work and poverty.) He realises he actually prefers the asylum with the routines, OT, groups, doctors and nurses, food trolleys, long stay

patients, chaplains, and grounds, to outside – the outside. (He must still be a teenager.)Chapter VI, Grovelands House, 1980: This is a halfway house, beyond the ward and patients’ canteen. There is a view to a leafy suburban street, people sit on ‘shabby sofas and lumpy armchairs, drinking cups of tea and smoking.’ It is an interview and he tells them he has been in Friern for 5 months (his second asylum, as I had two asylums.) He says he likes growing things, connecting to nature, and they tell him this is a therapeutic community. He tells them about being fostered and his two asylums. If he accepted he can stay for 18 months, starting off sharing and then getting his own room. He can register with the GP and get a claim for sickness benefit. They accept him and when he moves in he meets the warden. The place is two houses in one. He moves into a three bed room with a wash basin. There are set routines around meetings and cleaning, and if you get a job some of the routine changes. No sex, no violence allowed. A room-mate is temping for the council and has impressive A Levels, can go to university – not for John. The Monday night meeting takes place in the lounge. There is a Them and Us with the staff. It’s no so much a commune, more a Them and Us mirror of society. The staff are in control. One of the residents has a side effect tic like he’s seen in Claybury. He ends up having a relationship with Becky. He describes some aspects of how residents deal with the routine and getting out of it.Chapter XI, Banstead, 1984: John does the washing up with a foreign (Filipino) cleaner in the ward kitchen (like at Oakwood, Hellingly for me.) Banstead is the third place to section him (I was in three places too: Hellingly, Oakwood and DGH.) There are dormitories for men and women at either end of the ward. There is a TV lounge and John observes the same divisions of class and hierarchy among the staff prevail as at other places. Prior to that

he had bunked a train from New Cross to the country to get a break:- he’s free, just like when he was on the streets before. The police pick him up and ask if he’s looking for a few days in the country. They take him to Banstead. He is mad angry at being picked up by the police and dumped, and looks after a patient who he fantasises with about getting out and having good food, brad and cheese. He hates the heroin in the old places in London – New Cross. Banstead is not as extensive as Claybury or Friern. A nurse gives him an idea of his rights as a sectioned patient, for the first time. His friends Keith and Susie help him escape temporarily. The police knock on the door of the place they have left him, and take him back to Banstead. There he gets in an altercation and they put him in the Locked Ward. This has involved an old Polish patient who fought in the Battle of Britain – cf the Polish section of Oakwood library. He reflects on a friend who has been sent to Broadmoor, where Ronnie Kray is. Previously he has been with patients who are either depressed or disturbed, now he’s with the dangerous crew, and is scared. ‘Peace, love and understanding have been smashed to pieces’ (p203). On the TV is the violence of the Miners’ strike. Mrs Thatcher declares that the ‘Enemy Within’ is dangerous to liberty – it’s like she wants to section the whole country (cf my life following politics and economics.)Various parts of text: pp 140-141 (St Mungo’s, 1982)...He is told about his B1 and B1C, to sort out his claim at the dole office (1920’s echoes). He rips all his poem books to shreds, from his Friern days, like Mum threw way all my school exercise books that I had saved from 8 years at Sidcup Grammar. He walks for 60 miles from east/north London to Essex, like Robert B walking across the marshes from Bexhill to Eastbourne. He says of Bradwell ecumenical community that it is as if God has forsaken the place, like my song Jesus Has Left The Asylum. He dosses down at Villiers Street, he

says it’s as low as you can go, like life for me in the Spikes. (All pp 140-141).

says it’s as low as you can go, like life for me in the Spikes. (All pp 140-141).