Lithium: the Strange Death of Priadel

Priadel is being discontinued in the U.K. What does this mean for bipolar patients? My pharmacist leaned in conspiratorially when I last picked up my prescription, his glasses perched on the edge of his sweaty nose. “So there’s something I need to tell you about your lithium...” He told me that the U.K wasn’t making any more of it. My heart jumped inside my chest and I could feel the beginnings of an anxiety attack. Like millions of others in the U.K, I rely on lithium to tether me to Earth,

Gambling In Wales: A Hidden Problem | Feature

In most betting shops you will see three windows marked ‘Bet Here’ and only one window with the legend ‘Pay Out’. Jeffrey Bernard Gambling isn’t exactly a recent phenomenon although certain advances like Bitcoin Casinos At EasyMobileCasino are. The origin of gambling goes back 2000 years ago, back to the Chinese playing keno, an early form of lottery. The widespread popularity of the game allegedly helped to pay for the Great Wall of China, get more info on that here if you are so inclined. Che

TROUBLE AT A TAVERN: WALES' RELATIONSHIP WITH ALCOHOL | FEATURE •

In the fourteenth century, Welsh poet Dafydd ap Gwilym wrote a poem called Trafferth Mewn Tafarn, or Trouble At A Tavern. The protagonist drinks wine, tries to seduce a comely lass, stumbles over bar stools, and narrowly avoids an altercation with three Englishmen before slinking off to bed alone, asking God to forgive him. Alcohol leading to lust, violence, foolishness and shame are pretty familiar themes, even in 2016. Many people who are alcoholics are going to Detox of South Fl, to get help.

SOUTH WALES' MENTAL HEALTH | FEATURE •

South Wales has been the focus of lurid mental health headlines over the past few years, from the tragic string of suicides in Bridgend to the Daily Mail’s assertion that Blaenau Gwent is “hooked on happy pills”. Just last month Pontypridd MP Owen Smith denounced our mental health system as “terrible” after his brother waited on a hospital trolley in A&E for over a week, instead of receiving specialist mental health treatment. In the UK, one in four of us will experience a mental health problem

POISONED PICK’N’MIX

Well, it used to be called dysphoric mania. Now it goes by the catch-all term ‘bipolar mixed episode’ or ‘mixed state’, the mental health equivalent of an electrified corpse in hot-pink lipstick. It’s depression on fire. It’s medieval manic funeral-weeping. It’s a brain being pulled in two catastrophically different directions from the moment you wake up until you finally manage to get a few hours’ sleep. It started, as bad experiences often do, with a Disney live action re-make. I went to se

The Bipolar Business Card

I order business cards on light grey linen in the middle of the night, a feverish sweat on my brow, bashing the ‘process order’ button without caring that the forty words advertising my ‘business’ are all misspelled or casually capitalised in places where capital letters have no right to be. “I’ve ordered a shit-ton of business cards.” I say to my room-mate, as he does the washing up wearing tart-red washing up gloves. “I’m going to be an Instagram poet.” “Right. And why would you need busine

Rainbow Bridge

Perhaps it was a freak accident or a long illness — it doesn’t really matter now. They’re gone; they’re at peace. But what are we left with? Guilt, loneliness, sadness. Perhaps even a sense of our own mortality. A pet is a member of the family, often the heart-beat of the home. My cat Bert was the one I came home to after long, grey days, the one who woke me up, the one I wished goodnight. He was my best friend, and I spoiled him like a child. I won’t presume to tell you how to mourn your own