Reprise, reprise, reprise.

I knew it wouldn't go away. It doesn't go away if you don't look after it and, as we all know now, Zach doesn't look after it or himself. He has the meds but he takes them in a desultory way. He knows best. Thinks he's 'happy' but doesn't realise that reality for him is that 'happiness' is elation, is pressurised talking, ideas coming at him from all sides; lack of sleep; exuberance; energy; grandiosity - psychosis.

I heard on the news the other day that the American diagnostic evaluation of mental illness is to be changed. It's going to incorporate more varied and less easily identifiable subsumes of 'mental illness.' One of those will be some kind of 'predisposition to psychosis.' As usual this is a red herring, a non-sequiteur. Of course among young men who indulge freely in drugs from a young age, there's going to be a 'predisposition to psychosis.' If you fuck around with the seratonin, then disrupt the neurotransmitters, screw the brain's chemistry, then, bingo! It doesn't take an Einstein to come to the conclusion that psychosis will follow that.

So what do you do? Shut these kids away during their formative years, impressing upon them that drugs and a 'predisposition to psychosis' don't go together? What parent would want to listen to that advice and act upon it? What percentage will create insanity? There's no real leadership from so-called 'role models' that has any force of will to instill a feeling of resistance to drugs in so many teens - boys especially. It's a part of the testesterone rush to prove that they can 'beat' drugs and that drugs won't 'beat' them.

This current government, of whom we had a glimmer of hope, has now gone the way of the last. They're going to cut the NHS budgets so that there will be even less money spent on mental health. Less beds, less infrastructure, less medication and the intervention that can provide succur for the mentally ill and their families.

This, therefore, brings me back to Zach. He's not in Greece, nor India nor Thailand. At 8.00am this morning he was in Camden, when usually he would have been out for the count, asleep in his bed until noon. His friends last night attempted to get him into hospital but, aware of their subterfuge, he did his usual and made a bolt for it. What happens now is part and parcel of his modus operandi. His behaviour will deteriorate. He'll try to do something so that the police are called. Hopefully someone will realise that he's ill and not a criminal and he'll be taken to hospital. Let's just hope.