What's Normal Anyway? Celebrities' Own Stories of Mental Illness (20 page)

So that's how it manifested itself pretty much from day one and, you know, it was difficult. Thirteen is a difficult age, and I remember it as a very difficult time, particularly as I moved school that year. Having said that, my stepsister sent me a text yesterday saying: ‘I beg to differ with your analysis about when you got OCD.' She said: ‘I remember you as a child aged five and you wouldn't go to bed until everything was organised just right in the bathroom.' Which is interesting and I don't recall that. But it makes sense as my parents divorced when I was young and from the age of three to six there were tough times and I felt I wasn't in control of my environment. And OCD is all about controlling events – my view of OCD is that it's about finding balance, feeling that
you're
in control. The problem is, the more you feed it, the more
it's
in control. Yep?

It can almost torment you to a degree where everything you're doing, everything, takes so long, as the rituals just become more pronounced and more demanding. I'm particularly bad in the kitchen so – when I'm really being very tedious – I'll walk through the door, go to the fridge and get a diet coke, so you've got to wash your hands because you've been in the fridge. You'll get something out of the bread bin, wash your hands. You'll get some salt out of the cupboard, wash your hands. You'll put the Diet Coke can in the recycling bin, wash your hands. Do you see what I mean? And I know, from people who have contacted me, that I'm not at the desperate end of the spectrum, nowhere near the desperate end of the spectrum. Some people are constantly washing their hands because of germs – they're terrified – but it's just routine, you've got to wash your hands so many times. So it really can dominate your life. Getting out the bath can take an extra five or ten minutes. Oh, it's like . . . God, getting out of the garden can take an extra five or ten minutes. You know? Grrr.

I operate to the rule of four, so I have to do everything in evens. So if I'm walking the dog and it's snowed, for example, then if I touch the snow once to feel the texture – I love climates and snow – then I have to touch it two times, then two times with that hand, then another two times, and another two times. Or when I go to the loft I have to switch the light on four times, you know? Again, the bathroom, I have to wash my hands four times. It's no laugh when you've washed your hands repeatedly, and you don't dry them because you're so pissed off, and then you press a light switch and get a shock. Another thing I do is I have to walk in and out of the room four times. I mean, I don't want to be rude to Michael Flatley, but I said I look like an extra from
Riverdance
, coming in and out of a room, so my family call it the ‘Michael Flatley's'. You know, all the: ‘Diddly, diddly'. So they say: ‘Dad's got the Michael Flatley's again.' So my wife and children often make light of it – often it's: ‘Come on Dad, get on with it!' – which is helpful because I think you don't want to make an issue out of it.

Although sometimes, very occasionally, when it really does kick you in the head, I'll say to my wife: ‘That was a bad day', and she'll say: ‘I know it was bad because your rituals have been bad.' You know, she can spot it, I don't need to tell her now that I've had a bad, or even a bloody nightmare, day. And she's been an absolute hero to bear with it. I'm lucky I've got a very patient wife, because I think I have been quite demanding. I think Mrs Walker – if she was to be frank with me – would probably admit that it's been a bigger pain in the arse for her than I ever thought it was, because I have a
level
of insight, but you're never quite sure how difficult you are. I can be quite awkward because I can obsess on things. I could be up for hours looking for an interest rate statement from a bank account two years ago that might only be for
£
7.50 and which actually I don't really need. But it's about control. So occasionally Mrs Walker will say: ‘You are being bloody difficult at the moment.' So when it's bad, I'm given a fairly wide berth . . . no, that's not right. I'm given a lot of latitude and slack. Latitude and slack, that's what I mean, and that's why I'm lucky.

I mean, I've read stories where it just destroys marriages, it destroys relationships, it really does hurt and damage families. It can become a monster, I mean, a monster. As many people have said to me, it's like an unwelcome house guest – as is any mental illness – that can, at times, grind you down and make you feel very unhappy. It drives people just . . . it can drive people round the bend; it drives me round the bend at times. I've had it at times where I've felt very depressed and miserable. I'd describe it as malevolent – it's malevolent – God, is it a destructive illness. Although is it an illness? It's a mental . . . it's mental ill health. I think we need to redefine mental illness; it's mental ill health. Do you see what I mean? Mental ill health is more DEFCON 3 than DEFCON 2. Does that make sense?

Having said that, people do tend to trivialise OCD, so they think it's all about putting your pencils in a line. And maybe the person who does that does have OCD, but there are grades of OCD. At OCD's most spiteful, you're blackmailed; a hundred blackmails a day. It has ranges of blackmails, but at its most spiteful, if you don't do a particular thing then someone you really do love is going to die. And you know that that is total nonsense – that's the weird thing, you have total insight – you know it's completely, completely crazy, but you're not going to risk it. I was on holiday recently and I took a beautiful photograph of my son carrying a fishing rod and I was glowing with pride, but then the voice started: ‘If you don't get rid of that photograph, your child will die.' You fight those voices for a couple or three hours and you know that you really should not give into them because they should not be there and it ain't going to happen. But, in the end, you ain't going to risk your child, so one gives into the voices and then feels pretty miserable about life afterwards.

So in my view, OCD is when it actually really starts to impact upon your happiness and welfare and well-being. It's when, after six months, you haven't been able to move on – when it actually starts to impact upon your medium- to long-term happiness and equilibrium. That's when perhaps you need to start thinking: ‘Look, there's no reason I should sit around feeling miserable, maybe I should go and talk to someone about it or sort it out.' Although I haven't, I haven't. Listen, we're going to have a really disappointing interview on this, because I haven't. Because, you know, I'm a typical man. I know that you can do cognitive behavioural therapy, you can take antidepressants, so I know that there
are
treatments out there and maybe I will go out and embrace them. But no, I haven't so far. It's a male thing isn't it? Personally, I wouldn't want to take drugs, but I want to make it clear that I've nothing against them and that there's lots of people they work very, very, well for.

And really I would say that for the last four and a half years it's been pretty benign for me. There have been moments, there have been periods of anxiety in there where it flairs up, but they've been short periods. So it's not been tricky for me for the last few years and I think that's because I'm more settled in what I'm doing. I mean today, for instance, I've washed my hands a few times – at times when you'd expect me to wash my hands, to be honest, like before a meal – and I'll always take a bit longer because I have to do that, that, that and that, but it's not very active at the moment.

***

If you were to ask me: ‘When were the most active times of your OCD?' it would be the times when I was most anxious and I imagine most professionals in this field, and I'm not a professional, would say that makes perfect sense. The problem is, it comes at times when I'm very stressed, so, let's think: going to a new school when I was thirteen, going to university, first job, changing jobs, losing (which I was always going to do) the general election in 2001 and not having a job to go to after that, getting selected for parliament. So it's periods of great change and uncertainty which trigger anxiety. I mean, it was very bad after I was elected to the House of Commons, then it plateaued, but then you get spikes. So during the expenses scandal, for example, when you were totally out of control – you didn't know whether you'd done anything wrong or whether you were going to – it was just totally off the scale. Because you're trying to find control, you're trying to find balance. Does that make sense? So that would be an example where it wasn't good. And nobody would be sympathetic, and I wouldn't ask for it, the last thing I want is any sympathy.

When I first got into parliament in 2005 it was extraordinary. Nothing prepares you for being in the public eye. You think you want to be an MP, I was selected, and within two days the OCD came roaring back and it lasted for two years. It was the scrutiny – or the sense of scrutiny, even if it's not happening you imagine it's there – the expectation, the directness with which people communicate with you. It's a complete sensory overload and I don't think anything prepares you for that. Suddenly, you know, you're reading the newspaper and there's a journalist calling you a fat Tory – not that that would worry me in the slightest now – but it's part of the jigsaw. So I think a lot of colleagues struggle in their first two years, I really do, I think that's pretty factual, because you come into politics and it's a hostile world. Your motives are always questioned and you very quickly realise that it doesn't matter that you're a new broom. In a sense the media treat you as before and constituents will be very direct with you – often very warm but sometimes very direct – so I think the first two years are difficult in this place for anyone.

The House of Commons is very good for finding a weakness. If you've got a weakness for drink, the House of Commons will find it – less so now because the hours have changed – but if you've got an addiction, in whatever way, it will find it. If you have a predilection for unhealthy eating, or eating too much, you know, it'll just find it. So if you have a weakness – and I don't want to say mental health is a weakness – but if you have something that you're struggling with, or prone to, I think the pressure of politics will aggravate it. It may have always been there but it will bring it to the fore. Because people are anxious here, so they might comfort eat, or smoke too much, or drink too much, or feel lonely and get themselves tangled up in situations that may well have happened in a marriage but perhaps they just get there earlier. I hope that makes sense.

And all the time you feel you're having to try to hide these things from everybody. And I'm very good at hiding it at work, but then you'll get home and it sort of explodes. Do you see what I mean? You can contain it but then it seems to go off the scale. Before talking about it publicly, I'd been involved in parliament for seven years and talked quite passionately about mental health, often without notes, or with very few notes, and people had occasionally said: ‘Do you have personal experience?' And I'd say: ‘Oh no, no, no, family experience, family experience.' But in the few years prior to that debate I was beginning to be less guarded in my conversations, I think I was just preparing, you know? I couldn't be bothered anymore. Afterwards, my wife was asked by a journalist: ‘Did you know he was going to do it?' And she said: ‘For the last three years he's been thinking about it.'

Because sometimes, with OCD, you just want to go to the top of a hill and just scream: ‘Argh, argh!' Yeah? Well, when I stood up in the Commons and came out in that debate in June 2012 that was the equivalent: it was metaphorically just getting it off my chest. Brilliant. Let me tell you, having told the world about it, I feel 100 per cent better. I'm delighted to be out, delighted. It's about crossing that hurdle, saying: ‘Listen, I suffer in a minor way, and have suffered in a minor way, and people just need to know that.' Because, you know, if everybody knows, it's not a problem. What can I say new on this? Well, in
Crocodile Dundee
when the journalist – I don't know what her name was – says:

‘So what do you do when you've got a problem here Mick?'

Mick Dundee: ‘I tell Wally.'

‘And what does Wally do?'

‘He tells everybody else and it's not a problem.'

Hooray! You know, genius!

It meant I could move on and how fantastic is that? I'm so privileged in a sense to have had the chance for self-therapy and that really was a great moment for me personally. I don't want to say it was self-indulgent – because it wasn't – but it was good for me, it was important for me. I hope other people felt that way, because it wasn't just me, there was a real sort of ‘get it off your chest' feeling that day. And none of those colleagues were asking anybody to feel sorry for them, there was not an ounce of self-pity. And these are all people who, I think, politics is so much better for having them there. You know, we're constantly told that MPs are out of touch, that they don't have real life experiences and this, that, and the other, and that's rubbish. I mean, rubbish. Most members of parliament are there for all the right reasons and are pretty good, decent, normal people.

I didn't know what to expect after I spoke out. I knew that every time I'd spoken on mental health previously, people had quietly come up to me from all quarters and put their hand on my arm or elbow, or had taken me aside, and said: ‘Thank you so much for what you're doing because my son or my daughter, my husband, my wife, my partner, my uncle, you know, my mum or dad . . .'. Do you see what I mean? So I knew there was a demand out there, in its crudest terms, for politicians to address this problem. But I think a lot of people felt that because there was almost this radio silence, that it wasn't something they wanted to talk about. But look, there's 650 MPs, so is it really possible that out of 650 MPs, up until that debate, none had mental health problems? I mean, we know there are members of parliament that have had difficulties, but nobody would actually stand up and admit to it.