I’m going to tell you a story. If you are eating, stop. Some time ago, and let’s just assume that it was longer ago than it was, I made a trip to the loo, the ‘sitting down’ type of visit. Anyway, I finished up (I’m so sorry), washed my hands and went to join my friends where I slid seamlessly back  into conversation. After a couple of minutes, a few twitching noses and many puffed cheeks, it was clear that something was more than a little rancid in the air. I decided to try and escape the vile odour and drifted off to another group of friends nearby. It wasn’t nearly so easy to pass off the return of this smell when I saw the same reaction again. Panic-struck, I made my excuses (whilst appearing as nasally offended as everyone else) and scurried back to the toilet where the true horror of the situation hit me. It soon became clear that when I had gone to wipe (I’m so, so sorry), my t-shirt had got caught on my looroll-clad hand and had taken the brunt of the dirty damage, and I had been wandering around since with a heavy smear of faecal matter joyfully grinning up the base of my back.

You'll really wish you hadn't said that.

Now why would I tell you what is evidently one of those stories that you would pay good money to bury in the depths of your mind, along with the memory of your own birth or the first time you saw Anne Widdecombe ? Well I figure, if I’m capable of revealing something as godawful as that, I’m equally capable of telling you this: I have depression.

Depression is not a subject that’s easy to talk about at the best of times. I would even go as far as to assume that it might be marginally harder for men to talk about given society’s associated sense of bravado. And finally for sportsmen, the idolised epitome of supposed masculinity and physical prowess, I would suggest harder still. So having ticked all three of those boxes myself (although the ‘idolisation’ aspect would be a stretch for even my Mum’s cobwebbed box of my medals), it hasn’t proved particularly easy.

The first signs were a rather panicky feeling of anxiety. It was pretty rough in the hospital during my second chemotherapy stay (of three) but I would have expected to be focussing on how close I was to ending my treatment, rather than entertaining a strange new fear of going back to hospital again. I am normally quite a placid person and I try not to let on when things are getting at all out of hand, but I started voicing my concerns to friends and family about returning for my final treatment.

In fact, so potent was my dread of going back that I spoke to my oncologist about the possibility of finishing my cancer treatment after only two cycles of chemotherapy. I knew this was something I couldn’t really risk but my fear was palpable and seemingly at odds with the knowledge that this was what was saving me. The very thought of the hospital itself, or for any of the food I had been served there, filled me with instant nausea. Now, I am well acquainted with the process of association, aversion therapy and conditioning but this was more than that. It was a brain-shuddering terror.

We shall not forget.

When I arrived in hospital I immediately spoke to my oncologist who then called in my chemotherapy doctor and, having heard the kind of mental state I was in, agreed that I needed to be put onto a course of anti-depressants immediately. The next 5 days in hospital inflicted on me the worst nausea I have ever experienced, which was a blessing in disguise. The feeling that  a heavily-oiled Tony Blair was lap-dancing on my gag-reflex whilst a viscous gravy of Hitler’s semen sloshed in my stomach meant that there was no space in my being for anything other than “PLEASE NURSE THIS SEDATIVE ISN’T FUCKING SEDATIVE ENOUGH” for 120 hours. I had decided that, in my own best interest, I should probably not be alone, given my state of mind, and so I trotted off to stay with first my sister and then my Mum for a few days. It was here that I really felt depression putting happiness into enforced hibernation.

Neither stay was easy for me (or I can imagine, my family). I ended up just feeling guilty for not being able to talk and being a useless layabout. Apparently, feelings of plummeting self-worth and lip-quivering guilt are commonplace so I was absolutely thrilled to be a gold-plated member of that community. My nausea was still totally dreadful. In fact in some ways it was worse, as previously I’d had, on call, a cocktail of drugs that could render an epileptic grizzly bear blissfully apathetic. My main issue was that I was now supposed to be finished with my treatment and hopefully free of cancer, and yet I actually found myself feeling mentally worse than ever, with no timeline of progression ahead of me. In fact things could get a lot worse. And as it happened, they did.

"144,529 seconds, 144,530 seconds..."

I returned to London and arriving back in my room, felt the sheer terror of not knowing what on earth to do to get me through the next hour, let alone day. I decided that no answer was going to be found staring at a wall (unless the question was “how long can you stare at a wall?”), and I found some people to meet up with and did what any non-sensible Brit does, I got steaming drunk.

Over the coming days and weeks, I spent most of my time alone, desperately trying to find opportunities to meet up with people or find distractions that would while away another hour before the unconscious relief of sleep returned again. During this period, I became reliant on a very few close friends and family, and became as clingy as an orphaned shower-curtain. But gradually, I started to feel better. The medication began to kick in and, perhaps most importantly, I was again able to return to training. I cannot overstate the effect that this had on me, and can have on anyone. Not only was I afforded a timely distraction from my situation, I was also amongst friends, doing something I love that also happened to generate one of the body’s most potent highs through the release of endorphins.

"Mummy?"

Nietszche is quoted to have said “That which doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger”, a maxim often employed in situations such as these. When we consider the etymology of the original German, the word for stronger is “stärker”. Subsequently, in Yiddish, if you were to call someone a ‘shtarker’ you referred to them as militant, hard-nosed or tough. It’s this pressing obligation for men, particularly, to conform to this stereotype that makes it not only so difficult to admit initially that perhaps help is required, but also, in turn, that this is a subject that can be readily talked about without judgement or prejudice. When feeling choked by a cloak of emotional constraint, the point that I, and so many others often miss, is that depression isn’t a weakness or sign of emotional frailty, it’s an illness. An illness that, albeit often triggered by something awful, can actually affect anyone at anytime.

In the wake of so many male sportsman making the news on the subject of depression recently, whether it be Andy Morrison, Stan Collymore or even the conjecture surrounding Gary Speed, I can only hope that more people out there are able to firstly come to terms with their illness and finally feel they have the ability to speak openly about it, should they choose, without the weight of stigma bearing down on them. With the recent news that the Professional Footballers Association has commissioned a guidebook to aid footballers battling with depression it looks like they might. And if it means they have to first share a terrifying secret about shit-stained clothes, then all the better for everyone.

Links:

Mind UK – www.mind.org.uk

Samaritans – www.samaritans.org

Ruby Wax’s Social Network - www.blackdogtribebeta.com