Playing with Luke

Like many people, I sometimes find myself saying to a friend “We must catch up properly soon” yet, simultaneously, experience tells me that we won’t get around to it and will be saying something similar again in a few months, or years, whenever we next encounter each other.

Yesterday, I found myself uttering this phrase when I was at a meeting and bumped into an old friend called Luke, a potentially confusing coincidence - all the more so because he is a psychologist; however, he works from a different theoretical framework to The Diceman. It was natural to tell him about my recent crisis, even though I am already feeling bored with the story myself, and he was entertained by the notion of harnessing chance therapeutically. Consequently, after doing the ‘we must catch up’ thing, I commented that mostly people don’t when they say this and suggested that we use the dice to ensure we act on our intention.

I proposed that I would offer six suggestions for things we could meet up to do. He could then counter-propose alternatives until we agreed on a final six, and then the dice would make our decision. Luke and his family are based in London and I live in Kent, so I shall propose activities that have an evens chance of one of us having to visit the other (two each) and two that require both of us to make a journey away from home. Here are my starting suggestions:

1. We have an outdoor table tennis match on one of the concrete tables that can be found in London parks http://etta.co.uk/news/find-an-outdoor-table/ 
2. I devise a walking tour of my old home town Chatham that could either be just for the pair of us, or adjusted for our partners and his children to join us and discover that Chatham can be magnificent in a way that contradicts the impression in this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkTiJzJRAG8A
3. A meal at Luke’s home 
4.  A meal at our home. These two are kind of boring for the reader, I know. But the objective is not primarily to entertain the reader, it is to make my life more enjoyable so... 
5.  Attend an event at the De  La Warr Pavilion. Great architecture and an interesting cultural programme http://www.dlwp.com/ 
6. Visit an exhibition at the Turner Contemporary, Margate http://www.turnercontemporary.org/

You can reject and or all of these Luke, but you have to propose alternatives for each one you reject, we have to obey the dice and we have to fulfil the commitment by the end of 2014. You can do so in the comments on this blog, or by email, as you prefer. I would prefer it if it was in the comments though.

If anyone else reads this and wants to offer other suggestions, please do. Equally, if you want to borrow any of these ideas for yourselves, that is also the point, so be my guest.

Your power is weak old man

One of the basics of CBT is the search for disconfirming evidence for the negative and disabling cognitions that accompany depressive episodes. For me, the idea that I could no longer write was foremost and, increasingly, I believed that I’d lost my report drafting mojo. I spent hours sitting in front of the computer with a report deadline looming, paralysed, unable to put together a sentence, with critical voices in my head saying 

“They’ll just think it’s shit. You’re power is weak old man. It’s game-over for your career.”

I could speculate about why I think this was happening and might in a later blog, but I had a slender hunch that my intellectual powers and writing ability hadn’t entirely deserted me...just the will to churn out yet another report.

This blog is therefore an attempt to write in a different genre to ‘the academic report’ and produce evidence that contradicts the powerful conviction that I have become a feeble-minded dolt. If I can blog cogently, engagingly and with occasional moments of wit, the future will seem less bleak. 

Okay, it’s still pretty bleak if you’re an academic who can’t write reports any more, because that’s usually the pay off for the funder at the end of the contract, so your academic career is, as they say, F.U.K.T.  But if it is just the report writing bit of my brain that is disordered, it does mean that there is some possibility of reinventing myself in some way that is still intellectually rewarding (and pays the bills).

I can, of course, see that blogging about the experiences of a depressed Diceman is not a very cutting-edge idea. Luke Rhinehart has had numerous imitators since 1971, including – as I am discovering - roughly 10% of my friends. 

It feels bewildering to understand how completely I had missed hearing about the Diceman. Such discoveries generate the inverse of the surprise when I learn that some celebrity is dead, months, or perhaps years, after their demise, because I was on holiday in Cornwall the particular week that ‘The artist formerly known as Prince’ became missing presumed dead after a tragic hang gliding accident in which his minuscule body was dragged higher and higher into the stratosphere until he vanished permanently from sight. 

In a moment, the person shifts from the category of ‘living pop star’ to ‘defunct concept’ as rapidly as Luke Rhinehart recently changed from ‘unknown 1970’s fictional character’ to ‘constant companion’, or some idiot starts another unfounded and highly improbable rumour on the internet that then circulates endlessly from one fool to another.

A thing about writing academic reports is that generally they contain many thousands of words that go unread about stuff you have carefully reviewed or investigated, whereas the blog seems a simpler literary discipline, insofar as it mainly just draws on the rubbish that goes on in your head and is much shorter. I’m setting a self-imposed limit of 500 words per entry, which this one is exactly... now.

Revisiting Eleanor

It’s a temporary snag, but this blog is playing catch-up while I document events since the 14^th January. Don’t blame me, the dice could have ordered me to upload it and start on day 1, but they didn’t. Nevertheless, it is a blog, which means it has to be uploaded at some point, otherwise, it would be called ‘random, unpublished witterings in my laptop’ and not a blog.

My session with Eleanor on January 21^st couldn’t have been more different. It was immediately obvious that I’d had a week of feeling perkier and neither of us needed my PHQ-9 score to know I was no longer the glum, near stuporose pessimist she had met a week ago. 

Whatever complex of factors explains how I’ve been feeling, the main one I am aware of is the near-complete loss of my ability to write the research and reports that have largely comprised my career – such as it is – over the past 25 years.  The prospect of writing about drug policy for the work I am contracted to complete induces a paralysis in me. It’s quite illogical, but then that is the nature of lots of mental illness. And as the approaching deadline ratchets up my anxiety and depression, irrational thoughts start to flood my brain:

“You’ve got early dementia. The next few years will see your brain shed memories like an onion until you no longer know how to shit or piss in a toilet.”

“You’ve boiled your brain with too many orgies of serotonin on dance floors you fucking idiot. Now you don’t look so clever, do you?”

It must be a bit tricky for Eleanor. As a psychiatric nurse, I used basic CBT myself, so am one of those annoying, arrogant, know-it-all patients; partly daring the therapist to teach me something I don’t already know. Despite some effort to engage with her correctly, evidence-based sessions, it hasn’t really worked for me so far, but this week’s session felt like much better use of our time. 

I explained that I am now a ‘Dice Man’. She really liked the story. Then I said, ‘What I’d really like to do today is discuss how to use the dice therapeutically’.  As it is CBT driven, Eleanor obviously had a handout for such occasions and, sure enough, she printed one out. Write a ‘Rainy day letter to yourself’.  I can kind of see the point, but among other things it doesn’t take account of the fact that I’m one of those  people who forgets why he just came in the kitchen, so no way will I find any such letter when I need it. I might, however, remember to look at my blog, so I plan to include a few ‘Letters to myself’ here along with assorted ‘Bollockings for being in a state again’ and some personalised variations on ‘Scorn for fuckwits’. Maybe it’s because I need tough love. Probably it’s because of an allergy to excessive, virtuous naval-gazing.27^th January, 2014 (entry 2)

Becoming dice-minded

Unlike Luke Rhinehart, I have no plans to add contingencies such as ‘<1> says go and rape Arlene’ (the curvaceous wife of his colleague). He roles a <1>, of course. In fact, she is readily complicit in what is more of a seduction than a rape, but these are moral complications I really, really don’t want in my life. Or approve of. 

So reader, rather than being an exhilarating read documenting the transformation of a mundane life into something outrageous and extraordinary, this is more likely to be a tedious, self-indulgent description of a moderately troubled middle aged guy trying to get to grips with his depression and first world problems.Don’t howl ‘I’ve been cheated’ when that is all you get. On the other hand, the whole point of the dice is that I don’t know what they’ll do. It will always be some combination of fate and my imagination. Not knowing quite where this will lead is kind of the point. I need to read on to find out what happens, just as you do. 

Since starting, I’ve so far been using the dice occasionally to make very dull, practical decisions. 

Should I leave the voluble Pete now and get on with some work, or stay for another cuppa and laugh at more of his tales and fantastic word play. Odds, I stay. Double <3>. See you later Pete.

Should I run to Aylesford (evens, easy) or over Bluebell Hill (odds, will half kill me in my dilapidated state). On that occasion I rolled double <1> to much relief. Yet I’m still doing something, when I would have done nothing. Broadly speaking, I’m trying to use the dice to force me to make beneficial, therapeutic choices. 

What’s with all these doubles?

On Monday January 21st, I’m in London for a meeting and agree to meet Sophie for dinner. Good to make the best of a trip to London as money is a bit tight these days. I know she will not want to stay out late but I don’t have to return home until midnight, so I turn to Facebook and ask London-based friends for suggestions for free/cheap late evening activities from which the dice could choose. Quite quickly I have a range of enticing choices, but one stand out proposal. Jane says come to dinner with her and Cliff. Two beautiful friends I haven’t seen in over a year. Being neither Luke Rhinehart, nor an idiot, I don’t allow the dice to decide my destiny this evening. To decline would be stupid and I don't. Sophie joins us too for a pretty perfect evening. 

This is an example of something I hadn’t anticipated. Simply being dice-minded generates options I hadn’t previously had, irrespective of whether the dice are allowed to choose them. 

This early evidence of the value of the dice is encouraging. I wonder if it will be sustained?

27th January, 2014

Can you recommend an extraordinary book?

“Can you recommend a book that I’d find extraordinary?” I asked the woman in the book shop. “It’s a game I sometimes play.”

The Chapel , Broadstairs made me optimistic about this gambit. Tiers of second hand books that you smell once you cross the threshold. Teas by day, real ales and live music by night. Yet at midday on a Winter’s Tuesday I was the only customer. Perhaps that’s why the assistant responded with such diligence. As  I watched, she drifted from section to section, toying with books, considering then rejecting several possibilities. Eventually, she handed me a battered copy of The Dice Man.

It only took a few moments to know. “That looks perfect. And only a pound?” The rules are that I buy whatever I’m proffered. She could have recommended an old Readers Digest for £25 and I’d have had to buy it. A while ago in Washington DC, I ended up spending about $140 in one shop when I played the game. So, not only did this seem like a potentially interesting read, but also a bargain.

Tonight, I grin as I think what a prescient choice she made. A main character filled with ennui and self-loathing, with writer’s block, who turns his life over to the dice. Maybe more randomness might disturb whatever permutation of depression that has seen me shift from bed to sofa to bed again for the past eight days. Monosyllabic. Self-pitying. Miserable.  A pedestrian condition, yet utterly disabling.

And I badly needed something to help me get unstuck. Just the night before, Sonia had quite reasonably pointed out that she was barely able to cope with the demands of the household on her own and that my emotional and practical absenteeism was unsustainable. It was a fair point.

Then this morning my son Manny had given me a talking to, urging me to get up and do something...anything... rather than just moping. “Please don’t close your eyes when I’m talking to you,” he said at one point. I was surprised by his assertiveness, and quietly pleased. Though I doubt he’d have registered this from my resentful grunt.

Later that morning, as I slumped in her chair, prevaricating over choices for the rating scales on her laptop, my psychologist Eleanor was unsurprised by my PHQ-9 score. “Severe depression. That fits.” She was concerned when I told her  I had planned to drive to the coast for a walk. I could sympathise. Suicidal ideation and 50 miles of A roads with oncoming traffic that I could swerve in front of at any time probably troubled her, but although I’ve been a self-indulgent cunt lately and thought about swerving a couple of times on the journey, I’m not that cuntish. And if I hadn’t made the drive I wouldn’t now be feeling invigorated by the possibilities of throwing the dice.

The first throw then. More than <6> and I’ll upload this as a blog tonight...

Double <3>.

It can wait.

14^th January 2014.