One year later and my world came to an end again, this time a lot closer to home!

By this time I had found a part time job with the local newspaper and was enjoying it there.
I was down to part time hours at the night club to fit the day job in and things were going as well as could be expected.

I was at work at the newspaper one afternoon when one of my co-workers came into the typesetting room where I was working.

Looking back now it was quite amusing as this chap had a stutter and the news had had to pass on to me must have added to the oral dysfunction . Therefore it took some time before the message was relayed.

It appeared that my son had been involved in a road traffic accident and that I should go straight up to the Accident and Emergency Department of the local hospital. I told him that I would just finish off what I was doing as our kids had had to be taken to the hospital before with cuts and bruises from a variety of domestic accidents before.

He told me that it would be best if I got up there as soon as possible as it sounded bad.

I immediately raced to the car and sped up to the hospital to be greeted with the news that my son was seriously ill with head injuries and that he was being transferred to the nearest neuro specialist hospital in Leeds some 15 miles away.

The full story is told elsewhere on this site at, (just click on the "Head Injury" button on the left), so I will not go into details here. Nevertheless unless you've been in this kind of situation you will not feel the absolute agony that the accident brought upon my already fragile mind.

The first concern is the survival and return to health of your offspring but after the situation has eased the self begins to suffer. And how it suffered!

After I returned to work I started to drink a lot of alcohol to ease the pain and to help me sleep through the night. Alcohol only serves to enhance the depression and can also lead to short temperedness.

It was not a route I consciously took but I needed some way to switch off.

My temper started to break again only this time it manifested itself in the destruction of inanimate objects and self harm. I can still remember coming home from a bar, getting a sharp knife and slowly driving it through the palm of my hand.

Seeing the results that action had on my family I decided I had better seek medical help again.

After making an appointment with the doctor I was offered the services of the local psychiatric nurse. All went well for a while but he suddenly stopped coming to the house for some reason.

Back to the doctors again. Medication and the services of the practice psychology counsellor.