Present Day.

As I feared.

Procuring the poison took all day. You can never tell quite where all your energies will go: just that they will go somewhere – with nothing much to show for it – in feeding the fury of the all-devouring madness. With Bink herself, of course, being the primary fodder.

As I said in my first post, we stand on the brink of a miracle. Bink is about to start treatment. I hope, trust and believe, truly adequate treatment for the first time in her life and illness.

The first psychiatrist I ever knew killed himself. Within two weeks of my moving in with his family, in my gap year. I like to think the two events weren’t causally connected, but my relationship with shrinks has gone downhill from there, really – rapidly accelerated by Bink’s various treatments. If she had never met a psychiatrist in her life she would never have got so ill. Not by a very long country mile indeed.

Be that as it may, the psychiatrist who is soon going to be treating her has won me over lock, stock and barrel.

First, because he has the two rarest and most important qualities: common sense; and compassion.

And secondly – I imagine thanks to these traits – because he doesn’t want to shove her full of more mind-bending chemical venom. His aim is to get her off the stuff. And miraculously, not onto other stuff. Most shrinks suck through their teeth thoughtfully and say, Ooh, you don’t want to be on that... here, have some of this instead.

So it’s ironic that it was he who came galloping over the horizon to the sound of the William Tell Overture, willing to write a prescription for the vile but currently much-needed Lorazepam. And, rather sensibly (given that Bink recently got stressed and took 15 at once) to send it to me for safe-keeping.

Solution, right?

Wrong.

In place of the whoops of joy due for getting over this week’s hurdle, Bink offered me, “I can’t work with him if he does that. I won’t be able to go into hospital.”

Count to ten. Don’t scream. Count again. Let’s go out for a coffee and get to the bottom of this shall we?

The thing about madness is that it has its own... well, I hesitate to call it logic. Systems. Rules. And if you don’t take time to get into the mind (for want of a better word) of the mad person you love, you can’t do anything. This is what shrinks should be doing, instead of giving them Smarties to send them to sleep for 100 years.

So here is the theorem, as advanced over a cappuccino for me and an ice-cream for Bink, because obviously she doesn’t take addictive mind-altering substances like caffeine:

Quitting the meds has got to come from Bink herself. Everyone says you can’t get well unless you want to. Good.
Ergo, it’s got to involve trust, both ways. She has to trust shrink, and shrink has to trust her.
Following on from which... well that’s it really.

Even more miraculously, said shrink accepted this without demur and sent the prescription straight to the chemist for Bink to collect.

I have a feeling this relationship is going to go very, very well.

So does Bink. She immediately felt secure enough with him (and thankful enough to me, for “Going to so much trouble to get me what you don’t think I should have”) that she was able to drop her daily intake from 4mg to 3.

Just like that.