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Psychosis and the art of hanging cats

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PSYCHOSIS and the Art of Hanging Cats, which was originally launched as an e-book last year, has now been published in hard copy.

 

 

The book was written by an Ennis woman under the pseudonym Jane Ellen Heartfield and it is a semi-fictional account of her abuse of drugs and alcohol, which led to psychosis, followed by recovery.

The title comes from a picture she saw in her childhood, which resonated with her and in latter years she would refer to her psychosis as ‘my black cat’.
It deals quite frankly with the dangers of drugs, particularly of LSD, which she says brought her to psychosis. Of her first experience of it as a college student, she writes, “On the whole, it was anticlimactic but without my even realising, it had been the inception of my mental illness. That night, a seed was sewn. I felt strange for a while after: it took the rest of term for my mind and mood to recover. Normality was like an oasis.

“Acid or LSD is a serious, mind-altering, hallucinogenic drug that should only be taken by exceptionally mature and robust people in a very particular and controlled environment, not in a student hostel in Limerick by a chronically depressed teenager. It’s serious because at times, even the most outwardly confident people crack up on it and never make it back from the ether that they submerge themselves in by taking it.”

She also deals with her efforts at recovery and giving up alcohol. “I was back in group to finish the last 10 days of treatment. My only viable option was to use the programme or die. Sobriety was life and drink was death. It seemed absolutely black and white. I simply chose to live again. From then on, I was a blank canvas so it was up to me what to paint. Would I make it dark and miserable or would I try something new and different? I couldn’t turn back then, I’d gone too far to stop. I literally had to restart my life from that moment on. I now needed the programme to survive as all my defence and coping mechanisms had disintegrated. Some say it’s the only way to recover, simply wipe the brain slate clean and start again.”

The book can be bought online at a Facebook page named Psychosis and the art of Hanging Cats by Jane Heartfield. It can also be bought on Amazon.com and in Ennis, it is available at the Ennis Bookshop, Angel Times and the Scéal Eile bookshops. It will also be going into the De Valera library, Ennis.

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