‘Save the planet! Eat a vegetarian.’ read his t-shirt.  He loved to laugh and make others laugh. His laughter was infectious. Lots of his family and friends remember him for that. I miss him terribly for that. When I see people making funny faces while their picture is being taken or pronounce a word in a peculiar manner or have a funny mannerism about them, I can see his amused smile. We were once in Switzerland where we managed to locate a little Indian eatery. The proprietor would welcome us in and lead us to our table. “Are you cumberfatale?” he would ask with a big smile on his face. We relived that scenario through his mimicry many a time, each time as vividly as ever.

As a long haired 16 year old he would douse his head in coconut oil so that Cleo, our family dog could lick it all off as she loved the taste of it. It was a treat to watch the two of them cuddling and playing on the floor. He loved animals. He named his little kitten ‘Milkshake’. He took good care of him, spent lots of time playing with him, let him sleep in his bed, bought him toys, took lots of pictures of him, watered and fed him and made sure he was safe. He was a good Mum.

For the evening of Day 0, I had tickets for us to go out for a play in the west end of London together and he knew that. I thought keeping him entertained might help him keep going. In reality, may be even the idea of going out exhausted him.

During a casual conversation last evening I was asked, ”How many children do you have?” Not sure what to say to that. Do I have one or two? Both of them live in my heart forever.

AK-47, Knock Out and Destroyer – these are the names of the newer brands of cannabis in common use amongst adolescents today. Very appropriate terms. THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) is the active ingredient of Cannabis. For the past 15 years, what is sold commonly in the UK is ‘skunk’ and other varieties which have THC concentrations 2-3 times higher than the older traditional cannabis. 5.3 million 16-24 year olds have used it in 2013 according to this very informative leaflet published last year by the Royal College of Psychiatry:

:http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/mentalhealthinformation/mentalhealthproblems/alcoholanddrugs/cannabisandmentalhealth.aspx

A study following 1600 Australian school kids, aged 14 to 15 for seven years, found that children who use cannabis regularly have a significantly higher risk of depression. Daily use increases the risk of depression and anxiety to as much as 5 times higher in later life. The opposite was not the case – children who already suffered from depression were not more likely than anyone else to use cannabis. There is sufficient evidence to show that those who use cannabis particularly at a younger age, such as around the age of 15, have a higher than average risk of developing a psychotic illness, such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.

Why are teenagers more vulnerable to the use of cannabis? Apparently the brain is still developing in the teenage years – up to the age of around 25. A massive process of ‘neural pruning’ goes on, streamlining a tangled jumble of circuits so they can work more effectively. Any experience, or substance, that affects this process has the potential to produce long-term psychological effects.

Of course not everyone who uses cannabis, even at a young age, develops a psychotic illness. Research shows that those who have a family history of a psychotic illness, schizotypal personality or possibly have certain types of genes may be at increased risk of developing a psychotic illness following the regular use of strong cannabis.

Well, what can we do about this? In America, in some parts of which cannabis use is legal, they have marijuana-anonymous.org. Has criminalization of cannabis helped at all? Millions of people are still using it. Is it possible that there would be no need to create stronger and more damaging variants of cannabis if it was legal? If the users did not have to hide the fact from parents and doctors, wouldn’t it be better for them? What effect does criminalisation have on our ability to treat mentally ill people who also smoke cannabis? Does it not push their problems into the shadows?

It’s thursday again : 15 weeks!
Today was spent in bed due to what feels like a viral illness. Time to rest. I am sharing with you a beautiful passage sent to me by one of my many lovely virtual friends.
“As for grief, you’ll find it comes in waves. When the ship is first wrecked, you’re drowning, with wreckage all around you. Everything floating around you reminds you of the beauty and the magnificence of the ship that was, and is no more. And all you can do is float. You find some piece of the wreckage and you hang on for a while. Maybe it’s some physical thing. Maybe it’s a happy memory or a photograph. Maybe it’s a person who is also floating. For a while, all you can do is float. Stay alive.

How could this ruinous storm wreck my home and take away my sweetheart from me?
Let it go.

How I wish I could hold him in my arms one more time!
Let it go.

I hope he is happy wherever he is.
Let it go.

How am I going to keep his memory alive?
Let it go.

He didn’t deserve to suffer the way he did.
Let it go.

Where do I go from here?
Let it go.

What is the meaning of all of this?
Let it go.

I wish I understood his illness better.
Let it go.

When will this pain subside?
Let it go.

Does anyone really understand how it feels?
Let it go.

Forgive yourself. Forgive the situation and let it go.

When I moved from India to the UK, one of the things that stood out for me was the high number of people that lived alone. One of the criteria for discharge after a Day Surgery procedure under sedation or anaesthesia is that the patient should be accompanied by another adult for a duration of 24 hours afterwards. It was very surprising for me to find that sometimes we had to cancel cases because this criterion could not be fulfilled – not one family member or friend could be with the patient for a whole day. In other cases patients were terribly stressed because their friend or relative could only come to the hospital at a particular time to pick them up, hence if the patient was not ready for home by then, they would not be happy.

The second thing that struck me was the number of people on antidepressant medications. In 2013, in some areas up to 1 in 6 people were on them. So many and rising every year!!! Figures from 2011 say that NHS England spent 270 million pounds on antidepressants – a massive 23% increase on 2010. In 1991, English pharmacies handed over 9 million prescriptions. In 2001, it was 24.3 million. In 2012 the number had grown to 46.7 million prescriptions – a 9.1% rise on the previous year. More details are available in this article: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-23553897

Could the two things be related? No man is an island. We are designed to live in communities. We are interdependent in countless different ways yet in the modern world there is a high degree of isolation. How did it come to be like this? Is this the price we pay for modernisation or individualisation? Why do kids have to leave home at age 18? They might still be just kids. They don’t all mature at the same age. I don’t know. But this is our problem and pills alone won’t fix all of it. We need to think about the connectedness between us. They say a heart to heart with a friend is as much if not more useful than a session with a shrink.