16.06.15
Words by:

John Doran is a journalist and founder of the respected music and pop culture website The Quietus. In 2011, Doran was invited to write a column for Vice. That column, Menk, formed the basis of his first book Jolly Lad – a memoir about his recovery from alcoholism. Here, in a column entitled I Hate Writing… I Wish It Would Just Fuck Off, he recalls the anguish he suffered while writing Jolly Lad.

Writing my first book was the worst thing that has ever happened to me.

Here are some other things that were a walk in the park by comparison:

  1. Giving up amphetamines.
  2. Giving up cocaine full stop.
  3. Giving up alcohol (I will concede that this comes a close second).
  4. Having my heart broken.
  5. Dealing with the death of friends.

None of them are things I want to go through again, of course, but they’re not quite in the same league as simply writing some shit down.

I have to admit that I may have made the whole experience harder on myself than I necessarily needed to. After wasting nearly a quarter of a  century just sitting round on the lash and talking shit I have, rather late in the day, discovered I have a fearsome work ethic when sober. I like to multi-task wherever possible.

So when I booked a three month sabbatical off work to write Jolly Lad at the end of 2014, I couldn’t help but wonder what other jobs I could cram
into the time frame. I’d been on a strong dosage of SSRI drugs for bipolar disorder for the best part of a decade and was getting quite angsty about coming off them. Suddenly a plan coalesced in my – admittedly confused and fatigued – mind.

I would use my season off work to come off antidepressants … simple! My work colleagues would be spared me sighing and grumbling, I would minimise rudeness to colleagues in the PR industry and I wouldn’t get into any senseless online slanging matches with Artrocker. I essentially didn’t want to be a prick to anyone, so why not come off them while I was going to be on my own at home for months?

Of course, what actually happens when you stop taking a heavy dose of SSRIs after 10 years is really unpleasant and not conducive to writing a book. I developed what felt like concussion mixed with amnesia as well as suffering the terrifying ‘brain zaps’, not to mention crippling headaches.

I should mention that I muddied the waters even further by the fact I was already completely addicted to painkillers – a habit I’d picked up after giving up drinking in 2008. No mealtime was complete without me knocking back a handful of strong ibuprofen, something I’d been doing every day for seven years. So I immediately started throwing copious amounts of codeine-based analgesics into the mix as well.

So what could go wrong, right?

I think I lasted about three months before I had to seek medical help. My daily routine was trying to remember where I was and what I was doing, gobbling down handfuls of painkillers, constantly spasming like someone was sticking a cattle prod into my brain, slipping into a lurid world of paranoid fantasy … and, during the whole thing, I was trying to write a book. And to be fair to me I did complete a first draft, but it was so bad that my editor quit. Natasha Soobramanien, who is an author herself, has been my friend for many years but when she read my manuscript she advised me to give up on the idea of being an author and seek psychiatric help instead.

She was right. It was like the Unabomber’s Manifesto written on homebrew and poppers. It was garbage written by a lunatic.

So I was lost, my book was a failure, my editor quit. The whole thing had been an unmitigated disaster, I made my mind up to abandon the book. And then, after some liver function tests, to make it worse, my doctor insisted I stop taking all painkillers – effective immediately.

This didn’t go well. I had a nervous breakdown immediately and had to have a serious conversation with my doctor about spending some time as a voluntary inmate in a psychiatric institution.

The same week, I received news that my friend had died unexpectedly. In a strange sort of way this news, while devastating, galvanised me. I felt that it was obscene for me to be sitting at home crying and wishing myself dead and glumly thinking of myself as a failure when my friend – a genuinely brilliant artist, with unique and beautiful talent, not just some chancer like me – no longer had any say in the production of art or of anything else in life at all. For the little it was worth I was determined to finish the book, make it worth reading and to dedicate it to him.

When I finally finished Jolly Lad I said emphatically: “I will never, under any circumstances whatsoever, write another book.”

But then, a few weeks ago, I went to meet my publisher Mark from Strange Attractor and he handed me a box of books. The sun was out and the birds were singing, and I immediately thought to myself:

“You know, I’ve always fancied writing a historical novel … maybe a trilogy set during the fall of the Ottoman Empire. And then how about a short story collection early next year?”

And isn’t that just the thing about writing? It’s fucking horrible, it’s a massive pain in the arse and I hate it, but it’s tougher to kick than alcohol, crack, cigarettes and amphetamines all combined. And as addictions go, at least it’s killing me slowly.

Jolly Lad by John Doran is out now via Strange Attractor Press