In my final year I was asked to write an essay about dictionaries which for me was just the complete antithesis of every reason why I should care about English.
I found myself in the library, writing these ridiculous things, like over and over again. My head started to explode because I wanted to write this linguistic big bang theory.
I felt so attuned to everything. I felt so sensitive to everything. I felt like I could feel what other people felt.
What you don't have at that point is a filter, and with, like it's almost like walking down the street, you see everything, you feel everything, you know, and it becomes incredibly painful as well.
It's when you stop being able to eat and you stop being able to sleep that you know that you are getting into a dangerous zone um where you can spin off. You become then incredibly light and quick on your feet - it's great fun but you know there's a definite point at which you should hold back.
Very, very gradually, everybody…withdraws their faith that you are coping and then you're on your own…and then you're in hospital.
Coming down from being high you feel a sense of loss and utterly role-less. It's like, I had a role, I was a student, and then I had a role, I was in hospital, then I came out, and I had nothing so you feel that you don't have a place and you don't have a meaning anymore, it's like it's a constant - not even white noise, it's like a tone.
So, you wake up in the morning, you think, 'God, not this day again'. It feels like you've done it already again. I uh, I remember looking at my finger nails and my finger nails had grown and I was thinking because it seems like it's all in the same day and I was just thinking, 'Oh, God, I've got to cut my finger nails'. It's like they think, my finger nails think that time has passed, and I know it hasn't. It's like the thing that turns you on, the light bulb thing, that's not there any more.