spinofflive
Salesroom of a pharmacy
Salesroom of a pharmacy

SocietyNovember 4, 2017

On Tuesdays I go to the pharmacy

Salesroom of a pharmacy
Salesroom of a pharmacy

A personal memoir of mental health, by Paula Harris.

Content warning: this essay discusses severe mental health issues, including suicidal ideation.

On Tuesdays I go to the pharmacy. That’s the day when I pick up that week’s worth of antidepressants. Someone somewhere thought it’d be fine to manufacture an antidepressant that people can overdose on. And since I’m At Risk, my doctors don’t take chances. I’m only allowed a week of meds at a time.

So every Tuesday I go to the pharmacy, right after I’ve taught a lunchtime Pilates group class. This routine is the only way I can remember to get the next lot.

It used to be I only went to the pharmacy once every few months, when I needed something fairly boring and pedestrian, like painkillers or nail files. Then I started on these antidepressants and here I am, once a week, going in.

Most of the staff now recognise me when I arrive, calling out “Hi Paula, are you here to pick up your meds?” as they turn towards the shelf where my small paper bag has again gotten lost under all the bigger paper bags of other people’s health problems. The experience catches me awkwardly: I like to feel part of a community, for people to know my name, for that look of recognition in their eyes, which is what I get on Tuesdays. But at the same time I’m aware that they all know what I’m picking up and why I have to come in every week for it, that they can see a little glowing sign above my head saying At Risk.

I was first diagnosed with depression when I was 26. I’d just come through a turbulent month in hospital from Crohn’s Disease, during which I’d been told twice that I was dying and had undergone two emergency surgeries. I left hospital with an ileostomy, pain, painkillers and fresh wounds. My then-GP rang to say he wanted to see me, having received my surgery notes. When I arrived for my appointment he asked how I was doing and I began crying. I cried and cried, in front of a man who I’d known since I was small. He handed me tissues and said “You’re depressed.” He’d never been a particularly comforting doctor, but now he looked at me with soft eyes and worried eyebrows.

With a prescription for antidepressants in my hand, I started seeing a counsellor at the hospital. Anne talked me through what depression was; I remember sitting there thinking “That’s depression?? Oh, I’ve felt like this for years. Is this not normal?”

When I was young, I used to sit as close to the TV as possible. Sprawled on my belly, resting on my elbows, I would look straight up at the screen. My mother would grab my ankles and drag me back towards the couch, telling me I didn’t need to sit that close. I’d quietly inch back forward; she’d drag me back…. This was our nightly tug-of-war. When I was 11 she got sick of it and brought me to the optometrist, to prove that she was right. I still remember the optometrist getting me to sit in that big awkward chair and, after he’d raised its height, saying to me “You can read the top line, can’t you.” It wasn’t a question, it was a statement. Surely everyone could read the top line! I looked in the direction he was pointing and said “What top line?” All I could see in front of me was a white blur. Because blurs were my normal.

When I went back a month later to get my new glasses (brown plastic frames that were square with rounded corners; the 80s were indeed a terrible time), a whole new world was there. There was a top line! And the calendar behind the reception desk had numbers on it. Numbers! I didn’t know that calendars were anything beyond pretty coloured blurs. Because all I knew was blurs. I couldn’t see out of anyone else’s eyes to know that what my eyes showed me wasn’t normal. It was the only normal I’d ever known. Now though, the way my school friends knew what was written on the blackboard ceased being some magic I’d never been able to understand. Now I had magic eyes too.

My brain is the same. I couldn’t see the world through someone else’s brain to know that mine wasn’t seeing things quite right. I thought everyone felt the way I did, saw things the way that I did, thought how I thought. It was only when Anne told me that this and this and this were signs of depression that I started to realise my brain was playing tricks on me, and had been since I was 10, at least. That’s how far back I can remember feeling these things, thinking these thoughts, seeing the world this way. With or without glasses, I see the world a bit wonky.

After my surgeries, I spent three and a half years on antidepressants, and the same length of time in counselling, although I moved on to a new hospital counsellor, Erica, after a while. Antidepressants allowed me to get out of bed in the morning, to get showered and dressed and eat. And I was even happy – sometimes, of a sort. Mainly I wasn’t as sad and suicidal. But they also took away my desire to write anything, and so I felt like a Fake Me. I stopped taking them when they didn’t feel like they were working the same anymore. Without them I was still getting out of bed and showering and dressing and eating, so I didn’t want to face starting something new. I stopped seeing Erica a little later, after her job changed and she was no longer able to see patients for counselling. Erica had sat there through sessions where all I did was cry, she’d helped me take on studying, she’d started the process of helping me to undo some of the mess my childhood had done to my head, she’d helped me see myself as someone who wasn’t just a bunch of scars but someone who could still be attractive to others. I just couldn’t bring myself to start the process over again with someone new.

Since then I’ve wavered up and down, sometimes going through a bad episode of depression, managing it with herbs and supplements because I didn’t want to go back on antidepressants and feel like a Fake Me. The longest of those antidepressant-free episodes was nine months, which felt like forever.

It’s been a little over two years since this episode started. It took a year before I gave in and went looking for help. My new GP is fantastic, an old school doctor who looks vaguely saddened at my monitoring sessions that I haven’t made a major improvement after a year on various antidepressants. Earlier this year he openly admitted that he was at the end of his comfort zone, both in knowledge of remaining medications for depression and in how bad my depression is, and referred me to Community Mental Health Services for them to provide additional support for both me and him.

In his reports my psychiatrist writes that I have a 30+ year history of Dysthymia, with Major Depressive Disorder currently in full swing. He tells me that I’m about the middle of the scale for Major Depressive Disorder, that if I was closer towards the top end of the scale I wouldn’t be getting out of bed and dressed. Some days I don’t, but generally I can. I find it harder and harder to leave the house these days, especially if I have to go somewhere with lots of people or noise. It makes for a very lonely life.

Just because I’m depressed doesn’t mean I can’t experience happiness; it’s just harder. A psychologist I was seeing last year explained that while everyone experiences highs and lows, mine are more extreme: I experience good things incredibly intensely and they have a massive emotional impact on me, while my lows are sudden and fast and very very low. There’s nothing wrong with that, she reassured me, it’s who I am and it’s part of what makes me Me. It’s a matter of figuring out how to cope with the lows so that they don’t sink me.

Figuring out how to cope with the lows is easier said than done.

There were three weeks last December when I felt great. Every day, I felt great. I didn’t think about suicide once, which startled me, because I couldn’t remember the last time I went more than a day or two without thinking about it. I hit a magic spot where I was genuinely not depressed: I was doing a poetry paper at university and so was writing and talking about words every week, I was staying with my closest friend, Mike, every Sunday night and felt relaxed and calm from my time with him, and yes, the antidepressants were doing their job.

It was a strangely unfamiliar feeling. I kind of liked it, even though I felt a bit weirded out and lost, like when I first got glasses and found the ground rushing up towards me. It’s like suicide has become my security blanket, the thing I curl into when things are really bad, knowing that there’s a way out. Suddenly it wasn’t there and even though I should’ve felt relief, it was also confusing. I found myself thinking “is this what it’s like for other people?” and trying to adjust to my new view. Then, just as I was settling into it, it slipped away. I finished uni for the semester – now I wasn’t staying with Mike every week or feeling the rush of words – and the anniversary dates of my surgeries were coming up fast. I dropped low and fast.

It was hard for everyone. My GP was a bit crushed to have me back to being unable to control my crying. My psychologist returned from holiday to find me a wreck and we never managed to get our sessions back to a helpful place. Mike got worn out from having to help carry the weight of my depression and our friendship exploded. I no longer heard from the two other people I’d been closest with. Depression can be an incredibly destructive weight to bear.

Salesroom of a pharmacy

On Tuesdays I go to the pharmacy. My new antidepressant, which I’ve been on for two months, makes my brain a bit foggy, and causes nausea and weight gain and achy dry eyes. I’m still depressed; I can usually get up and get dressed, but I’m anticipating that my psychiatrist will increase my dose when I see him next. I’m finding it harder to write and I worry about becoming a Fake Me again. My GP understands this and asks me to just give it a bit of time, and if the writing doesn’t come back easily, there’ll be another med to try. I try not to think about stockpiling this med and using that as my security blanket.

Antidepressants are not an easy choice. I’ve lost track of how many I’ve been on in the last year. They’ve made me nauseous enough to be gagging in front of clients, caused me to develop horrendous bruises from small knocks, given me massive palpitations that make me think I’m having a heart attack, and added 10 kilos to my body. Sometimes I’ll be so tired I’ll sleep for at least 12 hours a day and still hardly be able to stay awake when I was meant to be working. Then there’s acne, hallucinations, mood swings, impaired brain function, nightmares, headaches, acid reflux, the inability to regulate my body temperature (mainly on the side of feeling overly hot and sweaty), and the simple fact that my guts just really don’t cope well with the meds. Plus there was the month when I was pretty much a zombie and moved through life with nearly zero brain function. My GP tells me I’m in the hard place, where I get all of the side effects without the benefit of, well, not being depressed, so he understands why it’s so hard to keep taking my meds. I know that if I stop taking them right now, I won’t be alive in six months time.

I cry whenever the loneliness hits me. It’s hitting me as I write this. But on Tuesday I will go to the pharmacy, try to smile at the woman behind the counter whose name I can never remember, and get my next week of pills.


The Society section is sponsored by AUT. As a contemporary university we’re focused on providing exceptional learning experiences, developing impactful research and forging strong industry partnerships. Start your university journey with us today.

Keep going!
image1 copy

SocietyNovember 4, 2017

Poisoner: The story of Thomas Hall

image1 copy

Black Sheep is a RNZ series about the shady, controversial and sometimes downright villainous characters of New Zealand history, presented by William Ray. Here he introduces Thomas Hall, the Timaru man whose murder trial was an 1880s sensation.

“You have achieved in the annals of crime the position of being the vilest criminal ever tried in New Zealand.” That’s what the judge said to Thomas Hall as he sentenced him to life in prison in 1886.

Tom Hall was part of a rich and influential family in Timaru. His uncle, Sir John Hall, was a former Premier of New Zealand. You can imagine the scandal when news broke that a member of that family had attempted to poison his wife in an effort to steal her family fortune.

But while the initial reaction was a sort of morbid glee, it quickly turned to horror when the full extent of Tom’s crimes were revealed.

Listen to the podcast that accompanies this story here.

Tom Hall bears a striking resemblance to the presenter of this podcast (he has confirmed they are not related) Photo: Fair use

The son of a rich sheep farmer, Tom Hall was born during a gigantic wool boom in the 20 years from 1850 to 1870. That boom saw Timaru grow from a few shacks on the beach to one of the wealthiest places in the country.

Tom initially went into the family business working a sheep run in the Mackenzie Country but quickly abandoned that line of work, due to harsh conditions as revealed in his diary.

“July 20: stayed a night with Parkerson on the way up. Lots of snow and severe frost. My horse had icicles three inches long on his nostrils. Twenty inches of snow fallen. Twelve inches still lying.”

Instead Tom Hall became a businessman… and a con-artist.

“People thought he was good at what he did,” says Peter Graham, author of Vile Crimes: the Timaru Poisonings. “No one had any reason to suspect there was anything wrong with [Tom’s] company.”

Sir John Hall, Tom’s uncle was a former Premier of New Zealand Photo: Alexander Turnbull Library Ref: PAColl-3768-4-02

Tom’s business was in finance, property and insurance, which he used as a cover to steal clients’ money and forge documents to get loans from banks.

“He was shuffling money around left, right and centre,” Peter Graham says. “He was trying to stave off the day when he was going to be exposed.”

A world wide credit crisis in the 1880s proved disastrous for Tom’s scam. With credit drying up he was forced to look elsewhere for money

“His way out was to marry a wife with money,” Peter says. “He picked upon Kitty Cain. She was one of two stepdaughters of Captain Cain [who was] really a founding father of Timaru.”

But it wasn’t enough to simply marry a rich woman, Tom wanted Kitty’s money all to himself. Even before they were wed, he was planning on killing her.

“Tom Hall travelled to Christchurch to get legal advice before he married Kitty,” says Peter.

Tom asked his lawyer what benefit would come to him if his wife died and was told the only way he could inherit her money is if the couple had a son before Kitty’s death.

Three weeks before his wedding, Tom bought 120 grains of tartar emetic from a chemist. The day after Kitty gave birth to his son he bought another 120. Tartar emetic is made from antimony, a metal which acts as an irritant poison similar to arsenic.

A piece of antimony, the metal Tom Hall used to poison his wife Photo: CC 3.0

“It’s a metallic poison that accumulates in the system and only two or three grains was enough to kill someone,” Peter says. “It’s quite a hard poison to administer because you have to get the mix exactly right. If you give too much it will simply be vomited up.”

So instead Tom poisoned his wife slowly over the course of two months. Mixing antimony into Kitty’s food and water, watching as her health slowly deteriorated. She started suffering from constant vomiting attacks, but the worst symptoms were a constant itching and an unquenchable thirst for water.

Throughout this time Tom appeared as a caring husband. Never giving a hint he was the one responsible for his wife’s illness.

“I see him as a psychopath type,” says Peter Graham. “The cold calculation, the charm, the way he could sit there with his wife hour after hour, day after day.”

Tom probably hoped that by poisoning Kitty with antimony, her death would be less suspicious. Instead of suddenly dropping dead she would seem to suffer a long, lingering, ultimately fatal illness.

Then, immediately after her death, Tom planned to burn down the family house – destroying any traces of poison in Kitty’s body. At trial it was revealed the attic of the house had been packed with rags and straw; and doused with kerosene.

Frontispiece of a pamphlet about the Hall poisoning case. Photo: Alexander Turnbull Library Ref: PUBL-0155-front

But Tom’s plan unravelled thanks to a sharp eyed nurse.

“Nurse Ellison saw Tom give Kitty a sip of water that [Kitty] complained tasted a bit brackish and then immediately vomited,” says Peter.

The nurse took a sample of water which she gave to the family doctor, Patrick MacIntyre, who had it tested by a local chemist. It was found to be laced with a large dose of antimony.

Doctor MacIntyre went to the police and swore evidence against Tom Hall for attempted murder and also against another of Kitty’s nurses, a woman called Margaret Houston.

Several servants described on what they felt was an inappropriately close relationship between Margaret and Tom. They spent a lot of time in each other’s rooms and on one occasion Tom helped Margaret get dressed by tightening the stays on her corset (seen as scandalous behaviour at the time).

Margaret’s behaviour when the police came to arrest her and Tom was also seen as suspicious.

When the police arrived Tom attempted to throw a bottle of poison he had in his pocket into the fire. This led to a wrestling match with the two police officers, with Margaret joining the fight on Tom’s part.

Margaret tried to divert suspicion from Tom when police told them that the accusation against him was attempted murder by the poisoning with antimony. “Antimony?” Margaret said. “Isn’t that what you use in your photography Tom?”

Tom responded by snapping, “Keep quiet will you!” and telling the police that “whatever I did in this matter I did alone. … Miss Houston has nothing whatever to do with this.”

Along with the poison in his pocket, the police discovered a bottle of poisoned brandy on Kitty’s bedside, another bottle of poison in Tom’s room, and a copy of the book Taylor on Poisons on his bedside table.

The trial was a national sensation – the drama only heightened by the fact that the lawyer for the prosecution was Robert Stout, the sitting Premier and Attorney General.

Robert Stout was the NZ Premier when he prosecuted the Tom Hall case Photo: Alexander Turnbull Library Ref: 1/2-098553; F

It took the jury just eight minutes to find Tom Hall guilty. Margaret Houston was exonerated, largely because a doctor’s examination proved she was a virgin, making it difficult to prove a romantic relationship between she and Tom.

However, Tom then faced a second trial after the family doctor recalled that Kitty’s stepfather, Captain Cain, had suffered very similar symptoms to Kitty before his death earlier that year.

The police exhumed the body in a scene described in vivid detail by the Timaru Herald.

“The scene was a ghostly and horrible one… The sky was enveloped in heavy, threatening looking black clouds. The scene, laid as it was in the cemetery, was enough to fill the spectators with horror, which was heightened by the lanterns now and then flashing their rays on tombstones and graves; and the sight of the ghostly coffin, covered in mud and dripping with water, caused an involuntary shudder to pass through the assembled crowd.” – Timaru Herald 1886

Captain Cain’s body was found to be laced with antimony. Tom Hall was convicted of murder and sentenced to death.

However that conviction was then quashed after an appeal on a legal technicality relating to the admissibility of evidence used in the trial – specifically, the evidence that Tom had already been found guilty of attempted murder (by poisoning).

He was sentenced to prison and served 21 years, one year longer than the customary life sentence of the time. After his release he left to live in Australia in the seaside town of Yeppoon where he is buried today under the assumed name of Paul Newstead.

Listen to the full Black Sheep podcast to hear why Kitty refused to believe her husband tried to poison her and how the New Zealand public reacted to Tom Hall’s acquittal for murder.


The Society section is sponsored by AUT. As a contemporary university we’re focused on providing exceptional learning experiences, developing impactful research and forging strong industry partnerships. Start your university journey with us today.

But wait there's more!