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If only it was that simple. For me, for you, or even for the brains behind the Atheist Bus Campaign, Ariane Sherine, who following its success (but trolled remorselessly by supposed Christians) suffered a major nervous breakdown and suicide ideation. She was at London Skeptics in the Pub last Monday (I'm getting a bit tardy with these blogs - must improve) to deliver a talk, Talk Yourself Better:A Confused Person's Guide to Therapy, Counselling and Self-Help, that promised to cover both that Atheist Bus Campaign, her breakdown, and her ongoing recovery from it.
But, as befits a talk about therapy, it went a lot deeper than that. At one point I had to wipe the tears from my eyes. It had been an emotional couple of days (and the week that followed continued in much the same vein) but even if it hadn't I think it would have affected me more deeply than most Skeptics talks.
Having been beset by anxiety (and borderline, possibly more, depression) most of my life I could identify with much of what Ariane was talking about (not all, I'm male, and some of her issues are, sadly, issues forced on her by aggressive men - more later). The fact that the talk came on the day that Keith Flint of The Prodigy took his own life made it even more pertinent and perhaps put an awareness in more people's heads that though things may look fine on the surface there are often deep, and troubling, thoughts bubbling beneath that can boil over at any time.
Fourteen months after the above, happy looking, photo was taken with Richard Dawkins, Ariane was in the midst of a nervous breakdown and her weight had doubled. How did this happen? I've never actually laid down on a psychiatrist's couch but the old story used to be that a session would usually begin with a request to "tell me about your childhood". Ariane Sherine was not to disappoint on that score.
The daughter of an East African mother of Indian descent and a Californian dad. A dad who she described as kind, amazing, wonderful .... and abusive. Disturbed by his own abusive childhood, he would fly into rages over the tiniest of things, spank his daughter's bare bum a hundred times, and tell her she was 'revolting'.
Mum, due to her own confidence issues, turned a blind eye, so Ariane started to believe that it was all her own fault. She turned in on herself and, to make matters worse, the kids at her school were happy to help her do that. They bullied her, they ostracised her, and they beat her up.
Beaten at school, when she arrived home she was hit again. So, like many who suffer bullying, she looked for someone to bully. She had a four year old brother so she hit him. Her dad told the brother to hit Ariane back, but the four year old refused. Much to Ariane's then disappointment. If the toddler didn't whack her, her father would - and that would hurt a lot more.
Ariane Sherine has not spoken to her brother for twenty-two years since he punched her in the face. The dad is dead now. But it's not clear what became of the kids at her school. The ones that said she was so ugly that when she grew up no man would ever fuck her and she'd have to have sex with animals instead.
While the family were together there was, at one point, the suggestion of some family counselling. Dad refused to go. Men of his age who'd grown up in the US during the depression era didn't have, or need, counselling. They just had to 'man up'. Mum said the brother wouldn't need to go as none of it was his fault so Mum and Ariane went together. Mum denying every allegation Ariane made about her father and his violent ways. She was worried he'd go to jail and the brother would be taken into care.
Ariane became suicidal and some observed, at the time, that this may, for her, always be the case. She began to self-harm using a maths compass but she also began to lose weight which, for the first time in her life, meant that boys started to take an interest. Even though an early boyfriend complained that she had 'no tits'.
This supposed lack of breasts didn't stop her winning the Miss Harrow beauty contest but her depression did prevent her from letting love in when it was offered. She'd constantly push lovers away and then bring them back into her life - in what felt like an ad infinitum scenario.
This caused further suicidal thoughts and a referral for psychodynamic therapy where she was diagnosed with a BPD (borderline personality disorder). 74% of sufferers of BPD will attempt suicide and 10% will succeed. Luckily, for everyone, Ariane wasn't in the 10% but she was in the 74%. She slashed her wrists and she threw herself in front of a train.
But she also started to express herself creatively. In her twenties she began to write for the children's TV series The Story of Tracy Beaker and went on to write for the inexplicably popular 'comedy' series Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps. She started to feel a sense of self-worth again but also she fell into an abusive relationship with a man ten years older than her.
She got pregnant by him and then on holiday in France with his brother and sister-in-law (who turned out to be a racist) an incident took place. The boyfriend took the racist sister-in-law's side when the issue of her racism was confronted so Ariane called her boyfriend a cunt. In return he smacked her in the face and told her he was going to kill her. She said she would have pressed charges if this had happened in the UK but had no idea how the system worked in France.
Once returned, and split from abusive boyfriend, she was left with the problem that she was pregnant so she Googled abortions - which led her to a lot of pro-life websites that told her if she had an abortion not only would she get breast cancer but she would burn for all of eternity in Hell. A place she didn't particularly believe in after her parents, one good thing they did do it seems, sent her to church as a kid to put her off religion.
On the day of her abortion, her mum had to work so dad took her to the clinic. Not an ideal scenario bearing in mind what we've already learned about their relationship. Post-abortion, a year of depression and crying followed. She suffered anxiety attacks, developed a fear of men, a fear of dogs, and, even, a fear of road signs.
She developed claustrophobia which meant she couldn't take lifts or the tube (problematic if working as a comedy writer in London) and decided to sign up for a course of psychoanalysis, some of the ol' Freudian stuff. The most convenient psychoanalyst she could find was a lady in Muswell Hill called Connie Booth. Yes, that one. Polly from, and co-creator of, Fawlty Towers. A comedy hero of Ariane's!
Ariane tried some computerised CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) but that was more for agoraphobics and didn't work for her. She also had a crack at some cognitive analytic theory, a cross between CBT and psychoanalysis.
None of this was really the correct fit but along with the downs, there were considerable ups. She got a job writing columns for The Guardian in which she'd rage against the appropriation of text speak in real life. She started dating Charlie Brooker who was 'lovely' and 'supportive' and fiercely atheist and turned her on to Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion which gave her the seed of the idea for the Atheist Bus Campaign.
Having seen how churches were allowed to make bold, and unsubstantiated, claims about what happens to us if we sin or fail to believe in God, she came up with the idea of writing on the side of the bus (a long time before some absolute villains realised the power of bus advertising) "THERE'S PROBABLY NO GOD. NOW STOP WORRYING AND ENJOY YOUR LIFE" in bold, bright, and happy colours.
£100,000 was raised in just four days and Dawkins then chucked about as much in himself. The first buses went out with these posters adorning their sides towards the end of 2008/start of 2009 and soon there were franchises in Germany, Australia, Sweden, and Russia as well as many other countries.
The campaign wasn't popular with everyone though. Soon the hate mail started coming in. "I hope Jesus kills you", "I will shoot you in the head". Her career was going very well but she wasn't able to enjoy it due to the fear that her murder was possibly imminent.
A doctor recommended a course of drugs that would, and did, cause weight gain. That put her off but as her anxiety and depression continued to deepen she came round to the fact that gaining some weight was a price worth paying.
London Skeptics are quite strict about how long a speaker talks for which meant we only briefly touched on Ariane's teenage years hanging around with Duran Duran. But also meant that the last five minutes or so were a bit rushed, I struggled to get the exact order of events down in my notebook but the gist was something like this:-
She got pregnant, she started visiting suicide forums, she didn't write professionally for three and a half years, she got some drug treatment which, and a no deal Brexit could change this - who knows?, she is still having. It means her weight will be more than she'd ideally like forever but it also means she survived.
The therapy really helped but the drugs, in her case, helped more. In recent years more celebrities (Stephen Fry, David Baddiel, Charlie Brooker) have come out and spoken about, made podcasts mostly, their own therapy and the stigma is gradually being removed in a way that would probably be unimaginable to her father.
But there still is a stigma regarding mental illness, depression, and anxiety. Still a belief that people are being self-indulgent, that they need to 'man up', that to talk about one's problems makes one a burden. It's shit - and people die all the time because of it.
I'm really glad Ariane didn't. Not just because she was able to provide a wonderful, emotional, and thoughtful evening for me but because I don't want anybody dying due to an illness that, if it can't be totally cured, can at least be managed. If only we speak about it. If only society allows us to speak about it. Maybe that's what needs writing on the side of a bus and maybe that's what some of that £350,000,000 promised to the NHS could go towards?
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