I’m all about having fun, partying, hanging out with my friends, going to clubs, listening to good music, festivals, dressing up, good food and great cocktails.

My life changed in October 2015 when the car I was driving was hit by a truck on the motorway. I don’t remember the accident, apparently your brain shuts out the things that are too stressful for you to deal with. What I do remember is waking up the next morning after barely any sleep. I had intense pins and needles down my right arm as well as pain down the right side of my body, my bum, lower back and side were bruised and all I could do was cry.

The hospital thought that it was nerve damage causing the pins and needles and that it would be temporary and should be better within days. They told me to go to the Dr if not. Two days later and the pain and sensations are unbearable. I went to the GP and got some painkillers and other tablets to help with the pins and needles and a fast tracked MRI for my neck, which scared the sh*t out of me as I’m claustrophobic.

The cocktail of drugs that I was on dulled the pain a bit, but the pins and needles weren’t going away, I also had shooting pains and couldn’t move my fingers or my hand properly and I had no strength. I wasn’t sleeping, I couldn’t feed myself, wash myself or get dressed. It was like I had lost my arm. Everyone kept telling me that it would get better soon, but it didn’t. I was soon on sleeping pills, codeine, anti inflammatories, anticonvulsants, paracetamols and lord knows what else.

I went from being a confident, outgoing, healthy, fit person to an anxious, depressed, bloated mess. I wouldn’t leave the house on my own. I was embarrassed about having to have my food cut up for me like a baby and sometimes I couldn’t speak, words just wouldn’t come out, I’d open my mouth and nothing.

I went totally into myself and I was scared of everything. All the time I was still in pain and not able to use my right hand and arm. I had so many different hospital appointments, was given so many different drugs, ones to counteract the effects of others, ones to replace others as they were having such bad side effects….. and then I went insane, not just a little bit, full on bat sh*t crazy. I thought that I was dead, that I had died in the accident & that’s why I didn’t remember it. People around me were trying to tell me that I wasn’t dead, but I would just respond with “well, I’m going to die very soon then.”

At this point, my then fiancé took me to the Dr. She took me off all of the drugs, apart from the codeine, anti inflammatories and paracetamol. She said that I was highly sensitive to drugs, which was why I was being crazy, but thought that the codeine would be okay. She was wrong, codeine is evil, it’s highly addictive & I had some super crazy messed up dreams on it and decided that I needed to quit that too.

So, I went cold turkey, it was literally like you see in the movies when someone quits heroin. I was shaky, sweaty, pale, clammy, cold, shivering, feeling sick, not sleeping etc until it was out of my system. Through all of this I still have the pain and an arm and hand that doesn’t work properly. The Drs were telling me that there’s nothing that they can do and I had an intense feeling of hopelessness.

I don’t want others to have to go through what I did. I lost a year of my life in a prescription drug fuelled haze and then I spent another three years in intense pain. I’m now loads better, not like I was before and I don’t know if I ever will be the same, but this version of me is doing well.

I’m going to use this site to share with you the things that helped, the things that got me through my darkest moments. I want to help you or your friends or family through theirs.

Some of my journey and tips will be useful to different people so I have broken them down into categories. Some of the things are a bit WOO WAA and you’ll be thinking who’s this crazy loon, but as the psychiatrist said to me ‘Some things in life cannot be explained’. This sentence has saved me from having myself committed, when the weird and wonderful has happened.

I’m writing this from a place of love, in the hope that it can help even just one other person. We can all overcome the worst, it just takes the right frame of mind and belief in yourself that you can do it.