Paranoia And Me

I thought the whole world was trying to scam me; then I got better

Some time in the early noughties, when I was in my mid twenties, I was in a nightclub in London with my girlfriend, my sister and a mate. We’d had a few drinks and were having a lovely time dancing to great music. Until, that is, I became suddenly convinced that a bunch of lads stood beside the dance floor were pointing and laughing at us.

I don’t know where this idea came from – it was probably the drink – but I started to fixate upon it so hard that I stopped having a lovely time and just disappeared inside my drunken, paranoid mind. And then, all of a sudden, I lunged at one of the lads, grabbed him by the throat and started to squeeze hard. He was understandably gobsmacked. Clearly, he hadn’t even noticed my existence before I attacked him. The mockery had all been in my mind. I think I realised this quite quickly but, by that stage, I had taken things too far to back down. His mates tried to pull me off him and when that didn’t work a couple of them rained a few punches at my head, which in turn drew my mate into the melee. Before we knew it, a fully fledged brawl had broken out.

Well, I say ‘fully fledged,’ it probably lasted about thirty seconds before the bouncers grabbed us up and threw us on the street. I recall one of them clutching my face in his hand and saying with a sort of urgent compassion: “What are you doing, mate?”

It was a fair question. I didn’t know the answer. Nor did the lads I had attacked or my mate who had nobly stood up for me and taken a couple of digs for his troubles. My girlfriend and sister were completely befuddled and a little outraged. I think I actually ended up saying sorry to the lad I’d tried to strangle as I stumbled away from the scene. He accepted the apology with an expression that seemed to say: ‘You wanna get your head checked you fucking weirdo.’ He was right, of course.

In the morning I woke up hung over, full of regret but happy to write the whole thing off to pissed-up misadventure. Just one of those things, no harm done, maybe try to pace myself a bit better next time I’m out.

But there was more to it than that. I was a paranoid person, I just didn’t realise it. Throughout my teens, twenties and thirties I thought that everybody was out to get me.