Episode 1 — Marcus

EPISODE ONE: “MARCUS — NOT A PUDDLE OF GLITTER”

NARRATION

Hey there. As well as a few swears, this episode contains discussion of substance use, eating disorders, depression, self-harm and suicidal ideation. These conversations are important to have, but if you’re struggling with any of these issues and think these discussions could bring stuff up for you, maybe skip to another episode. We also want to stress that this is just one person’s story, so may not reflect the experiences of others.

HANNAH  

Which was your favourite drug?

MARCUS

Probably speed because I just like feeling awake. And then G. Whatever I could get my hands – on whatever would get me the most fucked up.

HANNAH

Could you describe how it felt to be on speed?

MARCUS

Speed for me was just like… I liked being alert and awake but still in control. I was just like switched on, I was like wired. I was just able to like be conscious, but at the same time still fucked up.

NARRATION

This is Marcus. He studies sociology and has rocked up to the interview in Adidas originals with an iced coffee hand. He’s 23 now, but a whole bunch has happened to him already. So let’s start at the start.

SFX: kids partying, bad late 00s music

MARCUS

So it was probably at the end of Year 7 or the end of Year 8. There was like an end-of-year party and me and one other friend decided that we wanted to drink before it. Being young kids, we didn’t know what we should drink. So I just went into my like dad’s liquor cabinet. Got an empty like water bottle and filled up with like half a bottle of absinthe, and then like a quarter of whiskey and then a quarter vodka. And we didn’t know how much that was. So I skolled probably like half of it, and then my friend had a few swigs. And then at the party I was apparently on all fours and like stumbling around and yelling, “does anybody want a gobby?!?” Yeah, very classy of me

But the next thing I know, I was in my front yard, like lying in the grass. And I was like, vomiting everywhere, and I was crying, saying, I don’t want to be gay. I don’t want to be gay.

HANNAH  

You know, I’ve ended up in a flower bed crying about being gay before.

MARCUS

Yeah, happens to the best of us.

NARRATION

The realisation that you’re queer kinda doesn’t happen all of a sudden. Like you don’t wake up one morning in a puddle of glitter. At least that wasn’t my experience, or Marcus’. Often it can be a whole bunch of…moments: your stomach drops when you see George Michael, or Drew Barrymore on the TV. Little clues, that ultimately add up to the revelation of an identity that feels true for you.

For Marcus, this all happened quite early, and he felt he needed to come out to his parents.

MARCUS

And I just kind of like said I needed to talk to them. And they… I just told them. I was just like, “I’m gay”. I literally didn’t know what to do. So I just like walked out and then like walked into my room. And then like, closed the door behind me. They obviously followed, they’re like, “you can’t just say that and then leave”. And I was like, “fair”.

 But they just said, “we know, like you’re our child. It was obvious.” And then they said that I am young and that I shouldn’t be like labelling or pigeon-holing myself so soon and just to be myself.

 And at the time, I took that as “oh they think it’s a phase”. But now that I’m older, and I see 13-year-olds, I see that they were just trying to be like, “you don’t have to put yourself into this box. You don’t have to label yourself so young. Just like, be who you are.”

HANNAH 

Were you happy to be gay at the time?

music: synth pop melody

MARCUS  

No, not at all. It was a really hard thing to come to terms with.

I think our whole lives – even before we’re born – we’re assumed we’re going to be straight our whole life. Like even through ads and through movies, where there’s this expectation that we’ll grow up, marry someone of the opposite sex, have a family, have kids, and then when you realise that that’s not what’s going to be your life, and that’s… like you’re not even going to pass on the family name, for example, like there’s a potential for that. Those sort of things really just like, mess around with your head. I struggled a lot with it. Initially.

NARRATION

We’ve made a lot of progress with LGBTIQ rights and acceptance, and obviously same sex couples can and do get married and have kids just like straight people. But despite these in-roads, young LGBTIQ people still experience mental health issues at a rate higher than their straight peers. On just about every metric you can think: depression, anxiety, self-harm and suicidal ideation - it’s a big problem.

I’m Hannah McElhinney, and this is The Things I’ve Thought.

music: theme (medium tempo hip hop beats with piano)

MARCUS 

So this was probably around the age of like 12. I was in Year 6 when I was realising my sexuality. And that came with all the depressing feelings. Like I was crying every night. I was really just mad at myself and disgusted that I could be this and thought that I was a failure and that I was a disappointment.

It got to the point where I was like self-harming as well. I hated my body, and also it sounds really graphic, but like seeing blood was almost like a reminder that I was still living. Like, I’m not just this empty shell like, flesh prison. I was bleeding, and I was breathing, and it kind of brought me back to reality almost.

NARRATION

During his early to mid-teens, Marcus also began experimenting with drugs - mainly weed and acid. He was also drinking pretty heavily.

MARCUS 

I think because I wanted an escape and to forget that I was queer and lonely that I just drank so much. Because it is this feeling of being out of your body for a little bit; not really thinking about much. I would just forget who I was for a night. And that was like bliss for me.

NARRATION

In addition to the self-medicating, Marcus was also seeing a psychologist and was taking anti-depressants to help with these feelings. But soon after, things started to take a different turn.

MARCUS 

Initially, I wasn’t aware of how I looked, or like cared about how I looked. But as I got older, I became more and more conscious of it. I was realising that I felt fat, or I thought ugly. Yeah, it was hard. Because even though I knew I wasn’t necessarily like, extremely overweight, I was just being really critical of myself.

NARRATION

So he heads to the gym in an effort to do something about his body. And he goes hard. Soon, he’s counting calories.

MARCUS

And I would always make sure that I burnt off everything I ate for the day. And I would skip meals. It was an obsession with numbers. It was like I was obsessed with seeing numbers on the scale, numbers on the little gym machine screen telling me how much I’ve burnt.

It was weird though, because I was restricting myself this much I would then go and binge every now and then. And just like eat a whole packet of Tim Tams, eat like everything like a whole loaf of bread, like 12 pieces of toast. And then because I’d shrunk my stomach from not eating much, I would just feel so sick where I would vomit without the intention of making myself vomit. I’d just eaten so much. And then obviously, I’d feel really guilty about that. So the cycle begins again.

I felt like being in high school there was so many rules and policies to follow. I had to dress a certain way, I’d have my hair colour a certain way. I didn’t have any other queer friends so I felt like everything else was out of my control of how I could live my life. Even though I couldn’t control other things, I could at least control this.

BELINDA 

We now know that neurobiologically that for people who, for a range of other reasons, (have) anxiety about a whole range of issues, that for a small group of those people actually restricting their food actually starts to make them feel calmer.

NARRATION

This is Belinda Caldwell. She’s the CEO of Eating Disorders Victoria. EDV run peer mentoring programs, education workshops. They do advocacy work and also operate a support service that is accessible over the phone or internet. They’re basically about supporting people the 1 million or so Australians who will experience an eating disorder in their lifetime.

BELINDA

And there’s a whole lot of parts of our body that get affected. And one of the key parts of our body that gets affected in that process is our brain. And what is really interesting is that just the process of starvation for our brains, basically changes the way it works. So it makes it more rigid, it makes it more anxious, it makes it more black and white, and less flexible.

So what happens is that the more someone is focused on exercising ‘x’ amount or reducing the food by this amount, or removing that type of food out of their diet, the more they do that, the more likely they are to do that. So it’s a bit of a spiral down.

NARRATION

We’ll hear more from Belinda later. But back in Marcus’ world, his eating disorder is about to go up a level. Because one day, he’s scrolling through Instagram and he sees a promotion for this tea.

MARCUS

I saw before and after pictures of people drinking these two week program teas, and the results looked good. It would be all like wholesome and like flowers and pretty pictures and like people exercising. And it was used as like a fitness detox and that’s how it was marketed. So I ordered myself some. That was a pretty intense thing.

I definitely felt as though because I was buying herbs from a wholesome lady, in like a hemp skirt who was smiling, that this was okay for me to do. And that because it was a natural plant that it wasn’t anything that serious. I felt like it wasn’t a serious problem because I could buy this fine over, like, from a store and I could keep this in my pantry and make this tea. It comes from a plant. How bad can it be?

NARRATION

A lot of products are out there saying they’ll help you lose weight, but Belinda Caldwell says there’s no real evidence to suggest that any of them work. Plus, it’s not good for you.

BELINDA

Laxative use is incredibly dangerous. So for people who abuse laxatives, you can get really significant damage to both your bowels and your overall health system. They’re really not safe practice at all.

MARCUS 

And then I’d move away from the tea because the taste had like disgusted me by that point. I had associated that taste with the pain of using the bathroom the next day, trying to shit. Sorry for being crude, but like I just I didn’t have much in me and my stomach was just in so much pain. And that’s when I kind of realised I was like “this is just going on too far.”

NARRATION

Here, I want to point out that using laxatives like this is not only very bad for your health, but completely useless at helping someone lose weight. Pretty much all the calories from food are already absorbed by the time they come out the other end. Shitting yourself thin – not a thing.

MARCUS 

Around that time I was like, like 16, 17 I think. And like Tumblr was really big then as well. And there was all these online spaces of people like promoting ways to starve yourself or make yourself purge as they called it. It was this really toxic online community of people like helping each other. It was really like, thinking back on it was so so so damaging the influence of people online.

HANNAH

Did anyone notice?

MARCUS

A few people. Like mum and dad were a bit suss, but I was pretty good at hiding it. I looked thin, but I didn’t look unhealthily thin. I kind of just like teetered around this weight category that was not unhealthy. So I looked okay, but compared to how I used to look, I looked pretty thin. But no one was ever concerned about how I looked.

NARRATION

Eventually, his parents did grow concerned, enough that they took him to see a specialist, who diagnosed Marcus with having EDNOS, or Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified. Belinda Caldwell from EDV, again.

BELINDA

EDNOS is actually now something called OSFED.

NARRATION

OSFED is another acronym meaning Other Specified Feeding and Eating Disorder.

MARCUS

It essentially just means I had a shit relationship with food.

BELINDA

And basically EDNOS or OSFED are really eating disorders in any other shape or form but they don’t quite make the diagnostic criteria for anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa or binge eating disorder. What we do know is research demonstrates that they’re just as dangerous and just as debilitating.

MARCUS

And it was really hard when they kind of tell you what’s wrong with you. Not, “what’s wrong with you” is the wrong way to say it, but like, what mental illness you have. It’s kind of a bit of a reality check. And a bit of an eye opener to what you’re doing isn’t healthy or normal.

Because I think you can forget that what you’re doing isn’t the norm and isn’t healthy. And even though it’s like now saying it out loud, it sounds so obvious that those habits aren’t good habits to have. But when you’re like stuck in this way of thinking, and you’re stuck in this routine, it’s hard to have clear judgment.

NARRATION

Marcus engaged with a few treatments, and tried to change his behaviours and relationship with food, but he found it super difficult. Belinda says that this isn’t unusual.

BELINDA

It can be quite difficult for people to find treatment. I think the key thing we know now around treatment is that it really, wherever possible, should involve families or support networks around the person. So it’s an illness that is really difficult to get out of on your own.

And I think what’s common is, you know, people really feeling just really super sensitive to stress and a bit out of control. That kind of sense of themselves that creates a lot of these things and potentially that drifts into the substance abuse.

NARRATION

And so it was with Marcus. For the remainder of high school, his eating disorder improved, but still continued. Then, once he turned 18 and was out in the world, things changed again.

music: club music - banging beats

MARCUS 

I think once you graduate school, especially as a queer person, it’s like, your whole life begins. Being introduced to the partying scene in Melbourne, because I had a few older friends, it was great. I all of a sudden had a room full of people just like me. And I didn’t even know that places like this existed. So it was a great experience. And before I knew it, I was taking lots of drugs and wasn’t really caring about what I was eating because I knew from Thursday through to like Sunday or Monday, I would barely be eating.

And then after that, EDNOS kind of just faded into the background, because like I had other aspects of my life I could control, I guess. So yeah, it was kind of this swap between controlling calories and what I was eating, to like not giving a shit about anything except what drugs I was doing on the weekend.

NARRATION

Because of the anti-depressants he was on, some of the party drugs he was taking weren’t having the desired effect.

MARCUS  

And that for me it was like “ah well, I guess I should go off meds then because I want to eat pingers on the weekend.”

NARRATION

So despite this, really, not being the greatest idea of all time, Marcus felt his world had suddenly opened up. Having felt isolated at high school, he had now found his tribe and he fell hard into the queer scene with all its clubs and saunas. And in the club, surrounded by new queer friends, you really can find a sense of freedom and identity.

Finally you can be yourself. But there’s no road map for the scene.

music: muffled club music

MARCUS 

And it was mostly me getting wound up in, I guess, a hedonistic lifestyle. Just doing lots of drugs, drinking lots, having lots of sex, and it was just this weird experience that I never thought I would be able to do. Because high school you feel so lonely, but then you are exposed to this whole world. And it’s amazing but also terrifying. Because you don’t know how you should be behaving or you don’t know how you should be acting. You don’t know about safe sex because your school only taught about straight sex. You don’t know about drinking or taking drugs because your school taught you not to do those things. So it’s a real trial and error period for a lot of people, including myself.

HANNAH 

So what kind of drugs would you take?

MARCUS

Pretty much anything I can get my hands on. Mostly stimulants. MD, speed, ket - ketamine, coke, GHB.

HANNAH 

And then how was Monday?

MARCUS

Trash. Um, yeah, and it was really funny because I was like, “I feel like shit”, but then it wouldn’t… these come downs, which was essentially until I would get back up again. I wouldn’t associate that with why I was feeling shit or care enough about how shit I was feeling to stop doing what I was doing.

I couldn’t see the correlation between taking a shitload of caps on the weekend and then just wanting to die on a Tuesday.

NARRATION

Okay, so I do want to chime in here with a general point about how debilitating drug use can be on our physical and mental health. I think it’s so fine to have a joke about our experiences sometimes, but we shouldn’t ignore the reality that drugs can have short-term and irreversible long-term negative impacts on our bodies and minds.

I’m all about harm minimisation, and I reckon the best way to reduce potential harm is to educate yourself and understand what you’re putting in you, how and why it’s going to alter your consciousness, and what the health impacts could be. At least then you’ll be able to make an informed decision, rather than just trusting your future wellbeing to a dealer with the chemical equivalent of a baggie of magic beans.

Anyway, enough soap-boxing.

So Marcus had moved out of home by this stage and was living in a sharehouse that, from the sounds of it, was one of those horror story dumps of a place.

MARCUS  

There was a hole in the living room floor. My mattress was like literally on the ground with no sheet on it. Like I would just ash ciggies on the mattress, like next to the mattress on the floor. It was a mess. There was someone living in the living room.

And like I would always prioritise like “oh should I get food this week or should I buy more gear?” And like I obviously always chose drugs.

My mental health was pretty trashed. Like I was barely making enough money to pay rent and eat and continue my partying lifestyle. And if I wasn’t partying, I was like I didn’t see the point. I was like, “I need to do this. I’m not going to spend my Saturday nights inside so…”

Yeah, my mental health was pretty bad.

NARRATION

And although Marcus felt like he belonged for the first time in his life, he found that many of his new friendships, which are often a great protector against poor mental health, were mostly disingenuous. That’s the thing about club friendships, often they stay in the club.

MARCUS 

And I quickly learned that you can have lots of acquaintances like I had through clubbing. But once you stop going clubbing you realise you don’t have anything in common with these people. And these friendships were purely, like fuelled through chemicals. Like you don’t know shit about this person. It’s quite weird to realise.

NARRATION

So things continued to plunge on downward. Marcus moves back home and spends his time doing pretty much nothing. And I know I flagged it at the top of the episode, but just so you’re aware, there’s some talk of suicide in this next bit.

MARCUS

I think depression has always been something I’ve dealt with. And then with the drugs on top of that, at this time of my life, it kind of all just turned to shit. It was past the point of like it wasn’t familiar to me. This time it seemed different. This time it seemed like, actually I was genuinely scared. And I was aware that I could potentially do something really dumb here.

I would push my family and my friends away. Be like purposely rude or disrespectful to them. So that it would make it easier if I do kill myself, so that they would not be as upset. And obviously that is a dumb thing to do. But like that seemed logical for me at the time.

SFX: train going past

MARCUS 

And then one day I was crying by the train tracks and I was - I’m not sure if I would have actually done it or not, but it was running through my head - and I was quite shaken up. And I get a notification on my phone. And I get a Tinder super like. I’m like “what the fuck? Who super liked me?” And then I open it up and it’s my best mate. And he just sent me some dumb ass message and it kind of brought me back to how much love I have for my friends and my family. And it was definitely a reality check of what I was doing or what I was about to do.

NARRATION

Out of fear for his safety, Marcus’ psychologist requested the Crisis Assessment and Treatment team, or CAT team, pay him a visit. This is usually a group of two to four mental health professionals who are tasked with determining how a person is going, and whether they might need to be immediately hospitalised for their own good. A CAT team visit is a fairly common occurrence, but it can be a scary and often intimidating one.

MARCUS  

So they came out to my room, and they ask me all these questions, and drugs came up. So we were talking about how I had a big stash of G that I was either planning to use to kill myself with or just like do for fun. So it was like, I’d do one or the other. They made me pour it out, which was… I felt like I had no choice and like, obviously it was probably for the best. But it was scary having these authoritative figures in my own space telling me what to do, even though it’s for my own good.

NARRATION

Marcus doesn’t really know what alerted the CAT team - perhaps his erratic mood, or the state of his room – but what happened next completely changed everything for Marcus. After sitting him down with his parents, the CAT team suggested that he might have Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder, or ADHD.

MARCUS 

And I was like, “cool, whatever, but like I legit like want to kill myself.”

NARRATION

But despite thinking the suggestion was ridiculous, he follows their recommendation and sees a psychiatrist specialising in ADHD.

MARCUS  

And then he asked me if I take drugs. I was like, “yeah.” He’s like, “what mostly?” and I was like “speed. Like, I just love speed.” And he like, asked me why. And I said, “oh it just makes me feel really focused and awake.” And he was just like, “ah…” And that was just kind of like a clicking point of being like, “oh, yeah, no shit.”

NARRATION

In order to manage this, Marcus is put on medication. But nothing was having a positive impact. In fact, it was quite the opposite.

MARCUS 

I was trying all these whack things that made me feel like shit, like, felt really dissociated. I just felt out of touch with my body, very sleepy. It took about a good six months of trialling different things.

music: hopeful melodic pop

But getting the diagnosis was like one of the best things that’s happened to me. It was weird, like, I had to try a few different medications, specifically ones that I couldn’t abuse. So as soon as I found the one that worked for me, which I’m still on, it changed my life completely.

It was really weird. I like no longer had these urges to go out and get like, hectically fucked up. Or do a copious amount of drugs. And the psychiatrist was like, “yeah, a lot of people find that they’re like self-treating, or self-diagnosing and treating their symptoms of ADHD by partying.”

And for me, that was like real whack, because I’d never really given much thought to ADHD at all, or the potential of it.

NARRATION

It’s been 12 months now since Marcus reached rock bottom, and he’s doing great. He’s even started to shift his focus away from partying and onto the unique pressures and issues that are faced by young queer people like himself.

MARCUS 

Like the prevalence of mental illness and the availability of drugs in the queer scene worries me a lot. Like we’ve gotten marriage equality, but we still see queer people so much more likely to attempt suicide or have a mental illness. And I think that this availability is taking advantage of lonely, queer people. And it is a real problem that no one is really acknowledging.

HANNAH

What about the pressure to party as a queer person?

MARCUS

Yeah, I’m not sure if there’s necessarily a pressure to party as a queer person, or it’s more that you can be in a space that has all these queer people, but it’s in a partying atmosphere. You know, like there’s no queer… like, there’s not many queer coffee shops or like queer bookstores. There’s a few, but it’s all in like a party environment. So you’re kind of forced if you want to hang out with like-minded people to be at a club or a bar. So I guess it’s kind of intertwined that way, the pressure. And then I think the pressure normally comes from yourself if you want to party. Like, your own anxieties and your own feeling of isolation.

HANNAH 

Yeah, it would be good if there was like a queer gym.

MARCUS

Yeah, right? Or a queer something. Something that doesn’t involve like, getting maggot brained.

HANNAH

Was it hard cutting back?

MARCUS 

Not necessarily hard cutting back. I think it was like a natural progression when I was starting ADHD medication. But it was more hard like cutting back from the social situation of it. Like realising that I wasn’t going to be out until sunrise every morning also meant that I wouldn’t be spending time with some friends or queer communities. So it was hard in that sense.

music: mid-tempo pop dance music

MARCUS  

My mental health now is much better. Obviously there are days where it’s shit. Like anything, ups and downs, but I think now it’s being in control and aware of your mental health and having the tools and techniques to like kind of not get wrapped up in it and being able to step back and ground yourself I guess. And just not let it consume you.

NARRATION

And his eating disorder hasn’t entirely disappeared.

MARCUS 

Yeah, I do still struggle with it a bit today. These things kind of don’t ever leave you. Like every now and then I’ll still feel a little bit bad about my weight. And it’s just a matter of being able to get perspective now and having techniques to take a step back and think, and get yourself in the right headspace. And not letting it take over.

NARRATION

But if Marcus’ eating disorder did ever start impacting his behaviour again, help and support would be close by.

BELINDA  

So if you’re looking for a provider, and you want to find someone in your area, you’re very welcome to ring our hub here at EDV.

Often someone who is seeking treatment… it’s a very scary process. So it can be easier to open up to one person and then get their help to help you navigate the system. Because your eating disorder can often give you a really hard time about getting help. It can make you feel really guilty and really bad that you’re reaching out for help. So if you can just get one person and get that person to call us, that’s a really helpful way of trying to get yourself into the system and into treatment.

NARRATION

For Marcus, one of his most positive experiences has been his time at uni. He says it’s had a great impact on his wellbeing.

MARCUS

I think with uni, studying a degree that I actually love, like studying sociology at Swinburne, that’s been like one of the best things for me. It’s given me like lots of structure. Without structure, I tend to crumble.

NARRATION

He’s also a part of a Swinburne initiative called H-Squad.

MARCUS

H-squad with Swinburne is promoting health promotion, like peer health promotion. So we like, organise events or be at open days and orientation days and hand out flyers. Mostly about visibility and making people aware of all the services – health services available for no or little cost to students. Because a lot of people aren’t aware of them.

And like, especially as a student, no one wants to make a time to see a counsellor or psychologist when they’re so busy. But knowing that you can do that for free on campus, like in between classes, is an amazing service to have available to us.

I love it. I feel as though the more we talk about mental illness or sex education, the less stigma there is around it. Because there is still so much stigma around both like sexual practices and mental illness. And I think the more we talk about it, the more accepting we are of it. And the more normalised it becomes.

music: slow electronic music

NARRATION

To end, I asked Marcus what he would say to his younger self…

MARCUS 

I would say to 13-year-old queer Marcus, that “you are not alone. There’s plenty of queer people out there and to not do so much MDMA, because it’s going to make you feel like shit in the long run.” That would be my main things. And to keep on going, “you’re going to think that you’re at the end but you’re not. You got plenty more to do.”

NARRATION

Thanks to Marcus for sharing his story, and for his awesome work with the H-Squad at Swinburne. Thanks also to Belinda Caldwell at Eating Disorders Victoria.

If this story has triggered something for you, or if you or someone you know has developed or is at risk of an eating disorder, help is close by.

If you’re in urgent need of assistance, contact Triple 0, Lifeline on 131 114, or the Suicide Help Line on 1300 651 251.

Recent changes to Medicare mean that people with a serious eating disorder can now access up to 40 funded sessions with a mental health specialist and 20 sessions with a dietician in any calendar year. That’s massive. Contact your GP for more information, or reach out to Eating Disorders Victoria on 1300 550 236.

music: theme

At Swinburne, students can access a GP, and a team of mental health clinicians, psychiatrists and clinical psychologists. Call 9214 8483 to learn more and book a free appointment.

There’s also an after-hours crisis phone service that Swinburne run that is available every day of the year, even weekends and public holidays, 5pm to 9am. Call 1300 854 144 or SMS 0488 884 145.

We’ll chuck all this info into the show notes.

You may also like to go and do something nice for yourself, like get out of the house, go window shopping, or look at dog videos.

If you or someone you know is in need of help, please reach out. There are no stronger people out there than those that can put up their hand and say they need help.

All right, that’s it. Sometimes a Saturday night spent with Netflix can be good for you.

The Things I’ve Thought is a Swinburne University of Technology initiative, produced by Sam Loy and me, Hannah McElhinney, with sound design and mixing by Tiffany Dimmack, and executive produced by Clare Monte, May Ling Yong, Douglas Pope, and Kate Montague.

Special thanks to Jonathan Lang in the Swinburne media department, and Jess O’Callaghan.