Book Interview: Declan Gould on finally making peace with the clamouring voices in his head

Author Declan Gould has always battled mental illness but continues to strive to make a difference through his activism. Picture: Vincent Murphy

• Crazy Daze: A Bipolar Odyssey
• Declan Gould lulu.com, available online, £8.25

An engineer by profession and an activist for much of his life, Corkman Declan Gould hears voices. The 72-year-old’s memoir (recently launched with the lifting of the pandemic restrictions) is entitled Crazy Daze: A Bipolar Odyssey.

It reveals the author’s susceptibility to the voices he writes about and his gullibility in trying to carry out whatever is suggested to him including jumping in the river only to find his way out via the steps of one of the quays of the River Lee. That incident was sparked by what he interpreted as a stark choice: he was either going to kill his mother or kill himself. So he headed for the river.

After clambering back onto the street, he hailed a taxi home to his parents house in Ballinlough and was later driven to hospital and told he had bipolar disorder. This condition is characterised by extreme highs and lows and racing thoughts unless controlled by medication.

Gould recalls another bizarre incident that happened in 1982.

“I was cycling down to Carrigaline and I said to myself that I would do anything for world peace.

“I heard a very deep voice saying that if I wanted world peace, I had to take off all my clothes and cycle back to Cork. I was horrified, naturally enough. But I was more terrified not to do it because I felt I was being ordered by the power of the universe, God himself.

“So I went to Carrigaline and deposited my clothes outside my aunt’s front door. I cycled back towards Cork. I was naked, obviously. I was in Catholic territory and knew people wouldn’t be approving of what I was doing.

“Suddenly, a garda squad car stopped right next to me. Two guards got out. One threw the bike over the ditch and the other threw me in the back of the car.

“Off we went to the Bridewell. They gave me a blanket. The two guards who picked me up were horrified and treated me with disdain. On the other hand, there was a ban garda at the desk who laughed.”

Looking back, Gould says that he now believes the voice he heard that day as being that of the devil: “I think it was malicious.”

He describes prescriptive voices he hears as being “external, above and behind me”.

Gould’s book isn’t just a litany of such carry-on. It is also about his well-intentioned activism, including protesting against nuclear power.

He spent about seven years in Zimbabwe where he worked with homeless people, all the time in and out of engineering and teaching jobs as he tried to support his Cork-born wife and their two daughters. But Gould’s wife, from whom he has since broken up, was the steady earner.

The odyssey takes the reader from Ireland to the US and Zimbabwe. It reveals Gould’s brushes with the law and the mental health services. He addresses stigma and mental health and also writes about the issues arising from being in a psychiatric ward.

We meet in Brídhaven Nursing Home in Mallow, Co Cork, where Gould lives quite happily, it seems, bantering with the staff and accepting a mug of coffee from one of them.

He talks about his time on The Farm, an intentional community in Lewis County, Tennesse, based on the principles of non-violence and respect for the earth.

It was founded in 1971 by the late hippie philosopher, Stephen Gaskin. The Farm was the setting for the rebirth of midwifery in the US and its members founded a number of non-profit organisations. Gould worked as a miller there.

Asked if it was a positive experience, Gould says: “Not really. I had a hard time adjusting to the culture of the place.

“The people there were very nice to me. But The Farm was a weird place when I was there. It was unapologetically hippie. The hippie philosophy is great if it’s practised rather than just sitting around and talking about it.

“There was cannabis but no free love in my experience. Maybe that was my own fault.”

Gould left The Farm to go and see his dying father in Cork. While in his native city, he had a brief romance with a Corkwoman who returned to Africa where she was living. She contacted Gould to say she was pregnant by him and asked to marry him. They were married for seven years and their daughters are now in their thirties.

While living in Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, Gould accidentally started working with homeless people. He recalls how that happened.

“I got thrown out of a job for criticising the chairman of the organisation. It was a mistake on my part. I shouldn’t have done that as a guest in the country.

“In a speech, the chairman of Christian Care said the thing we ought to remember about Jesus Christ is that his most important principle was throwing traders out of the temple. I said ‘no, that’s not true. The important thing was his compassion’. The chairman questioned my temerity for speaking out.

“It cost me a job. There are pros and cons of speaking out against authority.”

Jobless, Gould walked out of a railway station he had arrived in and saw a group of people gathered around a fire in the dark.

“I was curious. They sat me down and gave me tea. I asked them about their situation, out in the open, in Harare.

“One said he was thrown out of the house because of his stepfather. Another had run away from the independence war and was moving into town to live the good life.

“Foolishly, I tried to help them. I wasn’t even helping myself. Now I realise that I must help myself first and then other people.”

The homeless people squatted on land until eventually, their shelters were “torched and everyone was brought to the central police station. The street people, who made up the Street People’s Organisation, ended up where they had been two years previously.”

Gould writes in his book that homelessness “is a product of urbanisation, which is growing globally”.

“Socially, mentally and physically, it can be a very debilitating state. The squatters of the Street People’s Organisation were a small, young group, with few skills.

“Unfortunately, two groups were trying to organise them; one with an ecclesiastical bias and the other trying to build social democracy.”

The ideological differences between the two groups was the death knell for the homeless people in the middle.

“The government was unprepared to allow a group of people to illegally occupy a piece of land close to downtown Harare and it used heavy-handed methods to get rid of them. Alternative land was provided by evangelicals but the homeless people didn’t seem to want to become Christians.”

As a “side consequence” of his involvement with this group of people, Gould didn’t get a visa and remained in Zimbabwe as an illegal alien for some time — but when he got back to Cork, Gould continued his activism.

He is a founder member of ‘The Next Step’, a support group for people experiencing mental health difficulties. Activities are offered such as art and crafts, drama, mindfulness, yoga, and creative writing.

Based in the Unitarian Church in Cork, ‘The Next Step’ is something Gould is proud of. After years of striving, he has come home and done something constructive.