how do you know if there's something wrong with you?

"Live with it you cunt. If it's weak it's you" as Damien Hirst said.

And I suppose similarly with mental conditions. If you're toiling down a mine or reaping hay in a field and doing the same monotonous thing over and over which nowadays a machine could do, I suppose there was no attention paid to how well you related to other ppl and as for being a team-player, well, if you were such a terrible team player that you stopped mining the coal or threashing the hay then you starved. Otherwise nobody noticed.

yeah, MarkH, something like that. deficiencies, imbalances, etc. diet, I guess, could be the cause. you could be eating [too much of] something that has something in it that is ruining your life or not eating [enough of] something that has has something in it that would make your life better/normal/etc. but how are you to know?

Still on the booze way too much but cutting down.

I imagine it being so difficult to work out what could be having a negative effect [omitting single things from diet, for periods, and monitoring] that you should just shut up about it.

I also imagine a GP saying 'OK...eh.'

Well, mine didn't. I got good advice w/r/t diet & stuff from him, & some of it made a difference. I think you should try to write down exactly what is feeling "wrong" w/yourself, and present this to your GP. The interweb is the worst place imaginable for medical advice.

; )

So, RJG, I'd say going to the doctor is a good idea, but I'd also do some research of your own into things like anaemia and food intolerances. (There's medical resources online, but also the NHS Direct - even in clinics they sometimes keep databases where you can look up your symptoms.) Look for things that fit your symptoms, and ask your doctor if it's possible you could have it when you see your doctor. Good doctors are always helped by well informed patients. (If yer doctor says "OK, eh" or tries to tell you what you have without listening to your concerns, then find another GP.)

I think I have a similar prob to you Le Coq ... the other night I spend 4 hours playing minesweeper to put off going to bed.

and this weekend rather than running errands as i'd planned i spent it playing 12 hours each day of playstation. there were times when i wanted to stop playing and just couldn't!

; )

Haha yes, the inherent contadiction!!

I'm not advocating self diagnosis, I'm advocating an informed patient!

OTM. This is why I frequently hate doctors. There was about a year after recovering from a strange illness that I was having these lingering symptoms...I pushed through them and ignored them. They came on especially strongly every time I got a cold--I'd be incapacitated. I had a gut feeling that something was really wrong (that I didn't want to believe), and finally went to see a doctor, who said that post-viral symptoms could be common. She didn't have any advice about it--it was one of those "eh, you're making too big of a deal out of something small" sort of things. It seemed that she'd called me a hypochondriac, so...I continued to dismiss the dizzy exhaustion that would weigh on me at times.

I regret that now, though maybe it wouldn't change things at all. It's hard to tell.

So see a doctor, and even if the doctor doesn't have anything definitive to say, take care of yourself. If you feel like a rag doll, don't force yourself to go biking. If there's a heavy fog over your brain already, go home and sleep instead of going out drinking til 4 AM. If you have to miss out on something big because you feel really rotten and have to rest, it's probably better than feeling worse. Pay attention to how your body responds to things, and take good care of it.

That seems rather obvious, but it's easy to push health concerns aside because you're so determined to live a normal life. What everyone said about being informed is good advice too.

(I'm trying not to be intense--I don't mean to scare anyone. Stuff that's probably minor often ends up being minor).