Last week I confessed to anxiety and depression. Thank you for your response | Peter Goers

You feel isolated and alone with these issues, even in a crowd. So thank you, writes Peter Goers.

Last week in these pages I confessed to anxiety and depression. I’ve been overwhelmed by support. You feel isolated and alone with these mental health issues, even in a crowd, but I feel hugely understood. So many people share this condition and understand. Thanks.

Meanwhile, my excellent, caring GP prescribed an anti-depressive medication. I was advised to take half a tablet for four days then a whole tablet daily, thereafter. I took half a pill at 7.30pm and, incredibly, within ten minutes I was a high as a kite. Euphoric. Off my face. Its was what one imagines cocaine to be like. I was spinning out.

Then, 90 minutes later I succumbed to pernicious diarrhoea for three hours. I then had insomnia and I had to try to sleep in incontinence pants on a rubber sheet. And was the fun part. Then it got worse ….

Peter Goers at Her Majesty's Theatre. Picture: Brenton Edwards

My penis disappeared. It contracted. It looked like a button on a fur coat. I had to sit down to pee but that was OK because I was already sitting down with the dreaded diarrhoea.

Since I was depressed before all this I certainly was more depressed after. I’m persisting on this medication and at least all the side effects gave me something to think about.

The older I get, the better I was. As we age we tend to live more in memory which is generally more manageable than the persistent present. So herewith a few memories.

I met Pelé at the Castle Plaza Shopping Centre. It’s the only time I’ve ever been there. Meeting the world’s greatest soccer player was a good enough reason to go. Soccer largely leaves me cold but Pelé was a god. He and Muhammad Ali were the two greatest sportsman who ever lived and they were both sainted. How different they were to overpaid, overrated, overindulged temperamental tennis players and cheating cricketers.

Pele at Town Hall in Adelaide, SA 05 Jul 1988.

Pelé was in Adelaide in 1990 for a book signing, oddly at the Castle Plaza, and I went to get a copy of The Pelé Albums signed for my godson.

Strangely, he was not mobbed. There were only a few people there and he was able to engage with everyone. He was as warm, charming and quietly charismatic as you hoped he’d be. It’s a general rule - the bigger the star, the nicer they are. There are exceptions but not Pelé. He was the most beautiful exponent of the most beautiful game which is cursed by appalling fans.

And I swim through life. In the sea and in pools. I love being in another element. Not that I swim much but I bob around like a cork.

You never regret a swim and pools are crystalline. I was recently asked if I remembered the City Baths on King William Street where the Festival Centre has long been. I swam there once as a little tacker and I mostly remember the diving tower.

Having learned to swim at the Ethelton Swimming Club I could survive anything. We were dangled off the wharf like human tea bags.

We were attached to a rope via a harness and someone walked along the top of the wharf pulling us along in the water. We had to swim breaststroke with hands cupped to push the “dead mullets” out of they way.

Remember the Henley Sea Baths? Both the grand gum tree-lined Norwood Pool and the Naracoorte Swimming Lake are my sacred sites although spoilsports removed the diving board at Norwood and took a lot of joy out of the world.

The Burnside Swimming Centre at Hazelwood Park is always lovely and I did my Royal Lifesaving awards at the old, rather barren Ethelton Pool which was the only chlorinated public swimming pool in the western suburbs and very welcome.

Teach your kids to swim. It’s crucial. And remember yourself as a kiddie - euphoric and wet after a long dip on a long hot day.

Your mum has wrapped you in a Dickie’s beach towel, put zinc cream one your nose and you are sucking on a strawberry Snip and happiness seemed endless.