We want to get more people talking about it

WHEN Alastair and I went to different universities it was the first time we’d been separated because we shared a room for our entire lives.

When he dropped out, that was difficult to hear but I was going through the same thing and having a bit of a rough experience as well.

Alastair suffered clear depression but I masked mine with copious amounts of alcohol.

I was drinking by myself, a litre of vodka before lunch – a very different thing to the usual student drinking.

Neither of us was confiding in anyone at that time. We’d very much grown up in an atmosphere of “someone else has a bigger problem, so don’t complain”.

Towards the end of first year at university when we’d just turned 18, I tried to take my own life before coming home for the summer.

Fortunately it didn’t go the way I’d planned. But that self-destructive seed was

there for many years afterwards. It wouldn’t take much for it to rear its head.

I started doing yoga and meditation, which helped me establish a routine, understand my triggers and the paranoid voice that filled me with self-loathing.

When Alastair tried to kill himself, I came clean and said: “Look I’ve been in the same place as you.”

We’d always had an open communication but when we between our teens and 25, that point when we were both struggling, we didn’t seem to have the tools to communicate with each other.

We were still speaking but we couldn’t communicate.

But now we speak very openly and if I see a post on Facebook that suggests he’s having a hard day, I’ll message him or speak to him.

We are identical twin bothers with depression that has manifested itself in different ways.

We want to get more people thinking and talking about it.

I masked my depression with alcohol – I was drinking a litre of vodka before lunch