Plenty of teenagers fall out with their parents or have a brush with the law.
For most of them it's only a fleeting setback on the road to adulthood, but not for Nigel Pearce. A runaway at 13, he lived in a London squat before being sent to a psychiatric asylum.
By the time he was 16 he had undergone controversial electroco
nvulsive therapy and went on to endure years of treatment for serious mental health problems and substance abuse.
It has been a difficult journey, but the 49-year-old is now a published writer and an active member of Leamington's mental health community.
Pearce, who produces the twice-monthly magazine Wake Your Mind, holds an Open University degree in arts and political science and a certificate in English from Warwick University.
He has just published Icarus Did Not Die, a collection of poetry, prose and literary criticism.
Ahead of his years, Pearce started reading Lenin, Marx and Mao at 11 and became friends with Warwick University students who were part of a counter-cultural scene in Leamington, hanging out at The Other Branch book shop in Gloucester Street.
He said: "Home was a troubled place at that time and my reading exacerbated the differences between my father and I.
"I heard about this squat in Notting Hill Gate in London and decided to go there. At that time people lived in squats for ideological reasons.
"It was fine, but I eventually became ill. When the squat was raided I had to leave and went to another one where the people weren't so friendly and I couldn't really cope and had a breakdown."
At 14 he was placed under a care order and sent to live in Hollymoor Hospital, a psychiatric asylum in Birmingham.
He said: "The treatment of young people with mental health problems in those days was not great, especially if you were young, rebellious and had an ideology the staff didn't approve of.
"Heavy sedatives were the first resort. So if you were being stroppy you would be restrained and given an injection which would leave you in bed unconscious for 12 hours.
"I got on well with my support workers, but it didn't endear me to psychiatry."
Two years later he was housed in a specialist manic depressive unit at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham where he first had electroconvulsive therapy.
At 20 he was diagnosed with schizophrenia and five years later sought help for substance abuse problems.
During this time he lived an itinerant lifestyle, which he says was tolerated by his "radical" social workers.
It was when he was admitted to Central Hospital in Hatton for treatment at 26 that he decided to start a degree.
He said: "There was an amazing nurse there who cleared out a broom cupboard for me and turned it into my study where I would have my tutorials.
"I had to stop for a couple of years due to a nervous breakdown, but graduated with a 2.1 in 1999.
"At the end of my dad's life we were reconciled. He had opened up about his experiences during the 1930s depression and Second World War, which had traumatised him, and at my graduation ceremony he said 'This is the greatest day of my life'."
Pearce, who is a long-standing member of South Warwickshire User Forum for mental health, now lives in his own flat in Leamington, helps at the Oxfam bookshop in Warwick Street and is studying for an Open University diploma in creative writing.
He describes getting his work published as "very fulfilling" and thinks it shows a change in attitude to people with mental health problems.
He said: "We are coming out of the closet as perhaps gay people did in the 70s and single mums in the 80s and 90s and I think we have things to offer.
"I always knew that my life would be about writing and to have that happen is wonderful."
Nigel's book is currently available as an ebook from www.chipmunkapublishing.co.uk price £5 and will be published in paperback next year.
