by Gavin Smith

Created on: February 28, 2008

Psoriasis is the reason I skulked through adolescence like an albino leopard. I was shy enough when I started secondary school; when my pale skin developed red, angry and often bleeding plaques of psoriasis, from my bony knees to my spotty brow, my desire to disappear forever into the treetops of introspection was complete.

From the age of twelve, my greasy, gangling body added psoriasis to my list of reasons to hate myself. Not only did it make wearing clothes unbearable and taking them off unthinkable, it crept skyward to cover my face as well. By the age of 15 I'd passed 6'5" and become a towering beacon of embarrassment.

Psoriasis affects perhaps 2% of the white population. It is non-contagious, chronic and inherited. It is part of my genetic blueprint. Even apparently unaffected skin on a sufferer is bio-chemically different to that of a non-sufferer.

Psoriasis typically makes patches of skin rise, become inflamed and shed abundant silver scales'. My skin generates new cells faster then the old ones can be shed, causing a dermal logjam. The skin occasionally splits and bleeds and always itches damnably. Some sufferers have a couple of patches here and there. Others have swathes of the stuff cladding their bodies like a glued-on hairshirt.

As I came to terms with psoriasis in the mid eighties, Dennis Potter's excellent TV drama, The Singing Detective', had special resonance for me. Its protagonist, Marlowe, was hospitalised by a voracious form of psoriasis that enveloped his entire body. Trapped in a hospital bed and mired in unguents, Marlowe escaped into a world of imagination in which he was the urbane sleuth in a world of post-war noir. Marlowe wasn't a prisoner of his wretched body and neither was I. Even if he was a prisoner, he had Joanne Whalley as a warder.

I've evolved a complex relationship with my skin involving a lot of cod psychology and minimal medical help. Psoriasis is acutely psychosomatic; it is exacerbated and often initiated by emotional trauma. In a few months, I went from unthinking contentment at primary school to desperate misery at secondary school. Psoriasis leapt from my genes and painted my woes all over my skin.

Psoriasis responds badly to any state of being more stressful than a coma. Any kind of emotional or physical trauma will leave its paw-prints on my dermis. Caffeine, salt and alcohol in any pleasurable quantity will exact a price in a pain like sunburn.

Besides watching my diet, I should use creams and ointments to control

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