Oliver Mol found out the hard way why doctors are calling young people like him "the guinea pig generation". Photo: Stocksy

When it happened the first time I was sitting in a café on Nicholson Street. It was night and I was writing a poem or a short story or a letter about happiness and sadness or growing up and getting old, or the difference between waiting to die and dying, and then a sharp pain shot through my face/head and I let out a whimper. There was a tingly-electric burning feeling spreading over my face and a bruise-y-burning feeling in my forehead and temples that seemed to be growing, expanding; like the inside of me was trying to escape, except there was nowhere for it to go.

So I went home. In the bathroom, I vomited. In the hallway, I fell repeatedly into the wall. My housemate was home and in the living room she said, "What's wrong?" I told her about the sharp pains in my head and the vomiting. I told her about the crown of my head and how it felt like it was being cracked from the inside. I thought about a hammer and a nail and that nail being hammered into a brick. She told me I had a migraine and she gave me some Panadol. The Panadol did nothing. The migraine lasted for two days. I lay in my bed and cried.

A year passed. The pain went away. I could write. I could work. But then the migraines returned and the crying did too. I couldn't understand what was going on. I had just published my debut book, Lion Attack! and was flying from Sydney to Melbourne for the launch. In the airport I was bending over my laptop, working on a short story, when the pain ⎯ except this time it was different, more intense somehow: large and unspecific (as if being beaten by a club while being massaged by something, maybe dry ice, inserted through the nose, to slow the use of the eyes, while poking them at the same time) ⎯ returned.

I slept through the flight, and in my dreams I kept telling myself: "you're okay, you're okay," but when I woke up I wasn't. I wasn't okay at all. I took a taxi to a chemist and bought a bunch of painkillers. I went to my launch. I was barely able to read.


This time the pain didn't go away. Two days became a week then a month. The pain became worse, almost unbearable, when I looked at a laptop or computer or iPhone. I assumed the migraines had something to do with my eyes. So I went to an optometrist. They told me I had a slight astigmatism in one eye. I was getting desperate. I felt like the pain was beginning to change me. I needed answers. I paid money I didn't have to buy glasses I didn't need. The glasses were useless. And I was beginning to feel increasingly useless too.

After 10 months I couldn't do it anymore. I'd returned to Brisbane over Christmas to see my parents and one night after dinner I broke down. I told them I'd been to doctors, ophthalmologists and neurologists. I'd had MRIs, eye tests and blood tests. They all returned with the same answer: we don't know what's wrong with you. My parents told me to move home. So I did. It was the only thing I knew how to do.

In Brisbane I was referred to the Headache & Pain Management Centre. I told them my symptoms and they told me they'd seen it all before. They explained the majority of migraines originate from the upper three joints in the neck. They said the way we work and spend most of our time ⎯ using devices ⎯ has changed and our bodies are changing too. That when we look at smart phones and tablets and laptops and desktops for extended periods of time our posture tends to slump. The spine changes from its natural "S" to a "C" shape. This creates tension in the shoulders while jutting the head forward, placing excessive strain on the neck.

"Imagine holding a three and a half kilo weight above your head and then holding that weight out 45 degrees," they said. "That's the strain you're putting on your neck."

Over the next three months my neck joints were manipulated back into place. It hurt but I didn't care. I worked on posture. I worked on core strength. I did neck rotations and exercises and chin tucks. I did yoga. I meditated. I began having migraine-free hours. I began taking less pain medication. I began using a computer for five minutes then twenty minutes then an hour. I remember holding my breath expecting the pain to come, but it not coming. I took breaks. I overdid it. The pain returned. I felt hopeless. I checked, then rechecked my alignment. I sat against walls pushing my shoulders against the walls. The pain went away. "You're improving," my mum would say. "Just remember you're improving." I placed a pillow behind the small of my back to protect my lower back. A month passed. It felt surreal to wake with a slight headache and not a migraine.

"The thing is," my psychologist told me, "you're the guinea pig generation dealing with the largest technological advance since the industrial revolution. And we're still figuring out how it all ⎯ computers, tablets, the internet ⎯ effects us, both mentally and physically."

I remember the first day I didn't need pain medication. I lay on my bed and smiled. I was smiling like I'd remembered something. I was smiling like I'd remembered how to hope.