This is a story about social media suicide...

Too long; didn't read? Those 140-character status updates exhaustively summarise my entire state of mind at any given moment in time. Join them up and you capture an entire person. Is their heart beating? No need to worry... they're still tweeting.

OK, good, we got the summary text bit out of the way.

For those of you still following along at home, I have some news: my little social media & blogging holiday seems to have put me back in contact with a few friends. I'm about to have a record-setting month of meeting up with people and going out for social engagements in real life.

Social media - by which I mean everything including group text messages - is enormously valuable in my life so I'm never actually going to quit Facebook. Anyway, this serves as a talking point tomorrow when people ask "didn't you say you were going to quit Facebook?"

As we know, clickbait is a real problem, so people tend to just read the title of anything on Facebook and assume they know the rest. When you assume, you make an "ass" out of "u" and "me".

"So close but yet so far"

We're all hyperconnected. I wake up and start having a conversation with a friend in New Zealand, who's about to go to bed. After lunch I start chatting to a friend in San Francisco, who's just woken up. Round and round and round we go; follow the sun. The sun never sets in the world of technology. Is this a good thing? It's certainly a bit weird, having a load of people who I'm in regular contact with, but I also spend the vast majority of my time physically alone in just two rooms: my bedroom and my lounge.

Somehow, by reducing the amount of energy I put into social media outpourings, it's created a bit of space for other people to come into my life. Either that or it's coming up to Christmas and people are simply feeling a bit more social.

Anyway, what about social media suicide?

I've been blogging extremely candidly for 15+ months. I've given a fairly unflinching account of all kinds of personal matters and it wouldn't make for great reading for any prospective employers or ageing family members of a sensitive disposition. Basically, it's the kind of stuff that people just don't talk about. Do I regret it? Not really. Brain dumping has been quite successful, I think, in terms of getting rid of a load of baggage.

What next? I'm really struggling to re-adjust having achieved my three major milestones:

• Blog every day for over a year
• Write a novel
• Write half a million words

As you can tell, my thoughts are scattered; disjointed. I'm struggling to get back into blogging, having spent a whole month writing fiction every day. Context switching is hard. Blogging got me through an incredibly boring contract, as well as providing structure and routine throughout a very unstable period of my life. Perhaps it's good to pick up the blogging again, but I'm squeezing it into a life which is hopefully going to be more balanced, rather than having it as such a major component.

It's all so terribly meta but that's part of finding my voice again, I think. Hopefully it will be a different voice: less bitter and stuck in the past. However, I've written that before and then found that there were things I was still really pissed off about that bubbled up and needed to be written about.

Finally, I'm super pleased that all my creative output is not trapped within the walled garden of Facebook or Twitter. Google is bringing me some delightful characters who have found my website. Apparently the search term "cat drug make me horny" will bring you here, so at least there's that.

Tags: #socialmedia #writing

Contents

Chapter 1: The Caravan

Chapter 2: Invisible Illness

Chapter 3: The Forest

Chapter 4: Prosaic

Chapter 5: The Van

Chapter 6: Into the Unknown

Chapter 7: The Journey

Chapter 8: Infamy

Chapter 9: The Villages

Chapter 10: Waiting Room

Chapter 11: The Shadow People

Chapter 12: Enough Rope

Chapter 13: The Post Offices

Chapter 14: Unsuitable Friends

Chapter 15: The Chase

Chapter 16: Self Inflicted

Chapter 17: The Holiday

Chapter 18: Psychosis, Madness, Insanity and Lunacy

Chapter 19: The Hospitals

Chapter 20: Segmentation

Chapter 21: The Cell

Chapter 22: Wells of Silence

Chapter 23: The Box

Chapter 24: Jailbird

Chapter 25: The Scales

Chapter 26: Descent

Chapter 27: The Syringe

Chapter 28: Anonymity

Chapter 29: The Imposter

Chapter 30: Wish You Were Here

25. The Scales

The crisis team - part of the community mental health team - social services and the police had all been quite helpful when Neil had originally gone missing. The police had quickly discovered that Neil had left his phone, wallet and passport behind. All the services were very concerned about Neil's welfare and had attempted to establish his last known movements as well as searching for him. Because Neil was considered a vulnerable person at risk of suicide, there had been a lot of initial effort, focus and attention on helping Lara, Colin and the family to make sure he was found safe and well.

With all avenues exhausted, there was little more that any of the services could do unless new information emerged. Lara and Colin were main points of contact, liaising with a police detective who was in charge of the ongoing - but parked - investigation.

Frustrated with a lack of progress, two highly regarded private investigators were contacted by Colin. After initial discussions they decided that there was insufficient evidence for them to be able to pursue the case. The truth was that nobody really wanted to touch the case, because of the number of government bodies already involved: National Health Service, mental health services, the police and social services.

Colin had eventually taken matters in to his own hands and gone to the house to look for more clues, when he found the transactions that had led him to the ongoing prosecution of the businesswoman and her associates. Once he'd found the names of the defendants, it was a simple case of searching the register of directors and finding the trading address of their company in the public records.

Now, he was back at the house once again. He regretted involving Lara so closely, but she wanted to play an active role and had discovered vital information that he himself - a grey-haired man in his sixties - would have been unlikely to have been able to extract from anybody embroiled in the court case.

Colin had sounded out friends - retired police officers, solicitors and even a judge - about bringing their own case to court. "Not a hope in hell" were the exact words of one former Justice of the Peace. His sentiments were pretty much echoed by everybody else Colin consulted informally.

"Imagine if a person was selling rat poison as heroin" said Bill, the retired judge. "Now, if that person was to sell rat poison in place of sugar, they might be convicted of murder or manslaughter. But as soon as they sell it as heroin, they'll be convicted for supply of a controlled substance, even though rat poison is not illegal to sell per se."

"But that's insane! Surely the charge of murder should take precedence over the charge of supplying a controlled substance" protested Colin.

"Well, it's about the buyer. If the buyer thought they were buying heroin, then nobody really cares whether that junkie dies. The seller will be convicted as a drug dealer, not a murderer."

"So the law really doesn't care whether you sell a junkie sugar, caffeine, heroin or rat poison?" asked Colin.

"Yep."

"What if the buyer didn't know what they were getting?"

"What did they actually buy?" Bill asked.

"A controlled substance."

"What was it sold as?"

"A chemical for laboratory research."

"There's no chance it could have been confused for a foodstuff? Was it marked as hazardous? Unfit for human consumption?"

"Yeah. It's not like it was sold as sugar or anything" Colin replied.

"Well then, the only conviction you could possibly get would be for supply of a controlled substance."

To make matters worse, everybody advised Colin not to mention the drug use to the police. One whiff of drug abuse and the case would be filed in a dustbin marked 'lost cause junkie'.

Back at the house searching for more clues, he looked high and low before finally he decided to search the attic. Boxes of Christmas decorations and long-neglected exercise equipment, the attic contained very little else except for a disused hot water cylinder and a galvanised metal cold water tank. There was a chipboard lid on the tank and Colin noticed that it was an inch or so out of place, overhanging on one corner. Lifting the lid, there was a green plastic box floating inside with a black plastic handle.

In the kitchen, Colin towelled off the green box so it was clean and dry and took it through to the dining room. Unclasping the two black plastic latches, the lid was stuck tight until the airtight and dust proof seal released the pressure. Inside the box was grey foam to protect the delicate instrument contained within: a laboratory-grade weighing scale.

Normal kitchen scales might tell you the weight of something in grams, but not very accurately. If you needed to weigh 10 grams - approximately the same as a one pound coin - then your kitchen scales would be woefully inadequate. Even fine balance scales with small weights would struggle to weigh anything lighter than a gram. Some digital scales could weigh one tenth of a gram with reasonable accuracy: 0.1g. The scales that Colin had found could weigh at a sub-milligram accuracy. Less than 0.001 grams. Even breathing on the instrument or standing too near the table on a wooden floor would cause measurement fluctuations, so there was a special stand, cover and calibration weights to ensure the readings were accurate. The "quick reference" instruction manual inside the case was a hefty pamphlet.

There were some spatulas and a metal dish inside the green box. A tiny amount of light brownish powder residue was visible on the foam that held the dish and the spatulas. There was also a very small plastic resealable bag which was almost empty except for the tiniest residue of powder in the corners.

Colin spent the whole next day searching the Internet and phoning testing facilities, before he finally located a laboratory that would be able to swab and test the tiny traces of drugs that he had found. Using gas chromatography mass spectrometry, the lab was able to then search the 'signature' of the chemical compounds and to find a match in their database.

After sending the scales by courier to the lab in the Netherlands, it took 3 weeks before he got the results emailed to him. There was no conclusive match, but there were several compounds that were 97% similar to chemicals that were held in their database. He had been warned that a 99% match was the highest that he could expect anyway, so it was a good start.

Searching the Internet, he found detailed online encyclopedia entries for two chemicals, as well as a brief summary of a third. The compounds were stimulants from three different families of drugs. Two had been developed and patented in the 1950's and 1960's, but had never been marketed to the public because of serious side effects. Colin found a shorter acronym form of the full chemical name of each of the three compounds and started to search the Internet for more information.

Quickly, Colin was immersed in a world of online discussion forums. Thousands of Internet users from around the globe were talking about their experiences of self-experimentation with chemical compounds that had been abandoned by pharmaceutical companies or not even patented. Some of the chemicals had only been thought of as theoretically possible, but a laboratory somewhere in the world was cooking up these drugs for people to buy and try on themselves.

He couldn't read any more. What he saw was immediately horrifying. Hundreds of stories of addiction and horrible psychotic episodes, health damage and hospitalisations. Internet users were swapping stories about how awful these chemicals were and that they were the most addictive drugs they'd ever tried. Many lamented the day they ever first experimented. One message stood out as clearly as the obvious warning to never take these substances: accurate measurement was the difference between desired effects and overdose.

Perhaps Neil had two sets of scales, but one set alone was worth almost £1,000. If he had overdosed at home, surely he would have been found there along with his scales?

From what Colin had read, a powerful dose of those drugs was just 0.005 grams. If Neil had half a gram delivered from China, that would be 100 doses. The effects would last well over 12 hours. That meant Neil would have been on a nonstop drug binge for 50 days with just one free sample, assuming he was measuring accurately.

He felt sick. His son had got mixed up with something so dangerous that it had overwhelmed him and taken his life in the blink of an eye. There was no way to sugar coat this. Was there even any point in telling Lara and the family that Neil had been completely consumed by addiction and stimulant psychosis? In less than 6 weeks these powerful Chinese drugs caused him to flee his home to his final resting place.

Next chapter...

Contents

Chapter 1: The Caravan

Chapter 2: Invisible Illness

Chapter 3: The Forest

Chapter 4: Prosaic

Chapter 5: The Van

Chapter 6: Into the Unknown

Chapter 7: The Journey

Chapter 8: Infamy

Chapter 9: The Villages

Chapter 10: Waiting Room

Chapter 11: The Shadow People

Chapter 12: Enough Rope

Chapter 13: The Post Offices

Chapter 14: Unsuitable Friends

Chapter 15: The Chase

Chapter 16: Self Inflicted

Chapter 17: The Holiday

Chapter 18: Psychosis, Madness, Insanity and Lunacy

Chapter 19: The Hospitals

Chapter 20: Segmentation

Chapter 21: The Cell

Chapter 22: Wells of Silence

Chapter 23: The Box

Chapter 24: Jailbird

Chapter 25: The Scales

Chapter 26: Descent

Chapter 27: The Syringe

Chapter 28: Anonymity

Chapter 29: The Imposter

Chapter 30: Wish You Were Here

10. Waiting Room

"Do you want me to come and see the doctor with you?" Lara asked.

"No, it'll be difficult for you to take the time off" replied Neil.

"I don't mind. It's important. I can do it if it will help" she said.

Neil was now in his third week off work and he was starting to get anxious about returning to his job.

"I just wish I felt better, but I think I feel worse than I did a few weeks ago" he complained.

"Try not to stress about things. Go and see the doctor again and see what they say" she said in a comforting tone.

He'd left it almost to the last minute - Thursday - but Lara was now coming home expecting to find out what had happened at the doctor's. Neil was sat on the sofa as she came in the front door and hung up her coat. There was no new prescription on the coffee table in front of him.

"So, how'd it go?" she asked.

"They're referring me to a psychiatrist."

"Well that's good. You'll get a specialist's opinion" she said.

"Yes, but it could take weeks, months even before I get an appointment to see a consultant."

"What's the plan for the interim?" she asked.

"The doctor's signed me off for another two weeks. I said I was getting very stressed and anxious about going back to work. He said I should contact my HR department who can involve occupational health."

"He?"

"Yes. I saw a different doctor this time."

"Doctor Hughes?" she asked.

"I can't remember. It'll be written on the sick note, I guess."

"How do you feel about things?" asked Lara.

"I'm anxious about what it's going to be like, going back to work after five weeks off. It's a long time, you know?" he replied.

"People get sick. It happens all the time" Lara said as reassuringly as she could.

"Yes. But not me. And hardly ever anybody else at work" said Neil.

"Everybody will be happy that you're feeling better again when you go back to work. It'll be fine" she soothed.

"We agreed I would keep taking the same antidepressants. It's too early to tell if it's going to have a positive effect yet. It could be weeks before it helps my mood improve" he said. "I've got enough to last me a couple of months now" he continued.

"You refilled your prescription?"

"Yeah. I felt embarrassed in the chemist. All those pills. All those sick people and then there's me" he replied.

"Lots of people have to take medication for all kinds of reasons. There's no shame in it"

"Yes, but I still felt ashamed. I didn't want anybody we know to see me, walking home with that paper bag full of pills from the chemist" he said.

"Awww. You'll feel better soon" she said, pulling his head into the crook of her neck and cradling him slightly. His eyes were downcast and sad.

"The doctor said to keep an eye on things. Go back if there's any problems. There's not going to be any follow-up appointments or anything. I've just got to wait for a letter with an appointment date to see the psychiatrist" Neil said with a resigned tone.

Psychiatry. Lara's only real first-hand experience with psychiatry was helping patients with their prescriptions when they were on the ward. The patients were often quite difficult to deal with, but not because of behaviour that she understood as classical mental illness. She would be pestered all the time by the patients - "Nurse, it's time for my medication" - who would get extremely upset about the disruption to their normal routine. There were endless arguments about their prescriptions.

On the ward, the nurses would do three medication rounds per shift, plus respond to patients who were allowed a certain amount of pain medication on request. Unless otherwise indicated in the patient's notes, Lara could only dispense small doses of paracetamol, taken orally. The patient's own medications were usually locked away in a bedside cabinet that only the nurses had the key to. Any medication that the hospital's doctors had prescribed would be dispensed by the nurses at set times and that was when they usually unlocked the cabinet if there was something else that the patient was taking.

Psychiatric inpatients had their usual medications meticulously recorded in separate notes. Although the patients often knew which pills they had to take and how often, Lara had to follow the notes to the letter. The routine of the general hospital was different from the psychiatric wards the patients were used to and they could get very agitated if they felt they were overdue getting their pills.

It was surprising just how many medications some patients had to take each day. There were mood stabilisers and antipsychotics. There were antidepressants and anxiety drugs. There were sleeping pills and tranquillisers. The night shift would start with two hours of hell, as patients begged for their sleeping pills. The first dispensing round of the night shift wasn't until 9pm, so the nurses would get no peace until then. Mercifully, the psychiatric patients were often knocked out cold until the next morning though, which meant they were less trouble through the night than the others.

When on night shift, trying to sleep during the day was hard. Slamming car doors, traffic noises, people yelling in the street below, children screaming in the back gardens. The world was set up for the 9 to 5, Monday to Friday worker. Nearby builders and roadworks could mean a week with barely any sleep at all. Lara often longed for some sleeping pills herself and she knew that some of her colleagues did use medications to help them get some quality sleep during the day.

The few psychiatric patients Lara came into contact with were the most extreme. She saw the aftermath of self harm, suicide attempts and psychotic episodes. However, on the general ward the patients were heavily medicated. They were dazed and confused, with cloudy minds. They shuffled around. Some of them had uncontrollably dribbling mouths and involuntary tics.

She knew that Neil was going to see a psychiatrist - as an outpatient - but Lara made no association between him and the kind of extreme cases of mental illness she occasionally encountered at work. Neil seemed perfectly healthy and normal to all outward appearances, although she could tell that he was lethargic and more anxious and negative than she'd ever known before.

Later that Thursday evening, Lara attended an engagement party for a couple they distantly knew through other friends. Lara had started to socialise again, but on her own. She could see an expression of exhaustion and stress spread over Neil's face when the topic of going out was ever discussed. It was clear that he really wasn't up to socialising yet.

"How's Neil?" asked Katie.

Katie was Russ' new girlfriend. She was still slowly ingratiating herself with everybody and Lara felt sorry for her, as she struggled to become included in the group. Katie was young and pretty and the other girls treated her as if she wasn't worth getting to know. "She'll just be another casual fling" the girls said behind Katie's back.

None of the other girls had really asked about Neil. They had decided to just ignore the issue. If anybody else had asked, Lara would have dismissed the question with a cheery "he's fine". However, Katie was somehow disarming and approachable. Lara drew her to one side. The rest of the group were engrossed in their usual comfortable conversational routines.

"He's ever so depressed. It's sad to see him like that. I don't know what to do" Lara confided.

"There's not much you can do. Don't beat yourself up. Is he taking anything?" Katie asked.

Lara was taken aback by Katie's directness, but it was good to talk to somebody who seemed to immediately understand what the couple were going through.

"He started antidepressants a couple of weeks ago" said Lara.

"Well, it can take time to find the right one. Don't lose hope if you don't see any quick improvements" said Katie.

"Do you?..." Lara tailed off, worried her question was too personal.

Katie gave a little chuckle.

"It's fine. You can ask. Yes, I've been on antidepressants for a few years now. They do help, when you find the one that works for you" said Katie.

"But you seem. You seem so..." Lara stumbled, not knowing how to finish her question.

"Normal? Happy?" Katie said, grinning.

"Yeah" said Lara, nervously.

"Well, I have my bad days like everybody, but life is mostly OK now. A few years ago I just closed the curtains and didn't get out of bed for what felt like forever. I couldn't face the world"

"That sounds like the stage Neil's at" said Lara.

"Well, it does get better; easier. Recovery can be slow and nonlinear. Or it was in my case, anyway" said Katie, with as much reassurance as she could muster.

"He's just so desperate to get back to work, but at the same time I can see he's anxious. I know he can't face it at the moment. He's barely left the house in weeks" said Lara.

"There's no rushing these things. Tell him there's no rush. It can be a long road"

There was something harsh and brutal about this, even though it was spoken kindly. Katie spoke directly, truthfully, sympathetically. Lara had read things like this on websites, but it hadn't sunk in until now. There had been a sense of denial; there had been false hope.

"Look. Phone me. We'll meet up, just the two of us. You need support. You need to think about yourself too" said Katie.

Lara felt strong emotions welling up inside. She had been holding it all down, holding things together, acting like everything was going to get back to normal overnight. She was worried she was going to cry but she didn't. She was stronger than that.

Katie reached down and squeezed Lara's hand and made a sympathetic face. Lara was grateful to have made a friend who talked so openly, so freely, so directly.

The party was starting to disband and Russ was making his way over to the girls. Katie's face immediately switched to the bright happy expression she usually wore. It didn't seem fake to Lara. It made sense, to present a front and avoid discussing things that most people wouldn't understand.

Next chapter...

Contents

Chapter 1: The Caravan

Chapter 2: Invisible Illness

Chapter 3: The Forest

Chapter 4: Prosaic

Chapter 5: The Van

Chapter 6: Into the Unknown

Chapter 7: The Journey

Chapter 8: Infamy

Chapter 9: The Villages

Chapter 10: Waiting Room

Chapter 11: The Shadow People

Chapter 12: Enough Rope

Chapter 13: The Post Offices

Chapter 14: Unsuitable Friends

Chapter 15: The Chase

Chapter 16: Self Inflicted

Chapter 17: The Holiday

Chapter 18: Psychosis, Madness, Insanity and Lunacy

Chapter 19: The Hospitals

Chapter 20: Segmentation

Chapter 21: The Cell

Chapter 22: Wells of Silence

Chapter 23: The Box

Chapter 24: Jailbird

Chapter 25: The Scales

Chapter 26: Descent

Chapter 27: The Syringe

Chapter 28: Anonymity

Chapter 29: The Imposter

Chapter 30: Wish You Were Here

7. The Journey

A large black expedition duffel bag contained a red rucksack, which had a thick winter sleeping bag and a few other items inside it. The bags were virtually empty at this stage. The journey was just beginning.

His house was silent but Neil was being extremely cautious to avoid being followed, traced, or anybody interfering and attempting to derail his plans. He left after the morning commuter rush had quietened down. On foot, he made his way to the coach station. His appearance was very much in keeping with the usual way he dressed. In clothes that he'd often been seen wearing by his friends, neighbours and family, the floppy half-empty bag was the only thing that was out of the ordinary, if somebody were to recognise him walking down his local streets.

Coaches to London were regular and there was already one at the station. The coach had offloaded any passengers who wanted to alight and was now awaiting its scheduled departure time. The coach door was open and the driver sat in his seat reading a newspaper. Neil bought a one-way ticket to Victoria station from the coach driver and paid in cash. There were only three other passengers on board, who were sat well apart from each other. Neil stowed his bag above an empty pair of seats and sat down.

The coach was relatively new and clean, but there were common features of coach travel that had been preserved for posterity. The upholstery was grey with streaks of orange, beige and red in a pattern that ran down the centre of each of the seats. The luggage racking above the seats was black plastic with a moulded texture that poorly imitated leather. There were black plastic handles on the seats lining the gangway up the middle of the coach. The carpet and fabric covering the interior roof and underside of the luggage racking, matched the colours and patterns of the seats. Black plastic strips trimmed every edge. More black plastic was used for the air vents and reading lights that were above each seat. The windows of the coach had smoked glass and grey curtains also impeded some light, even though they were tied back. The inside of the cabin was quite dark, despite the bright daylight outside.

There was a hiss of compressed air as the coach door closed and then the engine rumbled into life. The coach would be stopping at several towns on its way to London, to pick up and drop off. The journey was scheduled to take a couple of hours if the service kept to its timetable. Neil had elected to use the coach because the quality of the CCTV coverage on coaches and at coach stations was far inferior to that of the rail network. The first challenge he was setting for anybody who was trying to find him, would be to discover whether he got off at any of the stops before the coach reached London.

By the time the coach reached London, many more people had boarded, but Neil still had two seats to himself. Getting off at Victoria took a little time as bags were retrieved from the overhead racks, but Neil was happy to blend in with a group of fellow passengers. The coach station was crowded with tourists and their luggage. Neil felt comfortably anonymous as he slipped away from the transport hub and onto the nearest busy main street, lined with many well known high-street shops.

Walking away from the coach, tube and rail stations, the shops started to change from national chains to smaller independent businesses. Neil was looking for somewhere that bought and sold second hand and refurbished electronics. He came to a street that had a number of mobile phone repair and accessory shops, along with family-run stores that sold cheap imported goods and had appropriated part of the pavement for the display of their extensive stock.

There was a shop that was painted with garish red gloss paint and had a metal grille permanently affixed to protect the windows. Through the mesh, Neil was able to see a range of electronic goods laid out for sale on glass shelving with prices handwritten on bright yellow stickers underneath each item.

Neil bought the cheapest laptop that the shop had on sale after checking it had the right version of Windows and it booted up OK. The shop owner was most bemused by Neil's request for a very basic phone that only had a monochrome screen and no camera or Internet browsing capability. Imploring Neil to spend an extra fifteen or twenty pounds in order to obtain a far newer and more feature rich phone, the man could not understand why Neil would not want features such as GPS, which would allow him to navigate using a maps application. Neil was firm and resolute: he wanted the most basic phone that the shop had. He purchased both items with cash.

From an electronic accessory store he purchased an inverter, that would allow him to charge his laptop and phone from the 12 volt cigarette lighter of a vehicle. From a newsagent, he purchased a pay-as-you-go mobile phone SIM card and several top up vouchers. Each top up voucher had a silver part that was scratched off to reveal a unique code. Every transaction was made with cash, making the laptop and mobile phone virtually untraceable. There would be no record of serial numbers and identifying codes that was recorded anywhere that could possibly lead back to Neil.

Entering a sports clothing discount store, Neil bought a navy tracksuit and a grey tracksuit with trousers that could be easily removed by undoing poppers down the length of each side. He also bought a black baseball cap and a pair of grey trainers that had black parts on the top and sides. After much deliberation, Neil had selected the trainers because it was hard to decide whether the colour of the trainers could be described as predominantly black or grey.

In a public lavatory cubicle, Neil got changed into the navy tracksuit, and then put on the thinner and baggier grey tracksuit over the top. He pulled on the baseball cap and put on the trainers, stowing the outfit he had been wearing in his rucksack. He then put his rucksack back inside the black duffel bag.

Killing time reading newspapers in a busy fast-food restaurant, Neil waited until night time before returning to the coach station. Arriving a short time before its scheduled departure time, he boarded the last coach to Bristol, which would arrive in the small hours of the morning.

After an uncomfortable night's sleep in the waiting room at Bristol's main coach station, made a little warmer by the fact that he was wearing two tracksuits, Neil now boarded the first coach to Exeter. There was a small cramped toilet on board the coach, but there were no other passengers for the first part of the journey so he was able to unbutton his tracksuit bottoms and stow them in his rucksack along with the tracksuit jacket, baseball cap and the black duffel bag, without the driver noticing.

As Neil stepped off the coach the driver asked "didn't you get on with a big black bag?"

"Nope" said Neil, walking off with his rucksack slung over one shoulder.

Walking safely out of earshot from the coach driver, Neil knew that he hadn't shouted or chased after him. That was the kind of minor incident that would be memorable if anybody was trying to trace his movements, but he knew that he had taken so many safeguards in his journey to this point that it would be virtually impossible to join up the dots.

It was late morning in Exeter, but Neil still had plenty of time to find a van to buy.

In the caravan, on the bed, naked and in pain, surrounded by filth and damp air filled with noxious smells, Neil struggled to reconcile the danger he was now in with his original and meticulously planned desire for total privacy and anonymity: to be in an isolated, remote location. He was virtually impossible to find and it was highly unlikely that anybody knew where he had gone.

It was certain that with inaction his organs would soon fail and his dead body would be discovered by chance months or years later. Decay would set in almost immediately and the smell of rotting flesh would attract flies as soon as spring arrived. Maggots would strip his corpse to the bone in a matter of weeks. The police would quickly discover that his Estonian driving license was counterfeit. Identifying his body would be impossible except using dental records.

With the available evidence, it would be nearly impossible for a coroner to conclude anything other than misadventure or return an open verdict. Neil started to feel frustrated that the secret of the well planned sequence of events that had led to this point, would go to the grave along with him. A fate that was finally sealed by his own inaction, resulting in nothing more than an impenetrable mystery, would be horrible. He started to wonder whether a written note would survive decay in the caravan for long enough to still be read whenever he was discovered.

What on earth could he possibly write in a note to convey the complex reasons why he had started this journey and reached this point? What could be achieved by connecting his last movements at home with his final resting place? It was an impossible task, to try to put things into words with his remaining time and energy.

It seemed important that his death should be understood as a result of deliberate action. Neil started to think about the razor blade he had brought with him. He wondered if the blood stains in relation to where his body and the blade were found, would leave enough clues to show that he finally chose to exit the world through suicide.

Suicide had not crossed his mind recently. He had been thinking about getting to hospital or at least getting to the road, where somebody might find him alive. Before that, he had been consumed by fear that he had been discovered and that his private bubble was about to be burst. He had been so desperate to never be discovered in such an appalling state while alive, that he had never stopped to think about being discovered dead.

Linking his name to the disgusting scene of his final resting place was something he wanted to avoid at all costs, but also, he couldn't bear to think that people would conclude he died by accident.

Next chapter...

Contents

Chapter 1: The Caravan

Chapter 2: Invisible Illness

Chapter 3: The Forest

Chapter 4: Prosaic

Chapter 5: The Van

Chapter 6: Into the Unknown

Chapter 7: The Journey

Chapter 8: Infamy

Chapter 9: The Villages

Chapter 10: Waiting Room

Chapter 11: The Shadow People

Chapter 12: Enough Rope

Chapter 13: The Post Offices

Chapter 14: Unsuitable Friends

Chapter 15: The Chase

Chapter 16: Self Inflicted

Chapter 17: The Holiday

Chapter 18: Psychosis, Madness, Insanity and Lunacy

Chapter 19: The Hospitals

Chapter 20: Segmentation

Chapter 21: The Cell

Chapter 22: Wells of Silence

Chapter 23: The Box

Chapter 24: Jailbird

Chapter 25: The Scales

Chapter 26: Descent

Chapter 27: The Syringe

Chapter 28: Anonymity

Chapter 29: The Imposter

Chapter 30: Wish You Were Here

6. Into the Unknown

Going to university as a mature student had been hard work but a lot of fun. Lara was only a few years older than most of the other student nurses and their training wasn't like a normal degree course. 50% of the time the nurses did their university work in a building that was a long way from the main university campus. The other 50% of the time was spent in the clinical environment of the local hospital. Lara's university days weren't spent partying and skipping lectures - the workload was relentless and she was soon doing long shifts to gain all the necessary hands-on experience she needed to qualify.

With Neil's salary, savings, some money from her parents and a bursary, Lara and Neil managed to keep their home life relatively unchanged after Lara quit her office job to retrain. A little bit of belt tightening was necessary, but the couple managed to struggle through 3 years without Lara's salary.

Although she avoided living in a dirty and messy student house, Lara didn't miss out on any of the social bonding with the rest of her course-mates. During those three years at university, she made a lot of good friends.

After qualifying Lara's friends had been scattered all over the country. Some of them wanted to specialise. Some of them wanted to get jobs in particular cities or closer to family. There were a lot of jobs in London, which attracted many friends to move there, but Lara wanted to stay in the local area. For a lot of her friends, they were bored of the unremarkable university town they had spent three years in.

Working at a big hospital as a general nurse, there was a lot of variety in the day-to-day challenges. There were a lot of staff. There were a lot of departments. There were a lot of different procedures that could all happen within that large hospital building. The NHS had been closing smaller local hospitals, in preference for larger facilities, so that fewer items of expensive equipment had to be purchased nationally.

One of the few things separated from the general hospitals was mental health care. While the hospital had a handful of mental health specialists, they were in a psychiatric liaison role. Any physical health issues would be treated at Lara's hospital and then the patient would be transferred if they required inpatient care for mental health issues. There was a clear demarkation between general medicine and mental health and the few people Lara knew who had specialised in that area had followed a very different career track from her.

As a medical professional, Lara felt frustrated that she didn't know more about mental health issues and there was little opportunity at work to have a casual conversation with any of the doctors. The doctors in the hospital had specialised in the treatment of physical ailments, disease, surgery. She only knew a few doctors who she should speak to if a patient was behaving strangely. In Accident & Emergency the hospital would treat drug overdoses, alcoholics and people who had physically injured themselves while in a crazed state, quite often accompanied by police officers. The police normally had a better idea of what psychiatric issues the patient suffered from than the hospital staff. It seemed as though the police were at the front line of mental health issues.

Although she had bandaged lacerated wrists and dealt with patients who had swallowed handfuls of pills or poison by treating them with activated charcoal, Lara never really knew the story behind what had brought them to the brink of suicide in the first place, or what happened to them after they were physically healthy enough to be moved to a psychiatric facility. The patient notes for the nurses contained details such as blood pressure and medications. Very few details about the psychological problems that troubled these people were in the notes she saw.

When the weekend arrived, Lara found herself turning to the Internet to find out more about depression and how it was diagnosed and treated. It seemed strange that despite her training and experience, she should have to turn to websites for information, but she didn't know who to speak to. She knew friends had suffered bouts of depression, but it felt insensitive to phone them and say "Hey! You've been down before. What can you tell me?" Those friends who had become depressed never discussed the details of their prescribed treatment openly.

Lara knew her mum had become depressed after giving birth to her little brother. Her mum had sought help from the family doctor. Lara's mum said that a little time talking to the doctor about her feelings had been exactly what she needed. That was over 20 years ago. GPs didn't have much time to talk to their patients anymore. At the local doctor's surgery, Lara seemed to see a different doctor every time she visited.

Therapy conjured up images of whiney New Yorkers, self-indulgently talking about how their daddies didn't love them enough, on a psychotherapist's couch, spending hundreds or even thousands of dollars. Lara thought that to suggest counselling might make Neil more upset. Many people derided therapists as "quacks".

Having spent the week without socialising amongst their usual circle of friends, Lara now faced further isolation all weekend, as the couple cancelled their plans. There was little that Lara could do to help at home. Even asking Neil "are you OK?" could be a barbed question, when clearly he was not. It was very British to say "I'm fine thanks" as an automatic response whenever anybody asked how you were, no matter how dreadful life was feeling at that moment. Neil and Lara's parents had been raised in an environment of post-war austerity, where stiff upper lip and concealment of any inner emotions was considered the preferred way to conduct yourself. The touchy-feely stuff was not dealt with well by either family.

By Monday morning, Lara was relieved to be able to immerse herself back in her work. Throughout her shift she barely had a moment to herself to dwell on personal issues. For the sake of the patients and her team, it was imperative that she was positive and upbeat, concentrating, not distracted. She was expected to be a pillar of strength and exude confidence when patients were scared, in pain and discomfort. Context switching was surprisingly exhausting, but it didn't hit Lara until she left the hospital.

As the week wore on, Lara found that she was less and less able to carry the caring face she wore all day at work into her home. She felt like she had lost the support of both her partner and her social group and she could barely keep her own head above water. By Friday, some tiny slip of the mask must have betrayed how truly drained she felt, because the Ward Manager called Lara into her office at the end of her shift.

"Is everything OK, Lara?"

"My fiancée hasn't been very well for a couple of weeks, but I really didn't want to bring my problems with me to work, Judy, sorry" replied Lara.

"It's OK. You just look a little under the weather. I hoped you weren't coming down with something. Your work has been fine this week. No complaints from me" said Judy.

"Yeah, I'm fine. I'm just going to sleep all weekend and let my batteries fully recharge" said Lara.

"Well, look after yourself. Are you getting the support you need at home?" asked Judy.

"Yeah. We're getting by. I'm sure Neil's going to be feeling better and back to work soon" replied Lara.

"Neil. That was it. I remember you saying you'd got engaged, but I must admit I'd forgotten your fiancée's name. Any news on the wedding?" asked Judy, turning the conversation more light and casual.

"No, we haven't even started planning yet" replied Lara.

"Oh well. No rush" said Judy, glancing down at some paperwork on her desk.

"See you Monday. Have a good weekend" said Lara.

"You too" replied Judy, busily scribbling notes onto a yellow form she had been filling in when Lara had entered the office.

Lara fetched her coat and bag with some sense of relief, but also the nagging feeling that she had somehow trapped herself. Next week at work, she would have to work hard to keep a brave face on things. It would be harder now to admit that she wasn't coping well. All she could hope for was that things would be getting back to normal sooner rather than later.

Anne was hurriedly pulling on her coat as she jogged along the corridor to catch up with Lara, who was making her way to the lifts.

"What was that all about?" Anne asked.

"Oh, she was just asking if I was OK" Lara replied.

"And are you?" Anne asked.

"Not really" said Lara.

Next chapter...

This is a story about a pill for every ill...

There was a young man who swallowed a lie, about how hard work and loyalty to his company would make him successful. It left him exhausted and with depression, that wiggled and jiggled inside his brain. I don't know why he swallowed the lie. Perhaps he'll die.

There was a young man who swallowed 150mg of Bupropion - a fast acting antidepressant - to cancel out the depression and exhaustion, that wiggled and jiggled inside his brain. Perhaps he'll die.

There was a young man who swallowed 5mg of Olanzapine - a mood stabiliser - to cancel out the hypomanic highs that were created by the Bupropion, that was supposed to fix the depression and exhaustion, that wiggled and jiggled inside his brain. Perhaps he'll die.

There was a young man who swallowed 15mg of Mirtazapine - another antidepressant - because the Bupropion wasn't working so well any more on its own, to fix the depression and exhaustion, that wiggled and jiggled inside his brain. Perhaps he'll die.

There was a young man who swallowed 25mg of Lamotrigine, to raise his seizure threshold so he could take more Bupropion, stabilise his mood more and as a third antidepressant, to fix the depression and exhaustion, that wiggled and jiggled inside his brain. Perhaps he'll die.

There was a young man who swallowed 10mg of Diazepam - an anti-anxiety drug - because by now he was pretty jittery from all the damn drugs, that were supposed to fix his depression and exhaustion, that wiggled and jiggled inside his brain. Perhaps he'll die.

There was a young man who was going to swallow 2,000mg of potassium cyanide, to end the depression and exhaustion, that wiggled and jiggled inside his brain. Of course he would die.

Top picture, from left to right: Mirtazepine, Olanzapine, Bupropion, Diazepam, Lamotrigine.

Tags: #depression #bipolar #medication #suicide #career

This is a story about gallows humour...

Here's something for your amusement:

Q: What's worse than an abandoned blog?

A: A dead blogger

Not feeling particularly suicidal today, in case you were wondering. I think my mood will worsen before it improves though.

I've got a nice little project to play around with regarding Zero Knowledge Proofs - also known as zero-knowledge Succinct Non-interactive ARguments of Knowledge (zk-SNARK) systems - for Blockchain sidechain tech. Hopefully I can busy myself hacking something fun I want to build, rather than just lying around feeling miserable.

Otherwise, I could always get a job I suppose, although the prospect filled me with enough dread to trigger the downward spiral anyway.

I had another more fun/creative project planned, but the hard numbers just don't make the payoff worth the effort.

Sleepless manic nights spent reading cryptography papers might pay off in the end.

Tags: #suicide

This is a story about milestones...

There are so many people who either "don't smoke" or call themselves "social smokers". People say "I only smoke when I drink". There are so many people who claim that they are free from drink and drugs, but they're actually popping Xanax, antidepressants, Oxycontin, Solpadeine, Co-codamol (codeine), Vicodin and tranquillisers. There are so many people who sneer at substance abusers, but they drink, smoke and consume lots of tea, coffee and energy drinks, without realising they're dependent on alcohol, nicotine and caffeine, just to cope with normal everyday life.

In 6 months, I got through those 59 tablets - a combination of diazepam and nitrazepam - in an attempt to avoid a nervous breakdown and to survive an extremely stressful situation, where my whole career, solvency, home and life as a respectable member of society, hung in the balance.

If you take benzodiazepines continuously for over 3 months, you have probably become physically addicted. What that means is that you might have a seizure and die, if you were to abruptly stop taking the medication.

I've run out of benzodiazepines today.

I'm not worried about this.

59 tablets, of 2mg to 5mg strength, spread over 180 days, is a piss in the ocean. There's no way that I'm going to have withdrawal symptoms from stopping taking benzodiazepines. I might be a little anxious; I might have a little insomnia; I might feel a bit panicky. However, I'm not going to die.

A couple of years ago I took myself off to rehab. For over 3 months I had been swallowing a little cocktail: 6x 10mg diazepam tablets, 4x 2mg Xanax, 2x 10mg Ambien, 2x 15mg Zopiclone. Maybe it wasn't quite that much. I have no idea. Benzodiazepines cause amnesia. All I can remember is that I used to fill up the palm of my hand with various pills, and swallow them all in one go. Lights out. Wake up 2 days later.

You're in a hell of a mess when you're mixing uppers and downers; stimulants and tranquillisers; but that's what we do every day, when we have our morning coffee and a glass of wine when we get home from work. If you have a strong coffee after a boozy dinner, you're basically having the middle-class equivalent of a speedball (cocaine & heroin, injected).

Obviously, I'm irreverently mocking your self-delusion, when you tell yourself that you're not "hooked" on anything.

I've used alcohol and the occasional tranquilliser tablet, in order to limp through the last 6 months. I haven't been having tea, coffee or other caffeinated drinks.

I've actually tapered off the alcohol and the benzos, to the point where I only drank 2 days in the last 14. I didn't take any benzos all weekend.

The thing is, if you're smart and you're disciplined, addiction is something you can master. It is possible to give up anytime you want. It is possible to become really good at quitting drugs and booze. I'm a fucking expert in abstinence.

Almost like an alarm clock going off, my subconscious revealed that I had simply been waiting for 6 months.

School was absolute shit for me. Getting through the long school days of bullying was awful. Getting through the long terms of bullying was unbearable. Getting through year after year after year of bullying was absolutely dreadful. All I was doing was waiting for the end of school bell, the school holidays, and the day that I could finally leave school and get the fuck away from the bullies.

Family life was absolutely shit for me. I couldn't wait to move out of home, and get away from my arsehole parents. I've loved paying my own rent and bills. I've loved being independent. I do have all the fucking answers. I went out into the world, got a place to live, got a job, and never looked back. Up until then, I'd just been waiting for the day I could finally leave home, and it couldn't come a moment too soon.

So, I spent 17 years, just waiting. I was biding my time. I know how to suffer patiently. I'm an expert in suffering patiently.

Then, I applied my expertise in deferred gratification to the working world. I took shitty entry-level jobs and worked my way up. I stuck with shitty projects, and shitty companies, so that my CV would look good. I stuck with shitty bosses and put up with glass ceilings. I stuck with idiots who couldn't see my potential, and I just suffered because I had a game plan.

I can patiently wait anything out. I've had to spend about 16 weeks with very limited liberty, being treated as an inpatient. That's not including the time I've spent in hospital receiving emergency treatment. In theory, I could have discharged myself, but there would have been consequences. I spent 7 weeks with somebody who'd been in prison twice, and he acknowledges that I have a mindset that suggests I know how to do time.

I mean, Christ, I spent the best part of 5 years working for one damn company, in one damn building, with the same damn people. Day after day, month after month, year after year. I've done 19 bloody years on the IT gravy train, solving the same damn problems again and again and again, and seeing the same damn mistakes time after time.

And so, I wondered to myself, why didn't I have a packet of drugs to tear open, in celebration of the fact that I have so easily completed a 6-month period of abstinence?

What you'll find with many addicts, is that they're liars. When they say that they're abstinent, they're actually lying to themselves and others. I've done "6 months clean" before, but that hasn't counted "the occasional weekend" and one or two "lapses" (note: a lapse is a 'small' relapse). In actual fact, you're still addicted, but you're limping yourself along by hiding your habit, from yourself and others. You start to believe your own lies.

I've arrived at 6 months "clean" and it really is clean. As clean as anybody in the history of anything, ever.

Most people who quit smoking will drink more, have more coffee, eat more. Most people who quit anything, will find some way of compensating. It might be exercise; it might be work. Basically, humans need shit. We're not fucking robots. Humans have always had intoxicating substances. Wine was being made 6,000 years before Jesus Christ was even born... that's over 8,000 years ago!

Anyway, I started looking at websites of awful toxic Chinese "legal" highs. Then I had a look at the Dark Web. The amount of drugs that are available to order over the Internet is just staggering. Prohibition has spectacularly failed. The designer drug industry is enjoying such a boom time, thanks to ridiculous laws that force chemists to get creative. Technology's answer to the eternally insatiable human demand for mind-altering substances has created a whole swathe of online marketplaces stocking every drug under the sun.

There's something for everybody in the cornucopia that has been created by the war on drugs.

My finger hovered over the "Buy Now" button, because I've damn well proven my point. Pick some arbitrary milestone, and I'll hit it, easily. But, what do I have? My life is miserable. All I have ahead of me is stress and loneliness; insecurity and pain; suicidal thoughts and a sense of abandonment. Fairly easy to justify a relapse, isn't it, when you work so hard and you're not getting anywhere.

Then, I thought, what could I do that's slightly more sensible?

With a bit more searching around on the Internet, I found that you can consult a doctor online and have a prescription despatched next day. In the space of 7 minutes, a doctor agreed to prescribe me a fast-acting antidepressant called Wellbutrin. I needed something because I felt certain that I was either going to commit suicide quickly by cutting an artery, or commit suicide slowly by relapsing back into drug abuse.

Wellbutrin is a wonderful medication, because it's fast acting, it doesn't make you drowsy, and it doesn't ruin your sex life. Have you experienced the boredom of patiently fucking somebody who takes an SSRI antidepressant, waiting an absolute age before they possibly cum, but probably won't be able to? Who wants a sex life like that? I don't want my emotions blunted. I don't want 'brain zaps' and uncontrollable crying when I try and stop the damn medication.

Yeah, who knows what the fuck happens next. Tomorrow, I have a 2-month supply of a fast-acting antidepressant that you can't get on the NHS being delivered. Maybe life will look a bit less hopeless when I'm drugged out of my mind, like virtually everybody else I know.

It feels like selling out, but it's nearly killed me having to fight tooth and nail just to have a roof over my head and a job, while also being nearly stone cold sober. I don't have kids to remind me why I get up and go to work. I don't have pets to look after. I literally have no reason for living, except to achieve some arbitrary goals.

I thought, as an added bonus, that I would also be celebrating one year of blogging today, but it turns out that happened a couple of weeks ago. Today is my last day at work, and I've had a couple of leaving dos, which is nice, but I do of course have to go though all the stress and hassle of applying for new jobs, interviewing, making a good first impression etc. etc. How ironic that things seem to have conspired to happen today.

As luck would have it, a colleague has recommended me for another job, which I might end up interviewing for tomorrow and could even be asked to start a new contract as early as Monday. If I do that, I'm damnwell going to need a few happy pills to carry me through, because I had been thinking that I was going to have a minor nervous breakdown.

Anyway, a milestone of sorts. Nice to leave work with a few slaps on the back and "well done"s. Nice to know that I didn't 'cheat' with my 6 months of abstinence from addictive stimulants. Where's my fucking reward? Surely I should feel better than I do, but I'm depressed and anxious. I'm overwhelmed by the task of having to hustle again, to keep the momentum going.

But really, is there momentum, or did I just wait for 6 months, in order to have a well-earned breakdown?

Is that what life is? Just waiting to die, miserable as fuck?

Tags: #depression #suicide #addiction #drugs

This is a story about escape velocity...

A happy healthy life is a fairly simple prescription. It's not hard to look for slightly happier people and imitate their magic formula.

In essence, what I have distilled things down to is this:

• Home - so you can be warm and dry and your stuff isn't stolen
• Job - so you can pay your rent/mortgage, bills and buy food & clothes (yes, clothes wear out)
• Family - not blood relatives, but anybody who loves and cares about you
• Friends - social media doesn't count; you have to see friends face to face
• Disposible income - get deeper and deeper into debt and you'll lose your home
• Goal or passion - this can be work, this can be your kids, this can be a hobby; you need something.
• Girlfriend/boyfriend - everybody's gotta get laid, and it's important to have intimacy and companionship

At the moment I have 3 out of 7. Assuming that you need 50% or more to be OK, it's no wonder that I'm depressed as hell and have a lot of suicidal thoughts.

Yes, I have friends who I see less than once a week, so I do have friends. Yes, my sister and I do occasionally exchange text messages, even though we haven't seen each other for the best part of a year. Yes, my goal has been to get myself into a position of financial security, and I've been making great progress, but it's not really my goal... it's just a necessity because of needing to not be homeless and destitute.

So, all I really have is a home, a job, and I'm making more money than I'm spending, which is digging me out of debt.

I love my friends dearly, and it does help that people are in contact via social media, email, text message. I have the offer of speaking to a few friends on the telephone, which I'm grateful for. I also make the effort to travel as much as I feel able to, in order to see people face to face, and I'm glad when I do it, even though it's expensive, exhausting and time consuming to zoom all over the country, if not the world.

I just don't have a group of buddies you know? People to go to the pub with. People to go out for a meal with. People to play frisbee with in the park. I'm lacking a social group.

I'm also lacking that significant other. Somebody to just hang out with. Have sex with. Make food with. Watch movies with. Play games with. Go sightseeing with.

I've stitched together a patchwork quilt of whatever I can get, in order to just about cling to life with my fingernails, but it's inadequate. That's not to say I'm not ungrateful for those occasional invites to hang out and do stuff. It's just not enough. I thrive on face to face social contact, and I'm not getting enough.

To further compound problems, the team I've been managing at work are all in the Far East, so I don't even get proper face-to-face social contact at work. I sit at my desk, lonely and bored. I've helped to create a great culture in my team, but I don't really benefit from it, because they are quite literally 6,666 miles away (I just looked that up - I love that fact!).

In desperation, I made compromises that are just not acceptable, sustainable. I took a job that pays well and is very easy, but doesn't provide anything other than the money that I need. I made other choices because of the desperate need for something rather than nothing. There's an opportunity cost. If I'm in a job that I hate and drains my energy, then I don't have the time and the motivation to get something better.

In a way, it's good that a couple of things are coming to an end, because it's prompting me to go after the things I want rather than the things that I took through desperation. Of course, I'm grateful to have the money, and the support that I've received, but you make different choices when you're in deep shit.

So, on Thursday 22nd September, 2016, I will have completed a year of blogging, 6 months 'clean' and my 6 month employment contract will be over.

On Thursday 22nd September, 2016, I will have 1 out of 7 of the things that I need, with the threat that I will quickly lose even that one single thing.

Without a job, I'll have more expenditure than income. I need to pay rent, bills, service debts. I need to replace worn out clothes and things that break. I need to buy food and toiletries. Life is not sustainable in Western society without income.

I don't have savings, but I do have creditworthiness. Yet again, I will have to borrow money in order to keep my head above water. I have no financial safety net. What I have instead are commercial lenders who are prepared to extract their pound of flesh so that I can avoid homelessness and destitution.

If you think I could have saved more money than I have done these past months, you are mistaken. Without a short holiday, I would never have lasted the extra months. Without alcohol, I would never have coped with the stress and anxiety. I could have penny pinched on my accommodation, but can you imagine how awful it is living in a hostel when you're working full time? I worked, slept and ate. How far has it got me? Well. Probably about 50% of the way towards financial security.

I need to take a break, because my nerves are frazzled and I'm exhausted.

I doubt any contract could be as bad as the job I'm about to finish on Wednesday. For my next contract, I'm going to look for something where I'll be working with a team in London. I need a much more interesting workload. Being bored to death is no way to die.

With money comes the opportunity to travel, socialise, make the investment in a new hobby. With a more tolerable day job comes energy and enthusiasm for each day. With a more liveable life comes the freedom from drink, drugs and medication, in order to simply get through the day.

It's a fucking nutty strategy, to go for the big win. What you just don't understand is just how close to irreparably broken my life is. You just don't understand what it's like to not have so many of the elements that prop up your life. Look again at the bullet pointed list above, and score yourself. How many of the things you need do you have?

Look back at the last 4 weeks of your life and ask yourself this:

• How many nights were you homeless? - zero, I presume
• How many days did you work? - I'm guessing somewhere around 12, on average
• How many times were you in contact with your family? - I'm guessing at least 4
• How many days did you see friends face to face? - I'm guessing at least 8
• Did you make more money than you spent? - I'm guessing at least breakeven
• How many times did you do something 'fun'? - I'm guessing at least 4
• How many times did you have sex or snuggles? - I'm guessing at least 8

Those would seem like adequate answers to me. If you're hitting those numbers, your life is probably just about OK. Less than that in one area, maybe you can make up for it in another. For example, you might have been out of work and losing money, but at least you were surrounded by your loving family a lot more of the time, because maybe you were staying at home looking after the kids.

I'm certainly not saying it's easy being a stay at home mom or a househusband, but suicidal depression can come about through death by a thousand cuts. All the little things that are wrong in your life add up to an unbearably horrible situation.

In some ways I'm relishing next Thursday, because I can sleep and recharge my batteries. With spare time that's completely free from artificial structure, such as having to be in a certain office at certain times of the day, then I can start to relax and decide what I want to do next.

The obvious thing to do is to get another lucrative contract, and work for at least another 4 months, so that I can get a cushion of savings to support me in pursuing a passion. Without being able to underwrite my own risk, I have zero faith in my family or government to support me if I fall on hard times. I have a friend who's offered me some financial support, but I think it's unethical to accept it because then I'm borrowing from their safety net.

In this individualistic society, nobody parachuted in to rescue me when I was homeless, destitute. Nobody came to rescue me. Nobody came to my aid. Help was not forthcoming. Even when I had letters from my doctor, my psychiatrist, my social worker... all begging for the government to support me as a vulnerable person with mental health problems, the people I dealt with were unhelpful, obstructive and ultimately just wasted my time and effort even asking for the support that I was entitled to, because of their legal and moral obligations. Those public servants' salaries are paid for with my goddamn taxes. I've paid a lot in, and when I needed it, I could get nothing out.  It's down to me to support myself. I might as well be living in some developing world country, where at least the cost of surviving is lower.

People who warn me to stay within easy reach of the National Health Service for mental health reasons, are just naïve. I've been round and round the system many times since becoming clinically depressed in 2008. The system is bullshit. There is no safety net if you're a single man.

And so, I must play russian roulette with my life in order to support myself. The upside is OK: I might become wealthy and comfortable again, in a relatively short timescale of just a few years. The downside is horrible though. Can you imagine how much time I've spent thinking about how I'm going to kill myself? Can you imagine what it's like to spend a significant proportion of your waking hours feeling so awful that you pretty much want to die?

I swear if one more person tells me to go to my doctor and get some magic beans I'm going to scream. STOP MEDICALISING NON-MEDICAL PROBLEMS. The problem is clearly outlined above. I don't have broken brain chemistry. My brain has correctly identified the problems in my life. There are no short cuts. There's no way to cheat the sytem.

Of course, there is a short cut.

Drugs will tell your brain you feel loved. Drugs will make you feel relaxed. Drugs will make you feel happy. Drugs will make you feel contented. Drugs will tell you that you don't need friends. Drugs will tell you that you don't even need to eat or drink. Drugs will tell you that everything is fine.

Everything is not fine, so I don't want drugs - and by that I mean medication too - to tell me that things are fine. Things are not fine. I almost need these awful feelings to prompt me to get a better job, find some new friends, get a girlfriend, get a hobby. It's just that financial circumstances have constrained me more than you can possibly imagine.

Imagine if I'd declared bankruptcy at the start of the year. That would have been a stupendously dumb decision, in hindsight, wouldn't it? I'm presently not bankrupt. Presently, I have enough money to clear my credit cards, my overdraft.

Of course, my position can't last. You have to run just to stand still. I'm losing my job, and that means I will quickly go into debt again.

"Get another job then"

Guess what, Einstein... that's what I'm going to do. Even though I'm suicidally depressed, overcome with anxiety, I'm going to go and get another motherfucking job you c**t. Even though I'm technically entitled to disability benefits and a council house because my mental health is so debilitating, I am able to do these crazy raiding missions to go and gather nuts before my brain explodes and it all comes crashing down again. I'm locked into this boom & bust cycle. No wonder my bipolar disorder is so exacerbated.

And so, round and round I go. Up & down. Boom & bust. Highs & lows. It's not a medical problem. Its the motherfucking dance I'm forced to do by this farcical society. This is what you get when you don't support people. This is what you get when you isolate people. This is what you get when you only look out for number one.

"The pills will help you stabilise"

No, they won't. Have you looked at the long term studies? Have you studied the data, the clinical outcomes? Have you done the research? No. Of course you haven't. You just have this bullshit belief in the power of medical science. If I had an infection, I'd go to my doctor for antibiotics to treat it. I don't have a fucking infection. I have an allergy to shitty unbearable unliveable life.

I've tried all the meds under the sun. I know what life on medication is like. I've had tons of doctors and psychiatrists. I've tried tons of therapies. It's all a crock of shit. The fundamental problem is the fucking shitty world. Look around you; do you like what you see?

I'm not going to change the world begging on the street with a cardboard sign. I'm not going to change the world by impoverishing myself. I'm not going to change the world by trying the same things that people have tried for hundreds of years, without success. Only an idiot tries the same things expecting different results.

So, I'm on this crazy journey. I'm hoping that by next Wednesday I might have managed to write 365 blog posts, and probably around 450,000 words. That might not make a difference to you, but it's surely making a difference to me. It's probably making a difference to somebody, somewhere. I have visitors from around the world, reading what I write. Even if it's absolute garbage, it's better than just being a helpless spectator. Even if you think I'm an irrelevant bleeding heart lefty liberal who doesn't amount to a hill of beans, at least I'm composing my thoughts. At least I have a belief system. At least I have values and things that I passionately believe in.

It's very hard for me to come up with a reason why I'm struggling along at the moment. Why am I putting myself through this awful shit? Why don't I just kill myself, and then the pain will be over? Why don't I just give up, and relapse back into drug addiction?

Actually the second one is fairly easy to answer: somebody who dies of drug addiction is easy to discredit as a 'dirty' junkie. Somebody who's 'clean' and has just completed an important project for a major corporation, in a valuable role, and has set their financial affairs in good order, is a rather more inconvenient and difficult problem to find a soundbite to toss them into the gutter.

I want to be a thorn in the side of every selfish c**t out there who wishes their fellow humans dead. I want to shame people into action, from their comfortable existence where they don't even lose sleep over every homeless, hungry struggling person in pain and suffering out there.

Where the fuck are people when those around them are in distress? Who the fuck do you think is going to sort problems out, if it's not you?

Even though I could have put my tax money to far better use supporting myself, rather than paying the salaries of people who tell me they're not going to help me, I'm still glad to give away a substantial proportion of my income. However, I'm not buying a clean conscience. It's not like I pay my taxes so I can watch my friends become homeless and mentally ill, and assume that the council and some doctors are going to wave their magic wands and make it all better.

What the fuck happened to the empathy? I think I would offer to let somebody sleep on my couch, lend somebody money or go and visit somebody in distress, before I even experienced horrible things first hand myself. I had quite a comfortable existence up to the age of 32 or thereabouts, but I didn't think it was big OR clever to sit on my fucking arse not doing anything when people were suffering.

Those who have been kindest are those who have suffered the most, which makes me detest the comfortably off for their lack of empathy, their lack of humanity.

If humanity is destined for a situation where we let even our own family members and friends flail and drown, then I'm pleased that climate change is going to wipe you miserable c**ts out of existence. You don't deserve to survive, if your "I'm alright Jack" attitude is the prevailing one. I hope you and your kids and grandkids die slowly and painfully if you spawned more mouths to feed with not a single concern for anybody else.

Believe me, I do observe how happy and fulfilled my friends who are parents are, even if they complain how hard it is being a parent. Did you forget that we live in the age of birth control and abortion? You chose to have kids, and no matter what you say, you do get immeasurable benefit from having them. You have happiness and security, knowing you procreated. You have a flood of oxytocin when your cute kids throw their arms gleefully around you.

Believe me, I do observe how happy my friends are to own a dog, even if they complain about having to pick up the poop and hoover up the hair and other mess. You chose to have another carnivore on the planet, eating meat that meant that food for livestock was grown, rather than having more food for those who are starving, and depriving the planet of those extra trees that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Having a pet dog is selfish as fuck, but I do see how nice it is to have your dog playfully jumping with joy to see you, and throwing sticks in the park for them to fetch.

I can see that there are choices that benefit me as an individual hugely, but I choose not to take them, because I'm responsible for more than just myself. I don't believe that collective responsibility is something that naturally follows from individual responsibility. In fact, I see that the two things are naturally opposing.

Can't you see the fucking trends? Of course you do, but you just don't want to believe it.

You don't want to give up eating meat. You don't want to adopt instead of having your own biological children. You don't want to stop driving your precious little darlings around in a gas-guzzling 4x4 "because it's safer for our family". You don't want to plant trees instead of having a pet dog. You don't want to do anything different at all, in fact, even though you're fucking everything up for your kids and your grandkids.

That's why I'm depressed. That's why I'm suicidal. That's why I'm stuck in a hole I can't get out of. That's why I'm desperate and driven crazy by all this bullshit. That's why I'm doing things that are atypical... because the typical is what got us into this fucked up mess in the first place.

I don't care whether you're religious or not, but imagine some future judgement day, when it's obvious that the planet and the future survival of the human race is clearly doomed: will you say that you went along with things, supported the status quo, or did you try and change things? Did you at least act differently? Did you at least try and help in a way that's less pathetic than recycling your bottles? Did you help anybody other than the fucking clones you spawned to replace yourself?

Note: I'm not anti-parents. I don't hate my friends. I'm not some "wake up sheeple" fucktard. Dismiss me if you like using some convenient label that you were taught to use by those who wish to perpetuate the status quo.

If you're not acting with your conscience, or at least kept awake at night worrying about this shit, that's unconscionable.

You probably should worry about me. No doctor in a white fucking coat is going to make everything OK. It's not a medical problem. It's not a government problem. It's everybody's problem, including mine, but it's more than I can handle on my own.

Tags: #suicide #depression #mentalhealth #climate #politics #capitalism #homeless

This is a story about spoon feeding...

There are a number of writing guides that suggest cutting out unnecessary words, shortening sentences and generally dumbing down what you write to appeal to the lowest common denominator. I personally think that would be an insult to the intelligence of anybody who takes the time to read my writing.

The academic equivalent of willy-waving is to try and pepper your text with obscure vocabulary and other curios. At best, you're going to impress some sneering pretentious elites. At worst you're going to write impenetrable text that's virtually unreadable without a dictionary. Somewhere in-between the best and the worst, you're going to trip yourself up and have those who are highly educated chortling at your clumsy use of language, while everybody else just thinks you're a stuck-up twat.

I write in a conversational manner, very much in the voice of my internal monologue. You, as the reader, must hear the stream of my thoughts, as a facsimile in your head as you read my words.

With editing, I could produce more concise text. With some rewriting, I could represent ideas and concepts, experiences and stories, in a much more concise manner. I could write to convey things with much more simplicity. But then, wouldn't you just be reading yet another yawnfest of Internet banality?

To try to be original is impossible: we are all just a product of our experiences. Monkey see, monkey do. However, to be authentic merely takes bravery... or is it stupidity?

I'm not writing a Wikipedia article. I'm not writing a self-help guide. I'm not writing a scientific paper.

This is a secret diary that has been made public. This is my psyche, laid bare so that my distress, confusion, isolation and the hideous complexity of the circumstances that I find myself in, are not obscured from view. I'm genuinely concerned for my safety, and without my detailed account of who I am, I might die completely misunderstood.

Don't we all fear that we might die misunderstood? Well... it's more complex than that.

If you have kids, you fear that you're not going to get to see them grow up. The fact of the matter is that you're unlikely to outlive your kids, but you've set yourself some unspoken milestones:

• "As long as I get to watch them grow up to the age of 18, I'll be happy"
• "As long as I get to watch them graduate from university, I'll be happy"
• "As long as I get to watch them get married, I'll be happy"
• "As long as I get to meet my grandkids, I'll be happy"

Perhaps you're concerned about how elderly your parents are getting, and you want to be around to look after them. Perhaps you're loved by your brothers and sisters, and your nieces and nephews. You're aware that you'd leave a hole in your family's life if you were gone.

Things are a bit different for me.

This is what my mum said to me, when I asked her why she never travelled the 45 minutes on the train to come and see me when I was in hospital:

"The police will tell us when you're dead and we can come and identify your body at the morgue if we have to"

I think it's pretty clear that my parents have faulty genes that need to die off. I can understand that you might not want to spend £5,000 on an operation to save the life of your pet hamster. However, I would spend thousands if my cat or my dog got sick. I would spend every penny I had, to save my child. My parents didn't think I was worth the £20 for the train fare from Oxford to London, and the 45 minutes of their time.

If you want to understand how or why I arrived at the notion that my family would not only be better off without me, but they actually actively want me dead then you only have to study that one example.

Whether you like it or not, you are responsible for your children's lives. Your children didn't ask to be born. Your children are not supposed to be grateful to be alive. You're supposed to be grateful if you have healthy children.

It's a risky decision to have a child: they might be born with birth defects, they might be disabled. Your child might be suffering and in pain. Instead of adopting one of the many children who don't have a family, instead you decided to create an extra mouth to feed on the overcrowded planet, and take a chance that your shitty genes might leave them with terrible quality of life. Instead of considering what you could give the child, you thought about what you could take in terms of feeling satisfied that you have procreated.

Being brought up to feel apologetic that you even exist is an awful thing. Being told you're a bad kid because you didn't pop out of the womb ready to serve your parents like some subservient sycophantic butler is an awful thing.

"I taught you how to use a spoon"

Don't make me fucking laugh. If you don't feed your kid you're a negligent parent. What do you want, a fucking medal for taking the bare minimum responsibility for the life that you chose to bring into existence? If my parents didn't teach me to eat using a spoon, I would have eaten with my hands, or somebody with more of a nurturing instinct would have taught me to eat using cutlery, or I would have died earlier and suffered less.

Yes, I've reached the point now where I'm basically saying "what's the fucking point?".

What is the point, really? Surely, it's a fucking gift to rear a child and be pleased you actually took some fucking responsibility. There can only be shame in neglecting your responsibilities. There are no medals and ticker-tape parades for parents, because you wanted to fuck, you wanted to experience the miracle of life, you wanted it... your kids didn't. Remember that: nobody asked to be born.

If your kids are miserable and want to die, you have failed miserably as a parent. Victim blaming is no use to sidestep the responsibility. On the day of judgement, can you say hand on heart that you acted in your child's best interests, given your decision to create that child in the first place?

We are not fucking fish! We don't just spew out eggs and sperm into the ocean in the hope that some of our spawn reaches adulthood. What the fuck happened to your brain? What the fuck happened to your education? My parents both had the benefit of free university places. My parents both think they're oh-so smart. It's not like you can hide behind the defence of saying you're just a dumb animal.

I'm smarter than an animal. I'm smarter than my genes.

I know that my genes program me to want to procreate, but I can choose not to. In fact, on the evidence of the behaviour of my parents, passing on their genes would be the most irresponsible thing I could possibly do. Clearly this line of genes needs to die out, because I detest parents who don't take responsibility for their choices, their children.

My parents are too stupid to even read, as it turns out. I suckered them in with some honeyed words, to get them hooked reading this blog, and then I dialled up the honesty. They could not have cut & run any faster. Like Usain Bolt, they sprinted for the hills. The truth is hard to deal with when the only way you can look yourself in the mirror and sleep at night is by pretending your son is already dead.

It's a bit strange to write and write and write like this, labouring a point, but until they die from old age, smoking and drug/alcohol abuse related illness, I feel there needs to be this constant reinforcement of the consequences of their mistreatment of me.

Instead of thinking "my friends would miss me" I think "what if my parents attempt to corrupt the truth after I die". In a way, I'm staying alive to defend my memory, but when the truth is fully told I can finally collapse with exhaustion and rest in peace.

Sure, my parents spoon fed me. I wish they hadn't. If you're not going to go the distance, what's the fucking point? Why even start? It's fucking cruel, to bring someone into the world who didn't ask for it, and then to fuck them over. If I'm here just to pass on your genes, guess what? I'm not going to.

Why am I seething with such anger about something in the past? Well, it's in the context of how much of my life I felt secure, happy, loved (not much). It's in the context of how suicidal I feel (very). It's in the context of how things will look, when I'm gone.

The most loved I ever felt was when a lovely family in Ireland took me in. That just ain't right... what the fuck is wrong with my parents? Is it because they're drug addicts and alcoholics? I doubt it's the drugs or the alcohol because I'm very loving and nurturing, so I must conclude that there must be genes in me that haven't yet been expressed. I fear that I may be a terrible father, if I had kids, even if I was a loving caring husband, and I cared for my pets more than I even cared for myself.

Oh well, maybe it'll all be over soon and I can leave the final analysis to somebody else.

Tags: #parents #suicide