This is a story about two against one...

I'm fed up of being ignored and getting no respect from my Dad. This is a twofold problem. Now they don't take drugs anymore, they have  lost the only social bond to many freinds, and they don't know how to make new ones. They also live in a co-dependent abusive bubble, where my Mum has to agree with my Dad 0r else there will be arguing that my Dad always wins, because he puts ego ahead of relationships.

Growing up, I learned that making a reasoned argument, supported by evidence would get me nowhere. My most logical and intelligent statements would be put down with "smart arse" or "know-it-all", which is like an adult blowing a raspberry at a child because they can't think of a reply or they know they're wrong.

I'm writing two books, One on Bipolar Disorder and one on Legal Highs. I only have one literary agent at the moment, so if you know somebody who publishes non-fiction, please get in contact.

If you would like to read the first 12,000 words of my first book, please click this link and request access (I can't make it public, or else I can't sell it): https://drive.google.com/a/grant.gb.com/file/d/0B1Yzdy-TF4Z2WkczX28zVjRJNk0/view?usp=sharing

An advance would be really handy right now, because the thought of going back into a corporate environment again after 20 years of playing the game takes the saying 'deferred gratification' to an extreme level.

I would also like to borrow a vehicle of some sort, or be allowed to pitch my tent on your land. I'd like the option to change my environment. Marine Girl had offered her camper van but I guess she's away on half-term.

I'm going to keep my London base, because it's a gorgeous flat and my flatmate is such a great friend who really understands what I'm going through.

I have plans to keep a modest regular income, and I want a physical project too. I'm currently looking for derelict commercial property in London, that would be converted to house unaccompanied minors as part of Techfugees. If there's one thing I do well, it's the project that everybody else is too busy waiting for permission to do.

If anybody wants to 'buy' something from my company, I'm selling money-back guarantees. It also gives me an income of 4.5%. Also, if anybody wants to buy any 'nearly new' Macbooks etc off me, I'm offering a discount of up to 12.25%, but it'd be helpful if I could keep the whole 24.5%. Same goes for anything else that's VATable. Maybe you should buy that van (please lend it to me for a bit).

Also, I would like to sell some of my services, so I don't give the VAT man NO tax next quarter. Is there anything you have to do regularly on your computer, but the macro is just too hard? Do you want an ecommerce website or a forum or some graphic design work? Is there a data export/import task that takes you ages? See if you can get the purchase approval for the most IT experienced temp you've ever met in your life.

I do lecturing and pulic speaking too: London Business School, Bournemouth Business School and this little place called Cambridge.

If all else fails, I'm good at looking around a business, learning from your best people, and then shouting at everybody until things start going a bit better, if you're spending a lot but it all seems to be disappearing into a black hole. It's time for me to leave, which is normally when people return to their old habits or the management team think their failing project/company is just going to fix itself if everybody keeps the faith.

A leader should inspire confidence, the faith to follow them, but if that's up a dead-end then you're stuffed. Always remember this: leaders are promoted up to the level that they're no longer competent at their job.

So my parents will have a fantasy story about who I've 'become' and what I do with my time, and where my money goes. Why don't you get back in contact with me. I'll be pleased t0 hear fr0m you and I always appreciate advice and feedback. nick@manicgrant.com or @ManicGrant if you do that new-fangled Twitter thing.

If you hear something about me from my Mum or Dad, just say "with respect, you never email him, visit him and he ignores your calls after you only ever used them to guilt-trip him about his sister and niece, or say ignorant judgemental things". I need the family's help, not two ingnoramuses spreading inaccurate gossip about me.

I want my Mum & Dad in my life, but they need to grow up and learn that respect is a two-way-street. I'm still their son though, so if I'm in trouble and you've promised to help, then help, and help 100% not 50%, and certainly don't hinder by phoning all my relatives and telling them not to lend me any money because I became a drug addict devil overnight who complies with every stereotype.

Blame is a fruitless excercise. Just make good on your promises and help where you can, otherwise you inflict consequences which are not the same as blame.

I'm so exhasted, but I'm going to go look for buildings for unaccompnied minors. Guess where they mostly came from?

I always thought that drugs funded terrorism, but I feel so much safer already knowing that terrorism won't be getting any of its funds from pistachios and saffron.

Tags: #parents #childhood #politics #refugees

This is a story about feedback...

Writing this blog has driven me deeper and deeper into the examination of the injustices and irresponsibilities of the past. The people I've targeted are ignorant, delusional and virtually illiterate.

I decided to write something else. A couple of publishers asked me to show them 10-20,000 words of a manuscript I'd written. I didn't have a manuscript, but I knew what I wanted to write.  Memoirs are egotistical, biographies are for people who are narcissists.

I've written a book that explains everything I've learned about the systems and processes, gleaned from the last 4 years: Hospital, Mental Health, Crisis Teams, Police, homelessness, unpleasant wives, parents who give up on their children, sisters who want their brothers to shut the fuck up and stop being melodramatic.

I love my Mum and I miss her, but Dad is such a cowardly domestic abuser. He expects my Mum to be a mind reader, and umpteen times a day he will says something disrespectful, unpleasant, abusive to her. That's domestic abuse.

If you want to know just how much of a coward is, he spent about an hour taking the piss out of me on the phone, so I was pretty annoyed, and I said "let's talk about this face to face, and you can say those things to my face, and let's see what happens". He's 66 years old, so it's not like I was going to fight him, I just wanted him to be brave enough to take the piss out of me to my face.

When I turned up at the house, the back door was locked. Then my Dad appeared. He made no move to open the door. I hadn't travelled for over an hour to be staring at a coward behind a door. "Come on then, let's have it. Open the door and say what you just said to my face" I said. He remained immobile.

I picked up a giant stone urn and hurled it at the window glass. The urn shattered, but the glass was merely scratched. I picked up a smaller piece to throw, and that's when a terrified looking female Police sergeant appeared. She told me to drop the piece of urn, which I immediately did. She told me to put my hands on my head and face away from the door, which I immediately did. I was cuffed and put in the back of one of the 3 Police cars that were in attendance.

It seems that my Dad is such a coward he needs 6 police officers to protect him from having a respectful chat with his own son.

All in all I think 8 or 9 officers attended. According to the sergeant, they were all very scared when I was roaring with rage for my Dad to face me like a man and have a proper chat with me. She was not expecting me to fully co-operate at all.

My book is not about what a cowardly cunt my dad is. My book is supposed to help people whose lives have not been going that well with mental illness and drug abuse, to see that it's not a downward spiral. With the help of kind, nonjudgemental people, and a belief in yourself. you can make it through some rough patches.

My Dad is a criminal. He has a criminal record (spent) for the possession of drugs. I've been caught with Cocaine, Speed, Benzos, Ecstasy and α-PVP. I have no criminal record.

Draw your own conclusions from what it means that a criminal needs the protection of 9 Police officers, from an IT consultant.

Tags: #police #parents

This is a story about the choice you didn't make...

There is an arrogance amongst ageing Westerners that I detest. There is a sense that these people somehow earned their wealth, that they worked for their place in the world, that they made smarter choices, that they avoided bad choices, that they made their own destiny. This delusional belief makes me spit with fury, rage.

I wrote a Facebook post entitled "Dear Baby Boomers" some time ago, and it really raised some heckles, but let's re-examine the whole thing, because it appears that the message really is not penetrating some very thick skulls.

The single most important deciding factor in your entire life happened before you were even born. If you were conceived in the Baby Boom generation, in the UK or USA or some other wealthy western nation, to a reasonably wealthy family (i.e. one of your parents was working, and maybe you even had a mortgage on your house) then you were quite literally born with a silver spoon in your mouth.

Let's put this in context. If you were born a hundred years earlier, if infant mortality didn't kill you, then preventable disease probably would have taken you to an early grave. Did you choose to be born after the discovery of Penicillin and the eradication of Smallpox and Polio? Did you choose to be born after the mass production of fertiliser and pesticides meant that farming yields give the West huge grain surpluses? Did you choose to be born after modern surgical techniques, such as the ligature of blood vessels and blood transfusions with the correct blood type had been developed? Did you choose where in the world you were born? Good job you didn't choose to be born in sub-saharan Africa, right?. Being born in Ethiopia would have been a pretty dumb choice wouldn't it? Good job.

Let's put things further into context for you. As part of the post-war Baby Boom generation, meant that you could expect to have a job, buy a house, get married and start having children, all with a single salary. And there would still be money left over for the flourishing practice of tourism. Yes, with each passing year, airfares as a proportion of your disposable income got less and less expensive, and the destinations got more and more exotic. Your disposable income meant you could save up money and buy a car, outright. You could own your car, and after 25 years, you could own your house. And you probably wouldn't need to be on any kind of property ladder... most Baby Boomers were able to buy family houses as their first home.

But you're grasping, and greedy and arrogant. You wanted more. You wanted an extension. You wanted two cars. You wanted three foreign holidays a year. You wanted premium bonds and high-interest savings accounts and a stock portfolio. You wanted world-class healthcare and education, provided by the state. You wanted the best of everything, and - being frankly honest - you didn't really work for it at all.

I find a 35 hour working week just a laughable concept. The fact that a whole generation were able to commute either by car or aboard uncramped public transport where they would get a seat in order to read their newspaper. A whole generation would work their 7 hours a day, with a whole hour for lunch. They would actually eat lunch and not just stuff a sandwich in their mouth while continuing to hunch over their keyboard. Then everybody would leave, en-masse at 5pm, and return home in the comfort of their car or their usual train carriage, thinking about the meal that their housewife would have prepared for them on their return. What a joke.

The Baby Boom generation is responsible for nuclear arms proliferation, an unmitigated climate catastrophe of global proportions which may condemn billions to their death, and financial profligacy of such wanton excess that the entire capitalist system, if not indeed the entire western civilisation, is teetering on the brink of collapse.

And these are supposed to be be fine minds, are they not, these arrogant fuckers? They got to go to University with full grants and no tuition fees. They got to fuck about studying to their heart's content, with somebody else picking up the bills. Yes, didn't the Baby Boomers choose to have a free University education, at the expense of future generations?

Didn't the Baby Boomers choose to drive around in those big engined cars and take all those foreign holidays, and have lovely warm centrally heated houses with crappy insulation, at the expense of future generations?

Didn't the Baby Boomers choose to grasp and grab the maximum that their greedy little mitts could get their hands on, leaving little in the pension funds for any future generations?

Didn't the Baby Boomers choose to elect politicians, and buy products from companies, that put profits and short term comfort and luxury ahead of any kind of long-term planning? Didn't the Baby Boomers choose to cover themselves in glory and pat themselves on the back, and make premature proclamations about having improved the standard of living? In fact, didn't the Baby Boomers choose to inflate their own standard of living at the expense of future generations? Yes. Yes they did.

Living standards are in decline, and it's not because young people make bad choices. It's not because young people are not smart. It's not because young people don't work hard. It's not because young people are not resourceful. It's not because young people have unreasonable expectations or they're spoilt. There is simply less opportunity, less on offer, more stress, more obstacles, more competition, fewer resources, higher costs, slimmer chances and young people have to work much much much harder than you can even imagine.

When I talk to people about how far they have to travel to get to their jobs, the conditions of public transport... it's atrocious. When a nurse has to get up at 5am, take 3 busses travelling for nearly 2 hours, to then work a 12 hour shift, and then has a journey home that's just as hard as the one they took in the morning, that's an unacceptable drop in the standard of living. When over 50% of their wage goes on rent alone. When they just quite simply don't have any disposable income because all their income goes on rent, council tax, electricity, gas and travel... how THE FLYING FUCK can you criticise them for choosing not to save money for a 'rainy day'.

Yes, you got to put money aside, because you were part of the arrogant smug generation of cunts who had your hand in the till stealing all the money. Because you didn't pay for your University eduction. Because you will be taking far more money out for your pension than you paid in. Because you didn't work very hard, and when you did work, the working conditions were slack as fuck. Yes, I'm angry about this. I'm angry that there are a whole load of sneering ignorant arrogant smug awful awful people who think that the reason why they mostly paid off their mortgage, maybe have some savings, maybe own their car, maybe have some disposable income each month... they think they fucking earned that, through smart choices and hard work, and they didn't.

Here's a smart choice for you: give away your wealth. Give it away as fast as you can. I doubt you'll even be able to give it away fast enough, because you've pissed off every subsequent generation that you stole from. You might sit in your armchair with your crappy rag of a newspaper, watching shitty TV, wallowing in your ignorance, luxuriating on your bed of lies, but there's an entire subcontinent who were economically enslaved to give you your ill-gotten lifestyle, and that wasn't enough for you... you even mortgaged the kids and the grandkids.

So, when you come to try and retire. When you come to try and cash in some of those casino chips you've been hoarding. When you ask the kids and the grandkids to carry you on their back, despite the fact that their life is shit when yours was lovely, do you think they're going to do it?

Given that we're talking about choices being the things that we're responsible for, do you think the millennials are going to choose to be responsible for your profligacy, your arrogance, your ignorance, your myopia? Are they going to pick up your trash and wipe your arse, when you kicked them and beat them up as scapegoats for your own shitty short-term gains and comfort?

Young people are being driven to emigrate, in search of a better standard of living, while at the same time, vast numbers of refugees and migrants are trying to get into the West for a better life. Meanwhile, you still expect to retire on your full pension having barely broken a sweat your whole working life? In your massive house that is far bigger than you could possibly need? Reading books, with your superior intellect from that University education that you never paid for? Overweight and full of obesity-related diseases from all the luxury food that you relentlessly push into that greedy hole in your face, but you just want more savings, more investments, more 000's on the end of your bank balance.

It's you who chooses more. More more more. More for you, less for everybody else. You're part of it. Collective responsibility.

Spend a bit less time talking about people's bad choices and a bit more time thinking about somebody who doesn't even have a choice, because of when and where they were born... which last time I checked, wasn't something you could choose at all.

Tags: #parents #politics #childhood

This is a story about living with a mood disorder...

Type II Bipolar Disorder took a long time to diagnose, despite a fairly obvious pattern of moods that can be easily traced back to adolescence. Of course, we all have mood fluctuations, but it's the extremity of those moods that qualifies something as a disorder.

I would say that hypomania was the more obvious one of of my pathological moods. Being able to concentrate and work with great intensity, with little sleep & food and a refusal to be diverted from my task, an irritability for distractions, hypersexuality, spending loads of money, risk-taking. Talking seems too slow to express your thoughts... the speed that you're thinking is too fast to explain to anybody else, to put into words. You're just a blur of activity.

It felt like driving with the hand-brake engaged for a lot of my life. I was always waiting for the next slim window of opportunity to work on something that I loved. Whether that was the Design & Technology at school, where there was never enough time to finish what I was working on before the end-of-class bell, or the lego model I was making, before it was mealtime and playtime was over.

Of course, we all have to work within a timetable, and we all have to eat & sleep, but these things always made me feel like I had to rush at everything I did as fast as I possibly could, in the hope that one day, I would complete one of my projects. I also grew incredibly frustrated with the limitations of timetables, mealtimes, bedtimes.

Switching to the world of work, there wasn't actually very much to do. Most people did very little. I ended up searching around for extra things to do.

The computer network at my first full time job ran like an absolute dog. That was because AppleTalk traffic from the office Macs and their printers was polluting the Ethernet traffic from the Sun SparcStations. I managed to talk my friend Lucas into helping me to rewire all the cables one evening.

I wish I could show you the actual images, but we weren't even supposed to be in the server room. This was a Ministry of Defence prime defence contractor with a high level of security clearance. The two junior programmers aren't supposed to go and fix all the networking problems in the office without any authorisation.

The next morning, everybody was commenting how amazingly well the network was running. Lucas & I obviously couldn't claim any credit, because we had acted without authority, but nobody was going to do a witch-hunt when everybody was so pleased that the most major problem affecting everybody in the office had been solved overnight.

That's pretty much how a person with Bipolar Disorder hides out in a corporation. You bumble along, bored, depressed, coming in late, demotivated... and then you suddenly pull something out of the bag that nobody else would risk their career to do, let alone the lack of sleep and unsociable hours.

Bosses seemed to just accept my erratic working patterns, knowing that when there was something that needed doing with an impossible deadline, that's normally around the time I'd wake up and start hacking something together.

It all kind of hung together until I started at a new company in 2008 and the project they were asking me to do was so huge, I didn't know where to begin. I was just entering a depression, which was bad timing. There was also a cultural problem, where their in-house IT staff built everything using Microsoft Excel, and any 'proper' software was built by Oracle consultants or bought off the shelf... but nobody liked those big expensive systems.

My depression got so bad I couldn't even get out of bed or stop crying randomly. I knew I wasn't going to bounce back quickly from that one. After a couple of months I quit that job and started making iPhone games in my back garden. 18 hours a day, 7 days a week. I couldn't go fast enough.

And so began a completely unstructured phase of my life. I would take on a project or interest, completely immerse myself in it for as many hours as I could stay awake, and stay obsessed with that single task until I burnt out. Then I would be depressed, and with no reason to even drag myself out of bed and go and be miserable at work, I would just be depressed all day in bed. I stopped answering my phone. I stopped answering the door. I never opened the curtains.

Being self-employed after 11 or so years of 9 to 5, Monday to Friday structure and routine, is kind of a red rag to a bull, if you have a tendency towards mood instability.

I relished those periods of hypomania. I wrote a series of iPhone games. I built a wooden summer house. I read a huge pile of books on Theoretical Physics and had lengthy email conversations with professors around the world, I wrote a mobile eLearning system and launched it at Learning Technologies conference, I decided that I wanted to be a startup founder and applied for TechStars, I learnt all about Bitcoin, bought Bitcoin miners and started mining in my summer house, I traded Bitcoin for profit, I wrote my own virtual CPU so I could attack algorithms like SHA-256, I started investigating security loopholes in things like internationalised domain names and the Google and Facebook developer platforms.

It's not long before you stray into legal grey areas though, so a lot of my projects have been shelved and I've had to go on raiding missions back to the corporate world, to stay afloat financially. These are normally timed with my hypomania, so a company gets 3 months of incredible productivity, and then a month or two of me being depressed, and then we normally go our separate ways.

My depressions have gotten worse and worse. They seem to last longer, and I've actually started to harm myself more & more. It's strange, when you emerge from a depression and enter a period of hypomania though... you can't remember just how dark those previous days were. There's no rational voice that says "hey! slow down, or else you're going to crash again!". Instead, the voice says "better go as quick as you can, because we know a crash is coming again soon".

So how do we know that depression is the pathological mood at the other pole from my hypomania? Well, I sleep. A lot. Sometimes 16 hours a day. When I'm awake I have very low energy, low motivation. I have no interest in things I'd normally find enjoyable. I don't want to see or speak to anybody. I generally think that everything is pointless, broken, useless, hopeless. Lots of negative memories keep coming into my head, and make me think "I can't believe I said/did that" with extreme regret, embarrassment, shame. I think the world would be better off without me. I start to do pros & cons of living lists, either in my head or written down. I start to think of ways to kill myself, and what affairs I would need to set in order before I committed suicide. This goes on for weeks, months.

I've written before about trying mood stabilisers and antidepressants. The side effects just aren't compatible with good quality of life. You might think that risk to life outweighs quality of life, but it doesn't, especially when you have the waves of hypomania to surf, before crashing onto the rocks of depression.

My body and my mind seems to have decided to adapt itself to this world, to this society, to this environment. We applaud the kid who busts their balls to study for their exams, and can then collapse in a heap during the school holidays. We applaud the employee who pulls the all-nighters and comes in at weekends when work is behind schedule. We applaud the 'overnight success' stories, when an impressive project is unveiled, seemingly created out of thin air, as if by magic. There is no magic. It's just an unsustainable burst of energy, focus, determination, single-mindedness and a touch of madness.

I'd like to go back to the routine I once had, pre-2009. Only I don't seem to be able to retrace my steps, yet. I know the formula that used to work, and a very dear and trusted friend urges me to take a permanent job, and he's probably right to some extent. However, if it all goes horribly wrong again, I would have earned a fraction of what I would have done in a contract.

I'm hoping I can find my little niché. Somewhere I can deliver more value than keeping a seat warm from Monday to Friday. Somewhere where the bosses are more interested in results than headcount in their empire. Pretentious? Moi?

I don't really care whether you think I should cheer the fuck up or calm the fuck down... my moods seem pretty intent on doing whatever they want to do. I've been fully aware of the calamitous consequences of not keeping my mouth shut at the right time, or not getting out of bed and doing some urgent crap. It doesn't really feel like I'm choosing even if it does look like a choice to you, as an outside observer.

This looks like a load of angst-filled teenaged immature self-centred selfish drivel. It probably is. I call it my life.

I'm probably more self-aware than you give me credit for. If you're thinking "oh my God, can you even hear what you're saying? Can you even hear yourself?" the answer is yes, yes I can. I spend a lot of time cringing and wishing things weren't so, and indeed wondering why I'm like a moth to a flame so often. I can see the train wrecks before they happen. I've plotted my mood and activity data, and the patterns are as clear as day. So what?

I'm sure there are days when you'd really like to be a bird, just soaring on the air currents above the ground, looking down on people & buildings. It doesn't matter how badly you want to be a bird. It doesn't matter how rational it seems, to become a bird and just fly right over that traffic jam that's getting in your way, it's not actually possible. That's a bit like those days when I would really like to feel normal. I can want it, but it's not actually possible. Anybody who tells you that you can stop worrying or be happy just by choosing is full of shit. You have my permission to punch them in their smug mouth.

So, I'd say my experiment with abstinence was a failed one. We need a little alcohol to calm our nerves. We need a little caffeine to perk us up. We know when we need it, and most of us know our limits. We're pretty adept creatures at tweaking our own moods. We probably need a pet for a bit of soothing oxytocin. We probably need a girl/boyfriend for a bit of serotonin and a squirt of dopamine. Other than that, we just need something to keep our minds occupied as a distraction from the inevitability of death and decay. Not God though. God is for crazy people.

Anyway, that's my two cents, on my two poles: Type II Bi-polar Disorder.

Tags: #bipolar #mentalhealth #depression #suicide #nhs

This is a story about modern life...

I missed 5 blog posts. 3 people were worried on Facebook, plus my flatmate. My sofa-surfing Kiwi has gone back to NZ.

2 of those people, I met at a hackathon, back in October. When I had to go into hospital a few weeks later, one of these new friends brought me a backpack that contained a set of hand-picked items from around my room, each thoughtfully chosen as something that I would probably need during a week or two in hospital. It felt like Christmas.

When I got really sick over the Xmas/New Year period, my other new friend came and sat on my bed and gave me a hug. He also did loads of my washing, cooked for me, and generally nursed me back to health. The most important thing he did though, was to just be thoroughly lovely. It makes a difference, somebody asking how you are and giving you a hug.

I was in a pretty bad way with muscle wastage and weight loss, having stopped eating for about 2 and a half weeks. Obviously I couldn't impose on my poor friend, with additional burdens, such as extra shopping to carry home, when he was already doing so much that was well above and beyond what any flatmate and friend would do.

Another new friend had become concerned by my lack of blog posts, and had actually come over to my flat on her own initiative. She's a very active person, with a busy life, but it so happened that she was off work... although I doubt that she pictured herself nipping to the Tesco Local for protein shakes, isotonic fluids and anything that had high calorie content. It was so kind and helpful of her that she did.

So, I just received an email from my sister. Apparently she's been getting shit from my parents, because they've read my blog and being the horribly abusive people that they are, they are taking it out their frustration with semi-illiteracy and their almost total exclusion from my life, on my poor sister.

Let's recap what wonderful parents they are, because apparently I've forgotten all the great stuff they did for me:

• Born to a couple of junkies. My mum was a student and my dad was failing to make enough money to support a family by buying and selling junk.
• Grandparents took pity on 3-year-old grandchild and bought them a house. Dad still doesn't have a proper job... too busy taking drugs.
• I spend all my time when I'm not at school in the pub, because my parents still can't afford to support a family, a drug addiction and alcoholism. Alcohol comes first.
• My Dad decides to scale up the junk buying/selling that didn't work before, so I have to leave all my playgroup and primary school friends to move to Oxford
• Between eye patches that I don't need and a yet another girl's bike with a fucking basket on it, I pretty much become the most bullied kid at school. I remember picking gravel out of my back whenever I was 'clotheslined' on the hard play area.
• My mum did take me to London a bunch of times, which was nice. We went to the Science Museum, which got me interested in science.
• Move to a school with a uniform. Turnups and the school blazer (optional) plus carry-over from previous school means the bullying continues. My mum sympathises with the bullies.
• I get a goldfish. He's called Fred. You can't stroke a goldfish. It's a shit pet, but I cry when he dies and make a little gravestone for him.
• Finally get a home computer. Not the Apple Mac like Julian and Joe have, or the PC like Barnaby, Ben, Marcus etc. etc. No... this is the last of the ZX Spectrums ever made
• Have to move school again. Great school. Bullying not quite so bad as there is an unpopular Russian boy and I'm in all the top sets and a good form group... so my parents decide we should move to France
• Some accountant friend of the family takes pity on me and gives me the oldest PC you've ever seen in your life. No software works on it, but that doesn't matter because the monitor is black and white anyway. This is my parents main gift to me: giving me something that's so unbelievably unfit for purpose that I try and try in desperation to make things work.
• Learn to speak French in France. Also didn't make any friends in the UK, and was away from all my other friends. Given the choice, I'd rather have friends than be able to speak French.
• Another new school. Bullying atrocious. Teachers are nice though. One of them takes me sailing after school... like a dad.
• Rather than leave me in a town where I can cycle everywhere and remain with my friends during puberty, we move to the middle of fucking nowhere. I write letters to my friends on floppy disks and post them to them. One friend comes to visit. One. That's it. One.
• Sailing club is good... thanks again to that teacher
• Another start at a new school ruined by the only bike that was capable of tackling the steep hills being a proper mountain bike. One that my dad stole. It was a girls bike. I had to ride past over 1,000 children all congregating on a big long pavement, before going up the steps to the school. My few sailing club friends disowned me.
• I was supposed to be saving up for another new computer, but £10 a week from a paper round doesn't leave a lot of spare money to buy replacement parts for my mountain bike, which gets used at least twice a day on very steep hills
• With a small contribution from me in cash, but absolutely huge in terms of the number of miles I cycled every day on my paper round, my Dad got me my new computer, well after its processor became obsolete. It doesn't have a co-processor or enough memory, but I figure I can upgrade those parts when I get a better job than a paper round.
• My dad bought the shittest, most rotten, neglected boat that looked totally not water-worthy. I restored it, then sold it for a big profit. Can't remember if I paid him back.
• I had a small financial contribution when I bought my 4th and 7th cars. The 7th car was brilliant, but I could have paid for it myself. I think I was only short a few hundred quid, and I was IT contracting so I was raking it in. I can't believe how my parents still say they "bought" me that car. I shall have to dig out the bank statements.
• That's it!

Oh, here are a few things that my parents like to misremember:

• They gave me one of their cars. My mum had crashed it and it had been repaired by a blind man. The thing is, it wasn't a gift. My granny had been saving money since I was really little so that I could get a car and insurance, and I would have easily been able to buy a small engined petrol car, in a low insurance group, with cheap parts... like everybody else my age. Instead, ALL the money had to go on insurance, and the shitty car broke down all the time, and because it was a complicated diesel with expensive parts, it was the world's shittest car for a broke 17 year old.
• Holidays: well, actually these were conferences for my mum, or the shitty dilapidated house in France where I was away from all my friends in the UK. My parents were always pulling me out of school, and sure it was an education and experience, but it was just what my parents wanted to do, with me along in tow. If you were going to do it anyway, it doesn't count as something you did for your kid. The fact we drove past Alton Towers so many times but never went illustrates their mindset perfectly.
• I've cost them a lot of money. Horseshit. I read books from the library or was playing round at friend's houses or somewhere I shouldn't have been. My parents never bought me the correct shoes to not get beaten up. Once I saved up the money from my granny and bought a pair of Nikes. I remember everybody commenting at school for days. I remember wanting to fall asleep just looking at them.
• They lent me money when I was in London. Nope. What they did was not lend me money when I was in London. I needed it in October 2013. Two years late is too late.

Ok, so there are myriad little things, mainly to do with cooking with my mum. My mum is really great. She did try her very best to give me a nice life. She worked hard, paid the mortgage and bankrolled my dad.

I'm trying to think of a nice memory with my dad, but it's all so practical. I was always watching him do DIY or cook but the only thing I think we learned together was when he taught me to read & write. Later, we would change the oil on a car and suchandsuch, but we never did something together, although I was allowed to come along to car boot sales, for example.

My only memory of him really taking an interest in something in my life was when I wanted to do a sponsored mountain bike ride, and I hadn't been doing the big hills for long enough to really travel all the way to the town where the event was being held, and then have much remaining energy to race.

It wasn't much more than a completely lumpy field, with a savagely steep climb, long traverse, descent and then back on the flat to the bottom of the climb again. I had no bottle cage on my bike and I was dressed in jeans, and it was a pretty hot day. People were laughing at this kid in jeans with a touring helmet, no other safety gear, on a girls bike.

When the race started, I left everybody who had "all the gear but no idea" behind. The traverse was quite tricky, especially without toeclips. The descent was suicidal on a fully rigid bike, but I started to lap quite fast.

The more the laps went by, the more of the skilled but unfit riders fell away. The ascent really was a killer in that heat. Anyway, I decided I'd better stop after quite a few laps, because I was feeling really badly dehydrated, and I was sick of getting flies in my eyes.

My dad was gobsmacked. I can't remember where I finished, but from his point of view, I was just lapping everybody over and over and over again. He took me to the bike shop in the nearby town and bought me a pair of clear cycling glasses for the flies, mud and stones, plus a bottle cage and bottle so I could carry a drink with me.

Perhaps if I racked my brains I could think of something else, but getting complemented on my riding, and then him making a further investment - unprompted - to allow me to take my hobby further, was a special moment.

So, my sister's pretty pissed off with me, but I can't understand why. My dad conspired with my wife and my GP to drag me away from my home, my life was dismantled, and the one time in my adult life when I did actually need and want their help - and it had been offered - they reneged on their promise in October 2013, and bang went my best chance to put my life back together in London, thanks to their lies.

I've not really altered the formula, and it's really quite simple:

• Place to live (not a hostel, tent, or shop doorway)
• Job (I'm an IT contractor. Thanks for your offer of [insert low wage job] but it would be uneconomical of me to not focus my search on highly paid contracts)
• Enough money for any cashflow shortfall until the 60+ days it takes before I get paid are done, plus I've absorbed the hit of the 6 weeks deposit, 1 month rent & agent fees
• I'm afraid that I'm so profligate that I replace my suit every 5 years, and my overcoat every 12 yeas. Shoes, I'm afraid I throw away when the shoe repair man laughs in my face. Shirts, I replace when the collar is worn through and it's horribly yellow under the arms.

There are certain things that people in London don't do either:

• They don't walk for 2 or 3 hours. They get the tube. That costs over £5 a day
• They don't bring a thermos flask of coffee into the office. Coffee is a £6 a day habit, but a necessary social visit
• They don't bring a picnic basket, get the blanket out, lay it down on the office floor, sit down and start getting foil-wrapped cucumber sandwiches out. Lunch is a £5 a day habit
• They don't drink much water. Sometimes they drink fizzy drinks. Sometimes they drink a kale, ginger and apple smoothie. Drinks are a £3 a day habit
• They don't have home-brew kegs hidden under their desks. When a Londoner goes for an after work drink, which is pretty much a social necessity, they will spend £5 a pint or more
• They don't work the longest hours in Europe and travel on a packed tube train to then get home, travel back in time, and start making fresh pasta and picking basil leaves in the garden they don't have. Your economy Londoners will buy fresh pasta and pesto, and will even push the boat out for a bit of parmesan: cost £7. Some days, you're at work so late that you might even get a luxury stonebaked pizza sent to the office, or failing that, you'll probably pick up a takeaway on the way home, because you're just going to fall asleep as soon as you've eaten: cost £15.
• They don't live in Zone 99. The zones go 1-2-middle-of-fucking-nowhere-99-100. Yes, it's true that you can save 50p a year on rent by living in Zone 99, but it will cost you over a million pounds for a travel card that goes out that far. It would also be quicker to just get a jet or a helicopter to City Airport if you're that far out.
• They don't all take loads of coke. Yes, it's true that there is some drug taking in the capital, but I bet there are good statistics to show that a far greater percentage of people are on drugs in the provinces, because it's so fucking dull out there.
• They don't fret about saving 7 pence on a loaf of mouldy bread, or consider it profligate to buy popcorn at the cinema, because wages are so much higher and you'll be working too hard to do all the stuff that you have to do to entertain yourself in the provinces on your meagre wage

So, anyway, I've shown my magic formula works. I know what I need to get back into work, routine, friendships and get on an even keel financially, so that I never ever have to explain to a dimwitted out-of-towner why the cost of living initially looks quite high.

However, my sister has a shit job, got pregnant with kid they couldn't afford, went through a divorce, lives in midlands suburbia and generally acts with incredulity that I could maybe have found it a bit stressful trying to re-enter London life on a credit card, living in a hostel.

I had said that my sister & niece were the only thing keeping me alive when I was in hospital. My life is fucked, the cashflow doesn't work, I'm not very well, I still haven't got a contract and there are now further delays. I know what'll happen... I'll get a nice big money contract, but after a month I'll be bankrupt, and my money will still be 30 days away at least. If I take it all out as soon as I can, then it means I'm not maximising my dividends, and it means I have to live on 33% of my income, instead of 100%. That means the stress carries on, month after month after month. But, apparently everybody's an expert in accountancy and cashflow forecasting now.

Apparently one of my sister's friends has it so much harder than me or something. Anyway, they're dead now. I'm just being a martyr or something. According to my sister and parents it's really easy to blag your way into a mental hospital, and slicing lengthways down my forearms with a razor blade was some kind of emotional blackmail, or maybe it was melodramatic... I don't give a shit anymore.

I literally think that you are a grade-A douchecanoe if you have no idea just how hard it has been to survive in London with no parental or state support, when I was completely fucked.

A big part of me says "fuck it". I was a homeless bankrupt drug addict in a park one day, and then you expect it to be all fixed in 5 months because I managed to get a flat, and a job. Then you only choose to help me when I'm hospitalised, suicidal. And then after it's already too late you say it's blackmail.

Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you.

Can't be bothered.

Why bother?

You have absolutely no idea how hard it's been to work my way back from the brink and just how carefully I've had to budget, and how cleverly I've done my accounting.

I really didn't want to write another thing about my parents. They're dead to me. But to hear my sister echoing their lies is heartbreaking, and to receive a lengthy message telling me things that are just total bullshit, and saying "I'm sorry, but I don't want to be anywhere near you".

That's just fucking awful. OK, so I've poured out my anger at my parents for forcefully removing me from my own home so my ex could cheat on me, generally backing her up, and then totally fucking me over when they had their chance to make good on something helpful. It's something I have been trying forgive and forget but they're never going to re-enter my life. They have no interest in it anyway. My dad didn't even want to come in my London house and meet my London friends, despite being parked right outside.

My sister says I should ask if I need help. My parents don't do anything until it's too late: I'll either be dead or in hospital.

That's not emotional blackmail. That's getting rid of some worthless cunts from your life.

I'm absolutely heartbroken that my sister has been taken in by their bullshit. We had been talking about her visiting London and her getting a matching semicolon tattoo.

Fuck life

Tags: #parents #childhood #sister #career #london #suicide #depression

This is a story about blowing off steam...

While the world gets on with its life, I seem to have one foot in the grave, or to be stuck in the past. Apologies for the self-absorption. I'm trying to move forwards, but it turns out there's quite a lot of stuff I needed to work through.

Many people might view me as a 'keyboard warrior'. Somebody who is far more aggressive and outspoken when protected behind a computer screen. I think you'll find that I don't really tone things down face to face, but when people read what I write they certainly interpret it as being quite angry.

It's hard to infer emotion from writing. I tend to use a mix of humour and sarcasm, as well as writing down explicitly what emotions I'm feeling, if they're strong enough to warrant recording in the text, as I write. Perhaps I'm just impervious to my emotions a lot of the time though. I'm mostly very calm when I'm writing.

I'm acutely aware just how self-absorbed I have become, and I certainly need a bit of a reality check. The fact of the matter is that I'm pretty exhausted, depressed, stressed and anxious. Writing doesn't seem to have brought any relief yet, but when suicide and drug abuse are places that your mind can wander to, it's good to have a distraction.

I reviewed what I wrote so far, and it's interesting to see a pronounced dip in quality, as I started to self-destruct over the Christmas and New Year period. I can really see my writing get sloppy and thoughts get jumbled. The writing up to that period was quite repetitive though, quite laboured.

It must be fairly obvious to any independent observer, that whatever I turn my hand to, I will get excessively involved with. If I start going to the gym, I will train far too hard and push my body too far. If I get into a new sport or hobby, I will obsessively learn everything about it and just pursue that one thing, to the exclusion of everything else in my life. If I get a new job, I will be so passionate about it that it will become very personal. I will be super dedicated to whatever I do.

Is the explanation for this behaviour simply that I am transferring my addict's habits into different kinds of activity? The repetition, the obsessiveness, the single-minded pursuit of one goal... it all smacks of addiction.

So, am I addicted to writing? Am I addicted to telling my story? Am I addicted to sensationalism and attention seeking? Am I addicted to the little dopamine hit I get for every Facebook like, Twitter retweet and Reddit upvote? Yeah. Probably.

But, at the same time, writing is immensely useful for recovery. I'm not sure I could have gone from the end of October to the end of January with no job and only one lapse, without the continuity of this blog. It's also served one its original purposes of keeping people informed, letting people know whether I'm afloat or whether I'm sinking. Even a simple "signs of life" as one caring friend put it.

I write for me, but it is meaningful who takes the time to respond. When somebody I haven't really been in contact with for a long time indicates that they've read something I've written, there is initially a gut-wrenching realisation that they've probably had their eyes opened to a side of my character that they never knew, then there is a pleasing sense that there is still an ongoing connection between us, as friends whose contact has dwindled over the difficult years.

It's interesting the responses that my writing has prompted from friends and strangers alike. People have shared some things with me, that I will keep completely confidential, but have really helped me to realise that we're all putting a brave face on things a lot of the time. Everybody has an untold tale behind their stoic exterior. The happiest, smiliest, 'life is perfect' type people have connected with something in my writing and shared some quite shocking truths about their own wayward journey through life.

Don't read a book by it's cover. Does a blog really have a cover? I suppose "manic" is quite a provocative title. It's interesting that you could dip in at any moment in time and dependent on the phase of writing, you could assume that I'm a junkie, sex addict, suicidally depressed, pissed off with my job, happy with my job, pissed off with my parents, had an unhappy childhood, had an interesting childhood, was a domestic abuse perpetrator, was a domestic abuse victim, had a shitty divorce and am completely bat shit insane, with long unintelligible monologues about some half-baked ideas in theoretical physics that don't really add up to a hill of beans.

Is it so different from the sumtotal of my Facebook status updates? I generally get the impression that the world has kids, babies, cats, dogs, cars, holidays and dubious politics, from what I can see on the Facebook walls of my friends. Who knew?

There are a lot of social commentators saying that this eruption of social media sharing of our innermost thoughts and feelings is leading to an addiction to Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat etc. etc. and that we're headed for some kind of armeggedon because of it.

Having been somebody who has written on forums under my own name for the best part of 14 years, I have only ever felt the benefit of human connection, even if it has been computer-assisted. With the kitesurfing/kiteboarding forums, we used to meet up every Tuesday and every weekend. I've made some of my very best friends through forums and the social ties that the forums enabled.

When you have to get through a long working week, your job isn't particularly challenging, you're a bit jaded and cynical and sick of the 9 to 5 drudgery, there's nothing quite like a forum to while away your 37.5 hours a week. I made it a personal mission to read every forum post, and respond whenever I could.

A life lived online is a bit strange, but I've been all over the world with people who I met online. Electronic communication is creating social cohesion where otherwise there would only be urban solitude. Unless you live in some 1950's throwback community, where you know your neighbours and you leave your doors unlocked and let your kids play with the dodgy looking guy in the raincoat, then you probably live most of your life in social isolation, beyond the members of your household, and a small group of people who you go out of your way to stay in regular contact with.

Most of us probably have a certain day or a time that we speak to our mums. Most of us probably have people that we regularly speak to online or a regular social get together. Most of us probably have a group of friends that we regularly meet up with at weekends, and see in the pattern of our daily lives: the school run, the kids birthday parties, the meals out with a network of friends, celebrating some event or other. Plus there are the people at work. You know how many kids they have, and some vague things about what's happening in each of their lives. You have an established social routine with your work colleagues.

If you're a bit of an oddball like me, you don't really fit in. For a long time, I was a lot more senior than people my age. When I started my career, I was the young kid with poor social skills and a bad dress sense. Later, I was the golden boy who was trying to do the same thing as his peers - have a nice settled little life with a family and a lovely home - but was roughly the same age as the group who were partying and generally having fun.

This disjoint has meant that as my boring old person life fell to bits, it was just about at the same time as my younger friends were all getting big houses and having babies. My older friends now have kids who are going to big school. My younger friends are up to their elbows in nappies.

I guess it happens to everybody. There are waves of engagements, marriages, house purchases, babies and then come the divorces. Thankfully, not too many of my friends have started dropping dead yet.

Everybody is so darn busy, and working so darn hard. Apparently, life is supposed to be taxing on parents with two kids. Life is optimised to bleed the parents dry, of their time, energy and money of course. If you're not flat broke, exhausted and don't have a minute to yourself to sit down and read a newspaper, you're not trying hard enough.

Sorry if that sounds condescending or anything... I have no idea what it must be like having copulated for 30 seconds and now having a screaming, shitting, vomiting thing that can't look after itself and you'll be chucked in jail if you hide it in the oven.

My views are probably quite obnoxious to many people. Certainly a recurrent theme is parenting. I'm very hard on my parents, and sure there are a lot of people who say "I'm sure they did the best they knew how to do" and I'm not going to re-iterate the fact that sitting around on your arse taking drugs is a bit stupid, when you're supposed to be childrearing. I certainly see a lot of smiles on the kids faces that get posted onto Facebook, and I know that my sister is doing a great job with my niece, so I certainly don't think that my friends and sister are doing a bad job.

It must seem very annoying and pathetic that I'm complaining about my lot in life, and being so self-absorbed and selfish, sitting around writing crap about "woe is me!" and so oh-so difficult life is for me, me, me. Sorry about that. I must be doubly difficult when you're struggling to make ends meet financially, and you're stressed about little Oliver's violin recital, and whether Hermione's going to get into that grammar school. I'm sure you hate your job too. I'm sure you'd love to have a breakdown and be in bed for 14 hours a day exhausted, shaking like a wreck.

Yes, I do claim that I don't feel entitled, but I'm certainly able to some extent, to spend some time thinking about the past and wallowing in self-pity. I have no dependents. I didn't spawn any gene cloning machines that I'm trying to protect from the wolves in the forest. I'm not being smug. I'm actually jealous. I can see that it's pretty exhausting and terrifying, having 'skin in the game' but I can also see those chests swelling with pride and those eyes lighting up with delight at your beautiful children. I don't get any cuddle time with my offspring that I don't have.

So, life looks a lot simpler for the single guy with no kids, but in a way, my life is less dictated by the demands of feeding, clothing and schooling of any infants, which means I kind of have to find a reason for living, every day.

I hope you don't hate me for saying I have to decide what I'm going to do every day. I'm sure you have a long list of things you'd love to do, if you had the time. My life is not exactly like that... I don't wake up and think "shall I learn to waterski today, or should I go to Mexico?". However, I don't wake up and think "I have to get the kids dressed and make them breakfast" just like every morning for the next 18 years.

I can't decide whether having made a rational decision to defer parenthood was a mistake. It would be interesting to compare some kind of objective quality-of-life scores with my peers who made different choices, but I suspect that things would be comparable, as I know that many of my friends have suffered with depression and anxiety just as much as me, despite being mummies and daddies. I know that many of my friends are just as cheesed off with the work they do, and it's making them unwell.

Anyway, we're all slowly inching our way to the grave, like it or not. One thing's for certain with life: death will follow hot on its heels.

Yeah that's lava going in the sea. Salt water cleanses everything, especially tears

Tags: #depression #parents

This is a story about dying while doing something you love...

Please forgive the gallows humour. I find death quite darkly comic, having lived in its shadow for far too long.

I found myself in possession of a year's supply of Supercrack once. It cost me less than $150 including shipping. A whole year of drug abuse, in one little baggie. Addiction never leaves your side. You can go anywhere you want, but you can't escape yourself.

Having a year's supply of your drug of choice should be an addict's wet dream, right? Well, it depends on the nature of your addiction. If you're still managing to eat and sleep, then perhaps you will make it to the end of the year. If you're not eating or sleeping, then you're simply committing suicide, slowly.

When I was trapped in an abusive relationship and kept away from London, I had given up on life. I was dying. I used to occasionally get scared of death, and clean up my act for a few weeks, but then I would always relapse, because of the same old abusive relationship and isolation from the city I call home.

I finally made it back to London, but there was pointless crap dragging me back into things that were far less important than saving my life.

That's a letter I received, in my mother's handwriting, hassling me about some divorce paperwork that could have waited until I had completed the treatment that I was undergoing to save my life. I had explicitly stated that I didn't want my wife or parents to be in any form of contact with me, while I was trying to get better. During this second attempt, I explicitly forbade my wife and parents from having any contact with me or the professionals who were paid to take care of me.

It was time to get better, get away from the s**ts who nearly hounded me to my grave. It was time to move on. It was time to recover.

Eventually, the vultures f**ked off and thankfully I had enough money left to pay the deposit on a flat and the first couple of months rent and bills, so I could get myself settled, get into a new job etc. etc.

I rented a room in a shared house near some friends in Kentish Town. My time up to this point had been wasted on pointless divorce crap that could have been deferred. I had been relentlessly harassed. Also, having my leg in plaster cast and being on crutches didn't help. My treatment was ruined by people not respecting my wishes. I was in a worse state than ever.

I hobbled into my new room and collapsed. I spent a week crying myself to sleep, I was so exhausted by the trauma of everything that had gone before. I had just about enough money left to make a go of things, but not quite. Everything had to go perfectly.

I had resolved not to commit suicide in my friends' house, where I was a guest, as it would have been a very unpleasant legacy to leave behind in somebody's home. They seemed committed to making that house their forever home, so there was no way I could do that to them.

After moving out and having a week where I felt that I didn't have the reserves of strength and money to continue, I decided to shut up shop. I decided to commit suicide.

The final straw was when my Dad tried to poison my friend's opinion of me, with his warped version of events. People were talking behind my back, and my confidentiality and consent to share information were completely breached. The place where I had spent the best part of £8k on treatment became some kind of counsellor and general centre for misinformation for my parents, despite explicit instructions that they weren't allowed contact.

I took a massive overdose and collapsed on the floor. The three metal prongs of a plug were sticking painfully into my thigh, but I couldn't move. The hot transformer for my laptop was burning my abdomen, scorching the skin, but I couldn't move. My arms were in the most uncomfortable position, but I couldn't move. The weight of my head rested uncomfortably on my chin, with my neck extended very awkwardly, but I couldn't move.

When you have taken an overdose, and you realise that it's overwhelming you, you start to panic. Can you make yourself throw up, if you've swallowed your poison? You know that it's too late... the chemicals are already entering your bloodstream and vomiting will make no difference. There was a moment's regret, and then resignation.

My body spasmed and twitched for quite a long time. There were a lot of auditory disturbances (I heard weird things). My mind kinda went blank for ages, or was caught up with weird confused thoughts. Then it dawned on me that I was alive but still on collision course with death. Day turned to night, and night turned to day, and so on. About 4 days went by with me paralysed like that... just breathing, and my body spasming.

I then started to think about death. I started to consider the possibility that I was going to discover if there was an afterlife or not. I started to think how embarrassed I would be to meet some deity who I never believed in. I didn't start believing in any god, but I considered how sheepish I would be if I met my maker.

Next, I started to think about the waste of it, the waste of life. Not that I was wasting my life, but that there was nothing positive that was going to come from my death. I started to consider how I could leave a message that would somehow prove useful to those who survived me. I started to consider how frustrating it would be to discover something in death, but have no way to pass on that discovery to the living world.

I started to imagine a weird experiment, where two suicidal people would risk their lives to discover if it's possible to communicate from beyond the grave. They would be in two isolated chambers, each with a keyboard. There would be a randomly timed event that would kill them, but they would get about a minute's warning before they were about to be killed. They would then type messages, and only in the event that the messages were co-incidentally the same, would the time be extended.

Eventually, one of the experimenters can type no more and rushes out of the experiment exit to safety. The other experimenter is killed. When the messages are later examined, we can see that the co-incidence of the messages being the same is immensely unlikely, but yet there were a sequence of messages that were identical, despite death being inevitable at that point.

Don't worry, I didn't decide to start a cult with a suicide pact. I did however decide that dying alone, leaving no note or anything was rather silly. I summoned the strength to claw myself off the floor and onto my bed, where I lay in agony for some time.

I urinated into a pint glass - I was virtually immobile - and saw that my urine was cloudy and the colour of orange juice with a lot of blood in it. My organs had started to shut down. My thigh was a painful mess from the plug that had dug into it, and my abdomen was burnt from the laptop transformer. My kidneys hurt and my tummy was tender and painful. My muscles were weak as hell. I had a lot of fluid on my lungs and my chest was tight. Breathing was difficult.

I decided to try and make death a bit quicker by severing my jugular vein, but my blood pressure was so low and it was actually really hard for me to even find a pulse. I kept blacking out with orthostatic hypotension.

Later, my ex-girlfriend discovered me in this dreadful state, and got me to the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead, where the hard-working lovely people of the NHS saved my life.

Here's the view I woke up to, from my hospital bed. I was quite surprised to wake up (May 2014)

Tags: #addiction #suicide #divorce #depression #london #nhs #injury

This is a story about rehab...

What's the difference between detox, rehab and inpatient treatment for mental health disorders? Very little actually. Here's my little exposé into being a patient of the UK's most notorious private drug and alcohol abuse treatment provider.

As far as my medical records show, I was admitted to The Priory for treatment for Type II Bipolar Disorder, during an episode of acute illness. My private health insurance picked up the bill and JPMorgan gave me the time and the space to get better. They're a great employer actually.

I had found a local private psychiatrist, as I was running out of ideas for how to deal with my Dual Diagnosis (Bipolar & substance abuse) and I knew that the stats weren't good. Not many people recover from such a death sentence of a diagnosis.

I was very lucky to find the psychiatrist that I did. I had been trying to get in contact with a number of specialists directly, but things were very slow going during the Xmas/New Year period, when a lot of people suffer a big decline due to the bad weather and family pressure to put a jolly face on everything during the holiday season.

I contacted a general psychiatrist at the local private hospital, and he turned out to be one of the nicest, kindest people I could ever have hoped to meet. It was pure relief to meet somebody nonjudgemental who would hear my story without leaping to immediate conclusions. The first time I met him, he simply said "we can only play the cards we are dealt" which had me in floods of tears, as it was the first time that anybody had ever said something so kind to me.

I had been taking quite a kicking from my supposed loved ones - but I'm not going to go into that anymore - and been made to feel very guilty and a total failure for having gotten sick. It should be noted that I became clinically depressed and suicidal before any substance abuse entered the picture. Bipolar symptoms had always been present in my life, but it took a further 2 years to get diagnosed. Then, finally, substance abuse reared its ugly head and became the most pressing issue.

From my point of view, I had struggled for years and years with recurrent suicidal ideation, suicide plans. I have struggled all my life with mood instability. To be simply dumped in a bucket labelled 'lost cause addict' was a bit s**t to be honest, after 30 odd years of reliable good service, despite fairly debilitating mental health problems.

Perhaps I'm complaining too much, making too much of a big thing of my struggles? Yes, yes, yes, there are people who've had it so much harder than me, blah, blah, blah. Ok, unless you've sliced your forearms multiple times, lengthways along your veins, with a razor blade, do me a favour and shut up? Some of my friends are wonderfully supportive and have gone out of their way to learn about mental health problems. Perhaps you could follow their example?

So you think this is attention seeking? Save it for the funeral.

It's true that it's taking me a while to work up the bravery to take the Final Exit. Ending your life is a big deal, and you've got to do it right, otherwise you're just going to end up in hospital in pain.

I've had cans of inert gas to suffocate myself, 2 grams of Potassium Cyanide, enough barbiturates to slip into a coma and drown in my hot tub while unconscious, travelled to the top of tall buildings, cliffs and peered over the edge of high bridges. The most serious attempt I made was trying to open my veins with a razor blade. I must admit though, I was just testing the water. You want to make sure that you open some major veins, like the jugular, if you want to die quickly.

Stupidly, I still have hope and some faith in myself. I should write myself off for dead, like those-who-shall-not-be-named have done.

So it came to pass that I went into The Priory, with a referral to one of the country's leading experts on Bipolar Disorder and Dual Diagnosis. JPMorgan were told that I was experiencing mental health problems (true) but the main objective was for me to detox for 28 days, so that there was a clearer clinical picture, and the treatment of my Bipolar and depression could begin.

That makes me an addict right? Don't need to read the rest of the story. Skip to the end. Case closed.

Well, actually, The Priory and my psychiatrists were concerned with my mental health, and saving my life, not just labelling me as an addict and sticking me into the revolving doors of mistreatment and stigma that those suffering individuals endure. The Priory is actually a private hospital, and cares primarily for those suffering with various mental health disorders that are less controversial and stigmatised than substance abuse. There were ten times as many patients who were there because of depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, borderline personality disorder, eating disorders etc. etc.

It's actually all part and parcel of the same group of problems. One fellow patient had been admitted with mental health issues, but out of some drive to self-destruct, she started filling up a mug with alcohol-based hand sanitising gel and flavouring it with orange squash, and drinking it to get drunk.

One of my fellow patients tried to commit suicide by climbing a high wall and hurling herself off, while I was there. Does it matter if she was being treated for depression, or for substance abuse? The fact of the matter is that she was suicidal at that moment. Mental illness of some kind had driven her to try and take her own life.

There was a game we used to play, when a car used to roll up to the house, and out would step the worried looking family members, dragging some dishevelled son, daughter or partner out of the back seat and into a meeting about admission. We used to try and guess what they would be admitted for. Sometimes it was obvious - if they had red wine all spilt down their clothes for example - but often it was nearly impossible.

But what's it actually like, in private hospital? Are there rock stars and stuff? Well, my doctors had treated a number of high-profile sportsmen and women, but when I was there, there weren't any rock stars. Couple of millionaires but no rock stars.

Really, it's much like an NHS mental hospital, except a little more well appointed. Everything is bolted down and the windows don't open and the doors don't lock. The lights don't dangle down and there are no curtains. Mirror glass is made of plastic, and pictures are screwed to the wall, not hung. Yes, there is quite a lot of anti-hanging thought that has gone into things.

When you arrive, you will hand over your razor, scissors, tweezers, solvent containing toiletries, shoelaces, belt etc. to the nurses to keep at their station. If you want to have a shave you'll have to ask for permission, and you'll only get a short amount of time to attack your face with something sharp.

Plus, it's still a hospital, and people are very sick. One woman said to me "it's OK, your secret is safe with me" and tapped her nose with a knowing wink. It later emerged that she thought I was a royal prince, and that my presence in hospital was a state secret. She also came into my room and stole all my underwear and my books, before the nurses tracked down her hiding place.

The rooms are actually as good as any 3-star hotel, with a writing desk, nice view of the gardens, an OK single bed and an ensuite with no shower curtain or plug (drowning is frowned upon). Once you're off suicide watch, you might get to move to one of the double bedrooms that are further away from the nurse's station.

Other than the slight refinement of having a TV and a telephone in your bedroom, there is little different from NHS mental health treatment. The food was very good, I have to say, but your days are generally structured around morning and afternoon trips to the dispensary hatch for your medications, and being regularly checked on by nurses if you're not in some group activity.

Between art therapy, yoga, mindfulness, music therapy, table tennis, TV, movie night and generally socialising with the other patients, it all sounds like a thoroughly lovely spa break. There was a gym and quite big grounds that one could roam in, provided you told the nurses where you were going and how long you'd be gone for. Leaving the compound within my 28 days was forbidden.

Your partner can come and visit you, and you can give a knowing wink at the nurses station before you have sex, so that nobody barges in on you unannounced. Just don't take too long. Visiting is only on a Sunday, so you'll probably have a sack like Santa anyway. You have to hand over your mobile phone and laptop, and digitally detox, so pornography is hard to come by. Probably because sex addiction is also treated at the hospital.

We should remember that although people talk about 'rehab' we need to be quite clear about the treatment route of substance abuse. There is first a detox. It's necessary to break the body's dependence on substances, and treat the withdrawal. If you are an alcohol or a benzodiazepine abuser, there's a good chance that withdrawal could kill you, so the hospital will put you on tapered medication to get you off those substances. If you are an opiate abuser, you will get very sick from withdrawal symptoms, and these can be attenuated with substitute prescribing or by putting the patient into induced sleep. If you are a stimulant abuser, you will suffer cognitive impairment, exhaustion and suicidal depression.

After detox, which could take the whole 28 days, then comes rehabilitation. Depending on how dysfunctional a person has been, they could need 3 to 6 months of rebuilding their damaged life in a safe environment. Just breaking the cycle of chemical dependency is not enough. There's a reason why a person entered that cycle in the first place. There's a reason why that person stayed in that cycle.

We know that gambling addicts don't inject packs of cards into their veins, so addiction can't just be about chemical substances, can it?

So it was, as my time at The Priory drew to a close, the staff gave me the bad news that my treatment was incomplete. I would need another 3 months of rehab if I wanted to make the changes permanent. I flipped out. I discharged myself, went home for a day. Then I spoke to one of the staff on the phone and decided to go back for the remaining few days of treatment. She-who-shall-not-be-named decided that I had "failed" in my commitment to getting better. That's simply a lack of understanding about the commitment that is needed to support somebody in recovery.

Recovery is not about abstinence, it's about having people who love you trying to support you. Support does not mean hectoring, bullying, nitpicking and generally being obnoxious to a person. Your holier-than-thou drinking and smoking and generally behaving like it's OK to do whatever you want and laughing in the face of the abstainer is not helpful, OK?

Abstinence doesn't even work anyway. It's just a continual reminder of what people want to believe: that you're somehow a bad person, that you're faulty, defective. People want to treat you differently, want to label you. Teetotallers are ridiculed, treated with contempt. Why bother being teetotal?

Certainly, not being a smoker was a problem in hospital. There would be long periods where I was left all on my own, because everybody was outside smoking. There is no real abstinence in the world. I found the nurse's stash of caffeinated coffee in one of the more remote kitchens, and in some hospitals you are even allowed to have caffeinated drinks. 'Addicts' are encouraged to not give up smoking and tea/coffee, because they will need those things as a crutch, during those early days of abstinence.

If you look a little more closely at human behaviour, you will see that people are self medicating in one way or another. You'll see the hypocrites, dosing themselves up with stimulants in the form of caffeine. You'll hear the hypocrites, being hypocritical about addiction inbetween puffs on their cigarette. You'll suffer the hypocrites, swallowing their pills and liquids they have as government sanctioned, medically approved substitute addictions.

I could go to my doctor and get a prescription - called a script in addict parlance - for something to salve my addiction and turn it into something seemingly acceptable in society. It's OK if my pills come in boxes from the pharmacy, with my name printed on them and with a prescription from my GP or psychiatrist?

If I had to go to work at the moment I would probably need some Dexamphetamine, or at least a gallon of super strong black coffee. Because I've used so many stimulants, I can drink heaps of coffee without having the anxiety, palpitations and sweats that you would get, but it's a poor substitute for genuine amphetamines, even if the caffeine molecule is virtually identical.

There's no magic in treatment. There's no magic to recovery. It's just time & space and being treated nicely by people, being respected as a human being.

It's important to respect people.

Just respect people.

Tags: #addiction #alcohol #drugs #suicide #mentalhealth #nhs #bipolar #depression

This is a story about discovering yourself...

Nostalgia is a liar that tells us that there was a bygone era when things were better than they are today. It tells us that despite a lack of antibiotics, immunisation, modern surgical techniques, telephones, internet, jet aircraft and reliable fuel-economical automobiles, there is something that we're missing from the pre-war years.

The fact is, that most people didn't have enough to eat, struggled to stay warm & dry and lived in fear of preventable diseases, which killed a huge proportion of people. Manual labour and low standards of health & safety killed men early. Childbirth and a lack of family planning killed women early. Infant mortality rates were stupendously high. Life was short & shit.

There's no point in looking backwards to those times. There's no point in stuffing your house full of antiques and dressing your children like some Dickens pastiche. There's no point in preaching a values system that probably never existed. You might like to believe that there was a time when there was more respect, more order. Do you think that the whip, cane and the gallows were never used? Even with corporal and capital punishment as deterrents, people still stepped out of line.

You might bemoan unruly or even ferral children, and imagine that there was a time when kids "behaved themselves". In fact, it is you who is delusional. Children are not dollies and mannequins. Children are not there for you to play dressing up games with, and to robotically comply with your instructions. They are little people, with their own identities.

The sooner that you accept that we live now, not yesteryear, the better. Your child does not have some imagined Victorian values stored hidden inside them. Your child exists as they do, today. They are shaped by this very moment, not your flights of fancy, nor your imagination.

Sure, as a parent, you have some preprogrammed delusions. You will always believe your baby is the bonniest. You will always think your child is the most adorable, the smartest, the one destined for success. No, probably not.

It's a good idea to back your kid up, to be on their side, to fight their corner. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with that. It all goes a bit skew-whiff when you start using your kid to live out your own fantasies though, getting your kid to compensate for your own inadequacies. If you didn't do well at school, pushing your kid too hard to be the academic that you failed to be will never fix your past failure.

And so it came to pass, that I arrived at the age of 17 without the foggiest idea of who I was as a person. I was quite clear about two different imaginary people that my parents wanted me to be, and just how much contradiction and impossibility there was in realising their fantasies. However, I hadn't the faintest idea of what shape my own personality took.

Discovering the drug, Ecstasy, allowed me to feel self-love and explore my feelings for myself. It also gave me a strange identity, bound up with drugs, dancing and music. I was a clubber/raver. I knew who I was on a Saturday night, in a sweaty railway arch, cutting shapes in the air and with pupils like saucers, high as a kite on MDMA. The rest of the time was dead to me. I was just counting down the hours, minutes and seconds until the next weekend.

This was clearly not a sustainable and complete identity, and my self-esteem was still at absolute rock bottom. In this vulnerable phase in my development, I slept with my male boss, believing - hoping even - that I was possibly gay. Turns out that I'm not gay. Shame. Life could have possibly slotted into some order, as at least there is some strong identity in being camp and effeminante, as a man.

The next cruel twist of vulnerability was to see me get involved romantically with an achondroplastic dwarf. She's one of the nicest girls you could ever hope to meet, and I really hope her feelings aren't hurt if she reads this, but she was quite aggressive in her advances. As I was completely lacking in self-confidence, I struggled to assert myself. I went along with things. I complied.

It's a bit strange, dating somebody that you're not attracted to, but I guess it's no different from my experiments with homosexuality. It's just that she was less unpleasant to kiss than somebody whose face is covered in stubble. Being f**ked in the arse is tolerable, but not exactly pleasant. This girl at least didn't want to penetrate me with some part of her body.

This strange little life had formed itself. I switched myself off during the week and went into hibernation. Then at the weekends I would take Ecstasy, and under the influence of this chemical, my feelings became much more fungible. It's easier to believe you have fallen for somebody, under the influence of the 'love drug'.

I guess I always maintained some toe-hold in reality though. I always knew that my feelings were being psychopharmacologically pulled this way and that, and I knew deep down that something felt very wrong.

It takes a long time to fix broken self-esteem and for you to emerge from the oppression of people who never allowed you to have your own identity. My own tastes had never been allowed to develop. I had never gained the skills of choosing my own clothes and outfits. I didn't know how to dress.

My hair was unruly and an inconvenience. I didn't like its style, but I had no idea how I wanted it to be cut. I had no idea how to tame my wavy locks. It's only because of an outdoors lifestyle, that I arrived at the shorter cut that I wear today.

IT contracting gave me the money to attain status symbols like a nice car, which I'm ashamed to admit, helped my self-esteem to some extent. Becoming some twat who is rather pleased with himself because he's rich and successful in those materialistic measures was not a road that I would have liked to continue down though. It was rather offensive to be flashing the cash to compensate for crushing inadequacy.

It was London that eventually gave me the space and the time to develop my own style, my own precious identity. It was tough going. One very bullying housemate drove me to the very limit of what I could endure, before she finally pissed off. Oh, what sweet relief! To finally be living in the Angel Islington, as a well dressed young man in a job that I was good at, with a healthy circle of friends and acquaintances. It was bliss.

The combination of corporate identity midweek - nice suit and crisply pressed shirts - with a surf style at the weekends, coupled with my newfound love of kiteboarding, really sealed the deal. I felt like a complete person, and for the first time in my life, age 23, I actually asked a girl out on a date.

I was still crushingly insecure, but I mostly muddled through because I was busy and I was optimistic and positive. I bungled a lot of the growing up, and failed to see the opportunity for bed-hopping for what it was, and instead continued to think I was falling in love at the drop of a hat.

I was hopeless at reading even the most un-subtle of advances by the opposite sex, and screwed up opportunities to trade up with some girls who I fancied the pants off. I was a faithful monogamist, but perhaps only because self-esteem and experience were still quite lacking in my love life. I kick myself now, when I think of some of the gorgeous women who advertised their availability to me.

In London you can find people whose style you wish to emulate. You can find those few inspiring fashion pieces, which can prop up your fragile self-esteem. You can start to develop your own identity, your own style, your own wardrobe. You start to feel good in your clothes, and then later in your body.

My broken self-esteem was restored to the point where I was confident enough to make a permanent mark of ownership on my body, in the form of a tattoo. I'm now so self-confident that I made the mark in a place where I can't even see it. From the photos that I've seen, it's not even quite in the right place but I don't care. It feels nice to have disfigured myself, deliberately, through my own choice.

I even grew a moustache for Movember, which is something I never thought I would do, given my lack of ability to grow decent stubble or a beard.

There's this tightly-bound link between London, outdoor/adrenalin sports, working for a corporation and being a secret raver/clubber, that is instricically linked to my identity. It's hard to shake those foundations as the things that I will run to in times of stress.

I know that MDMA will release me from the shackles of shame, regret and self-criticism, when I become paralysed by those oppressive thoughts. I know that the chemical will help me to have an epiphany of sorts, and move on with my life when I have become stuck in a rut. It's like taking a brief holiday from yourself and all your baggage. It's pretty hard on your body & mind in your thirties though! Quite a hangover.

I know that adrenalin sports will remind me that I'm alive, when I feel dead or dying. Just riding across London on a bicycle is enough to reaffirm that you still have some self-preservation instincts. You always end up having a moment where you nearly die, which puts things into perspective.

I know that immersing myself in corporate culture is occasionally good for my identity. It feels good to put on a suit, and know that the public are somehow looking at you as somehow more respectable, more mannered, more civilised. It feels good to puff your chest out with self importance and pretend like being part of the big money machine means that you have some value, even if the bubble soon bursts.

I know that being part of the heaving mass of bodies that make up London is a very cool part of somebody's identity. When you are somewhat hardened to it, used to the noise and the invasion of personal space, and the offence on your senses, you then start to get enjoyment from gliding serenely through the carnage. You know that people are looking at you and wondering how you managed to cut through the crowd and anticipate the seemingly random movements of individuals, so that you dance around the dawdler and dodge the ditherer. It feels good to have mastered the capital city, to know these mean streets.

Put it all together and you have quite a strong identity, quite a distinct personality. It's quite nice that a 'me' has emerged after a rather difficult upbringing, and further struggles to break free from parental oppression and some relationships which preyed upon my vulnerability, my insecurity.

If you wanted to try and get me outside the M25 now, you'd have to put my dead body in a pine box.

I love this dirty town.

Tags: #london #career #childhood

This is a story about taboos and titillation...

That's a photo of a big black cock. It has been quite hard to pair some photos with this blog post, given its provocative title, but I think I've nailed it with this one.

I'm aware that my writing has reached a level of honesty that pretty much makes it unreadable. It's just too unflinchingly brutally open. It's too gut-wrenchingly, stomach squirming and churningly letting all the skeletons out of the closet. People aren't supposed to say these kinds of things. People aren't supposed to talk about this kind of stuff.

It's an absolutely ludicrous experiment, to write down everything that's in your head, in a public journal. However, it's my belief that the age of privacy is over. We are now too wedded to technology to step back to a previous era, but many people are unaware just how insecure their data is. We are almost living in the age of open data.

My laptop is infected with a keylogger, with the attacker hoping to skim credit card details, passwords and obviously able to see every single word that I type. I have also been the victim of a ransomware style attack, when I was using some Google products (phone, smartwatch) which saw me bullied into doing something against my will, when my privacy was massively compromised. I have even conducted a spot of phishing of my own... only in the interests of computer science, of course.

I imagine that my webcam has, at times, become compromised. I dread to think what that electronic eye has witnessed, but we are all watched over by machines of loving grace, at all times. On my bedside table I have my smartwatch and my phone - 2 microphones and 2 cameras - which are pretty much recording around the clock. Next to my bed is my infected laptop, with its microphone and webcam. Whether the data is persisted or not, I wouldn't be qualified to speculate.

Getting to the heart of the matter, human beings are known to pleasure themselves from time to time, even when they are getting enough sex. It's pretty much a fact of life. There's no sense in denying it, or just pretending it doesn't happen. I'm talking about it. This is happening. I'm breaching the taboo.

Let's talk about pornography. Have you watched any music videos lately? They're basically soft porn. Pornographic content has entered mainstream media. Whether it's more and more explicit sex scenes in movies, or the use of pornographic imagery to sell products, it's there on open display, all around us.

Around 2001 I moved into my first flat with a girlfriend. I also, briefly, had a bit of a problem with the amount of 'video-based art' that I was downloading from peer-to-peer networks. It was unhealthy for my relationship, which subsequently ended. I moved back into a shared house. You could say that it was a brief addiction, given the damage to a relationship and my living status.

Porn is probably the most easily accessible of all the addictions. You can stream all you want via your broadband internet connection, for free. Even a gambling addiction costs money. Even a food addiction requires you to go to the supermarket.

The phallic column in the background is The Monument to the Great Fire of London. There are now an impressive array of tall buildings that have been erected in London, in recent years.

We all know that London's seedier side is openly on display in Soho, but actually, there's a lot of willy-waving that goes on throughout the metropolis. On-the-spot fines are having to be issued to the super-rich playboys who cruise around Kensington and Chelsea in their sportscars, with their long bonnets, revving their engines aggressively.

Too embarrassed to go to a strip club? Don't worry, there are now bars in the City that bring the dancing girls into a respectable setting, for you to oggle.

This is my [female] agent's idea of corporate hospitality. Tipping cocktails down the client's neck while scantily clad women shake their booty. This is an acceptable night out to put down as an expense claim, when trying to get your client to renew your contract.

The porn industry might be losing money to piracy, copyright infringement and amateurs who seem to want to share their most private frissons with the world, but sex is very much mainstream and an accepted part of daily life. TV shows now get great ratings if they are filled with buxom wenches and nudity. It worked for Game of Thrones.

Personally, chemsex links horribly with an addiction mess that includes porn and masturbation. As I've written before, my libido has started to become my enemy. A natural survival of the species instinct prompts me to now seek out drugs, and with drugs in my system that libido gets twisted into something very shameful indeed.

Obviously, drugs don't change who you are fundamentally. They can only amplify and exacerbate. However, we all like boobs, ass, pussy and/or cock. We are all programmed to try and achieve some degree of sexual satisfaction. We can't shut down and deny that side of our nature.

Why on earth would I write about this stuff? Well, that tightly wound ball of shame needs to unwind. At its core is a seed that dwells within all of us. I might have corrupted myself, twisted myself, become unrecognisable from an innocent starting position, but given the same conditions it could happen to anybody. I took the risks, and it happened to me, so they're my consequences to own. It's my burden to carry. Only got myself to blame, eh? It just so happens that I'm going to write about it all and see what happens.

Writing about this stuff seems more rational than tearing my own genitals off my body, although the life of a eunuch looks enviable to me in some ways.

Do you like flowers? You do know that a flower is the sexual organ of a plant, don't you?

Tags: #sex