This is a story about storm clouds...

I often assume that after a lengthy period without abusing drink, drugs, medication and other mind-altering substances, I'll reap some rewards. I tend to think that a period clean and sober will bring good health, and in turn, that life will improve. It's certainly true that drugs have brought nothing but chaos and turmoil into my life, making it completely unmanageable, as my mental health problems are exacerbated. Eliminating most psychoactive substances has certainly turned my life into something which looks - to the outside observer - to be stable, productive, functional and indeed, at times quite enviable. To all intents and purposes, I look, smell, sound and act like a normal member of mainstream society.

Internally, there's nothing to help me cope with the intrusive thoughts; the traumatic flashbacks.

In the comfort of my own home, as I've already written about, I yell out, grimace and flinch, as I'm assaulted by all kinds of post-traumatic flashbacks. I have horrible nightmares. I suffer lengthy periods of skin-crawling agonising anxiety, where the hands of the clock are barely moving; it lasts for an eternity.

There are no rewards for being clean and sober; only suffering.

It's unthinkable, lifting the lid when there's so much trauma. It's insanity to have it all hitting me like a freight train, every single second of every single day, even when I'm asleep.

I like to think that my brain is mending itself. I like to think that by reliving those traumas, my brain is kind of re-organising itself and exorcising stuff. I allow myself to yell out, flinch and grimace, because it seems better to let it out than to fight it and attempt to suppress it.

Thinking about it, there's mountains of stuff. There's an unimaginable amount of stuff.

The memories - the bad memories - come thick and fast, intruding into whatever I'm doing, unless I'm really working hard; really concentrating on something. I have so few distractions that there's plenty of time for my brain to throw a relentless torrent of terrible, dreadful, awful traumatic memories at me, which are so bad that they're physically painful and cause me to cry out in shock.

I don't think I'd have been able to cope without medication, but now I've lost that crutch, it feels like I stored up years worth of terrible stuff without dealing with it properly. Now it's all hitting me, seemingly all at once.

I'm unusual, in that I'm one of the least psychoactively altered people - I don't have any tea, coffee, coca-cola, fizzy drinks, nicotine, cannabis, alcohol or medication. I don't eat, drink, swallow, smoke, inject, snort or otherwise ingest anything mind-altering. That's very unusual. To give you an example, out of hundreds of people I work with, I'm the only one who doesn't drink tea, coffee or other caffeinated beverages, and my teetotaling makes me even more unusual.

As a friend said to me, quoting a popular Tweet: I'm raw-dogging reality.

It's really brutal. It's really awful. I don't recommend it at all. It's not nice. In fact, it's thoroughly unpleasant and intolerable. Don't do it. It's not worth it. It's not healthy, it's hell.

Why am I doing it then?

I have the unshakeable belief that I can achieve mood stability by avoiding all mind-altering substances, including the things we don't usually bother to think about, like tea and coffee. I feel a lot more stable - mentally - having given up everything. I'm trying to regulate my mood by doing other things. I'm hoping that I develop some healthy habits.

Certainly, after a couple of weeks teetotal, I have a lot more energy and enthusiasm; I'm a lot more active; I sleep better. These are not things to be sniffed at. Alcohol and depression combined to create a very sedentary lifestyle, which was horrifically damaging to my health. I was drinking myself to death, even though I appeared very functional and otherwise doing very well in life.

So, I'm suffering the dark, horrible invasive thoughts, driven to find out whether my brain will eventually rid itself of the toxins and settle down. Certainly, there are health benefits, but I am suffering a great deal.

Tags: #mentalhealth #bipolar #depression #anxiety #alcohol

This is a story about boredom...

What if I offered you a six-figure salary to do nothing? Would you take it? Of course you'd take it, right? Think of all the great stuff you could buy with a six-figure income. Think of what a great house and car you could buy. Think of all the holidays you could have. Think of all the lovely things that money would buy.

Wrong.

Firstly, going on holiday is not "doing nothing". If you're on holiday, you won't be earning your six-figure salary: you're only paid for the time you're doing nothing.

Fine, you say.

But.

You're going to have to spend some time doing nothing, in order to get your hands on the money. How much time do you think you could spend doing nothing in any given year? Assuming that you spend about 5 weeks each year on holiday, that means you'll have to spend 47 weeks doing nothing. That's achievable, right?

Wrong.

It's a lot harder doing nothing than doing something. You might not realise this - because you've never had to do nothing - but it's the hardest thing in the world. Perhaps if you work as a security guard or a solidier, you might be able to legitimately claim that you've got first-hand experience of doing nothing, but that's not true. It's well known that doing nothing is impossible, so security guards and soldiers get paired up or given 'lone worker' tasks to do, in order to break the monotony of the task.

In fact, every time you were bored, you just walked out of that job and went and got another one; every time your situation was uncomfortable, you changed it. Your entire life consists of chatting to people, making cups of tea/coffee and undertaking a variety of tasks. You never do nothing.

Doing nothing pays the most money.

Boredom is directly proportional to remuneration; the more boring a job is, the more you get paid (with the exception of being a security guard, perhaps). Maybe it's like a 'U' shape actually - there are really badly paid jobs which are boring, and the best paid jobs which are boring, and the jobs in the middle are the interesting ones.

The best thing I can do at the moment is nothing. The more I keep quiet and keep my head down, the better. Far better if I avoid trouble and don't do anything - do nothing - to earn loads of money.

It's unbearable.

Most people are led by impulse and instinct, but I have to fight my gut every step of the way. If I did what 'felt' right then I would quit what I'm doing and just figure things out - anything's better than being trapped doing nothing, bored. Of course, I would miss the 'easy' money, so I keep going, because my head says it's the right thing to do. I know that the suffering will yield vast financial compensation, even if the means of achieving it are intolerable.

I suppose you think that it's a nice problem to have but you'd be mistaken. We can all prostitute ourselves, or otherwise do work which is toxic to our dignity, sense of wellbeing, sense of achievement, mental health etc. Of course, some sex workers are happy doing what they're doing, so use your imagination: you could earn a lot of money doing crime if you wanted to.

If you think what I'm writing is entitled and whingey, fuck off. If you're thinking "we all have to suffer a little boredom occasionally" then you're right... "occasionally". When it becomes your full-time job to be bored out of your mind, then it goes beyond 'normal' and moves into the territory of an extreme health hazard; a threat to life.

Of course I can see the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but I can also see the broken glass and razor blades I have to crawl over to get there. Sure, I probably will get there in the end, but I'm going to whine and complain the whole way, because it's a ridiculous waste of time, energy and talent, to have a person tormented - in agony - with insufferable boredom.

Tags: #boredom #work

This is a story about reckless misconduct...

To say that I have great power would be delusional and grandiose. To say that I'm anything other than another anonymous voice in an infinite sea of near-identical voices - constant background noise; static hiss - would be to lose all perspective on reality. I. Am. Nothing.

However.

It has not escaped my notice that ever more thousands of people are reading my blog every day. It seems that I've rather stumbled upon something which many people are searching for, which my website has the answers to. Alarmingly, it's on the topic of suicide.

Stuff I wrote without thinking a great deal about the consequences, now potentially could have very bad consequences. Woe betide me if something I wrote was sufficient to push a person who would otherwise have lived, over the edge and into an act of suicide. How awful it would be if I some how enabled or encouraged or unwittingly aided and abetted in any way - no matter how small - the avoidable death of a person, or indeed persons.

Suicidal thoughts are, sadly, very common. I personally suffer from suicidal thoughts on a daily basis, and suicide plays a very big part in my life; my plans. I have firm plans to kill myself at the moment; I live with plans to commit suicide, day in and day out.

When I wrote what I wrote - mainly the thing about suicide methods seems to be the most popular essay - I thought there was no harm in having a frank discussion about things, given that all forms of media - books, films, radio, TV etc - contain depictions of suicide, and it seems inconceivable that we could have gone through life and not encountered at least one method, even if we expressly avoided anything gruesome and unpleasant.

In the context of writing in obscurity, I could write whatever I wanted, safe in the knowledge that nobody was reading it. Certainly, I never had to consider any consequences of what I wrote.

Now, things are a little different.

Some people write to me. I left an open invitation for people to get in touch, and they do. They're in all kinds of different situations, but they're all suicidal... or at least they tell me that they are, and who am I to doubt them? I'm not a trained counsellor. I'm not a specialist in mental health crises, except by way of my own experience. I'm not qualified. I'm not a professional in the field of suicide... merely a person who's attempted suicide a bunch of times, and who has written over a million words on the subject. I very much feel that I'm the wrong person to get in contact with, for those who are looking for a more traditional crisis counsellor, such as the one you might speak to if you pick up the phone on the Golden Gate Bridge, for example.

I know from personal experience, that sometimes you don't want to speak to somebody traditional who is going to say all the same old clichéd things. Personally, I've found it more useful to talk to people who genuinely understand what it's like to be suicidal; not in some abstract sense, from training courses and suchlike. I'm sure all the mental health professionals are super great at their jobs, and many of them do have personal experience of depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts, but there's something homogenous about their approach; there are no surprises and nothing useful - personally - in any of the things they've said to me, in the past.

It seems criminally reckless of me to perhaps venture into a world which is the strictly reserved for trained, qualified members of professional bodies, who are - in theory - the most competent and capable people in existence, able to deal with suicidal people.

However.

It's not working.

More people than ever are depressed. More people than ever are anxious. More people than ever are suicidal.

So, I'm making myself, and what I know, publicly available. I've written vast amounts on the subject of suicide. I've open-sourced my experiences. You can contact me, and I'll do my best to reply.

Will I talk you out of suicide? No.

Am I offering something better than counselling, therapy and medicine? No.

Why read what I've got to say? Why get in contact? Well, because maybe you don't want to hear yet more clichéd "don't do it... you've got so much to live for... think of the pain you'll cause" type BS. Maybe you want to hear from somebody who's experiencing what you're experiencing. Maybe you want to hear that it's OK to feel what you're feeling in a way, because somebody else is struggling too. There's a lot of guilt about wanting to die, and I think that's wrong. It's OK to want to die; it's normal... it's more normal than you could ever possibly imagine.

Usual caveats apply: I want to live in a zero suicide world. I do not encourage, endorse or otherwise want to enable and/or aid and abet suicide in any way, no matter how small.

Tags: #suicide

This is a story about Tourette's...

I struggle with invasive thoughts. The thoughts are so traumatic that they cause me to wince and yell. I shout out in pain and shock when the thoughts hit me. It makes me appear like I have a tic.

What is a tic anyway?

Somebody who suffers with Tourette's is able to suppress their tic for a brief period, but then they have to let it out; to scratch the itch, as it were. I'm not claiming to have Tourette's of course, but I have some of the symptoms.

I live alone - except for my cat - in a big old house with thick walls, so I can shout out when I get hit by the invasive thoughts, and I'm mostly not bothering anybody. Sometimes I go out for a walk and I can't control the thoughts, so I yell out and flinch - tic - while I'm walking down the road. If anybody sees me, they must think that I'm very strange.

I can control my tic - mostly - when I'm in a work setting. Sometimes it gets the better of me and I mutter something or flinch in the company of my colleagues. They mostly don't notice or comment, but sometimes they do, occasionally.

I don't particularly try to control my tic when I'm with my girlfriend. We're usually in a relaxed private setting anyway, so I don't have to concentrate on controlling it as much as I can. The invasive thoughts, yelling, yelping, flinching, grimacing and other things too, happen all the time. It's fairly disconcerting to anybody who's not spent time in the company of somebody with the particular neurological complaint.

I won't be seeking any medical help for the problem. It seems to be exacerbated by alcohol, or rather by withdrawal from alcohol, so the solution is to either drink all the time, or not drink at all. I need to lose some weight and get healthier, so I am choosing the latter at the moment. It's not a severe and debilitating enough problem to seek medical help.

You know when you lie awake at night and you start remembering lots of embarrassing memories? Imagine that, except that it happens from the moment you wake up until the moment you go to sleep, and the memories are so traumatic they feel like they're causing you physical pain. That's what my invasive thoughts are like.

I might have Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). It seems likely. Given the severity of the trauma I've experienced, and the long-lasting problems I'm having as a result of it, it seems like the most probable thing. It's well beyond "embarrassing memories".

The thoughts don't particularly bother me; they're fleeting. Of course, I'd rather that I didn't yell, grimace, flinch and otherwise react to the severe traumatic flashbacks, but the damage is done and there's nothing much I can do about it. My life is - on the whole - unaffected by the invasive thoughts, given that they are short sharp shocks and not bothering me except for those unpredictable but frequent instants.

I wonder if I've got brain damage, but the question is a bit of a non-sequitur. The brain is a plastic organ, so it's continuously adapting; I definitely don't have a traumatic brain injury or any impairment to suggest any lasting permanent physical damage which my brain hasn't been able to adapt to, and doesn't continuously continue to adapt to.

There have been plenty of incidents which are bound to have damaged my organs, but my physical health seems mostly OK. Of course my kidneys and heart are a worry, and my general fitness levels have dropped to a really bad level, but I'm working on getting fitter.

In the course of writing this, I haven't been bothered by invasive thoughts at all; they only bother me when I'm bored. I like to keep busy. I like to keep my mind occupied. If my brain is active then it doesn't have time for invasive thoughts.

Tags: #mentalhealth #ptsd #tic

This is a story about burnout...

I can't brain today. I have the dumb.

Tags: #mentalhealth

This is a story about the collapse of civilisation...

We like to laugh at the stupidity of 'primitive' civilisations which used to make human sacrifices to the sun god. However, we also live in an era - today - where we make human sacrifices to imaginary concepts.

The squeals and cries of "the economy!" in the face of a deadly global pandemic, indicate that global free-market capitalism demands human sacrifice at the alter of Mammon. In a more civilised society, we wouldn't kill people for the sake of an abstract concept, such as money. Money can be created at will, with the stroke of a key on a keyboard: it doesn't exist; it's not a physical commodity; we can continue to grow and harvest crops, rear cattle, fish the seas, build houses, make clothes and do all the other physical, tangible things that we need to, in order to be healthy and happy. We do not need money. To demand that people die for the sake of money is exactly the same as sacrificing people to the sun god; equally delusional and psychotic.

We've been looking for people to murder for a long time now. In the UK, we've had many years of wanting to murder non-whites, under the guise of so-called "anti-immigration" policies. Instead of looking at how we can improve our quality of life, instead our efforts have been ploughed into worsening the quality of lives for people. The 'hostile environment' policies of Theresa May were as damaging to vulnerable white working-class people as they were to the non-whites they were designed to injure and kill. Given half a chance, 51.9% of the country would be out on the streets slitting the throats of anybody they didn't deem to be like them: non-whites, gays, transexuals... and probably a lot of the liberal metropolitan elites too. Why stop there? They wouldn't. They'd kill anybody they had got a grudge with too, and still not be satisfied. When the food and medicine ran out and the power went off, they'd then kill and eat their own children - "Spoiled little brats... I showed THEM who's boss".

As a self-confessed leftist and Benthamite utilitarian, I must say that I have indulged in a few wealth redistribution fantasies. I don't think that we should kill and eat the rich, but we could certainly take 90% of their wealth, in order to lift living standards for billions of people.

On closer examination does murdering a few people really seem so bad for the greater good? We must explore the question.

Let us think about a mass murderer who's beyond hope of rehabilitation. Even if we do not sentence the mass murderer to death as a punishment, it is costly to imprison them. Why would we waste valuable resources on somebody with zero utility, who poses a very real and significant risk to the general public, and indeed anybody in charge of keeping them imprisoned. It seems to make sense to kill the mass murderer.

What about billionaires? We don't need any billionaires, but we certainly need their wealth. It seems fairly obvious that we should take and redistribute the wealth of billionaires, but what do we do with them? Well, I see no reason to kill them - what harm are they, once they're stripped of most of their wealth? If they build more wealth, we'll just take it off them again. In fact, perhaps stripping them of wealth encourages them to create more - a win:win situation. They can remain obscenely wealthy, but not so much so that we have any hunger, homelessness or exploitation left in the world.

What about Jews?

Let's imagine that hypothetically - although I must make it clear that I am exploring this anti-Semitic canard purely to illustrate how ridiculous it is - lots of Jews are billionaires. Well, why decide to treat the Jews differently? It's perfectly philosophically and ethically acceptable to strip the billionaires of most of their wealth, provided they are left with plenty and aren't mistreated. Why would we single the Jews out, even if there are lots of Jewish billionaires? Just go after the billionaires and don't persecute anybody because of their religious faith, right?

I'm not saying that choosing a particular identifiable group and murdering them isn't "economically sound". In fact, it's definitely "good" economically to commit murder, as the many wars from history will attest. If you kill somebody and take their wealth, you become wealthy and there's one less mouth to feed; one less person to house and clothe. Of course, murder seems completely logical, if you believe that "the economy!" and money are the most important things in life.

Of course, then there's the temptation to murder Jews and/or non-whites. Why not just redistribute wealth though, instead of committing mass murder? Why not target the wealthy and not Jews, Muslims or non-whites? If you are in favour of wealth distribution I will support you, and so will the majority of other people. If you are in favour of persecuting Jews, Muslims and non-whites, then I will fight you every step of the way.

Tags: #capitalism

This is a story about Twitter boycotts...

A loathsome gammon was abusing me on Facebook for anti-racist, anti-transphobic things that I was saying. I was accused of virtue signalling which is a ridiculous charge, when the very basic minimum of human decency is to not be racist, homophobic, transphobic or otherwise persecutory towards minorities. Sure, if I was lecturing people - unsolicited - on why they shouldn't eat red meat, and boasting about what a fine person I am for being vegan, then it would be possibly a bit much, but no... I was just sharing some very non-contentions opinions about the notorious transphobe, J. K. Rowling, and otherwise anti-racist sentiment; nothing that should have drawn a vicious personal attack.

Anyway, I need to break my routine for a couple of days and not post this on Twitter.

Why?

Well, it's not because of virtue signalling.

I'm aware that there's a widespread movement to boycott Twitter for 48 hours, in protest at the length of time it took Twitter to remove anti-Semitic content and instate a temporary ban on the account involved. It's not virtue signalling to see something abhorrent taking place, and take action against it. It's not virtue signalling, to call out hate speech, for example. It's not virtue signalling to agree that we need to be anti-racist and to eradicate anti-Semitism wherever we see it. It's not virtue signalling to participate in civilised society, where we all have a duty to police hateful extremism. Hate speech is not OK, but criticising racists, bigoted people, is more than OK; it's encouraged to criticise the hateful extremists.

I'm aware that there are lots of fads which people get swept up with, like when everyone was posting plain black photos as part of a social media 'blackout' but I fail to see how it's negative or otherwise worthy of criticism. Of course, if the only aim and objective is to appear to empathise with the plight of an oppressed minority, then it's a bit pathetic, but it's better than being silent or ignoring the world around us. I'd rather be criticised for a rather pathetically easy gesture, such as not tweeting for 48 hours, than be amongst the racist bigoted bunch.

If you see virtue in my actions, and you think I'm signalling, tough titties. It's perfectly possible that you see virtue because there is virtue there to be seen. Shouldn't we be aspiring - as a human race - to be more virtuous anyway? Why would you celebrate those without virtue? Why is it a good thing to be barbaric and uncivilised? Why would you think that unvirtuous behaviour is desirable?

Donating a tiny fraction of my wealth to charity, or doing something fun that I was going to do anyway, but sponsored, is something that many people do in order to salve their conscience. Because of said acts of charity, we can feel that we're doing something to address the horrendous inequalities in the world... but it's not true. Charitable giving benefits the giver... charities have proven to be completely ineffective at bringing about any meaningful change in the world; they're an abysmal failure. However, those who give charitably and those who work for charities are trying at least; their intentions are good, even if the main beneficiary is themselves, because they can feel smug and comfortable about their contribution, even though it's ineffective and often downright counter-productive. I approve of the sentiment, even if it's misguided.

Nothing will ever change for the better because of a Twitter boycott, but that's not a reason not to take part.

Tags: #socialmedia

This is a story about school bullies...

Whatever happened to the people who I went to school with? My peer group - those friends who were academic high-achievers like myself - obviously went to university and became six-figure salary earning captains of industry, venture capitalists, tech startup founders, renowned scientists and academics, and all-round paragons of success.

What about all the thickos?

Well, firstly, I don't really count the thickos as peers. They were there in the same school as me at the same time, sure, but they weren't part of my peer group. They were languishing in the lower-set classes, resentful that they were legally mandated to attend school, just waiting to leave and go to prison and/or get pregnant.

Of course, some of the thickos didn't go to prison. They are stacking the shelves in supermarkets or sweeping the streets. Those jobs are very useful to society, so I'm grateful to them for their contribution... except on social media.

Yes, social media is the problem, which is the basis of this essay.

The thickos previously had no platform on which to express their retarded opinions, except to their mates down the pub, or to their girlie mates in the baby circle. Their opinions - mercifully - didn't enter public discourse. Their opinions were not dignified with a platform for them to be shared.

In the early days of the internet, when it came in down the phone with a sound like robots screaming, it was the sole preserve of geeks; a paradise. In fact pre-dating the internet were dial-up bulletin boards, which you had to phone up and some of them only had one or two phone lines, so if somebody else was using it then the number was engaged. You might dial up a bulletin board, leave a message, then not go back for a few days to check for replies - a far cry from the current era of instant notifications from a million different apps, the moment somebody replies or 'likes' what you posted.

The technical complexity of getting online "back in the day" was sufficient to keep the thickos offline. As such, most people you might encounter were highly intelligent and highly educated. Opinions lacked the diversity we see today, given that they were mostly white men of a geeky persuasion, but there was a refreshing lack of morons. Having suffered 13 years of full-time education with a vast horde of intellectually challenged thickos, the internet was paradise.

Technologists have been trying to make tech as "frictionless" as possible, which is to say that the thickos can now press the big child-friendly buttons on their Fisher-Price toy phones and share their racist, homophobic, transphobic, regressive and retarded worldview... which unfortunately is presented on social media as equal to the refined erudite educated considered musings of highly intelligent and respectable individuals.

Another thing is happening.

Given that the paradise world of cyberspace has been lost to the moronic hordes, we have reverted to playground rules: bullies are getting a toe-hold.

Donald Trump succeeded because he speaks idiot; he says the things that idiots say. Trump and his alt-right sycophants - who also include Nigel Farage and all the Brexiteers - are all cut from the same cloth; they all have the same moronic worldview. The thing in particular that I wanted to write about is how childish playground techniques employed by thickos, are being employed in the former paradise of cyberspace.

Gone is rational and reasonable debate. Gone is any attempt to discuss the difficult areas of politcal philosophy, such as attempting to wrestle with the meaning of life. In its place, barbaric morons simply repeat verbatim, various things said by Trump, Farage and other influential figures in their orbit. "Build a wall" and "Britain first" they blurt out, without the faintest comprehension of the deeper meaning and consequences of what they're saying... unable to comprehend the crimes against humanity that they are implicitly demanding, in order to serve their unspoken demand for a white ethnostate.

What I fear most, is that liberal outrage is fuel for the 51.9% of society who are racist cunts. That shower of shits failed abysmally academically and in life - now in prison and/or living on benefits - and like the bullying children who hated the clever kids, the only way for them to exact their revenge is to attack those who are smarter than them. The Trump supporters and Brexiteers love it when the liberal metropolitan intelligentsia squeal with frustration. The alt-right will feel triumphant as society crumbles and burns. "We really stuck it to you there, nerds!" they will yell as human civilisation descends into a barbaric dark age.

For my part, I will never stop taking the bait and fighting the moronic fuckers - wherever I find them - because even though I spent 13 traumatic years of my life, legally trapped in an education system which forced me to be proximate with abusive, bullying thicko moronic cunts who made every day of my life a living hell, I succeeded and they failed.

Tags: #bullying

This is a story about Kim and Kanye...

This is not a story about Kim and Kanye. I don't know anybody called Kim and Kanye. I wrote the title of this essay and the little introductory line because apparently it was newsworthy that somebody wrote something on Instagram. Anyway, I realised that I haven't written much about bipolar recently.

I have a diagnosis of bipolar, but I don't particularly have any symptoms which are bothering me. I've been unmedicated for years and yet I'm fully functional. This is not to say that I think anyone who does use medication to help them with their bipolar is wrong to do so, but it doesn't work for me.

I sure as hell have a mood disorder. I'm suicidally depressed a lot of the time, but I also have periods of extremely high productivity. Sure, I'm very good at managing my condition, such that my friends and colleagues don't really know I've got a major mental health problem, but it doesn't mean it's not causing me any difficulties, despite appearing symptom-free.

I suppose the main problem I'm dealing with is the risk to my life. Being suicidal so often is pretty dangerous, and it's landed me in hospital - in intensive care and high dependency wards - a whole bunch of times. Still, I don't want to be medicated. If I die, I die. I'd rather not have the side-effects of powerful psychiatric medications.

Did I mention how functional I am?

Until I'm not.

I can cruise along just fine for very long periods of time, but then I crash. I always crash. Crashing is inevitable.

I don't think medication is the solution to the crashes. "Mood stabilisers" do not do what they claim to be able to. In fact, "mood stabilisers" can be highly destabilising, as I've found many times from bitter and unpleasant experience.

Certainly, anti-depressants are destabilising, always pushing me manic or at least hypomanic. I want them - obviously - because it's so horrible to be suicidally depressed all the time, but I know they're too destabilising and will cause my life to become chaotic and unmanageable.

So, I struggle along with commonly available mind-altering substances, like alcohol, which is a dreadful substance but I've become very experienced with using it to limp along through life.

I'm persevering with so-called "clean living" where I use a number of techniques to achieve more mood stability, naturally. I keep very strict bedtimes. I keep very strict meal times. I eat a balanced diet. I exercise. I limit my alcohol intake. I avoid all drugs and medications. It seems to be a winning formula. Also, money. Having plenty of money, a low-stress job and secure housing, are all very important pieces of the puzzle. If any one single thing is wrong, it throws my world into chaos and instability; it makes me unwell.

It's pretty dull really, the current story of me and my bipolar. Things are kinda under control and the things I'm doing to keep myself stable are - by design - super boring.

Tags: #bipolar

This is a story about racism...

If racism is the inability to be wilfully colourblind, then I am a racist. I'm sorry, but if the aim is to pretend that we don't perceive differences in appearance, then I feel that anti-racism is doomed, because it's dishonest. Instead, we should talk about what's really going on; be truthful.

Of course, my default position as a member of the metropolitan elite, is to say that I'm not a racist. To be a racist in polite, educated, civilised middle-class circles, amongst professionals, is unthinkable. There is a viceral rejection of any slight hint that we - educated middle aged white people - might possibly be a bit racist. However, it's there - in some [small] part - and we should talk about it.

Children are a good benchmark, because they have a tendency to be much more honest, unfiltered and uninhibited. Children aren't subtle and devious, and generally haven't learned to hide or disguise what they really think. In fact, adults aren't great at hiding what they really think either. Everyone knows that "anti immigration" really means anti-non-white (i.e. racism).

We should acknowledge that children will, quite naturally, bully and otherwise victimise minorities who look and act differently. Children are vicious animals who will attack anything "other"... but where does that animal - bestial - behaviour come from?

The Price equation shows us that it is a rational strategy for a person to attack and/or kill anybody who does not look similar, even if the attacking/murderous individual is killed or injured in the process. In fact, our genes encode racism into our very fabric. We are evolved to attack those who are obviously genetically unrelated from us - this can be mathematically proven to confer an evolutionary advantage. Unfortunately, at a bestial animalistic level, we are hard-wired to be racist.

Of course, we are not animals. We are not children. We are civilised people. However, we are animals, and we can easily regress into childish bestial behaviour.

That is what is happening.

Spend a moment watching Donald Trump or a Brexit voter speak, and imagine their words coming out of the mouth of a child. Do you see how the words match perfectly with a mental age of a child? We have entered an era when infantile idiots are given a voice - a platform - and they have clumped together with other thick-skulled neanderthals, and are now brazenly dragging civilised society back into the dark ages; back to a place of rampant racism, mobs, hysteria and bestial behaviour.

But, calling racists racist hasn't got us anywhere.

It's not surprising to me that 51.9% of the UK is racist, because most people in the UK are very stupid and immature; we do not have a society full of educated individuals, but instead a mountain of morons. Take a look on Facebook, where racists like to congregate, and you can see a pitiful display of bad grammar, spelling mistakes and sentence construction which would make any decent educated person blush with shame. Instead of reading good books, the racists spend their time share their views with other near-illiterate racists, hammering on their keyboard with their clumsy fists.

Calling racists racist hasn't got us anywhere, but we do need an outlet for our frustration with them.

So, am I colourblind? Absolutely not. It would be an absolute lie if I pretended that I was unable to make an educated guess about a person's ethnic background based on their skin tone, along with other clues, such as hair and facial features. Likewise, I can probably make an educated guess about where a person grew up based on their accent. To claim that I couldn't do such a thing would be disingenuous.

Do I discriminate? If the question is whether I go out of my way to thwart, undermine or otherwise prevent a non-white person from enjoying the same opportunities as a white person, then the answer is no, I do not consciously do that. I do - absolutely - change how I speak and act, depending on my audience. If I'm speaking to somebody who doesn't speak English fluently, I will simplify my language; slow my speed of speech; speak with clearer enunciation. I do discriminate, but I don't do so maliciously.

Am I guilty of unconscious bias? Absolutely. The whole point of unconscious bias is that I'm not even aware it's there. I've grown up in a society dominated by whites, so it's totally expected that I am riddled with all kinds of prejudices and biases, which I haven't been able to iron out and get rid of through sheer force of will and hard work, although I do try my hardest to think in an inclusive and unprejudiced way.

Am I guilty of white privilege? Yes.

Whoever said "it is not enough to say you aren’t racist, you have to be anti-racist" summed it up very well. Knowing what we know about the Price equation and our genetic predisposition towards racism, we have to fight against our DNA. Genes are risk not destiny so it's not true to say that because our genes code for racism, we are automatically racist, but if we do nothing then we do revert to racism as a default position. This is why we have to actively choose to be anti-racist; our natural instincts are wrong and this is why populism has led to terrible things.

These are my thoughts on a charged subject, and I expect I have made mistakes. I hope to be corrected.

Addendum:

I realise that "colourblind" is an aspiration - although unachievable literally - which metaphorically means treating people exactly the same, regardless of skin tone. I think that when racists speak out against multiculturalism, they are really saying that they hate non-whites; they don't hate Northerners or Scottish people moving to the south of the UK, for example, despite the cultural differences. For my part, I think that the "melting pot" as exemplified by London, is the ideal picture of modern society, although of course it suffers socioeconomic segregation and many problems. I think that we should aspire to the level of multiculturalism and tolerance we see in the capital.

I also see that I am prone to being too literal sometimes. For example, "Semitic" relates to both Hebrew and Arabic, therefore Islamophobia is anti-Semitic, technically and literally, although it's so often used to mean "Jew hating" that the literal meaning is not relevant and I realise it's wrong to point out that quirk of etymology.

Tags: #racism