This is a story about my secret diary...

Now that my friends have responded so brilliantly to my distress, I feel quite bad. I feel like I've taken up people's time, worried them and been self-absorbed. However, I guess that's partly because I now see light at the end of the tunnel, so I feel less panicked and in danger of something pushing me over the edge, back into suicidal thoughts.

I was thinking to myself about my motivation for writing so much private and personal stuff. The fact is, I want people to like me. I want to feel understood, and that people can empathise with me.

Where do we draw the line between somebody with dangerously low self esteem, and somebody who is egotistical and self-centred? I centred in on one particular phrase:

"I think people like me"

Why should that be so controversial? Well, in lots of literature that deals with psychology, thinking of yourself as likeable is linked to pathological conditions, like narcissism. From things I've read, I'm actually supposed to think of myself as unlikeable, or else I'm a narcissist, I'm dangerously self centred and egotistical.

But, if you think you're unlikeable, worthless, not worth knowing, then this is the basis for low self-esteem, and suicidal thoughts. If you think that nobody likes you, then the world would be better off without you. We all consume a great deal of precious resources - food, energy - so why should I stick around wasting oxygen if I'm somehow unlikeable? This is how I arrive at the decision to kill myself.

Clearly there's a contradiction here. We're telling people not to like themselves and not to feel liked or loved, or else they're some kind of horribly self obsessed, preening egotistical narcissist. However, without feeling like you have some value in other people's lives, you think that you might as well be dead.

I look at the precocious children, the ones who were loved and popular, showered with praise from all quarters... the ones who had their egos polished every day... the ones whose parents told them that they were special, talented... the ones who felt loveable, and as if the world was interested in their talents and ideas. I look at those children, and instead of feeling envy, I simply see the glow, the smile, the cotton wool that surrounds them, and I think that it's a good thing.

Life is going to be brutal. How do we even know we're alive, unless there is sadness to help us appreciate the happiness? Without darkness, we could never appreciate the light. However, it makes no sense to me to add extra shit to the life of a child. Why tell them they're a bad person, worthless, selfish and stupid? The world is going to do that for their entire adult life. For god's sake let them have a childhood.

So, I've grown up with this ridiculous idea of 'original sin'. I've learned to feel guilty about feeling happy. I've learned to feel guilty when luck goes my way. I've learned to feel guilty when somebody shows me love or affection. I've learned to feel guilty for craving friendship, companionship. I've learned to feel guilty for wanting any kind of external validation that I'm alive. I've learned to feel guilty for wanting to feel that there's a reason for living.

Nothing crystallises the issue quite like selfies and Facebook/Instagram. Do you have friends who post endless pictures of themselves up on their social media accounts? What do you think about them?

For pretty girls, they must get an ego boost, putting on their selfie pout and photographing themselves, with lots of 'likes' from horny boys. But surely things can be a little more innocent than that, or even mask deep-seated psychological issues.

Parents like to see photos of their kids. Families like to see photos of their relatives. Friends like to see photos of their friends. With the collapse of local communities, the geographical scattering of families, the decline of villages, clans & tribes... we need photo and video services to have any social bonds over these unnatural distances. Human evolution hasn't caught up with the automobile, the train, the boat and the airplane yet.

Equally, we know that glossy magazines, advertising and hollywood, paint a picture of perfect glamour. The most attractive people on the planet are paraded in front of our eyes, throughout our waking hours. How can we avoid comparing them with ourselves, and feeling inadequate?

We just don't measure up, and we feel ugly. We dislike our mis-shapen noses, sticky out ears and unruly hair. We look in the mirror at our spots and birthmarks, our pockmarked skin, our crooked stained teeth, and we know we can never measure up to the airbrushed beauties who are shoved in our faces.

For me, selfie culture is like grass-roots activism. Publishing directly onto the web takes away all the power and control that the newspapers and book publishers have, and allows anybody to become a writer. Putting pictures of yourself onto Facebook and Instagram allows anybody to become a glamour model, a famous face. It's reclaiming your sense of self-worth, from powerful media forces that parade unrealistic body images in front of us.

I've obviously wrestled with the idea that only rich, famous and powerful people are allowed to publish memoirs and biographies. Who would want to read about the life of a thirtysomething white middle-class IT consultant who went to state school and doesn't know any celebrities? Who would want to read about the very ordinary trials and tribulations of trying not to run out of money, getting a job and finding a place to live?

Am I supposed to feel guilty about the fact that I've been clamouring for my friends, and strangers from the Internet, to engage with me and give me even the tiniest indications that I'm being heard? Should I feel bad, when I admit that it's had a profound psychological effect, having a flurry of people 'like' my content on Facebook and Twitter, and getting a load of comments on Reddit and in the comments section below?

I'm not coercing people to continue to read, and to give me more 'likes'. I kinda feel like writing this has achieved what I wanted, which was to feel noticed. When you're struggling with suicidal thoughts, a big component is that nobody seems to care whether you live or die. The more you wail in distress and get ignored, the more it reaffirms your belief that the world would be better off without you.

I had a big response when I told people I was in hospital, and that was super nice, but I've been wary of spamming Facebook. People are often accused of being attention seeking, when they share shocking stuff on Facebook. Is that fair, if they're genuinely in danger of committing suicide?

To be admitted to a psychiatric hospital in the UK is not easy. You don't just turn up and say you need to be 'committed'. The number of places in hospital are very limited, and "care in the community" is always the preferred option. I had 4 or 5 section assessments, but I've never been 'sectioned'. It's really rare to have your liberty taken away, and be put into a secure facility for the protection of yourself and others.

My point is, that if mental health professionals thought that it was safest if I was admitted to hospital, then my life was in very real danger, and I have independent confirmation that I'm not just an attention whore. Surely it's OK to reach out to the world and say "I don't feel good. I feel alone. I feel unloved, unliked. I don't feel like I have any value. I feel worthless" no matter how you do that?

Personally, I think we should be paying attention to the drama queens, attention whores and people who seem self-obsessed. In actual fact, they probably have very fragile mental health, and are desperately trying to connect with the world and feel that they have some self-worth.

I'm not going to feel guilty about posting the occasional selfie.

I drew a big cock & balls on the beach, and nobody told me to "stop showing off" but I did hear those words in my head.

Tags: #childhood #friends #suicide #depression #mentalhealth #socialmedia #writing

This is a story about friendship...

I had a truly awesome week - the best in a very long time - thanks to my friends. People have been scattered to all four corners of the globe, but through social media and the pull of the capital, we managed to reconnect. I can't stress enough how grateful I am to those people who've made the effort to stay in touch, and not to judge and disown me.

The week kicked off with a couple of friends making a last minute dash up to London. Doing touristy things with them really made me appreciate where I live. I can jump on the tube whenever I want and travel all over London very easily, but sometimes you don't appreciate your home town until you're seeing it through the eyes of visitors, and playing host.

The really cool thing about seeing my friends was having face-to-face conversations. We sat out on the bench in my garden, and we had a conversation that was way easier to have in person, having spent the day together. Chatting online is nice, but it's rarely more than checking in to make sure each other is OK, and just renewing that bond. I'm not complaining, but it was great to see some old friends, and for them to challenge me on some of the bitterness, regret and resentment that's been very unhealthy, as well as just having a really nice chat.

Chatting with my friend's wife, who is a social worker, she shared some really interesting stuff about the importance of a sibling relationship in the life of a child. The big hole in my life is my sister. I spent the first 10 years of my life as an only child, and they say the first 7 years of a child's life are the most formative. Obviously, I've tried hard to re-adjust, and I'm genuinely overjoyed to have a sister, but it's never good enough for my parents. They wanted me to tread a hard line: being both a mature parent figure to my sister, but at the same time I was still a kid and a sibling, not actually an unpaid babysitter. I wanted to play with my sister, not raise her.

If you think I'm a bit cold and brutal with people, a loner, unafraid to cut people off if they're taking the piss... you're right in a way. I was always taught not to bother forming close bonds with people. Being pulled out of so many schools and kept away from my friends, taught me that I would never be allowed to retain my friendships, my relationships. I learned to develop shallow friendships and remain emotionally detached. I learned to protect myself from the inevitable time when my parents would drag me off somewhere else, away from my friends.

In adult life, I've bonded with a new set of friends and found great happiness and comfort in having those friendships last more than a couple of years. Things slowly fell into disrepair with one set of friends, as I moved away from London and got sucked into an abusive relationship. Friendships were neglected during my descent into mental illness and addiction, which kinda poured cold water on another set of friends, and meant further declines in the quality of my older friendships.

However, quite a lot of people are still tentatively connected to me, and by co-incidence another friend was coming up to London for a visit. We met up in a pub on my last day as a free man, and played a card game, just like we used to do on a random midweek evening in the good old days. We then sat in his friend's back garden playing cards and drinking beer, under the watchful gaze of a zombie garden gnome, with the light fading to the point where we could no longer tell which cards were which.

I started a new job, and the guy who showed me the ropes turned out to know a guy who I met at my very first full-time job. He's a friendly fella and it certainly took away a lot of those first day nerves, plus the feeling of trepidation that builds and builds, the longer you have off work. Having taken 6 months out of the game, I was filled with self-doubt, so it was a big relief to meet somebody friendly.

Some friends from my homeless days came over to visit. It was nice to show them my flat, and a real point of pride for somebody who was really down on their luck only a year before. Entertaining and hosting are so good for my self-esteem. I know it's probably not healthy to pin my sense of wellbeing on wowing people with something so materialistic as a nice place to live, but it does make me feel good to say "look how far I've come". It was nice to chat to a couple of people who also keenly felt the sense of loss, as our little social group crumbled, when we all started to get jobs and places to live, and move on with our lives.

I went out for dinner with another friend. It was nice to feel like there was some reward for working. Social bonding over food & drink is the reason for living, for going to work, to me. I always valued the social time with people rather than the excuse, the 'sport' or 'hobby' or whatever it was that supposedly tied us all together.

It was a totally unexpected twist, that when I got into kitesurfing - which is not a team sport - that I would actually end up with one of the largest groups of friends I've ever had the fortune of having in my life. I felt truly cherished and blessed, during those golden years of the London Kitesurfers, when we jetted around the globe together and threw wild parties.

Friday, I scheduled a 'date' with my 'bro'. It was nice to arrange a phonecall with a very supportive friend, and have good news to report. He's a sensitive guy and has been particularly concerned about my wellbeing, especially during my very suicidal moments. It was nice to have a somewhat more positive phone conversation.

Technology and social media is priceless in my life, and I rounded off the week with a video-chat call with a friend in New Zealand. At one point, I was struck by just how amazing technology is. I was having a face-to-face conversation with a friend who I haven't seen for 5 months, and there we were having a chat... midnight in the UK on a Saturday night, and 11am on Sunday morning in Auckland. Truly a globe-shrinking experience, to think that I'd have to be on a plane for 24+ hours if I actually wanted to shake my friend's hand, but yet we were able to speak as if we were almost in the same room together.

I completed the week, 10 weeks clean from the drugs, 3 days of my new job without being sacked, having seen 8 or more friends and made an ally at work. Given that recovery is a function of a healthy life, not sobriety, this bodes well.

I expect that things will get harder before they get easier, and the last week was probably a blip. I'm slightly scared to say "I'm feeling a bit better" because I fear that friends who are looking out for me might back off, believing I'm fine. You know, every little message in chat apps, every like on facebook, every text, every email... they all add up to a cushion of support that keeps me afloat. This is not emotional blackmail. Please think of it as a Thank You.

I still need to put regular social contact, exercise and some kind of hobby or passion into the mix. I'd like to get my kites repaired and buy a new wetsuit so I can go kitesurfing at the weekends again, just like I used to.

Don't move, improve!

Look: I even got a new bed, thanks to my guardian angel driving me across London in a small car, overburdened with a massive piece of furniture. This reparation is a good metaphor for the damage repairs that my friends have enabled.

Tags: #friends #career #suicide #addiction

This is a story about being a contrarian...

I remember sitting down with a mortgage broker in 2007, and he said "just focus on the teaser rate, don't worry about the interest rate after the initial 2 year discount. When your 2 years is up, we'll get you another great deal!". I said to this guy "you do realise I work with Credit Default Swaps, don't you?". Naturally, I ignored his advice and went for a deal that I could afford if there was a credit crunch.

I didn't even want to buy a house anyway. I wanted to put all my money into gold, in 2005/6, and I had opened an account at a bullion vault and bought a small amount... at $550 a troy ounce. The dollar was also really weak so it was a cheap buy.

I thought the housing market looked massively dodgy and the amount of money I saw flying around at JPMorgan, in the credit markets, was ridiculous. Clearly, the bubble was about to burst and a store of wealth in a scarce commodity looked like the best bet. There were plenty of dumbasses around though.

In Cambridge in 2011, I read the original paper on Bitcoin. I thought it looked a damnsight more interesting than my startup. By the end of that year, I had started buying Bitcoins. I bought hundreds.

By the spring of 2012, I wanted to pump all of my wealth into Bitcoin. I was buying Bitcoins at $5 a pop. I was certain that there were big capital gains to be made in the emerging Cryptocurrency. Again, dumbassses didn't see the potential, but even I frittered away those first Bitcoins that I bought, rather than keeping them as an investment. Unless I was going to make a sizeable bet I wasn't interested.

Come the summer of 2013 I was running out of money. My solution: invest in Bitcoin miners and buy bitcoins at $100. I borrowed every penny I could lay my hands on and sank it all into Bitcoin. I offered to cut friends and family in on the potential rewards. Two friends let me manage an investment for them. My family wouldn't give me a cent, even to help me keep a roof over my head.

An idiot - my father - called me "lucky" when I sold my Bitcoins for well over 1,000% return, later that year. I sold my bitcoin miners for a profit. I made money for my friends.

At some point, you've been "lucky" so many times that it's statistically improbable that it's luck, and in actual fact, all the analysis and reading, and time spent thinking about the macroeconomic environment, somehow seems to beat "luck".

If I'd taken the advice of the idiots, I'd be working in a factory in the provinces for minimum wage, or I'd be dead, although the two things sounds pretty much the same to me. Is it "luck" that means I'm not? Well, I'm not arrogant enough to believe that it was smart choices or hard work that mean I am where I am. I know that I'm "lucky" to be alive, to have functioning kidneys, to have enough brain cells left to not be left as a vegetable.

How do you unpick luck from your story?

There's a snobbery that's coming across, and perhaps you even think I imagine myself as some kind of smarty pants. Well, it's pretty clear from this tale that I've taken some pretty dumb risks and done some staggeringly dumb stuff, lately.

I like to think of it as some kind of karma. If your family treat you like a worthless piece of shit and a know-nothing waste of space, then why shouldn't the wider world be a little kinder to you, and gift you the occasional lucky break when you really need one?

These are my fundamental rules for life:

• Be nice to your kids
• Invest in scarce commodities

That is all.

Tags: #banking #capitalism #parents #family

This is a story about channelling energy into something positive...

Buckminster Fuller was going to commit suicide, so that his family could benefit from his life insurance policy. After an epiphany, he found his purpose in life and went on to publish over 30 books.

In a month or two, I will have written the equivalent of 5 novels. Obviously, most of it is garbage, but I hope it serves as a warm-up. The point is to see if I have the discipline to sit down and write every day. Writing gives my life structure, routine.

I normally have 3 or 4 things I want to write about each day, and I struggle to keep under 1,000 words. Browsing statistics tell me that people read for between 3 and 4 minutes per day, on average... even when I've broken my rules and have written 6,000 words, which means that they're probably skim reading or getting bored and stopping reading before the end.

There has been real violence & venom in my words, as I've struggled with a sense of abandonment and real anger and frustration at being let down on promises at a really critical time, and when my life really hung in the balance.

My writing did nothing to sway the people who I targeted, to act with any decency, but now that I know they're no longer reading, I do feel satisfied that I have at least put my side of the story across.

In actual fact, I feel like I made myself look like quite a bitter and angry person, quite immature and unconstructive, negative. It might be well overdue, and the damage is already done to my image, my reputation, but now it's time to stop grinding the axe and start writing in a more positive way.

Behind every rant, every acerbic scalding word, was a lot of emotion, but it was all focussed & fixated on a few individuals. Not very healthy or productive. Unlikely to lead to pieces of writing that are interesting for people to read.

I've read a couple of posthumously published satires where the author's frustrations with the world are barely concealed. They are repetitive and almost cringeworthy to read, but the passion makes the books hard to put down. However, they are good works of literature, unlike me just slagging off my drug addict, alcoholic, loser parents and abusive ex-wife.

It's difficult to know how to act. My school days were dominated by bullying. My working years have been dominated by age discrimination and people who've been promoted to a position of incompetence, where they are completely useless and concentrate exclusively on stopping anybody else from getting ahead. My longest relationship was with an abusive bully. I've had relatively few good role models.

I've picked a few people who I like and respect, from around the world, and I've tried to learn what I can from them, and to emulate their life philosophies, some of their thoughts and teachings, to be interested in things they're interested in, to try and understand what is important in their lives, and how that makes them tick.

I'm a long way from where I'd like to be. I've made a poor account of myself, blathering on like a fool while in a messed up state. I've exposed my darker side: the rage and frustration has bubbled over and I've revealed human characteristics that are less than desirable.

It's good to connect with people but I've been very exposed. I fear that I've lost the respect of some people I really idolise, and others that I could learn a lot from. I fear that I have taken something that had a lot of potential to reach a broad spectrum of people I wanted to connect with, and I have corrupted it into a nasty weapon to try and beat up on just a few people, and that's kinda shameful.

You know what though? I don't have a healthy outlet, other than writing this, and nor did I learn any ways to deal with frustration and anger as a child and young adult. I was the one on the receiving end of other people's shit. I took the blame for my parents' shortcomings. I was the recipient of my ex-wife's viciousness. I was the victim of daily bullying and abuse.

I've soaked up all this shitty abuse for years and years and years and now it's all got to come out somehow. I'm fed up of being the punchbag. I'm fed up of being the scapegoat. I'm fed up of taking the blame for everything. I'm fed up of being the quiet keeper of secrets.

Yes, I've got to find a more positive way to channel this negative energy. Hitting back at the people who hurt me, in particular my parents and ex-wife, will never lead anywhere. The bullies and abusers never feel any remorse. They'll never back down. They'll never say sorry.

Retaliation & tit-for-tat... I know that it's a dark path to go down. I know that the secret is to rise above it all. It's hard to be the bigger person. It's hard to just let things go when you've been wronged, even if the hatred is destroying you from the inside.

Some of my friends' parents taught me to believe that two wrongs don't make a right. They're probably right, but the main problem is that retaliation is punished more harshly than bullying and abuse. We reward the bullies and the abusers and the bigger stronger people, and hand out trite platitudes to their victims.

But, it's true, I am the bigger person. I know the chain of violence and abuse has to be broken. An eye for an eye leaves everyone blind.

I always thought that society would cleave itself in two, with the sensitive and intelligent beings creating a super-race that would have all the best technology, while the thick-skulled idiots would just slowly devolve into some more basic animal creature, which is quite well physically endowed but only uses its muscles to fight over food scraps and compete for other similarly dumb animal mates. These creatures would obviously very easy to herd and to keep separate from the elite.

When life was going well, I lost all the bitterness about my shitty childhood. At last, I was tasting the rewards for that abuse... I had risen above the herd of idiots. Sadly, as a horribly ironic twist, I ended up dating and then later marrying a bully, and she dragged me down to her level. It's taken me a long time to realise that I need to distance myself from such people as soon as I can, and to get myself back into safe space, away from the herd of idiots.

It's really hard to not be bitter & twisted, when you know you've got to rebuild so much. It's really hard not to be angry and resentful at people who have profited from your labour, your industriousness, your ingenuity, your trust, your kindness.

I'm remarkably close to either a breakthrough or capitulation, suicide. Things are on a knife-edge. I have the opportunity to earn 3 or even 4 times what I could have done, weighed down by the abusive numbskulls. With money comes opportunity. With opportunity comes the benefit of all those tough experiences.

Now, I'm so passionately against bullying and abuse. I'm so passionately against living miserably. I'm so passionately against brutality and cruelty.

It would be easy for me to become cruel and bullying, as a result of having suffered so much shit myself, however my future hasn't been written off by a few horrible and small-minded people. There's a glimmer of an opportunity, and every chance I might rise above the herd of idiots once again.

I've got 6 months ahead of me before any kind of sense of security will return to my life. 6 months living under threat. 6 months where one thing going wrong could screw everything up. That's a lot of pressure to live with every day. Everything has to go right, during the next 6 months, or else it takes me beyond the limit of what I can handle. There is no contingency. There is no safety margin. There is no excess fat.

As you can imagine, that makes me very tense, very highly strung, very anxious. That pressure comes out in a negative way sometimes, directed at those who dumped me in the shit, but I know that's no use. That pressure comes out as hopelessness sometimes: a sense that I can never overcome the obstacles, and luck will never be in my favour for long enough to break free again. The hopelessness leads to suicidal thoughts.

So, tomorrow I start something that has real tangible value, to rebuild my life. However, don't be surprised if the pressure is unbearable, and I fly off the handle at seemingly minor setbacks. Don't be surprised if I'm still not quite able to bury the hatchet and stop being so aggressive, so violent in my communication towards my persecutors.

I'm a long way from breaking free again.

The geeks will inherit the earth

Tags: #bullying #parents #childhood #divorce #writing #career

This is a story about the hardest part of the journey...

People often give up when they're closer than they think they are to making a breakthrough. The first 80% of a task is always the bit that seems quite easy, like you're making really good progress. The final 20% is tough. Progress seems to slow to a snail's pace, and self-doubt creeps in. It's easy to quit in the final leg, believing you're never going to achieve your goal.

I'm racked with nervousness about whether I'm following the right path. There are lots of things that I feel somewhat full of regret about. There's lots of stuff that I feel a bit stupid and embarrassed about. There are plenty of things that, on reflection, look pretty dumb, arrogant, crazy.

In particular, I'm following a cyclical pattern. I keep repeating the same formula, because I know it sort of works. It's easy for me to stay living where I live, getting more work in the field I know best and pretty much acting the way I've always acted. The pressure to stay in this loop is undeniable.

I need to get my head above water. I'm not in any position to just sack off the western lifestyle and leave a smoking crater in my reputation, creditworthiness and ability to continue to function in the mainstream.

Believe me, I'm so tempted right now to just disappear. I would love to grab my tent, sleeping bag and a few other essentials, and just go off-grid. Suicidal thoughts have reached a crescendo in my head... they stalk me every waking hour of the day. It's clear what's driving this sinking feeling in my heart: the fact that life for the next 6 months is going to be very much a paint-by-numbers exercise.

I've done the commuting thing for 20 years. I've done the IT thing for 20 years. I've done the city living thing for 20 years. I've done the urban solitude thing for 20 years. There is no novelty, no joy, no challenge, no surprises... it's just a case of turning the pedals, and plodding along. The monotony, the drudgery, the formula, the routine... it's worse than a prison sentence.

Do I have a reason for living? Not really. What would it be? Is it a reason for living, to pay rent and service debts? Is work a reason for living, if you're just selling your brain and body to the highest bidder to work on bullshit projects? How can you take pride in your work when you've done the same thing, over and over and over again, for 20 miserable boring years.

I used to work to live. I had a nice lifestyle and I always took my full holiday allowance, travelling to exotic destinations and pursuing exciting activities, adventures. That was less than 10% of the time. The rest of the time was spent watching the clock. Two clocks actually: one that counted down until the end of the working week, and one that counted down until the day that I no longer had to do a job that I had nothing but contempt for.

In truth, I hadn't really reckoned on living this long. Certainly in recent years I decided that things would be wrapped up neatly if I just shuffled off my mortal coil, and my life insurance would at least leave a small legacy for my sister and my niece. I don't really fancy growing old and infirm, and facing yet more of the same bullshit that's been such a chore.

I remember being in hospital, and I really wasn't at all scared that I was going to die, even though my prognosis was that I had about a 30% chance of surviving, such was the damage to my internal organs.

Things haven't really moved on much. I have no dependents. My family ditched me, so I've ditched them. I've not been able to rebuild my social life. I take no pleasure or satisfaction from doing the same job I've been doing for 20 years. I'm too trapped by the mechanisms of capitalism to be able to pursue travel and adventure. I'm too paralysed by fear of dropping out of the rat race and becoming unemployable, to do something gutsy, which would be a one-way ticket.

You see, I'm acutely aware that my perception of the world is coloured by my mood disorder. When I'm depressed, I see everything as pointless, relentlessly horrible and never going to improve. However, I'm able to be rational, and I know that it's foolish to make a permanent change for a temporary problem.

If I throw away the ability to be able to earn huge amounts of money very quickly, then I'm very much limiting my future options. As it stands, at the moment, I can potentially dig myself out of a financial hole and feather the nest very quickly. It seems churlish to not even be prepared to toe the line for 6 short months. However, if you've followed my story at all, you'll know that 6 months is a long time for me... a lot can happen in my life in that period.

My timescales are heavily compressed. Gains need to be shored up quickly or else the hard work will be undone. Things need to happen faster, not slower than normal. Asking somebody whose life is extremely fragile to work harder, longer and suffer more than their peers is likely to lead to the "fuck it" button being pushed. Whatever happened to supporting those who are weaker?

I can see now, where the cracks are. I can see why people slip through the nets and sink to the bottom. I understand where we are hindering, not helping. Life is pretty vicious and unforgiving.

It's true that I'm pretty resilient. It's true that it's remarkable that I've made it this far, and that I still apparently have the opportunity to fight my way back, to recover... and then to perhaps thrive and prosper.

Hopefully, this feeling will pass, but from experience, I think it's going to get harder before it gets easier.

It's like this blog. There are less people reading than ever before, and I'm getting less feedback and encouragement than ever before. I'm not sure why I'm even writing anymore. I've failed to shame my parents into acting with any common decency (although perhaps that was always doomed to fail) and I've as yet failed to feel better, using writing as some kind of shrink, a silent counsellor... to deal with my fucked up head.

But, my experience tells me that doubt always creeps in. I've written 240,000 words and I plan to write 300,000. I plan to write every day for at least a year. Who knows what it will achieve? Sometimes, you don't know until you do it.

When I wrote on a forum every day, it brought me friends, a sense of identity, self-respect and even a sense of achievement when I wrote something that a lot of people found useful. This is kind of like a repetition of that, except that this time I'm publicly dissecting my own psyche.

Is it useful to externalise my internal monologue? Is it useful to psychologically expose myself like this? I've found introspection and self-examination useful in the past, and there's no reason why 'open sourcing' the contents of my brain shouldn't be interesting to somebody somewhere sometime.

They say the most interesting writing is when people are raw & authentic. I'm not really trying to emulate any writers or follow any formula to gain an audience. I just need to get stuff out of my brain and onto paper. I need to pick things to bits and figure out what makes me tick, so I can hopefully begin to open a new, happier chapter in my life.

Watch this space.

Travel doesn't have to mean jetting around the globe to me. I'd be happy in my tent in a muddy field, I think. I'm so sick of the global rat race.

Tags: #bipolar #depression #suicide #career #mentalhealth #homeless

This is a story about arrested development...

It's fairly clear that I have too much time on my hands to think about stuff. Too much time alone thinking about stuff leads to dredging up old memories, getting worked up about stuff in the past, and strange thoughts and ideas, without any checks & balances.

However, I'm reasonably self-aware, so I thought I'd share my own impressions of myself. In particular, my attempts to be rational and objective about everything that grinds my gears.

I'm aware that the more and more I wail in distress, bitch and whine, the more I seem like a spoiled teenager, full of angst and feelings of being 'hard done by'. Perhaps there's the impression that I'm owed something. Perhaps a sense of entitlement is coming across.

Actually, there's no entitlement... driving all of these feelings are suicidal thoughts, which mean that if life is too awful, too unbearable, I'll just remove myself from the game altogether.

It's easy to dismiss a suicidal or depressed person, saying "other people have it so much harder than you" but it's that attitude that is the truly immature one. With maturity, you'll realise that life doesn't work like that. As a friend once said, there isn't one single person on the planet who's entitled to feel depressed and suicidal because they have it worst of all, and everybody else shouldn't feel depressed because they have it better than this one individual.

We judge things relatively, this is natural, it's permitted and it's an acceptable fact of life. Why shouldn't I judge my lot relative to my peers, relative to the opportunities and luck that we've all enjoyed in life, as well as the unlucky things that have happened?

Luck? Luck? What the hell am I talking about luck for? Isn't destiny decided by choices? Well, no, not really.

I didn't decide to get born to a couple of drug addict dropout losers, who were too intoxicated on drugs and alcohol to adjust their lifestyle and grow the fuck up when kids started to arrive. Did I decide that these losers would be such a waste of space that they'd need bailouts from the bank of Mum & Dad just to put a roof over the family's head? Did I decide that these losers would spend my entire upbringing teaching me not to be entitled, and to expect a lower standard of living than they enjoyed? Did I decide to pick parents who both enjoyed University educations, but dropped out, and decided not to afford me and my sister the same privilege? I think, if you're looking for the entitled people who believed that the world owes them a living, you'll find them in my parents.

I've always looked to the future, and tried to act in a positive way. I forged my own path, and decided to have a career and follow the path of responsibility, hard work and reject the lifestyle of my parents: being lazy drug addicts as they were.

However, when I found myself back in the situation of my teens - no money and control taken out of my hands - naturally, I feel pretty bitter about everything, pretty resentful to have nothing to show for years of hard graft. Yes it's immature, to bitch and whine about it. Yes it seems like I'm not taking responsibility for the shit that went wrong, undoing all that hard work. Do you want to know why I watched everything burn down, and why I don't feel that responsible?

Does that look like a happy child to you, or a clotheshorse? Does it even look like a child, or perhaps a status symbol? Perhaps it's an object, to be wheeled around, a badge, a token?

The bulk of my upbringing was spent receiving abuse for not having been born with perfect maturity, naturally instilled Victorian values. I never had a childhood.

This is what makes me tick: I feel like I'm entitled to a childhood, now, today, as payback for a horrible upbringing.

I feel like I can act the fool, the jester, the clown. I feel like I can have a massive tantrum, call everyone names, throw a hissy fit. I feel I can have chocolate and jelly for dinner. I feel like I can play with toys. I feel like I can neglect my responsibilities and not do my homework.

This is payback time. I'm taking the time that I didn't have as a kid to make people laugh, or cringe. I actually don't care that I look childish and immature, it's too much fun and I don't give a fuck what people think.

Is it spoiled, and is it bratty? Well, that depends... who spoiled me? I paid for this. I paid for me to have a massive meltdown, a massive tantrum. It's all my wages, my life savings, that has funded what had become a long-overdue childhood.

What did you think it was all about? Riding my bike recklessly around London, getting mixed up with the "wrong" crowd and being the popular kid who doesn't play by the rules, doesn't respect authority and their elders, doesn't say and do the "right" things.

Oh boy, let me tell you that it feels good. It's such a relief to throw off the shackles of savings accounts, mortgages and pension funds. It's such a relief to be free from the oppression of a work schedule, allotted holiday allowances and kissing arses. It's such a relief to speak my mind, rather than falling in line with the rabble.

What's the lesson we learn from all this? Well, if you're overly disciplinary with your kids, and take them away from all their friends and give them a sparse, boring, shit little life, filled with angry abuse for them being nothing more than a fucking child... expect them to grow up feeling like they missed out, like they never really knew childhood innocence, the joy of just laughing and giggling.

Now, when I start to go a bit hypomanic, I chuckle to myself, I grin manically. There is a lightness in my chest, pure glee. People see it, and it's infectious. They can't believe an adult would have such childlike qualities.

When will this end, this somewhat embarrassing and disgraceful immaturity? When will I stop being bitter and resentful about a horrible childhood? When will I move on, and stop verbally attacking my lazy drug addict dropout loser parents?

The answer: when I feel like I've had enough.

I look pretty happy on top of this bus stop, don't I. I'm 'owed' 18 years of childhood innocence, aren't I?

Tags: #childhood #parents #career #depression #suicide #mentalhealth #bipolar

This is a story about being an open book...

I'm having a crisis of confidence. I've written the best part of a quarter of a million words, but now I'm starting to feel like it's all garbage. I'm losing my audience, and I'm losing my way... where am I going with this?

I've got experience of writing every day. I used to do it on a forum, and it brought very positive things to my life. Having that connection with a group of people formed the basis for friendships that later developed in to proper face-to-face relationships. It was also really confidence inspiring, finding out that people had read my stuff and found it interesting.

So, this could be seen as something immature. I've gone back to the things that I was doing in my early twenties, in an attempt to recapture some long-lost happiness and security. I've moved back to London, I'm working back in banking IT, I aspire to get back into kitesurfing and I'm writing every day... albeit in isolation.

When I started writing on the British KiteSurfing Association (BKSA) forum, the internet was a very different place. There was no Facebook. There was no Twitter. The internet had not yet been colonised by an army of bloggers, churning out a banal wall of white noise, as they attempted to fill the void in their boring isolated lives.

It was interesting that a friend said he had to take down his forum website because it was simply killed by spammers, trying to generate links to their crappy sites, in an attempt to push up their Google ranking. In an article he shared yesterday, a woman wrote about most of the comments in her blog being other bloggers trying to do the same: to generate traffic on their sites.

Fundamentally, the message is clear: nobody reads your boring shit. Stop writing. Don't bother.

However, I'm not writing because I want the advertising revenue or product sponsorship deals. I'm writing because some crazy shit happened to me in recent years, and I want people to empathise. I can no longer carry the burden of having all these secrets. I can no longer handle having a load of experiences that I've never told to my friends and family.

A year ago, I was paranoid about being 'found out' as somebody who came off the rails and had a tough time. I felt that my professional reputation would be ruined. I felt that people would recoil in horror, and that I would lose friendships, respect. The jury is still out, and I've pushed pretty hard into territory that makes me look really really bad, but I'm still here... pushing through it.

There is a kind of catharsis in sharing some stuff that's eating you up inside. I guess it doesn't have to be done so publicly, but my attempts to discuss this stuff over email fell on deaf ears. My attempts to discuss this stuff with my parents ended with them just wanting to avoid the topics. I don't really see any friends on a regular basis, so I've been trapped all alone with my thoughts.

What I know about stuff online is that there are a lot more 'lurkers' than you're aware of. Far more people are reading than writing. People struggle to find the words of their own, and instead they try and find voices that echo their own sentiments. We find it much less scary to share something that was written by somebody else, that matches our own opinion, than to write down our own opinion. We almost feel as if our own opinion isn't worthy, isn't valid.

I guess I don't really have that problem. I'm outspoken in any area that takes my interest. If I don't have an opinion on something, I'll think about it and then develop an opinion of my own. I like to think that my opinions have not been easily swayed, but are instead the rational conclusions drawn from the available evidence.

When I write some pieces which are pure opinion - like my rants about the pensions crisis, or how shitty young people's prospects are - then I do kind of feel like I'm writing garbage. I don't treat it as an academic exercise, and put in loads of references and quotes. I simply set out my opinion in strongly emotive language, because I obviously care deeply enough to write about it.

However, when I think about why I wrote something, it's often because I'm bitter and angry about something else. It's been quite clear from my writing that I'm pretty pissed off with my parents, and so these strong emotions start to express themselves in thinly veiled attacks on their politics and lifestyle choices. The fact that they sit in wealthy comfort while my sister and I struggle turns into an attack on rich Cotswold-dwelling upper middle class Conservative twits, like David Cameron... completely ignorant of the struggles of inner city and suburban ordinary people.

Why I have chosen to shame myself, and write about deeply embarrassing personal stuff and mistakes that I have made, is somewhat more complicated.

There's a huge risk that I'm going to slip backwards into the traps that threatened to destroy my life, during the last few years. I'm scared about how chaotic my life was, how close I came to death, life-changing injury and permanent madness. I want to have some kind of record of my ups and downs, to put things into my own words and demystify what's been going on.

My perception is that I'm currently fairly healthy. I'm struggling with depression and anxiety, but all my feelings of paranoia, my jumbled up disordered thoughts and the really strange ideas and terrible plans or schemes... they've all subsided. Now, I feel quite practical, quite realistic, quite sane. I feel mostly normal.

It's not healthy to regard yourself with suspicion, to think of yourself as unwell. I'm pretty sure I'm not unwell, but it's taking time to get back on my feet. Repairing the damage caused by traumatic events in your life is not quick and it's not easy. If you've read any of my story, you'll know that I've had a remarkable turnaround from where I was, at my lowest ebb.

I've got no idea who's still reading this, and what their perception is of me, but my objective now is to try and demonstrate that I'm stabilising, that I'm getting back to normal. I want to try and reassure people that I'm not a lost cause, and that I'm on top of the scary things that threatened to consume me. I want people to see me as somebody worthwhile, somebody worth being friends with, somebody interesting, not just as a gruesome jester, not just as a fizzing, bubbling, seething mass of self-destructive insanity.

It would be nice if I can write a new, happier, more normal chapter in my story. It would be nice if that chapter included some supporters, but I appreciate that my story has been very hard to follow. I've been hard work, but I hope I'm worth it in the end.

Fundamentally, I'm humbled, even if it doesn't come across very well.

I'm starting to get a bit paranoid about my employers finding this blog, but if I keep writing, all the madness is going to get buried under far too much text for them to bother reading

Tags: #writing #mentalhealth #career

This is a story about descending into insanity...

What do we know about technology that is capable of tracking us, capturing images and sound? When does it do this? What data is stored, transmitted, received, without us even knowing?

I'm on extremely dodgy ground, talking about snooping, spying, surveillance and hijacking of the 'smart' devices we have in our possession most of the time. There's a risk that I could swing into out and out paranoia. However, I also need to tell you what happened to me, as I experienced it.

So, we pick up the story where we left part one, yesterday. I'm in my hotel room, it's going dark, there aren't any drugs in my bloodstream anymore, and I can hear an angry family outside my door. The hotel reception has been alerted to my distress, as have the police. This is what happened next.

I heard a sound outside my window, of two people climbing up onto the top of the bay windows, in order to stand on the little balcony and look right into my room through the window. I had the impression that it was a father and son. I turned my back on them, horrified by this intrusion.

Voices now came from behind me, where the father and son stood, peering at me through the glass, with me like a goldfish in a bowl. Voices came from below, where they shouted to somebody relaying messages, to somebody outside my door... an upset female voice, just the other side.

At first, the father and son were critically appraising me: "look at him, look at the way he's cowering from us, what a pathetic little twerp". Being talked about like this made me squirm with self-consciousness, to feel that my privacy, my personal space was being horribly invaded.

This narrative of abuse, where I was talked about as if I wasn't able to perfectly hear what was being said, carried on for some time. I started to get angry that I was being peered at like this, with no escape, trapped on both sides. I slid the flimsy wardrobe in front of the window, so that the father & son couldn't see in.

By now, it was getting pretty dark. The voices carried on as if I could be seen, and I was confused to know how that was possible, when I had covered the window with the wardrobe. The messages that the father and son relayed to the rest of the family seemed to suggest that they were still able to see me. I moved around the room and tried to hide myself from their intrusive gaze, seemingly to no avail.

"Look at him, what a mess. He's a right state. So messed up. Disgusting!" they said. Meanwhile the female voices sounded like they were whipping themselves into a bloodlust, a frenzy. "C'mon Dad let's get him. Let's teach him a lesson he won't forget" the daughter pleaded. You could hear excitement, exhilaration in her voice... she was starting to enjoy this.

Everything up to this point, except for my face-to-face contact with the person who came into my room, could be pretty much put down to temporary insanity. I hadn't really seen anything and it's quite possible that I was hearing things. I've never really had a problem with hearing voices, but I was so tired, malnourished, stressed and strung out that it's quite possible that my brain had simply lost its grip on reality.

Even the father and son, stood on the balcony, were only things that I perceived in the murky gloom of the darkness, and I didn't want them staring at me, so I had turned my back on them and then slid the wardrobe in the way.

The sense that I was being watched, certainly didn't make any rational sense. I had started to get really alarmed, after it seemed like I was still being watched from every angle. I had started to look around the room, to see if I could see holes drilled in the walls or ceiling, to see if I could see any means of spying on me... I saw nothing. This really didn't make any sense to me, and I was kind of still secretly hoping that it could all be put down to the effects of drugs wearing off, even though I knew that they were no longer in my bloodstream.

I was not at all prepared for what happened next.

I heard the mechanical sound of an electric motor, and the next thing I knew, a thin silvery metal tube-like thing was poked under the bedroom door. This tube, ridged like a shower hose, then turned 90 degrees and started to extend upwards at a 45 degree angle away from the floor. When it had extended a few feet upwards, the end then turned to point into the room, and I could see dark glass on the end, which looked like the lens of a tiny camera.

This. Changed. Everything.

Now I had actual confirmation, clear as day, with my eyes that I was being spied on. Up to this point, I had been half considering that everything was just in my mind. It's not unreasonable to hear and perceive things incorrectly when so tired and messed up, but I'd never had a hallucination. When people talk about hallucinations, they aren't actually seeing things. Instead, the brain is misinterpreting things. You can see snakes and spiders in shadows, but when you look directly, you don't see those things... they're just corruptions of things that aren't seen clearly.

This telescopic spy camera was here, it was real. I went from being half-asleep, exhausted by the prolonged stress and the sleepless nights, to being wide awake. Everything was in sharp focus, and it was clear that this was no hallucination.

I yelled: "Hello, police?". My assumption was that this could be the police's way of checking to see if I was OK, if they were worried that I was suicidal, or perhaps had a weapon. "That camera had better belong to the police, or else there's going to be hell to pay" I yelled, aware that this was an invasion of privacy that could never be justified in court, by private citizens.

Then I overhead two people talking "yeah, the guy's name is Nicholas Grant, from Bournemouth". Bournemouth? How the hell would they know that? That's what it says on my driving license, because I never got it changed. It sent shivers down my spine at the time. It certainly stopped me in my tracks, because I was about to grab the camera and try and pull it out from under the door.

I decided that it was probably the police, so I went to my bag and found a letter from my doctor, explaining that I was in a vulnerable situation: struggling with mental health issues, drug addiction, homelessness and dislocation from family and friends. The letter was intended to be given to hospital staff if I ever needed treatment, as it summarised my care needs and primary health risks, but I felt like it would make a starting point with the police, seeing as there were at least 4 angry family members stood outside who wanted to put their own point of view across, painting me in a negative light.

"Oh, ho, what's this trick he's trying to pull. What excuses are these? A letter full of lies, is it?" I overheard. The irate family thought that I was trying to pull a fast one, to get myself out of trouble by hiding behind medical diagnosis, perhaps. They certainly weren't happy that I was preparing myself for a knock at the door from the police. They seemed to feel like justice wasn't going to be served.

I didn't feel like the police would permit any such situation to occur. I was now convinced that this camera had perhaps been purchased or rented by one of the family, and was part of their continued persecution of me. I phoned the police myself. I explained where I was, what was happening. They said they'd see what they could do, but they were strangely unconvincing.

I then heard a flurry of activity outside the door. "Get that call cancelled off" I heard somebody say. Then "have they called it off". A little later, I heard "we've got it called off" and a little cheer went up. This was really confusing. Were these people the police, were they working with the police, or were they just really good at blagging the police in order to keep their quarry trapped in his hotel room, in order to serve up their own form of vigilante justice?

I was struck with an idea. What if I could communicate with these bullies, this mob? I decided to write messages on my mobile phone and point it at the camera so they could read it. I got out my mobile phone and launched Google Apps, which has a word processor. I then made the font really big, so the text could be read.

The fact I'd got my phone out again and what I was doing caused considerable interest, particularly with the excitable female, who seemed to be the main injured party in the whole fiasco, but now seemed to be revelling in her position as centre of attention. "What's he doing? Oh, he's going to write us a message is he? Oh this is going to be good" she said.

I wrote "I'm sorry". With reference to the original offence I seemed to have somehow caused.

My oppressors seemed to react before I'd even shown it to the camera. They laughed derisively and mockingly, and then reacted angrily. There was an explosion of anger, seemingly incredulous that I could be remorseful that I had caused such offence that I would be attacked by an entire family.

It was strange that my messages could be read, without me even having to show them to the camera. I then decided that my phone had probably been hacked... hence how I could be overheard so easily. However, I still felt bad about what I'd said, and I was still clearly trapped by an angry mob, so I started to make pleas.

"I'm scared" I said next. This had a somewhat de-escalating effect, but now I seemed to enter into a direct dialogue with the female who had sustained the most offence, and was the vocal ringleader for the rest of the family. We were getting somewhere, it seemed.

"I didn't mean what I said" I pleaded. This didn't go down very well.

"I was born in Wales, my parents are from the North" I wrote, trying to undo the whole us vs. them thing that I'd started, when I had made my flippant remarks about uncultured out of town people, under my breath, muttering in a bad German accent, assuming that nobody could hear me.

I can't remember the details of the conversation, but there was little dissuading the offended party that I hadn't meant anything malicious in my comments. I had then moved on to reasoning with them, that violence wasn't the answer. I wrote that beating me up would be a vicious and cowardly attack, completely out of proportion with whatever I had done.

Things dragged on and on, until we eventually reached the point where the main woman made it clear that I had to do something to demonstrate my remorse. It was fairly clear that if we just continued, eventually they'd have to go away, and then they'd feel like justice hadn't been done. The last thing I wrote was "if I wasn't sorry, I'd just keep this conversation going, wouldn't I?".

The penny seemed to drop with me, that I was supposed to do something brave, to demonstrate that I was sorry, instead of just hiding behind my door, hiding behind the police, hiding behind the letter from my doctor. I was struck by the certainty that I had to do something very clear to demonstrate how sorry I was.

I put my phone into my pocket, moved the wardrobe back against the wall, opened the window - the father and son had gone - and climbed out. I was stood, on the 3rd floor, on top of a bay window, without railings or other safety guard around me, on the outside of this building, perilously high above the ground.

I raised my arms to the air, and yelled to the street below "I fucked up!!". As I did this, a police helicopter that was hovering about quarter of a mile away shone its light onto me. I clambered back in the window, with adrenalin coursing through my bloodstream. "What do I do now?" I asked aloud to the room. "Come and find me" the girl said. "Climb out of the window and climb down. We've been doing it all day" she said.

Obviously, I was aware that the police helicopter was there. The light was now shining in the window very brightly. I decided that climbing down from the top floor of a building in full view of a police helicopter was not the smartest idea, so instead I opened the bedroom door and legged it down the back staircase of the hotel, full of the excitement and glee of a child. The most exciting game of hide & seek ever, had just begun.

Things were just hotting up.

The next part of the story does actually contain the fun run bit. I did interact with lots more people face-to-face in the final chapter, which makes the whole silly episode that much harder to explain. I also have some digital evidence of what went down during those crazy couple of days. However, I do kind of wonder if I didn't dream the whole thing sometimes.

The finalé really is almost impossible to explain away as mental illness or drug side-effects, but I still need to tell the story and 'ask the audience' what they think could possibly have happened. As I continue to tell the tale, you'll see that it's harder and harder to explain away as a bout of temporary insanity.

I want it to be temporary insanity, because it means that I wasn't the victim of a rather harrowing incident. It's rather unsettling to think that I could have been so insane that I thought I was making phonecalls to hotel receptionists, the police, speaking face to face with people and seeing things as clear as day, like the spy camera. It makes no sense, which is why I'm finally telling the tale, after a year of trying to wrap my head around it.

I suspect that Islington holds more secrets than it's letting on, but we shall see.

Tune in tomorrow for the final instalment.

Tags: #mentalhealth #bipolar #drugs #addiction #london

This is a story about everything trapped inside my head...

I'm lying awake and my mind is going at a million miles an hour, thinking about all the things that I want to write about, need to write about. There's a lot of my story that still needs to be told before the 13th/14th of May. I'm not sure why anniversaries are important to us humans, but we seem to attach significance to the passage of 365 days and nights.

I want to write an open letter to my Mum, for her birthday on the 13th, but I don't want that to overshadow something more significant that happened at around the same time: The Finsbury Park Fun Run. My parents have become quite irrelevant really, and I'd like to keep it that way. The further they are from my life, the more I feel within touching distance of restabilising, recovering, moving forwards.

My parents will tell you that I shouldn't be thinking about myself at the moment, when there's been a death in the family and another family member is seriously unwell. However, as I've alluded to before, I'm not exactly off the critical list myself. I took a kitchen knife to my forearm only last night, daring myself to open my veins, to end it.

When I came to listen to all my old voicemails at the beginning of this week, there were heaps of messages from my Mum, berating me for not being emotionally available to her. I couldn't believe how I'm supposed to be the responsible, reliable, dependable member of the family, there as emotional support and as a punching bag, for my flakey drop-out loser parents. Ok, so I've thrown off the shackles of wearing a grey suit and being the career-minded sensible and conservative member of the family, after the best part of 20 years in financial services technology and 9 to 5 office humdrum. However, I reject both roles: punchbag & outcast.

I can't be both left out in the cold when I'm having a hard time, but yet supposed to be there for my family when they're having a hard time. Fuck them. Fuck them to heck.

Anyway, I've kept my safety barriers up. There's too much at stake at the moment. I'm under too much pressure and stress as it is, and things are too fragile, the green shoots have only just appeared. I'm not going to have it all go down the shitter because of my damn parents again, rearing their ugly heads at precisely the wrong moment, because they want something.

I already occupy a convenient space for my parents: a talking point. They are friendless, isolated, unhealthy and unhappy. Their abusive relationship is toxic, and the only way that they know how to function is by picking holes in other people, sitting in smug judgement over the world.

Anyway, enough about my damn family already. The sooner I'm disinherited the better. I may revisit the topic of my Mother, in an open letter, but otherwise it should be case closed. The open wound that was my horrible childhood will never heal while I'm still dragged back into that sick, unhealthy family.

END OF RANT

So, what else is going on inside my damaged little noggin? Well, I feel like I haven't really bridged the gap for my readers, between the happy me who had my shit together, and the drug addict homeless guy. There's a period of time that warrants further examination.

I appreciate that what I'm doing - picking at the scab, committing public reputational suicide - is rather strange, hard to deal with, almost impossible to comprehend. If you think about the damage that I'm trying to undo though, and how close I've come to death or permanent insanity (perhaps already there, ha ha!) then you might be able to see why I have to take such a bold step.

Somebody who has been through what I've been through should be suffering much more permanent and irreversible brain damage. I should be attempting to swat invisible insects, perhaps picking off my own skin to get to invisible bugs underneath. I should be shouting at unseen people, hearing voices. I should be consumed by paranoia... convinced that something or somebody is out to get me.

I've certainly unseated my mental health, which has always had dubious stability. I was clearly suffering from a mood disorder before I started putting copious amounts of powerful narcotics into my body. The two things really don't mix well and play nice.

It's hard to be self-aware, and it was certainly surprising when I was told that I was slurring my words and talking really slowly, back earlier this year, when I was swallowing loads of legal benzodiazepines and suffering the cognitive impairment of drug withdrawal from long binges on powerful stimulants.

I'm quite familiar with the brain-killing sluggishness of stimulant withdrawal. Normally it means I'm really sleepy and struggle to hold a coherent conversation or thread of thought. When writing, I might drift in and out of consciousness, and it'll take me ages to finish what I'm writing, which ends up flitting from topic to topic. You can see it in my writing, but it's masked by the fact that you have no idea how long it took me to write.

The benzos leave big gaps in my memory. Rohypnol, the famous 'date rape' drug is a benzo, and the amnesia-inducing effects are presumably what the would-be rapists are looking for, when they're spiking drinks. So, I guess I was spiking my own drinks. Who would do such a thing, and why? Well, another effect of stimulant comedowns is horrible panic attacks and anxiety, as well as disturbed sleep and appetite. Benzos help to calm everything down after a big stimulant binge.

But anyway, I'm getting waaaay ahead of myself. How did it even come to this? How did I even get off the rails in such a bad way?

In actual fact, you don't realise this, but things have improved massively. Things were much, MUCH worse. That's the thing about your journey downwards... you don't even know where you're headed yet. People talk about rock bottom, and I think that's a lot of nonsense. I never reached a rock bottom, but I can tell you that things started out slow, crept up on me and then got the better of me. No rock bottom, but I had to learn some pretty brutal lessons before I got the upper hand.

So, let me give you a little insight into how I became a drug addict. It starts with sex.

SEX ADDICTION

I've written before about experimenting with drugs to enhance bedroom antics, but what I haven't had a chance to write about yet is just how much of an addiction sex was. Perhaps it wasn't an addiction, but it was the yardstick by which I measured happiness and security. If I wasn't getting sex, my life felt pretty meaningless.

A few of my relationships were built on an almost purely sexual basis. One girlfriend, I really didn't find at all attractive, but at least I was getting regular sex. It was somehow important to me in my late teens and early twenties to get a lot of sex. I felt like I was making up for lost time, that I had missed out on a lot of those great experiences of first girlfriends, childhood sweethearts, school crushes etc. etc. I felt like I was 'owed' a debt of sexual gratification.

One of my close friends talks about notches on the bedpost as a way of warding off the relentless bullying endured at school, and it was this exact thing that I was trying to do myself, except I was just doing it with the one girl, rather than being the heartbreaking rogue that he is. Fact of the matter was, my self confidence was probably damaged, not enhanced, by being with somebody I really didn't fancy, and actually felt ashamed that I had 'sold out' and decided to date.

The truth is, I'm actually pretty vulnerable. Very vulnerable in fact. I'm so desperate to be loved, liked even, that I'll accept all kinds of mistreatment and being pushed into things that are really not in my favour. There are desperately needy things, like being friends with people who are just taking advantage of me. Then there is the sexually fucked up thing of having sex with girls I don't fancy, just because I don't want to be alone.

My ex wife was different. I did actually fancy her. I mean, I do kind of corrupt and twist myself though. I found her attractive, but in truth, I also tried to dump her when I realised she wasn't a nice person. I also realised that I wasn't even that compatible with her, the more I got to know her. However, there was one thing that we stuck together for: the sex.

I'm not sure what your relationship with sex is, but mine used to be like this: I felt I had to have it. If I thought I wasn't going to have it, I used to get stressed, upset, anxious. I had more of it than I really wanted, just because I was fulfilling some kind of ritual, reassuring myself that I could have it whenever I wanted. When I couldn't have it, I'd react badly, getting upset or threatening to go off to find it elsewhere.

Basically, I'm pretty sure I had all the hallmarks of a psychological addiction. When my ex mentioned she'd have to be away for a period of time, the pit of my stomach would feel sick. What about sex? Where am I going to get sex? When can I have sex? Will I be able to have enough sex? What if I want to have sex and I can't? This was a major issue for me.

I must be clear: I used seduction rather that coercion to ensure I had a steady supply of sex. I worked my arse off in the bedroom to ensure my ex wanted it as much as me. In a way, I addicted her to sex. I was a sex pusher. I gave her a great time in the bedroom, but my motives were not pure. I wanted her to be available to me, whenever I wanted. It took time, it took effort, but slowly I was building a co-dependent relationship based around sex. It's all we had.

There were other reasons why sex became such an unhealthy fixation in our co-dependent relationship. Namely, she was a really mean person to me. She isolated me from friends and activities I loved, criticised everything about me and generally dragged down my self esteem to the point where I was trapped by a sense of worthlessness and loneliness. All alone in a flat in the middle of nowhere that she insisted we move into. I was miserable as sin.

I'm covering old ground here a little, but it's important to go over this, as this was the groundwork for the really destructive stuff that was to follow.

CO-DEPENDENT RELATIONSHIP

It was always clear that the relationship was unhealthy as hell, and really needed to end, but it was virtually impossible for me to back out of it, because I had so little in my life except for the sex. So many friendships had been damaged and fallen into disrepair. Even my work was suffering because of this all-consuming fuck up of a relationship.

Eventually though, I found a reserve of strength and finally managed to break up with her. This was the catalyst for me forging a more entrepreneurial path. Mingled in with the breakup was some career changes, some business ventures... basically a lot of my pent-up creativity and strength came out in much more positive directions, around the time that we broke up, the first time.

Then, when things were going really well in my life, I decided to try and get back with her. Things were different. The relationship was less destructive, but the way that things quickly developed was deepening co-dependency, with the introduction of sex-enhancing drugs.

Yes, the introduction of drugs into our relationship brought a kind of stability. I've written before about swathes of time at weekends being taken up by the drug-fuelled pursuit of sexual ecstasy. I felt like drugs would bring us closer, and they certainly reduced the arguments, the agression and abusive nature of the relationship. However, it wasn't healthy. It was co-dependency taken to the next level.

With drugs, it's sometimes only a matter of time before you take things up a gear, if you're chasing a high. What started out with some MDMA (Ecstasy, Molly) and GBL/GHB then turned into rampant experimentation across the spectrum of available legal highs, before fatefully arriving at a compound nicknamed NRG-3.

MY FIRST DRUG ADDICTION

This is where the slowly-slowly creeping up thing happens. You feel like you're in control, with your accurate measuring scales and strict rules about dosages and keeping things limited to weekends, but you're playing with drugs that erode your self-control, willpower. I was the sensible one, but I was also a lot of the driving force too... this new level of co-dependency felt a little bit like we were in love and had a stable happy relationship, with me as the architect.

It would be me who carefully researched each chemical, measured doses and made sure we stayed safe. The problem was, I hadn't yet found my nemesis: my drug of choice.

NRG-3 was deemed by me to be too dangerous for us to try, and it remained an unopened packet, a closed Pandora's Box. I was right to treat it with respect... it turned out to be every bit as dangerous as my research had led me to believe.

But, addiction needs a catalyst. Me leaving Cambridge and facing the stress of how to grow my little company to be big enough to employ at least 2 people full time, plus resolve the intractable issue of where to locate the office, reached crisis point. A busy summer of relentless weddings taking up whole weekends was the straw that broke the camel's back.

Me and my ex were absolutely paralytically drunk at her brother's wedding. We had an absolutely almighty row in front of her whole family, and I ended up back home, alone, suicidally depressed. It seemed like the perfect time to try NRG-3.

People talk about drugs being near-instantaneously addictive, and I don't think that's correct. However, the circumstances under which I tried NRG-3 certainly conspired to create brain conditions that were almost perfect for addiction to flourish. I disappeared into the depths of my first ever drug binge. All the rules about dosage and measurement went right out of the window.

So, the rest is history right? Wrong.

Chronic drug addiction still doesn't happen overnight. At the end of my binge, I had an almighty panic attack, got really scared by it, and then life kind of got back to normal... except it didn't. There was now a little devil inside of me that wanted to repeat the experience, and was just waiting for an appropriate moment.

Enter the era of the 'secret drug habit'. My ex talked about my 'drug habit' during our divorce. What utter nonsense. By the time we separated, 2 years later, I was a raging drug addict. There was no hiding a 'habit'... I was actively turning parts of our home into a crack den. However, there was a period of 18 months where I tried my very best to keep the devil at bay, and hide my habit.

I'm actually putting myself in an excessively bad light here. I had no idea that addiction had taken hold so firmly. Yes, sure, it was me who played with fire and got burned. It was me who made bad decisions that led to an ever-worsening situation. However, as I've tried to explain above, one thing leads to another. It's impossible to separate my decision making from my state of mind and the circumstances surrounding it.

So, I started to try to use NRG-3 in secret, which wasn't a problem at first as my company was going down the shitter, so I could use drugs at home when I was supposed to be working, and my ex was at her job. Whether the drugs were the reason why my startup failed, quite possibly, but actually you could say that a terrible relationship was the reason why I did a startup in the first place, which later led to unmanageable stress that was the catalyst for my drug habit... one thing leads to another!

Within a month or so, I thought I was going to die. I was carrying a letter around with me at all times, that basically confessed that I was addicted to powerful stimulants. This letter was going to be given to the doctors at Accident and Emergency, in the event that my heart started giving out, or I went insane or something.

I was a little more proactive than this, and did reach out to community mental health services as well as addiction support specialists, but when I met other 'service users' I felt that my case was unworthy of their time. Meeting child prostitutes who'd had their children taken into care, and had poly-substance abuse issues as well as alcoholism, and grinding poverty... versus me, with my health intact plus a big pile of savings still in the bank. I felt like I was taking the piss by taking up the time of those treatment centres.

This is what I mean by saying that there were lessons I had to learn. I sensed the danger, but I still felt in control. The main problem was a recurrent lie that a lot of addicts tell themselves though: I thought I could use in moderation, and I thought I was better off hiding my problems and trying to fix things on my own, which actually turn out to be contradictory things.

There's a lot of times when drugs are talked about, not as something inanimate, but actually as if they have a life of their own. It's the drugs that are to blame we say, as if they have legs and walked right into your bloodstream all on their own. It's certainly hard to unpick the strange behavioural changes that addiction has on you, from the supposed free will that we all apparently exercise.

What happened to me, during my descent into chronic addiction, was the re-programming of my brain. Whenever my ex would say she was going away or she would be doing something, my brain would instantly say "great, more time to use drugs". When I wasn't using drugs, I was planning the next time I would be able to, anticipating it, aching for it, willing the time to pass more quickly so I could get to my next fix. This didn't happen overnight.

I used to be able to go for a week between getting a fix. Then it shortened to about every 3 days. Then of course, it started to be a daily habit. Then it came to the point where I would pretend to be staying up late to watch TV or something, but just stay awake all night taking drugs. Then it progressed to 'secretly' dipping into a bag of drugs when we were actually in bed together. By the time it gets this bad, you're not exactly hiding your 'habit'... you're practically a chronic drug addict.

Two things happened to significantly worsten the addiction: firstly, I started getting signed off sick for periods by the doctor, which in my mind were to be used 80% for drug taking, and 20% for recovery. I remember when I got signed off for 5 weeks, my very first thought was "great, that's 4 weeks drug taking and 1 week to recover". It had become automatic by then... I didn't choose to think like that... that's what addiction does to you. It changes your subconscious, your priorities, the way you think and act.

Secondly, conflict erupted between me and my ex, and my response was to corner myself. I would go into the spare bedroom, and she would kick and punch the door and scream at the top of her lungs. I was always afraid of her aggressive, violent, abusive side, and this was particularly harrowing when under the influence of powerful drugs or on a comedown, so I tried to barricade myself from these attacks.

THE PRISONER

Being barricaded into a corner, with somebody raging and snarling and raining blows on the only physical barrier that prevents you from being the object receiving the beating, is not conducive to good mental health. Siege tactics were employed, but hunger and thirst don't have the intended affect on somebody so psychologically traumatised, and under the influence of anoretic drugs.

Eventually it got so bad, that my ex could finally see that she was killing me. You can't leave somebody backed into a corner with no food, no drink, no toilet, and not see that your aggression is the reason why somebody is so physically wrecked. It was being cornered that destroyed me, as much as the drugs. It was being cornered that affected my mental health, as much as anything.

By the time we separated, we had entered a dangerous dance, where it was almost routine for her to spend entire weeks keeping me entombed in my sarcophagus. It was unrelenting, the screaming, the shouting, the hammering of fists and feet on the door. I don't think it's unreasonable to say that I felt shellshocked. I was hypervigilent: I could never relax for a second. I was in a state of constant fear, agitation.

If you'd like to blame the drugs in isolation for this, you're wrong. It's quite possible that the addiction would have developed in a different direction, without this mistreatment, but it's certainly true that what I went through was inhumane. I was a prisoner in my own home. Drugs just facilitated this, made me an easier target for abuse. I can barely convey to you the awfulness of being subjected to around-the-clock abuse like that, when so weak and so vulnerable.

Finally, our parents stepped in and enforced a separation to spare my life. I was fucked, and had made a desperate appeal for my release from captivity, to both her parents as well as mine. Mercifully, they arrived and stopped the relentless vigil at my flimsy barrier.

Am I being melodramatic? Well, find yourself a tiny room in your house and lock yourself in there with no food, water or toilet for days on end, with people coming to hammer on the door and scream abuse at you around the clock. See how long you last for. See how your mental health holds up, without even the amplifying effects of a drugs.

Why didn't I run away, go somewhere else? Well, this is where the illogical bullshit that addiction spews into your brain comes in. In my mind, my drug use was still a 'habit' that could be hidden, and it was only when a weekend or holiday arrived that this folly was exposed for what it was. The arrival of a weekend can even come as a surprise to somebody completely in the depths of chronic addiction... it was only the screaming and the yelling and the kicking and the punching that I had any means to mark the passage of time at all.

You have to remember that I was the weakened one here, I was the one in trouble, in distress, cornered and traumatised. You don't fight abuse with more abuse. Nobody's psychological problems were ever cured by screaming at them and cornering them. I had enough on my plate with drug addiction to deal with, let alone an abusive partner.

I did need to quit drugs, get cleaned up... addiction was consuming me and fucking up my life... but, abusing me only prolonged the agony. I learned nothing from being cornered and abused. All it did was to leave me with deep psychological scars.

Separation only opened the door to these psychological issues being resolved, over time. When some friends in London invited me to live with them, I was paralysed by fear of somebody hammering on the door, shouting at me. When I went to stay with my parents, they actually did hammer on the door and shout at me, which is what I had spent days anxiously anticipating... deepening my sense of threat, confirming my worst fears. Obviously, these feelings were irrational, however I had been traumatised to the point where serious psychological damage had been done.

London was chaotic and traumatic in whole new ways, but at least I was eventually released from the prison cell of being trapped in a room with no food, water or toilet. My life imploded to the point where I was actually in full public view, either in hostels or sleeping rough. All privacy, dignity was stripped away from me. I was laid bare for the world to see.

But London led me to social reconnection. Having interactions with people that weren't screaming, shouting, punching and kicking... it started to bring me back to the real world. As I built a network of friends at one hostel, my life started to stabilise. The more human contact, the more friends, the more ordinary conversations and interactions I had, the more normal I felt again, the more my dignity and self-esteem were restored, the more my chances of recovery increased.

RECOVERY

Johann Hari, writes that the opposite of addiction is not sobriety, but human connection. Addiction is about forming a bond with a drug, when healthy human relationships are not available. I had fallen back into the clutches of an abusive co-dependent relationship, miles away from my fellow startup founders, investors, mentors, family and in a part of the country where most of my friendships had fallen into disrepair due to the all-consuming and destructive nature of the relationship I had with my ex.

Of course I was going to get sucked into drug addiction. It replaced my ex perfectly. It was actually a superior relationship. I had everything that a co-dependent sex addiction gave me, in a convenient powder form. It was this drug - NRG-3 - that allowed me to finally break the habit that was my ex. We finally broke up once and for all, and I knew that it would be easier to quit drugs than to break up with her, so I felt relieved even though I was deep in the hole.

When me and my ex wife separated, I was using heroin, crack, crystal meth, cocaine, speed, diazepam, alprazolam, zopiclone as well as my drug of choice... NRG-3. Within a few weeks, I had cut it down to just some pure Dexidrene, which I was using to get over the worst of the depression and fatigue that would be inevitable after a lengthy period of addiction.

I was using 5mg of Dexidrene per day, to combat fatigue, cravings and poor concentration that would have ruined my recovery. It was a remarkable turnaround, but unfortunately it all got ruined by a complete lack of care for my wellbeing and future survival prospects, in favour of my ex's unreasonable demands to have the divorce processed her way or the highway. I wanted her to just take everything and leave me alone. My life and my health were the most important things. She continued to make my life hell.

Not that it matters, but today I've been abstinent for 7 and a half weeks, but not only that, I'm not drinking any caffeinated drinks or taking anything to help me sleep. I'm 100% drug free, and I'm not suffering unmanageable fatigue or cognitive impairment. I have no motor tics, and I don't have any psychosis or paranoia. This is quite remarkable. Considering how long and how deep this gash in my life has run, it's quite remarkable that I should be as close to normal as I am.

Anxiety and depression are unspeakably horrible forces in my life at the moment. I guess when I think about it, it's to be expected: withdrawal from benzos gives horrible rebound anxiety, and withdrawal from stimulants can trigger deep depressive episodes. The fact that I'm chugging along through a very stressful period of financial problems and job hunting, with very little support from friends & family, while going completely abstintent from all drugs... this is a big deal. It's not every day that people pull through things like this.

I'm sorry that last paragraph ended up a bit back-slapping, self-congratulatory. Certainly, any kind of complacency will lead to relapses. I've fallen foul of thinking "I can quit anytime I want" before, but the next challenge is to try and sustain recovery and put in place all the pieces that make a proper life. Everything was so temporary and fragile before.

Anybody who says "oh yeah, heard it all before" doesn't have a fucking clue what they're talking about. Every relapse has been due to either excess stress, or a collapse of the things I worked so hard to build. Losing all my hostel friends due to the pressures and stresses associated with the life change of moving from an unemployed homeless bum to being a guy working 9 to 5 in an office, plus a breakup with a girlfriend, plus the loss of a contract. Then, facing financial armageddon with a rent to pay and no means to do it, deep in a hole of debts, ridiculous pressure on the project I was working on, and bad mental health problems due to the sustained anxiety and stress I had been under relentlessly for so long, losing friends as well as colleagues when my work contract was no longer sustainable and I had to leave a job quite abruptly and inelegantly.

We've all faced bumps in the road, and these hiccups, these hurdles are inevitable. Part of sustainable recovery is once again being able to cope when things aren't going great. However, expecting somebody who's been through hell to be able to cope with an absolute clusterfuck as the challenge to their fragile, delicate, green shoots of recovery... I've got to say... what sort of cruel fucked up world would wish that upon somebody who's trying so hard.

That's fundamentally the driving force behind so many of my bitter, angry rants. I'm just incredulous that I'd be left to flounder by so many of my nearest and dearest, when the distress flares have been going up and the opportunity to rescue an entire ship before it sinks below the waves has been there for the taking. Raising a wreck is hard, when it's at the bottom of the ocean. Better to step in when it's just a little leak in the hull, rather than after the captain and crew have drowned and the boat's sunk.

It's not anybody else's responsibility other than my own, but you can fuck off if you're going to ring me up and leave me shitty voicemails saying I'm letting friends and family down. You want something from me now? Well, where were you when I needed support?

I know that a lot of friends have been there with support at the most unlikely of times, and in the most dire circumstances. I know it's seemed a little thankless, and that friends have even felt a little used or that trust has been abused. It's really not like that.

Yup, I've made some mistakes along the way. I'm still making mistakes. However, the tip of the iceberg conceals the great mass of the shit that I've been through, and yet, I still maintain some ethics, some sense of a debt of gratitude. I have a functioning moral compass, and I'm honest and acting purposefully towards repaying my friends for their help and support, showing them it was worthwhile, aiming to restore some semblance of a will to live to my shattered life.

That's what you're doing if you help me: you're saving a life. Don't believe any bullshit about 'enabling'... it's true that's possible if I'm wrapped up in active addiction, but I have the ethics, the sense of right and wrong to not ask for anything of my friends that would be squandered on addiction. The truth of the matter is that there are plenty of times, like now, where I'm not an addict. I'm just somebody who's struggling to rebuild their shattered life. I'm less of an addict than you, given that I don't drink tea or coffee, or even take headache tablets.

Yes, you could say I was reckless, I was irresponsible. Not really. I always paid my own way. I always covered my bets. I've kept track of where any debts or favours need to be repaid.

It's true, I felt a little entitled to have a complete breakdown. I felt entitled to lift the burden of responsibility from my shoulders for a time. For a time, I didn't feel guilty for being a risk taker and for the consequences that followed. Most of the consequences were suffered by me anyway.

CONSEQUENCES

Consequences, consequences. I've felt perhaps less than I should have done, but perhaps I have paid in other ways. I certainly feel like I don't want to rack up any more consequences. In fact, I'm back to the position of wanting to end my life quickly and cleanly if it looks like everything's going to go down the shitter again, rather than prolonging the agony and creating more problems for the world to mop up after I'm gone.

I feel a little bad that I would be depriving my sister of a brother, to be there to support her and my niece after my parents are gone, but at the same time I'm aware that I need to keep my distance from my niece, in case I don't make it. An uncle she hardly knew who's now gone is no big deal in the grand scheme of things, and certainly better than a drawn-out endgame that's just continuous "will he make it? won't he make it?" heartache, until the inevitable day that luck runs out.

Maybe you think I'm being melodramatic again, or using emotional blackmail. You think I talk about my suicidal thoughts lightly? You'd seriously call my bluff on this? I really think you'll regret it when I'm dead. I'm obviously not going to feel anything when I'm dead, except sweet sweet relief from a world that's been indifferent to my suffering and pain.

It'd be so easy for me to just decide, and act. I'm a very decisive person. I'm determined, stubborn, brave... everything that could quickly snuf my life out, if the scales tip just that bit too far. I'm keeping score, and if things get too unfair I'll just tip the whole boardgame onto the floor, along with all the playing pieces, dice and cards. You might think it's childish, flippant, knee-jerk, but it's actually cold hard rational, logical.

I feel like the writing I did when I slipped back into addiction doesn't make a fine account of me. I feel like the bitterness and anger towards unresolved issues with my parents made me come across as very unpleasant, as well as obsessively stuck in the past, and even launching tirades against people who only share some of the responsibility. I can't lay everything at the door of my horrible childhood and irresponsible and unpleasant parents. At some point, I have to draw a line that indicates where the division of responsibility lies.

The fact of the matter is though, that you've got to live with yourselves after I've gone. Coulda, woulda, shoudla... that's not going to mean jack squat when I'm gone. There's a smoking gun here. It's going to be hard to say that it was inevitable that I'd meet my untimely demise, when there's a record of periods of opportunity to step in and help, before things got too unmanageable for any human being to endure.

We should be fucking celebrating somebody coming back from the fucking dead. This is a fucking big deal, where I'm at right now. I shouldn't be here. The way I've been treated thus far in my life, I've been left for dead so many times. Aren't you going to fucking learn?

BACK FROM THE DEAD

It's not right to write people off, and leave them for dead. It's not right to nickel and dime people. It's not right to let the bystander effect be your excuse for not stepping in: let somebody else make the first move, surely it's somebody else's responsibility, not mine?

What the fuck happened to collective responsibility? What the fuck happened to a sense of community? What the fuck happened to helping each other out?

Where the fuck did this every man for himself bullshit come from? Are we Darwinian beasts, duking it out in the jungle, or are we a supposedly advanced race living in a modern civilisation?

I watched the film Se7en (Seven) again the other night, and I was taken by the similarity between me and the psychopathic killer. He had filled books and books with his thoughts, and then wanted to make a grand gesture to the world, culminating in his death. He thought that his actions would be studied, that they would make a difference in an indifferent world.

In a way, I'm drinking poison, hoping to kill somebody else. Everything I've done and written since I reached breaking point has in some way hurt me more than it's hurt anybody else. I threw away a very lucrative contract, I destroyed my professional reputation with a large number of individuals, I have spread word about my personal and private problems all over the internet and throughout my network of contact. If you search for my name and any company that I've worked for on Google, there's me.... right there on the first page, for all to see.

Here I am, with my guts hanging out. All my internal organs are on display. All my gory detail is right here, on these pages, for anybody to see.

What's worse, to die with some kind of false reputation? Your friends and family could always hold some mistaken belief about what your life was really all about, in the end. The more lurid details could be discreetly swept under the carpet, to save the blushes of your family, and to preserve your memory in some slightly more wholesome light. Seems like bullshit to me. I want people to know what drove me to the brink and beyond. I want people to have the facts, and decide for themselves. I want a world where we see that the only difference between people are the circumstances that conspire around them.

To say that this writing, this journal, this log, is a gift, that it serves some useful purpose... is grossly arrogant, deluded. However, it's all I've fucking got at the moment. Perhaps I am fighting to clear my name a little. Perhaps I'm not going down without a fight, and I'm taking hostages, taking some people down with me.

It's up to you, dear reader, to decide. I present you with my side of the story. It's up to you whether you dismiss me easily, as a madman and an addict, with no worth to my words. It's up to you whether you remember me as having the potential to be good, or the destiny to be bad.

Personally, I think it's immoral to make bets on living people's lives.

Tags: #parents #childhood #drugs #addiction #depression #suicide #career

This is a story about human connection...

I try to use photos that are a metaphor for what I'm going to write about. I was thinking that the yo-yo could represent mood fluctuations, but I actually think of it more as an autonomous puppet on the end of a string.

I've been feeling like I've lost my way. I've certainly felt like I've pushed just about everybody away that I possibly can. After the 'big confession' around Christmas time, I've felt like I've been fighting to clear my name, to explain and justify myself, my actions, my thoughts.

Obviously paranoia is sometimes a product of drug abuse, and I can certainly see that my brain was getting more and more destroyed as January became February, and then March, and the self destruction was still continuing unabated.

Actually, last night when I went back and reviewed the 214,000 words that I have written to date, I could really see a frightening degradation of my capability to think and express myself, progressing over those 3 months. What shocked me most was how coherent I was in January, and how incoherent I was in March. For some reason, I had imagined that I had been 'on the mend' for a lot longer that just 7 weeks.

I'm acutely aware that the gibberish that I was spouting, plus the repetitive angry rants and axe grinding, made my writing virtually unreadable. I'm still coming to terms with the fact that I've got this bitterness that's still coming out in a very unhealthy and unpleasant way. I'm not sure why I'm still so raw, tender and full of anger and pent-up aggression about things that happened a long time ago.

I think there's a massive amount of insecurity I'm experiencing at the moment, having 'confessed' my darkest secrets, and I now feel very exposed. I feel unlovable. I feel like a failure. I feel like all the things I've been trying very hard to convince people I'm not. I notice that the harder I attack those who I pin blame onto, the more unpleasant I become myself, which shames me.

If you imagine what my life is right now: trying to fight a drug addiction that has nearly claimed my life on a couple of occasions, trying to get a job and get back into a sustainable routine, anxious about servicing my debts and paying my rent & bills, with no income. I'm doing this with a supportive flatmate and another friend, but that's pretty much it... for months, this is the only human face-to-face contact I've had.

I had about 20 voicemails I hadn't listened to. When you get into a financially distressed situation you don't really listen to voicemails or answer the phone. It's too much stress.

My mum had left me about 6 messages that were all berating me for not being emotionally available to her, for support and to dump on. Sure, the family is going through some turbulent times, but my own name might easily be added to the list of casualties. Death is closer than you think.

I think about committing suicide every day.

Tags: #bipolar #suicide #parents #addiction