Nick Grant

This is a story about jealousy...

This is a drawing, from memory, of my Dad's drug stash. This pot was made out of pewter or silver, and was about 5 inches tall. He lifted the lid with the little ball on top. The surface of it had been decorated with lots of little indentations.

Strangely, I was kinda jealous of this little pot. The care and attention lavished on this inanimate object was care and attention that I wanted.

After my Dad had taken his drugs, he became emotionally detached, sleepy, withdrawn from the world, intoxicated. There was calm - relief from angry outbursts - but he had somehow temporarily left the family, left reality behind, and all that was left was a limp body.

This is my main memory of my Dad: his drug-taking ritual, his routine. The painstaking attention to detail and the almost religious ceremony with which he conducted his drug-taking.

Happy Father's Day, Dad.

Tags: #parents #childhood #drugs #addiction

This is a story about working class heroes...

What could be more symbolic of the ordinary working Englishman, than the white van driver? What embodies the British working class more than a beer-gutted builder, wolf whistling at a pretty girl in the street, from the vantage point of their scaffolding? What could be more patriotic than the colours of the St George's flag, and a rioting football hooligan, swilling lager while chanting racial abuse?

Oneupmanship is rife, even when people are talking about reverse snobbery. People say to me "everybody's got to work" as if they're some kind of class hero, some kind of fucking Victorian chimney sweep. They see themselves as hardworking, and everybody else as angst-filled spoiled brats.

But, this is stupidity, plain and simple.

The fact of the matter is, people don't have to work. There is enough wealth, that if it was all shared out, we'd have over $200,000 each, so a family of 2 adults and 3 kids would have a million dollars. That's enough to live for 548 years, in the developing world.

In actual fact, we have been programmed - brainwashed - to believe that what we do is productive and useful and necessary. Somehow, the world's going to come to an end without those sales forecasts. Somehow, everybody's going to die if you don't fill in your timesheet. Somehow, all the crops are going to fail if you don't sell any insurance policies today.

I was watching a documentary about legal highs last night, and the film-maker asked a guy who was manufacturing and selling legal drugs how he could live with himself, knowing that he was fuelling people's addictions: "everyone's gotta work" he said.

I worked for a weapons manufacturer, as my first job after college. If you don't think to yourself "what is the negative impact on the world of what I do?" then you're a fucking idiot. You can't hide behind "everyone's got to work".

"I was just following orders" is the equivalent of "everyone's got to work". Being a guard in a concentration camp, or an officer of an army committing a genocide... those things are jobs, and everyone's got to work, apparently. It's pathetic. You can't hide behind a justification like that.

Anyone who says I'm lazy is going to get a boot up their fucking arse. I've founded multiple businesses and worked 100+ hour weeks, in a non-stop career that hasn't included any breaks, any gap years, any sitting around reading fucking books. I've been in full-time education and employment since I was out of fucking nappies. Fuck off. Fuck all the way off.

What I'm talking about is conscientious objection. Yes, we normally associate that with people who refuse to do a government's killing for them. However, the way that wars are waged nowadays is not with boots on the ground, but in boardrooms, stock markets and with foreign currency trades.

There's an arms race, where multinational corporations have enslaved the world. If I have an economic monopoly, because I have used my stock price in order to acquire all my competitors, I obviously control the labour market as well the ability to manipulate prices.

I can buy a pair of jeans from Primark for £7. How is that possible? Somebody still has to pick the cotton. Somebody still has to operate the sewing machine. We haven't entered a robotic futuristic world yet.

Here's a picture of the very moment that I broke down, and became so depressed that I could no longer work. This is the West's lie, their fantasy, their trick. This is a robotic distribution centre, where goods are distributed to stores, for your consumption. This is what we believe is the reality of progress, and innovation.

However, somebody still has to pick the cotton. It might feel like we're arrived in a futuristic utopia, but the reality is that simply the shitty jobs have mostly been offshored. When I decided I wanted to be an electrician, it's because somebody in a callcentre in India can't clamber down the phone line and come and fix your lights.

The lack of a tangible reality, in almost everything I did as a software engineer, really started to fuck me up. Where's the physical proof that something I did was useful to humanity? In actual fact, I had proof of quite the opposite, having been right at the very heart of the credit crunch during 2007/2008.

Turning on each other and saying crap like "get a job" and "everybody's gotta work" is such utter bullshit. People who have become depressed and can't work have got it right. Propping up a system that enslaves most of humanity is total horseshit. You damn well should be depressed about your crappy job that ignores the blatant crime of economic imperialism. It is unconscionable.

We are now living in such a highly-leveraged society, that nobody can take their foot off the gas pedal. People have skin in the game - kids - so they think they have to keep servicing their debts, paying their rent/mortgage, working their crappy job. People mistakenly believe that work will set them free. Work will not set you free - you toil for your own demise.

The worship of corporate profits means that people must work longer hours for less money, in real terms. Wage inflation is rock bottom, and that means that your wealth is inflated away. The cost of goods, services, housing, food... all these things have massively increased, but average wages have barely budged.

The brainwashed massses are now fighting with one another. Instead of being pleased that your co-worker got that promotion, we think "it should have been me". We think "I could do what they do" and secretly hope that our peers are just as downtrodden as us, just as hard-up. There is jealousy, resentment.

The crabs in the bucket are pulling each other back down into their prison, whenever one of them is close to escape. The working public are crawling all over each other, in a seething mass of claws and excrement at the bottom of a plastic bucket, just waiting for the day that they're tossed into a pan of boiling water.

The government encourages us to report benefit cheats and other victimless crime. We are taught to bully and abuse people who don't work. We are brainwashed into thinking we're some kind of fucking hero, for working a shit job that does nothing except perpetuate human misery and further compound global problems.

Have a kid, get a dog. Try to pretend you're really important. Well done. Gold star. You worked your job, without giving a shit about what it really fucking means.

This is the reality of how your cotton pickers and callcentre staff get to work. This is the future. This is what you don't see, as a consequence of "everyone needs to work" and feeling smug about what a hard little worker you are.

Tags: #career #banking #capitalism #politics

This is a story about being a civilised adult...

Now that we have the Internet and social media, as a platform - a soapbox - for every vile, uncultured, ill-educated, nasty little specimen of humanity, people are throwing caution to the wind and broadcasting opinions that they would have never dreamt of publicly sharing, before the days that like-minded fools were allowed to cluster together, bonded by their mutually unpleasant views.

We are not at school anymore. You are a grown up. Try to behave as such.

With freedom comes responsibility. Just because you're not immediately dragged off to jail for detestably fascist remarks, it doesn't mean it's OK. Just because you're getting "likes" and "shares" of your social media posts, in the echo chamber of your hate group, doesn't mean that your views are acceptable.

Freedom of speech comes at a cost, and that cost is that individuals must self-censor and control their primitive animal-like behaviour. Public hangings, stonings, witch burnings, fights... these things will always draw a crowd. However, it's our collective and individual responsibility to condemn barbaric behaviour.

So, here's a 10-step guide to preventing the human race destroying itself, by exercising its freedom without regard for responsibility and consequences:

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1. Should you really say that?

There's a reason why hate crime has been written into the statute book. You are breaking the law if you incite violence and hatred with your words. Just being subtle about it doesn't excuse you.

If Nigel Farage can stand in front of a billboard with a bunch of people with dark skin tones, and suggest that these people are the enemy at the gate, that's a hate crime, to my mind. Every demand to "deport" the people you don't like very much because of their race, religion or skin colour, is perpetuating hate and divisions in society.

2. It's not just about you

Occupying a position of global dominance and wealth means that our nation has additional responsibilities. While you might think that we should "look after our own" in actual fact, what you are saying is that subjugated nations should continue to toil as our slaves.

If you don't share the wealth, you deserve to have your empire toppled. Do you really want to sit back and enjoy the spoils of war, torture and human suffering? Have you considered the price - in human lives - of the luxuries that you enjoy, or are you simply demanding to be wilfully ignorant?

3. Since when did conflict become desirable?

Why do things have to be "us" and "them"? Making things into an adversarial situation feels good, if you're on the winning side, but it's not the civilised thing to do. Of course, I'd love to get a big stick and a gang of thugs, and go and rob my weak neighbour, but that's not the way to conduct yourself.

If you're digging into your trenches, and thinking of ways to defend your argument and promote your cause, you're looking at things in the wrong way. Try to empathise with your 'enemy'. We all bleed red and we're all pink on the inside. You probably have more in common with the group that you're baring your teeth at, than you even realise.

4. Ad hominem attacks are not acceptable

Ok, you want to have some debate? You want to have a rational discussion? Well, personal attacks are not allowed. They're below-the-belt blows, not valid arguments. Differences of opinion cannot be settled by bringing somebody's character into question.

You might not like my views, but they could be the right ones, even if you don't like who I am as a person. Anybody can put the correct argument forward: they're just a spokesperson, a messenger for rational ideas.

5. Your defence is paper-thin

By grouping together with people who share your vile views, you share tips on how to defend yourself from the onslaught of a world intent on civilising you. You have developed a set of standard replies to the obvious criticisms of your unpleasant opinions.

Saying "I'm not racist, because Islam is not a race" is a straw-man argument. You're being discriminatory over a group of people. You're attempting to use some pathetic words to excuse your disgusting behaviour.

If you follow the same logic, you could end up being a Nazi apologist "because Judaism is not a race". I don't really care what the basis for your hatred is... it's wrong to discriminate.

6. What are you striving for?

If your goal for humanity is to go back to some time that you're nostalgic for, you are a being a fool. Today, we have medicine, safety standards, leisure time, vast quantities of high quality food, global communication and the ability to protect ourselves from many forces of nature.

You can't "close the door" on some advancing horde of brown people that you don't like very much, just the same as you can't abolish the poor either. You can't wave a magic wand and we'll all be transported back to some kind of bygone era, where we all live in a land of plenty. There are 7.1 billion mouths to feed on the planet, and they all have equal rights. I hope you're not arguing for some kind of race supremacy!

7. Do your research

There's no excuse for ignorance. Education is a privilege that you have enjoyed, and if you're sharing your nasty opinions on the Internet, then you're obviously able to read. I expect you might even be dimly aware that there were a couple of World Wars, and millions of people died. What did they die for? So that you can perpetrate another genocide?

Why do you not automatically recoil in horror from things that are echoes of an undesirable past? Why do you not associate the camps in Calais with prisoner of war camps and forced labour camps? Why do you not associate the refugee processing centres with ghettos, where undesirable members of society were forced to live, during previous atrocities?

8. What are your motives?

What does "take our country back" really mean? Is it true that really, deep down, you feel cheated? You're getting a raw deal. This isn't the life that you were promised. You've been let down. The system has failed you.

Your anger and frustration isn't with immigrants, it's with the politicians who gave tax breaks to the wealthy and allowed monopolies to dominate the world. The rich got richer and the poor got poorer, and sadly, you're in the bucket with all the other poor people. The landed gentry don't care about you any more than they care about the hungry brown person trying to get into our country for a bowlful of rice.

9. What are your values?

Do you strive for equality? Do you strive for greater knowledge? Do you believe in freedom? How would you like to improve the human condition? Do you have empathy, sympathy, compassion?

If your goal in life is to simply have more for you and your family, have you really considered the bigger picture? Do you really not give a shit, that for you to have Sky TV and a new car, perhaps hundreds and thousands of people are going to starve to death?

10. No man is an island

Yes, it's a nice fantasy, to think of yourself marooned on a desert island with everything you need. You're going to drink coconut milk, eat wild boar and civilise the natives. Bullshit.

What are you going to do without your smartphone, built in a factory in China or Korea? What are you going to do without your fresh fruit, that you can get even in the middle of winter, because it's flown into the country from Kenya? Who's going to clean your toilet and wash your car?

Building walls, or saying that your borders end at the seashore is total rubbish. Are you going to stop going abroad to all those countries that you want to send those brown people back to? Have you even looked at a map, and figured out where your all-inclusive package holiday is on the planet?

---

Why does it not chill you to the core, the thought of a world of divisions? Why does the idea of dismantling unions, co-operative pacts, systems of teamwork and collaboration, not make you upset and feel like we're going backwards? Why does the idea that a brown person has fewer rights than you, with your white skin, not seem abhorrent, wrong?

Seeing a young, fit, healthy man who wants to come and work, pay taxes and grow the economy, should be a welcome sight. The sight of a family fleeing war and conflict, should instill a nurturing instinct - we should be welcoming people, comforting them, accommodating them, not slamming the door in their face.

Yes, it's true that infrastructure is at breaking point. Yes it's true that traditional ways of life are under threat. Yes it's true that society is not well integrated, and people have clustered together in ethnic groups. However that's not a cost, that's a benefit of progress. I love that I'm able to hear nearly 300 different languages spoken in my home town of London. I love that I'm able to travel between different areas and experience different cultures. My life is enriched and improved, by embracing the very best that the world has to offer.

The people who uproot their families and embark upon perilous journeys in order to make a better life for themselves, are making a better life for everybody. The people who you want to exclude from society are motivated, hard working, industrious, resourceful, humble, worldly and bring energy and enthusiasm, that is completely lacking in a population that wants to rest on its laurels.

Our grandparents and great grandparents fought for our freedom, not so that we could horde it for ourselves, but so that we can share it. Our way of life doesn't need protecting, it needs to be distributed globally.

Freedom is not a commodity that's just for us. Everybody should have freedom. But the price of freedom is being responsible, and acting with restraint and human decency. Those who are free must be kind and compassionate, and share more. Those who are free must set an example. Those who are free must try harder, reach further, think deeper, consider the implications of everything they do.

If we don't act with responsibility that extends beyond our own selfish wants and immediate gratification, everything's going to crumble before our very eyes, and finger-pointing at immigrants is going to be the catalyst. While we wail about brown people and lament the loss of a bygone era that never existed, we will throw away the beautiful things we have constructed.

All this infighting and tribal, regressive, aggressive behaviour deeply saddens me, and reminds me of nasty kids in the playground. Aren't we supposed to have grown up?

Tags: #politics #socialmedia

This is a story about avoiding anonymity...

Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Cocaine Anonymous, Crystal Meth Anonymous, Gamblers Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous, Sex Addicts Anonymous. Why are you hiding in anonymity?

I feel like former addicts are cowering in shame, fearful that the world might discover their dirty little secrets. People are tucked away in church halls, community centres and other meeting places. Tea and biscuits are served, and the ostracised members of society discuss the trials and tribulations of sobriety and abstinence, amongst their peers.

I've been to my fair share of 12-step meetings, and I know the format, the stories. I know that people are grateful to "the fellowship" for the lifeline they've been given. People reel off the number of days they've been clean & sober, and collect some kind of token for significant periods of time - 30 days, 90 days, 1 year etc. - as well as receiving a round of applause from the audience.

Families are quick to take advantage of a weakness, and to blame one member for their own shortcomings and failures. The addict or alcoholic is a convenient scapegoat, whenever things are not going exactly swimmingly for the family. Transferring all your guilt, as a failed parent, as a terrible partner, as an impotent sibling, onto a designated individual, is a damnsight easier than taking any individual or collective responsibility. Victim blaming is convenient.

Friends don't really want to get involved. When the chips are down, you'll find that most of your buddies are actually fair-weather friends. Very few people actually want to stick around when shit gets ugly. All those people who you thought were like your brothers and sisters... when the cash runs out and the drugs & alcohol run dry, you find yourself quite shockingly alone.

Providing peer-to-peer support, from one black sheep to another, is a genius stroke. Amongst those who have fallen, you're all equals. Everybody is tarred with the same brush. You can't bullshit a bullshitter, and so you're stripped of all the usual protocol that has to be observed as an addict or an alcoholic, in order to elicit human empathy that should be taken for granted.

If you tell somebody that some tragedy has happened to you, and you've fallen on hard times, sympathy is forthcoming as long as you're "clean & sober" but as soon as substance abuse enters the picture, suddenly your woes are believed to be self-inflicted, and therefore you're not a 'worthy' cause. The suffering addict or alcoholic has to start with a preamble, where you attempt to convince a hostile world that you're abstinent from the very things that comfort you, when you've been kicked to the gutter by society, friends and family.

Of course, it's enticing, to cluster together in groups of similarly excluded and misunderstood people. There's so much in common with these people, in particular the prejudice that you face on a daily basis. People talk about 'dirty' junkies, 'winos', 'drunks', 'tramps' and other derogatory terms. How quickly forgotten, the fact that at one time these trampled individuals were once somebody's cute little baby or smiling child in a school photograph.

The reasons for retreating into anonymity are obvious. Who's going to employ a former junkie? Who wants to live next door to a former addict? Who would trust their kids near a former alcoholic? Who would waste their time talking to a former pill popper?

When you hide the things that trigger people's prejudices, surprisingly they discover that they can actually get along with each other, they can like each other, and live together, despite the shocking stuff that happened in the past. When you go to an Anonymous meeting, you hear some hair-raising stories of the depths that people can sink to... but they're still people. We all bleed the same. We are all subject to the same weaknesses, the same faults.

I think that society is weakened when we allow the media to continue to portray an increasingly demonic view of the 'dirty junkie' while at the same time the fallen angels hide themselves from public view. When it becomes "us" and "them" and nobody's standing up and saying "I'm normal, just like you - we are the same" then the good vs. evil bullshit is allowed to perpetuate.

Isn't the whole point of rehabilitation to reintegrate into society? I don't consider it recovery, to have to stick amongst my 'own people', who are merely those who have been labelled and cast out of society due to life 'choices' that they made.

Do I really want a life of having to go to meetings, praising the fellowship, and sponsoring other "recovering" addicts and alcoholics? I hate that word - "recovering" - in the context of addiction and alcoholism. When do you become recovered? As far as I can see, the whole bullshit of a society hell-bent on labelling people, means that former addicts and alcoholics will never be considered recovered. They'll always be labelled. They'll always carry a black mark.

So, I've marked myself. The semicolon tattoo behind my ear tells the world that I've struggled with depression, suicide attempts, and then later, drug and alcohol abuse problems. And you know what? I still drink too much. I still take stimulants and 'downers'. Is it abuse, addiction? Is it fuck. We're all just doing what we've gotta do to survive.

Part of survival for me is making life bearable. Of course people who are abused and mistreated are going to self-medicate. Of course people who have unbearable lives are going to reach out for whatever makes life a little bit easier.

Frankly though, if we're serious about treating each other well, helping each other, we could start by letting people be honest about their 'mistakes' and past misdemeanours.

I'm taking a big risk, by having myself so obviously marked, labelled. I'm taking a big chance, having a public blog in my own name, covered with photos of myself, and making full disclosure of my entire history of mental health problems and substance abuse. It's either a gutsy or a stupid thing to do, but I hope it's the former, not the latter.

Somebody has to stand up and be heard, because silent and anonymous addicts and alcoholics are too much of a convenient group to scapegoat for the world's problems, when in fact the existence of substance abuse is symptomatic of a depressing, lonely and abusive world, full of hateful humans who have no empathy for one another.

While I don't advocate the use of drugs and alcohol, I strongly believe that people who have had to suffer should no longer have to hide in the shadows, and be punished additionally for their pain.

The burden that the addict or alcoholic must carry is more than any man or woman could possibly manage, and that's not fair.

Do you think I give a shit about how long I've been 'clean' for? I was never 'dirty' in the first place.

Tags: #addiction #drugs #alcohol #notanonymous

This is a story about jobs for the boys...

Do you feel like you earn your salary? What is it that makes you think you're worth your wages? How do you value your contribution?

If you work a physical job, you're likely to feel pretty exhausted at the end of the day. Maybe your feet hurt, your back, your muscles. Perhaps you judge your working day based on how much energy you've expended. Perhaps your job involves standing up, walking around, even running around. Perhaps your job involves lifting, stacking, moving, shifting. Can your value therefore be considered a function of how many things you physically move? For example: boxes of stuff from the storeroom, products on shelves, patients from beds, or children from perilous situations.

Maybe you work an academic job, or something you have to be highly qualified for. Perhaps you judge your working day based on how hard you worked in the past. You maybe had to really concentrate at school and do all your homework. Perhaps you had to go to University and at least turn up for some of the lectures. You're probably pretty pleased with yourself that you beat the competition to those limited places, and got the necessary grades. Can your value be considered a function of how stressful your exams were, and how hard it was to write your disseration, your thesis?

Maybe you work a high pressure job, something you really have to concentrate on. Perhaps you have no time to judge your day, because you're just so busy that you don't have time to think about it. You maybe have to take sales calls all day long to meet your targets. You're always talking to people. Or maybe you have to watch a computer screen all day, like a stock-market trader or an air-traffic controller. Can your value be considered a function of your ability to concentrate, and keep busy with the task in hand for the whole working day?

Maybe you work a caring job, or something that delivers service directly to people. Perhaps you judge your working day based on how many people you deliver satisfactory outcomes for. Perhaps you have had to work on a caring bedside manner. Perhaps you have had to develop diplomatic skills for dealing with people. Can your value be considered to be a function of how many smiles you get each day, how many thank yous?

Maybe you work a repetitive job, or something that requires very little problem solving. Perhaps you have plenty of time to think and it's quite clear what needs to be done, but there are only a limited number of hours in the day. Perhaps you enter data in spreadsheets. Perhaps you type the answers that are written down on forms. Perhaps you work on a factory production line. Perhaps you deliver widgets. Can your value be considered a function of how many of these repetitive functions you can perform in a fixed period of time? Do you take pride in the tiny efficiency gains you can make in a job that has been easily mastered?

Maybe your job is to educate, inform, inspire, entertain. Your job is to titillate the attentions of other people. Your job is to spoon feed culture to the masses. Perhaps you had wide-eyed ambitions about bringing song and dance to the people. Perhaps you thought you were going to be a war journalist. Perhaps you thought you were going to set the minds of young people alight. Can your value be considered a function of your reach, your influence? Do you know how many followers you have? How many viewers? How many readers? How many listeners?

But what happens when your purpose is cloudy, unclear? What happens when you can't see what difference you're making, either to other people or to yourself?

Why do you do what you do? Is it possible to work a job, just because it puts food on the table and shoes on the children? Is it possible to work a job just because?

Everybody needs to work, right? But what if your job is makework? What if your job is made up, just to justify the salary of your manager, who has to have a certain headcount in order to get their promotion? What if your whole industry can't justify its existence? What if everything that your company does, and companies like it, is completely superfluous to human existence?

What do we need? Food, water, shelter, warmth, social bonds. Where does insurance fit in that world? Where does a law firm fit? Where does a bank fit? Where do technology companies fit?

If you woke up tomorrow, and your company didn't exist, and neither did any of its competitors, would the human race keel over and die? If you work for an agricultural business, then quite possibly. We need grains, we need vegetables. If you work for an accountancy firm, I think we'll all be just fine.

I've got nothing against the people who work in the service sector per se but should we value those industries more than, say, fishing, farming, building & caring?

Do you think I give a shit about the protection of intellectual property rights of a wealthy corporation? Do you think that I respect the instruments of capitalism as an efficient means to do more with less?

Fundamentally, how many people are living miserably? We might point to increases in life expectancy as an indicator of progress, but what if those lives are filled with stress, anxiety, depression? What if those lives are miserable and isolated, unfulfilled, unhappy?

Official statistics say that more than 1 in 4 of us are battling mental health problems. In truth, the real number must be much higher, because there are so many people who have undiagnosed problems. We know from suicide rates and prescriptions of psychiatric medications - such as antidepressants and anti-anxiety drugs - that problems are growing at an alarming rate.

There's a direct correlation between my lack of job satisfaction, and my poor mental health. When I've been happy in my job, I've been overworked. When I've stopped to think about what I've been doing, I've realised that I've been building systems that perpetuate human misery.

It's said that for every 1% that unemployment increases, over 40,000 people will commit suicide. I built a system for JPMorgan that processed the equivalent of $163,000 for every man, woman and child on the planet, in Credit Default Swaps. You think that money is better off locked up in the banking system rather than being in people's pockets?

If I'm building banking systems that process $37 million a second, why the hell are people living in poverty? Why the hell has the National Health Service got to be left underfunded? Why the hell is science underfunded? Why the hell have I got to work a crappy job that I hate, in order to make thousands of people redundant?

Rational self-interest, and the philosophy of Ayn Rand has led us down a very dark path. It's actually in our rational self-interest to smash the systems that take us on a race to the bottom.

Perhaps it's time to throw our clogs into the loom?

You think that you want an A-list celebrity life, with all the trimmings and bling. However, collectively wanting this is leading us all down a path that makes humanity miserable, depressed, stressed, anxious, lonely and isolated.

Tags: #depression #mentalhealth #suicide #career #banking #capitalism

This is a story about what happened next...

Ordinary person discovers this one weird trick. When they saw what happened next, they were AMAZED!!!

So, I've been accused of being anti-psychiatry, but in fact I'm not. The discovery of chemicals that can cross the blood-brain barrier and affect your perception of the world, has been incredibly important for the understanding of neurological functions, as well as the pathology of mental illness. It's also true that pharmacological interventions are priceless during episodes that would otherwise be unmanageable.

For the record, my own diagnoses have included:

• Clinical depression
• Type II Bipolar Disorder
• Anxiety
• Stress
• Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)

I've been treated with:

• Antidepressants
• Antipsychotics
• Mood stabilisers
• Anxiolytics / hypnotic sedatives
• Sleep aids

Then having read a meta-analysis of psychiatric treatment outcomes by Robert Whittaker in his books Mad in America and Anatomy of an Epidemic, I decided to embark upon an unethical study, with me as the test subject. I decided to go completely unmedicated.

The general public often associate unmedicated mental health patients with some wild-eyed looney, who has slipped their straightjacket, ducked the tackles of the hospital orderlies and legged it out of some mental health institution. There is an assumption that people with mental health problems are homicidal maniacs, and a danger to the public. I'm here to dispel that myth.

Going unmedicated is not something I would ever advocate. The withdrawal effects from psychiatric medication are likely to be severe and unpredictable. It's not something that should ever be done without consulting your doctor. However, I did it, and this is my account of what happened.

Firstly, coming off medication is hard. Really hard. I've had comedowns from drug abuse that haven't been as bad as coming off anxiety medications, for example. What goes up must come down, and there's no avoiding the fact that coming off a 'feel good' medication means that you are going to feel bad. Really bad.

Fundamentally, that's why many of us take medication, isn't it? To feel normal. To feel better than we would do without it. That's certainly how I got mixed up in the whole world of mental health in the first place... because I felt terrible. I was exhausted and suicidal and depressed and demotivated and I didn't enjoy anything. I needed happy pills, because all my happy had leaked away somewhere, and I was just spending 14 to 16 hours a day asleep, and the rest of it in bed hoping that the world would go away.

The thing is, the unnatural 'happy' pills destabilised me, and my mood then swung too happy, and entered a mood cycle of alternating periods of depression and hypomania. Enter the mood stabilisers. It's starting to sound like a story about the old woman who swallowed a fly, isn't it? For those who are unfamiliar with the story, she then swallowed a spider to catch the fly, and then something else to catch the spider and so on, until she swallowed something so large it killed her.

The problem with trying to treat human moods with medications is that the brain has evolved to be homeostatic. That is to say, the brain has evolved its own mechanisms to maintain stability, and anything you introduce artificially will quite naturally destabilise those systems.

The stability of your moods can also be destabilised by supposedly normal things. We are all supposed to be able to cope with the pressure of exams, work, domestic duties and so on, but for some of us, it will all become too much. Is this mental illness, or are these 'nervous breakdowns' actually something that threaten to blight the lives of every single person? Is it a lottery as to whether the stress will become overwhelming?

I self-medicated for stress for years, using copious amounts of alcohol. Of course, at work you then have to compensate for the foggy mind caused by a hangover, so you start to drink strong coffee. I was probably having the equivalent of about 12 shots of espresso every single day. The amount of caffeine contained in those shots was practically the same as being an amphetamine addict, and indeed my boss at the time - who got me into this destructive lifestyle - had the racing speech and fast jerky movements that you would associate with a speed freak.

When I moved onto harder stimulants, including a drug that would keep me awake for over a week at a time, I found that my mind was not as robust as I had assumed it would be. I managed to induce within myself, symptoms that were unmistakably schizophrenic.

Consumed with paranoid delusions, hearing and seeing things and with completely warped perceptions, I was very mentally unwell indeed. This divided medical opinion. Some professionals wanted to treat me as if I had permanently damaged my brain, and had now become a schizophreniac. Others could see that the symptoms were likely to abate, if I just got some sleep, had some food & drink and started to detox and let my frazzled brain recover. Thankfully, the latter was the correct opinion.

Does that mean that all schizophreniacs can recover and live normal unmedicated lives? No, sadly not. I've seen quite a lot of people who have been suffering acute episodes of mental illness as a result of circumstances or substance abuse, and these people have recovered as soon as they were removed from the situation that landed them in hospital. However, there are clearly some patients who are either too badly damaged, or have some other pathology that is driving their illness, and medication is necessary to control the psychosis & mania.

For my own part, I have lived without caffeine for many years now, and I try to keep alcohol consumption to a minimum. I've been medication free for a few years, but I have dipped back into both sedatives, sleep aids as well as powerful stimulants, during times of crisis. It's been a few months since the last time I dabbled with anything psychoactive, and I'm still suffering rebound anxiety and depression.

Life is incredibly hard right now. I'm stalked by suicidal thoughts all the time, and stress is almost unbearable. I would dearly love the comforting embrace of a chemical security blanket. I long for intoxication. However, despite the hard, sharp edges of daily existence, at least my emotions aren't blunted and I feel like I have wonderful mental clarity.

Every day is a struggle, and my perception of time is completely warped. I feel like this depression is going to last forever, and I assume that everybody hates me and that I have nothing to offer the world, and I'm never going to be happy ever again. However, I'm able to be very rational, and I can see that my perceptions have merely been warped by my mood, which is partly because I'm still recovering from the abuse of sleeping pills, anxiety drugs and stimulants.

It would be easy to write off my tale as that of a drug addict, but that's not really the story. In actual fact, self medication with 'bad' chemicals was only very recently, and well after I was diagnosed with various mental health problems and had already been taking 'good' chemicals (i.e. medications). All psychoactive chemicals are inherently destabilising.

Self medication is a disastrous path to go down, but all attempts to force your moods to go one way or the other without changing the environment that you're in, will be doomed to failure. I wanted happy pills so that I could remain in the rat race, and maintain a standard of living that I had gotten used to. However, what I really needed was to escape that bullshit world.

Propping up my ailing mental health so that I could continue to work a job that I hated and that bored the shit out of me was a dumb choice. Mental health is too precious to fuck about with using pills and potions. If you're not feeling great, that's probably because you need to get out in green spaces more, eat healthier, get some new friends, ditch that mean abusive partner, disown those horrible parents who never congratulate you on your achievements and always give you a hard time, and quit trying so hard to impress people and be somebody you're not.

This is my prescription for life: be myself and tell everybody to shove their ill-informed opinions about my life up their arse. Nobody's an expert in my life and how to live it, and so many of the so-called experts are actually unhappy themselves, nor are they bringing happiness to the lives of the people they advise. Judge people on their results.

Fundamentally, there is an epidemic of mental health issues, and nobody is curing anyone, so trust nobody except for yourself, and do what feels right for you.

I discharged myself, because I was in hospital voluntarily. I've had several 'section' assessments but never been sectioned under the Mental Health Act. However, I'm an unmedicated mental health patient on the loose, so look out!

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

This is a story about covering your ass...

If I was to mention the name of the project I'm working on and the name of my client, I would be picked up by paranoid people doing web searches. It's already happened to one of my colleagues. Naturally, I don't want to draw attention to the ups and downs that I've documented here, as I need the contract more than anybody realises.

The sensible thing to do would maybe be to take this site down, for fear of losing my income. However, nobody really does the sensible thing in their adult life. It looks to me like adults do reckless stuff and then live in fear, trying to protect their selfish crappy little lives. It looks to me like nobody does the sensible thing.

The sensible thing to do is not to have kids, not to perpetuate the misery and suffering, not to prop up capitalism and ecological destruction, warfare. The sensible thing to do is not to legitimise imperial aggression, by demanding that politicians protect our way of life. The sensible thing to do is to say "enough" and put down your tools and go on strike, in protest over the collision course with disaster that we are all collectively taking.

I'm not sure how my views are going to change, as I start to get a little bit more comfortable. By the end of the week, the wolf won't be at the door anymore. I'm going to have a lot of pressure and stress hanging around for 6 months, at least, and it'll take another 6 months before I have some kind of safety cushion. The litmus test is what I do once I have some kind of warchest again.

When I wrote about HSBC and the Customer Due Diligence project, I hadn't dug myself out of the hole, but I had been completely exhausted by the demands that had been placed on me. I've been an IT professional for 20 years, so I know how projects go, and I know how to blend into the corporate background and not make waves. I know how to kiss ass, I know that people don't want loose cannons and they want an easy life. However, it was an important project and I had something to contribute. I also couldn't live with my conscience if I didn't act during another banking stitch-up, having been near to ground zero during the credit crunch.

Now I have an early contract termination and probably a lack of decent reference to explain away, as something that I worry about. I'm pleased that I acted with integrity and ethics, but it's definitely me that suffered most of all. I martyred myself for no benefit to anybody, probably.

Why make yourself a martyr? Why make life harder for yourself than it needs to be? Why rock the boat? Well, it's simple: somebody has to be first.

I was told to wind my neck in, keep a low profile, not stick my head above the parapet. Of course I knew it was good advice - on a personal level - but I knew exactly what I was doing. Somebody has to be brave. Somebody has to take a stand, and push back. Somebody's got to raise their voice.

I hate the collective madness. There's no safety in numbers, when your whole flock goes running off the edge of the cliff.

Tags: #career #banking #capitalism #hsbc

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

What is it that causes empires to collapse? Why have fascinating ancient civilisations crumbled into ruins? Well, one prevailing theory seems to be that these societies failed to forgive debts, before there was a popular uprising.

There's a disrespect for working people that's highly prevalent in the world. We have a patronising attitude towards people who get themselves in heaps of credit card debt, or take out mortgages that they can't afford. We seem to assume that the when loans go bad, it's is somehow the fault of the borrowers.

In actual fact, having sat in on phonecalls with many people who are in a distressed debt situation, they did nothing more than try to make ends meet and have a lifestyle that should be considered completely normal in a developed Western country.

Most people who've got into a debt-spiral did so because there's no way to legitimately dig their way out of the hole. They already work the maximum hours that they're able to, but yet their earning potential has maxed out. When the car breaks down, they have to borrow to meet the shortfall, and this tips them into a downward spiral, because they'll never be able to find the extra cash, due to punitive interest rates.

The story is almost always the same. When things start going wrong, people hover up every bit of available credit in order to maintain their perfectly reasonable lifestyle. People still need to replace their clothes, and cheap clothes wear out very quickly. People still need to get to work, and transport costs are significant. People even need to service their addictions. Without tobacco and alcohol, many lives would simply be unbearable. These are not luxuries, and people are not profligate for expecting a minimum standard of living.

If you look at the kind of savings you can make by economising and shopping around, it's fairly depressing. You might be able to save a few pounds by shopping at another supermarket on the other side of town, but what about the extra fuel you burned getting there, and the extra wear & tear on the car? What about the waste of your time, that could have been spent working more hours... if they were offered?

The fact of the matter is, that in free market economics, prices will find a level that is just about affordable for people on an average wage. If you price things too high, then everybody goes bankrupt and just refuses to work because the game is a stupid one. If you price things too low, then there's untapped profits and people rise out of poverty and refuse to do shitty jobs anymore. So, things have to be priced just right so that everybody is looking at their bank balance and eking things out to the end of the month, every month, month after month, year after year.

If you're a politician, landlord or a businessman, you want to find the price elasticity of demand so that you know how much you can charge as taxes, rent and the price of your products, such that demand is not unduly impacted. You want to charge the maximum tax, maximum rent and maximum price for everything, without people saying "fuck this" in huge numbers. Everything is priced based on the limit of what most people will just about put up with.

Unfortunately, people get ground down. Working your whole life just to pay taxes and service debts starts to get pretty irritating. People can see that they don't stand any chance of ever getting ahead in life.

We can see that there's a link between poverty and ridiculous dreams. Where people are poor, gambling is popular, and there's no bigger tax on the poor than a lottery. The lottery is the ultimate con, because it robs the very poorest people of a significant proportion of their income, whilst also giving them false hope that they might one day escape their situation.

Other ridiculous dreams include becoming a professional athlete, and becoming a famous pop singer or movie star. The number of Premier League footballers and TV celebrities is a piss in the ocean. In percentage terms, you're more likely to win a lottery or some kind of accumulator bet.

So many kids these days say that they want to be "famous" but they have no idea what for... singing probably. Vast numbers of people watch singing contests like X-Factor, Pop Idol and The Voice, and unwittingly, they are buying into this fairytale dream that they're going to be plucked from obscurity and poverty one day, and get to live this A-list celebrity lifestyle that's rammed down our throats with shows like Made in Chelsea and The Only Way is Essex, let alone Keeping up with the Kardashians.

Panem et circenses has paved the way for the political class to become ever more powerful, with the proletariat feeling that their vote would make no difference, and their time is better devoted to watching banal wannabe celebrities croon on a television show, as well as spending money to vote on premium rate phone lines.

Banks are "too big to fail" but the ordinary working person receives no government bailout for their financial woes, when it becomes evident that they can no longer service the debt that they have run up. However, there has been no popular uprising yet, because people are resigned to government and corporate control of their lives.

For me, the rioting and looting that we saw in the Tottenham and Croydon riots in London is indicative of a huge portion of society who are taunted with expensive consumer goods that they'll never be able to afford, and offered no jobs or legitimate opportunity, in order to acquire the material things that they desire.

Debt has been the only way that people have been able to get the celebrity lifestyle that's rammed down everybody's throats. All those flashy new cars are on hire purchase. All those gold-plated iPhones are bought with credit cards. All those lovely clothes are purchased on storecards. I don't think these people are idiots, and I don't think they're financially reckless. They've been told their whole lives that they're entitled to these things.

However, the more that people are denied the things that they've been promised - houses, cars, holidays and all the trimmings - the more they're going to wonder why they should work, only to get deeper and deeper into debt, and to have a miserable life where they're just counting down to payday, only for their hard-earned cash to be swallowed by rent, debts, transport, food, clothing and other life essentials.

We are asking too much of our working people, and at some point they're going to realise that it's not the immigrants who are to blame, but the ruling class.

The party never stopped for the elite. The good times just kept rolling. You can't prop things up forever, when working people are so unhappy.

Tags: #capitalism #banking #politics

This is a story about reproduction...

A flower is the sexual organ of a plant. A bunch of flowers is a bunch of genitals. They're a lot prettier than a man's meat & two veg though, admittedly.

Apparently, sending a picture of your manhood to the object of your affections is an accepted part of the new modern courtship ritual. A friend once told me she thought it was basically the same as "I'll show you mine if you show me yours" except completely unsolicited. I shudder to think what it must be like for girls on Tinder and Snapchat.

I guess I'm almost an ultra-conservative. I actually aspire to have a relatively old-fashioned relationship. I think gender roles are not actually a bad thing. The expectation for women to carry the unborn infant, give birth and be the primary caregiver, whilst also being expected to take the lead in maintaining domestic bliss, and have a career to boot, is too much to ask of somebody. Whore in the bedroom, chef in the kitchen, maid in the home, nanny to the kids and power-dressing bosswoman.

Men like to feel useful, needed, but frankly, once you've ponied up half a teaspoonful of baby batter, in order to impregnate somebody, your job's pretty much done in this society where women do it all. Is it any wonder that it's acceptable for men to be the butt of so many jokes: we're truly the weaker sex.

I feel like I might have offended a couple of my friends who are parents, with my bitter rants at my own parents. There's been plenty of times that I've written about the neurology of parenthood - the endorphins that are released in order to bond parent with child - and it has perhaps seemed like I've been attacking the 'magic' of parenthood by reducing it to its chemical nuts and bolts.

Believe me, I'm a sensation seeker, and just about the only thing left on my bucket list is to know what it's like to become a parent. I'd love to be so reckless and irresponsible as to just take a wild leap into the unknown, on the assumption that everything would be just fine. "You'll find a way" people say, and "there's never a right time".

Yes, that's right, there's never a right time. I've been thinking about population growth, and how much faster the human population has grown than anybody would have ever predicted. 60 years ago, the population was predicted to have grown to 3 billion by the year 2000. In actual fact, the population was over double that.

We now have over 7 billion mouths to feed on planet Earth. Not only that, but we all want to drive our little darlings around in gas-guzzling cars, have a pet doggie, take the whole family away on exotic holidays and fill our homes with cheap goods manufactured in the Far East. Something doesn't add up.

We talk about economic austerity, but the reality is much, much worse. The standard of living that we've all enjoyed, needs to take a massive nosedive, but nobody wants to hear it.

I desperately want to have some kids of my own, and a pet dog, and probably a cat too. I desperately want to return to the jet-set lifestyle I enjoyed a few years ago. I want to buy another car, another speedboat. However, just recycling a few bottles and buying a Toyota Prius is not going to offset the global impact of these selfish choices.

If there's one thing I know about experts, it's that they're usually conservative in their estimates. If the weatherman says to prepare for a gale, you should get ready for a hurricane. If the population experts say that the world population is going to be over 9 billion in 2050, we should assume that it's going to be 12 billion. If climate scientists say that global temperatures are going to increase by 2 degrees centigrade, we should assume they're going to increase by 4 degrees. If tide gauges show that sea levels have risen by a foot, we should expect them to rise another two feet in the coming years.

We have a culture where we're encouraged to think of our little nuclear families as little fortresses. We have double-locked front doors, and fences round our gardens. Our homes are our castles, and we view the world as vicious place, full of paedophiles, rapists, robbers and other things that are "out to get us". We are not only individually selfish - thinking about the immediate gratification of our reproduction and nurturing instincts - but we are collectively selfish, in that we put the needs of our family ahead of the needs of our species.

Yes, you're damn right, I would love to be a dad and to have a best friend in the form of a dog. I'm sure nothing could be more fulfilling than the feeling of adoration from the animals I feed. Many scientific studies have proven that it's nice to feel like the alpha, the leader of the pack, and nothing epitomises that more than the domestication of dogs. Dogs are pack animals, so they are genetically predisposed towards seeking approval of the 'alpha'.

However, dogs and babies are polluting. Disposable nappies are convenient, but make up a huge component of landfill. It's said that if an alien race were to come to Earth in a couple of hundred years time, when we've all died, they'll assume that we were a civilisation of incontinent midgets, because the mountains of nappies will still not have biodegraded.

I certainly wouldn't want to raise a kid without modern parenting aids. I certainly don't hanker for the days where we all died prematurely of preventable diseases and of starvation when the crops failed. However, where is the responsibility?

Dog ownership is the very pinnacle of irresponsibility. These are predatory carnivores. The meat we need to keep them means that huge swathes of arable land is used to grow animal feed, in order to keep our pets fed. Nobody can argue that keeping these animals as pets is a good use of finite resources. Having a dog is more polluting than having a car.

City living is responsible living: where we are entertained by culture rather than wiping up snot and vomit and spawning more mouths to feed. Where we are able to move around using mass transit systems that only work where there are economies of scale. Where we are able to be fed in massive refectories. We can have vast variety of food with relatively little wastage, because the population is so dense. Where the distances we have to travel are far less, because we build upwards, not outwards.

Yes, I feel unfulfilled, not having a nurturing outlet. I'd love to have some kids, a dog, a house in the country. However, it's irresponsible.

Just doing what your parents did, what other people do... that's sheep-like behaviour. Saying "well they did it too" is no defence, when you know you're acting recklessly, irresponsibly. We have birth control, we have planned parenthood, we know the problems we face as a species, as a planet. Do you want your kids and grandkids to starve to death on an infertile, polluted and inhospitable Earth?

Tags: #politics #climate

This is a story about U-turns...

I've been backing the wrong side. I've been in the wrong camp. I've been barking up the wrong tree. I've been the odd one out.

As somebody who's certifiably insane, divorced, nearly been bankrupt a bunch of times, been homeless, had drug problems, drinks too much, has a chip on my shoulder about a bunch of stuff, can descend into long insane rants that aren't backed by any facts, and I'm prone to irrational behaviour... what the hell was I thinking? This was clearly inconsistent with throwing my weight behind the campaign to keep Trump away from becoming the leader of the free world, and to keep the United Kingdom in the European Union.

I've failed at everything in my life and I'm angry with the world. All of my pent-up frustration with my own shortcomings will be well served with a "feel good" vote, that will hopefully give a bloody nose to those pesky immigrants. Having a minority group to blame for my economic inactivity and my bitterness and resentment, will give me an outlet for my barely concealed racism and lack of cultural sensitivity.

Frankly, I feel relieved to no longer have to check facts or find rational arguments for my behaviour. Acting in a way that has been swayed by emotive and sensationalistic journalism, feels more natural and allows me to stick with the crowd, the gang, the mob.

I feel like I'll fit right in amongst other financially reckless, insane, bigoted, bitter and twisted people who appeal to the primal, animalistic and most basic of human instincts, rather than that airy-fairy, namby-pamby, liberal, enlightened nonsense, with its touchy-feely mushy crap that doesn't give me that sense of belonging that I get by acting like a football hooligan.

Hooliganism gets a bad press, but it's quite a thrill, being part of a baying crowd, wreaking havoc through civilised society. Vandalism and violence are fun, when perpetrated against small groups of peaceful, pacifistic and law-abiding people, who can be dehumanised by considering them 'terrorist sympathisers'.

Having the world simplified for me, so that I see it as "us" and "them" has made a complex political landscape and frightening world into a game of cowboys & indians, cops & robbers, goodies and baddies. I like feeling that I'm one of the good guys, and I like excluding people, and blaming them for everything that's bad in the world.

The pressure to be educated, informed and to act in a rational way in accordance with the facts was a real drag. There was too much pressure to think about the best interests of everybody in society, and consider global issues, macroeconomics and the precedent set by foreign policy as well as the domestic treatment of marginalised people. I feel relieved to have found a way to simplify my worldview to a kind of wonderful fairytale fantasy where one vote will fix the world's problems.

Building walls, blaming immigrants, fragmentation, divisions in society, mistrust and disrespect of one another... these have always been a sound basis for policies and the advancement of humanity, I feel sure. I'm glad I don't have to check my facts anymore or consider similar historical outcomes, now that I've joined the monster raving loony party.

Go Trump! Go Brexit!

You might have misunderestimated me.

Tags: #politics