This is a story of queue jumping and those who get left behind...

I keep this in my wallet, to remind myself not to be one 0f the self-important pricks who thinks they deserve their position in the world. It reminds me that it's never OK to barge in front of the struggling masses. I found it in the middle of a forest in Ireland. The former owner, I imagine, was a jumped-up London eedjit who littered one of the most beautiful and unspoilt parts of our world I have ever seen. This little patch of green is one of the few places to not have been totally screwed by selfish and greedy monsters.

This keepsake also reminds me of the day that I decided to make a switch, from being so consumed with the rat race that I was unable to stop and smell the roses, to notice that there are very few places left that have not got massive concrete tower blocks, huge piles of plastic rubbish, terrible air quality, polluted rivers and all the increasingly obvious signs that the human race is acting with little or no care for the future of the planet.

It also marks the day that I reconnected with nature, having been stuck in the concrete jungle for far too long. The problem with London is, that unless you have a healthy outdoor hobby, like cycling or surfing, you have very little connection with your environment. We live under artificial lighting 24 hours a day, and our views are dominated by huge buildings, not towering trees.

Another problem with London is the drinking culture. I'm not sure if London drinks alcohol to switch off and get some sleep, after all those strong coffees, or whether to numb the realisation that the standard of living is actually pretty poor, when you consider long commutes, high rents, overcrowding, crime rates and poverty everywhere you look (except for Canary Wharf, which is a private estate).

So, I decided that I am going to quit drinking. This is harder than you would think, when you work in an industry where a standard interview joke with a candidate is "Do you drink? Don't worry if you don't, we can send you on a course". They closed the bars in offices, as the City has cleaned up its image, but you can still roll from your desk straight to a bar within barely a few strides.

Let's be clear about my drinking though. I drank pints of lager out with the lads from work. Drinking spirits and drinking alone set of alarm bells in my head, luckily, but binge drinking huge amounts of beer is not good either, even if everyone else around you is doing it too.

It has taken some time to prepare my colleagues for the relinquishment of my final vice. I have never smoked in my life. I gave up caffeine over the last year or so and I am now completely decaffeinated. I am targeting targeting a 1 pint a week, which will be cut to zero in October. This is a drastic reduction from having 5 or 6 pints of Peroni (over 5% alcohol) on a midweek evening, and my body and my colleagues have felt the impact.

So, at first, my body was extremely unhappy about going alcohol free. My sleep was terrible. I was waking up sweating in the middle of the night. In the morning I felt like I was full of flu: aching joints, feeling sick, painful abdomen. This was when I was STOPPING... surely we are supposed to feel better, not worse? Well, as it turns out, it takes quite a long time before you start to feel better.

I was shocked by how long it has taken me to taper my alcohol consumption down to just a single social drink, which I accepted on the proviso that nobody was allowed to pressure me into having another one, and I would go home after I had finished it. My colleagues carried on and were nursing hangovers the next day. I felt surprisingly rubbish after only 1 pint, but I was able to get up and have my breakfast at the normal time.

I think it really is like my friend, Tim, often jokes: "I'm not an alcoholic, because alcoholics go to meetings". The City runs on that kind of gallows humour. However, I have now started to lose friends and colleagues to alcoholism, and many more are very ill indeed. I don't want to be next.

Could this be my last ever pint? My body and brain wish it was (October 2014)

Tags: #career #london #alcohol #addiction #mentalhealth #banking

This is a story of fear, lies and insecurity...

I once used the DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th Edition) to decompose, deconstruct, examine and criticise my ex's behaviour. I should have turned that spotlight on myself, instead. People in grass houses shouldn't stow thrones.

I have lived a lot of my life with fear, guilt, self-loathing and insecurity. It dominated every waking hour of my life, which was pretty unbearable. I was a pathalogical liar, manipulator, bully, cheat and child.

Yes, that's right, I was a child. Up until the age I could legally drink (18 in the UK) I was growing up. I'm not 'grown up' now, but there was a turning point around the time of my late teens, which began a process of change, from child to adult.

As a kid, I used to lie about having Sky TV, owning a Game Boy and even about the size of my hard disk drive (fnarr, fnarr). I used to feel unworthy of having friends, a girlfriend, and instead cultivated a self-protecting "if you don't need me, I don't need you" isolationism, where I used to spend long periods lost in my own thoughts. I was so lost in my own thoughts, my parents even had my hearing tested, as it would take me a few moments to return to reality from my daydreams.

I remember my Mum being horrified that I seemingly lacked empathy for my tormentors. Two boys who were particularly vicious and violent towards me, and made my life hell, were apparently thin, pale and emaciated, from an unpleasant home life. Unfortunately my unpleasant school life blinded me from these facts, at the time, and I failed to share my Mum's feelings of protectiveness for these bullies.

I think I would have developed into a cruel and bullying boss and CEO if it had not been for an unexpected event in my late teens, which was at once both life-changing, but also potentially life-destroying.

3,4-methylenedioxy-methamphetamine is something I can correctly type from memory, because it is intractably linked to a turning point in my life. It's a bitter medicine to swallow, literally and figuratively - plant alkaloids are extremely unpleasant tasting, and Leah Betts had recently died when I took this substance for the first time - but the "empathy pill" or "love drug" literally changed my life overnight.

Before I continue, you should know that I had never abused drugs before taking MDMA, and I more or less ceased taking Ecstasy only a year or so after my first experience with it. What is written about drugs and addiciton being dangerous and life-destroying is true, and I am very glad that I didn't graduate onto drugs like Ketamine, which has caused irreparable urological damage to the bladder of many clubbers and ravers, and harder drugs that have destroyed countless lives.

There are no words sufficient to express the veil that was lifted as I 'came up' 45 minutes after ingesting a Mitsubishi Turbo pill, in a dark nightclub under a railway arch near Vauxhall, London. Pounding Trance music and sweaty bodies filled a space, way beyond the legal capacity of the venue. I was terrified by the setting, before my friend John even produced an innocent looking tablet on the palm of his outstretched hand.

We should be mindful of the dangers. Leah Betts was killed by a lack of blood supply to her brain, when it swelled up and squashed the artery entering her cranium. She unbalanced the osmotic processes in her body by drinking ~6 litres of water in the space of only a couple of hours. I can understand why she did it. The drug is hyperthermic and diuretic, which means you get hot - so you want to drink more fluids - but you don't feel like you need to pee.

Addiction is also a huge danger. Look again at the chemical name. It has methamphetamine on the end of it. The drug is basically Crystal Meth with a Phenethylamine ring bolted on to it. How else can people dance for 12 hours nonstop to monotonous minimalist electronic music?

Luckily for me, the confidence, energy & lightness in my limbs, the euphoria, the nonsensical "liking" of a chemical substance is the hallmark of an addictive Dopaminergic agonist or reuptake-inhibitor... all these things were of secondary importance to the main event: I felt loved and secure and happy and I felt empathy towards every person, regardless of looks, age, colour, creed, political leanings or socioeconomic background, citizenship, perceived intellect or subcultural references in their clothes, piercings and tattoos - including myself - we are often unable to stop judging and accept our own selves.

As ravers, we used to say "PLUR": Peace Love Unity Respect. I think this is a good motto for life #dontbeevil

Tags: #london #drugs #addiction #childhood #bullying #mentalhealth