This is a story about spying...

I'm not doing very well in terms of burying my blog. I've not been very successful at writing a load of non-contentious stuff that would bore any person who stumbled upon my website and decided to go digging in the archives. I've not done a very good job of being sensible and writing stuff that wouldn't be controversial if it was discovered by somebody connected with my work.

Where I live is a fairly small place. In theory I should be more careful, but I haven't been. It's been too difficult to change my habits. I've written candidly with authenticity and honesty for so long that it's become a habit. I'm unguarded. I'm vulnerable. It's been so long since I kept up the corporate mask and pretended like everything was A-OK for the sake of my job.

This Monday has been completely different from last Monday. I'm starting to become hopeful that life might become sustainable and pleasant. Happier times might be ahead - I'm really close to making a breakthrough. My life is more good than bad at the moment.

It makes me a little paranoid knowing that I've got some things that I want to keep. I'd be upset if I lost my local job and my imagined future crumbled into dust. Without money how am I going to get a place of my own? How am I going to be able to go out on dates and on mini-breaks with my girlfriend? How will I continue to escape from the circumstances that made my life so awful, without some means of bankrolling it? There's a temptation to hide my real personality; to hide my inner monologue; to bury my true feelings; to present a fake corporate-friendly mask instead of my honest self. I'm economically incentivised to become Mr Boring.

Obviously I'm not going to ditch my blog. I need my daily writing outlet. I need the stability; the security; the comfort blanket.

I'm very worried that mania is going to rear its ugly head and ruin everything. I'm really worried that I'm going to self-sabotage as soon as I get myself into a better position. It's been so long since I had all the pieces of the puzzle. It's really dangerous when I get everything, because I'm busting my balls and on the brink of a breakdown the whole time. I can imagine that I'll be hit with an emotional tsunami when I finally get the keys to a place of my own, for example.

I can detect a lot of unpleasant aggressiveness in my demeanour at times, due to the fact I'm so stressed about crossing the finish line. I'm super defensive and super protective over the progress I've made. I have so little tolerance for anybody who might stand in the way. I have no time for anybody who thinks they've got any ideas of how I should be living my life, because I've got such a clear idea in my mind of what I'm doing and where I'm going. It's so stressful to be so close, but yet so far.

I'm under so much pressure to make my struggles secret. I can't imagine that my work colleagues would understand the journey I've been on to get to this point. It's too mind-blowing for a corporate drone to think about an atypical path through live. It's too much of a taboo to talk about any off-piste moments that aren't CV-friendly, in the world of business and large organisations.

I'm going to keep the details of my working day secret, as is my professional duty, but it's too much to ask of me to bury my blog; to hide my identity. Yes, it's risky, but I need the stability; I need the consistency; I need the continuity.

By writing, hopefully I'm making myself more normal in the flesh. I think that without this outlet I struggle to deal with people face-to-face. Without this outlet, there's no way of getting rid of the bad thoughts and feelings and harmlessly de-fusing things that threaten to blow up in my face. Without this outlet, there's a greater chance of me losing my mind and screwing everything up. I just did 6 months incident-free. 6 months of stability is an amazing achievement, especially considering the toxic circumstances I've had to deal with. By writing, I hope that I can maintain the steady stable changes that have helped me to improve my life, working towards happier times.

I don't even particularly feel like writing today, but I'm doing it because it's part of my routine. Some days we don't feel like going to work, but we do anyway because we need the money. The routine is necessary. The routine is healthy even. It can be easy to give up and stop... to refuse to carry on.

Keeping secrets is a burden. I can't handle any extra burdens right now. I'll do my professional duty and avoid any situations that would infringe my code of conduct, but I can't afford to go stealth; to bury my identity.

Perhaps I seem reckless. Perhaps I seem like I want to have my cake and eat it. I certainly seem to be getting everything I want. I guess I should be humble. I guess I shouldn't take any risks. I guess I shouldn't take any chances. I should grovel and kiss arses, declaring my undying gratitude for a few crumbs from the cake, shouldn't I?

I've been put through the wringer to get to this point, but that doesn't make me want to hide my personality; it doesn't make me want to put the corporate-friendly mask back on. I think it was the fake corporate mask that made me unwell. It was so exhausting pretenting like I'm the perfect employee... a perfect CV; a blemish-free record - no black marks against my name.

So, the open secret is staying here. Fuck it. If you want to buy 100% of me - my brain, my body, my past, my future - then it's going to cost you a lot more than I'm being paid at the moment.

Tags: #career #writing

This is a story about doing things you dislike...

Pretty soon I'm going to have to start turning up at work on time, because I have a good first impression to make. Pretty soon I'm going to be commuting to work along with lots of other miserable people, clogging up the roads and getting stressed out of our minds. Pretty soon I'm going to have to pretend like I'm a regular office worker, and suffer the cold early mornings - getting out of bed when it's a really miserable time of year, defrosting the car and pretending like it makes perfect sense to be acting the same as if it was the middle of summer.

I'd worked really hard so that I could start to take it easy, maybe switch careers or maybe reconfigure my life so that I work less and get paid more, or at least I'd be somewhat my own boss. Everything went to hell in a handcart, so instead I'm still stuck in the rat race. It's not that I haven't worked hard and achieved a lot... it's that I went backwards rapidly for quite a few years. Instead of just wiping the slate clean, I'm trying to do the honest decent thing and live my life the hard way - to pay the price for those years I lost in the wilderness, where everything I'd worked so hard to build ended up getting messed up and destroyed, and I got in a right old mess.

I could just say "screw it" because I've rebuilt myself from nothing a couple of times already. I've already proven the point - that I know how to get my life sorted out when it's in a mess. It's been really disheartening to fight back and rebuild my life, only to have it fall to pieces again - a lot of the reason being that working hard to achieve something is one thing, but working hard and achieving nothing is soul destroying. All my hard work amounts to nothing - I still don't have health, wealth and prosperity, so why did I bother? All of my hard work hasn't even managed to get me back to zero yet - I'm still stuck in a very deep hole.

You might think that the hole I'm in is because I made really bad choices, and there's some justice, but what you don't realise is how vulnerable people can get when they're unwell. I've been ripped off for thousands of pounds by people who've sought to take advantage of me when I've been sick. I don't really begrudge it, because that's the kind of society we've built, where we trample on each other to get ahead, but it's pretty hard to accept that - for example - one guy doesn't even think he's done anything wrong, even though he owes me thousands of pounds.

To live life with honesty and integrity is really hard work and I don't think that there's enough appreciation of that fact. While there are lots of rich people who are financially reckless, leave their staff members unpaid and declare bankruptcy owing millions and billions of pounds. While we say that a 'self-made' successful entrepreneur must be really smart and totally deserves their fortune, we fail to give acknowledgement to all the smart hard-working people who've led lives with more risk-aversion and prudence because they simply couldn't afford to fail - they had rent and bills to pay, and no wealthy family to bail them out of any financial difficulties.

It would be lacking in humility to claim that I'm a hard worker, and dishonest to say I don't have some element of my risk underwritten. My risk is underwritten in strange ways - I know that I do a very good impression of a well-mannered posh person, which seems to be quite endearing... I seem like a worthy cause to those who are charitably minded. I think it would be unfair to say that I've ever mooched off anybody's kindness or otherwise taken assistance without the intention of using it to improve my life as intended, but I've definitely had help that would never be forthcoming for less fortunate members of society who are easily identifiable as "undesirables". Nobody wants to help a white trash football hooligan drug addict, for example, which is why I can't begrudge any wealth that's been redistributed from my pocket into the pocket of somebody who nobody else would help.

Wealth has flowed through me and into other hands. I'm a model citizen in a way, because wealth really has trickled down in my world. A lot of money has come my way, but I haven't hoarded it - it's all gone back into the economy, and you'll be very glad to hear that only the teeny tiniest fraction was spent making enterprising drug dealers on council estates any richer, and most of the dosh has been spent making the rich richer - rent, interest, taxes etc.

The future that lies ahead is going to involve a lot of the same crap I was doing 20+ years ago when I started my career - it's practically the same job. My future is going to involve working just as hard as I did back when I was trying to escape from the rat race. My future is incredibly disappointing, because I should have been very comfortably wealthy by now, and it's only because I was abandoned when I was at my most vulnerable that so much stuff got ruined and I'm having to rebuild from a position that's *WORSE* than starting over. I'm starting from a *HUGELY* disadvantaged position.

The only slight comfort is the fact that it's seemingly quite "quick" for me to get back to a position where I'm doing OK. It might take most ordinary people a hell of a long time to dig themselves out of the kind of hole I've got myself in, or even leave them with no option other than to declare bankruptcy and start again from the bottom rung of the ladder, but I'm "lucky" enough to get to "quickly" recover, although you don't realise just how exhausting it's been to be flirting with disaster for so long.

So, I have to put up and shut up for a while longer. Even though I'm taking the fast-track it feels like it's lasting an eternity, because it's so unbearably nasty to be going through an all work and no play struggle, with horrible stuff hanging over me. This isn't my comeuppance - this is me paying the price for all the people who've gleefully come and picked my pocket when I was vulnerable. I haven't lived beyond my means - it's a miracle I've lived at all... I should be dead.

The main message I've been receiving in life is "hard work doesn't pay" and "give up and kill yourself" because every attempt to work my way out of poverty has burnt me out and not got me anywhere. Every attempt to play by the rules of the game has been futile. Every attempt to act with honesty, integrity and personal responsibility has made me feel mugged off.

I don't really know how to give up. I don't really know how to accept defeat. Maybe I'm a bad loser, but the game's not over, so I'm playing on. That might sound really positive, but I'm not going to need much of an excuse to throw in the towel - it wouldn't take much to make me decide that all the effort and the stress just hasn't been worth it, and that everything's hopelessly ruined.

Friends think they see repeating patterns in my behaviour, but don't they see that there are patterns everywhere? Sleep and wake. Work and leisure. Feast and famine. Sprint and coast. Yes I've tried the same strategy quite a few times, but it's always had different results. Yes there are things I've tried before, but don't you think that the remarkable thing is that I've avoided bankruptcy, destitution, permanent debilitating mental illness, chronic drug addiction... and an early death, of course. If anything, I've been trying some of the 'same' things because they work very well - for example, I would have thought that being well paid is far better than being really badly paid, but it's true... I've never tried the latter - maybe that's where I've been going wrong all along!

Maybe I have been making bad career choices, but most jobs all involve the same things: desks, offices, email and meetings, plus horrible commutes to work. Most jobs seem to involve being awake when you don't want to be and doing things you don't like doing. If two jobs are more-or-less identically horrible, why would I choose the underpaid one?

So, I'm sticking with offices and 9 to 5 and Monday to Friday and desks and computers and emails and water-coolers and all the other shit that goes with the territory. I'm sticking with having to get up even though I want to stay in bed, going to a place I hate and doing work that I hate, because it's essential if I'm going to have another shot at trying to build a more pleasant life - we can't do anything we want, until we have a shitload of money in the bank, and my only source of money is selling my brain and body to the highest bidder.

It sucks, but it's always sucked.

Tags: #career

This is a story about brain dumping...

I wish I was writing short and sweet think-pieces, but I'm not. I wish I was writing on a variety of topics, but I'm not. I wish I had all day long to compose something, edit it, improve it and give it some quality, but instead I come home and unload - I spend all day chained to my desk, hating every second, so when I finally sit down in front of my computer all I can do is pound out thousands of words that need to be unleashed, because I've been driven crazy alone in the office all day.

One of the reasons for writing so much is fear: Fear of dying misunderstood. If you felt like you had to write down everything you ever wanted to say, because you were going to die, then you'd write lots too, wouldn't you? What would you want to say to your family? What would you want to say to your partner? What would you want to say to your kids? What would you want to say to your friends? What would you want to tell the world? When you start to think about all that, then you might find that you've got quite a lot to say.

Isn't it so painfully embarrassingly teenaged angsty to be saying "I don't want to die misunderstood" and writing a diary where I go on and on about how the world is out to get me and grown-ups are awful? Isn't it super-duper immature to write like I've got all the answers and I'm the first person in the history of the universe to ever experience a few bad emotions and get a bit grumpy about having to work for a living? Shouldn't the shame of realising that I'm making a fool of myself cause me to shut the hell up? Can't I see myself? Don't I know how I'm coming across?

I guess I got into this writing habit when I felt like I was writing my own obituary. Then, over time, I've felt more and more comfort from knowing that I have uploaded as much of my mind into the cloud as I possibly can. It would be ridiculous to think that I'm somehow immortalising myself by spewing words out into the ether, along with all the trillions of others - every man and his dog has a blog, and believes what they're writing is profound. To think that I'm in any way original or making any kind of useful contribution, would be complete stupidity.

I've now reached the point where the steam of consciousness is seemingly endless, if anybody were to dig back in the archives. Any new reader would quickly tire of reading my boring dross, so it's almost as if I've been writing since the dawn of time. I write so much that it has to be skim-read - the themes are so repetitive; my points are so laboured. Like measuring the height of a child every single day, there seems to be very little progression - to the naked eye, I'm going nowhere with this, yet if we look back in the archives we can see that my life today is remarkably different versus 3, 6 or 12 months ago. 3 months ago I didn't have a job. 6 months ago I didn't have a home. 12 months ago I was a drug addict.

The archives don't chart my turbulent existence very well, because I don't write regularly when I'm sick and dying. It's hard to continue writing when you're in hospital, for example, so there are gaps. The gaps themselves tell a story. I have access to my photo library, which fills in some of the blanks, but I need to tell the story of what happened because otherwise people would never be able to guess from my photos. I write so much at the moment because I'm fearful that I'm going to lose my mind, kill myself or relapse into drug addiction. I write now, for fear of not being able to write later.

Just to write words like "drug addiction" or "didn't have a home" conjures up images of injecting heroin under a bridge. I write so much because I could easily be dismissed with a lazy label: Addict, for example. I write because things aren't as simple as they would seem to the casual reader. I write because there's complexity. I write because there aren't any easy conclusions that can be quickly drawn.

There's a process of reconciliation - those who know me are trying to reconcile the person they know with the story I'm telling of the more unfortunate events in my recent life; those who are getting to know me through only the pages of this website, are trying to reconcile what they understand of drug addiction, homelessness and mental health, with a story which seems to feature these elements in an atypical and non-stereotypical way. I deliberately write factual things - "I was a patient on a locked psychiatric ward" - knowing that it's shorthand for describing a person who serves no useful function in society, and should be kept in the asylum forever. When I write "drug addict" I do so knowing that it conjures up images of syringes and crack dens. I write because I'm an educated middle-class white guy who works for an investment bank, and I don't take drugs and I'm not homeless. Every preconceived notion you've ever had is going to be challenged, if you were to read my whole story. I don't think I'm original, special or different. However, my experience of addiction treatment services, homelessness, mental health and other public services, has shown that I'm an outlier - I'm even suspected of being some kind of hoax, or otherwise just a tourist passing through.

"It's not all about you" I'm often reprimanded. If you think I'm selfish and self-centred and conceited and vain and narcissistic and anything else of that ilk that you want to throw at me, you can f**k off and read somebody else's blog. This is where I write "Nick woz ere" in the hope that I either get better, or at least I made my very best attempt at explaining how difficult life is when you're laid low by depression, mood instability, abusive relationships, averse childhood experiences, divorce, loss of status, loss of home, addiction, mental health problems, suicide attempts, hospitalisation, institutionalisation, police, fire, ambulance... you name it!

To have built a Twitter following around one topic, and one topic only - the many trials and tribulations of Mr Nick Grant - seems incredibly narcissistic. I promise you that one reason I'm NOT writing, is to simply to shock and entertain... I'm not writing to be popular, even though I must admit that it helps my self-esteem a very great deal that people are reading what I write.

There's a very great temptation to give my 'fans' what they want. I can see that there are certain topics that create a great deal of engagement with my readers, and I could become addicted to the buzz of feeding that desire. I know what gets 'likes' and retweets. I know what gets chins wagging (virtually). I know that I could easily seed a thread of discussion, or otherwise troll in order to feel that I'm noticed and I'm making some ripples in the pond. Like many relatively early pioneers into cyberspace, I've spent enough time online to know what courts controversy and what kind of online persona I project... but that's not the way I play things. What I write comes from an earlier period in my childhood, when I used to write a journal for a cherished English teacher of mine to read - it was a formative experience.

I write because I'm a sensitive little soul in a world of bragging and bravado and bullshit. I write because I'm not going to win at sports, or even some kind of memorising-regurgitation exercise. I write because it's non-competitive and it's the only way I know to express myself - to dump out all the emotions that surge in my heart.

I'm aware that I have a bad case of verbal diarrhoea, but I don't care because my life is otherwise ascetic - I work, sleep and eat, and I have little outlet for self-expression and the pursuit of things that tickle my academic fancy; I have little opportunity for interesting discourse with fascinating people. It seems horribly self-indulgent to write so much about myself, but nobody asked you to read, did they?

I often think about the ears:mouth ratio, and that I should use them in the correct ratio. If you meet me in person - and I hope we do get to meet in person - then you might see that since I started writing, I've stopped the dreadful habit of just waiting for my turn to speak. I hope I'm a good listener. I hope I'm more engaged than I appear to be, writing all this god-awful stuff about myself. I've learned a lot about other people since writing so much about myself, because I don't feel so pressured to defend myself and otherwise present myself in the most favourable light that I can. I don't feel the need to tell you much about me at all really, in person, because it's all written down in a lot of detail if you really want to read it (which I don't recommend).

I'd ideally like to be writing high quality pieces on a variety of subjects, that take no more than a few minutes to read. 700 words is the sweet spot, I think - not too short, and not too long. As I write this, my rambling has just passed the 1,600 word mark. If ever you thought that writing a 2,000 word essay, a 10,000 word dissertation, 40,000 word MSc or 80,000 word thesis was a torturous task, then I'm just going to laugh at you because I've blogged 821,000 words to date and I'm aiming for a million by the end of the year. "Yes, but they have to be the right words" says a friend... she forgets that I've also written tens of thousands of lines of computer code in the last year alone, which have to be right otherwise they simply won't work - there's no wiggle room when a computer's involved, because it either works (true) or it doesn't (false)... it's binary.

I'm now writing utter horse shit, you realise, because I can't bear to be parted from the page. This moment - writing - is when I feel connected and switched on. It's like I've had the brakes on the whole time, and suddenly they're let off and I can just flow. If I wasn't writing, then I'd be getting up to mischief, so it's great to be able to write about whatever I want... just pouring words out onto a page.

Of course these are the insane ramblings of an unhinged man, but that's why you came here, isn't it? If I'm writing, it means that I'm still in the land of the living. If I'm still stringing together a coherent sentence, there's a little bit of me left on this earth - I haven't departed for the next life yet.

Do I cringe with embarrassment when I think about things I've written? Of course. If I could go back in time and stop myself from writing publicly about all the gory details of the inner-workings of my mind, would I do it? No way. If I could stop myself and go back to living a life of quiet obscurity, would I? No - I much prefer to document what's really going on with me, in a place that's readily available for anybody to come and peek into my mind.

I feel like I should write an obligatory bit of self-deprecation, saying what a self-centred idiot I am, but you know what? I can't be bothered. Yes this is all meaningless waffle - and so much of it - but the internet is not going to run out of bytes anytime soon... better out than in.

There we go... 2,000 words of nothingness. Just as meaningless as your uni dissertation that nobody will ever read. Just as meaningless as that thesis, that book, your entire life... whatever it is. It's easy to write, and it's also hard.

Tags: #writing

This is a story about copycat suicides...

I took this photo on the 10th of August 2017. I had three boxes just like this, each containing 112 capsules of tramadol. I had deliberately stockpiled these capsules over the course of a 3-month period. A month later I wrote a blog called The Closest I've Come to Suicide. Only a matter of hours later I very nearly did succeed in killing myself.

I'm repeating myself. Why?

I've kept the photos. I've kept the blog posts. Why?

Why am I thinking about this stuff? Aren't I deliberately triggering myself? Am I not tempting fate? Shouldn't I try to forget; pretend it never happened? Shouldn't I think positive thoughts, abandon my blog and decide that I'm going to be cured and happy? Am I not deliberately keeping myself depressed and suicidal, by continuing to have this link to the past?

People kill themselves all the time. Suicide kills a lot of men like me. In fact, suicide is the thing that's most likely to kill me. I'm not unique - if you're a man under the age of 45, suicide's the thing that's most likely to kill you too. Suicide's more likely to kill you than a car crash, cancer, a heart attack, a brain tumour, a drug overdose, a freak accident or anything else you can think of. You should be worried about suicide - it's the #1 risk to your health.

Technically, I'm not really allowed to write this. It's too soon - there's been a recent event. I can't talk about the event, but it happened. It's not about me. I shouldn't write about me. I shouldn't write about how it affects me. I'm not allowed to do those things - to write about it; to feel things. It's not me who's been affected. I'm impossible to affect.

My thoughts are with some other people who are more directly affected, but there's something else. I can't talk about it.

I'm safe, but if ever there was an example of a trigger, this would be it. I can't explain what the trigger is, which is part of what makes it so dangerously triggering - when people can't talk about stuff, that's when they're in danger. When people stop talking, that's when they're in danger.

Arguably, you might say that my blog didn't help me to stop following through with my plans to kill myself. However, it was also through my Twitter followers that the emergency services were able to get to me in time and save my life. My blog was never really supposed to be a cure - it's a suicide note. I started writing this because I didn't want to die misunderstood. I think it's had therapeutic benefit, but it's clearly not been curative, because I still tried to kill myself and very nearly succeeded.

The more I have to self-censor and worry about who's reading and how they're going to react, the harder it is for me to use my blog therapeutically. The best thing for me is to write without a filter, but that has consequences. There are things I want to write about, so that I'm fully publicly accountable and I've stayed true to my mission to document absolutely everything that's happening to me in unflinching detail, but I've got to balance that with the need to tell the story in the right sequence, otherwise people will leap to the wrong conclusions. I also jeopardise relationships and my job when I write so openly. I need to write with pure honesty, but human lives are complicated - there's no synopsis that allows anybody to effortlessly understand who I am.

My mood was dangerously unstable last week. This week I'm exhausted and stressed, but my mood is not so low. I was going to skip work today, but I didn't, and more importantly I didn't feel suicidally desperate about it. I felt like hiding under the duvet and never leaving the house, but that's completely different from feeling suicidal. There's a whole load of stuff that's hit me all at once at the start of the week - good and bad - but I'm feeling considerably better than I was this time last week, when I wrote Cry for Help.

I've had a week where there have been a number of 'triggering' things, most of which I'm not prepared to write about at the moment. I've had a week where there were at least 3 disastrous courses of action I could've embarked upon, but I got through it.

It feels horrible to be going through a period where I'm constrained in what I can write about. It feels dangerous to be living with things that are distressing, but are too difficult to tackle without compromising decisions I made about privacy and things that I don't want to share [yet].

I'm not a keeper of secrets. I don't want to be a man of mystery. I don't like having things that are off-limits to write about. I think it's dangerous - I don't want to have things that are bothering me, that I haven't alerted anybody about. I'm a lot happier - and safer - when I'm allowing pressure to escape from the safety release valve. I need to blow off steam; to vent.

Clearly, I'm being antagonised. Some of it is me, some of it is circumstances beyond anybody's control, some of it is other people. As a coping mechanism, I'm trying to write about it without making things personal; I'm trying to write about stuff that affects me personally, and also be some kind of superhuman who always thinks about how everyone else is feeling too, and attempts to put my own feelings into perspective.

I'm compromised. My blog serves a purpose. My blog is mine. I'm in a weird situation where I've got to watch what I say. How do I deal with something that's triggering, while also being mindful of other people at all times? This isn't supposed to be like a regular social situation, where I have to be mindful of other people's feelings. This is supposed to be my place where I come and deal with the thing that's most upsetting - triggering - to me.

Should I switch to a private journal, I wonder to myself. But, then I lose my all-important public scrutiny. If I write about my most desperate struggles in private, I won't be discovered until it's too late, if there was a repeat of what happened last time I tried to kill myself. I'm not planning on killing myself, but it's something to bear in mind - my social media friends are there for me when it's life-or-death. If nothing else, this blog has plucked me out of some very sorry situations. I can't really abandon it, just because I get too much earache from a handful of people who think they've read enough already.

I feel like I've got to write a caveat: that my thoughts are with somebody I really care about, arguably more affected than me by an event. It's not a competition, but I can't pretend like what's happened is not 'triggering' for me though, for reasons I can't go into. It's such a damn pain when I can't speak freely because I'm boxed in by a whole load of considerations about other people. It's stopping me from being raw and honest, which is stopping me from being able to cope in the usual way: to write without a filter; without self-censorship.

I'm sorry this is so repetitive and cryptic.

I don't know how to proceed. I think I'm going to have to continue my story. I'm going to have to be selfish and self-centred and get what I need out of writing. I'm going to have to be true to my mission, which is to be authentic and honest. I'm going to have to be brave and put everything out there, because the alternative will lead me to being isolated and alone with my terrible thoughts and feelings which could drive me to attempt suicide again.

Half tempted to scrub this and write about what's really going on, but I'm not going to. I'm going to see how I feel about things after I've had some more time to think.

Tags: #suicide

This is a story about moral superiority...

We are all well aware that there's no point comparing anything unless we are using the same unit of measurement. To say that my penis is 6 long is meaningless. If it's 6 centimetres then that's not very impressive. If it's 6 millimetres that's a downright micropenis. If it's 6 feet then that's just an impractical length - I'd have to coil it up or sling it over my shoulder. Clearly it's important to know what unit of measurement we're talking about.

Next comes the problem of standardisation. If you've ever bought cocaine then you'll know that your drug dealer's scales use a different set of weights and measures than those which would be officially approved. On a fully calibrated weighing scale, you may be disappointed to learn that you've been ripped off by at least 10%, not including whatever was added to bulk out the product when your precious powder was cut.

On the topic of comparing apples with apples, how should we compare 1g of cocaine cut with teething powder, with 1g of cocaine cut with powdered milk? Is it even meaningful to compare weight when we don't know the purity? You might not even be buying cocaine - there are many [cheaper] drugs that mimic its effects, and others that are added to give the classic numbness you feel when it's rubbed on your gums or snorted.

So, if we have measured length, weight and density (or purity) then what else is there that we could measure? Time. How do we measure time?

We had the movement of the sun, the flow of sand and water through primitive timing devices, and clockwork, but the devices are not very accurate. It wasn't until the miniaturisation of clockwork movements into pocket watches that we had a reliable device to keep time, but these are still quite inaccurate. It was discovered that quartz crystals had a mechanical resonance, and that an electronic device could 'count' the vibrations - 32,768 vibrations is 1 second. Temperature fluctuations will cause a quartz digital clock to gain or lose a second or two over the course of a year. It sounds accurate enough and for the purposes of this piece I won't delve any deeper into the strange workings of time.

Now, let's suppose you and I synchronise our watches and say to one another "let's meet back here at this time tomorrow" do you suppose we have both experienced exactly 24 hours, when we meet up again the following day? Do you suppose that each of our 24 hours passed at exactly the same rate?

I could explain some of the minutiae of special and general relativity, but I'm writing about the kind of relativity that we experience every day. Unless you're on a spaceship travelling at 97% of the speed of light, special relativity is not really going to apply in everyday life. Unless you're mucking about near a neutron star, general relativity is of no concern in this terrestrial tale.

So, you and your companion parted ways for 24 hours. So, when you compare your watches, they're still showing exactly the same time, right? But, did time flow at the same rate for both of you? Is it a useful comparison to say that both of you experienced the same 24 hours, as measured by your watches?

Let's imagine our two experimenters - call them Alice and Bob - went about their normal business. Alice is a scientist and she went back to her lab where she had some discussions with her colleagues about the fundamental nature of reality. Bob works in a pea factory, canning peas. Bob went back to the pea factory and did a 12-hour shift, pulling a lever that puts a pre-measured quantity of peas into a can. Alice isn't even sure how long she was at work, because she was so engrossed in her discussions with fascinating people. Bob knows exactly how long he was at work, because his whole time he was wishing the factory whistle would blow so he could go and punch his timecard. Was one hour of Alice's work the same as one hour of Bob's work?

Next, Alice and Bob go home. Alice has a husband she adores, 3 kids and a cat. She put the kids to bed and drank a glass of red wine with her husband, while updating him on the day's events. Bob lives on his own in a dismal flat. Bob sat drinking vodka because he hates his job, but he has to do another 12-hour shift tomorrow. Did Alice and Bob's evening pass at the same speed as each other's?

Alice slept for 7 hours before springing out of bed to get the kids up and prepare breakfast. She was buzzing with energy and full of enthusiasm about the day ahead. Bob slept for 12 hours and woke up with a sense of dread - he was disappointed that he hadn't died in his sleep. Clearly, there was a disparity in the amount of sleep each of them got, although their watches did not go to sleep. How can we compare two people's day, when we get different amounts of sleep?

We might agree that Alice and Bob's watches experienced the same 24 hours, insofar as can be measured using hours, minutes and seconds, but do you think that time passed at the same speed for them, in the way that they subjectively experienced it? Is time a meaningful unit at all, in this context?

Imagine if every hour we asked Alice and Bob to rate how fast the last hour had passed for them - either "quickly", "slowly" or "normal". We might see that Alice rates her hours as passing quickly, while Bob rates his hours as passing slowly. When we consider this, we see that their conscious hours are very different indeed, and the actual number of hours, minutes and seconds elapsed is not a very useful measure.

Thinking about this disparity in perceived hours, between different individuals in different jobs, it seems quite obvious that it's cruel and torturous to expect those who are suffering to tolerate the passage of time, when others find that their day flies by with ease.

What we see is that a number of people won't hold down a job, and will chop and change between different money-getting pursuits because they find most work to be unbearably shit. Some of us will find so little difference between one McJob and another, that we will be unable to work at all. Some of us know very clearly what kind of work we can't stand: working in offices and having to get up early in the morning, is very badly suited to a night-owl who has a brain and a personality, for example.

Relatively speaking, I'm one of the lucky ones. I'm extremely well remunerated and I pretty much do whatever I want - I'm not somebody you could ever 'manage' or boss around. If I don't feel like working, I don't go to work. If I want to quit, I can quit and find another job really easily. The problem with work is that it never pays enough for what's expected of you - the pay packet never fully compensates you for giving up your precious time, and the interminable tedium. Obviously, that's slightly insulting, considering I earn bucketloads, but I'll gladly switch with you and flip burgers for a while, because the monotony of my 20 year career is killing me.

The grass is greener etc. etc. Believe me I don't want to be mopping floors as my full-time occupation and getting paid minimum wage. However, it's completely bafflingly insane to be grateful for a job that's making you unwell and robbing you of your precious time. We only get one life so I don't understand why we spend so much of it bullying each other into working shitty jobs. I don't understand why those whose days are excruciatingly awful don't complain and demand a hundredfold pay increase. I don't understand why more people don't decide to go hungry and homeless, in the face of the oppressive tyranny of bullshit jobs.

Given the obvious health risks of being bored and stressed at work - as bad if not worse than smoking cigarettes - then I think we should be getting danger money. They're not paying us enough!

Tags: #career

This is a story about music...

The only things that seem to be capable of making me cry at the moment are Disney movies and a 90-second passage from The Tempest, which is about dreams and sleep. I quote it now for your interest, and as I write this big salty tears are rolling down my cheeks:

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air: 
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, 
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, 
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, 
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff 
As dreams are made on, and our little life 
Is rounded with a sleep.

It seems remarkable to me that I'm not able to resist the mawkish and emotionally manipulative thrust of the Disney movies, and I blub in all the right places and even some of the wrong ones. To accuse me of being emotionally unstable or having a tendency towards inappropriate emotional responses to situations, is grossly inaccurate and untrue. I would agree that I'm unguarded; trusting... a little vulnerable and certainly quite naïve, although I would argue that I prefer to be naïve than cynical and guarded.

In terms of protecting myself from whimsically falling in love and getting hurt, I would say that I don't protect myself at all. My emotions go where they want to go and I let them. I use the "L" word very sparingly and tend to distrust strong emotions, viewing them as transient; fleeting. I favour loyalty above everything else. I've got no time for game playing and wimpy wusses who are afraid of getting hurt.

Under a railway arch in Vauxhall, I experienced what the children of doting parents must experience their whole lives - to be loved, cared for; adored. I felt a sense of contentment and security that had been absent throughout my bullied childhood. I felt the warm embrace - the hug, if you like - that had been absent in my life and had turned me into an insecure person who completely lacked self-confidence and a sense of identity. I'd been through 8 schools and lost countless friends due to my druggie alkie loser parents not giving a shit about the damage they were doing. The experience of clubbing under the railway arches was curative - this was the love that had been sorely absent in my life. The catalyst? MDMA.

Fifteen years later, my marriage was collapsing. I needed to go to hospital. I was admitted to The Priory thanks to my private health insurance.

It's actually unremarkable that I grew out of a brief period where I dabbled with recreational drugs - ecstasy - and went on to have a 15-year blemish-free career, before the stress of a toxic and abusive relationship tipped me back into the very state I was in when I was a child: in desperate need of some unconditional love. It seems obvious that depriving a person of their identity and security, and bullying them, would result in trauma and psychological damage. It seems obvious that the same negative stimuli would elicit the same negative response.

While I was in The Priory, I handed in my iPod after a couple of weeks. I had decided that I was using music as a way of manipulating my moods, in a similar manner to people drinking, smoking and using drugs, in response to stress and other negative situations. I decided that if I was going to take treatment seriously, I would have to avoid things which I could use and abuse to alter my mood.

Presently, we seem to think it's virtuous to deny ourselves all the things we enjoy. Cream cakes (too fatty), fizzy drinks (too much sugar), beer and wine (alcoholic), masturbation ("wanker", "tosser" etc.), spending money (too fun) and all the other things that make life mildly bearable are given up for January, while we run on a treadmill in a gym, or lash ourselves with a bunch of nettles or whatever the f**k it is that 'virtuous' people do these days.

When I was seized with the notion that pure devotion to a 'natural' life would lead to happier, healthier times, it became as obsessive as anything else that might be characterised as an addiction. I became addicted to making every single tiny health tweak in my life that I could. I cut out dairy and gluten. I washed out my sinuses with saline. I probably would have done colonic irrigation if I'd thought about it at the time. The whole thing was dumb - pure superstition and pseudoscience.

Today, I take dietary supplements - 5-HTP, tyrosine and magnesium - which are supposed to provide my brain with the building blocks it needs to restore normal mood and improve my sleep. However, I've also abused simple amino acids and even pure dopamine - in the form of L-DOPA - to put my brain into a completely unnatural state, with the intention of achieving an otherwise unattainable euphoria or level of performance.

I've abused stimulants to stay awake and give me the energy to dance all night. I've used prolactin-suppressing medications to allow me to have multiple orgasms. I've used erectile dysfunction medications to allow me to sustain an erection for priapic lengths of time. I've used drugs to move my mood up, down and sideways - attempting to 'play god' if you like.

How many drugs and medications have I tried? Two hundred? Three hundred? More? This is not hyperbole - I had the time, the money, the determination and the means.

If you think I'm an idiot who makes bad choices, I ask you to look again. Imagine what my upbringing was like before I discovered that there was this chemical - MDMA - that unlocked me from that miserable prison. Of course I was going to mistakenly believe that it was a trick that could be repeated. In my desperation to escape a toxic abusive relationship 15 years later, I tried heroin, crack and crystal meth - amongst innumerable others - and none of them grabbed me. I methodically worked my way through everything I could get my hands on - illegal drugs, legal highs and black-market prescription medications.

The net result was not a predictable one. Instead of being dead in a ditch due to poly-substance abuse, I'm now quite averse to any psychoactive substances. I'm one of the few people you know who doesn't drink caffeinated beverages. That I'm unmedicated for my mental health problems is not because I think I'm "well" but because I know that I prefer to suffer the symptoms - very few people you know are prepared to tolerate depression and anxiety, but I do so on a daily basis without medication to assist me.

There's a part of me that wants to quit carbs, quit booze and join a gym, but frankly I've got enough shit on my plate just trying to get up in the mornings and not kill myself.

I loosened the purse strings and bought a few new clothes at the weekend. I went on a couple of dates. I'm listening to euphoric dance music, eating what I want to eat and drinking quite a lot. Fuck it. Life's too short to be miserable.

Last night, a woman ran up behind me as I was crossing the road and started asking for money. I said "sorry". She launched into an escalating level of abuse, accusing me of saying "no" and for toying her when she was "begging [for my] help". She was too busy yelling and screaming horrible names at me to be interested in the fact that I would've helped her, absolutely. In fact I still would. Fuck it, even if she was just rattling for "B and white" (heroin and crack, also known as "dark and light") and she was short for the score, I'd have helped. You've got to acknowledge the complexities of life and human nature if you want to help anybody. Expecting everybody to be gym-going, kale-eating, alcohol and drug free totally fucking ridiculously 'virtuous' people is absurd. Most of us have a vice.

When I think about how long I lived without my cat to stroke, and without the pleasure of snuggling with a girl I'm really into, I'm surprised I made it this far. What's the point of life without a good healthy dose of oxytocin? Is life even liveable without the bonding hormone? I really don't think it is.

So, as we approach the end of Jinxed January, I'm throwing caution to the wind little by little. I'm buying myself new clothes and having a haircut, because it's great for my self-esteem. I'm dating and having sex because it's fucking awesome. I'm letting myself do a million little things that just make my day a little bit more bearable, because that's what life's all about if you don't want it to be suicidal misery.

There's a chance that all the little changes in my life will destabilise me. It's all quite stressful, even if it's also fun. I'm quite well aware that something as simple as a late night can throw my world into quite a lot of chaos, but sod it, life's too short and I've waited and been sensible for long enough.

I don't think I'm going to go clubbing and take any MDMA any time soon though.

Tags: #relationships #sex #bipolar

This is a story about the hands of time...

I have a breadcrumb trail of images that allow me to retrace my steps and understand where I've come from and attempt to estimate whether I'm spiralling downwards or slowly recovering. If I look through my photo library at the images and videos that I captured exactly one year ago, there are three strange videos that I recorded, which clearly indicate that I'd had a major relapse. Three days later both my kidneys had failed, my left leg had ballooned to twice its normal size due to DVT and my blood was toxic enough to kill me at any moment.

Every year for the past four, I've had a Jinxed January. It's true that depression, hypomania and addiction have reared their ugly heads year-round, but January is a particularly awful time. I cured the November wobbles by writing novels. I cured the December wobbles by cutting my toxic parents out of my life. The next problem I've got is how to solve Jinxed January.

My present strategy is to shackle myself to my desk, doing a job that I absolutely hate and is completely incompatible with my mental health. If I can survive this January without doing anything stupid and self-sabotaging, I should have the wind behind me and a downhill stretch of road to help me coast into the spring. The odds will be increasingly in my favour as the days get longer and the weather improves.

I'm emerging from the fog of addiction, intoxicating medications and copious quantities of alcohol. It was impossible for me to really comprehend how bad things had gotten, while I had so much toxic crap in my body. I'd lost all perspective and ability to perceive reality. I struggle to relate to a lot of what I've written in the last few years, because that person who was under the influence of such vast quantities of drink and drugs feels like somebody else. I can read my own words, I can see the distress and I can remember the things that were driving my thoughts and emotions at the time, but not everything in my world was entirely real and grounded in reality. I'm not seeking to distance myself from the things that my body did - including saying and writing things - but it's a little bit hard to imagine that it was me. If you want to get obsessive about blame and responsibility, then f**k you, buddy... go read somebody else's blog you tiresome bore.

Of course, I feel very bad about the way I treated - for example - my lovely girlfriend who gave me a wonderful Christmas with her family, cared for me when I was in hospital, and was extremely nonjudgemental and understanding when addiction got its hooks back in me. I didn't treat her well in the end. I regret it and I'm sorry. I did that. I'm to blame. I'm responsible.

However, in the context of unpicking everything, I can see that there are repeating patterns and things that trigger other things - cause and effect are very complicated to understand. To fully understand the likely consequences and plan ahead, like playing a thousand simultaneous games of chess against grandmasters, is a completely unreasonable and unrealistic thing to expect of me.

Searching back through my photo archives, I can see that I obtained a prescription for an antidepressant - bupropion - shortly before one relapse. I can see that I obtained another - California rocket fuel - shortly before an episode of hypomania where I broke up with the aforementioned brilliant girlfriend. In fact, whenever I seek chemical relief from depression, that's usually an indication of a desire to feel better at any costs, having suffered weeks and months of suicidal thoughts. Am I to blame for seeking relief from my intolerable feelings of depression?

Scanning through my library of images, I can see how I become obsessive over sleeping tablets and tranquillisers, as I rely upon the pills in order to cope with dreadfully stressful situations, which would send even the least-anxiety prone amongst us running screaming in the opposite direction from the source of the stress.

This time last year I was about to start work doing yet more IT consultancy for yet another bank. I was not incredibly enamoured at the prospect, but I needed the money. Circumstances conspired to force me back into an unhealthy environment.

Sadly, I'm not rich enough to do whatever I want, and I'm not even financially comfortable enough to do something tolerable - I've got to do the thing which pays the bills, and that's IT consultancy for banks, unfortunately. It's a fact of life that sometimes we have to do things we don't like very much.

So, I've avoided the antidepressants this time, because they always seem to send me loopy. I'm white-knuckling it to the end of Jinxed January, because I just need to get through this god-awful month, come hell or high water. I'm constantly reminding myself that even to dabble with so-called recreational drugs or get mixed up with girls in a big way, is likely to be destabilising. I live like a monk - work, eat, sleep, repeat.

Because of the extraordinary quantity of benzodiazepines I was abusing, I have huge holes in my memory. It feels like such a short time ago that I was hooked up to my own dedicated dialysis machine, on a high dependency ward. It feels like only yesterday that I regained consciousness with a machine breathing for me in intensive care. I managed a spectacularly terrible sum total of just 11 weeks at work in 2017, and virtually all the rest was pure insanity. I spent about 7 weeks in hospital, so with that 11 versus 7 ratio, you can see that my year was pretty messed up.

This year is brutally drug-free and medication-free. My brain screams in agony at the unbearable levels of depression and anxiety, but I've seen that to reach for any kind of substance for relief is opening the flood gates to fully-blown addiction. I'll convince myself that whatever chemical I'm using to feel better is not effective, and I need to take more, more, MORE! Before I know it, I'll be back on the supercrack.

It might seem obvious to an outside observer that my cyclical life is due to bipolar disorder, and I should rush to my psychiatrist and beg to be given mood stabilisers immediately. However, those who superficially observe me would remark that I'm very stable: I get up, shower, get dressed, have breakfast, go to my job, spend my evening watching TV and writing and get eight hours sleep. To the casual observer, I seem like the most functional and stable person who you could possibly hope to ever meet.

The reality of my existence is one of continuous battle with depression, anxiety and a craving to spectacularly self-sabotage with addiction. Getting out of bed in the morning and overcoming debilitating anxiety are comparatively easy, having built up the mental strength to overcome the urge to take one of the most addictive substances known to man. I'm not meaning to compete with those who find their lifes to be completely unliveable due to depression and anxiety, but merely to say that I've found it easier to overcome things which would have kept me bed-bound, after having been through what I've been through. Every cell of my body screams in protest at the bullshit I'm putting myself through at the moment. Every bit of my brain yells in agony at the daily punishment I suffer, but what does an extra bit of suffering matter compared with the endless comedowns and drug withdrawals I've been through?

As I look back on the last year, I realise I've been through opiate withdrawal from tramadol, codeine and dihydrocodeine; through benzodiazepine withdrawal from diazepam and alprazolam; through stimulant withdrawal from crystal meth and supercrack; through withdrawal from pregabalin and alcohol; through withdrawal from sleeping tablets like zopiclone and zolpidem. In terms of detoxes, I've had the detox from hell. In terms of quitting addictive medications, I'm a Guinness World Record holder. I really do deserve a medal.

As I look back on the last year, I realise I've been through so many health issues, housing issues, financial issues, legal issues, employment issues, relationship issues and everything else that would wreck your head and rob you of your sense of stability, comfort, contentedness and happiness. I'm surprised I'm not sleeping in a cardboard box, just to escape the clutches of a society that wants its pound of flesh at any costs. I'm exhausted by the constant stress of it all.

If I make it through Jinxed January, I have little to look forward to. There's nothing jump for joy about. Anybody who tells you you'll feel better if you quit the booze and the drugs and the pills is a fucking idiot. Anybody who tells you that you'll have improved self-esteem and all the other good stuff, if you get yourself off the streets and into a job, is a fucking idiot. I'm an extremely rare example of a judge, policeman and a social worker's wet dream - a bankrupt homeless mentally ill junkie who's got themselves scrubbed down and gone back to civilised society, but I've got to tell you in no uncertain terms that it's awful and I hate it. My life is a living hell.

Perhaps this is the ultimate comedown. Perhaps all the chickens are eventually coming home to roost. Perhaps this is the payback, given that I somehow miraculously avoided prison, a criminal record, bankruptcy and permanent health damage. Perhaps I'm finally paying the price for all that partying.

But, I haven't been partying. It's not like I haven't paid the price every time I fucked up. It's not like I haven't tried hard to do the all the right things and contribute to society. It's not like I've robbed, and manipulated and been a parasite on society. I've already paid for my transgressions. Where's the reward for getting myself sorted out? Why did I bother?

As I look back, I have rose-tinted glasses. As I look forward, I see the world through a blue filter. The past wasn't so bad and the future looks bleak. Perhaps this is the final stage of recovery from addiction, when my memory of the horrors of the past is becoming faded and I fondly reminisce about the few moments that were OK in all that insanity. It was certainly an easier life, to be on a rocket-ride to hell.

I try to look back and remind myself just how bad things were, but I find myself smiling and laughing in a way that I just don't when I think about the eight hours I spent going through hell at my desk today. In my mind, I perceive the present unpleasantness as far greater than anything else I've been through in the last year. That's strange, isn't it? To have suffered multiple organ failure, loss of my home, loss of my job, a suicide attempt, incarceration, getting sectioned, psych wards, addiction, loss of my girlfriend and all the other atrocious things that I went through in the last year, and the very worst thing is my current working arrangements.

Obviously, I think that my perceptions must be warped by my state of semi-recovery from addiction and other mental health problems, but I don't think it explains everything. There is something awful about being all alone in an AirBnb, working a job I hate because it's boring, easy and doesn't bring me into contact with a single soul... it's so lonely and isolating.

I'm churning words out into the ether, because I'm in such discomfort and I'm so afraid.

It's strange that I'm not afraid of ending up back in hospital, isn't it?

Tags: #addiction #recovery #mentalhealth #depression #bipolar #medication #career

This is a story about lethal combinations...

Those who are familiar with the more extreme end of Grindr casual sex shenanigans will know that there's an unholy trinity of club drugs - crystal meth, GBL/GHB and viagra - which provide the sexual stamina for outrageously debaucherous f**kfests. To arrange drug-fuelled sex parties via the Grindr app is shockingly quick and easy. Under the influence of these drugs, one's sexual appetites are rarely satiated.

My own unholy trinity is far more prosaic - sleeping pills, tranquillisers and alcohol.

I never intended on becoming hooked on 'downers' and indeed I was very well aware of the physically addictive nature of the benzodiazepines. There is absolutely nothing that appeals to me about being intoxicated on CNS depressants. I do not enjoy feeling under the influence of the GABA agonists. For me, it was all about wanting the absence of something: the absence of panic attacks where I felt like I was going to die; the absence of interminable insomnia; the absence of the skin-crawling feeling of anxiety; an escape from a life that was unbearably awful.

Alcohol was a taste I had to acquire. Getting drunk was a necessary part of getting laid - Dutch courage. Booze was ubiquitous at work and it was necessary to be a drinker to get ahead in my career. I would have been a suspicious outsider if I'd been sober during the many drunken lunches, after-work beers and meals where wine flowed liberally. Alcohol lubricates the world of investment banking and I fully embraced the culture.

Valium crept into my life as I searched for something to help me manage the undesirable side effects of stimulant abuse. I thought I could swallow a couple of pills and sleep off the worst of my addiction without any consequences. I knew that I was playing with fire - to use one addictive drug to combat the effects of another - but that's the kind of addict logic that I applied at the time. I knew that if I abused benzodiazepines for more than a few months, I'd end up with a physical dependency that would cause me to have seizures if I abruptly stopped taking the pills. I did what I felt I had to do.

Sleeping pills never held any appeal. If there's one thing I'm really good at, it's sleeping. I quickly figured out that the best way to escape an oppressive and unpleasant world is to be unconscious. I can put myself into a zoned-out trancelike state and sit quietly for hours. I can spend all day dozing in bed, even after 12 hours of restful sleep. I'm a master of sleep. Why would I dabble with sleeping pills?

Some of the benzodiazepines have a very long half-life. If you take benzos - like Valium - for a long time, they never really leave your bloodstream. If you're addicted to Valium, you're just topping up when you take the pills. Strangely, it's possible to have insomnia when you're on tranquillisers - you just lie there awake, not caring at all that you're not asleep. It's restful, but it's not refreshing, if you know what I mean?

During one of the most difficult periods of my addiction to a powerful stimulant - a drug that sends me completely psychotically insane - I could hear helicopters hovering over my apartment. All the traffic on the road had stopped - I couldn't hear any motorbikes, cars, lorries, buses or trucks. Then, I heard a lot of yelling. To my paranoid drug-addled and sleep-deprived mind, this was the thing I'd been dreading: the police and the army were coming to get me and drag me in front of a crowd of people, to shame and ridicule me. The 'enemy' were coming to get me. Then, I heard a commentator announce that the first runners of the London Marathon were about to come past my apartment block. Of course! It was the marathon, the route of which travels right past where I was living.

I was still fairly traumatised by the whole marathon thing, even though I quite quickly figured out that the helicopter wasn't there to deliver a SWAT team clad in black uniforms in through my bedroom windows. I turned to diazepam to soothe my jangled nerves. I swallowed about 20 high-strength 10mg blue tablets. That's a HELL of a lot of diazepam. It didn't touch the sides. What I really wanted was to be unconscious. Sometimes, being tranquillised up to the eyeballs just isn't enough.

Zopiclone and zolpidem entered my life as medications to allow me to have a seemingly normal sleep/wake cycle. When I was abusing a powerful stimulant, it would not be uncommon for me to spend four or five nights without sleeping at all. The most nights I ever went without sleep was about ten, which sent me completely barmy, of course. As you reach the outer extremities of an impossibly bad stimulant addiction, strangely you yearn to have a normal appetite and normal sleep. The tranquillisers helped me to stay on top of stimulant psychosis, but I needed sleeping pills otherwise I was just going to die from a low immune system, or otherwise go completely and permanently insane.

I can't stress enough how important sleep is. Without regular refreshing sleep, nothing else is going to fall into place. There's no hope of improvement and recovery without sleep.

The sleeping pills - such as zopiclone and zolpidem - don't actually give you normal sleep. Sometimes you can 'wake up' and feel a little bit like you've been asleep, but you haven't been - you've been drugged. Your body and your brain kind of knows the difference between sleep and unconsciousness. When you suddenly jerk awake and you say "what! where am I?" then that's usually an indication that you've been drugged, rather than sleeping.

I used sleeping pills for most of 2017. I almost don't know how to sleep without them. When you get habituated into using sleeping pills, you can get very anxious about trying to sleep without them. The anxiety around getting enough sleep builds and builds. You spend horrible days at work where you're trying to keep your eyes open, and then horrible nights awake because you desperately want to get enough sleep to catch up, but you can never get enough. Bedtime becomes super charged with nervous energy and you have an incredible longing for a night of refreshing sleep. The more you want sleep, the harder it is to get it. Sleeping pills are addictive, because they take away that anxiety and deliver some kind of dependable nightly rest, even if it's not very refreshing.

I abused my little toxic trio of chemicals because they gave me back my life. My life used to revolve around the highly potent and addictive stimulant drug which I had unfortunately become incurably hooked on. My life was going to hell in a hand cart. I was on collision course with permanent psychosis. I was definitely going to end up locked up in a mental institution for the rest of my days. To fight fire with fire was madness, but it worked. Although it was very dangerous and I nearly died as a result of poly-substance abuse, somehow I popped out the other side intact.

I didn't drink alcohol since last Saturday. Once I start drinking, I don't seem to be able stop when I want to. I don't seem to be able to drink in moderation. When I get the taste of beer or wine, I glug it down and I don't stop until I think "oh dear, I've had too much to drink". Because of all the occasions when I've thought "I wish I hadn't drunk so much" recently, I've decided that not drinking is the safest course of action.

I've been taking sleeping pills all week. I need some sort of crutch dagnammit! How am I supposed to cope in such unfavourable conditions without something to help make life a little more manageable. To lose sleep would be bound to push me back towards strange strung-out thinking, and make me liable to say or do something stupid.

One week from today I will see a psychiatrist. It's been 8 weeks or so since I last saw a psychiatrist. I haven't been taking any medication - except for the aforementioned sleeping pills - and I'm wondering if I should cut my pills down to absolute zero. It would be really wonderful to say that I'm not a drinker, not a smoker, I don't have tea, coffee, cola or energy drinks, and I don't take ANY medication at all. It's so rare that a psychiatrist would encounter somebody who's completely free from ALL psychoactive substances. I think I would really love it, to have the psychiatrist ask me "so, how do you feel?" and be able to answer, knowing that it's me and only me, and not some version that's twisted by caffeine, nicotine, drink, drugs and medications. How precious would that be, to be my real authentic unadulterated self?

To get to this point where I might be able to be completely free from all mind-altering substances has been an almost impossibly unbearably awful experience that's put my life at great danger, as well as my livelihood. Why the hell would I put myself through so much suffering? Why wouldn't I go a little more easy on myself?

What I find with substances is that they're insidious. Every time you say "one cigarette won't hurt" or "one glass of wine will be OK" you could be setting off down a road that leads to a whole bottle of wine, two bottles of wine, a bottle of vodka. I'm never going to be some boring teetotaller, but at the moment my life is so unbearable that I'll keep pouring myself glass after glass of booze until the pain and the anxiety is blocked out and I'm blacked out.

My nightly sleeping pill habit is comparatively healthy. I don't increase the dose. The dose is measured. There aren't any fattening calories in a sleeping tablet. Sleeping tablets don't give me awful hangovers. There could be much worse things to be hooked on. However, wouldn't it be awesome to look the psychiatrist straight in the eye and say "I haven't taken a single mind-altering substance for a week now".

This week has been awful without my little chemical helpers, but maybe next week will be better, and the week after will be even better still. Wouldn't it be awesome if I break free from chemical dependencies?

Of course, I will have to admit that I had unbearable anxiety and suffered suicidal thoughts that very nearly killed me. I will have to admit that it would have been sensible to take the sertraline (Zoloft in the USA or Lustral in the UK) instead of trying to tough it out without, and abusing things which I really shouldn't have done. It's true that I could have developed a sertraline habit by now - the withdrawal syndrome is pretty awful, so I'd be trapped onto yet another addictive medication. Yes, it would have helped me to get through some super stressful awfulness, but I'm going to end up like the old lady who swallowed the spider to catch the fly etc. etc.

My friend who's a doctor is incredibly frustrated that "Nick knows best" as usual. They're mad as hell that I'm doing my own thing; marching to my own beat. It seems patently absurd to reject a medication that could be a tiny bit better than placebo, in as little as 8 weeks. So, why is it that I feel a little bit better today? Seems rather coincidental, doesn't it?

My week at work was awful. In fact, I was too unwell to work for 3 out of 5 days. My week was almost unbearable. In the interests of being fair and honest, I must admit that this last week has made me question my stubborn decision. I've wondered whether I made a mistake. Then, I remember that I'm closer than I've ever been to proving my point: that I can be stable, contented and happy without pills. I plan on rejecting all my diagnoses at some point. I plan on declaring myself sane. I plan on being 'normal'.

How does somebody become normal if the paternalistic guardian class can always say "that's only because you're on the right medication"? When it says "medication takes 6 to 8 weeks to become effective" what would happen if you didn't take the damn pills? That's what I'm finding out. It was super telling to me that people were so quick to say "told you so" when the game wasn't even finished - the results aren't in yet.

It's been awful, but I'm winning. Bi-winning.

Tags: #depression #medication #mentalhealth #addiction

This is a story about being medicated...

It would substantially benefit my bank balance if I was to swallow substances that would remove my brain from my skull and place it into a jar - a chemical straightjacket. My doctors are falling over themselves to give me pills that will put me into a warped kind of reality - an altered state - where my perceptions are chemically changed.

If you put your hand in a fire and it's hurting because your hand is getting burnt, you have two choices. Firstly, you could remove your hand from the fire. Secondly, you could take a drug so that you don't feel the pain or care about your hand getting burnt.

I remain absolutely convinced that I'm in a state of depressive realism that's allowing me to perceive the madness of our late-capitalist society. I see suffering and injustice everywhere I look. I see the ridiculous situation where powerful incompetent men are paid millions of pounds, despite screwing everything up, while the people who do the most essential jobs in society are paid a pittance. The poor give every penny they earn back to the wealthy men for the privilege of being alive. It's a bitter pill to swallow.

Why have we defined "functional" to mean doing jobs that we hate? Why have we defined "functional" to mean not rocking the boat; not challenging the status quo? Why are our most "functional" members of society the ones who are causing the most human misery?

To decide not to take medication is a political statement. To decline to have my body violated - simply to conform with a political system that I don't agree with - makes me into a kind of political prisoner. I'm a victim of "fit in or f**k off" culture.

It seems to me like most people depend on substances - alcohol, tea, coffee, energy drinks, cigarettes, nicotine e-liquids, antidepressants, anxiolytics, tranquillisers, sleeping pills, painkillers - and very few of us are able to live life substance-free. What is it about modern life that pushes us onto these addictive substances and keeps us dependent on them? Why should it be mandated to use psychoactive substances, just to live my life?

It seems deeply immoral to have constructed a society that's unbearable except with something to 'take the edge off'. It seems like a complete car crash of a situation that we have to reach for chemicals just to be able to function and fit in. It seems like bullying and coercion to me. I have deep ethical objections to a world that forces me to put substances into my body against my will.

I fought hard to free myself from my dependence on caffeine. Quitting coffee was challenging. Quitting tea was relentlessly difficult. Avoiding caffeinated beverages is tricky.

I had the good fortune of never becoming addicted to nicotine, except when addiction was forced upon me by my parents breathing their second-hand smoke all over me in a confined space, which was wicked and immoral.

I deliberately spend lengthy periods without alcohol, to clear my mind of all substances. Alcohol is ubiquitous and hard to avoid. There's huge amounts of peer pressure to drink.

Finally, I find myself fending off prescription medications. Without prescribed pills, life is very hard. It's almost expected that modern life is going to induce anxiety and depression in most of us, and so it's us who must change rather than us changing the circumstances that produce the unbearable mental health problems - we consent to having mind-altering substances put into our bodies, because we have little choice in the matter.

If you want money - and I imagine that you probably need it - then you're going to have to slurp tea & coffee, suck on your e-cigarette, get drunk and pop pills. We've arrived at a state where life is so utterly depressing and shit that we need all these chemicals to pretend that it isn't.

In the face of so many obvious problems in the world, is the answer to take pills that allow us to be wilfully ignorant and carry on regardless? In the face of the whole shambolic mess threatening to crumble into dust at any moment, should we be so coerced and bullied into medicating ourselves?

We live with incredible insecurity. Our jobs are utter bullshit and we could lose them at any moment. Our wages barely cover our living expenses, and in many cases they don't. Payday lenders and other legal loan sharks put us into a constant state of debt-laden fear. Our livelihoods are under constant threat; our homes. Where's the security? Where's the comfort? Where's the contentment and relaxation and happiness going to come from, in this bullshit merry-go-round of horrible jobs and insufficient money to ever escape from the rat race?

Eventually, it's all too much and we capitulate. "Give me something to make me feel better, doc" we say. We swallow our antidepressants, anxiolytics, tranquillisers, sleeping pills and painkillers because we can't afford to take time off to get better. We can't afford to drop out of the rat race. We can't afford to show any weakness. We can't afford to catch our breath.

The capitalists have got us right where they want us - numb and dumb. We're so f**king doped up that we don't realise how awful we've let things get. We don't dare to imagine a better world. We just keep chasing that ever-elusive dream that one day we'll get to quit the rat race, but we never will because we're all doped up to the eyeballs with enough drugs to tranquillise an elephant.

That's why I don't take the damn pills. That's why I'm going through the shit I'm going through - I want to experience reality and I don't want to be yet another dull-eyed slave.

Tags: #capitalism #politics #depression #medication #alcohol #caffeine

This is a story about the most depressing day of the year...

I had a game plan for this week. I thought everything was going to be OK. I woke up and I felt awful. Then, I started feeling progressively more awful.

Past performance is not a guide to future performance. Just because I had an OK day on Friday, doesn't mean that I'm going to have an OK week this week. Just because I can appear to be functional at times, doesn't mean that I'm cured of depression and other debilitating mental illness. Just because I did my job doesn't mean I'm going to be able to crank out day after day of great performance at work. Most of the time my life sucks.

Of course, a lot of people's lives suck. A lot of us are stressed and exhausted and overwhelmed. A lot of us have almost intolerable levels of anxiety and other mental ailments that make our heads feel like they're going to implode. A lot of us say to ourselves "I can't do it; I can't go on; I can't cope"... but we do.

Just because we're appearing to cope doesn't mean that we really are coping. Some of us are building up to a breakdown of some sort. Some of us are pushing ourselves to the limit and beyond in an unsustainable way that's going to end in disaster.

I do a lot of whinging, don't I?

Of course I don't think I'm unique. Of course I don't think that my problems are worse than anybody else's. Of course I don't think that issues are insurmountable. Of course other people have survived worse. Of course I'm aware that my perceptions are warped by depression and anxiety, such that everything seems to be broken and disastrous and intolerably unbearably awful. But none of that matters - the fact is that one day you wake up and you just can't go on. One day, no amount of bullying and coercion will get you out of bed.

I used to stroke my cat and talk to him. I used to potter round my garden and talk to my plants. I used to talk to my significant other. Now, I talk to myself. I'm alone with my thoughts around-the-clock.

My job is incredibly isolating. I have no real reason to talk to anybody. I'm expected to be plugged into the Matrix, quietly making software. I'm expected to be some kind of robotic software-making machine, sitting silently in a corner churning out software systems, with zero human interaction required.

My home life is 5/7ths isolating, sitting alone in hotel rooms trying to connect with the world via the internet. London's not an unfriendly place, but locals definitely think you're a bit strange if you try to start a conversation with them. I suppose I could go looking for groups of gregarious tourists who'd be happy to chat to somebody who knows this city well, but it's exhausting doing all that getting-to-know-you stuff. It's exhausting to work all day and then have to carry on working just as hard - if not harder - to put myself out there and meet people.

So, here I am, in yet another room I'd never set foot in before. The noises are all different. The light is different. The bed is different. The bathroom is different. At night, different things wake me up. My body and brain are on high alert in this alien environment. I'll get used to it, but it's exhausting staying somewhere new every week.

I should have been at work today. Work is a known quantity. I know exactly what work I've got to do. I know roughly how I'm going to do my work. Nobody else is going to do anything - it's all down to me. My work will still be there, exactly how I left it. It's a job I've been doing for over 20 years, so there are no surprises. The familiarity makes it exhausting somehow - I get anxious about solving problems I've solved a million times before. I get anxious, because I know exactly how it makes me feel.

I hit the wall today. I couldn't get up. I gave up.

It's not like I had the flu or arterial bleeding gushing from a gaping wound. It's not like I had a legitimate excuse for not going to work, I just felt really shitty.

How can I explain it to you, that I really felt like I couldn't get up and face the day? How can I explain that although I was able to get up and buy myself something to eat at 3pm in the afternoon, I couldn't leap out of bed and dash off to the office at 8am? How is it possible to reconcile the fact that if I could be bothered to breathe, then surely it would have been possible to go and do 8 hours work?

I feel run down but I don't feel sick. I don't have nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, pain, swelling, tenderness, bleeding, bruising or any other physical symptoms to speak of. I feel exhausted, but I haven't recently run a marathon or climbed a mountain. I feel sad but I haven't recently lost a loved one. I feel anxious but I'm not trapped in a cage with a tiger. In theory, I shouldn't be feeling anything other than tip-top, ready and raring to go to work.

I don't know what to say, other than that I feel guilty about feeling like this. I feel guilty that I haven't gone to work when so many other people have done today. I feel guilty that I've spent time in bed when I haven't got any obvious physical symptoms of illness.

When I've felt like this before, I've been tested for thyroid problems and even AIDS. I've been subjected to a barrage of tests on my kidneys, liver and blood. I've been poked and prodded for any possible physical reason why I'd feel tired and unable to leap out of bed and enthusiastically rush to my desk in my office. No physical illness has ever been discovered. I'm not physically sick. I must be making it up. People in Africa wouldn't lie in bed like I do.

I sometimes wonder if we're supposed to get up when it's still dark, in the middle of the wettest and coldest months of the year, in order to go to jobs that are soul-destroying.

I wonder if one day, somebody's going to be brave enough to say "actually, you're having a sane reaction to an insane world" and give me a prescription for exemption from the bullshit of the rat race. It's surely grossly unhealthy to experience as much unhappiness as I do. It must be damaging to be as stressed as I am. It must be enough to make me sick, to be so isolated and lonely.

I walk down the road, or I sit at my desk, and I chatter away to myself. I write this blog because I need somebody to chat to. I have no regular healthy human contact. Everything shifts around me constantly. New places; new people. I assume that everything's all transient; temporary. What's the point in getting attached to anything or anybody? What's the point in feeling settled and contented - my whole world gets smashed to smithereens all the time anyway, so what's the point of anything? What's the point of life?

There's this massive gash; an open wound. I've got a staggeringly terrible injury, but nobody seems to acknowledge it. It's like I'm walking around with my arm hanging off and blood pissing out onto the ground, and everybody's just ignoring it. "It's just a scratch. You'll be fine. Just go to work like everybody else. You don't see other people making such a fuss, do you?"

But, I am making a fuss. I'm bunking off work, which always pisses people off ("lazy scrounger parasite" etc) and I'm lying in bed, which also pisses people off ("layabout idle waste-of-space" etc). What's my excuse? Because I don't feel very well? Not good enough. What possible reason could I have for not feeling very well? What's my excuse?

I've got antidepressants, but I don't take them. I've never taken antidepressants.

"Well, there's your problem"

Erm, yeah... if you say so. But what causes depression?

"Chemical imbalance"

Right. So what causes the "chemical imbalance"?

"I dunno. Genes or something"

Ok, but did you know that two genetically identical mice can end up looking completely different depending on environmental cues that cause different epigenetic expression of genes? That is to say, two mice with identical DNA won't always end up being identical individuals. Even with identical DNA, the environment can influence identical twins to become non-identical in appearance.

You're right, I don't live in Africa. I don't live in a warzone. My life's just peachy. What could I possibly have in my environment that would induce anxiety and depression in me?

In the last year, what's the ratio of traumatic events versus consistent things you have in your life? Did you stay in the same home? Did you stay in the same job? Did you stay in the same area of the country? How many kids do you have? Did you have the same partner? How many family members do you see and speak to on a regular basis? How many times were you hospitalised? How many times were you arrested? How many times did you think you were going to go bankrupt? How many times were you homeless? How many times did you think you were going to die?

It's not a competition and I'm not trying to elicit sympathy.

I'm exhausted and depressed and anxious, and I don't really know why, but it's not because I don't take antidepressants.

Tags: #depression