This is a story about human nature...

What kind of pose does one pull at the birthplace of Silicon Valley? Imitating the undead seemed somehow fitting. There is an incredibly powerful global brain drain at the moment.

Money does not trickle down, it concentrates in pools. If you want me to show you how to make a million dollars, give me 100 million and a year. I must be some sort of financial genius, right?

I'm alarmed by just how hard all the engineers are working, and how little of the reward they share. In fact, they are getting burnt out by an industry, which seems to care very little about the lives it's destroying. Get rich or die trying seems to be the order of the day. Very much more of the latter going on than the former.

Anybody who tells you that Americans don't understand irony is completely wrong. They not only understand it, but they play with it, and it's hilarious. The tongue-in-cheek humour I have had the pleasure of experiencing is delightful.

The entire world, including America, has been misled about the American Dream. Hollywood tells us we can all been rich and beautiful: take taxis, fly in jets, stay in 5-star hotels, have swimming pools, helicopters, speedboats and sports cars. We can't. There are far more people watching those movies and buying into that dream than the space available for helipads on the planet. It's a con.

Some of my super super smart engineer friends have even been taken in by the simplest con of all: getting somebody to do a load of hard work for you, while you pocket all the profits. It breaks my heart to find out just how diluted their shares are by the time they've built a valuable company for a bunch of Venture Capitalists.

However, my friends have gotten to scratch that "engineer's itch" and work with great people doing intersting stuff. I guess my remuneration is based on boredom and danger money for working in a tall building on an airport approach path, in a rather hated industry.

We used to talk about the 'golden handcuffs' at JPMorgan Chase & Co. We knew that what we were doing was completely insane, but we had big houses, kids in private schools and pretty wives with spending habits that were proportional to their good looks. We were locked into the system. We were prostitues and junkies.

However - as is always the case with human nature - people got greedy. They started getting young, idealistic and hard-working people to do more of the work for less of the pay. They even started getting massively underpaid Indians, straight out of University to to all the work for a tiny fraction of the pay. That doesn't work.

If you undervalue a person, they become a zombie. Zoned out.

If you wave a ridiculous cash reward under someone's nose, but chronically underpay them until they 'win' the prize that they can never seem to quite reach, they become burnt out.

Or they get really cheesed off with it all, and come back and kick your ass. The fact is, they've worked a lot harder than you, so they'll fight a lot harder too. They're probably smarter than you too, because they've had to be resourceful. Getting fattened by the labour of other people makes you lazy and soft.

Why people think that they deserve a big salary for forwarding emails is completely beyond any sensible comprehension. The laziness in middle management is incredible. Nobody can be bothered to do any typing. Nobody can be bothered to collate any figures, let alone do any math. Nobody seems to have any relevant knowledge or experience. They are just blundering fools.

So, I need to go back to London. The company that I'm officially contracted to at the moment desperately wants to terminate my contract but hasn't found an excuse to do it yet. I really wish they had the backbone to just do it so I could spend some more time with friends out here in California. I really could do with the money from the contract, and I really don't have any money to spend staying here, but I'm not being allowed to do anything approaching useful to help HSBC deliver the #1 project on time, on budget and to a decent quality.

"I told you so" is so completely useless. I just want to do a good job. My normal approach is to do the right thing, get in trouble for it, but then at least the problems are solved, things are delivered and the client is begrudgingly accepting of receiving exactly what was needed.

I can't be arsed with that anymore. Time for some honesty.

I'm actually completely exhausted by the relentless crappy compromises that are demanded by ass hats that result in death by a thousand cuts. Why do idiots feel they have to 'add value' by undermining the experts? Why do little hitlers feel that they are adding value by encroaching into people's lives? What I wear to work and when I turn up is none of your business if the work is getting done. Certainly my private life is completely off limits if you're not going to be sympathetic when I get sick.

I'm aware that people from work might read this, and I actually hope they really do. It's interesting to me to see how social media sourced data might be unethically used against me. Again, it's about a complete spinelessness in corporate culture. Why not just call me out... I've given so much to my job to try and get a late project back on time, and then when I needed a week out, I got accused of being "unreliable" and was told I was acting "cloak and dagger"... that's such utter horse sh1t.

Was I unreliable when I was amongst a handful of people who always got phoned every weekend? Was it cloak and dagger when I was working 7 days a week and clearly not sleeping because I was answering email around-the-clock? I couldn't possibly have concealed anything as I was forever in the eye of my team, and the client. No cloak, no dagger.

Frankly, you picked a fight with the wrong guy. I'm coming back to the UK, and I'm mighty p1ssed off... and you don't want to see me p1ssed off.

Here is an unrelated picture of Frankie the cat. I like the feel of grass under my feet. It calms me down (July 2012)

Tags: #banking #career #computing #frankie #mentalhealth

This is a story about the rise and rise of mental illness...

I used to be a Sea Scout. The motto of the Scouts is "Be Prepared".

When I suspected that I was becoming mentally unwell, I read every book, website, academic paper and journal that I could find that I felt related to my mental health and its potential treatment. I educated myself.

I'm an educated patient. Because I'm an educated patient, I avoided being medicated with a Selective Serotonin Re-uptake Inhibitor (SSRI) which would have caused greater mood instability than I was already suffering with.

SSRIs are also linked to emotional blunting and the destruction of the sex lives and relationships of many couples. My relationship was already on the rocks, hence going to the doctor to see if there were some magic beans or a silver bullet, that could cure my ills.

Fundamentally, I believe that some mental health issues are risk not destiny. There don't seem to be any genes that are clearly faulty in individuals who suffer from Unipolar Depression and Bipolar Disorder. They are complex spectrum disorders. Some people are really dysfunctional when they are unwell, and others find ways of coping, sometimes to the point that people around them don't even know they are suffering.

However, out of desperation, I have tried the following medications, prescribed to me:

-----

Mirtazepine

This was well tolerated (no nasty side effects that made me want to stop taking it). It certainly seemed to reduce my stress levels and get some sleep. I think I might have rebounded though and started to go hypomanic fairly quickly.

Quetiapine

Unless you like weight gain, constipation, dry mouth and feeling like a drugged zombie for the few hours that you are awake, before your next dose knocks you out and you start the whole miserable 24 hour cycle all over again... I can't say this medication gives much quality of life beyond dribbling at daytime TV.

Aripiprazole

This is useful to see if your head is held straight. If your head is leaning to the left, then you will dribble out of the left side of your mouth. If your head is leaning to the right, then you will dribble out of the right side of your mouth. If you are holding your head perfectly straight, then you will dribble out of both sides of your mouth.

Lithium

This is hardcore. You need to have regular blood tests. It will shorten your life. Avoid if you can tolerate other meds or manage without.

Sodium Valproate & Depakote

Do you plan on working again? In an office? 9 to 5? Not really compatible with going back to work full time. If you're not completely manic (psychotic) then best avoided.

Lamotrogine

Just takes so damn long to get up to a therapeutic dose, you go through another hypomanic episode, decide that you're fine, and then stop taking your medication anyway. It's pretty subtle. Apparently it improves REM sleep. I dream a lot anyway. My sleep quality is more a function of good sleep hygiene.

Olanzapine

Fast acting. Good to calm you down if you're having an unmanageable moment. Makes you sleepy though... couldn't really work 9 to 5 on it.

Bupropion

Fast acting. Incredible antidepressant. It did give me a panic attack once though. Also stokes my hypomania pretty bad. Although it's a nicotinergic agonist, it actually shares many characteristics of stimulants like caffeine and amphetamine. Makes you pretty horny. Helps you quit smoking too (I don't smoke though).

Diazepam

Mother's little helpers (Valium). This powerful long-acting GABA agonist is an amazing anxiolytic. You could literally stand in the middle of a highway and not give a sh1t about the cars whizzing past you at 70mph. Super addictive. Horrible to taper off.

-----

Fundamentally, do any of these medications work? Well, I can vouch for Bupropion, Olanzapine, Mirtazepine and Diazepam for their short term efficacy. However, the body soon gets used to the effects and builds tolerance, which means you forever need to increase the dose to get the same therapeutic effect... welcome to homestasis, b1tches!

In my anecdotal experience, it's better to tough out the storm and not mess with the ridiculously complex organ that is a brain. When the psychopharmacologists imagined how Prozac (Fluoxetine) was having its antidepressant effect they expected to see higher serotonin levels in spinal fluids. They told the world that depressed people had "low serotonin". They just guessed and they guessed wrong.

Type I Bi-Polar Disorder was also known as Manic Depression. This is a serious illness that requires serious treatment. It's not my place to comment on whether medication plays a part in that. I'm no expert on Type I BPD.

Type II Bipolar means that you have hypomanic episodes, not fully blown mania. That means risk taking, spending money, hypersexuality, racing thoughts and pressured speech... amongst other symptoms, such as reduced need for sleep & food, and intolerance of slow-witted fools.

I'm Type II. I think it's a very important distinction. If I can control my mood disorder with good diet, good routine, good sleep and abstinence from alcohol & drugs (including prescribed drugs) then my brain has the best possible chance of finding homeostasis.

If I can remove unnecessary stress in my life, caused by complete ass-hats, and I'm empowered to just get the f**k on with my life, then my symptoms will abate. It's as simple as that.

This was the first time that Frankie had ever seen snow. His brain adapted to the change in environment (December 2010)

Tags: #bipolar #mentalhealth #depression #suicide #sex #drugs #frankie

This is a story about burnout...

Here I am, back in Cambridge, after 4 years of ups & downs. What happened?

Well, I got hit by a perfect storm. I could see the storm coming - I'm a sailor after all - but I couldn't sail fast enough to get out of the way. Part of the reason for the sudden breakdown was uncontrolled self-medication with the GABA agonist, ethanol, which had suppressed my natural anxiety response until things were literally unbearable. The other reason is a lack of support from my parents. In fact, they actually undermined me and lied about supporting me.

Life is stressful. My sister is a single mum on a low income, working 6 days a week, going through a horrible divorce. That's stressful. I was a startup founder, in conflict with my co-founder and my girlfriend, who were both pulling me in different directions and away from my investors in Cambridge and my customers and talent pool in London. That's stressful too.

Our parents are always looking for the easy way out. They are not good at taking any responsibility, but I don't blame them. Whatever it is that causes them to be so slippery at accepting that they have 2 children who need their support, I want to find out and help them. My sister is a supermum to her daugher, my niece.

Even though our parents don't realise or appreciate it, we have been working so damn hard all our careers to make sure we don't place any financial burden on them. My sister and I have suffered in our adult lives as a result.

Something had to give.

You should give your children enough to do something but not enough to do nothing. It's as simple as that. If you don't give enough to allow your kids to do something then you're not a good parent. Simples.

My sister gives my niece a brilliant life.

So, I want to help my parents with their alcoholism. I want to help them see that projecting their inadequacies onto their kids is over-pressuring them. I want them to see that their kids are nice people who care about family and want to look after their parents in the manner to which they have become accustomed, but we are living in an age when the government has bankrupted the country.

Life is hard as a young person.

Baby boomers had it unbelievably easy versus the prospects that a young person faces today. The chance of a young person being debt free, owning their car, buying a house... these are pie in the sky dreams that will never come to fruition unless your parents are able to comprehend that their dreams of being idle pensioners are of lower priority than miserable deprived grandchildren and stressed anxious children, who have become parents themselves.

We have known about contraception and family planning for long enough, that there is no excuse for not thinking about the wellbeing of any children you might spawn. Having a baby does not make you clever. It means that your body did something that it was evolved to do... just the same as a slug, a pig, a fish, a bird. Reproduction just means that you failed to use your higher brain function, and acted instead, no differently than a fly laying eggs in putrid meat. Well done.

There are a great number of barely educated and underprivileged kids who are bored on housing estates and have no hope of escaping these sink holes. They are incentivised to perpetuate generations of welfare dependent and economically inactive families. These people have been robbed of the things that would enable them to work their way out of poverty and deprivation.

My parents both went to University, so they have no excuse.

I delayed starting a family until I had done more research into the genetic factors in Type II Bipolar Disorder, and had verified whether I could consistently manage my own illness in a stressful environment. Only when I know that I'm not going to pass on bad genes and I'm not going to have another stress-related burnout, will I consider stopping using contraception.

Condoms are a good thing.

My parents enjoy looking after my cat, Frankie, until I'm ready to be a good human to him again (August 2012)

Tags: #university #career #divorce #parents #depression #suicide #alcohol #addiction #bipolar #youth #sex #politics

This is a story about thought experiments...

I had 50 minutes to draw something while in hospital. I drew this. I have been thinking about it since I lay dying on the floor, unable to move a muscle except my eyes, diaphragm and heart. My urine was like orange juice and full of blood.

I considered that dying would be a regretful waste, because I wouldn't be able to tell anybody what it was like to die. I decided that if I discovered I was immortal, it could corrupt my morality and I would eventually use that knowledge to my sole advantage. I also considered how embarassed I would be to 'meet my maker' in the full realisation that I p1ssed away my chance to learn anything from the situation.

Bizarrely, I then conceived a thought experiment, as I lay on the floor. This addresses The Measurement Problem in Quantum Physics. The problem is this: how do you separate the experiment from the scientist who is conducting the experiment? By taking a measurement you are actually part of the experiment. We see this in every experiment that attempts to measure Quantum weirdness.

Then, seemingly 'miraculously' enough of my muscle was broken down by my body so that I had enough energy to get up and phone for help. I wasn't out of the woods though. I nearly lost my kidneys. There was a lot of muscle damage too. So, just biology, and not really a miracle. I'm not a God bod now... although I did become agnostic at this point.

My thought experiment is a variation of Schrödinger's Cat, where two brave (or suicidal) scientists willingly enter a soundproof box, with a soundproof wall separating them. They then have to press a timing device for each other that must be pressed once every 2 minutes or else the timer will reach zero, and a captive bolt will pneumatically be driven into the brain of the other scientist. Given that there is a co-dependence on each other, if one scientist dies, so will the other.

As an additional twist, if the two scientists press their buttons at the same time, within n milliseconds of each other, then they are both killed by the captive bolts.

We can then start to tweak the parameters of the experiment so that we dial in a known probability of our scientists being killed. With 120 seconds of possible button push time, and 1,000 milliseconds in a second, we might hypothesise that there is a 1 in 120,000 chance (0.0008%) of both buttons being pushed within the same millisecond, which will trigger the event that leaves our scientists dead.

So, what if our suicidal scientists press the button 60,000 times? Well, then the probability that the 2 scientists will be dead when we open the box is 50/50 . This is equivalent to Schrödinger's Cat, except that 2 scientists are both alive and dead, rather than 1 cat that is both alive and dead, until we open the box.

So, what if our suicidal scientists press the button 120,000 times? Well then the probabilistic prediction is that there is a 99% chance that the co-incidence would have occurred. We would be very surprised to open the box and find two living scientists. However, there is still a possibility that - no matter how slim the chance - they could have played Russian Roulette with a 100 bullet revolver loaded with 99 bullets, and somehow managed to fire the empty chamber.

So, what if the scientists playing the game keep playing and playing and playing and playing. What if they eventually grow tired, having run many millions, billions, trillions, quadrillions of iterations, and they are still alive and button pushing? What if they decide to rip off the equipment and step outside the box? What would they know?

They would know that Quantum Theory's prediciton of immortality is very likely to be correct (Many Minds interpretation) and also know that this can be communicated beyond a single conscious surviving mind.

I know that this is very messed up. Similar thoughts troubled another JPMorgan IT bod to the point where he took his own life.

However, we can't ignore the predictions of a fundamental theory that seems to be borne out by the experiments that we can conduct ethically. But why are we asking intelligent people to do stupid jobs? Is that ethical?

I have always had a passion and aptitude for science and art, but we are all in a debt trap. Without the brain draining work of Global Banking IT, I could never be debt free. My myopic ex-wife got greedy. She now has a paltry amount of rapidly devaluing fiat currency, rather than a tangible freehold property asset.

This is the kind startup I really want to be working on.

I started building this but my divorce nearly destroyed me (October 2013)

Tags: #physics #depression #suicide #mentalhealth #NHS #startup #career #divorce #banking #capitalism

This is a story about bridge burning...

How many of us are afraid to declare the causes we support, for fear of impacting our professional reputation. Does supporting mental health and homelessness charities make me look somehow less corporate, and consequently, make me less employable? Does the fact that I have even experienced these things first hand make me unemployable?

In fact, if my employment options became coincidentally curtailled at the same time as I have started blogging, despite a successful full-time career of some 18+ years, it would not take a brain of Britain to recognise that this must be because of institutional discrimination, which is probably illegal.

There is absolutely nothing to suggest that I am any less able than any other candidate in the job market, and in fact, my history makes me more of a 'catch' to a potential employer: the man who has nothing has nothing to lose. Plus I have been 'stress tested' to the limit and beyond. I know exactly where those limits are, and I can empathise with my colleagues when they are under stress and pressure.

When 'sh1t goes bad' who do you really want in the bunker with you? People who have never been in that kind of situation before, and are therefore an unknown quantity, or people who know their personal breaking point.

I've been in some hair-raising situations, both through choice and by accident. Challenging yourself, and being challenged by things that are out of your control, teaches you how to handle stressful situations. A certain amount of training, discipline and drills will prepare your muscle memory to pull the "parachute rip-cord" to use a layman's term. But how do you deal with the long plane journey up to 13,000ft? How do you mentally prepare to throw yourself out of a perfectly servicable aeroplane?

Worse still, how do you prepare yourself for people yelling at you and telling you you're an idiot? People do this because they are scared and have lost faith in your leadership. People believe that pain and fear can be magically taken away by those in positions of authority.

Losing authority can be dangerous, especially if you are the leader in a dangerous place. Generally, most people don't know what to expect when they are entering an extreme environment: the mountains and the sea (the poles and the deserts too, but I don't know much about those places, yet).

Let me tell you about crampons. These are a spiked device that attach to your feet, so that you can move safely on ice. I always shake my head in disbelief at people who are blunting an expensive pair of crapons on rocks. If they do encounter any ice, they will certainly not be effective if they are not sharp.

Let me tell you about ropes. These long flexible cords are no use at arresting a fall unless they are attached to something solid. In order to attach a rope to a mountain, you will need a whole load of other heavy metal gear that will need to be secured to the rocks, and the rocks themselves will need to be large and heavy and generally immovable.

So, if you see climbing parties with crampons and ropes, moving on snow - in an area with no glaciers - then these things are only there as a confidence trick. The fact is, that there is very little stopping you from plunging to your death, even with ropes & crampons.

I personally, don't like to be weighed down with unnecessary gear. It's not about not being prepared. It's about recognising that I'd rather have saved the energy, so that I can use that surplus reserve of energy in order to scout ahead of my group for problems, or fetch assistance if necessary. The main thing though, is to stay within personal limits as a leader, so that when people are tired and cranky, and scared and their feet hurt and they are cold and hungry, you don't mind giving them your personal stash of candy bars, you don't mind them calling you names, you don't mind them questioning your leadership skills.

The main thing that qualifies a person as a leader is how they cope under crossfire.

The more I lead people in stressful situations, the more I learn about my personal weaknesses, the more I learn about my personal limits. Nobody should underestimate just how hard I had to be pushed before I cracked, but nobody should consider themselves such a 'rock' or a hard nut that will never crack under pressure.

My best friend and climbing partner sustained life-changing injuries in a 'freak' accident when the chockstone he was abseilling from shattered. I have only just started to deal with feelings surrounding this, so I'm not going to write any more about this today, but my thoughts always turn to him and how I have shyed away from post-accident involvement, as it was such a terrifying reminder of our mortality and fragility. I knew I couldn't do anything to turn back the hands of time. Accidents happen, and the first thing you learn in the mountains is that you can't control all the variables. It's still something that victims, survivors and those connected to them, have to come to terms with though.

Ropes have their place in sport rock climbing. Modern equipment is so good - the Petzl Grigri in this case - I don't even have to hold the rope to be honest, but old habits literally die hard (October 2012)

Addendum for climbing nerd trolls: no, I didn't leave the rope all over the place like that. I was asked to step in and belay only seconds (sic.) before the photo was taken. And, no, I'm not even standing on the rope even though it looks like I might be from the low-resolution image. Anybody who has climbed multi-pitch with me will tell you my ropework is above your nitpicking.

Tags: #climbing #leadership #homeless #career #london #banking #adventure #mentalhealth

This is a story of a red flag that gets raised before disaster strikes...

Why does a person sink? Why do they get swamped? Why do they collapse inwards, under the gravity of their own infinite stress, sadness, blackness? Why do they implode in a spectacular supernova? Can we ever understand and relate to depression so deep that it would drive a person to take their own life? Can we make a difference? Can we empathise, help and ever rehabilitate somebody who has the clinical diagnosis of depression, without pills and a padded cell?

From my personal point of view, I have always felt that making a mistake leaves a dark stain on me, a black mark. People seem to have a very long memory for the mistakes I have made, and enjoy bringing up things that embarrass and upset me. In my career, the people who I need to impress and to promote me are always very keen to know about my weaknesses and flaws, seemingly as an excuse that I should "know my place" and not challenge the status quo.

The world has organised itself into a Pyramid Scheme, where there are a handful of unbelievably filthy rich oligarchs, sheikhs, kings, queens and emperors and other scum, who sit in their palaces, while their people starve in squalor. The trickle-down effect is a lie, spun by the courtiers, the sycophants in the entourage of the super-rich.

This wealth-worship has created a totally fake society, where newspapers, TV and the media, exists only to tell the proletariat that they are 'special' and 'unique' while at the same time, getting them to buy mass produced products from factories in China.

The best example of which is Apple and Beats by Dr Dre. There is a standard line amongst the creative community, that only a MacBook will suffice, as a the workhorse for the output of recording artists, graphic designers, web developers and startup founders. This is backed with the celebrity endorsement of footballers, who are seen arriving at matches wearing their 'individual' choice of a pair of overpriced Beats headphones.

I have always said that it's the software packages that are important, not the Operating System (OS) or the hardware, provided that both of those things are adequately up to specification to run the software. It's true that Apple stuff "just works" but anybody who foolishly accepts a new software release too early also finds that Apple do a lot of their testing by relying totally on the loyalty of their Fanboys.

I have mixed feelings about the largest consumer electronics company in the world. I think they are more anticompetitive than Microsoft ever was in their heyday. When IBM's BIOS (Basic Input-Output System) was reverse engineered, which started the boom of IBM Personal Computer Compatible grey clones. This, along with Microsoft Disk Operating System (DOS) launched the home computer from the realm of labcoat wearing boffins, into the ubiquitous Internet-of-Things existance, where my car and my washing machine have an Application Programming Interface (API). This has been Bill Gates' vision for as long as I can remember.

I have always been fairly platform agnostic. I tend to go with whatever works, and ignore the marketing rhetoric and hyperbole.

That takes a lot of work and bravery, because at some point, people start to have vested interests. There are billions of dollars at stake in the tech industry. Apple majicked (sic.) a billion dollar App industry into existence more or less overnight. Who would have thought that paying 59 British pence for stupid little time-filling games (the developer used to keep 36 pence of that) would be so lucrative?

It also seems to take a lot of bravery to stick around and re-invest your cash in something worthy or pay the tax, because Apple seem to have precipitated a brain drain in the developed nations. I know far too many wealthy people who are hiding in tax havens, due to fear and greed. Why run away to South East Asia, taking your cash pile with you? What was wrong with paying tax or investing in somebody or something? What are you afraid of?

Perhaps I have little appreciation of risk? What's the worst that's going to happen to me though? The Conservative government will support me as a successful entrepreneur who invests in people, ideas, research & development. The Labour government will support me as a socialist who pays his taxes and does not try to evade them, recognising that the National Health Service, high quality schools and colleges, roads, libraries, street lighting, policing, fire service, trash collection, civic ameneties, community events, social services and the broad and rich spectrum of life in the United Kingdom is truly a model that every nation should aspire to emulate.

Feel the fear and do it anyway (Y2K)

Tags: #apple #computing #career #NHS #politics

This is a story of a leap of faith...

This is what's happening to me now that I have stopped drinking strong coffee.

"Coginitive impairment" sounds terrifying, and it certainly isn't pleasant to experience, but that's what I have chosen to go through by stopping my caffeine intake fairly abruptly. I didn't taper down, because of the long half-life of caffeine and the fact that it's in so many everyday things, like cola and headache tablets.

That's actually the first symptom of caffeine withdrawal that I experienced: an extremely unpleasant headache. The symptom onset can take a surpring amount of time, but then again, caffeine takes a long time to be metabolised.

The next symptoms crept up on me slowly, slowly:

• Inability to concentrate
• Poor impulse control
• Motor/verbal tics
• Cognitive impairment

I definitely do not "have wings" at the moment. It feels like my frontal lobes are completely inactive, which I guess is a little bit equivalent to a partial lobotomy.

Definitely not good for productivity, but the brain is a plastic organ, and can learn how to re-regulate its neurotransmitter levels in my synapses and at receptor sites.

So, it's hard work at the moment, but I no longer want to be a slave to tea, coffee, cola/energy drinks etc. etc.

It feels pretty horrible at the moment though, and I've been doing it for weeks.

My sleep is improving all the time though.

Wish I could write more, but I'm really struggling!

Tags: #caffeine #addiction #mentalhealth

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 exploitation...

Bipolar II is risk, not destiny, but I have unwittingly utilised my diagnosed illness in order to achieve things which many can only dream of. There has been a price to pay, which might aptly be summed up as Nick in blue.

For the uninitiated, a chronic illness is something that you will suffer from your whole life, with little hope of a cure or doing anything beyond masking the symptoms. An acute illness is one that presents itself - an episode of an acute illness - but can go away, for days, weeks, months, years or even the rest of your life.

As the Bipolar propaganda proudly purports, many famous 'sufferers' are not really suffering at all in their hypomanic phases, if we consider the following: very few would give up those highs in favour of a normal range of moods, despite the savage depressive episodes which inevitably follow the hugely productive and energy-sapping explosion of activity, which tends to punctuate the cycle.

Why should anyone who is so applauded and revered by bosses, parents, society, for their 'achievements' - measured only on abstract scales such as school and University grades, income and other work-related nonsense such as promotions and job titles - think that they are unwell and seek treatment?

It's very hard to spot a person with Bipolar II in your organisation, your team. When they are hypomanic, they are also productive, but they are disruptive and argumentative. Essentially, they are totally unmanageable and unable to play nicely with plodders. Companies like plodders. Managers like plodders. They make up the numbers nicely and don't give you any surprises.

When your Bipolar II team member becomes depressed, their productivity drops to zero and so do their hours. They will arrive late at work, leave early and generally do very little. However, as a manager, you will be flooded with relief that your team member is now no longer being so disruptive and argumentative, and you will finally see that a hell of a lot of work has been achieved, and happily let the burnt-out wreck turn up and be miserable at their desk.

As a plodder however, you are only waiting for the sleeping beast to re-awaken. It keeps you awake at night. It stresses you out. You only know how to do the thing that you're totally mediocre at, and you absolutely hate change and are unable to deal with it, so the idea of getting away from the source of this stress is unthinkable. You stay and accept round after round of unintended abuse.

Organisations like productivity, and stressed plodders are even less productive than normal plodders, so when they speak up and say that they are tired (from all the lost sleep) and stressed and they can't plod as averagely as they had been plodding before, the management don't tend to be very sympathetic. Often times, it's the poor plodder who gets the shove rather than the primadonna Bipolar II golden boy or girl.

Now, if this sounds Sociopathic, Narcissistic and arrogant, you are mistaken. Our entire pyramid-scheme structure is rather adversarial, and when we set targets for our employees in these fake hierarchies, we do so in the full knowledge that there are more people competing for the next rung on the ladder than there are fake job titles at the next tranche in the pyramid. We are deliberately asking people to squabble with each other over those precious promotions.

The Narcissist believes he or she is special, and deserves special treatment, deserves the status that they have (or better normally!). I personally, always wonder why people are listening to me, why I am the one who seems to be making the decisions or getting the promotion, because I don't do the work that's asked of me, play politics or jump through the hoops and clap like a trained sea lion in a circus, which is what we are told will get us to the top of the tottering tree.

Believe me, I try to fit in as best as I can. I have literally been crying every morning for weeks and months on end, when I am nearly dead with depression, but yet I have to try and comply with somebody else's idea of ideal office hours. Likewise, I try and do what is asked of me by my bosses, but unless you know how to do it at plod pace, you have normally finished your work by lunchtime on Tuesday, and your boss is rather annoyed that he or she now has to give you some more... so you have actually failed to please your boss.

So, there are a few things I have found, which help to give me a little more stability: to cap and floor the moods, so to speak, and not have absolutely bat sh1t crazy hypomania, and dangerously low depression:

• Breakfast : this is absolutely crucial. The stomach is a key part of our circadian rhythm. Digesting that first meal tells your body clock that "this is the time to get up tomorrow". I never used to be a morning person until I started eating breakfast, and now I spring out of bed with no "snooze" button presses at 7am.
• Lunch : I think you can probably see where this is going. Yes, lunch is important, because it breaks the tendency to just work without a break. When a person gets going in a hypomanic phase, they can work for days almost without sleep or breaks
• Dinner : saying to yourself that you need to stop work so that you can eat and digest before winding down for the day is crucial. Eating before 9pm is mandatory, and eating before 8pm is preferred. Otherwise, you find yourself gorging on whatever you can find, just before collapsing after 18 straight hours with no food at all since waking up.
• Wind-down : almost impossible if you don't start early enough, but essential preparation for the next part of being an animal.
• Sleep : not something you always feel like doing. Your intuition can be totally wrong when you are hypomanic, and usually you are way more tired than you realise, even though you don't feel like sleeping and you most definitely can keep on working. You would not even believe how many nights of sleep I have skipped in a row. Sleep is essential for energy, mood and the immune system. You get really sick if you don't have 6 or 7 hours a night, at least. More than 9 is too many... you'll get lethargic, or perhaps you are exhausted and depressed and you don't even realise!

In addition to this, there are some other rules:

• No caffeine : because it's a Dopaminergic and Noradrenalinergic stimulant in the same class of chemicals as amphetamine. It's a potent wakefulness agent in the brain, and will mess you up. "Do stupid sh1t faster and with more energy" is accurate.
  
• No alcohol : because it's a GABA agonist, like Diazepam (Valium) and you will develop a physical dependency on it, requiring it to be able to sleep, especially if you have been drinking coffee. It's the same as mixing uppers & downers as any other kind of drug addict. Did you know you're a junkie? Think about that next time you're looking down your nose at somebody. Alcohol is also hydrophilic, which means that it draws water out of the cells in your body... you are actually less full of life-giving water, when you are full of booze.
• No psychoactive medicines or drugs : the brain and body are homeostatic. That means, they are designed to stay in equilibrium. You don't need to add anything apart from glucose, water and a few vitamin, mineral and amino acid trace amounts, which you can get from proteins. Fatty proteins should give you everything you need (yes, animal fat is good for you in its natural form).

And finally:

• Exercise the brain and the body equally : when the brain is tired and the body isn't, it doesn't have a frigging clue why you are not absolutely whacked out and ready for bed. In our modern sedentary society, where we do little more than scroll through emails and web pages, our brain is a lot more tired than our muscles. This is not natural, and leads to 'brain exhaustion' despite the rest of you being physically dormant.

Of course, this recipe for mood stability is what I aspire to perfect, but it takes practice. I'm still working on keeping the routine, and resisting the temptations of a cold beer or a glass of wine. Giving up tea and coffee was one of the hardest things I have ever done, and I still have my 'methadone' in the form of mint leaves in hot water.

By the way, anyone who tells you sugar is a drug is an idiot. What's next, Oxygen is a drug?

Sex can be addictive, but it's not unhealthy. However, an unsatiated libido is most definitely unhealthy and unnatural (March 2015)

Tags: #career #mentalhealth #bipolar #sex

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