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

I should have been at work today. Instead, I was trying to entertain and amuse my fellow patients in hospital. We put on our own rendition of There's a Hole in My Bucket. I must stress that this was a team effort. I co-wrote the script, helped make costumes and props and played the part of Liza. Everything is cool when you are part of a team. Everything is better when we stick together.

I might be a drama queen, but you don't have to attend the performance

We even tried to work in some plot lines for Black History Month but this was somewhat of an afterthought. We definitely challenged gender sterotypes though. Homophobes might also be somewhat disbelieving when I say that I'm mostly heterosexual, but I was able to have make-up applied to my face, wear an apron and play the part of a LAY-DEE, OOH!

Yes, this is a satirical critique of today's society (October 2015)

Tags: #NHS #mentalhealth #depression #suicide #LGBT #gender #leadership

This is a story about a sane response to an insane world...

We were told Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) could hit us within minutes, but it took me 13 hours to be admitted to hospital when my life was in danger. We have our priorities totally wrong.

Nuclear weapons, guns, bullets, bombs, tanks, warplanes, warships, submarines... can these things really come ahead of seeds, tractors, irrigation, clean water, reversing the spread of deserts, planting trees, immunising people against preventable diseases, treating illnesses that are seen as 'par for the course' in Western life - like diarrhoea - that kill in the developing nations, and the education of girls and young women; that data has shown to be the most effective route to good family planning,

Is it a lack of education that causes people to believe what they read in commercial newspapers, and what they see and hear on commercial radio and TV, which have a political and economic bias, to maintain plutocratic power and control over the struggling masses? Why are people so racist? Why are people so protectionist? Why are people so uneducated regarding repetition of the mistakes that history teaches us, that people have made time and time again?

Technology can save us, but it can save us in unusual ways. For example, microbial filters like the LifeStraw® from Vestegaard. Obviously, this drinking straw stops waterborne pathogens from being ingested, but - perhaps more significantly - it reduces the carbon footprint of people who use it, because they no longer have to boil water to make it safe to drink. This device makes profits through carbon credits claimed for every straw used.

That makes a lot more sense to me than trying to get the rich to put money in charity collection buckets. Keep your coins, I want change.

I would rather be at work, or looking at the river from my apartment. Anybody who says I engineered this situation must be mad (October 21st, 2015)

Tags: #mentalhealth #suicide #depression #NHS #war #charity #media

This is a story about obvious consequences...

The Trek 820 mountain bike was excellent, and cost just over £300 in 1993. This was apparently too much for my Dad to pay, so he stole a girl's bike.

Having removed the family to the middle of a remote part of the UK, on very steep hills on the Devon/Dorset/Somerset borders, away from all my friends in Oxford, I was then expected to get to school and do my paper round on this bike, as well as making new friends at the school which was part of my 6 day a week gruelling punishment for being the son of a couple of lazy dope smokers.

Averaging about 50 miles a day on some of the UK's steepest gradients. I can tell you a lot about lactic acid burning in your legs. I can tell you a lot about gritting your teeth and grinding the pedals, through all seasons, through all weather.

One thing I can tell you about children, is that they are extremely good at spotting other children who are different. Usually bullying and social exclusion are based on these perceived differences. I can tell you a lot about both of those things.

I'm going to hospital now, because I'm suicidally depressed. It seems like the responsible thing to do, even though all I really want to do is run myself a hot bath and slice my arms open with a kitchen knife, to get at my radial arteries. The pain must flow out of me somehow. The thoughts are invasive. I can't block them out.

At least my parents got to save £300 (or maybe less if they actually bought me a bicycle second hand). Are they responsible?

Tags: #bullying #oxford #childhood #parents #cycling #addiction

This is a story about unquantifiable needs...

It takes a lot of effort to keep up with somebody in distress. If you're not going to go the distance, you are just guessing, and you will be wrong on every conclusion drawn from lazy presumptions.

Whenever my homeless friend Frank phoned me, I would get on my bike and travel from Kentish Town to King's Cross to meet him. This might have been rather inconvenient for me, but I had started so I was going to finish. That's the first thing you need to know about me & Frank: we are determined people who finish what we start.

I had decided to take a trip to Prague, Czech Republic, to see a friend from the Springboard Accelerator Program, Cambridge. In so doing, I wasn't there for Frank. The consequences for him were nearly disastrous.

Did you know you can't keep one single solitary crab in a bucket, because it will crawl out and escape? However, you can keep two or more crabs in a bucket, because as soon as a crab tries to escape the other(s) will pull it back down into the bucket. They keep each other imprisoned. Mutually assured destruction.

Frank is a happy-go-lucky kinda guy, like me. We trust people. We give people the benefit of the doubt. We ran into some of Frank's 'friends' just before I had to catch my flight to Prague. They tried to mug me. Luckily I was streetwise enough to see what was happening and I cycled off. There was nothing else I could do. They stole Frank's iPhone, so I couldn't contact him. I had no idea what had happened to him.

When I got back from my trip to Prague, I got a call from Frank's friend, Paul, saying he had just been discharged from hospital.

There was a significant disparity between Frank's story and his hospital discharge notes. He told me he had been discharged from St. Pancras Hospital, but his discharge notes were clearly from UCLH. He told me that he had sustained a head injury, but there was no mention of that in the notes.

However, what did check out was that Frank was an alcoholic and he had gone through untreated withdrawal that could have killed him. Delirium Tremens killed the famous singer Amy Winehouse and it nearly killed Frank. The notes didn't seem to draw much attention to the fact that he did not receive treatment for his withdrawal. I guess London hospitals see a lot of homeless alcoholics though... mainly in the morgue.

When I first met Frank, on Primrose Hill, the first thing I noticed was that he was clean shaven, well dressed, had a tidy haircut and spoke articulately. The second thing that I noticed was that he was drinking at 7am. When we went to get a cup of tea later, I noticed that he started shaking quite badly... it was time to skip the tea and get him an alcoholic drink.

Buying alcohol for an alcoholic? Had I lost my mind?

You are ignorant about the dangers of abrupt alcohol withdrawal syndrome for an alcoholic. It's not a perfect solution, to buy them a beer, but do you really want somebody having a Grand Mal seizure and dying right in front of your eyes, because you are too stubborn to educate yourself about the damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you don't trap that an alcoholic can't escape.

So, alcoholics are abandoned by society, begging enough money to self-medicate for their physical dependence with the threat of horrendous withdrawal syndrome and possible death, if their blood alcohol level drops too abruptly.

How do I know this? I've known alcoholics, I've seen people get treated, I've read books and papers and online resources. You can do it too, if you care. It's certainly a lot easier to be wilfully ignorant, though, and incorrectly say "why don't they just stop drinking and use some willpower?". It's certainly a lot easier to not know any facts and just be wrong about everything.

What if that person was your son, daughter, brother, sister, husband, wife, girlfriend, boyfriend, friend? Just let them die, right?

Well done.

First, do no harm (October 2013)

Tags: #frank #homeless #alcohol #addiction #NHS #friends

This is a story of a culture that is destroying people's mental health and lives...

Management by balance-sheet, bean counters, spreadsheet jockeys and "yes" men and women are joining a set of executives who do everything in their power to abstain from any of the hard work and responsibility that is necessary in the world.

We have all heard horror stories of people being sacked by text message. In fact, skilled workers, professionals, have been steadily robbed of their worth and self-esteem since powerful rich men, behind closed doors in gentleman's clubs were allowed to asset strip British industry. The practice continues today, as companies are allowed to be headquartered in the UK, but are offshoring all the jobs for cost reasons, and are draining the wealth of the nation.

Europe is fast becoming little more than a tax haven for global businesses, with billions, if not trillions of dollars of profits being pushed through legal entities that have little reason for existence other than to evade the taxes that these companies rightfully should pay to the countries that they have extracted the profits from.

Luxembourg is the most obvious example, but Ireland has recently jumped on the bandwagon. The amount of tax that is paid by Vodafone (group HQ is Luxembourg... funny that, considering that Newbury, UK is where I thought they were founded?) or Apple and Amazon (taxed via Irish legal entity... I know Apple Maps is rubbish but it's a long way from Silicon Valley?) is a pittance. The amount of profits that these companies make is disgusting, versus what they pay as percentage of their gross profits.

However, maybe there is a good reason for all of this?

When I became unwell, and asked good old UK government for support - as somebody who has always paid my full taxes, has no offshore bank accounts, has never tried to evade or avoid taxes - I found that there was worryingly little of a safety net there.

I went to my doctor (General Practitioner, or GP for short, here in the UK) and had a 30 second conversation about what was going on in my life.

"Have you heard of Fluoxetine"

Well, yes, I have heard of Fluoxetine. It's the generic name for Prozac, which is an antidepressant from the 1980s. What the hell is my doctor doing dishing out 25 year old pills to somebody who they have taken 30 seconds to get to know? Well, we know that the NHS is extremely cost pressured, given that we have to give such large tax breaks to profitable billion dollar companies and make sure that we don't take too much inheritance tax from dead multi-millionaires. Oh, and we need nuclear atomic bombs too. Yes, we need to make sure we can always annihilate every person on earth at the flick of a switch.

Luckily for me, I walked away from a course of powerful psychoactive medication, that has been proven in long-term studies to be less effective than placebo. It also takes 6 weeks to take effect. My episodes of depression tend to be about this long anyway. Also, SSRIs make you fat and destroy your sex life, as well as blunting your emotions and generally making your sh1t life even more sh1t, but you'll be too doped up to even realise, unless you ever emerge from the chemical haze.

I'm pretty upset about this, if you hadn't picked up on that.

Another thing that is very annoying is that, as anybody who takes a few more minutes to get to know me will tell you, I'm certainly not what you might term unipolar. My life is littered with examples of radical mood swings. Catch me at a certain time, and you will see my racing thoughts, pressured speech, lack of sleep, intolerance of dimwitted twits, and evidence of my wacky projects.

One day I whimsically decided to knock down my shed, order a load of wood from a sawmill and build a giant beach hut summer house thing in my back garden. Somebody suffering from unipolar depression does not normally do such a thing, according to the DSM-IV/V.

I had to learn all about Google Sketchup, so that I could design the thing, learn about different types of timber, wooden building construction techniques, roofing techniques, planning laws governing outbuildings, estimate how much I would need in terms of materials, locate a sawmill, find a roofing supplier, get a chop saw, nail gun and roofing blow torch (the most fun tool of all).

At no point did any of this seems slightly strange or beyond my capabilities, as a spotty IT nerd who did little more than turn coffee into software for a living, by pressing buttons on a computer, in a comfortable air-conditioned office.

Working around-the-clock seemed perfectly normal too. I remember one neighbour pointed out that the sound of nails being hammered at 9pm was not helping him to study for an English exam... but how are you supposed to hammer quietly? I did try and hammer more considerately, but it seemed more considerate to simply get the project done as fast as possible (I think I took 3 days to complete the structure) given that I didn't know the sleep patterns of everybody within earshot.

So "Mega Shed" as she was affectionately known, appeared at the bottom of my garden in under a week, at a cost of £700. An ordinary week in anybody's life? Well it's hard to judge from an internal point of view, as you can't step out of your own mind and view yourself as others would.

Naturally, friends, colleagues and family are always impressed by a person's industriousness and ingenuity, so I saw no real reason to back off the gas. When the world rewards you for efforts, this reinforces your belief that what you are doing is sustainable.

I then decided to sit in my garden and read a huge stack of books on Quantum Mechanics. This then progressed to me reading every paper that looked interesting in Cornell University's online archives. Naturally, I then started emailling a bunch of the authors, and getting engaged in particularly interesting email based discussions with people around the world about De Broglie's Matter Waves (Pilot Wave theory) which looked a hell of a lot more elegant than all that Standard Model crap that couldn't be unified with General Relativity.

Instead of being discouraged, I found academics to be kind, indulgent and generous with their time. I took things too far, of course, and wrote a paper on the measurement of collapsing Quantum States in an entangled system, spread over a physical space larger than the light-cones of the particles being measured. Standard Quantum Eraser type stuff. I even tried to get it published. Lolz.

At no point did anybody actually directly say to me "you seem to be as mad as a box of frogs on acid with lasers coming out of their nostrils" so I kept digging myself into a deeper and deeper thought hole until I sank into another depression, with no idea what had just happened to me.

The thing is, it's fairly entertaining, enthralling, to watch somebody who is hypomanic. In our age of Big Brother and myriad reality TV shows, we seem to think that it's OK to be a spectator in somebody's spectacular life.

We seem to think it's OK to sit back and watch somebody go absolutely bezerk. It's that person's fault, right? Or maybe it's not their fault, but it's not your responsibility... that would be somebody else? Maybe doctors? Maybe the police? Maybe the council? I don't know... I'm just going to watch - because this is just too horrible to miss a minute of - and I can't tear my eyes away this is just so awful, somebody should do something about it, but not me, and not yet because I'm really getting into this. Brilliant. Who needs TV anyway?

I don't think that I'm not personally responsible for getting unwell, but I don't think that people know how to help, really. I don't think that people are particularly incentivised to help either. We have a very isolated existence. We don't know our neighbours, we don't trust strangers, we ring the police to deal with things that we used to work out between ourselves, we expect our doctors to give us magic beans to cure all society's ills.

So, today is World Mental Health day and World Homeless Day. I can tell you, from personal experience, that mental health issues can lead to homelessness. When I was discharged from hospital after a suicide attempt, I was given 2 weeks accommodation, and I was expected to use that time to arrange my own accommodation. I went to the council offices with a letter from my doctors, explaining that I was extremely vulnerable and that I should receive urgent assistance. The person I spoke to then went on holiday and that was the last I heard of it.

I don't blame the system or the people. People are trying to do the best that they can, but there are so many people in need of assistance, and so little money, because we are fixated on helping the rich to get richer, rather than supporting the most vulnerable members of society. I'm not even angry about it. Living in the Royal Parks and on Hampstead Heath was an eye-opening education for an extremely highly qualified and well educated guy who fell on hard times. If you think I chose to become homeless, then f**k you, you ignoramus.

Yes, I could have sold my camera, but I wanted to document what happened to me and I already sold all my other possessions to support myself. When will you be satisfied? Sell my clothes? Locking me up for being naked will be expensive (June 2014)

Tags: #mentalhealth #bipolar #depression #homeless #sex #banking #career #london #culture

This is a story of a seemingly simple equation...

1 + 1 ≠ 1. I have been trying to make a single 'perfect' life by finding 'the one' but this has not led me or anybody to nirvana.

I was once so desperate for 'love' that I tried to make a relationship work with a girl I didn't fancy and a male boss, who was gay. You can't say I haven't tried everything!

I've had some lovely girlfriends, but it's been rather hard for them. I think I started 'clingy' and then progressed to 'intense' and then didn't really develop much from there. Not sure why it's taking me so long to realise that these things can't be rushed.

So, I got married, and we had our first test of in sickness and in health almost immediately, but we got married in Hawaii, so I'm not even sure if that was part of the vows. I certainly feel like it's a pretty crucial part of a loving committed relationship, but I don't know what the correct formula is.

When I had to go into hospital, soon after getting married, my wife said I would have to choose between her and treatment. I was pretty sure I was going to die if I didn't get treatment, and it was the reccomendation of my doctor, so I was kind of caught between a rock and a hard place.

I had pretty much offered my wife my head on a platter, as some kind of crazy symbolic gesture of how much I loved her, but that I felt I needed to demonstrate my love in this way was most confusing and distressing to me. I can see that this was my problem, not hers.

I left London to live the dream of having a place near the beach and kitesurfing every day. While I was down at the beach one day, my then girlfriend went through my stuff and when I returned to my car to warm up, I saw that I had a message demanding that I return home immediately... I was being summoned to court. Not a real court, but I had been summarily judged to be various things. I had to scamper back as quickly as I could to face my charges.

I don't blame my ex. She had added up 2 + 2 and made 5. She only cared about me, and about our relationship. She was worried I was a drug addict, because she had been through my internet search history, and found that I had Google'd "Nutmeg" after our friend had said that it had psychoactive effects comparable with strong narcotics. Frankly and truthfully, I merely wanted to find evidence to repudiate these unlikely claims.

My ex had good reason to feel insecure though... our friend had kinda gotten my attention. Not to do with the drugs, but she was and still is a larger than life character who defies being ignored by any and all male attention. That does not mean I wanted to cheat on my ex. It means I can still look at a cheeseburger when I am eating a steak.

The company that my ex was working for at the time sent her away from my beach dream life quite often, and I was lonely in the flat that she had insisted that I rent to be close to the office that she never spent any time at, in Poole. I had offered to move to Oxford, where she was working most of the time, but she had promised me that her contract would not be extended. Having worked for the same client and received several extensions myself, I could see that this was unlikely.

So, my friends looked after me, when I was all lonely in our huge apartment that was nowhere near any of my friends. We went out and sang Karaoke. We got drunk together. My certain female friend in question even offered to try and help me with my lifelong dislike of blowjobs... I declined, because I was in love with my ex. It was a thoughtful gesture though.

My ex could see that there was a certain chemistry though, and I guess she grew insecure. She tried to break up with me, without an explaination, and I was confused as hell. I stuck with it and she could see that I cared about her very much and so she gave it another go, but I never really understood what that was all about, until I just wrote these words right now.

The thing that she never seemed to realise is that I only had eyes for her. She lit up a room when she was happy. I remember walking with friends down at Ringstead Bay, near Weymouth, and the girls were walking along together in a line, when I turned back and shot my ex a smouldering look, completely by accident. I was so in love with her, it was so visible to everyone else that the girls either side all went "aaahhhhh" simultanously.

I hope my ex is happy now. I hope she has moved on. I hope that I made enough space and gave her enough closure that she has been able to pick up the pieces of her life and carry on. I'm really sorry that things didn't work out, but I hope the breakup can somehow be for the best in the long run.

So, one of my best friends reminded me last night of the rule of thumb for getting over someone. Seeing as me and my ex were off-and-on from 2005 to 2013, I guess that means there will be a situation vacant in 2017, but until then women should steer clear of this particular emotional juggernaught.

Show me the way to Mordor (October 2013)

Tags: #love #divorce #LGBT #friends

This is a story of a night where I fell asleep and didn't know if I was going to wake up...

God bless the NHS. This is the view that I couldn't really appreciate, from my hospital bed, where I was quite surprised to wake up. I wasn't surprised that I was in hospital, as I remember going there, but I don't remember caring whether I lived or died. I certainly was not afraid of death. I was surprised to still be alive. Was I grateful to be alive? No. Was I grateful for the hard working people of the Royal Free Hospital? Yes.

On another occasion, I had sliced my wrist open, which was a fairly calculated cry for help, and as my distress grew, I posted a picture on Facebook of some Potassium Cyanide which I had obtained through the Dark Web, which was perhaps a final warning. The responses to both were rather confusing and disturbing. People reacted angrily. I became the bad guy somehow. I'm not sure how or why that happened.

It was World Suicide Prevention day on September 10th, but I was too consumed with work to notice that day had passed. That means I survived, for now. However, I am scared that the darkness may return one day.

That's why I decided to build something that I thought would have been useful to me, when I was going through tough times. I didn't even stop to think that somebody else might have built something similar. I just threw something together (areyougone.org) in the matter of a few hours.

If it only takes me a few hours to build a suicide prevention / missing persons service, but it only takes you a few moments to dismiss somebody as a "Melodramatic Emo" or some kind of "Lost Cause" then F**k You, buddy.

None of my friends came to visit me in hospital. None of my family. That's a pretty poor show.

Do you really want to pick over the details? Who made you God? Why should you sit in judgement over those lives you want to care for and nurture and protect, and those who you deem unworthy? When is it OK to label a person as a lost cause, and just leave it to the Police, Nurses, Doctors and Coroners to pick up the pieces?

We are kicking human lives into the gutter, and I'm upset about that.

I had to ring an ex-girlfriend to bring me some clothes. Weeks in hospital with no physical support from partner, parents or friends is pretty shitty (May 2014)

Tags: #suicide #mentalhealth #depression #NHS #london