This is a story about descending into insanity...

What do we know about technology that is capable of tracking us, capturing images and sound? When does it do this? What data is stored, transmitted, received, without us even knowing?

I'm on extremely dodgy ground, talking about snooping, spying, surveillance and hijacking of the 'smart' devices we have in our possession most of the time. There's a risk that I could swing into out and out paranoia. However, I also need to tell you what happened to me, as I experienced it.

So, we pick up the story where we left part one, yesterday. I'm in my hotel room, it's going dark, there aren't any drugs in my bloodstream anymore, and I can hear an angry family outside my door. The hotel reception has been alerted to my distress, as have the police. This is what happened next.

I heard a sound outside my window, of two people climbing up onto the top of the bay windows, in order to stand on the little balcony and look right into my room through the window. I had the impression that it was a father and son. I turned my back on them, horrified by this intrusion.

Voices now came from behind me, where the father and son stood, peering at me through the glass, with me like a goldfish in a bowl. Voices came from below, where they shouted to somebody relaying messages, to somebody outside my door... an upset female voice, just the other side.

At first, the father and son were critically appraising me: "look at him, look at the way he's cowering from us, what a pathetic little twerp". Being talked about like this made me squirm with self-consciousness, to feel that my privacy, my personal space was being horribly invaded.

This narrative of abuse, where I was talked about as if I wasn't able to perfectly hear what was being said, carried on for some time. I started to get angry that I was being peered at like this, with no escape, trapped on both sides. I slid the flimsy wardrobe in front of the window, so that the father & son couldn't see in.

By now, it was getting pretty dark. The voices carried on as if I could be seen, and I was confused to know how that was possible, when I had covered the window with the wardrobe. The messages that the father and son relayed to the rest of the family seemed to suggest that they were still able to see me. I moved around the room and tried to hide myself from their intrusive gaze, seemingly to no avail.

"Look at him, what a mess. He's a right state. So messed up. Disgusting!" they said. Meanwhile the female voices sounded like they were whipping themselves into a bloodlust, a frenzy. "C'mon Dad let's get him. Let's teach him a lesson he won't forget" the daughter pleaded. You could hear excitement, exhilaration in her voice... she was starting to enjoy this.

Everything up to this point, except for my face-to-face contact with the person who came into my room, could be pretty much put down to temporary insanity. I hadn't really seen anything and it's quite possible that I was hearing things. I've never really had a problem with hearing voices, but I was so tired, malnourished, stressed and strung out that it's quite possible that my brain had simply lost its grip on reality.

Even the father and son, stood on the balcony, were only things that I perceived in the murky gloom of the darkness, and I didn't want them staring at me, so I had turned my back on them and then slid the wardrobe in the way.

The sense that I was being watched, certainly didn't make any rational sense. I had started to get really alarmed, after it seemed like I was still being watched from every angle. I had started to look around the room, to see if I could see holes drilled in the walls or ceiling, to see if I could see any means of spying on me... I saw nothing. This really didn't make any sense to me, and I was kind of still secretly hoping that it could all be put down to the effects of drugs wearing off, even though I knew that they were no longer in my bloodstream.

I was not at all prepared for what happened next.

I heard the mechanical sound of an electric motor, and the next thing I knew, a thin silvery metal tube-like thing was poked under the bedroom door. This tube, ridged like a shower hose, then turned 90 degrees and started to extend upwards at a 45 degree angle away from the floor. When it had extended a few feet upwards, the end then turned to point into the room, and I could see dark glass on the end, which looked like the lens of a tiny camera.

This. Changed. Everything.

Now I had actual confirmation, clear as day, with my eyes that I was being spied on. Up to this point, I had been half considering that everything was just in my mind. It's not unreasonable to hear and perceive things incorrectly when so tired and messed up, but I'd never had a hallucination. When people talk about hallucinations, they aren't actually seeing things. Instead, the brain is misinterpreting things. You can see snakes and spiders in shadows, but when you look directly, you don't see those things... they're just corruptions of things that aren't seen clearly.

This telescopic spy camera was here, it was real. I went from being half-asleep, exhausted by the prolonged stress and the sleepless nights, to being wide awake. Everything was in sharp focus, and it was clear that this was no hallucination.

I yelled: "Hello, police?". My assumption was that this could be the police's way of checking to see if I was OK, if they were worried that I was suicidal, or perhaps had a weapon. "That camera had better belong to the police, or else there's going to be hell to pay" I yelled, aware that this was an invasion of privacy that could never be justified in court, by private citizens.

Then I overhead two people talking "yeah, the guy's name is Nicholas Grant, from Bournemouth". Bournemouth? How the hell would they know that? That's what it says on my driving license, because I never got it changed. It sent shivers down my spine at the time. It certainly stopped me in my tracks, because I was about to grab the camera and try and pull it out from under the door.

I decided that it was probably the police, so I went to my bag and found a letter from my doctor, explaining that I was in a vulnerable situation: struggling with mental health issues, drug addiction, homelessness and dislocation from family and friends. The letter was intended to be given to hospital staff if I ever needed treatment, as it summarised my care needs and primary health risks, but I felt like it would make a starting point with the police, seeing as there were at least 4 angry family members stood outside who wanted to put their own point of view across, painting me in a negative light.

"Oh, ho, what's this trick he's trying to pull. What excuses are these? A letter full of lies, is it?" I overheard. The irate family thought that I was trying to pull a fast one, to get myself out of trouble by hiding behind medical diagnosis, perhaps. They certainly weren't happy that I was preparing myself for a knock at the door from the police. They seemed to feel like justice wasn't going to be served.

I didn't feel like the police would permit any such situation to occur. I was now convinced that this camera had perhaps been purchased or rented by one of the family, and was part of their continued persecution of me. I phoned the police myself. I explained where I was, what was happening. They said they'd see what they could do, but they were strangely unconvincing.

I then heard a flurry of activity outside the door. "Get that call cancelled off" I heard somebody say. Then "have they called it off". A little later, I heard "we've got it called off" and a little cheer went up. This was really confusing. Were these people the police, were they working with the police, or were they just really good at blagging the police in order to keep their quarry trapped in his hotel room, in order to serve up their own form of vigilante justice?

I was struck with an idea. What if I could communicate with these bullies, this mob? I decided to write messages on my mobile phone and point it at the camera so they could read it. I got out my mobile phone and launched Google Apps, which has a word processor. I then made the font really big, so the text could be read.

The fact I'd got my phone out again and what I was doing caused considerable interest, particularly with the excitable female, who seemed to be the main injured party in the whole fiasco, but now seemed to be revelling in her position as centre of attention. "What's he doing? Oh, he's going to write us a message is he? Oh this is going to be good" she said.

I wrote "I'm sorry". With reference to the original offence I seemed to have somehow caused.

My oppressors seemed to react before I'd even shown it to the camera. They laughed derisively and mockingly, and then reacted angrily. There was an explosion of anger, seemingly incredulous that I could be remorseful that I had caused such offence that I would be attacked by an entire family.

It was strange that my messages could be read, without me even having to show them to the camera. I then decided that my phone had probably been hacked... hence how I could be overheard so easily. However, I still felt bad about what I'd said, and I was still clearly trapped by an angry mob, so I started to make pleas.

"I'm scared" I said next. This had a somewhat de-escalating effect, but now I seemed to enter into a direct dialogue with the female who had sustained the most offence, and was the vocal ringleader for the rest of the family. We were getting somewhere, it seemed.

"I didn't mean what I said" I pleaded. This didn't go down very well.

"I was born in Wales, my parents are from the North" I wrote, trying to undo the whole us vs. them thing that I'd started, when I had made my flippant remarks about uncultured out of town people, under my breath, muttering in a bad German accent, assuming that nobody could hear me.

I can't remember the details of the conversation, but there was little dissuading the offended party that I hadn't meant anything malicious in my comments. I had then moved on to reasoning with them, that violence wasn't the answer. I wrote that beating me up would be a vicious and cowardly attack, completely out of proportion with whatever I had done.

Things dragged on and on, until we eventually reached the point where the main woman made it clear that I had to do something to demonstrate my remorse. It was fairly clear that if we just continued, eventually they'd have to go away, and then they'd feel like justice hadn't been done. The last thing I wrote was "if I wasn't sorry, I'd just keep this conversation going, wouldn't I?".

The penny seemed to drop with me, that I was supposed to do something brave, to demonstrate that I was sorry, instead of just hiding behind my door, hiding behind the police, hiding behind the letter from my doctor. I was struck by the certainty that I had to do something very clear to demonstrate how sorry I was.

I put my phone into my pocket, moved the wardrobe back against the wall, opened the window - the father and son had gone - and climbed out. I was stood, on the 3rd floor, on top of a bay window, without railings or other safety guard around me, on the outside of this building, perilously high above the ground.

I raised my arms to the air, and yelled to the street below "I fucked up!!". As I did this, a police helicopter that was hovering about quarter of a mile away shone its light onto me. I clambered back in the window, with adrenalin coursing through my bloodstream. "What do I do now?" I asked aloud to the room. "Come and find me" the girl said. "Climb out of the window and climb down. We've been doing it all day" she said.

Obviously, I was aware that the police helicopter was there. The light was now shining in the window very brightly. I decided that climbing down from the top floor of a building in full view of a police helicopter was not the smartest idea, so instead I opened the bedroom door and legged it down the back staircase of the hotel, full of the excitement and glee of a child. The most exciting game of hide & seek ever, had just begun.

Things were just hotting up.

The next part of the story does actually contain the fun run bit. I did interact with lots more people face-to-face in the final chapter, which makes the whole silly episode that much harder to explain. I also have some digital evidence of what went down during those crazy couple of days. However, I do kind of wonder if I didn't dream the whole thing sometimes.

The finalé really is almost impossible to explain away as mental illness or drug side-effects, but I still need to tell the story and 'ask the audience' what they think could possibly have happened. As I continue to tell the tale, you'll see that it's harder and harder to explain away as a bout of temporary insanity.

I want it to be temporary insanity, because it means that I wasn't the victim of a rather harrowing incident. It's rather unsettling to think that I could have been so insane that I thought I was making phonecalls to hotel receptionists, the police, speaking face to face with people and seeing things as clear as day, like the spy camera. It makes no sense, which is why I'm finally telling the tale, after a year of trying to wrap my head around it.

I suspect that Islington holds more secrets than it's letting on, but we shall see.

Tune in tomorrow for the final instalment.

Tags: #mentalhealth #bipolar #drugs #addiction #london

This is a story about becoming self obsessed...

Things have gotten pretty weird, haven't they? I've shared some stuff that would surely be better off buried, deep deep down in a pit of shame. Writing has become central in my life in a way that has even outrivalled my relationship with my collapsed trashed bed.

I've kept up the story, through living out of a suitcase in a hotel, working 7 days a week, suffering the trials and tribulations of the London housing market, falling out with an ineffectual scrounger friend, ending up in a secure psychiatric ward of a hospital, flying round the world while warding off suicidal thoughts, seeing long-lost friends, visiting every geek's Mecca (Silicon Valley), losing my job, financial armageddon, replapse into drug addiction and then starting the whole motherfucking cycle again, job hunting and fixing up stuff that got broken, like my life.

So, I'm back on the park bench again. Only this time it's in the garden that belongs to the apartment complex in a gated community where I live. However, I'm technically homeless as I have no means to pay the rent or bills, no job, no income.

Yes, it's true that I have good employment prospects, provided my prospective employers don't Google me and read the truth about how chaotic and traumatic my life has been. We can't be giving people chances to redeem themselves now, can we? One strike and you're out. Put a black mark against my name for having lived, for having tried... forget it... I'm used & dirty, tainted. We only employ shiny perfect plastic corporate dolls, who've had their brains removed.

I did start to feel that I'd overstepped the mark. I did start to feel like a bit of jackass for having poured my heart out onto the public internet. I did start to get fearful that I really had made myself unemployable, and had alienated friends and family.

I'm reading a book by Dr Gabor Maté at the moment, and his son wrote a letter to him, describing his addiction to blogging. His son said he initially loved the frisson of excitement, when sharing more and more intimate personal details, until finally Dr Maté had to point out that his son had gone too far. He'd overstepped the mark.

I considered this very carefully, in the light of my own obsession with writing down my story in all its gory truth. However, I've come to a different conclusion. I feel worthless, and isolated from the world. This website is an invitation for people to connect with me, and it's worked: people have reached out and gotten in contact. On balance, people have shown that they care about me, unlike my family who have only got in contact to try and gag me, to try and protect a fake image.

But the point is, it's not all about me, me, ME, is it? The point is that all this is so self-centred, and apparently doesn't consider the feelings of other people. Apparently, this is purely egotistical, narcissistic, self-obsessed. Wrong. You need to consider it in the context of my life at the moment: I have nothing, nobody. I'm all alone. I'm trapped with my thoughts, isolated... what else would I write about? How else should I conduct myself, when I'm so ostracised?

Think about the regular, healthy, face-to-face contact that you have with your family, friends, girlfriend/boyfriend/wife/husband, co-workers and even the people you buy your coffee from, shop assistants. Contrast this instead with a housebound depressed guy, unemployed, unable to pay rent & bills, paralysed by anxiety and stress... just waiting for the day I hit the limit of my credit and I'm evicted onto the street.

What would you do? Well, to say that you would never have let things get so bad is churlish. To say that you'd just fix the broken things in your life is ignorant. I am fixing things up, but there's only so much you can fix up at any one time. The bulk of my effort is currently being expended on job-hunting, which will bring structure, routine, human connection as well as easing my cashflow crisis. To say I should be out socialising, making new friends, pursuing a hobby... well, that just doesn't consider how dysfunctional my life has been, how destructive things like depression can be. Besides, how would I pay for those leisure pursuits?

It's certainly true that I squandered a few months, falling back into drug addiction. What you need to understand about addiction is this: it's slow suicide. I obviously didn't have the guts to actually push slightly harder on that razor blade, when I was slicing my forearms open. I was covered with blood and making quite a mess of them but I was still holding back slightly, stopping short of actually making a deep incision into my veins.

You need to understand though, that this isn't attention seeking, and it's not emotional blackmail. The time to save a suicidal person's life is when they're alive, not some pretty words in commemoration of their life, at their funeral.

Yes, I use very emotive language and imagery. Yes, I even took some pretty clear actions: travelling to San Francisco and going straight to the Golden Gate Bridge, and cutting my arms to ribbons with a razor blade. If you think it's just alarmist, I wonder what's wrong with you? How did you become so desensitised to human suffering? How can you ignore somebody in distress?

My Mum told me that I was "better than" the alcoholics and addicts at Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous meetings. In actual fact, it's my peers who are the most kind and compassionate. Yes, it's true that a lot of addicts are liars, cheats, fraudsters, hustlers... but they're also open & honest about shortcomings that are present in every human being, as well as being very empathetic. There's a refreshing lack of hypocrisy amongst my peers.

There's a clear hierarchy in society. Those who are keeping a lid on their mental health problems look down on those who have become unwell. People who are taking psychiatric medication look down on those who are self medicating with alcohol and drugs. People who are using alcohol and 'soft' drugs look down on those who are self medicating with 'hard' drugs. Only the hard drug user says "mea culpa" but the truth is that these people are the most bullied, abused and scapegoated.

It would be easy up to try and sum me up as reckless and irresponsible, but what about the 30+ years of getting good exam grades, not getting in trouble, being a good little worker bee and dressing up in my grey suit and going to work, Monday to Friday, 9 to 5, paying my mortgage, bills & taxes and being a regular guy, just like you?

I'm telling my story because there's a dichotomy here, and I don't trust my family to tell it truthfully.

I meant to try and keep to 500 words a day, but there's too much to say at the moment. Instead, here are some pretty pictures to hold your attention while you read for a whole 5 minutes.

Tags: #homeless #career #depression #london #suicide #mentalhealth

This is a story about being bored to death...

I've had enough of alienating people. I even bore myself with my repetitive themes, labouring the same points over & over again. I know I wrote once before about changing the scratched record, but I've struggled to do it yet.

If you've stuck with me this far, I'm amazed, and I'm grateful. I will try my hardest to make it worthwhile, as the narrative hopefully turns in a positive direction. I decided that I was going to blog for at least a year, every day if possible, and I've stuck pretty true to my original objective. I'm about 8 months into this whacky project.

When I think back to some of the weird and (not very) wonderful stuff that has spewed out, during some rather strung out periods, it's a bit cringeworthy. Having all this brain dump out there for all to see is quite embarrassing, shameful, but who cares? The genie is out of the bottle.

I'm far more self aware than you probably think I am. I'm aware how bitter & twisted I come across. I'm aware how much I'm grinding my axe, and refusing to bury the hatchet. I'm aware how stuck in the past I am. I'm aware how absolutely bat shit insane I've been at times.

It's going to take months before I have most of the pieces that build a stable life. I currently have a place to live and a couple of friends that I see regularly, so that's more than I had in July 2014, homeless on Hampstead Heath, but it's still a pretty incomplete picture. I don't have a lot of control over how long it's going to take to get another job, and rebuilding a social network is going to take ages. Who knows if I'll ever patch things up with my family?

I wrote before about compassion fatigue, and besides, don't my problems look self made anyway? Doesn't it look, to all intents and purposes, that I'm a spoiled little rich brat, wailing about first world problems, or things that I shouldn't have to fix up anyway? How can I talk about being fortunate at one time, and then talk about being down on luck another time?

When I'm starting a sentence, I notice how often I'm using a personal pronoun. It's all "I" and "me". This hasn't escaped my notice. As a proportion of the world that I inhabit, I'm alone with my thoughts far more than most. No job, no work colleagues, only one friend that I see regularly, apart from my one flatmate.

If you think I've become self absorbed... or maybe that I'm always self absorbed... that's perhaps a function of isolation, loneliness, being an only child up to the age of 10, being bullied & ostracised, being moved around the country away from friends, switching schools 6 times, isolated in a tiny village in France every school holiday.

I try and fight the self-absorption, but it's a fact of where I am right now. I'm broke, unemployed and I don't see anybody face-to-face on any kind of regular basis. I have no passion at the moment, nothing to live for, nor the money to pursue a passion.

There's a bird I photographed, when I was living up on Hampstead Heath. Perhaps I seem free as a bird to you, seeing as I don't have any kids to feed & clothe, seeing as I don't have a partner to buy handbags and shoes for, seeing as I don't have a mortgage to pay anymore.

Certainly, I felt free when I didn't have rent to pay, debts to service. It was exciting, an adventure, sleeping rough in London. But, I'm not stupid. Sleeping rough is no fun when the weather is bad. Sleeping rough is no fun when your luck turns, and you get robbed or in trouble with the police or park wardens.

Rejecting the rat race can only be done for so long, before you are unemployable and so far outside the system that you can never re-enter it. People and their neat little pigeon holes can't cope with a gap in a CV where you were a no-fixed-abode hobo. When you have no address to fill in your last 5 years of address history, the forms just aren't set up for that. Computer says no.

There's a very real lack of excitement and adventure in my life at the moment. The more that you play chicken with the grim reaper, the more the humdrum daily existence becomes anathema. My whole childhood and career was mostly boredom, so the chaos of even traumatic and stressful events holds more interest than yet more rat race game playing.

In a way, I want to fix up things in my life, only so that I can burn them down again. To chuck things away at the moment would be an insult to two people who've helped me not lose everything that we consider vitally important in the world of the rat race. It's a shame to admit how depressed I am at the moment though.

Am I supposed to be happy about the prospect of brown-nosing bosses and dressing up in a fancy suit every day, trying to make a good first impression with new work colleagues? Am I supposed to be excited about having the money to wipe out my debts, and to feather the nest of my landlord? Am I supposed to be pleased that while death rushes headlong towards me, I'm saving up towards some imagined future time when hopefully I have enough health & wealth left to fuck the whole thing off?

During periods of exhaustion and particularly poor mental health due to extreme stress and pressure, I've talked about wanting to teach deprived kids physics, write a book, solve the riddles of the Universe, set up a hostel for refugees... basically jack in the rat race and do something worthwhile. There's a social conscience and a curious mind that are completely unfulfilled, and 36 years of trying to keep it at bay is just as damaging as anything you can do to yourself with drink & drugs.

But, when I'm well, I'm a realist. I will choose the path of least resistance. I won't burn every bridge.

However, I do worry that the day has finally come when I've burnt every bridge. This website, where my entire psyche and darkest secrets are out on display for all to see... it could be the end of my professional reputation. It could derail my gravy train. If it does, I'll feel guilty for those who tried to protect me from myself, but I'll probably be happy, deep down. The rat race is a miserable existence.

There's a Lego gravy train. Adults like playing with kids toys. What does that tell you about how pointless and boring most jobs are?

Tags: #homeless #career #mentalhealth #depression #bipolar #parents #childhood

This is a story about unlocking potential...

I have been unproductive for 6 months. In fact, I was counterproductive for 3 months: self sabotaging. That might be a turn-off for some people. They might assume that my actions are nonsensical, and point to irrational behaviour, madness.

I would argue instead, that my ability to fight my way back from being abandoned by my own friends & family, and society as a whole, but getting back onto my feet without assistance, is proof that I can do things that would send most people insane with stress and anxiety.

If you hit Christmas, when everybody is thinking festive thoughts and taking loads of holiday, and you haven't got a job, you haven't got a lot of hope of finding a new role until well into the new year.

With no means of paying my rent & bills, and no cashflow, what hope did I have? Seeing as I'm out of contact with so many friends, and my relationship with my family is beyond broken, what was I really living for?

Society is literally better off with me dead. I'm a risk. Although I'm a net contributor, through taxation and productive output, there only looks like one outcome, according to conventional wisdom: that I should live out the rest of my life heavily medicated, on benefits, or that I will fully relapse onto drugs before being caught up in the criminal justice system.

Surely, given this bleak outlook, you should reach the same conclusion as my parents and leave me for dead. When I'm dead, at least I have a life insurance policy that can be cashed in. When I'm dead, at least the expensive assets in my estate can be sold off and the proceeds distributed. Only my life stands in the way of unlocking all that cold hard cash.

And what quality, this life? With hardly any human connection, it's a miserable existence. I don't see my children every day (I have none), I don't see my girlfriend or wife (I haven't got one), I don't see my friends (I'm out of contact with those far-flung people), I don't see my family (the relationship has broken down). Without human connection, what do I exist for, except to pay rent, to service debts and to consume, consume, consume?

I know that it is only the bullshit of the system that keeps me down. The millstone of paying rent can be replaced by living rough on the streets. The misery of working a pointless job can be replaced by just doing random acts of kindness, making human contact instead of trying to thrust more crap down people's throats, trying to squeeze a drop more blood out of the stone.

I'm wrung dry. I've been playing the silly games for so long that it seems patently ridiculous to be asked to continue doing the same stupid shit that doesn't go anywhere. "Make poverty history" charities exclaim, and have exclaimed for many lifetimes... but yet the rich:poor divide is wider than ever. I can't switch my brain off. I can't turn a blind eye, in the self-centred interests of child-rearing, like you can.

The more I write, the more I see a thinly veiled jealousy. Of course, I would love to feel fulfilled by the unconditional love of my children, knowing that I have passed on my genes, and that I have a reason to get up in the morning and go to work: to put food on the table, and keep a dry roof over the heads of my family.

I've been trapped up a dead-end alleyway. I'm now somewhat forced to take the highest paid work that I can, in order to service debts that I incurred as a result of being let down by people who believe in abandoning their own family members and reneging on promises. I'm angry that I trusted them, instead of making commercial lending agreements to bridge the gap during my divorce.

Again, I can point to evidence to show who the real fools are. I made shrewd investments when my back was really hard against the wall, and made 1,200% return in just a few months. I had few options, because my time had been wasted on false promises, and so I had to bet big. I outsmarted some dumb, nasty people, and survived. My credentials gained even more credibility, whilst some other people proved to be an unreliable waste of the hot air expelled from their mouths.

But for some reason, I don't feel credible. I feel broken. I feel like a fraud. In fact, I'm far less of a fraud than many, because I'm so self-critical, even in the face of great evidence that I can create value wherever I go, no matter how shitty the circumstances.

There's a picture that my parents have painted of me: a drug addict who has wasted thousands on drugs and time wasting. In actual fact, nothing could be further from the truth. The total amount of money I've spent on drugs in my lifetime is less than a week's wages. Admittedly, I'm paid quite a lot of money, but it's still less than a week of my wages, in my entire life.

The other fact is that despite crippling mental health issues, I have still managed steady gainful employment. I've still been incredibly productive. Even in the very darkest days of problems with mental health and substance abuse, I was still valued by colleagues and bosses, well paid and contributing big sums of tax to the state.

What is the measure of a man? As I'm currently not in a contract, I feel worthless. I feel like I've 'gone soft' while I've been off work and that my skils and employability have been very badly damaged. I feel less of a person. I feel a great pressure to sell myself short, to undervalue myself, in the same way that other people undervalue me.

It's only because a select handful of people have gone above & beyond that I don't chuck the towel in and fuck the whole thing off.

The sun only shines in my life for short periods at the moment

Tags: #career #depression #bipolar #mentalhealth

This is a story about things that can't be changed...

London represents opportunity to me. People talk about the streets being paved with gold, and this city has always provided for me, when I've been going through hard times or thought I had reached a dead end.

Obviously, it's people not the place, that has meant that I've had a roof over my head, and the chance to work again, when I would otherwise have sunk, stagnated, rotted and died.

I've been very bitter about my ex-wife and parents, who haven't helped, and have even been obstructive. The bitterness is partly because I've not yet been able to have a sustained period of recovery, to show to those who have helped me that it was worthwhile.

I've considered going back and deleting or editing some of my bitter, angry rants at people who've let me down, obstructed my recovery, even injured me and taken me away from friends, work, my life. It's obvious to me how stuck in a rut I am, how boring and repetitive I've become, how obsessive and negative I sound.

There are several challenges I've set for myself at the moment:

• Get back to work
• Fight depression
• Tidy up a load of administrative loose ends
• Stay 'clean'

It probably seems like I'm making mountains out of molehills, having a storm in a teacup, but there are few words to truly convey just how dysfunctional my life was. Post was shoved out of sight, bills piled up, finances got in a terrible mess, out of contact with all my friends, conflict with my family. The threat of bankruptcy and homelessness was imminent, around the clock.

I know that you have probably had times when you've worried about making ends meet, how you're going to pay the bills, how you're going to pay the rent or the mortgage. I'm sure you've felt like you're not going to do it, that you're going to fall on hard times and be evicted from your home. Try living like that for a few years, and see what your stress levels are like.

A lot of my bitteness stems from the fact that the depths I sank to, the problems I've had to overcome... a lot of it was so easily avoidable. A very small handful of people just had to honour their commitments, their word, their duty and their obligation as supposedly decent human beings, and my situation could have been very different.

However, I need to move forward. I don't feel in a particularly forgiving mood, so instead I'm going to blame myself. I'm going to blame myself for trusting people. I'm going to blame myself for taking people at their word. I'm going to blame myself for thinking that other people were dependable, reliable, trustworthy, pleasant, decent human beings.

I can improve on that. I can actually say that I learned some important life lessons. "In sickness and in health" are just empty words to some people, and some parents are just terrible, terrible people. My faith in humanity is damaged, but I will probably benefit from becoming cynical, untrusting, negative, selfish and unreliable... just like them.

I need to make it clear here that I'm not talking about all those many people in London, who have been my friends, my support network, my saviours in my hour of need. London has provided me with clothes in hospital, where my parents have left me for dead. London has provided me with a dry roof over my head, where my ex-wife would see me go homeless. London has provided non-judgemental friends, where others have recoiled in prejudiced horror at the propaganda pedalled by my ex and my Dad.

One of my great sadnesses is that where these worlds have collided, and the chaos and trauma that I have been through has overspilled into all areas of my life, long-standing friendships have been damaged. I can not and will not criticise my friend, who made me a guest in his home, for the fact that he believed things said behind my back, which his naïvety led him to believe, but it's hard to know how to fix things up between us.

There's a saying amongst people dealing with mental health issues:

Nothing about us without us

It's quite simple really. You have no idea what a person is going through, when they're suffering the chaos and trauma associated with mental health issues (including substance abuse) and 2nd or 3rd hand information is just tittle-tattle, and will not help anybody.

It sounds like I'm ticking my friends off, and I'm really not. Where people have tried to help, I have nothing but gratitude. I don't expect people to understand, to make allowances, to go out of their way to educate themselves. I have no entitlement, beyond the basic human decency of not making assumptions based on stuff that's been discussed behind my back, but I can understand that there might be honest good intentions.

This is all starting to sound rather paranoid, confused. Yes, that's the psychological damage that's done when you overhear hushed whispers about yourself, and news spreads via gossip and contact behind your back that you aren't party to.

As a sick person, I felt like a failure. I blamed myself for being defective, and later for 'choices' I made. I viciously attacked myself, criticised my inability to cure my ailments and restore my former stability, reliability, order in my life. When you feel terrible about yourself, you carry a huge burden of shame. You try and hide yourself away, minimise your footprint on the world, withdraw from human contact and the public gaze.

It's very strange, pretending you don't exist, because you're ashamed, embarrassed. You live in fear of anybody discovering that you're not well. You live in fear of anybody finding out how much of a failure you think you are. Of course, this breeds paranoia. Of course, you are hypersensitive to people talking about you behind your back.

Of my friends, there's no blame here. They tried to help. They wanted to help. Their motives were good. They aided. They helped, they didn't hinder. I have only regret that I haven't yet been able to use the patchwork quilt of support that I've received to put it all together into something more positive... yet.

Certain beginnings haven't reached the end yet. This story's not over

Tags: #london #friends #parents #divorce #bipolar #depression #mentalhealth

This is a story about how people respond to incentives...

The last time I was in the Accident & Emergency department of a general hospital, I got a ticking off from the consultant. It was almost as if he didn't understand that the threat of kidney failure and early death was no disincentive to the path through life I was taking. It shouldn't have been a surprise to him: I hadn't gone to the hospital through choice, but instead the police had taken me there.

This was my life for a while: being passed from pillar to post by people who didn't understand what I was going through or how to deal with me. One thing that everybody seemed to agree on though, was that tough love was probably the best option. I should be ridiculed, shamed, talked down to and ostracised until I "saw sense" and decided to change the course of my life. Why would anybody choose the life that I had?

Actually, the police were excellent, seeing as they deal with society's dregs day in and day out. The well-to-do Royal Free hospital on the hills of London's exclusive Hampstead, was perhaps less used to dealing with those who have lost their way in life. Certainly, those who were struggling with drink and addiction, that I met, were sent to more central hospitals, like UCLH on the Euston Road.

I certainly don't see hospital as the first port of call, to rectify issues, and I bandaged my own massive leg wound and would have tried to avoid hospital, had paramedics not insisted that I was admitted, on another occasion.

It is only with regret that I have consumed NHS resources, but I certainly don't feel that there was any choice in the matter. When I injured my leg one night on London's streets, alone, I pulled out the broken glass and let it heal as I lay in agony in a bush for several days, with the blood-soaked wound sticking to my torn trousers. It needed stitches and I needed antibiotics to avoid infection, but I was lucky. I saved the NHS some money and I've got the scars to prove it.

Passing the buck, and driving somebody away from their home, family and friendship groups... making somebody feel ashamed, turning them into an outcast, demonising and villainising somebody... that's ridiculous!

I picked the wrong life partner: somebody judgemental, violent, abusive. That's my fault. I wasn't equipped with the life experience to know that I should walk away. My own parents relationship was full of verbal abuse and psychological warfare, but they stayed together: commitment to a partner was all I knew. I was naïvely optimistic that things would finally work, if only I tried hard enough.

When depression worsened and became bipolar disorder, when bipolar was overshadowed by addiction... things were chaotic, and consumed my sanity, temporarily. I was heavily dependent, trusting, of my partner and my Dad, and my GP. They acted with ignorance and without consideration of my wishes. Later, my partner would act with spite and selfishness.

It's hard to recover if your partner is working against you, and has your Dad in co-operation too. But, I'm going over heavily trodden ground. I don't mean to re-iterate this. I mean instead to talk about another approach: carrot, not stick.

I was dealing with something, in technical terms, called a clusterfuck. A combination of mental health problems, an unsupportive partner, unsupportive and even obstructive family, sex addiction, drug addiction, having to find a new home, new friends, new job... it's too much to ask of somebody. A breakdown, a major relapse, becoming completely dysfunctional: this was made inevitable by the circumstances around me.

Only the police acted with any restraint. The police see lives ruined, and people enter into the revolving-doors of criminal justice. The police know that slapping a criminal conviction onto somebody makes their life harder, rather than improving their chances of rehabilitation into society, so they are reluctant to condemn somebody to that fate. However, many in the rest of society are keen to label and ostracise and destroy their fellow human beings.

We are living in an increasingly isolated society, where we are mistrustful of each other. We avoid listening to anybody's personal story, lest it instil some sense of sympathy within ourselves. To view every stranger as a potential murderer, rapist, paedophile, thief and dirty junkie, is easier than just seeing other human beings, and feeling compelled to hesitate in the rat race for a second and give somebody a hand up.

We are all competing with one another so fiercely, that we believe that it is only with intensely selfish and self-centred actions, to the detriment of society as a whole, that we can get ahead, that we can succeed. We believe that we are helping our family, by turning a blind eye to the beggars, the homeless, the poor and the addicts and alcoholics.

The welfare state is being dismantled. The sympathy of society and the basic human instinct for care and compassion is being eroded. Instead we have a culture of "every man for himself" and we'll allow incredible human suffering to be perpetrated in our names, because we are sold good vs. evil fairytales by a wealthy elite, intent on turning us into scared, isolated consumers.

I feel with certainty that the depression that I feel - the dissatisfaction with what I see in the world - stems directly from an unpleasant attitude that's prevalent everywhere I look: the collapse of social bonds, and the mistrust of strangers, neighbours, fellow human beings.

I've paid over £30,000 just to be treated like a human being, by some kind and compassionate, non-judgemental people. That's all it takes to help somebody on the road to recovery: just don't be an arsehole to them. Be consistently nice to each other, and the world won't be such a shit place that people get depressed in, want to get intoxicated and want to kill themselves.

Yes, it's true that when my life is absolutely appalling, I will probably run to drink & drugs. What's the alternative? The razor blade and the noose.

They feed you in hospital. You could try starving people, to punish them for getting sick, but seeing as that's how I ended up in hospital I can't see why that would work. Carrot works. Stick doesn't

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

This is a story about tl;dr...

Creativity loves constraints, although I have gotten rather carried away recently, with my average post length stretching out from under 1,000 words, to now pushing 3,000 words. If you write 3,000 words a day, you're churning out nearly 2 novels every month. It's NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) on steroids.

There are lies, damn lies and statistics, but I must admit that I have been gathering browsing data from my website since January. I know, for example, that the average amount of time per day, that a person spends reading my website is 4 minutes and 25 seconds.

On a more interesting note, I can also see the kind of things that people search Google for, and end up finding my website. Here is one wonderful poetic example:

"i want to go to london soon dont worry i dont want to do anything stupid no big hand outs just want to book into re hab strait away or as soon as poss get my teeth sorted and be human again please dont block me might got replys when i am sorted want to leave this funiv life for good want to see my favourite wife i always think of her i went back in hotel but she was gone i wish i had of spoke" -- anonymous

That is, word for word, what somebody typed into Google, and found my website.

Here are some other delightful highlights:

• "methylone made me think wife was cheating"
• "london people fucking on sister"
• "legal highs that make you randy"
• "i do not argue with imbecile i respect myself and my profession"
• "i bully my granny to have sex with me story"
• "fucked my sister wjen (sic.) she was hospitalised"
• "sugar mummy fucking themself"

I think that the person who was searching for a story about bullying a granny to have sex with them is my personal favourite, for some sick reason. I don't like the idea of the story or that kind of perversion, but I like that something so corrupt and awful brought that person to my website. Sucker.

I can see from the statistics that most of my traffic comes from Facebook and Twitter. You would have thought that 6,000 Twitter followers would bring you a lot of readers, but it's only 35% of the total.

Direct means people who have bookmarked or typed in manicgrant dot com. I love you guys & girls... you're my regular readers, who remember my website and keep coming back ♥︎

Organic search is all the screwed up weird stuff that people type into Google... with some of the most precious examples listed above, for your amusement.

Referral is links from other sites, like Reddit. I haven't done much link building, because I like writing, not promoting my website. I write it for me, mainly, to keep friends and family informed secondly, and thirdly, I write because I'm developing a body of work that I hope will at some point become useful for people suffering from Bipolar Disorder, depression and substance abuse.

I like writing on my own website (although it's powered by Known, created by my friend Ben) rather than one of those free blogs that you get from Wordpress or Blogger.com. I like and respect bloggers, but they make up the bulk of your readers when you blog on one of those mainstream websites. I have no idea where my regular readers found me, or why they choose to read my stuff, but it sure as hell isn't one of those "choose random blog" buttons you get on the free blogging sites.

Writing on the public internet feels a little bit like shouting, not whispering your secrets into the hollow of an ancient tree, in a very crowded park. You have no idea who's listening, and how they're reacting to a complete stranger's private life, being brain dumped onto these webpages.

It's only because some individuals have been kind enough to comment and email, that I have any feedback at all, and I know that people beyond my immediate circle of family and friends are getting something out of it.

For all of us, we face off to parents, brothers & sisters, friends, work colleagues, more distant family members and even the public to some extent. We are in the eyes and ears of all these different people, who each perceive something different, and have a different recollection of events.

The reconciliation of the version of your life, imagined by everybody and anybody you ever come into contact with, is a rather impossible thing, when people come and go at different times, and they only know snippets of your story.

Of course it's totally self-absorbed to be a normal regular Joe, who isn't famous for anything, to write something that is so biographical. We think of autobiographies as things that are ghostwritten so that they can be bought as a Christmas present for somebody when you can't think of anything else better to get for them. How completely absurd that a nobody like me should document parts of my life like this!

In a very large way, this is my anti-Facebook. Instead of trying to appear as successful, happy and having my shit together as possible, with lots of photos of me smiling and doing nice things like going out for meals with friends and going on holiday with pretty girls... this is my answer to the fake world of the perfect social media identity.

Of course, I'm playing with fire, using my real identity to write about real events in the most honest and unflinching way that I dare. Naturally, I have had my fears about employers and work colleagues reading this stuff, but the experiment continues.

Frankly, I'm through having to wear a mask, and hide my true colours in order to be considered grey, bland, boring and corporate enough to be allowed into the inner sanctum of bankerland. I'm glad that I lost my last contract, because I was too outspoken about a moral and professional duty to the shareholders.

Now, as I look for a new contract, I do so with less fear than ever before.

The last year in a single graph

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

This is a story about feeling bad...

The person who is my harshest critic, puts the most pressure on me, never lets me relax, is always on my case to either be working, or feeling bad about not doing anything productive... is me.

For the best part of 6 months my life revolved around 2 rooms: my bedroom and my lounge, and I didn't even spend much time in my lounge. A combination of winter, plus depression, plus a gap between contracts, meant that I've been in a heightened state of stress and anxiety, not allowing myself a moment to relax.

I can tell you, it's pretty exhausting being hard on yourself 24 x 7. People tell me to go easy on myself, give myself a break, but it's not really been part of my upbringing. Naturally, after I got my first job and left the family home, I carried on the established pattern of being harsh with myself: pressuring myself to be a high achiever, reach career goals, feel that I'm being productive and useful with every waking second of the day.

It's pretty hard to unwind, when you're under that kind of pressure, whether it's coming from your parents, a partner or yourself. I would say that it takes two weeks in order to gain just a few days of proper rest & relaxation. You also can't do it at home, where you are surrounded by the piles of paperwork and other reminders of things you're supposed to be dealing with.

When it's simply the rigours of your job and commuting that you need a bit of a break from, I remember that a couple of weeks in the sunshine used to do the trick. When it's the near-lethal disintegration of your entire life leaving you destitute and homeless... yeah, you kinda need a bit more than a day at the seaside.

I'm going through a staged recovery. I had the job, but nowhere to live. Then I had the home, but no work. The next stage will be to have a home and some work. With the combination of all the elements that most people would call a 'life', I take a step closer to stability, to recovery.

If you're looking for an idiot-proof guide to when my recovery is complete, it looks like this:

• Place to live
• Paid employment
• Safety buffer of savings (rainy day/emergency money)
• Friends
• Outside interests (i.e. hobby)
• Exercise (e.g. riding my bike to work)
• Holidays & weekends relaxing

Do you know how long it's been since I've had all those pieces in place? Do you know how many times that somebody has taken away one of those pieces just as I've managed to get another one in place? It's been like nailing down a bent floorboard: when you nail one end down, the other end springs up.

Anyway, this isn't one of those "poor me, poor me, pour me another drink" blog posts. I just thought I'd share some of the reasons why people lose their will to live.

There's a picture of me hitch-hiking for the first time in my life, age 36. I never had a gap-yah (gap year, to those who don't speak in the spoilt brattish posh voice of the middle class Home Counties types) or took up the University places I was offered. When I eventually ended up at Cambridge University's Institute for Manufacturing, I was working 100+ hours a week. No extended student holidays for me, for 3 or 4 years, while I fart-arsed around getting into debt.

The point is not that you should feel sorry for me, but merely that you should understand that I've never taken my foot of the accelerator pedal. I've had that pedal firmly jammed to the floor of the car for as long as I can remember.

My parents might tell you that I was lazy or whatever, but I always got good exam grades and I was in the top classes. I got a good job and supported myself... what the f**k more do you want from a son or daughter? I think if you're looking for the lazy ones, I'd say that'd be my parents, who didn't work hard enough to provide comparable opportunities for my sister and me, versus our peers. Too much money spent sat on their arses, intoxicated on alcohol and drugs, would be my verdict.

Recently even my own sister criticised me going to San Francisco, on a business trip to see people from the startup community. She thought it was a holiday. If you think that I slept for 7 hours on the floor of New York JFK airport, and 5 hours on a bench at Seattle airport, for just a few days in the USA, then you've got a funny idea of what a holiday is.

I must confess that I did have 4 nights in Tenerife, nearly 2 years ago. I even went kitesurfing. This, I do count as a holiday, although it was a pretty short one. I'm not complaining though. It was sunny and warm, and I only had to wear a shortie wetsuit in the water. It was relaxing and I had a great time. Didn't have work or a place to live though, at the time.

I'm not sure why anybody would begrudge me just about any joy at the moment, when I spent 14 weeks in hospital in 2014, plus I was hospitalised twice in 2015, and then I decided to attack my veins with a razor blade early this year. I'm not owed a holiday, or indeed anything at all, but why sit in judgement over me and my lifestyle, when it's quite clear that things have hardly been going swimmingly for me in recent years.

I find it hard enough to be kind to myself, so anybody else who feels like criticising my decisions can pretty much back the f**k off. I'd prefer it if you actually lent a hand, actually. Some words of encouragement certainly don't go amiss.

You know, I've adopted this general "let it go" attitude to life. I'm owed quite a lot of money by friends, but I don't pile pressure on them to repay their debts. Some people have damaged my expensive stuff, or taken it without permission, but I haven't made them give it back, or to pay to have things repaired.

What's the point in just bickering with each other? Are you so perfect that you can sit in judgement over other people's lives? Is it worth damaging the relationship with friends and family, because you put money and possessions ahead of those personal connections?

From what I can see, my parents have put sitting around in a house that's way too big for their needs, bickering with each other, with no friends, in an alcoholic stupor, ahead of the happiness of their children and grandchildren. My Dad has put personal financial security ahead of making my Mum feel loved and cherished. Even my sister has fallen foul of sending me an extremely unpleasant email, despite the fact we barely have enough contact as it is. All of this is about money and possessions. What a load of bullshit. Surely family relationships and being a kind compassionate human being has to come before greed?

So, I'm making every effort to not feel guilty about allowing myself to recover, to regain my mental health, to regain strength and stability in my life, to regain my will to live. If you don't like that, tough shit.

Here's to all the haters

Tags: #depression #mentalhealth #parents

This is a story about being marooned...

The Isle of Dogs has been a pretty peaceful place to live, and I really needed for once in my life to see that the chaos in my life doesn't have to end in disaster and death. It's been a long time since things were on my terms.

This year has been a write-off so far, but while it looks like I've just wasted the best part of 4 months, in fact there has been a profound amount of psychological repair work done.

I should be babbling complete nonsense to myself, slowly rocking in a corner, completely detached from reality. I should be swinging from the chandeliers in a complete state of madness, but I'm not.

My extreme paranoia about outside interference, invasion of privacy, having my life dictated by people who don't know or care about me, being peered at like a goldfish in its bowl, having my cage rattled by aggressive and hostile people who don't care about my wellbeing... these psychological wounds have been quite remarkably healed in the last 4 months.

Ok, so I spent 3 months almost not leaving my bedroom. Only in the last few weeks have I been starting to come out of my shell a bit more, starting to think about a return to normality, with any credibility. Sure, I prematurely declared that I was ready to embark on the next crackpot scheme. That was just a reaction to the extreme things that I was going through. In the cold light of day, it was clear I was very sick indeed.

It sounds pathetic, but I took some tentative first steps back into the real world, and it's a big deal. The disruption, the disturbance, the chaos, the damage, the stress, the pressure, the neglect, the dysfunction... all of this caused me to just freeze in my tracks. Some kind of pretend recovery, propped up by drugs/medication/coffee, is not really recovery. Sure, I can do what I need to when I'm just about surviving, but it's not a path to thriving.

Sure, it's true that I'm not very compliant. The more pressure you pile onto me, the more likely it is that I'll dig in my heels and refuse to cave in. I tend to run the opposite direction to most other people. I won't put up with living miserably. I won't put up with being pushed around. I won't accept a pitiful painful and pointless existence, for the benefit of somebody else.

There's a great deal of pressure on me to toe the line. My sister once suggested I could get a low paid job at the place where she works, 130 miles away from my apartment in London. Has she been brainwashed? Has she been completely swept up in the madness of the idea of being underpaid, overworked and doing some shitty work that doesn't even pay for your travel, accommodation and bills? What sane and rational person would think that's a great idea.

London is where the jobs are. The well paid jobs for qualified professionals. I've been working as an IT professional for 20 years. I've never been short of employment opportunities. It's simply a question of mental health, and what's an acceptable standard of living for a person. What's the point of getting into debt and getting really sick, for the benefit of somebody else? Just to fit in? Madness.

Ok, so on close examination, there are some gaps in my recent employment history, but lots of IT contractors work for 6 to 9 months and then take 3 or 6 month breaks. Given the choice, why would you drive yourself insane, working too hard and never getting ahead. I've still made a considerable contribution to a couple of important projects, and worked for some massive companies quite recently. There is nothing to suggest that my skills and employability are in any way diminished.

In fact, I never really switch off. Even in down time, I'm still reading, still prototyping and experimenting. Research and development. My personal computer is full of development work: keeping my skills up to date and the grey matter ticking over. I never stop challenging myself.

Sure, everybody would like to see things happen overnight. Miraculous recovery, business as usual, normal service resumed. Well, sorry, I'm not going to rush my health and wellbeing.

Is it selfish or arrogant, to take my time, to tread carefully? This is about the first time in living memory that I actually feel well supported and I've got a good clean shot at what I want, rather than having to just rush into something, because of insurmountable pressure.

I like that people have shown their true colours. I know who I can count on, and who's just living in a self-centred little fantasy world. There are remarkably few people who make good on their promises, and their responsibilities and obligations. There are remarkably few decent human beings in the world.

I certainly don't put myself in the 'decent human being' bucket, but I'm keeping track of the score. I know who I'm indebted to, and I know how my karma is doing. I keep a pretty close eye on what difference I'm making to the world I live in.

It surprises me that many people don't question their own actions. It's a bit like smoking. Why on earth do people smoke? Cigarettes are really expensive, they're bad for your health, they make your breath and your clothes stink, stain your teeth as well as creating a stink that other people have to smell, and can even damage other people's health with your second-hand smoke. It must be by purely acting with animal instincts alone that people smoke. If they used their higher brain functions, they'd stop.

Obviously, I'm in no position to judge. It's just an observation, that there's very little upside in doing something with so many downsides. It would be understandable if there was something that was quickly achieved by smoking, other than the relief of a craving. It would be understandable if people did it in extreme circumstances, such as severe stress and depression, but it seems to offer so little escapism. At least supercrack will probably kill you at the end of a fairly insane ride to hell.

That's what it means to me, to examine my actions in great detail. When I question why I do the things I do, and decide what I want to do, how I want to live life, it's with a cold and rational objective analysis. When I do drink alcohol, coffee or have a sleeping pill, I can tell you precisely what the desired effects are, and whether I plan to turn alcoholic, stimulant or sleeping pill addict... nope!

I've decided that I will use alcohol and caffeine in moderation, to regulate my moods, when they are going to tip into destructive extremes. It was a strategy that worked for almost my entire adult life, so I'm going to return to a tried and trusted formula. Given that I've never been an alcoholic, and I managed to avoid stimulant addiction for so many years, despite having a lot of strong coffee, there is a lot of good data to support my case for having those crutches during exceptional periods of mood fluctuation.

The problem comes when you can't get up in the morning without the promise of a cup of coffee, and you can't get to sleep at night without an alcoholic drink. It's me who's going to define what I consider to be moderation, nobody else, but you can be damn sure that I won't be having any coffee after 3pm and I won't be drinking before lunchtime, and there will be plenty of days when I don't have any caffeine or alcohol at all.

I'm not answerable to anybody. I've made my peace with myself.

Stopping to smell the roses gives me a natural mood lift, but it's just not practical sometimes. When you've gotta work, you've gotta work, and it's all rush, rush, rush. Stuff your yoga up your arse.

Tags: #career #london #mentalhealth

This is a story about engaging your mouth before your brain...

Most of what I write is not stuff that is ordinarily shared by people. We bottle a lot of stuff up, and perhaps with good reason, but what happens if your general demeanour means you're a fairly open book?

Sure, it's true that some of my life experiences - mental health problems, drug abuse, homelessness, being arrested by the police - are not things that your ordinary middle-class professional will hopefully ever experience. It is therefore logical that I should keep all these things hush-hush. Pretend they never happened.

I don't think that privacy and anonymity is necessarily helpful, judging by the direction that life is headed for many people who I speak to. We know there is a mental health epidemic, with millions of people laid low with depression, anxiety and a huge spectrum of illnesses affecting the mind. If we don't talk about this, and share our experiences, we suffer in silence.

It seems to me as if Psychiatry has failed. Pills, powders and potions have failed to cure the ailments of our very souls. Something is wrong, broken, with society, and medicine hasn't yet come up with the cures... probably because we are treating symptoms, not root causes.

It's been a theory of mine that we were never evolved as a species to live in such close quarters with one another. Open plan offices and tiny cramped apartments in overcrowded cities certainly make me feel like a lemming: compelled to throw myself off a cliff. It really doesn't help that so many service sector jobs are so soul destroying. Moving paper or electronic money around for the mega wealthy is most of what we do in the rich nations. It's not growing carrots or building houses.

Sure, some of us are tortured artists and entertainers. Some of us create organic artisan jam, or dog's milk yoghurt, or run a creative digital agency where we wear unfashionable clothes and stupid facial hair and ride fixed-speed bicycles to work. These, most surely, are the last days of a dying civilisation.

They say you should never get too close to an iceberg, because they can flip over unexpectedly. You might be rather pleased to be part of the top 1% or even 5%, but while you're sticking up at the top, there's a huge mass under the water beneath. Sooner or later, the massive body of ice that's been held underwater rises up, and the top of the iceberg is plunged into the freezing sea.

The motto of Über is "everyone's private driver" but how can we all have a jet-set A-list celebrity lifestyle? There simply isn't enough landmass to create enough helipads for everybody to be flying around by private helicopter, chauffeur driven around the place, pampered and flattered at every turn. Technology can't make us all rich, famous and able to have an impossibly high standard of living, despite its promises.

With our MacBook Pro and our high-quality digital camera etc. we all feel like a writer, a photographer, an artist. Facebook gives us the impression that people love looking at photos of us, so we must be glamour models. Twitter turns us all into bloggers, preachers, with our followers... our congregation.

There was a time when you could quit your job and probably make a good living selling cup cakes, setting up a trendy delicatessen or being a life coach. I'm not sure if those people who followed their dreams and quit the rat race are happy, but there's certainly not any opportunity to do it today. Things are so competitive. How many cup cakes have you got to sell, in order to have a salary comparable with somebody who shuffles paper around their desk and tries to look busy and important in the office, but is just a tiny cog in a big wasteful machine that doesn't actually produce anything of tangible value.

I'm mortgaging my privacy. I'm selling my soul. By making public every little tiny detail about my private life, including my massive f**kups, I'm potentially headed up a one-way street. If I achieve any kind of infamy, then I'm basically screwed, in terms of re-entering the world of the wage-slave drones.

So, I've got the best part of 6,000 Twitter followers in the space of 6 months. Do you think that translates to pounds in my pocket? Do you think that taking the unprecedented step of writing nearly 200,000 words about a fairly spectacular life implosion, would change my life significantly? Well, the ship has sailed for anybody hoping to get an easy ride, I'm afraid.

I like what I've written. I would defend it, to some extent. It serves as a permanent public record of not only what I've been through in the past, but more importantly, there is a subtle recording of what I was going through during the whole time I've been blogging. You can read my emotions, my moods, the challenges, the stresses... in-between the lines of what's written down.

I'm starting to be accused of being self-indulgent, self-absorbed, but why shouldn't I have this? Why shouldn't I be allowed to scream and wail and tantrum a bit, if I had to be the sensible grey-suited career guy, with the good job and an impressive CV, who had the mortgage and saved money for a rainy day and got married and did everything by the f**king book like I was supposed to. I deferred gratification like a son of a bitch, and there was no f**king pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. The cake is a lie.

How many people are discontented? How many people are struggling? Not only struggling with stress and poverty and unpleasant things happening in their lives, but also struggling with the injustice of things, the pointlessness of some make-work wanky job that's completely useless to humanity. Or perhaps the work they can get is just so completely degrading and poorly paid it's not even worth working at all. You might as well just get off your head on drugs and alcohol and dribble while you play computer games or watch terrible trashy TV.

How many kids are getting smashed out of their skulls on cannabis, skunk and legal high smoking blends? How many kids are consuming dangerous amounts of cheap alcohol, simply to become highly intoxicated? What is it about life that these kids want to escape? Why aren't they sharing the anguish, the inner turmoil? Why do they retreat inwards, under the heavy sedation of intoxicating drugs and alcohol?

Now Microsoft and Facebook are hitting headlines, saying they're working on chat bots. The iPhone has Siri, which is supposed to be a kind of artificially intelligent digital assistant, that can understand what you ask it to do, and try and help you. People are delighted when it turns out that you can ask Siri to beatbox, and it will kinda do it, in a weird kind of way.

Why would we be wasting our time talking to computers, when we could be talking to each other? I wrote before about us sharing 21% less on Facebook, in the space of a year. Do we not keenly feel the loss of that connection with real people, who can get in contact and try to make us feel less alone with our problems and our existential crises?

No person is an island, and the isolating existence of interacting more with apps and websites and software in general, instead of with each other is a worrying trend. Ok, so I'm bucking that by providing a veritable brain dump of sharing, which is much akin to verbal diarrhoea, but at least it's putting stuff out there, where there's a chance I can get some help from my friends.

There's obviously a bystander effect, where nobody knows quite what to do when somebody starts having a public meltdown. People just aren't supposed to act like this. Where is my stoicism? Where is my stiff upper lip? Where is my shame? Where is my embarrassment and my intense desire for total privacy?

Nobody wants to be first, and people also worry that they're going to end up feeling responsible. Everybody feels they're already struggling so much to keep their own shit together, that anybody else bleating on about their own struggles should shut the hell up. Look after number one and keep yourself to yourself. Don't you think that could be the root cause of this horrible isolated existence that causes so much damage to our happiness, our sense of wellbeing, our mental health... leading to depression, stress, anxiety, breakdowns, self harm and suicides?

We're in such a hurry to label, to judge, to jump to conclusions. We like to bracket people and problems as quickly as we can. Somebody becomes known as a drama queen, or we tire of their depressed demeanour, the dark clouds that follow them around. We start to stop inviting the killjoy out, or generally interacting with them. Let them wallow in self-pity, right? I'm sure social services or somebody from a government service will step in before they do something stupid. It's somebody else's job. Not my problem. I've got enough going on with my own stressful, meaningless, empty, unfulfilling life that I hate and I'm depressed about.

I'm just typing now. The taps are open and the words are flooding out. I have relaxed my anal sphincter and a torrent of liquid brown verbal diarrhoea is jetting out of my arse and into the toilet bowl of the internet, and nobody gives a shit, because we are all sinking with shit up to our necks. There is a whole World Wide Web of shit out there, and we're all just pumping out this useless effluent into the cesspool of human emotional pain.

Do you think I'm going to look back on this frantic period of writing and recoil with horror when I read it back? I certainly expect that I will be cupping my face in my hands, saying to myself "what the fuck was I thinking?" but it must be about as close as it's possible to get to knowing what somebody's thinking, reading this shite.

I thought to myself that I won't hold back, I won't censor, edit or filter, because I can always tear this down with a click of the mouse. A stroke of the keyboard, and all this is gone and I can deny all knowledge that it ever existed. It's the digital photo that you deleted off your camera or smartphone... those shameful ones and zeros are gone forever.

But you know what? I've not felt the urge to take anything down. I've not felt the pangs of regret at sharing stuff that makes me look really bad. I've given the world everything it needs to pigeon-hole me, to categorise me, to bracket me, to judge me, to dismiss me with a label or an over-simplification of my entire existence.

That's what we want, isn't it? Computer credit scores, and computerised personality profiling, and a computer simulation of a real person, that responds in a predictable and easy to understand way. We don't want real lives, with all their messiness and unfathomable complexity. We don't want to get to know each other, but have to live with the fact that we still don't really know each other. We don't even know ourselves, even if you're an irritatingly self-absorbed little prick like I am, who self indulgently wallows in a world of introspection and deep self-examination.

Show me some more videos of funny cats. Distract me from the banality of my existence. Please don't remind me of the humanity that my fellow Earth residents possess or incite any kind of sympathetic or empathetic response in me. I'm quite wrapped up in my own world of pain and disappointment, boredom and stress. I want to pretend like technology and the advancement of civilisation is going to wave its magic wand and even though I'm fornicating with a person I'm nearly totally revulsed by the more I get to know them, in a filthy home in an overcrowded town, on a hopelessly poisoned planet, everything will be fucking rosy for the screaming brats that end up getting spawned.

What the hell is this anyway? This is what happens when the filter gets switched off. This is my life, with no filter.

I think I was born with no filter.

Look: I bought new socks. I'm sharing the private details of my socks life. Every time I have socks, I'm going to post it up on social media. Socks is supposed to be a taboo subject. Always practice safe socks.

Tags: #privacy #depression #mentalhealth #suicide #career #socialmedia