This is a story about being a groupie...

On the steps of the podium stand the winners of the 2007 Poole Animal Windfest. There is a girl and a boy for 3rd and 2nd place. If you look closely, where is the boy who won 1st place?

In 2007 I was involved in building part of the software system that processed over a quadrillion dollars worth of toxic bullshit for JPMorgan, in a single year. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't a bad job and they didn't treat me badly. In fact they kept a private driver waiting down by the seashore; engine running; waiting for the kitesurfing competition to finish. Then I jumped in the Mercedes with smoked glass windows and we sped off to Heathrow for me to catch a flight. I didn't even have time to wash the salt off my skin or sand out of my hair... or collect my prize for winning the competition.

There used to be a time when JPMorgan's main office in Bournemouth had squash courts and a gym onsite. There was a bar. There were enough car parking spaces for everybody, so everybody drove to work. Then, they grew; and they grew; and they grew. Investment banks were - and still are - ludicrously profitable. The IT budget that paid for my little team of 30-odd people was circa $10m per annum. You're never quite sure what the real numbers are though, when you work for an organisation with 130,000 direct employees.

Slowly, prefabricated office buildings sprang up on parts of the car park. The bar, gym and squash courts were turned into office space. That was OK. We still had several tennis courts and a sports centre nearby with badminton courts and 5-a-side football pitches. You could park nearby in an overflow car park. It was still a great place to work, and nobody had a fucking clue what they were doing or what impact it would have on the world, unless they really stopped and thought about it.

I've always been one of those pain-in-the-ass employees who does stop and think about the ramifications of everything that's being done. When it turned out that senior management had decided to support outsourcing a lot of our software development, I was very vocal about my displeasure and concerns. I was a thorn in the side of everybody more senior than me, in the hope of JPMorgan seeing sense: cheaper employees do not equate to cost savings. You get what you pay for.

So, I got landed with a stinker of a project. To train up about 20 brand new offshore employees, in Mumbai, and also to build a piece of software that was not only late, but was a critical component in a global initiative to get all the toxic bullshit warehoused in one place - a depository - so it could be figured out who the fuck owed who what, and how much? Who was holding the toxic debt? Who was bankrupt?

How big is a million dollars?

$1,000,000

It's hard to say, but it's probably a few times bigger than the value of your house, or twenty times bigger than your salary. Now, let's multiply that by a thousand.

$1,000,000,000

Now what you're looking at is a billion dollars. 1% of a billion dollars is $10 million. You'd be pretty happy with $10 million, wouldn't you? That'd set you up for life. Now, let's multiply that by a thousand.

$1,000,000,000,000

This is quite obviously a trillion dollars. 5 trillion dollars is the value of all the world's 'money' - the cash in your pocket, the coins in your purse, your bank balance etc. etc. Now, let's multiply that by a thousand.

$1,000,000,000,000,000

We've reached a quadrillion dollars. 1% of a quadrillion dollars is $10 trillion, which is twice as much as all the 'money' in existence. So, how the fuck does JPMorgan process over a quadrillion dollars in a single year? Two answers for you: 1) Derivatives 2) Financial crisis of 2007/8

A derivative is a financial instrument that derives its 'value' from an underlying security. By security, I mean something tangible: a fucking house or a metal coin that has its value stamped on it. Derivatives are just pieces of paper that say "in the event X, I will pay Y"... for example "if the stock market goes up, the value of this derivative goes up ten times as much". Derivatives contracts have been created that have become more valuable than all the 'money' in the world. As much as a thousand times more valuable. This is just worthless paper, and nobody has the money to pay up: insufficient collateral.

I know, right? Don't stop and think about this stuff too much. Nobody else did. There was too much money to be made.

So I get landed this stinker of a project, drive off from the beach at Sandbanks to Heathrow airport in a luxury car, in order to train 20 or so Indians on how to build a piece of software that's going to be instrumental in the Financial Crisis of 2007/8. I'm an engineer. I solve problems. I stopped thinking about the madness of outsourcing to India when JPMorgan was already plenty profitable. I stopped thinking about the madness of there being quadrillions of dollars worth of derivatives contracts, when there was only $5 trillion of money in existence. I started thinking about software designs and who I had in my new team to build this software system.

At some point, I was seduced. I was seduced by limo travel, private drivers, 7-star hotels, business class flights, everything paid for on expenses, company credit cards. I was seduced by everybody telling me what an important project it was, and what an honour it was to be in charge - the manager - when I was only 27 years old; so young & ambitious. Giddy with this seduction, I started to see the world in different colours. Things were rose tinted. I was sucked in. It was like I was dreaming.

A year later, I'd woken up from a nightmare where I'd played a significant role in helping the Investment Banks to hold the world to ransom. "Pay up, or we'll crash the global economy and plunge the world into a depression that will make the 1930's look like nothing" they said. And the ransom was paid. Every government; every central bank coughed up hundreds of billions, so the bullshit could continue and none of the bullshitters had to lose a cent. In fact, the only people I knew who lost their jobs were the ones who were replaced by Indians I trained.

I started thinking again. Big mistake.

I took to the bottle. I drank every lunchtime and every evening. I was drunk most of the time. How could JPMorgan sack me or even reprimand me? What they'd paid me to do; what they'd asked me to do... they could never make that right. They just let me do whatever I wanted, which was mostly to go to the pub and get drunk. Nobody ever questioned it.

As Bear Stearns was being taken over by JPMorgan - asset stripped under the auspices of being 'rescued' - I'd had enough. Building software for banks made me sick. I was sick at what they did to their own people. I was sick of what the industry was doing to the world. I was sick of producing nothing of value; helping nobody except the lucky few who knew how the con-job worked.

Don't get me wrong, I should have looked the other way; kept taking the fat bonus cheques and big salary; kept those golden handcuffs on - loose enough that they never chafe - but I wanted to get as far away from it as possible. The whole thing left me feeling like I had blood on my hands. Every company that went bankrupt; every person who lost their job; every home repossessed; every suicide due to financial worries... I was one of the co-conspirators who fleeced them out of their money and assets.

Some colleagues stayed, but most of the cynical ones - like me - drifted away. Some died or at least nearly did, as they beat themselves up with alcohol for their sins. JPMorgan paid for a lot of people to go to The Priory to dry out. Those who couldn't face working again were pensioned off early. You only had to work for a year, and then you were covered by a generous insurance policy so you never had to work again. Occupational health were busy, getting rid of an entire generation of engineers who had built the bedrock foundations of the global financial services empire, now shakily propped up using public money. Masses of public money.

Ten years on, I watch in horror as those hastily made repairs to a fundamentally broken system start to crumble.

Record high national debt and record low tax receipts. Our economy is 80% financial services - an industry that's booming if you haven't noticed. You probably haven't noticed unless you work in the Square Mile or Canary Wharf. You've probably seen stagnant wages, a lack of jobs and insecure employment, such as zero-hours contracts. There's always a McJob, if your self esteem is finally fully eroded by the capitalists.

Brexit had a frontman - Nigel Farage - who was a trader from the City. Brexit had billionaire donors, like the stockbroker Peter Hargreaves, who literally said "insecurity is fantastic" - referring to his desire to see workers abused by their employers, in the interest of profits.

I don't wish to segue into commentary on current affairs, but you have to be aware who you're dealing with. Who's putting words in your mouth? Who's planting ideas in your head, through the newspapers and TV channels they own?

You have to wake up out of your nightmare.

Tags: #politics #banking #capitalism

This is a story about nonlinear progression...

There's my bedroom door. As you can see, you can bolt it closed, which is a security feature I added myself. Later, I decided to slide a knife behind the wooden surround and screw that into the wood that surrounds the door. Then I decided that a second knife was probably needed, in case the first one snapped as the blade flexed. Then I decided that I needed something else and finally arrived at the decision to dismantle one of my crutches and part of my bed, so that I had a wooden slat and an aluminium tube, which in theory provided some kind of extra security.... I don't know. I'd been doing this for hours by this point, completely exhausted.

What you're really looking at is the mind, after losing five or six nights of sleep, skipping fifteen to eighteen meals, and being confined to one room, with all the windows obscured.

Who would want to come and do me any harm? Well, when you attempt to balance a crutch and a bed slat on a door handle at 4am - in total darkness - I imagine anybody within earshot would probably want to see me lynched.

I used to go and hide in the bathroom, because it had a proper lock, but then my flatmate unlocked it from outside with a butter knife. Luckily I was right by the door so I locked it again. He was only checking if I was alive, but it's strange how nobody talks to you when you descend into one of these periods of isolation.

In my mind, the lock on my balcony door had been picked. Then, the large glass patio door had been noiselessly slid open, and men clad in black wearing stealth shoes had been able to cross my wooden floor without alerting me to their presence. Meanwhile, more men clad in black, had entered my spare bedroom through a window. These men removed the 'security' features from my front door - for example, a hammer that falls on the floor if the door is opened, which is a kind of improvised intruder alarm - allowing more of their team to enter my flat and prepare to batter down my bedroom door.

Hiding in bathrooms is awful. The floor is freezing tiles and that's about it. There's plenty to drink and you can answer the call of nature, but other than that, it's just cold and boring. I spend half my time barricading the bathroom door and the other half looking through the crack under the door, to see if I can see the men in black in my bedroom. It's a really narrow crack and you can hardly see anything, so you start to imagine that you've seen things. This is why I've stopped hiding in bathrooms.

I have a bed that lifts up so you can store stuff underneath it. If you didn't know, you'd just think it was regular Ikea bed. I actually slept under there for 8 hours or so. It's fucking roasting and I'm sure there's inadequate air recirculation, but I seemed to survive.

Every time I get so hungry or thirsty or just fed up with the bullshit of it all, I take down the barricades and say "come on then, men in black, do your worst!". Then I usually just collapse in bed and sleep for hours and hours. Nothing bad has happened in my home, ever. The police have kicked the bedroom door in a couple of times at my parents', which is what triggered this whole paranoia. That's my parents for you: they'd rather have a door smashed off its hinges than talk to their son. I've tried the basics, like saying "use your words" but that's obviously too much effort for them.

That's the thing about paranoia: it doesn't come from nowhere. There are seeds and they grow into nightmares. Doesn't it creep you out, the idea of some twisted sick voyeur watching you while you take a shit or even just sleeping peacefully in bed? Doesn't it creep you out, the idea of your bedroom becoming a viewing gallery, where people come and go as they please, to watch whatever you're up to?

I haven't written in a while, and that's because I'd given up hope. I'd given up hope that my foot/ankle could be fixed and I could stop the massive doses of painkillers, that were making me so doped up I couldn't work. I'd given up hope that I had enough runway left, to be able to get another IT contract, especially after HSBC lowered my overdraft limit by the best part of £2,000. None of the sums added up. None of the calculations could show that there was a way that I could make my money last until I got some more income.

Then, a windfall from an investment I was managing on somebody else's behalf. A gift from a kind and caring person. Some help getting my spare bedroom ready to rent out to a flatmate - it had been left in an awful state by the last guy, who owes me approximately £6,000 - which will bring deposit money and cut my burn rate by half. Finally, I managed to get a bridging loan, which is getting paid into my account today. Turns out my credit rating is pretty awesome. One of my non-HSBC credit cards just had its limit doubled, so I can live on that to some extent. My interest bill is awful, but put in the context of what I can earn as an IT contractor, it don't mean shit.

I'm crashing at my girlfriend's so that I'm in a different environment. Also, because there are workmen replacing the planking on my balcony, but the amount of noise they're making, you'd think they were demolishing the entire block of flats.

The lounge/diner/kitchen massive room in my flat - with patio doors onto the balcony at one end and a dual-aspect panoramic view of the River Thames - is fucking awesome, but when I'm depressed I only go in there to get more unhealthy snacks, which I take back to my stinky bedroom, with the curtains drawn, to watch endless amounts of on-demand TV.

I don't like it when alcoholics describe themselves as 'in recovery' when they've been teetotal for years and years. I'm 'in recovery' in that I lost at least 14kg in body weight, since my peak (although that was somewhat skewed by fluid retention). I lost more sleep and skipped more meals than you'd ever believe. I need to recover. I need to catch up on sleep. I need nutrients and to allow my body to lay down a bit of fat. I need to have some time where I'm not worried about men in black kicking the door in, and where I can have sex with my girlfriend without worrying that some sicko voyeur is watching through a tiny gap in the curtains.

Working so hard, with such enormous effort and stress, to get out of hospital and get to the first day of my new job, was one of the most difficult, challenging and against-the-odds things I've ever done. I did it. I fucking did it. Then, to have it snatched away was a cruelty that broke me. It broke me. It broke my will to live. It broke my will to keep trying. I had to hide from the world for an entire week, just in shock, unable to allow myself to think, because my thoughts would have turned straight to suicide. I had to get through a week without a single bit of thinking, otherwise I was dead; it hurt me that badly and left me in such a shitty situation.

Since then, I've been careless with my life and everything in it. I've got an amazing girlfriend, but I risked losing her. I've got a super helpful friend who's always there for me, but I risked pushing them away. I know people are monitoring the situation through this blog and social media, and would act if they were worried, perhaps to send the police round to find my corpse. It'd be a better idea to just reach out and ask if I'm OK and say you're worried, using any of the tech communication channels we have - SMS, iMessage, Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger, Twitter DM... the list is endless.

My long-suffering girlfriend ended up speaking with somebody I know through my blog and Facebook, because he was quite rightly concerned. I'm really touched when I find out about these little webs of people who are like a safety net. Nets have holes and I might fall through one - as I have fallen through many of the cracks in life - but it does feel like I have more to live for, knowing that people care enough to speak to each other; share information; discuss what to do.

I'm now admiring my newly flat stomach (but seriously, don't do the supercrack diet) and feeling a little bit more relaxed about having some runway to get back to work once my foot/ankle is fixed... although ironically, I stopped taking the painkillers, but I broke my wrist, so go figure.

You'd seriously hate me if you knew everything about my charmed existence. I left my apartment which faces West - a view of almost every famous London landmark: Shard, London Eye, Tower Bridge, St Paul's Cathedral, Walkie Talkie, Cheesegrater, Gherkin, BT Tower etc. etc. - and I'm now recovering in my girlfriend's apartment which faces East, so I can look at the cable cars going over the Thames, the O2 Centre (a.k.a. the Millennium Dome), the Cutty Sark and Royal Naval College and other parts of beautiful old Greenwich.

I'm off most of the meds now. Coming off a high dose of Tramadol, I wondered why I was itchy, nauseous and sweaty, and realised I was junk sick. Opiate withdrawal ain't that bad really.

I've had an MRI scan of my foot/ankle, and on Friday somebody is going to test the nerve wiring from my foot all the way up my leg, to check for any broken connections. Then, there'll be another consultation and possibly an operation. Things are going quite quick because the NHS outsourced me to a private hospital.

Just need to remember not to get too relaxed at the moment!

Tags: #addiction #london #career #relationships

This is a story about grand gestures...

Here's the thing. You can reach the ripe old age of 52, father three children and generally be carrying on life completely unnoticed. You're a nobody. You're just making up the numbers. You can die of old age, and unless you're somebody considered to be important, you won't even make the obituary listings in your pathetic local rag of a newspaper. Most people live and die in total obscurity.

The recent murder of 4 people and injury of 50 more, on Westminster Bridge and at the Houses of Parliament, must have been influenced - at least in some small way - by the fact that the murderer knew that there would be a huge amount of media coverage of his actions: publicity. Whether we call it a terrorist attack or a killing spree, is very important. Terrorism needs publicity. Terrorism needs the media to strike fear into our hearts.

If it hadn't been for the media, I might not have known about the events of Wednesday until she sent me this message showing the memorial flowers. There are deadly road traffic accidents, stabbings, shootings and people jumping under tubes and overground trains, every single day in London. Because of the scale and significance of the attack, at the seat of government, perhaps the word-of-mouth news would have circulated quicker, but the media made it their top news item for four or five days, maybe more.

You may hate me for this, and think me detestable, but it plays heavily on my mind that these words that I write, even if they're not read today, are very likely to be read if I prematurely end my life. I write with that in mind. I write about what's driving me towards suicidal action. I write to leave a record of who I was, how I thought and what made me tick. I write to leave evidence, should anybody wish to investigate how a person who - to outward appearances - has nothing but opportunities, but yet could end up on the mortuary slab.

'Depression' is a cop-out of an answer. If you dig deeper, there isn't some difference between my brain and yours. Measuring the levels of 'happy' chemicals in our brains cannot be said to be the symptom of a problem, or the problem itself. Yes, we know we can manipulate our brains to alter our moods, but we also know that non-chemical things alter our moods too: when our sports team win; when we see a loved one; when we eat our favourite food.

There are so many variables to control for. The rich cry too. However, I refuse to accept that the cure for a condition that was identified in Ancient Greece - some 14,000 years ago - as melancholia, has to be pills, and not the freedom to escape from the confines of this crazy society.

It might piss you off to think that part of me wants to die, so that some attention is drawn to all the things I've been writing about; so that some questions are asked about why it happened.

I'd never go on a killing spree, but I wonder if dying for a single identifiable cause makes it easier for the public to understand. What would I choose? Anti-capitalism? Socialism? Wealth inequality? The difficulty of the choice is perhaps part of the reason why I'm still here today, writing, rather than having made my grand final gesture.

A friend made a couple of trips up to London to see me when we were both feeling really glum. I hope he doesn't mind me sharing - anonymously - that he'd tried to take his own life a couple of times. An old friend I had fallen out with came to see me in hospital, which was a nice surprise. My two friends who I've seen most regularly since returning to the capital, visited me in hospital. I have a friend who I got to know through my blog, who has been incredibly supportive and loyal and has gone to great lengths to keep me alive. I have a girlfriend who has slowly and naïvely unearthed the multiple additional issues that often accompany bipolar disorder, but she has worked hard to keep an open mind, be forgiving and kind, and be incredibly supportive. There are a handful of other people whose path I've crossed in London who care enough to help if I was in trouble. In Portishead, Killavullen, Bournemouth & Poole, Weymouth, Abingdon, Nottingham, Newcastle and perhaps even in Hythe, Woking, Biggleswade, Milan, Wimborne and Worcester, I think there are people who know me and care about me and would be upset by my departure from this Earthly realm.

Does it keep me glued in place, knowing the pain it'll cause so many people if I come unstuck? No, I'm sorry to say that it just adds a kind of guilt... a weight of responsibility.

People have their own problems and busy lives, but the stuff that makes the difference is when somebody says they'll help; even just opening my post. Even just sitting with me while I place an advert for a new flatmate. Even just getting me out of bed in the morning so I can make an 8am hospital appointment. It's rather childish and immature, to have to be babied and receive such hands-on care, but I've reached a point where I've lost all hope. I have no belief that there's any way out of this sticky situation I'm in. Things could be so much different if somebody just sat with me and answered my phone, and when it's HSBC ringing me back about a bridging loan, they can hand me the phone and we can see if we can get that sorted.That would completely change my optimism about the future, if I had adequate runway to get to the point where I'm consulting again.

My head's gone down. I've given up somewhat. I actually gave up fairly prematurely, and without much of a fight, on the face of it, but I'd had a long exhausting stressful wait with very little to do over the festive period, with regards to marketing my consultancy talents.

I've had a couple of kind offers from people to get me out of London and get me earning some cash elsewhere, but I'm so trapped by tenancy agreements, plus I'm in love with her and can't stand the thought of only seeing her at weekends and stuff. Fuck knows. It's a big shit sandwich, and I've got to take a great big bite.

You know, I'm TechStars accelerator alumni. I could leverage my network. I've got 500+ LinkedIn connections. What the hell am I worrying about? Well, I've got an MRI on my ankle/foot on Wednesday morning. I've got to go back to the Renal High Dependency Unit straight after that. I'm still pretty drugged up and in pain. I don't want another false start like I had with Lloyds. That was heartbreaking.

With the complexity of it all; the challenges that lie ahead; the cashflow projections that look terrible; the sheer number of pissy little jobs that need to be done, there's a voice that loudly and clearly says "why fucking bother?". That voice says "you've had all this stress before, and it's gotten you nowhere. You're back where you started. Why don't you just give up?". That voice says "take some pills and never wake up". That voice says "cut your carotid artery and that'll be the end of it: no more struggle, no more strife, no more stress".

I have to admit, that voice is one of the most reasoned and intelligent I've heard.

Tags: #suicide #terrorism

This is a story about whether it's right to stay with an alcoholic and/or an addict...

Poor me, poor me, pour me another drink. Like every alcoholic and/or addict I have a million and one reasons why I had one too many bottles of wine, or why I lapsed or relapsed into drug addiction.

I mentioned on Facebook earlier today that I rearranged the furniture in a hotel room in Bournemouth, right at the very worst most moment of my divorce. If you think that "worst moment of my divorce" caveat is me getting my excuses in early, then you're wrong. Let's get this straight: I didn't break anything or chuck a telly out of the window, but I made a lot of extra work for housekeeping.

I was actually so concerned that I was in such a bad frame of mind that I was actually going to throw a telly out of the window, so I phoned the duty solicitor. The duty solicitor gets phoned after you've been arrested, if you don't have your own solicitor.  I had not been arrested, but I didn't like the way things were going.

The duty solicitor was rather bemused by a person ringing up to chat about things before they're arrested.... in anticipation. He said that he didn't think the police would arrest me, and I should probably just ring friends and family. I was loathe to involve friends & family in a mess that I had made.

Eventually, having tried several other local solicitors, I rang the family solicitor, who phoned my Mum, who told my Dad to phone me. He was exceedingly unhappy that one of his longest friends had suggested that I might be in the need of a bit of support during a messy divorce.

I rang my friend Tim, who texted an ex police constable, who confirmed that the police would not press charges given the circumstances. Tim came to the hotel, and said it wasn't bad at all and we could fix it up in 5 or 10 minutes, but I just wanted to get home.

Despite a couple of offers of financial compensation for any inconvenience or damage the hotel manager laughed, being rather experiences with the wrecked hotel rooms due to the large amount of stag dos who visit Bournemouth. His housekeeping staff had not even commented. However, I still feel guilty about that today.

That was December 2013.

Let's make one thing really clear before we go on. My ex wife did not addict me to drugs. She's not responsible for any of my addiction: then or now.

My startup company fell to bits because I was under unbearable pressure to deliver Investment Banker lifestyle on startup wages, and base my company in Bournemouth, where there are no angel investors, no venture capitalists, no startup scene, no customers, it was over 2 hours away from my co-founder and his new baby girl. It was an irreconcilable problem, with my ex-wife being least willing to compromise despite having a job she could work anywhere in the country. But, that's not her fault. It's my fault. It's my fault that I made myself CEO instead of my co-founder. It's my fault I couldn't handle the pressure. It's my fault I wasn't strong enough to leave a toxic unsupportive relationship.

Drugs - legal highs - appeared on the scene in the autumn, as I sat at home, desperately depressed about the situation. I had already tried about 5 different antidepressants by this point, and had even moved on to trying over 10 extremely rare antidepressants that are extremely rarely prescribed, even in treatment-resistant depression cases.

It's not like I didn't recognise the problem. I accessed local drug & alcohol drop in centres, where I sat listening to teenaged alcoholic prostitutes talking about their children being taken into care, knowing that I owned my own home, cars, boats, hot tub, summer houses and had tens of thousands of pounds in the bank. I left, because it feel like sheer selfishness to deprive the time that could be given to somebody more needy.

I spent a day in a residential rehab as a day patient. By the end of the day, I had brushed up all the leaves, done all the washing up, hoovered, mopped and done just about everybody's weekly chores. The people's lives were fascinating, but most of the day was drinking tea & coffee and sitting around.

I don't know if I was successfully hiding my habit, but I gave a talk to a bunch of startup founders in London, and a few came over and said they'd heard me speak in Cambridge, and they thought my public speaking had improved a lot. Go figure.

The only real problem for hiding my habit was school holidays - my ex being an educator - when I wouldn't have the daytime to take drugs. Christmas holiday was unspeakably awful, with me sneaking off in the middle of the night to take drugs.

Getting clean and staying clean is my sole responsibility, but I found it telling that the only book on addiction my ex read parts of was called "Nag your loved one sober".

After Christmas, my ex demanded that my parents take me away. Naturally, they resisted and I resisted. My dad came down, and my ex had been nagging our mutual GP about how hard it was on her to deal with my addiction. Deal with my addiction? She didn't even know about it until a week earlier, when I struggled to hide it during the school holidays.

I was completely spooked by the sudden appearance of my dad and my GP, through no request of my own. The idea of leaving my home, my friends and everything else I'd spent years building around myself, to go live in a house I'd never lived in, trapped in a village where I didn't know anybody. That's fucking offensive.

Anyway, the psychiatrist I saw just before I left Bournemouth told me to taper off the legal highs gradually - over the course of 6 to 8 weeks - because nobody knew what withdrawal would be like.

Having gotten rid of me to my parents' house, my ex then refused to take my phone-calls and generally treated me like dog dirt.

I would say, that if it turns out you're dating an addict and/or alcoholic, you should make a decision - based on how long you've been together - as to whether they're the type who's going to bleed you dry and move onto the next unwitting victim, whether you're prepared to help them - and trust me, it's really fucking hard - or whether it's your moral duty to help them because they became unwell while they were your husband, wife or long term partner.

Anyway, my ex continued to be a right ***** until someone who isn't me hacked her email account and found out that no sooner had I left MY house, she had been dating other people. I confronted her with her infidelity, and she started treating me like a human again. Unfortunately, I thought a leopard could change its spots, so I spent £4,000 on flights to Hawaii to get married and £3,000 on an engagement ring. As you can tell, I'm the kind of junkie who spends all their money on themselves.

I struggled with sobriety, but held down a couple of good jobs and continued to be a good provider. My ex could have called off the wedding at any point.

The wedding, which was supposed to be stress-free with no guests, somehow became one of the most stressful things I've ever had to deal with. The whole holiday was ruined by my bridezilla. In the end, I threw a tantrum and said I could no longer deal with teepees and camper vans that break down and other eclectic but stressful shit that I had to organise, and booked us into the $800 a night Hilton. I had cocktails by the pool and it was bliss, but there were two days until we had to go home.

I relapsed as soon as we got home. It didn't help that my then-wife had booked a taxi online, specifying the wrong year. We could have stayed at Heathrow and waited for 4 hours, but having been on a plane for most of a day, I wanted to get home: unexpected £180 taxi ride in a black cab that I managed to negotiate.

My then-wife must have ordered my parents to come and 'deal' with me, because my dad marched into my house and said "you're an addict. you're an addict. Can't you see you're a dirty addict?" which was rich coming from a man with a history of drug use. That's not the kind of treatment you should ever receive in your own home, nor did it take account of the fact that I'd been in a lot of correspondence with several specialist psychiatrists who could deal with my specific condition: dual diagnosis. I was bipolar before I was a junkie, and the two do not complement each other well.

My mum had decided that she could 'smell' drugs on me. Unless she has a gas chromatograph mass spectrometer for a nose, she is wrong. You can smell smoke and cannabis on somebody's clothes, but drugs that you snort, swallow and inject are excreted through kidneys and faeces. It's a completely disproven hypothesis. Anyway, My then-wife did nothing to vouch for my sobriety when my mum had a go at me on my sister's wedding day (I was clean).

I'd gone back to working at JPMorgan, and they coughed up £12k for me to go to The Priory for 28 days, without a single qualm. My general psychiatrist had said I needed treatment in a therapeutic environment, which clearly my home was not. My then-wife said that she'd divorce me if I followed his advice and got treatment, and that she'd rather be a widow than a divorcee.

On my first day at The Priory, I phoned the local florist near our home, and asked them to leave a different flower each day under the windscreen wiper of my then-wife's car, before she left for work. She however, joined the dating sites again and decided not to visit or phone me.

During my stay at The Priory, we established that I was not well supported at home, and indeed, perhaps my relationship did not contain the prerequisite levels of respect, love, care, compassion etc. etc.

I panicked on day 27 of rehab, realising I had to divorce my wife, sell our house and decide what I was going to do next with my life. I spent the day talking to a few friends about different ideas, and returned for my final day a lot happier.

Straight after that was the birth of my niece. My loving then-wife did not attend. In fact. I remember her once being extremely put out that my grandmother had the temerity to die at an inconvenient moment. I think my friends had been right all along: she really was "the poison dwarf".

Anyway, after being under virtual house arrest, where I must admit I abused a lot of drugs as I tried to grapple with the magnitude of selling a house and downsizing. Probably moving to London. The friends who would take sides. Having to get a new job. I got fed up with my then-wife making me feel absolutely terrified by her unjustified rage and abuse, so I took to cocooning myself into a single room of our ample 3-bedroomed house, and even built myself a man cave in our summer house. She was never content to leave me be, and would hammer and scream all the time at whichever door I cowered behind.

Then, I sent an SOS email to our parents, to come and force our separation. I was starving. I had no toilet, no shower. Do you think that's the way that people get clean & sober?

My friend Posh Will kindly offered his spare bedroom to get back into London life. I was clean & sober, riding my bike all over London, incorporating a new company and touting for consultancy work. I was entrepreneur-in-residence at PlayFair capital and I was loving the London startup scene. I was making new friends and I quickly got a beautiful new girlfriend. I know I wasn't the first to commit adultery, because someone who isn't me hacked my then-wife's email and found out she was fucking a married man with kids.

Then, divorce turned nasty. A six week house sale turned into a six month sale, simply because my then wife wanted to drag it out, knowing I had no income yet in London. She kept making me do the 4 hour round trip to Bournemouth to do trivial things she could do herself, like get estate agent valuations. Finally, we arrive in December 2013, where I went to a hotel because our house was sold but I was so angry and frustrated by my wife dragging out the sale to the point I almost ran out of money, I was going to trash the place.

Sure, I then did a 5 days of a 10 day detox, at a place where they didn't know what a detox was, or how to deal with somebody with a benzo habit. I then did 7 weeks at a proper residential rehab. My parents were on my no-contact banned list, but my mum still wrote to me with Louise's divorce demands. I told her from the start I wanted to rent out the house, defer the divorce and deal with it all when I had my health. When she refused, I said take whatever you want, but just don't drag it out. If I wasn't the kind of person who assumes that everybody's OK deep down, I'd say that it was all because she's a vindictive, abusive, greedy, *****.

Anyway, after a mix-up at my parents about what day of the week it was, my dad demanded that I get dressed in front of him and leave immediately. I agreed to leaving immediately, but I refused to get dressed in front of him, on the grounds that it would be one of the most degrading things you could ever ask a person to do. He manhandled me and a mirror got knocked off the wall, slicing my shin muscle in half along with 4 tendons and 2 nerves. Only then did he allow me to get dressed in privacy.

After my operation, I was taking fentanyl and tramadol - both strong opiate painkillers - for the pain, and yet I managed to avoid becoming addicted to these drugs. Having to wear a plaster cast kinda means you're going to have to destroy a nice business suit, and who wants to hire somebody who's sick?

My friends said it was time for me to get a place of my own, although I was still on crutches. I rented a room nearby. I went for dinner with Posh Will, and I was honest with him about my addiction struggles, and his attitude towards me changed visibly immediately. Our friendship was almost ruined, because he had such strong preconceived notions about what drug addiction is. He virtually accused me of being at risk of coming round to his house to steal stuff to feed my habit. I had the money from the sale of my house and some successful Bitcoin investments. I didn't need to steal from my friends. I cried myself to sleep and then tried to commit suicide.

Hospital discharged me, but I'd lost my flat, so I was homeless. I lived in hostels and Kensington Gardens. I guarantee you that not many people get clean from drugs when they're homeless.

Anyway, I finally got a great group of friends at a hostel in Camden, and a beautiful girlfriend. Those were some of the happiest months of my life. I also got an IT contract for Barclays and a room in a student house in Swiss Cottage.

I did have a couple of 'lapses' on mild drugs, but I was clean and I was happy. Then Barclays terminated my contract and I was evicted (the landlord was selling the apartment).

I tried to put a brave face on things and have a happy family Christmas, but I'd broken up with my girlfriend, lost half my friends, lost my contract, was homeless again. A lovely family in Ireland saved my life, looking after me at one of the most depressing and vulnerable times of my life.

At the suggestion of Posh Will - ironically - I stayed in a hostel in Shoreditch. Initially I had a whole dorm to myself, but when they realised I had an OK personality and was a long-term resident, they moved me to the infamous 'Ward P'. The drink and the drugs were off the scale in that place. I had to leave because I was off my face around the clock, but it seemed normal because everybody was.

I started staying in AirBnB places, because they were homely and I could do short [but expensive] lets. I'd recently reconnected with an old friend, so it was nice to live near him, in the East End.

I was running out of money again, so I stayed in a really awful hotel that's covered quite extensively in the blog post called Finsbury Park Fun Run.

That got me back to the Camden Hostel, but I was still hopelessly re-addicted to drugs. Trust me, it's hard to hide a drug habit in a 'regular' tourist hostel, and the tourists don't really love it if you're acting all weird because you're so strung out you can't even see straight.

Somehow, I managed to land the HSBC contract.

I ran out of money. Working for HSBC while living in a hostel is just not possible either. More drugs - whole week AWOL from work. Got away with it.

Stayed clean all the way to Christmas pretty much. I was a wreck on Christmas Day. I hadn't eaten for days. My Kiwi sofa surfer had kindly cooked the turkey but he'd pretty much cremated it, and it'd taken him hours to coax me out of my bedroom. Still, it was super kind of him to cook the world's most depressing Christmas lunch.

Then drugs, drugs, drugs to March 21st. I had a bag that could quite easily have kept me supplied for 3 years. That's the problem with being rich and choosing a cheap and powerful drug - you're never going to run out.

Are you spotting a theme yet?

January, February and March are my nightmare months. If I'm off kitesurfing at some exotic location, no problem. If I'm working a contract, no problem.

This year, I've had acute kidney failure and severe and ongoing leg/foot trauma AND the loss of my contract at Lloyds to deal with. However, I had the best Christmas ever and I'm also dating the world's most amazing girlfriend, so perhaps these things should cancel each other out?

I have to think about drugs at the moment, because my leg is so damaged that I need a cocktail of strong opiate painkilllers, nerve blockers and a sleep aid, just to be able to partially function. I wake up every 4 hours in the night in excruciating agony.

Through the urgent need to re-stock on painkillers, I found myself back on the Dark Web. It was a stupid move. I kinda knew I'd never be able to resist the urge to go window shopping. I tried to order weaker drugs that might satisfy the craving that was instigated by nothing more than buying other products, but lapse and relapse were inevitable.

My most amazing girlfriend in the whole wide world is somebody I could spend 100% of my time with, and never get tired of her company. We like the same trashy TV. We enjoy the same high-brow movies. We both have an insatiable appetite for feature-length documentaries. We love London. We love the same things and we love each other.

Why then would I relapse onto incredibly dangerous and destructive drugs?

The watchword you need to look for here is trigger. When I was with my ex-wife, if she ever went on holiday on her own - which is something she did regularly during the death throes of our relationship - it built a Pavlovian association with an opportunity to take drugs without having an aggressive abusive ***** attempting to kick my prison door in and screaming horrible things at me.

I found a black market seller who would supply just enough for me to have a moment of fun, but not enough for me to end up in a destructive binge. Then that supplier disappeared, and I ended up buying the next smallest bag I could find: 100 to 200 mild to medium strength doses.

The net result is that I spent all yesterday evening and all last night trying to jam my locked bathroom door closed with a pair of nail tweezers, because I was convinced that angry neighbours had phoned the police, and even a mob had formed outside my apartment, ready to heckle me when the police led me from the building, cuffed in shame.

That's a net result of two things:

1. Having more than you need of a highly addictive drug is bound to lead to a binge
2. It's impossible to measure milligram doses of drugs without excellent scales. The difference between no effect, and psychotic overdose, can not be seen by the human eye

I sold my scales because I've successfully been having long periods of abstinence, and it makes sense to get rid of drug paraphernalia that could 'trigger' a craving.

Of course, I should have controlled my craving. Of course, I knew what the worst-case scenario would be. Of course, it seems to suggest that the love of my beautiful girlfriend is not enough.

All I can say in my defence is that my life is pretty depressing right now. I'm on such strong pain relief that I can barely even concentrate on writing. I'm not well enough to go back to work. I've been stressed about running out of money and being evicted.

Life is also awesome right now, because me and my incredibly fetching and intelligent and knowledgeable girlfriend both have riverside apartments, and we take turns to spend nights watching sunrises and sunsets.

She has a really difficult decision to make right now. My longest period of abstinence from drugs is what? 9 months, since becoming addicted. My longest period of sobriety was 121 days. All my money has been frittered away on private healthcare, periods where I was too unwell to work, and yes - perhaps as much a 5% - has been spent on drugs. Would you choose somebody like that for your boyfriend?

Alright, so my drug habit isn't going to lead me to a life of crime. I've been cautioned by the police 4 times, but there's not much point in wrecking my career because I'm an addict is there, when I'm not shoplifting, dealing drugs, robbing, doing fraud or committing any other crime.

However, this weekend has shown that I still have the capacity to get myself in a life threatening mess. I was ready to stab myself in the carotid artery this morning, rather than have my life ruined by a criminal record and have all that shame on top of what has already been a pretty awful February and March.

Of course, nobody can deny that I brought this on myself and that the behaviour is just the same as it was over the last few years. Is my addiction getting better? It's certainly not cured.

If you want to know if my addiction is getting better, you could look at my medical records for 2014. I was an inpatient for 14 weeks. You could consider the fact that the longest period I had without my drug of choice was 2 weeks, for the first couple of years. You could consider the fact that I'm in a meaningful relationship with a kind, caring and compassionate girlfriend who's sympathetic and well informed. I'm not lying to her to have a drug habit behind her back. I've lied to her twice when she went away on holiday, both times shortly after I had lost a contract and was a bit depressed.

Ask yourself, am I worth knowing as a friend? I could drop a dirty HIV or hepatitis infected syringe in your kid's playpen. I might replace your salt with cocaine for a prank. I'll probably take money out of the purse and wallet of everybody in your house. I'll nick anything that isn't nailed down. All I want to talk about is drugs drugs drugs and my life story's not interesting because it just goes addiction addiction addiction. I'll bring shame on your family and you'll get in trouble just because you're friends with me. Not worth it, is it?

What about dating a junkie? Well, everything they say is a lie, and you won't like having sex with them all the time because you know they're probably thinking about a syringe of heroin while they're doing it to you. They'll take all your money and ask for more. Nobody ever got cured of drink & drugs. Death's too good for 'em.

I do feel terrible about the lies [two] and the betrayal of trust. Also, she knows that a binge could easily hospitalise or kill me. She's also trying to have a relaxing holiday break, but she knows I'm sick, haven't had any sleep and haven't had anything to eat.

She can't watch me like a hawk all the time. She can't spy on me using webcams when she's on holiday. She doesn't know what I get up to at home when she's at work.

Why take a risk on a loser with such a poor track record?

I've told her if she wants to break up with me, I'll fight to save the relationship, but I won't just say anything to talk her out of it. I actually advised her to break up with me, because I'm a month or two away from earning money again, I've got depression, bipolar and maybe even borderline personality disorder, along with the death sentence of dual diagnosis. Would you want your kids to have those faulty genes? Would you want your family to find out one day that you've been dating a loser?

Anyway, that's where I am right now.

No amount of stick will stop anybody from taking drink or drugs. I need to find a social group to regularly attend. I need to get out of the house more. Through socialising will come enjoyment of even more people's company, as well as routine. There will be new opportunities. Maybe a new hobby? I'll get a new contract and throw myself into work. Once the money starts rolling in, me and her can have holidays and plan adventures.

Could I replace everything and everybody in my life with supercrack? Almost. It is pretty fucking good. Still, how much money would you need? Even if you lived in a tent, I still reckon food & drink would cost you £150-200k over your shortened lifespan. I do however think you get sick of it after a while, but the bastard thing is so fucking good when you go back to it after a little break.

What can I tell you? That's the truth?

So am I honestly comparing a night with the love of my life, with a sniff of supercrack? No. The comparison is facile. If you choose the tent dwelling supercrack life, there's no coming back from that. Also, I've never been in such a good relationship in my life: it just keeps getting better and better.

One final question to ask yourself? Even if you think you have the perfect partner, perfect friends, perfect job and generally perfect life... do you still occasionally do something that looks totally insane in the context of your amazing life, like get too drunk, or take a recreational drug even though you never do drugs? Do you think the fact that you do that, means you love your partner any less?

Tags: #drugs #addiction

This is a story about treating every day like it's your last...

My life plan was a fairly simple one: earn loads of money working in IT, marry an attractive & intelligent girl who was into outdoorsy stuff and live happily ever after. I lived by the seaside. I owned my own home. I had masses of savings. I owned everything outright: my car, my boat, the furniture... I paid cash for everything.

When it turned out that the girl I picked was, errr, 'incompatible' with living happily ever after - to phrase it delicately - I didn't really have a plan B.

To be honest, after my marriage went to shit, I hadn't really planned on living very long. I'm really rather surprised to find myself alive and in reasonable health today. I was warned that my new plan - to take copious amounts of drugs and die in a hedonistic blaze of glory - would drive me insane and I'd find myself permanently brain damaged and dying slowly and painfully as my organs shut down one by one, or perhaps I would just suddenly and unexpectedly drop dead.

"Suddenly and unexpectedly drop dead."

Isn't that a risk that we face every single day anyway? There's a certain chance that your heart is just going to stop pumping and go into cardiac arrest at any moment. If you have a cardiac arrest outside a hospital, you're 80% likely to die.

The biggest threat to my life at the moment, statistically - and this goes for any 37 year old man, not just the ones with bipolar disorder and substance abuse issues - is suicide. Suicide is the biggest killer of men under the age of 50.

If I made smart lifestyle choices like not taking copious amounts of dangerous drugs, riding my bike through central London in rush hour traffic with no helmet on, stopping eating and drinking to the point where my organs fail and I piss blood, you'd have thought that I'd be doing a pretty good job of minimising my risk of premature death. NOPE!

What about all those extreme hobbies of mine? Off-piste snowboarding, skydiving, mountain biking, kitesurfing, rock climbing and mountaineering. You'd have thought that it'd be a good idea to give up those dangerous sports, if I wanted to minimise my risk of premature death. NOPE!

I was trying to have this argument with the Royal London Hospital consultant in the Renal High-Dependency Unit, where I was being kept alive by dialysis. I basically said, look, you're going to have to discharge me and let me go and start my new job and I'll just have to take the risk that my kidneys get worse and I drop dead. "You're playing Russian Roulette with your life" she said. Not really. The biggest threat to my life is suicide, and it was inevitable that losing my job would leave me in a psychologically critical condition.

One thing I quite often hear is criticism of risk takers. "How can you climb that mountain and risk your life, when there are people who are terminally ill, who would give anything for just one more day alive?"

"Treat every day as if it's your last."

That fairly innocent sounding platitude actually backfires, when you realise that it's an incitement to maximise your risk in pursuit of hedonistic pleasures and thrillseeking.

Knowing that suicide is the biggest killer of men under 50 is just a meaningless statistic, until you lose a friend or a relative to suicide, or you become suicidal yourself.

That's me in the picture above. I'm stood on a pinnacle of rock that's nearly 3,000 metres above sea level. If I fell - and I'm not tied onto anything - then it would a very long freefall before I went splat into the ground. Why am I not tied on? Why haven't I taken the precaution of attaching myself to a rope? Is it because I was suicidal?

The more you climb; the higher you climb; the more steep and perilous things that you climb, you start to become used to the exposure. The constant threat of falling to your death is something that you just get used to. One slip and it's curtains... but you're not afraid anymore.

I've got rather a toxic mix of psychology. I've got the ability to manage my own fear, stress and adrenalin, so that I can throw myself out of planes or climb frozen waterfalls, but when I become suicidal, I'm acutely aware that I could act on a suicidal impulse very calmly and methodically.

What is this silly little dance we call life anyway? Is it about procreation? Is it about making money? Is it about looking after your grandparents and parents as they get old and die?

Do I 'owe' anybody anything? Do I 'owe' it to my parents to treat the fact I'm alive with respect because they 'gifted' me a life that I didn't ask for? Do I 'owe' it to terminally ill people, to treat my life with respect, because I'm lucky and they're not? Do I 'owe' it to my friends to struggle on through the misery, because they'd be a bit sad if I committed suicide?

There are a couple of families - one in Ireland and one in Bletchley/Suffolk - who have been there for me during my darkest moments. There's a friend who I would've seen over the Christmas break, except for an unfortunate bout of illness laying him low. There are a handful of people in the world who've seen what my friend Laurence calls 'The Horrors' and they've protected me; stuck by me; defended me and been loyal friends. There have been people who've appeared unexpectedly - most welcome - back in my life. I'm not the most predictable of people, having decided to visit an old school friend in San Francisco, booked a flight and boarded it, within the space of just a few hours.

That's how it goes. Here today; gone tomorrow.

The speed with which my kidneys failed was shocking, even for me. The fact I needed dialysis was shocking, even for me. The length of time it took my kidneys to start working efficiently again was shocking, even for me.

Does that sort of stuff make me think "oh wow! that was close!" and "I better be careful and treat my life with respect"? You're asking the wrong question. My suicidal thoughts drive my reckless risk taking behaviour. Suicide was, and still remains, the biggest threat to my life. The shitty stuff that happened was all a consequence of my flirtation with death. I don't quite have the nerve to take the active steps to 'pull the trigger' as it were, because I know that I'm psychologically strong enough to just do it, without hesitation.

My trip to the Golden Gate Bridge was a metaphor for just how quickly, impulsively and with single-minded determination I can reach the point of no return.

My friends who hosted me in San Francisco read some of my recent blogs and asked if there was anything they could do to help. These are some of the people I admire and respect most in the world. They have super busy stressful lives raising little kids on the other side of the Atlantic, on the West coast of America.

What can anybody do? Everybody's got their own problems. Everybody's got their own money worries. Everybody's got a lot of shit on their plate. We've built a society where we are isolated, alone, overstretched by ordinary life to the point where we're just about managing. Who can afford to shoulder part of the burden for somebody who's struggling? Who can afford the time? Where are you going to find the energy when life is already so exhausting? Who has the financial means to help every fuckup with their begging bowl held out?

More fundamentally, under what kind of terms am I prepared to help myself? Arguably, I've thrown away 3 very well paid IT contracts for 3 massive banks, doing work that I can do with my eyes closed. Why the fuck would I do that?

I'm a complex beast. I feel guilty about my role in building systems that were pivotal in the financial crisis of 2007/8. I hired a development team in Mumbai, India, and I led that team to create a trade confirmation system for derivatives that handled over a quadrillion dollars in volume, in its first year. That's immoral. I knew what I was doing. I was busily fixing my own mortgage rate, knowing that there was a credit crunch coming. I invested my money in physical gold, because I had so little faith in the banking systems that I helped build.

I also had a taste of what it's like to own and run my own company. I outsourced. I ran software projects. The only difference was that it was my money and nobody could tell me "no". I could do whatever I wanted, and the ego rub from holding the job title "CEO" is a hard place to come back from. I now wander from company to company, pointing out the things that are on fire, fixing them if they let me or otherwise getting into conflict or suffering incredible boredom and frustration as I try to keep my mouth shut about the impending disasters I can see unfolding. Sure, I get paid a buttload, but it upsets me. I still spend money like it's my own.

That last project I was working on had an annual budget of about £25 million and was handling 30 customers a day. Basically, the cost of customer acquisition was over £2,000. These were not high-net worth individuals. They were simply ordinary banking customers. The project was not very complicated, but the waste was incredible.

What the hell is wrong with me? Am I a prima donna? Am I Goldilocks? Everything's got to be 'just right' for me? Do I consider the kind of work that's available to me to be 'beneath' me?

Certainly, I struggle with the prospect of having to do the kind of job that I mastered 10 or 15 years ago. I sometimes laugh out loud in interviews when somebody asks a question that's the equivalent of asking a master builder if they know what a brick is. Is it arrogant? I don't give a fuck... it psychologically destroys me, running projects for dinosaurs who pay top dollar for the best consultants and then don't listen to them.

I remember quite distinctly in 2001, I was deciding whether to learn a new(ish) computer programming language. I read a book about it. I was already learning another programming language at the time. Then it hit me: I had become a polyglot, somewhat by accident. I was able to read any code and understand its function - its intent - no matter what the actual specific implementation technology was. I knew that me and software had reached the end of the road. I asked my boss for a sabbatical while I considered what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.

It's kinda hard to change career direction and it gets harder with age. You not only have to bankroll yourself through training and getting started in whatever new thing it is that you're doing, but if you're turning your back on one of the most lucrative careers there is, you'd better be pretty damn certain that you picked the right alternative.

I bump along the bottom, being dragged back into god-awful, boring, unambitious, ill-fated and badly run IT projects, whenever my bank balance reaches danger point. But the hardest thing is the dread: the dread about selling my soul; the dread about having to keep a straight face when people are panicking and running around like they've never seen some mundane issue before.

I can't escape. I'm in a deep hole. The hole isn't deep at all for an IT consultant, but for almost any other job, it's an inescapable pit of doom. The reason why I got in such deep shit is divorce, mental illness, and being smeared all over the streets of London, in and out of hospital. Like I said earlier, it's a miracle that I'm still alive.

I hadn't really planned on living this long and that's a bit of a problem. Because I'm so suicidal and trapped, I guess there's an easy decision to be made. I know that I have absolutely no problem following through and overcoming any psychological hurdle that might stop most ordinary people from killing themselves.

I wrote this, while I was working my last IT contract:

Once he had started, he knew there would be no stopping until it was done.

That's why it had taken him so long before he started his final journey; because he could picture every single step of it. He knew that he would just methodically follow the steps, and then it would be over. He could be cold and clinical when required; rational and calculated; measured in his approach. There would be no panic, no rise in pulse, no hyperventilation. To all outward appearances, there would be nothing that would cause alarm or alert suspicions in anybody, until he was at the very brink; in the final moments.

The imagery of the bridge was so ingrained in everybody's mind, because it was such a major landmark. The bridge had featured in so many films. The bridge had been photographed so many times. The bridge was a prominent part of company logos and corporate branding. The bridge was something you could close your eyes, and picture it in exquisite detail. If you were asked to draw the bridge from memory, you'd be able to make a passable sketch of it. Even if you'd never been to the bridge before, it felt like you had been there.

That's why he had never been to the bridge. He could never be sure if he was there just in his imagination - where there were no irreversible consequences - or if he was there in real life. It would be so easy to follow through with his day dream - his fantasy - in real life. He'd played it all through in his head so many times.

Staring up at the spot on the centre of the bridge, where it was highest above the river below, he could imagine himself walking up to that spot, knowing that when he reached that point, only the chest-high barrier would separate him from the edge. He knew that the hardest part would be the bold step of climbing over the barrier. It would be so easy to peer over the edge, while safely protected by the barrier, and then chicken out. That's why mental preparation was important. That's why visualising the whole thing in advance was important.

He wasn't unfamiliar with the psychological battle of overcoming your fears and hurling yourself over a mental obstacle. Stepping off an edge was something you did every time you stepped off the kerb and into traffic. Vaulting a barrier was something you did when you climbed over fences as a kid, playing with your friends. He had done bungee jumps, where it was up to you - free will - to actually jump. He had done skydives and parachute jumps, where it was up to you, whether or not you hurled yourself out of a perfectly good aircraft. He knew he could overcome the psychological challenge of cutting loose and falling. Falling, not attached to anything, tumbling free in space. Nothing to grab onto. No second chances. No way to change your mind once you throw yourself out into empty space.

People talked about cowardice, selfishness, but they missed the point. People didn't understand that have to be brave to choose to put your life in danger, especially when falling to your death is one of the obvious risks. You also have to be brave to choose death. Who knows what happens when you die? Fear of the unknown is why people cling to life: self-preservation instincts.

He'd been a leader in the mountains and on rock faces. The leader always took the biggest risk of falling. At some point, falling became inevitable. If you roll the dice enough times, your number is going to come up eventually. If you take risks, you have to accept the increased chance of injury and even death. He'd had friends who had been killed or permanently disabled. A certain amount of "it could never happen to me" bravado and gallows humour stopped people from losing their nerve. At funerals, people would say that "he/she died doing what they loved" which was true, but this was mainly to distract from the reminder of our mortality, while doing the things that we - the living - love.

Those psychological skills, as a rock climber, mountaineer, bungee jumper, skydiver... they all now worked against him. He knew what it felt like, to be on the edge of a perilous drop, with nothing holding him safe except his own grip, and his own sanity: to not hurl himself over the edge.
At the top of tall buildings, on a mountain, or at a cliff-top, it troubled him how easily he could just jump off. He had to stay away from the edge; not because he wanted to keep himself safe, but because he didn't know if he could trust himself to not just jump. It would be so easy. It was the ease of it that troubled him. The proximity to a fall that would deliver a swift death called to him like a siren. Instead of being appalled by the fear of death, there was an allure.

When learning to climb, people clung to the rocks with white knuckles. They kept their bodies pressed as close to the cliff face as they could, as if being flat against the surface would mean that they were somehow safer from the pull of gravity. Most people were not psychologically prepared to be climbers or mountaineers. People on mountains collapsed on the flat ground, when sheer drops to either side of them overwhelmed them. Our instincts tell us to lower our centre of gravity, but when you are up high, gravity can only pull you down. It doesn't work, putting yourself closer to the cliff or the ground. You will still fall to your death.

There was something different about him. Sure, he wasn't the only one with the strange mutation of the mind, that allowed him to overcome the self-preservation instincts, but it was rare. Most people dislike heights. Most people are scared of falling. Had he always had this ability to put himself in a position of peril, and to overcome the instinct to simply freeze, to overcome the instinct to not jump out of the aeroplane, or climb up high where you could fall.

Possibly through repeated exposure to perilous situations, he had become immune to the threat of death. He had become comfortable, being in situations that put your own mortality as the immediate and most pressing concern. Sure, you could die crossing the road, but most people aren't thinking about that. Those first few times that you jump out of a plane, you most certainly are thinking "what if my parachute doesn't open?".

But the what ifs can be set to one side. What if I end up in Hell? What if I change my mind, in the split second before I die, when I'm past the point of no return?

Death is the great unknown, and we intrinsically fear the unknown. He had become well practiced at entering the unknown, in mortal peril. Who knows how you're going to feel, plummeting towards the ground at terminal velocity? He knew.

In a way, he had answered too many questions that previously had comforting answers dreamt up by priests, shamen and witchdoctors. The answers of the unknown, and of the intrinsic fear of death that dwells within all mortal creatures, for the purpose of self preservation instinct, had been given by those who sought to profit from believable fairy-tales for simple minded idiots. His rejection of organised religion gave him little comfort, in an uncaring universe.

Science tried to give answers, but it could offer no meaning. Why was anything the way it was? It just was. Even science broke down at some point, demanding that those who studied it just accepted the cold hard equations that revealed themselves in the mathematical patterns that were observed in reality. However, science had nothing to say about how to adjust to the incomprehensible vastness of the universe, the insignificance of existence and the seeming finality of death.

Science demonstrably showed that there was nothing after death. After the neurons of your brain ceased in their electrical dance, you were gone. There is no soul. A person is nothing more than the quantum potential, held in a brain. Consciousness is nothing more than an illusion, an unintended consequence of the vast complexity of an organ belonging to an organism that was only intended to allow genes to replicate.

What had he done, opening Pandora's Box by studying theoretical physics, and all the applied sciences that were derived from the fundamental rules that governed the universe? It was if by pulling back the curtain, and shattering the illusion of the theatre that played out in front of his eyes, he had of course ruined the enjoyment of life.

The willing suspension of disbelief was necessary to get any enjoyment out of any theatrical presentation. For sure, the sets were made of wood, and the birds were painted onto the background and never flapped their wings. For sure, it wasn't really snowing when a stage-hand in the rafters tipped a bucket of white polystyrene balls from above, but the illusion was passable if you didn't pick it to pieces.

He had picked everything to pieces. By relentlessly asking "but why" until the question made no sense anymore, nothing made any sense anymore. When he had reached the realisation that he was nothing more than an insignificant speck in a universe that was as good as infinitely huge, and incalculably complex, it was hard to return to a simpler, happier time, when there was some mystery and joy in things. When you can reason everything from basic principles, there is no more magic in the world. When the magician's trick can be picked apart by logic and reason, he turns from an entertainer bringing joy and delight to his audience, to a con-man.

Everything had turned to shit for him. With a Midas touch, he now applied sharp reason and logic to everything he saw, and the curtain was permanently pulled back. He saw humanity's ugliness. He saw people fighting and fucking each other over, and just vast numbers of total idiots, everywhere he turned. His heart was broken. Where had the beauty and mystery all gone? What questions were there really left to ask, when it seemed like all could be answered on his own, using base principles.
Through extrapolation, he saw no more point in continuing his life, than a scientist would in repeating an experiment that has been proven beyond all reasonable doubt to yield the same results time and time again. Only a fool does the same things expecting different results, he was often fond of saying. If you keep putting garbage in, you'll keep getting garbage out.

The world had exhausted him. In love with ideas of building a utopia as a child and young man, he now accepted that there was no shortage of good ideas, but there was also no shortage of people who didn't want to see them implemented. There were too many vested interests. People had too much to lose. He couldn't fight the world anymore, with reason and logic, and arguments about the greater good. Nobody wanted the greater good. Most people just wanted to be at the top of the pyramid, king of the hill.

Perhaps that's why men climbed mountains, because for a brief moment when you stood on the summit, you could count yourself amongst just a handful of people who had faced great adversity to be higher than almost everybody else on the planet at that moment. Standing alone on the top of Mount Everest, anybody else you could see, with solid ground under their feet, would be literally beneath you. The air passengers and astronauts in the International Space Station don't count: they didn't walk there, on their own legs, and they're not standing on Earth.

That was a brave thing, to get into an aeroplane or a rocket. We have become desensitised to it, now that jet travel is commonplace, but imagine those first adventurers in space flight and aeronautics. Imagine again, how mad it is to put yourself in a position where you could fall to Earth.
So, he supposed it was apt, that he should end his life in this way: falling.

He walked up the steps, to where the bridge departed from the land, crossing the chasm below, held in space by the tensioned steel structure that towered above. He started to cross the bridge to the opposite side, that he had no intention of reaching.

In a dreamlike state now, his vision narrowed. His hearing was dulled. The fine detail of the universe around him seemed to fall away. He no longer noticed the cars driving across the bridge: their engine noise, and the rush of air as they went past. He no longer noticed the people, who were photographing themselves, talking to each other and headed to their own unknown destinations. He no longer noticed the rumble of a jet passing ahead, or the blast of a horn on a giant ship, that passed under the bridge, on the river below. He was now living his daydream, with everything playing out exactly has he had pictured it so many times before.

Reaching the centre of the bridge, he turned to the barrier. He couldn't hesitate for a single moment. If he hesitated, then doubt would enter his mind, and he would start to have thoughts: rational thoughts. He would start to re-analyse things. He would start to talk himself out of what he was going to do next. He would start to think about the "what if?"s He would start to enter some unknown situation, out of control from the destiny he had chosen. Things could easily get out of his hands. Some kindly good Samaritan could step in. The police could become involved. Psychiatrists. People to save him from himself.

He threw his leg over the barrier, and lowered his foot to the little ledge the other side without a pause. He then brought his other foot to meet the other on the ledge. He was now stood with his back to the river, facing onto the bridge, but on the outside of the barrier. He stared dead ahead for just a second, steeling himself to make the final moves.

He twisted his body 90 degrees, and swung his left foot out into space. Now, he swivelled on his other foot on the little ledge, and reached behind himself, grabbing the handrail of the barrier, with the bridge now at his back. He returned his left foot to the little ledge, with his feet now pointing outwards.

Pausing to look down, he didn't really see anything. His vision had glazed over. He knew that to focus on what was below him, and to consider the height that he was at, would be to invite a sense of peril into his mind. He had put himself into a trance-like state. All of the mental rehearsals beforehand had prepared him for this. All of the times he had pre-visualised these steps, meant that he was now following a dance routine, and his mind was quiet and calm. All he had to do was exhale, and make his final move.

His stomach rose in his chest, constricting in his neck, before he even released his grip. His body anticipated the weightlessness, before he had even stepped off the ledge. He knew he was going to jump, before he had even done it. He knew he had passed the point of no return - psychologically - before he had even physically started the process. The decision had been made in his brain, and the signals were being sent to his muscles, but he was already conscious that he had done it. He had jumped, even though his hand still gripped the barrier and his feet were still on the ledge.

Now, he was just a passenger. He felt himself let go of the handrail, and let his arms drop to his side. He felt himself squat slightly so that he could launch himself off the ledge. He felt himself straighten up, springing forward and away from the bridge. He brought his arms up, above him and pushed out his chest, forming a 'Y' shape with his body, as he cut through the air.
He didn't tumble. He fell fairly flat, with a slight incline towards the ground, as he gently rotated towards a head-first plummet to Earth.

He felt the air briefly rushing past his face, and heard the noise of wind get increasingly loud. He didn't see the ground coming towards him. It was all too quick, in the end.

Then, blackness and silence.

Stick that in your pipe and smoke it.

Tags: #suicide

This is a story about being locked in...

Let me quote from a poem called The Panther by Rainer Maria Rilke:

His weary glance, from passing by the bars,

Has grown into a dazed and vacant stare;

It seems to him there are a thousand bars

And out beyond those bars the empty air.

 

The pad of his strong feet, that ceaseless sound

Of supple tread behind the iron bands,

Is like a dance of strength circling around,

While in the circle, stunned, a great will stands.

 

But there are times the pupils of his eyes

Dilate, the strong limbs stand alert, apart,

Tense with the flood of visions that arise

Only to sink and die within his heart. 

Some of us do not seem to suffer in captivity. Some of us even thrive. "This is great: it's so comfortable, warm and dry in this big building" one pig says to another. "Yeah, I know and they keep bringing us all the food we can eat". Have these hogs found hog's heaven?

Perhaps this analogy serves well to explain why I bite the hand that feeds me. Perhaps it explains why any short-term comfort does not outweigh my long-term unhappiness.

"Stop complaining and take the free food and be grateful to work in a nice warm office" you might admonish me. "There are other people in the world who'd dream of having what you have".

How low do you need me to go? I've been homeless, penniless. I've cleaned hotel kitchens and done the washing up. I've done shitty jobs for shitty money. I've lived on the streets, in parks, crisis houses, and hostels. I've accepted food handouts. You want me to sink even lower? How's about being locked up in police cells, or on secure hospital wards? Is that low enough for you?

I tasted freedom once, when I was briefly released from my lifelong cage, and it was such a sweet feeling. No exams, no holiday projects, no homework, no bullying, no kissing ass to teachers. No interviews, no performance evaluations, no targets, no made-up work, no kissing ass to bosses. Nobody ever said "you're screwing up your academic prospects" or "you're screwing up your career" if I didn't conform and consent to live in a cage.

Obviously it it would be lovely to be a painter, a writer, a musician, a poet, and to be able to cope in captivity. Captivity demands zero creativity. Captivity can't cope with creativity.

Personally, I think the two worlds have been designed to be mutually exclusive. If I tell people at my day job that I wrote a novel they look visibly uncomfortable. The two groups just don't know how to mix, mingle, let alone relate to one another, or ask non clichéd awkward questions.

Am I medically broken for not being able to happily live in my cage, being fattened up for slaughter? Am I medically broken for wanting to be free of mortgages, ISAs, savings accounts, watching my digital bank balance slowly increment upwards. along with the days, weeks and years counting down until the day I die? Am I sick, if I reject a life of stress and anxiety, which benefits my paymasters, not me?

I'm sure there's a medically sanctioned happy pill out there to shut up the part of my brain that says "why are you enslaving yourself?" and turns me into a good well-behaved consumer, dragging a ball-and-chain of debt around with me.

Should I run clamouring for my doctor to anaesthetise me from reality? Should I ask for a chemical lobotomy that would allow me to be well-adjusted to a fucked up world?

Tags: #depression #suicide #career 

This is a story about what happens when the slender thread that holds Damocles' sword dangling above, is severed...

I live a highly leveraged life. When things go well, I can find my savings replenished, debts repaid and the threat of destitution lifted. When things go badly, I can quickly find myself in distress.

Something went 'twang!' in my leg. I'm not sure whether it was muscle tearing, tendon snapping, or something else, but I stood up from where I had been seated on the floor for a couple of hours, and my foot and calf were partially numb and I had lost some range of movement.

That injury - or perhaps damage to an old injury - happened two days before I was due to start a new contract. I needed that new contract. I needed the income from that new contract to pay the rent, bills, service debts, pay friends back who lent me money and generally get on top of a deteriorating financial situation. I was very close to running out of money.

Unfortunately, my leg and foot got worse, not better. There was lots of swelling and I stopped urinating. It was pretty clear that my kidneys had shut down. I had to go to hospital.

The company that hired me said they'd delay my start date by one week. I thought that would be adequate, if I could be quickly discharged. Then, I realised that it was going to take more than a week of treatment to get my kidneys going again. I delayed my start date by another 3 days, and then 2 more days. In the end, there was a total delay of just two weeks, which doesn't sound too bad to me, considering just how sick I'd been in hospital.

I had to discharge myself against medical advice on the weekend before I started my new job. My foot was still swollen and I was taking a lot of painkillers. My kidneys still weren't working efficiently, and the hospital wanted to keep me on dialysis.

I clomped into that new job, wearing an ankle splint that held my floppy foot in place, and expanded enough to not put pressure on the swelling. I worked a couple of days with the ankle splint, and then switched over to a slipper and a crutch. A slipper was the only footwear I could find that would stretch enough to accomodate the swelling.

I worked 4 days and made a good first impression. I put in a lot of effort into hitting the ground running. Unfortunately, I had to go back to hospital for blood tests and potentially more dialysis. I got the all clear from the hospital, which was a big relief. However, nobody had done anything to fix my leg/foot and I hadn't even been able to get my painkiller prescription refilled.

The following Monday morning, I was taking a cocktail of whatever medication I'd managed to get my hands on. We had a meeting where we all stood up. I was unsteady on my feet. My mind was cloudy. It was fairly obvious that I was unduly affected by medication, right at that unfortunate moment. My boss suggested I take another week off work, to recover properly. I was incredibly grateful for that.

I spent a week in bed, popping painkillers. My foot improved to the point where I could wear a normal shoe and I didn't need a crutch, although my walking was rather ungainly. On the Monday I went back again, the adrenalin of the situation carried me through that all important first meeting and everything seemed to be going OK.

Then, nausea surged up inside me. I spent the whole morning, feeling like I was about to throw up at any minute. I had all kinds of meetings to attend and I had to sit there, feeling sick, just keeping my mouth shut about it and pretending to be OK.

At lunchtime, I forced down a can of cola, knowing it contained some anti-emetic chemicals that might calm my nausea.

Things were not improving and a colleague asked how things were going. I said that the day had started OK, but I'd been struggling a bit. I said I'd be OK.

My boss called an informal meeting with me and asked if everything was OK. I explained that I felt everything was fine in the morning, but then I'd been having waves of nausea. I said that I really didn't need to go home or anything and that everything would probably be OK. I really didn't feel fine. I felt sick and I wanted to lie down. My boss suggested I take some more time off, and come back when I was feeling better. I had secretly wanted to go home and lie down that afternoon. I was grateful to not have to sit bolt upright at a desk, feeling so sick. I said I'd be back the next day, or the day after at the latest. Colleagues cheerily waved goodbye.

When I got outside the office, I didn't feel relieved. I felt like I might have been tricked into taking the bait. I felt like I had fallen at the final hurdle. I felt like I had failed a final test. I should have toughed it out. It felt like I gave up too easily. It felt wrong.

I got home and collapsed into bed. By this point I was sweating hot & cold as well as overcome by nausea. It was a slight relief to be able to lie down in a quiet darkened bedroom. Then, I noticed a bunch of missed calls from my agent. I immediately knew what that would be about.

I wanted to put it off but I decided to face speaking to the agent right away. Using the layers of complexity of end-client, consultancy and agency arrangements, they cooked up some cock-and-bull story that was basically: "Whatever your boss said about going back to work when you're feeling better, that's not the case. You're not going back to work. Your contract is terminated".

I earned 4 days money. That was enough to pay for a month's rent & bills.

There's no way I can apply & interview for another another contract, get the legal and accountancy things set up, start working, submit my invoices and get paid, before I run out of cash.

My foot's still busted and I'm still taking painkillers - albeit at a much lower dose now - and I'm not exactly in much of a fit state to start work, let alone face another gruelling battle to find and win a new contract.

There's just no way the numbers add up. There's just no way I can be lucky enough to pay this month's rent - which is due in 4 days time - and get my cashflow moving again fast enough to not run out of money entirely.

I need to move all my stuff into storage and leave my apartment. I need to try and get the lettings agent to find somebody to take over the apartment from me, or else lose my deposit.

I need to box up all my stuff, and get the hell out of my home. I just can't afford it. I've run out of runway.

Where I'm going to live, I don't know. What I'm going to do next, I don't know.

My confidence has taken a huge dent, and I can't see myself facing gruelling interview panels anymore. I can't see myself suffering the highs and lows of the job market, after such a horrific recent ordeal. I can't see any kind of way that things are going to get sorted out, without total collapse and destruction.

Suffice to say, depression and suicidal thoughts stalk me at every turn. Of course I just want to die. Of course I don't want to lose my home and suffer the indignity of being destitute. I can't face the stress of fighting back from nothing again. I've been to the bottom and back, and I know I can do it, but do I want to repeat that? No way. I'm exhausted. I'd rather just lay down and die.

I was touched by the outpouring of support on Facebook, during my acute kidney failure. I'm aware that there's someone in my life who's grown very close to me. I have a sister, a niece. However, I can't picture any kind of recovery from this point. I just can't see a route forward, to any kind of position that I'll be able to tolerate. Things are going to get wrecked, and things are going to be almost impossible to repair and replace. That kind of devastating blow is a hard one to take and come back from.

Right now, I'm just avoiding dealing with reality. I'm sleeping, watching feature length documentaries and generally trying to bury my head in the sand.

Everything is far too overwhelming, and I know that my thoughts will automatically leap to the conclusion that suicide is the best option.

She was amazing while I was in hospital. In fact she's been amazing full stop. But, it's been exhausting and stressful for her, and it's negatively impacted her life, her health and her great career. I'm dragging her down. I'm bad news. She's genuinely going to be better off without me, now that I lost that contract and all hope is sunk.

I'm not going to make the argument anymore today, but that's what I'm going to make my next few blog posts about: an attempt to persuade you that the humane thing to do is to let me escape any further pointless suffering, and to spare the drawn-out pain that those who care about me will witness, as my life gets ripped to pieces by the vultures.

Fine margins. Things can come down to the finest of margins. One little thread goes snap, and a whole life comes crashing down.

It's the beginning of the end.

Tags: #suicide

This is a story about the rising sun...

My toes are literally a bloody mess. I have new smart formal black leather work shoes, that have not been broken in. I have been wearing an ankle brace on my left foot, because the muscle, tendons and nerves are all screwed up and it's difficult and painful to walk on that foot when I can't raise it and the muscle at the back of my leg - particularly around my hamstring - is swollen and tender.

I get up and strap this contraption to my leg, which involved pumping up some inflatable bubbles. One of the little inflatable pouches has developed a leak. Without the pouches being inflated, it seems that the velcro strap around my calf just slides down, and the plastic cover that goes over the top of my foot and up my shin, seems to work its way out of position and start giving me incredible pain. Basically, the ankle brace isn't really designed for walking 15,000 steps, commuting all over London and having to travel to fucking hospital every night after work for pointless blood tests.

To cap everything off, what nobody realises is just how close to breaking point, self sabotage, suicide, fucking myself up and everything that entails, I was. It's almost as if the universe has decided to throw all the consequences of a full on don't-give-a-fuck supercrack relapse at me, except that never happened. That's not to say I wasn't all prepared to press the fuck it button in the event that the job hunting fiasco carried on a moment longer. That's not to say that I wasn't already at the end of my rope. I was fucked off with everything. I was stressed and depressed and I'd reached my limit. Life was unsustainable.

Life is unsustainable if you can't pay your rent, pay your bills, buy food, afford to leave the house. Life is unsustainable if you're on collision course with bankruptcy that's going to make you unemployable. Life is unsustainable if you're doing everything that's within your control to do, but those things that are outside your control are not going your way, and there's no way you can make anything go faster or create a different result.

I got my result. I got my contract. I started the new job and I like it. I'm very happy with what I'm doing and who I'm working with. I'm overjoyed that my bank balance is moving in the right direction again, and I'm earning more than I'm spending to simply be alive. It costs money just to stand still. It costs money just to breathe the air and look at the moon and the stars. It costs money just to drink the rainwater. Finally, I'm getting money in again, and it's flowing in fast, which it needs to do because who knows how long my health can take this fucking rollercoaster bullshit.

Anyway, two weeks ago, I went from being suicidally depressed and giving up, to the point where I literally though there's no point even bothering going to hospital. I'd been pissing grey-black liquid and then it stopped. I stopped pissing. It was clear my kidneys had packed up. My leg/foot was fucked: numb, hanging limp and useless, and swelling up like a motherfucker. My trouser snake was seriously traumatised and had swollen up to the point where it was an almost unrecognisable blob of badly damaged flesh. There was skin that was literally peeling off, revealing pink rawness underneath. There was plenty of blood, of course.

The hospital wondered why I was resistant to the idea of a catheter. The doctors puzzled over why there was so much blood in the tiny bit of urine I managed to squeeze out as a sample. The catheter point came up again and again, but 'luckily' my bladder was empty, because my kidneys had completely failed. The doctors scanned with ultrasound, and found not a single drop of wee in my bladder. My kidneys were well and truly knackered.

This is the sort of shit that's supposed to happen if I go on a 10-day supercrack bender, where I end up hiding under my own bed and barricading every door in the house. This sort of shit only happens when I stop eating and drinking, and only ingest highly toxic chemicals that are known to be super destructive to poor kidneys. I had become so well practiced in the routine of the binges, that I knew exactly what shade of dark brown and metallic smell of blood, my urine had to have to indicate that it was time to either go to hospital or perhaps have a drink of some water and stop killing myself with deadly chemicals.

The really fucking annoying thing is that all that fucking happened this time is that I sat on my leg a bit funny. It's so fucking ridiculous. I'd been drinking isotonic drinks and generally looking after myself, avoiding deadly Chinese supercrack. What the actual fuck? How can this be the worst ever fucked up that I've ever ever been? Why the fuck does this have to co-incide with my chance to work my way out of the shitty situation I'm in? Why does this have to fuck up my plans for some nice meals out, holidays and to just generally enjoy not shitting myself about running out of money? All I have to do is turn up to work, and not fuck up for 5 or 6 months, and everything's fucking peachy again. I can do that. I've done that loads of times.

Why do I have to work so fucking hard for this? Why do I have to fight the doctors all the way, to understand that it's not just a job, but there's my whole sanity and will to live on the fucking line here. There's my whole fucking livelihood and future on the line here. It doesn't matter how much I wave the "serious medical problem" card, nobody gives a shit: it's a commercial market. I'll replaced overnight, with no qualms. That's business. That's the way of the world I work in.

The fact that I'm turning up to work, not looking too bad, and just about able to cope with the foot, kidney and cock problem, is a fucking miracle. The fact I haven't just said "OK, it's too fucking hard" and killed myself in a blaze of supercrack glory, is a fucking miracle. I've got the fucking stuff. I don't even want to take it. I want this fucking job.

Maybe that's the point.

Maybe that's the test: how bad can I want a job. I've never really wanted a job that badly. I've just wanted the fucking money, and really all I've wanted is to be able to take supercrack. The job has been just a means to an end; and that end is supercrack.

How can you just pause your addiction for 6 months, 9 months, 12 months, and then pick it up again? Well, it's the same skills you develop when you get a boring as fuck full-time permanent job. You learn to put up with you fucking shit job for fucking years don't you? Same fucking thing. You just count down the hours, minutes and seconds, until it's time to get the party started. I can pick up and put down my addiction just as easily as you pick up and put down anything: a meaningless thing you didn't mean to pick up, and you hastily just put it back and never give it a second thought. Scary, isn't it?

I've got some shit worth fighting for. I've got rid of a flatmate who was leeching away my cash. I've got a lovely girlfriend. I've got a nice place to live - albeit rented. I've got this well paid contract on a quite interesting project with quite interesting people. I've got money coming in, just in time to stave off any financial problems and replenish my dwindling savings. I've got the opportunity to have a nice lifestyle of eating out, travel and generally not stressing about money, and sharing that with a wonderful girl.

However, it's a pill that's too bitter to swallow, to have all that smashed up and taken away, right in front of my very eyes.

My kidneys will recover on their own, in time. My one-eyed trouser snake is recovering surprisingly fast, although it's still out of commission. I can live with the foot/leg problem - albeit by using copious amounts of pain relief. I can tolerate the risks. I can do the job. I can make it fucking work.

The demands of the fucking hospital are tipping me over the edge at the moment. The lengthy trips across London after work for blood tests are the very last thing I need. The stressful arguments with doctors who don't understand the reality of needing money to pay rent and bills, otherwise being evicted and bankrupted. Didn't these stupid fucks ever play Monopoly? You can't stand still. You have to roll the dice. It costs money just to be in the game - to be alive. You've always got to pay somebody. There's always somebody sending you a bit of mashed up tree that's been pressed into flat thin white rectangles, covered with inky hieroglyphics, demanding your money. There's always a bill for breathing.

I know how to win at this stupid game. I know how to get loads of fucking money, so you can beat those cunts who keep sending you envelopes, demanding money with menaces. "Give us all your money or else!"

I can get in front. I can get to the point where life is enjoyable again. I can beat the stress and anxiety.

Except I can't, because my kidneys are being slow to recover.

Slow to recover.

That's all it is.

I'm pissing plenty.

My kidneys are making plenty of wee.

My potassium is safely within the limits.

There's not a fucking problem. Leave me the fuck alone and stop making me do extra shit, because I'm maxed out commuting to my job, and making a good first impression on my first week.

If you want to fucking help me out, you can figure out what the fuck is wrong with my leg/foot. You [doctors] didn't even scan it, did you? You were far too busy saving my fucking life by getting my kidneys rebooted, but you didn't realise that my life was already under threat of suicide. It says in my notes that the last time I was in hospital, it was a psychiatric admission because I couldn't keep myself safe. That was two weeks in hospital, and this kidney shit only lasted 10 days, although I must admit that I discharged myself early. It all matters though. You can't ignore the psychological damage that you might do, and the risk to somebody's life that it might create.

I can tell you with almost certainty that my kidneys will recover on their own. I can also tell you with absolute certainty that I will self-destruct, if my hard won contract gets fucked up and I'm left without that all important income, job, routine, workmates, self-esteem and all the other good stuff that goes along with having a purpose in life.

Fuuuuck. what have I got to do? Change my mobile number? Move house?

I just want to be able to nip to Guy's and St Thomas Hospital - near my work - for any fucking essential shit that needs to happen, after work. I can't be traipsing all across London for some fucking bullshit belt & braces crap.

Like I say, I've got the gun pointed at my temple, and my finger over the trigger, itching to pull it. Just give me an excuse. Make my fucking day.

Tags: #suicide #drugs #addiction #hospital

This is a story about conflict...

Israelis, are you fucking colour blind? The United Nations partitioned Palestine, to create the state of Israel in 1947. Stay behind your fucking border and stop killing Palestinian children with your American planes, bombs, guns, tanks, helicopters and every other piece of advanced military hardware that you have, to terrorise poor people who only have sticks and stones to defend themselves.

Israel, you have nuclear weapons, so the Arab countries that are in your proximity have a right to have them too, to defend themselves. You can't continue to bully and fuck over the poor nations in the region. You've got your territory. It's time to stop being such genocidal maniacs and total arseholes. You're the fucking reason why we have terrorists, along with your American sponsors.

Quit your fucking boo-hoo-hoo about the holocaust, and crying "ANTI SEMITE" whenever the international community criticises your atrocious violation of United Nation resolutions and your brutal assault on your impoverished neighbours. The Jews aren't the only group to have suffered a genocide. Check your fucking history books and have some fucking humility. Ever heard of the Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian Genocide? Quit your fucking self-pity and stay the fuck within your borders. Get the fuck out of Palestine and stop killing children.

Can you see lines on a map? Can you read? Does the name of that place you're bombing or invading have the name of your country on it, or somebody else's? Why do you think that these places have existed for long enough to have borders and names? Do you think it's because some kind of peace and stability in the region has been achieved: an uneasy truce?

So, Saddam probably gassed some Kurds. So fucking what? Boo fucking hoo. Sadam kept a lid on the Sunni vs. Shia bullshit, and kept the fucking Kurds at bay. The goddam Kurds are the thorn in everybody's side: just ask the Turkish. They're like those fucking nutjobs who think Cornwall should be independent from the UK. Bunch of nutters.

The Assads aren't exactly chuffed about American troops occupying the Middle East. How would you like it if some bunch of trigger-happy jumped up twats decided to live in part of your fucking house? Hafaz el-Assad was quite successful at getting the Americans to fuck off. Bashar al-Assad was doing quite a decent job of building a modern Syria, until neighbouring Iraq got illegally invaded and the whole fucking region was thrown into chaos, allowing 'rebels' to have a stab at trying to grab power through violence and coup attempts.

You can dig up dirt on any government, which is trying to maintain stability and control. The longer the region is left to stabilise, the less brutal the government has to be. I'm no fan of the Tory regime, with the evil dictator Theresa May. I would be locked up as a political prisoner - persecuted - for my right to rebel against the government by getting a gun and trying to take power by force. How can people be expected to live under such appalling conditions?

Afghanistan. Ever heard of this shitting place? I'm sure you've heard tales about how easy it's been for countries to take it over and control it. There's lots of history about how the British found it really easy there, and definitely didn't get totally massacred. Then the Russians were there and they had an absolutely wonderful time and didn't have any problems at all. Finally, the Americans decided that they'd have a go at this super soft target, because of the simplicity of the task of conquering this country with a long history of being easily dominated by massive military might. Yes, history has definitely shown that massive numbers of British, Russian and American troops, with all their military hardware, can easily control this strategically important country on the Silk Road. Nobody ever got their arses kicked... presumably. I'd need to check the history books, but I'm sure that it's written down somewhere that this is a totally cool place to invade.

You want to move goods from East to West, but there are only so many passes through the mountains where it's possible to get truckloads of whatever it is you're transporting, to be traded in the Middle East and Europe via Afghanistan. Maybe you've heard of the Khyber Pass and the Silk Road. It's pretty strategically important to have land-based supply chains.

Afghanistan looks innocuous enough on the map, but it's actually super important for anybody who doesn't want to be forced to deal with the Ruskies in the North.

You know sometimes you hear the name of a country and you think "I really want to bomb that country, just because I don't like the name". Sometimes you think "god damn, there's a country with some really nice infrastructure and a thriving economy... we really should bomb the shit out of some of their stuff". That's what Americans think when they hear Libya.

In 1986, three people were killed in a nightclub bombing in Berlin - which is in Germany by the way - so the obvious response was for the Americans, who live nearly 5,000 miles away from Germany and over 6,000 miles from Libya, was to bomb the shit out of the Libyans.

What about this poor bastard, Iran? The country that the US just won't leave the fuck alone. Oil rich and with a highly educated population, Iran has managed to get close to being able to defend itself, despite the US's attempt to use the monarchy to control the population for their own advantage. When the Shah started backing his Arab allies, especially as part of OPEC, the West had no more use for this puppet, and he was driven into exile. Ever since then, endless boo-hoo-hoo propaganda bullshit about how awful it is that now rich twats in Tehran have to act with some cultural sympathy, is fed to us in the West, while internally the country prospers as best as it can, despite bullshit sanctions designed to stop Iran from being able to stand up to the bullying imperialists, and be a strong Arab ally in the Middle East, to counter the disproportionate force of the genocidal Israelis.

In short: the world is a safer place if Iran gets nukes, because then the Israelis might have to stop acting like such utter cunts. If the Yanks and the Israelis stop pissing off the Arabs and destabilising the whole of the Middle East, then terrorism goes away and we all have a nice peaceful co-existence.

Basically, history since the end of World War II pretty much goes like this:

• State of Israel created so that persecuted jews have somewhere to call home
• Israelis start being right bunch of cunts, with American weapons, and pissing off all their fucking neighbours and threatening them with nukes and stuff
• Invasion of Middle East and illegal occupation of countries, pisses of some really poor people
• Americans and American-armed Israelis start killing Arab children and generally acting like fucking Nazis
• Americans jam their thumb up the arse of the Arabs and smear pooh all over their face, just to piss them off
• Israelis keep leaving human faeces on the doorstep of every Arab home
• Eventually, the incredibly poor people who don't have any weapons start chucking stones at the occupying forces, with their body armour and tanks.
• The Yanks and the Israelis start ethnic cleansing, blowing people and shit up and generally pursuing a policy of terrorism.
• A tiny handful of extremely pissed off Arabs blow up some planes, nightclubs, army barracks and other targets, in attempt to get the invading and occupying forces to fuck off out of their countries.
• The Israelis decide to invade and occupy parts of Egypt and Syria, just because they fucking can, because the Americans are backing them and they've got far superior weaponry. They even threaten to nuke the Egyptians.
• The Americans invade and blow everything to fucking pieces and completely destroy all peace and stability in the region.
• Some US government shit that shouldn't have even been in Libya gets attacked. Big deal. Get the fuck out of Benghazi - check the map... it's in Libya, not the United States.
• The Americans blow up a convoy allowing the Libyan leader to be lynched, after already destabilising the whole place by selling guns to both sides.
• "Regime change" is a synonym for "unleashing an unbelievably awful power struggle".
• All the fucking nutters that Gadaffi, Saddam and the Assads kept under control, start fucking up the peace and stability of the region.
• Iran is aggresively and relentlessly fucked over, because they're trying to defend themselves from American-sponsored Israeli aggression.
• The policy of supporting the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine and Golem Heights in Syria, allowing the Israelis to threaten the Middle East with their nukes and generally act like total Nazis, and whinge about anti-Semitism, while committing atrocities, continues to aggravate the Arab world
• Even a white middle-class British man who was born in Wales and grew up in Oxford, can sympathise with how fucked over the whole Arab world is by the Americans and the Israelis, and can understand why they would fight back by throwing stones or even suicide bombing
• Every fucking nutjob thinks their particular ethnic region should be an independent country, even though they couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery, let alone agree how to divide the land and self-govern. The Kurds attempt to fuck Turkey and Syria up. Various religious nutters try to enforce their bullshit patriarchy on whole developed countries, because they're not getting enough sex.

You could say it's all about oil, but in actual fact, all those petrodollars had built some amazing infrastructure and raised living standards exceptionally high in the Middle East. The middle classes were thriving. Educational standards were amazing. The 'developing' world was threatening to become a bit too developed. The Yanks decided to bomb and destabilise, invade and occupy, until the whole of North Africa, the Middle East and the Gulf states were totally fucked, and collapsed into internecine conflict.

In 1973, the world got a very clear message from the Arab world: don't fuck with us, because we can turn off the oil taps. The Arab world asked to be treated with some fucking respect, because they wield some power too. The Yanks didn't like that very much.

The Brits had done a decent enough job of chopping up the Middle East and installing some rulers who would give the region some stability. OK, so it was stability achieved by machine-gunning large numbers of religious nutjobs, like the pesky Wahhabists. OK, so a few militant Kurds needed to be liquidated. Call it collateral damage. You can't argue with the fact that it was at least peaceful after World War II, thanks to the Brits understanding the history and culture of the region very well.

The Americans are a bit stupid when it comes to the definition of terrorism. When the IRA would blow up a pub or a hotel or something like that, that wasn't terrorism. When the Israelis would terrorise all the impoverished people in the Middle East using American high-tech weaponry, that wasn't terrorism.

Israel and the Americans got annoyed that somebody threw a rock at them that harmlessly bounced off their kevlar body armour, so they decided they'd better take over the management of the Middle East, by bombing the shit out of everybody, killing civilians without giving a fuck and getting rid of 'regimes' that kept the whole region stable.

Obviously, it pissed the Yanks off that they were asked nicely to respect other countries and treat them with decency. Obviously, it pissed the Yanks off that they couldn't just take everything they wanted, whenever they wanted it, while the whole world starves in squalor and they live in opulent luxury. After the indignity of having to pay slightly more for their petrol in the 1970s, they decided to destroy an entire continent's living standards and directly and indirectly kill millions of people, just because they wanted to feel like a "big guy".

More of the history of the Middle East and North Africa is about the Brits and the Americans being able to sell weapons and supply the Israeli military, than it is about oil. Oil only enters the equation, because the cartel of OPEC pisses off arrogant Americans, who think they're the boss of everything and need not show an ounce of respect or diplomacy towards anybody.

So, if you were wondering why we have to suffer Nazis like Nigel Farage, Donald Trump, Geert Wilders, Marine Le Pen and other truly deplorable twats who threaten to destroy the peaceful world we've been able to enjoy since the last world war, then the answer is: because America has totally screwed up the Middle East, with Britain tagging along for the ride, even though us Brits actually stabilised the region in the first place.

There's so much disproportionate revenge from the United States, using weapons of mass destruction. You kill one of their soldiers who's invaded your country and is occupying your land, and they'll drop an atomic bomb on hundreds of thousands of your civilians. That's the kind of bloodthirsty evil shit of a country that we're dealing with: a bully that's armed to the teeth, and will inflict horrible death and suffering using any excuse.

If you want to know why we can't all get along, why we have all those security checks at airports and we're scared of Arab-looking men, it's because we fucking deserve a good kicking. We've been part of America's global campaign to be an absolute dick to everybody with a brown face, kill mind-boggling numbers of innocent people and cause unimaginable suffering, in the interests of imperial arrogance.

How much, exactly, do you want to have? The 1950s sounded pretty awesome, and the 1960s too. Why not stop there? Why go marauding all over the globe, fucking up other people's shit? Why on earth does America need to flex its muscles and bully impoverished nations?

The Brits seemed to develop a smidgen of humility, and stop pissing the Irish off so much. Ireland is Ireland. The British invasion and occupation of Ireland is something we should apologise for and be ashamed of. You can see what a bad attitude the Brits had, when you look at the Argentinian Malvinas, which fucking arrogant Brits seem to think are somewhere off the coast of Cornwall and are called the Falkland Islands.

Empires are one thing, but fucking with the stability of a region is quite another. The American quest to fuck up Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya and just about anywhere else that's peaceful and prosperous, but doesn't buy much Coca Cola and McDonalds, is the reason why we have these 'national security threats'.

So, 52% of the UK population are intent on fucking up the unity of a peaceful Europe, because they don't like immigrants and refugees, and they're fucking paranoid about terrorism. But think about why people might want to hurt us, or might want to come here: because their home countries got fucked up by us, as part of an American-led campaign to keep the poor in their place. Americans can't feel prosperous unless they're making somebody else suffer.

A billionaire reality-TV star, who's completely useless as a businessman, having been bankrupt many times, has now been elected leader of the 'free' world, by being a racist; a Nazi. How did this come about? What kind of world has resulted in building massive walls, revoking visas and banning visitors from certain countries? How on earth does any of this not sound like we're just repeating the mistakes that led to world wars?

This is not democracy in action. This is awful. The marginal Brexit victory, and the technical victory of Donald Trump - he got less votes overall - does not show the will of the people. It shows the disgusting attitude of the people. These weren't votes... this was an opinion poll that showed that there are a terrifying number of racist cunts in our midst.

Democracy and capitalism are not only failing, but they're giving credibility to awful things. There's no way I can respect a vote to abuse immigrants. There's no way I can respect the portion of the electorate who want to do awful things to their fellow human beings.

Try to remember that the Nazis didn't take their power by force. Try to remember that we all have an individual responsibility to vote with our conscience, not with malice, xenophobia and bigotry. It takes effort to be kind and humanitarian, but we have a responsibility to act with decency; both collectively and individually. It's a terrible thing when a gang of thugs starts throwing their weight around, and thinking it's OK because there's safety in numbers.

We may well find that democracy is completely flawed, when people turn nasty, because they're protected by the anonymity of the voting booth. Imagine if there was a permanent public record of how you voted: you could be held jointly responsible for the damage, suffering and deaths you caused through your nastiness, thinking that you could get away with it. Imagine being prosecuted for a crime against humanity, because you voted for something so evil and selfish, that was harmful to so many people.

It's our job as citizens of democratic countries to curb the warmongering ambitions of our political leaders. Every prime minister and president wants a war to call their own. It's our collective responsibility to muzzle these dangerous dogs. These wars should not be fought in our name, even if some of us are stupid enough to be swayed by the propaganda.

Take another look at recent history, and try to look at it without the Hollywood bullshit, that tells us the world is made up of good guys and bad guys. Why don't you find out what it was really like to live in Iraq under Saddam, Syria under Assad, or Libya under Gadaffi, before these places were torn to shreds by forces unleashed when America and a few allies - like us Brits - attacked, invaded, bombed, drone struck and generally destabilised.

Take another look at why the 'bad guys' - who are far fewer than you might imagine - want to 'kill us'. Think about motive. Think about what we might have done to other countries, that makes our own countries a target for retaliation. Think about what injustices we perpetuate, oppressing people. What can these unarmed victims do, in the face of these invading armies who have all the latest high-tech weaponry? 

Re-tell the story, without bleating on about the holocaust - it was a long time ago, by the way - and painting this demonic figure of 'radical islam'. Let's hear the story about illegal invasions, occupation, aggression of militarily superior nations against impoverished nations with limited ability to defend themselves. Let's hear the story about the bullies beating up anybody who's advancing and improving: keeping things unfair; unbalanced.

If having nukes means that you act with kindness, restraint and generosity, then maybe it's OK if only a few nations have them: countries that set a good example for the rest. However, having nukes seems to make a country act with aggression, arrogance, cruelty and a thirst for world domination. Therefore, the only solution is for everybody to have nukes, so nobody gets bullied. The other solution would be for every nation to give up all their nukes, but that ain't ever going to happen.

Anyway, everything looks like it's about to blow. Everywhere I look, things are fucked. Greece and Italy are in big economic trouble. Turkey is so strategically important, but also in the middle of a massive power struggle. Iran is exercising its rights as a sovereign country to develop weapons to defend itself, but America doesn't need much of an excuse to start wars and fuck countries up. Iran's probably one of the last stable proper Islamic republic democracies in the Middle East: the Iranians voted "Yankee go home". As the weather warms up, the huge movement of migrants will start again. The French are pissed off with having everybody trying to get to the UK, fucking up Calais. A wave of right-wing Nazism threatens a clean-sweep across the globe: Le Pen and Wilders joining the likes of Farage and Trump, in a world that thinks that racism is suddenly OK now. All it's going to take is one trigger event - a stock market slump, economic calamity or a major act of terrorism - and a massive domino effect will be triggered. Take a look in your history books and tell me what's happened before when people feel poor and insecure. Fuck the stats: the reality is that most families are just about managing, and it's fucking stressful. Something's gotta give.

Debt levels are unsustainable, suicides are soaring. All the omens are very bad. There's definitely a whiff of the 1930s about what's going on, with hints of another Great Depression and the rise of fucking insane nationalist Nazi parties. It all makes me feel rather nauseated.

I reckon we've probably got one chance to step back from the brink of disaster, but nobody seems to be capable of saying "ooops, I was wrong. I made a mistake". Nobody seems to want to say "look, I know that so-and-so won on a technicality, but really, I don't think our democracy should be run by a bunch of racist cunts".

Everybody's too busy just about managing to be able to understand what's really going on and act with some human decency, rather than having our emotional buttons pushed by the very people who have exploited us and pushed us to breaking point.

Why are you not more worried about history judging you to be one of the bad guys, than taking a clear stand and fighting for what's obviously the right humanitarian, compassionate thing to do?

Tags: #politics #history

This is a story about artistic integrity...

He who pays the piper calls the tune. Does the piper ever get to play, for their own amusement and freedom of expression?

If you look at my life strategy, it's pretty insane. I've picked a career that uses skills that I mastered as a child, and I now find the job mind-numbingly boring, easy and soul-destroying. I've picked an industry which is essentially just keeping a running total of who owes who what: simple addition and subtraction. I've chosen maximum income, for minimum effort. My life is constrained - certain rules have to be adhered to - but I have set things up so that I can jump through the pointless hoops as effortlessly as possible.

My theory is, that if I were to mix work and pleasure, then it would break my heart whenever I had to compromise. Let's imagine my passion in life is painting. I'd like to paint 1970's sci-fi inspired futuristic cityscapes, clinging to the rocky surface of distant planets. Those paintings are very intricate; detailed. The attraction of that art, for me, is the sense of scale that's given when you paint thousands of tiny windows on the buildings, and lots of tiny people in space suits, wandering around in their futuristic world. However, there's probably only a niché market for such paintings, and they'd take hundreds of hours to paint. Commercially, I'd be far better off splattering a canvas with bright primary colours and calling it abstract modern art - it would take far less effort and would have a much broader appeal. In order to pay my rent, I'd be economically incentivised to produce crap that I hated, because it would be much more profitable.

My strategy is to earn a lot and not work very hard, so I have lots of money and spare time to pursue whatever passions I have, without compromise.

Of course, there is always compromise.

Luckily, there is a Nick Grant who is a rapper, a Nick Grant who is a photographer, a Nick Grant who is an expert in sewerage processing, a Nick Grant who is a lecturer in American Studies at the University of East Anglia, a Nick Grant who's a toastmaster, a Nick Grant who's an expert in credit risk management, a Nick Grant who's a researcher in the Elementary Particle Physics department at the University of Warwick, a Nick Grant who's the CEO of Severn Trent, a Nick Grant who's a Labour Party candidate, barrister and head of legal services for Sainsbury's, a Nick Grant who's the concertmaster of the San Diego Symphony Orchestra, a Nick Grant who's the strategy director for Cancer Research UK, and there's even a series of fictional Nick Grant Adventure books by Jamie Dodson.

This means that I can pretty much write whatever I want on the public Internet, under my real name, without the fear that most salary earning wage slaves would have, that our employers will discover our deepest darkest secrets, prejudicing our career progression and perhaps even jeopardising our employment.

However, ex-colleagues from places like JPMorgan and HSBC occasionally visit this site, and pick up juicy tidbits about the implosion of my life and see the thrashing of my legs, beneath the surface of the water, when I'm swanning about trying to look as serene as possible in my professional capacity. I have old bosses as friends on Facebook and following me on Twitter.

I took an insane gamble. Instead of locking down my social media to only friends who can be trusted to not gossip with anybody connected with my former employers; instead of editing and censoring myself; instead of setting up a pseudonym - a pen name - I write under my real name, with real details that leave me no plausible deniability, to say "it isn't me" and "it must be another Nick Grant".

I guess there aren't that many people who leave the privileged and highly paid world of financial services and IT, in pursuit of the risky dream of doing something more rewarding in an intangible way. Earning bucketloads of cash is all the reward you'd want, right? Why would you want to earn less money being an electrician? Why would you want to have all that stress and risk your life savings, trying to start your own company? Why would somebody who's been a steady dependable 9 to 5 worker, with decades of dedicated service under their belt, suddenly lose their mind and end up in psychiatric hospitals, drug rehab and homeless?

So many of us dream of making a big change in our lives, but when we face up to the reality of the risks, sacrifices and effort involved, we decide that maybe the timing's just not quite right... maybe we'll do it next year, or the year after. We end up boring our friends and family with our grand plans that will never be implemented: forever on the drawing board.

When somebody is mad enough to unshackle themselves from the golden handcuffs and give something a proper go, it's big news. There are hundreds, if not thousands of bored office-working drones, who are fascinated to know the details of the trials and tribulations of anybody who had the guts to follow through on a plan to retrain in a completely different field, or start a business. When you quit your soul-destroying job, you're the underdog; David taking on Goliath - your former colleagues want to live your exciting life, vicariously. Former colleagues are rooting for you to succeed. Former colleagues want to know if you fail spectacularly, to re-affirm that they made the right decision, staying in their nice safe boring jobs.

Bootstrapping means taking on projects where you're not beholden to somebody for the funding. The whole point of me doing a job I hate, is that it's provided the dosh to do whatever I want without having to kiss ass, kowtow and do things in a way that they approve of. The whole point of founding my businesses with my own money, was so that I could run things exactly how I wanted, without investors and lenders breathing down my neck and making stupid suggestions about my business plan.

When it comes to a personal memoir type project, where I'm pouring my guts out, I'm somewhat burning the bridge back to the straight-laced world of boring jobs for boring people with boring lives. I have a CV that says I've worked for various companies and I have various qualifications. People who get salaried jobs by sending off their CV and going for interviews, are not allowed to have exciting lives where they do things that don't neatly fit into boxes. The world that provides my income has a strict rule: fit in or fuck off.

So, I made a decision. I decided FUCK IT. I decided that I would just write whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. I would be myself, I wouldn't censor, I wouldn't edit and waste time considering what the drones of the corporate world of wage slavery would think about my unorthodox life.

And so, with practice, my passion and - dare I say - my skill, is to document my innermost thoughts and feelings, publicly. It might not be art and it might not be commercial, but it sure as hell isn't compromised. I have moments of fear, where I think that I need to hide my blog, put a sticking plaster over the semicolon tattoo behind my ear, find out just precisely what my former colleagues are prepared to say about me: put them on the spot and say "look, do you judge me on the good work that you saw, or on the secret life that I chose to reveal to you?"

It drove me paranoid and crazy, trying to maintain a squeaky clean perfect professional image, whilst also dealing with all sorts of awful things in my private life. It exhausted me to the point where I lost my mind, covering up the fact that life outside the office was chaotic and unstable, and I didn't want anybody to know that I was just about surviving in grotty student flats, hostels, hotels and friends' sofas. I didn't want anybody to know that my engine had run out of petrol and was running on fumes. I didn't want anybody to know that I had no margin for error, no safety buffer: my finances were on the brink of total disaster.

Why should anybody know these things? If I get stuff fixed up and pick up where I left off, then who would be any the wiser? What people don't know can't hurt them, can it?

However, it hurt me. It hurt me every time a friend thought it was hilarious to tell my ex JPMorgan colleagues things that considerably damaged my reputation. It hurt me every time the grape vine managed to spread gossip about my attempts to find job satisfaction. "I heard you're an electrician now!" a colleague from HSBC who I hadn't spoken to for 6 years, said to me when we connected on LinkedIn. How the fuck do people find this stuff out?

"Oh you were in The Priory... like some kind of rock star. So cool!"

Not cool. That kind of stuff colours people's opinion of you. They make assumptions and whisper behind your back. "Shall we invite Nick to the pub at lunchtime?" somebody says. "No, better not... he's a recovering alcoholic, isn't he?" [I'm not, by the way]

What I write is repetitive. I have no idea what chapter of my life you're going to walk in on. I have no idea what I'm going to be writing about when you dip into my private world. So, I cover the same theme over and over again: I am me.

I'm no longer the straight-laced perfect employee with the immaculate CV. What are those gaps in my employment history? Well, in the context of me being your wage slave, that's none of your fucking business. You don't pay me enough to bribe me to act a certain way and to gag me. You don't pay me enough for me to compromise my integrity, my identity.

I've suffered enough boredom and I've been patient for long enough to have earned the right to be myself; the right to be creative; the right to express myself without hesitation; the right to not have to wear a mask; the right to not live in fear of negative judgement.

What happens if and when the worlds collide? Well, I've set the challenge: it's up to other people to decide whether to judge me on what they see in the office versus what they discover through my candour, in a totally unrelated context.

I'd love to make it into print. I have a penchant for debate, and strong views about government and society. At some point, my ambitions to be an author and to get involved in politics are going to be realised. Every word I write on the public Internet makes me more discoverable to somebody, somewhere, on some topic or other. If I simply wanted a book deal or to raise my profile, I could compromise and conform; I could channel my energy into being commercial and popular.

What does it mean to be authentic? You think it's some fucking option that we all have? You think it's a fucking lifestyle choice?

To be authentic is a risk and it's a privilege. You could lose friends and fall out with your family. You could lose your job. How are you going to find your true voice? The voice that speaks with childlike honesty; fearlessness; tapping into your live stream of thoughts, rather than the lines you've memorised; the act you've learned to play. It takes practice, to be able to express what you feel, rather than say what you think people want to hear. Many of us are disciplined to engage our brains before our mouths: to hesitate, withhold and communicate in a manner that conforms to social norms. We are coached and bullied into hiding our unique outlook and personality.

If I make myself unemployable, I'll be forced to try and monetise the things that I have a natural aptitude for. At the moment, writing is effortless, but I could push myself to write with more purpose, spend time editing and reconnect with some literary agents I started conversations with last year.

If I find myself barred from the land of boring jobs and immaculate CVs, then my energy - my creative output - will have to be expressed in ways that come naturally to me, not just easily. In a way, I'll be unbounded; unleashed; unchained. Of course, it invites hypomania to come and destabilise everything, but at least my crazy projects usually result in cold hard cash in my pocket and something else to add to my portfolio.

I'm scared. I can't play the game any more. I have a contract - ink dried on paper - and I can do the job with my eyes closed. I've been in hospital enough times with kidney problems to know when I'm in trouble, and to know when I can look after myself. I can't humour everybody with this "my health comes first" bullshit anymore. I'm the guy who's pissed copious amounts of blood on more than one occasion, and done the calculations: how long have I got before total organ failure will kill me? I'm the guy who knows when I'm in deep shit, and when I can take a calculated risk.

What scares me more than anything is going through all the same old shit I've been doing since I was a teenager. What scares me more than anything is playing the same fucking games, wearing the stupid fucking mask, and acting and speaking the lines I've learnt and spoken a zillion times before.

I've got a fairly simple plan: conform and comply just enough to get what I want out of some rich fucking banks who I don't give two shits about. The last thing I want to be doing in the world is help some dinosaur of a bank run a simple software project at snail's pace, but they're going to pay me a king's ransom to do it, and it gives me a tiny taste of freedom... I put up, shut up, suffer the boredom, and the reward for my patience is that I keep a bit of integrity; a bit of dignity; a bit of identity.

Maybe I should do this job or that job, people suggest. Wouldn't I be great as a carpet salesman, or a tyre fitter? Isn't my natural calling in life to be a supply chain analyst or a fork lift truck driver?

Maybe it's the mission of the company that I need to get right. Selling people financial products they don't need or want, and profiting on the margin between the borrowing rate and the lending rate, using fractional reserve banking, is hardly going to give you a warm fuzzy feeling, is it? Perhaps I should work for a charity that's managed to help a handful of individuals and a large number of donors to feel better about how disgustingly wealthy they are and ignore the fact that the gap between the rich and poor is growing. Perhaps I should simply find my place in the whole fucked up mess, where I can delude myself into thinking I'm making a positive difference.

But, I've seen too much. I know too much. I know that things are rotten to the core and it sickens me to emotionally involve myself, when everybody wants you to just STFU, keep your head down, do what you're told, not rock the boat and don't for god's sake solve any problems at the root cause.

Writing's the only time I can let rip and not get bogged down by the wilful ignorance and DGAF attitude of those around me. I'm not saying I'm superior and I've got all the answers, but I'm saying that when I get a hunch and I set out to prove my point, I've got plenty of examples of things I've done that have worked, when I'm free from constraints and naysayers.

I love this quote:

"People who say it can't be done should not interrupt those who are doing it"

Somebody's gotta be positive. Somebody's gotta do the math, calculate the risks and take a chance. Somebody has to be brave and stick to their guns. Somebody has to persevere through the setbacks. Somebody has to keep going when the way ahead looks blocked, to figure out how to overcome the obstacles.

I also love this quote:

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat" -- Theodore Roosevelt

I feel gagged. I feel cheated out of the opportunity to demonstrate the best of my abilities; to tap into my creativity and problem solving skills. I feel jealous of those people with inherited wealth, trust funds and other advantages that allow them to dispense with the wearisome world of bullshit jobs, and instead they can flounce around reading interesting things, writing, debating & discussing, composing, painting, drawing, sculpting and generally expressing themselves.

To have those prizes just out of reach, because of the demands of societal conformity, is agonising to the point where it makes me want to give up. I've worked hard enough for long enough that I should be in a different position. I'm left miming the same actions that I've done a thousand times before, in order to keep the money flowing, the rent paid and the food on the table, which is like some kind of psychological torture.

I know it sounds ridiculous, but I knew I would get a contract fairly quickly, and I know that I will be able to run the project really well, very easily. I've seen it all before; done it all before. I can see all the way to the end: no surprises. Because it's all just a means to an end, it makes it that much harder. I've got nothing to prove, and the fact that I'm employed to solve the same old problems in the same old way, time & time again, simply proves that they might as well just give me the money and not bother with the project, if they're not going to listen to the experts who know how to build better systems than these follies; these white elephants.

I've got this easy money contract all lined up. I know what the hell is going on with my kidneys. I've been in hospital enough times with rhabdomyolysis to know when the numbers say I'm fucked, and when the numbers say I've dodged another bullet and I'm fine & dandy. I know when I'm in big trouble and in desperate need of assistance, and I know when my tough little body is patched up and working again.

It's been agonising, to string this client; this consultancy; this agent along, while I've been in limbo: who could have predicted that it'd take nearly 15 hours of dialysis before my kidneys rebooted? Was I ever worried about my life, my health? You're asking the wrong question. You'd have thought that if you pissed absolute jet black liquid and you couldn't feel your foot or your calf, you'd be straight over to A&E, but it doesn't work like that if you're already at the limit of what you can take.

I phoned my client and said I wasn't going to make the 30 minute induction and I was too sick to start work that week. Chances are, that was the end of that: they'd just cancel the contract.

Things in my life are either there to be endured, they're an adventure, something good that's happening, or I've had enough and I'm going to self destruct.

Being in hospital again has been part adventure - I've never had dialysis before - partly something good, in terms of her seeing first hand the shit that I've been through a bunch of times. But there's the actual boring work that has to be endured if I still have a contract by the time I get discharged. There's the self destruct threat, because I've solved all these problems before. Everything's been overcome, so far as I can see. My client will wait until Monday for me to start work, my blood tests are stable and my kidneys are definitely working.

I had no control over whether the client would wait for me to get well. I had no control over when my kidneys would reboot. To discharge myself would have been suicide, so it didn't matter whether I lost the contract or not.

Nobody can see that the recent acute kidney failure is not the root cause of the problem here. Why did I let the problem get so bad? Why am I not afraid of a catastrophic chain of life-changing or life-ending events? My kidneys are working AND the client says I can start work on Monday, but why would I trust my knowledge, experience and the blood test data, and discharge myself, when I could just get another job in a few weeks or months? Why don't I avoid all risk, act like a sensible normal person, and just do everything I'm told?

There's a delicate chain here: I was lucky that my client has waited this long for me to get well, I was lucky that my kidneys recovered quickly, I'm lucky that I have a job that's easy money, I'm lucky that I don't have to suffer more agents and interviews, I'm lucky that I've got a financial lifeline that fixes my cashflow, I'm lucky that this contract keeps me within touching distance of the day when things are stable again, and I have the opportunity to think about doing something rewarding, challenging, creative and everything else I need as the antidote to 20 years of office boredom.

The ticking time bomb exploded, but it was unseen. I couldn't hang on any longer. I couldn't take any more delays and setbacks. My patience for being depressed, stressed and running out of runway, without success at securing a job (that I didn't really want anyway) had expired. I'd been strung along too long. Christmas and New Year slowed everything down and stopped progress, so the agony was drawn out longer than I could take.

Somebody's going to end up not getting what they want.

The doctors want to discharge me with blood tests that show my kidneys are clearing the remaining backlog of toxic crap out of my blood on their own. They want me to have an operation to have a dialysis line put in my jugular vein. They want to do more observation, without dialysis, to know how my kidneys are doing without any assistance.

Her and our friends want me to follow the doctor's advice, and treat my health as if my life hangs by a thread. They care about me. They don't care about my client. They know that there will be other jobs.

I want good quality sleep in my own bed for a couple of nights. I want to try on my ankle splint and get used to getting around on crutches. I want to make a plan for how I'm going to get to work during the tube strike. I want to figure out my medications so I'm not fuzzy-headed and sleepy during the day. I need to not have to start all over again. I need to balance the small risk that my kidneys might take a long time to clear the backlog of creatinine, against the big risk that I can't be out of work any longer, and I can't face starting the job hunt all over again, without depression and stress destroying me.

Yeah, I'm going to feel shit. I was always going to feel shit. I'm going to wish I was more well rested. I'm going to wish things worked out differently. I'm going to wish I could just press the fast forward button and be 6 months further through the year, and everything's gone exactly how I know it's going to go, but I don't have to suffer the boredom, the monotony and the ridiculous deja-vu of solving the same problems in the same way, over and over again.

What's the alternative? I can't cut & run. I can't switch career. I can't chase some stupid pipe dream.

Some people think I'm a know-it-all. Some people think I'm reckless and stupid. Some people think the answer to all my problems is to do the things I've tried before: regular salaried jobs, doctor's advice, safe & sensible behaviour, conformity to the norm.

All I can tell you is, I can make dumb decisions and get myself into deadly situations, but I'm also a bit of an expert in recovering from some very harrowing shit.

It's a bit unfair to ask people who care about me - both loved ones and professionals - to allow me to take what they see as an unnecessary risk, but the flip side is a complex web of psychological risks and consequences that are almost too hard to explain.

If I seem impatient, foolish, arrogant, entitled or somehow like I deserve different treatment and life opportunities to everybody else, all I can say is this: at some point you can't keep trying anymore, you give up and you slip away. At some point, it doesn't seem worth the struggle and the stress, just to line somebody else's pockets and allow them the freedom to pursue their artistic creative ambitions and generally waft around having a lovely time.

If I get what I want, start my job tired and in pain, work for at least 6 months, bored out of my mind and upset that I wasn't well rested and properly prepared; but at least the cashflow hole is plugged, my stress starts to go down, I start to relax about the purse strings, I can show my love and appreciation for the people who I care about and who care about me, I can start to improve my work:life balance and I can start to dream about longer-term ambitions, without torturing myself because things are so far out of reach.

If you think I expect this to happen overnight, you're wrong. I'm forecasting 6 months to stabilise, 6 more months to build up a healthy safety cushion, and another year before I can even dare to dream and start to think about a less soul-destroying life.

As I wrote before, I've got some amazing pieces of the puzzle in place - more love and support than I've ever had in my adult life - but I still can't afford to have other important things slip away for the sake of an acceptably small risk and some short-term pain, discomfort, exhaustion and a bit of extra stress. There is no perfect solution.

There is one thing that nobody can take away from me right at the moment: I'm a penniless writer.

Tags: #writing #art #hospital #career