This is a story about body shopping...

Because I'm a genius, I've figured out a brilliant business plan: buy low, sell high.

It used to be the case that companies would have their own IT staff, because it made sense to have people trained up and retain their skills, given how integral information technology is to every business in this day and age. Businesses would recruit technologists as permanent members of staff, and pay them a professional-grade salary.

Then, the IT crowd figured out that there was a skills shortage and that they were being underpaid for the amount of value that they were generating for their paymasters. Some IT professionals became technology entrepreneurs and others became IT contractors, selling their skills to the highest bidder.

As the year 2000 approached and panic spread about the millennium (Y2K) bug, IT contractors could pretty much name their price. It was quite clear just how valuable IT had become to big business and the running of the technological world around us.

Consultancies started to hoover up all the graduates coming out of the Computer Science degree courses at university, and also maths, physics, engineering and other technical disciplines too. There seemed to be an insatiable demand for anybody who had an aptitude for programming, so why not corner the market in anybody with the slightest ability to write software?

If you can hire a graduate for £25k per annum, how much do you think you could charge a client for a day of their time?

IT contractors probably charge circa £500 a day. The best get £700 to £1,000 per day. The worst get £300 per day.

£25k per annum equates to a cost of less than £70 a day, but you can't ask your fresh uni graduate to work weekends, you're going to have to give them some holiday and you're going to have to train them. Let's assume that our graduate is only billable for 26 weeks of the year and they cost a shitload to train and for taxes and other overheads. That means they cost the 'consultancy' (a.k.a. body shop) about £250 a day... in the absolute worst-case scenario.

A recruitment consultant will charge a 30% mark-up on an experienced IT contractor who's been working for 10+ years and is an absolute expert in their field: the best of the best. So, assuming the contractor is getting £700 a day, the company who needs them is paying £910 a day.

How much do you think our fresh graduate is charged to clients for, given they only cost the consultancy £250 a day? Answer: £1,200 a day and upwards.

This is the consultancy model: place a shitload of inexperienced people on client sites and charge a whopping 400%+ mark-up on them. Leave them to flounder and figure stuff out at the client's expense.

The IT contractor's role is now to go around cleaning up messes left by the poor kids who have the unenviable task of doing a job that they don't have the knowledge or experience to do, while getting underpaid to do it. The IT contractor's role is that of the grown up, the nanny, the only person who's even remotely worth the money.

Most companies are trying to trim their IT budgets and they got their fingers burned by offshoring a load of roles to India and other parts of Asia. You get what you pay for, unless you're paying for inexperienced graduates in this case.

For sure, graduates are smart nice people, strong communicators and they learn quickly. For sure, when "all that IT stuff is done" then you can say goodbye to all those pesky technology people without having costly redundancies.

The reality is that there's a load of crap software out there that's been developed by a bunch of amateurs, and it will fall to bits... if it even works in the first place.

It's professional suicide to write this stuff, but everybody's too busy making easy money doing bodyshopping that nobody important is going to read this. My IT expert friends might read this and chortle "yes that's so true!" but the consultancies are only interested in bums on seats. They don't care who I am or what I have to say: they only want me when the shit hits the fan and they need somebody to come and mop up the mess, as inevitably happens.

It pains me to see IT go from being a profession filled with experts and people who take pride in doing a good job, to being seen as some kind of dirty necessity. It fucks me off when the consultancies suck up to their clients and seemingly agree that there's no long-term value in having software experts in their firm.

"Get the job done, fuck off and let us go back to doing our business" seems to be the attitude. That's why the dinosaurs are dying and the startups are taking over. IT is your business, fools. Look at Amazon: are they a retailler or a technology company, first and foremost? Do you think Amazon is going to sack all their software developers now that they "have a website that works"?

The era of offshoring was a costly mistake that was brilliant for the consultancies, because they got to build huge development centres and skill up their own graduates at the expense of greedy Western corporations. Now the body-shop 'consultancies' in the UK have monopolised the IT contract market, flooding it with inexperienced people and charging top dollar for them.

I'm hoping - and not just for personal gain - that the whole thing comes full circle, and we'll revert to an era of experts being in demand and companies recognising that they need technologists as much as any other business critical function. Software's not some crap you can get on the cheap... it's an investment in the future of your company. One day, all businesses are going to be technology companies.

Tags: #career #computing

This is a story about social animals...

For solitary creatures, there are two drives that ensure they live long enough to reproduce: hunger and libido. If you didn't feel hungry, you'd be too busy fucking to stop and eat, so you'd die of starvation. In fact you'd probably die of starvation before you even reached sexual maturity. If you didn't have a sex drive, you'd be too busy gorging yourself on food to have sex.

There's a delicate balance between effort, pain and reward. In animal studies, laboratory tests have measured the amount of work - in calories - that an animal is prepared to do to get a food pellet. There's no point burning more calories than the reward, so animals will only work so hard for something to eat. Tests also showed that animals are prepared to suffer a certain amount of pain if they're hungry: lab rats will cross an electrified floor to get to a food pellet, even though it hurts their feet. The same goes for sex: the horny rats will work and put up with pain, in order to mate.

When we examine social animals, like us, the co-operative rewards are harder to understand. It's clear that individuals will die if they don't get enough food, and genes will die if individuals don't reproduce, but what's in it for us to be social? Well, the lone wolf is very unlikely to be able to hunt and kill prey on its own.

Dogs are the perfect animal to help us understand praise. A dog will fetch a stick for its owner, even though it gets no food or sex. Humans have figured out that if you can make a dog believe you're the alpha of the wolf pack, then the dog will go wild for your approval. Through body language cues, such as bared teeth or wagging tails, the message of social approval or disapproval can be sent. Dogs are evolved to seek praise, because it bonds their hunting pack together.

We can then start to see how different drugs affect our brains, through changes in our behaviour.

Let's start with amphetamines (speed, whizz, base, meth etc.)

Amphetamines suppress appetite. Because one side of the triangle has been suppressed, it leaves room for an increased sex drive and more pleasurable lovemaking. Addicts who inject crystal methamphetamine can masturbate or fuck (or both!) for 12 hours.

Heroin suppresses your sex drive. Heroin addicts can be perfectly functional people, who eat enough to stay healthy, but they're getting their kicks from the junk, so they don't need sex.

Cocaine removes your insecurity and need for praise. When you're high on coke, you know you're the best. Instead of nervously looking around to see who's approving and who's disapproving, you act as if you're the alpha of the pack; king of the hill; top dog.

Addictions are nothing more than a temporary perversion of our natural urges; survival instincts; drives. We simply retrain our brains to want drugs instead of food, sex and praise.

Last night, I couldn't sleep because I had cravings. I was lying awake, daydreaming about going to a dealer and buying the thing I was really craving. It was a craving like every craving I've ever had. The craving completely consumed me and I could hardly think about anything else. There was only one thing that my heart desired.

So, today I went to the [meat] dealer, and bought myself some [dried South African beef] product. I travelled across London with single-minded purpose: I was out to score and feed my addiction.

I can't emphasise enough how similar drug cravings are to feeling hungry or horny. The urges are identical. Drug cravings are indistinguishable from the natural urges that keep us alive. Saying "you've got no willpower" to somebody, while stuffing your face with a big pie, is ridiculous. How often have you given up food and how long have you fasted for? Try doing it for 28 days. Try doing it for 13 weeks. Try doing it for life.

Of course, if the brain can be trained to like something, it can also be untrained. Rabid animals get driven mad by hydrophobia: swallowing gives rabid animals painful spasms in their larynx, so they start to fear water even though they're desperately thirsty. There are several foods that are said to be an acquired taste: it takes some time for our brains to learn to associate the strange flavours with nourishment. Often, an upset stomach or a bout of food poisoning is enough to create a strong link in our brains that causes us to reject certain foods.

Alcoholics can break their addiction by taking medication that will make them throw up if they drink. This kind of negative conditioning can break the perverted programming of the brain. Instead of eagerly anticipating the reward of a 'buzz' every time you get drunk, you begin to associate alcoholic drinks with nausea.

Unfortunately, the programming can work in reverse. If you have lots of fantastic sex when you take drugs, you can then start to crave drugs every time you get horny. 'Normal' sex can start to feel uninteresting and not worth bothering with. Your libido becomes your enemy: driving you to seek drugs every time your nut-sack needs emptying.

I've been well aware for some time, that I need to stay on top of my libido or else it will work in harmony with residual drug cravings to overpower any freedom of choice that I supposedly have. "Willpower" and the feelings of guilt we have about all indulgences of our natural urges, are the attempts to impose morality on an entirely amoral thing: we have no control over our desires.

Yesterday was a new one on me: a hunger for food that was as strong as any drug craving I've ever experienced. Addiction works in strange and subtle ways, inhabiting your subconscious and trying to subvert your supposed freedom of choice. Lots of addicts will relapse 'by accident' because the levers being pulled in their brains are powerfully influenced by forces that we rarely acknowledge.

We rarely talk about showing off or trying to get a shag, but those things are far more influential on our world than almost anything except stuffing our faces with pies.

Tags: #addiction #drugs #alcohol

This is a story about parasites...

Everybody has to work, right? There's a social contract that we implicitly signed up for when our parents had sex on our behalf. In return for our parents' selfless act of having unprotected sex, we agreed - before we were born - to a life of wage slavery and paying bills.

The other way of looking at things is to ask what would happen if you didn't work.

A big hole in the ground was dug to make the foundations of your house, where you live. You dug that hole, right? What about the concrete that was used to fill the foundations? I presume you slaked the lime to make the mortar and you dug the aggregates to make the mix that was poured into the hole you dug. I mean, that's only logical.

Bricks were laid to make the walls of your house. I presume you collected the clay, shaped it into bricks and baked them in a kiln that you made. That's only logical.

Joists and beams were needed to make the floors you walk on and the roof that keeps you dry. I presume you chopped down those trees and milled them into the straight timbers that were needed. That's only logical.

Slates were hung to make your roof able to divert rain into your guttering. I presume you quarried those slates. That's only logical.

Nails were forged to join the wood. I presume you collected the iron ore and blacksmithed the nails. That's only logical.

Sand was melted in a furnace at incredibly hot temperatures to make the glass that glazes your windows. I presume you gathered that sand and kept the fires burning in order to make those panes of glass that adorn your house. I mean, that's only logical.

Meat, vegetables, kernels, pulses, herbs, salt, oils and other condiments were combined to make delicious meals to keep you going while you were doing all that hard work. I presume you farmed the edible things to make those meals. You harvested the corn, milled the flour and baked the bread. That's only logical.

Water was raised from the underground aquifers. I presume you dug the wells and winched up the buckets of water. That's only logical.

How are you doing so far? You can say that everything you've benefitted from has been a product of your own hard labour, right? You can show directly how your contribution to society means that you deserve your slice of the pie, of course. That's only logical.

"Actually, I'm much more important than that."

Right, let's test that hypothesis.

What do you actually do?

"I go to meetings in a big fancy office."

Alright. Let's go.

Coffee beans were picked, dried and roasted. The coffee was ground and infused in boling water. I presume you were there in South America, harvesting the crop. I presume you roasted your beans and ground them yourself. That's only logical.

Spreadsheet software was crafted from binary ones and zeros. Microsoft Excel was created from nothing, using computer programming. I presume you wrote Excel. That's only logical.

Companies were incorporated with memorandums and articles of association. Laws were made. Everything was written down on paper. Paper was made from wood pulp. Ink is made from pigments and dyes. I presume you made the paper and the ink, and you wrote down all the laws that govern your company. That's only logical.

Cotton was picked. Thread was made. Thread was woven into garments. Fancy shirts and suits of clothes were made so that the people in the offices could look powerful and important at their meetings, sipping coffee and putting made-up numbers into spreadsheets. You made all those things. That's only logical.

How are you doing now? Are you with me so far?

"You just don't understand. I paid for all those things."

Oh you PAID did you? Let's see how that stands up to cross-examination.

Gold was panned or mined out of the ground. Gold was melted down into bars and coins that were assay marked to vouch for purity and weight. I presume you were down in the mines with your pickaxe, or in the river bed with your panning bowl, plucking gold nuggets out of the ground. I mean, that's only logical.

Banknotes were printed and coins were minted. Banks held ledgers and reserves. Payments were recorded. I presume you made the currency that was hard to counterfeit. I presume you created the payment systems that were hard to defraud. That's only logical.

How about now? Keeping up?

"For fuck's sake. You just don't get it. I did my job and I got my salary. That's how I paid for my house and my food."

Oh, right. I get it now. What exactly did you do for your job? What exactly was your contribution?

Tags: #capitalism #economics #career

This is a story about IT projects...

I'm sorry steady eddies, but if you want to get anywhere with a big complicated project, you're going to need somebody who's a little bit of a madman. There's this idea that building a piece of software is a bit like building an aeroplane. Plan the work, work the plan. The idea is that the software architects will come up with a brilliant design specification, and then programmers can just come along and build it. Wrong.

Firstly, you have to plug together all the bits of tech, and make them work with each other. From the front end to the back end, you have the "full stack" and it takes a special kind of masochist to declare themselves to be a "full stack" developer, because you're liable to be asked to change the buttons to a slightly different shade of green far more often than you're likely to be asked to make a working piece of software.

For me, I'll start with a database design - a schema. I will model the data. Most applications have a CRUD element: create, read, update and delete data. If you think about the classic example of a database that holds all the data on your customers, most of it will be performing CRUD operations to keep the data up to date.

Then the next thing is the data abstraction layer. How is your software going to store and retrieve the data from the database? Software talks one language, databases talk another. Interfacing between them is easiest when you use a bit of software that does the 'translation' for you.

Then you're going to need a bunch of business logic. Sure, you have all this data stored, but you're going to want to do something interesting with it. Maybe you want a piece of code that tells you who all the customers who you need to contact today are. That's a bit of business logic, and you wrap it up in a service.

Then you're going to need APIs. APIs are Application Programming Interfaces. APIs let one bit of software talk to another bit of software, which can be done over the Internet. You need an API so that your website running in your Internet browser, can talk to the server to call the services that get the data to display, and call the services that have the business logic in them. When you click a button on a website, a request goes off to another computer somewhere in the world, which is processed, and then the response comes back. The API describes how this can happen: it's a contract.

Once you've built your APIs, you can build the user interface. The user interface is the pretty bit you see when you download an app from the App Store, or when you visit a website. When you visit a website, the user interface is actually downloaded and it runs on your computer, in your Internet browser.

With a website, the user interface will be built in code that's very different to the code that runs elsewhere. Because web servers execute millions of requests, their code is highly optimised. Because your Internet browser needs to support millions of different websites, developed by millions of different developers, the code is designed to run on almost any computer.

Then, when you've written all this code, you need to set up your infrastructure. You need a server, you need to connect it to the Internet, you'll need to connect your domain name to your server, you'll need to configure the server with website hosting software and the database, you'll need to protect your server against hackers, you'll need to deploy your code onto your server. Then, people can visit your domain by typing www.yourdomain.com and the user interface code will be downloaded to their computer's Internet browser, and then the API on your server will be called to get the data it needs. Bingo! Your software is live.

Just getting a basic website running requires you to be:

• A system administrator (a.k.a. "sysadmin") so you can configure the server
• A security specialist (a.k.a. "pentester") so you can protect yourself from hackers
• A networking specialist, so you can configure your domain name, load balancing, traffic routing
• A database administrator (a.k.a. "DBA") so you can configure the database
• A serverside developer (a.k.a. "backend dev") so you can write the service code
• An API designer, so you can define the interface contract between backend and user interface
• A web designer, so you can make the website look all pretty
• A front-end developer (a.k.a. "UI dev") so you can write the scripts that control the user interface
• A mobile developer so you can make an iPhone or Android app that does what the website does
• A QA engineer (a.k.a. "tester") so you can make sure the damn software works
• A release manager, so you can package up your software and deploy it
• An operational support engineer, so you can diagnose and fix problems when they occur

That's 12 different roles, or "hats" that you have to wear. Also, bear in mind that all your users care about is what colour the buttons are.

If you're a "full stack" developer, you're highly in demand, because you can take a piece of software from an idea, to something that actually works and can be used by people anywhere in the world, via the gift of the Internet.

Do you notice that none of those roles are "programmer". There is no such job as programmer anymore.

Back in the 1970s, you used to ring IBM up and they would wheel a dirty great big cabinet into your basement, and then a zillion wires would connect every "dumb" terminal in the building to it. The dumb terminals would just display on their screens what the mainframe would tell them. Essentially, it was just one computer that had hundreds of monitors, and hundreds of keyboards.

Programmers in the 1980s had everything they needed all in one box. User interfaces were just green text on a black screen. There weren't buttons to click on, that could be different colours, so nobody had to waste their time changing the colour of the buttons. There weren't pretty graphics for people to argue over. There was just green text on a black screen.

Because everything was on one box, everything was the same computer code. The data and the code and the different parts of the system were seamlessly interconnected. There wasn't computer code flying around over the Internet, being executed in billions of different Internet browsers all around the world. There was just one blob of code, running on one computer, with hundreds of users. That was programming: writing programs to run on one computer, not billions.

Programming's not even that hard: if this, then that. That's about the gist of it. If you know what the words AND, OR and NOT mean, you're well on your way to being a programmer. If you can write a list of instructions for another person to follow... that's how you become a good programmer. You just get really good at righting really good instructions for a really stupid person to follow.

IF you see some gold THEN go and pick up the gold

Looks pretty easy, right? Well, then you find that your program doesn't work very well when the gold is on the other side of a Plexiglas window. The automatons following your instructions are going to get stuck on the "go" part, and will find themselves just walking on the spot, with their nose pressed against the glass, trying to get to the gold that they can see.

Fast forward to the present day, and you might have the situation where your website looks absolutely awful because granny is still using Internet Explorer, but you only tested your code in Google Chrome. We have the situation where your website works perfectly fine when one person is using it at a time, but when millions of visitors are trying to access it at the same time, they're all treading on each other's feet and the whole thing falls in a heap.

A lot of techies want to be programmers, but programming is such a tiny part of anybody's job. If you hire a bunch of programmers, and they all insist that they only want to do programming, you're never going to have a website.

If you hire a bunch of web designers to build you a website, you'll have a very pretty looking thing, but it won't work very well. It'll be fake. It'll be window dressing. It'll be a film set, where the buildings don't actually have anything behind them: they're flat fronts, propped up from behind.

If you hire a bunch of back-end developers to build you an application, you'll have a beautiful set of services and APIs, but you won't have anybody to tell to change the colour of the buttons. If you tell the serverside developers how important it is that the button colour gets changed for the millionth time, they'll just say "yeah, yeah, yeah... I'm writing down on my invisible TODO list".

So, you hire a full-stack developer, because they can do everything. Trouble is, they're all a bit mental.

If you can do everything all on your own - you can wear 12 different hats and context-switch between them - then you're going to be driven mad if you have to work for somebody else.

Even though I can do everything, it's not like I should do everything. It's not healthy, to have constant interruptions, and to be pulled from one thing to another all the time. In fact, it's distinctly unhealthy.

The only way that a full-stack developer can make any progress is to work really, really quickly.

If you throw together a fully working application in the blink of an eye, you can get it done before anybody asks you to change the colour of the damn buttons. These herculean efforts are incredibly draining. Holding so many different competing tasks, and also the big picture, in your head, while working as fast as you can... that's exhausting.

Most software ends up in the bin anyway, so you might as well throw together these hastily built applications, that at least prove that things can be done, technically. There's already too much useless vapourware crap out there that doesn't actually do what it purports to be able to.

And so, I end up working on project after project that's clearly going wrong. I hastily cobble something together. I get something working end-to-end. Then, I'm burnt out and I have to take the money I've earned and go have a lie down in a darkened room.

I actually don't think software can be built without some nutter who's actually going to fill in all the blanks and prove out the concepts. Every important computer system that I've ever worked on has had one madman who's single-mindedly taken the project to the point of MVP - Minimum Viable Product.

It's unhealthy for your moods, to be expected to sprint as fast as you can, and then reap the rewards but be burnt out, but it's certainly lucrative and a good career strategy. The financial incentives can't be ignored. Also, if you're a complete-finisher personality type, it's the only way you're ever going to see a successful IT project, because so many people are happy to bumble along until the project eventually goes so far over budget and has spectacularly missed its deadlines, that it gets cancelled.

My current project - which is getting cancelled because it's over budget and late - has been slightly better for me than other projects have been in the past, because I just concentrated on making sure my team was on time and on budget, instead of thinking about the overall project. Net result, I'm out of a job again, but at least I've got a happy customer and a good reference, plus I'm not totally burnt out. It's a damnsight easier to only think about my 1/8th of the project, rather than feel responsible for the whole thing.

God knows how I'm going to reconcile my personality - a completer-finisher - with IT's staggeringly bad track record of ever successfully delivering projects on time and on budget. My health is suffering as I've tried to single-handedly get projects back on track, and I never get any thanks when I do that. I'm not saying I'm a hero. I'm just saying that I don't like to bumble along and fail.

Although I can do full-stack development, I don't think I should because it's just too much stress, being spread across 12 different roles. I reckon I'm going to look for some kind of development manager job, where I can have more management input into the way things are run.

It'd be interesting to know what my mental health would be like without the kind of external pressure to rush, rush, rush. It'd be nice to work on a project where I could take my time, take pride in my work, do the things I'm good at. Do those projects even exist?

I think it's the engineer's curse. "Can you do this?" is always answered honestly. Yes, I can probably fix your damn car, but should I really be doing that if my skill is as a software developer? "Yes I could, but I'm not sure I should" is the correct answer, but engineers aim to please. So few managers understand that it's a dumb idea to ask their capable engineers to do everything and anything, and expect them to spread themselves so thinly.

Even though management doesn't agree with me - too frustrating and boring - at least it gives me the opportunity to throw a bubble around my development team and protect them from bad managers. At least I can create the kind of culture that I'd like to have, as a developer, for my team.

It's hard to know how to balance your skills, your needs, your values, and the fact that life's a lot easier if you're paid a lot of cold hard cash.

Anyway, it's all rather academic until I've dug myself out of the debt hole.

Tags: #career #agile #computing #bipolar

This is a story about shutting down conversations...

Why don't we complain more? When things are going badly and luck is not in our favour, why don't we speak up about how unfair life can be? Why are we not allowed to discuss how hopeless we feel? Why aren't we allowed to say that we feel overwhelmed and that we can't cope?

There are numerous ways of shutting a person down, and ending any conversation before it even gets started:

• "Life is hard"
• "Life is unfair"
• "Deal with it"
• "Get over it"
• "Other people have it so much harder than you"
• "Look on the bright side"
• "You'll find a way to cope"
• "You'll get there in the end"
• "Look how far you've come"
• "You're a strong person"
• "God wouldn't give you anything you couldn't handle"
• "This will pass"
• "It gets easier"
• "Keep going"
• "Don't give up"

All of these phrases have the same objective: to shut the person up who is in distress. We seem to believe that talking about our distress is somehow wallowing in self-pity. We seem to think that the best way to deal with problems is just to pretend like they're not there and that they'll go away on their own. It's akin to saying "LA LA LA! NOT LISTENING!!".

This cultural programming is so engrained that we repeat the useless mantras to ourselves. When stress, anxiety and hopelessness are overwhelming us, we say the very same things to ourselves. It's like we're trying to bully and abuse ourselves into happiness. "Get happy or fuck off and die" is the unequivocal message that is being sent.

Talking about depression is now permitted, but the message is very much the same: go to your doctor, get a therapist, take some medication, take MORE medication. I can't believe how many people would say "have you taken your pills today?" or "maybe you need to increase your dose" when you're having a bad day. This is part of the reason why I don't tell my work colleagues that I have struggled with mental illness, and it's part of the reason why I don't take medication. It's too much of a cop-out to medicalise a situation which might be brought about by circumstances, rather than pathological brain chemistry.

There was an experiment where mice had to run across an electrified floor in order to get to their food. The mice were obviously pretty stressed about this, and would exhibit all kinds of symptoms of anxiety when they were getting hungry. The mice knew that the only way that they were going to get fed would be to have painful electric shocks jolting through their feet as they crossed to the other side of their cage, where the food was.

The mice would get more and more stressed, until finally they were so hungry that they had to dash across the electrified floor as fast as they possibly could, getting zapped the whole time. Pretty stressful circumstances, right?

When the anti-anxiety drug diazepam was discovered, they were testing it on these mice. The mice who were injected with diazepam would exhibit none of the symptoms of stress and anxiety, and would wander across the electrified floor in an unhurried manner. The mice who were under the influence of diazepam still felt the pain, and their faces winced with each painful electric shock that was delivered to their feet. The mice just didn't give a fuck anymore.

Pain exists to condition our behaviour. You don't stick your hand in a fire more than once. You're careful with a knife because of that one time you cut yourself. Pain tells us about our environment. Pain gives us our list of dos and don'ts, without them having to be extensively listed in some kind of compendium of things that fuck you up.

Anxiety exists to tell us to avoid pain, when we can see it coming. Without anxiety, we would stand in the middle of the road, watching a truck hurtling towards us and think "oh, this is going to hurt" but not actually be bothered about getting out of the way.

We now have a society where pain and anxiety seem to be accepted as facts of life. We can see the onrushing disaster of climate change, but yet we just stand there in the middle of the road waiting for it to smash into us and obliterate most life on Earth. We know that our jobs are utter boring bullshit and are destroying our physical and mental health, but we still continue to work them until we're too old and infirm to continue any more.

In the oft-quoted example: a frog is put in a pan of cool water, and then the water has been slowly brought to the boil. Nobody has sensed just how deadly the situation has got. Nobody is jumping out of the pan to save ourselves. We're all just sitting in a pan of boiling water saying "this is fine" like the cartoon dog in the house that's on fire.

Image credit: K C Green

If things get too hard to handle, and the danger that you sense - which is very real, tangible and rational - can no longer be quieted by telling yourself "everything's going to be fine" then you can trot off to your doctor and get yourself some happy pills to mask your symptoms.

How much depression is due to demoralisation, demotivation, boredom, stressful bullshit jobs with never-ending makework? How much anxiety is due to job insecurity, financial uncertainty, hand-to-mouth existence, well founded fears about terrorism, violence, rape, murder and paedophilia?

For sure the media rams the world's problems down our throat 24x7 from all corners of the globe, but fundamentally, even in our little local communities shitty stuff is happening. Even on the streets of wealthy London, there are awful things being perpetrated against innocent people.

Saying that life is a fight for survival, and that we are doomed to some kind of Malthusian catastrophe is disingenuous. Blaming people for their own misfortune is just an excuse for inaction. What we're basically saying is "at least I don't live in Africa" even though our lives are hardly peachy.

I would imagine that this put up & shut up ethos is trickled down from our ruling elite. While wealth is not trickling down at all, we are told that we should be grateful for a few crumbs from the table of the fat cat plutocrats. Bullying and drugging us into submission, our whole culture is one where we criticise anybody who dares to voice their discomfort and dissatisfaction with their lot in life, even though we ourselves are living with nearly unbearable stress.

It's as if we are all eating handfuls of ground up glass and razor blades, and somebody whose mouth is dripping with blood suddenly says "what are we doing? why are we doing this? we should stop!" and then everybody else rounds on them and says "we're all getting on with it without complaining, so you should too" and "take some painkillers if the pain is too much". It's as if the peer pressure to keep suffering the pain and eating the sharp glass and blades is so great that we continue to act irrationally and kill ourselves.

Food for thought, anyway.

Tags: #depression #anxiety #mentalhealth #suicide

This is a story about euthanasia...

I need to cover what I'm about to write with a hefty preamble, full of caveats and other disclaimers, because there are so many considerations with this issue, but it's an issue I need to tackle.

Firstly, let's consider this: nobody really wants to die.

For people who are in pain and other kinds of physical discomfort, or are otherwise afflicted by diseases, injuries or genetic problems that mean their quality of life is terrible, or certainly going to end up terrible: these people do not want to die. Those people would dearly love for a cure or some kind of relief from their symptoms that doesn't come with intolerable side effects.

Clearly people who want to prematurely end their lives in a dignified manner, have exhausted all treatment options, and their future looks bleak: pain, discomfort, infirmity, senility and disability.

Alzheimers and other kinds of incurable degenerative brain diseases carry the added worry that the sufferer will no longer be of a sound and rational mind when the illness reaches its late stages, and they will burden their carers, while perhaps not even being able to recognise their loved ones any more.

Let's also consider this: some people have hope, while others do not.

Yes, there's always a chance of a miracle cure. Yes, there's always a 1-in-a-trillion shot that God might personally intervene to remove the horrible afflictions that he originally cursed you with.

Most people love life and can't bear the thought of being torn from the arms of their loved ones. Most people cry out in fear, when they think they're about to die. Most people fight to survive.

There are people who have gone through many bouts of surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, transplants and who take bucketloads of medications with horrible side effects, and generally battle through awful sickness and pain, holding out hope that their ailments will be at least treated well enough to prolong their lives a little longer.

Some people might spend a long time on a transplant list, barely surviving, while oxygen and dialysis just about preserve them while they wait for a donor match. An agonising race against time happens: will a donor arrive before the illness kills the poor helpless person who can only sit and wait?

I feel like I should use softer language, to cushion the blows for every person who's lost a child, parent, friend, partner, relative. Death is painful, and all the more so knowing that a person had so much more life left in them. Death can be so cruel. People so deserving of more life can be snatched away, while others who are seemingly careless with the gift of life can seem so selfish and ungrateful for their good fortune to have been spared by the gods.

And it's the ungrateful ones I want to talk about.

What do you do with the alcoholic who 'wants' to drink themself to death? What do you do with a suicidal person?

The footballer George Best famously received a liver transplant, and then proceeded to court controversy when he was caught drinking again. Instead of demonstrating his gratitude for his stay of execution, by becoming teetotal, he was clearly the same person - ungrateful for life some might say - as he was before he received an organ donation.

What do you do with somebody who is determined to kill themself? Do you put them in a straightjacket and keep them in a padded cell indefinitely, just so that they can die of old age in an asylum?

It might be the case that a suicidal person is in perfectly good physical health and does not abuse drugs or alcohol, but they are nonetheless determined to end their own life prematurely.

There's a general belief that telling people that their lifestyle is much akin to suicide, will curtail their health-damaging behaviour. Doctors mostly seem to take the route of saying "if you keep drinking, you're going to die young" to alcoholics. While most people would think that this would shock somebody into cutting down their drinking, in fact there's little evidence that it has any affect at all.

Similarly, telling suicidal people "you've got so much to live for" and "it's just your depression telling you lies" and other statements that make perfect sense to people who are not suicidal, is also ineffective. The only thing that has proven somewhat effective - as far as short 12-week studies paid for by pharmaceutical companies can tell - is psychoactive medication.

Smoking causes many preventable diseases, and is a big killer, but yet people still choose to smoke even though it's expensive, makes you smell and stains your teeth. You would have thought that the large "SMOKING KILLS" health warnings on packets would cause people to stop smoking immediately, but no.

You know what one of the most effective smoking cessation treatments is? It's the antidepressant called Wellbutrin (marketed as stop-smoking drug Zyban and generically known as Bupropion).

Why would an antidepressant be a good treatment for smokers? Well, let's consider two things: firstly, people smoke because they're missing something. Take smoking away, and a smoker's life is now incomplete. Removing nicotine and the habit/ceremony of smoking leaves a void in that person's life. Also, you've got to be fairly depressed to do something that's clearly a threat to your health, and possibly your life.

Wellbutrin is a fast-acting antidepressant, unlike anything we can get on the NHS. Instead of making people feel sleepy and emotionally numbed, Wellbutrin has been proven to offer a number of improvements in the lives of patients, including their sex lives. Wellbutrin is France's most popular antidepressant.

What do you really want from an antidepressant, other than to relieve your symptoms of depression now when you're feeling it? Being told that a medication might take 6 to 8 weeks to become effective, and then having to suffer your symptoms that whole time while you're waiting is no use at all! Some depressions will lift naturally after a month or two anyway.

But what goes up must come down. After some weeks or months taking Wellbutrin, many patients experience panic attacks and insomnia. Plus there's the obvious problem of having to stop taking the medication at some point, and suffering the comedown (sorry, I mean withdrawal syndrome).

Yes, the difference between 'drugs of abuse' and 'prescribed psychoactive medications' is precisely zero. Every medication that has an upside also has a downside. Addiction and habituation with prescription medications is just as much of a problem as with street drugs. The only difference is medical oversight and quality control.

And so, I arrive at the situation where I'm perfectly well aware that I can get short-term relief for the symptoms of my depression, in the form of a pill from my doctor. However, I'm equally aware that to go down that road is to have a lifetime dependence on medication for my sense of wellbeing. Basically, do I want to be a medically sanctioned drug addict? None of the stigma, but all of the same behaviours.

You're right, I wouldn't have to lie, cheat or steal to feed my habit. I can wander into my pharmacist, and get my uppers over the counter, and carry on like I'm a fine upstanding member of the community. Did you know that even heroin addicts are completely functional members of society, when they can get a clean high quality supply of the opiates they need? When doctors in the UK used to prescribe heroin, there were none of the antisocial problems that we instinctively associate with drug abuse today.

Of course, I'm not advocating drug abuse, but then I'm also pointing out that the flaws that afflict a smoker, a drinker, a junkie and even a depressed person... they're all rooted in the same psychological need to cure an invisible illness.

Pretty soon, I will have spent a year where over 75% of the time I was using no psychoactive substances at all, except for alcohol. A period of 115 consecutive days - 32% of the year - I was completely teetotal. For the whole year I had no tea, coffee, cola, energy drinks, or caffeine containing headache pills (more common than you think). I'm completely unmedicated.

How do I feel? Awful.

It seems to me like I have a choice: suicidal depression, or drugs (i.e. medication, coffee & alcohol etc.)

I know that a scientific study with one participant tells us nothing, but equally I'm not a group, I'm me. You can't dismiss my individual findings, that are true for me. I've gathered the data during a 20 year career, and I've come to the conclusion that my life is unliveable in its current form.

When you are conducting a scientific study, you have to control the variables. Thankfully, I'm an ideal test subject for this.

Since the age of 17, I've been a very well paid software engineer. For sure, during the first couple of years it took me a while to get my salary up to a decent level, but since the age of 19 I've never had to worry about money. Also, I've done pretty much the same thing for all my career: sitting at a desk, tapping on a keyboard, making software.

I've had the same running crisis my whole career. When I was 19, I was bored so I applied to university and was offered places at some very prestigious institutions to study psychopharmacology. I decided to stick with the money, and keep selling my soul to the highest bidder.

When I was 28, depression had crushed me to the point I was on my knees and unable to turn up and do the same office bullshit anymore. I retrained as an electrician and started my own company.

As a self-employed tradesman, I loved what I did, but I was grossly underpaid for the level of responsibility I had. Ordinary members of the public think that tradesmen are out to rip them off. In reality tradesmen are highly trained professionals whose job it is to stop houses burning down and families being electrocuted or poisoned by carbon monoxide.

The freedom of not having a boss, not having a 9 to 5, Monday to Friday routine, and not having to sit in the same damn chair at the same damn desk, pushing the same damn 102 keys on the same goddam keyboard... all of those things are just as great as they sound. However, getting paid peanuts to do dangerous dirty work is also not great either.

And so, I returned to what I'm experienced and qualified to do.

I earn staggering amounts of cash for moving my mouse around and looking busy at a desk. However, I used to earn £470 per day when I was 20 years old, doing computer programming for Lloyds TSB back in the year 2000. My job is exactly the same today, doing the same damn computer code for HSBC, JPMorgan, Barclays or any other damn bank.

But maybe the problem's banking? Nope. I've written computer code for nuclear submarines, torpedos, school computer networks, trains, parking ticket machines, busses, security guards, shop assistants and just about every other weird and wonderful industry you can think of. I've written in dozens of programming languages, for dozens of operating systems, on dozens of form factors. It's all the fucking same binary 1s and 0s and boolean algebra under the covers. All code is made from the same nuts and bolts. It's fucking boring.

And so, I can be a miserable exploited worker on a low wage, doing something I take pride in but knowing that I'm undervalued. I can be an overpaid and underworked software developer / scrum master / development manager / IT director. I can be a stressed out startup founder working my arse off to line the pockets of the venture capitalists who are going to get filthy rich at the expense of my health. I can be a destitute bum, a tramp, a hobo. Which would YOU choose?

I particularly object to the idea that I have to drug myself up, just to fit in with the bullshit jobs economy. I object to having to be high on antidepressants just to be able to cope with the same bunch of fucktards making the same fucking mistakes I've seen a million times over, in the job that I've mastered and brings in obscene amounts of cash. I object to having to be high on anxiety medication, to cope with the insecurity faced by the underpaid and undervalued front-line members of society who build your houses, look after you in hospital, grow your food and perform every other truly useful function that we need.

Even to work in civil engineering would frustrate the hell out of me. Crossrail, the multi billion dollar project improve London's cross-capital transportation, is rather pointless because it will be at full capacity on the day it opens, because London is already packed full of idle fucktards like me, clogging up the world with pointless makework jobs. Do we really need any more offices and office workers? Do we really need any more service sector jobs? Do we really need such a bloated financial services sector, with its equally parasitic support industries of corporate law and accounting? It's all such utter bullshit.

And so, I'm damned if I do and I'm damned if I don't.

In my 20 years of full time work, I've become worn down with it all. I'm exhausted. I've tried a number of things, and I find that bullshit prevails everywhere I look. My heart is broken by all the bullshit that trumps everything else.

I'm exhausted, and I'm depressed and I'm suicidal.

Yes, I know some people are grateful for their lives and what little quality of life they can squeeze out of their existence. Yes, I know that I have good physical health and I'm reasonably young still. Yes, I know that there'd a queue that stretches around the planet, of people who would love to have my job.

So, if I choose to reject all that and end my life because I feel like I have no quality of life, is that morally wrong?

You can't even level the accusation of me that I don't know suffering, and I don't know poverty. I've lived homeless in a park, destitute, penniless and surviving on charitable food donations. I've woken up in hospital numerous times in pain and discomfort. I've had numerous scrapes with death. Shouldn't all that stuff make me grateful to be alive? Guess what? You have absolutely no idea. Guess what else, I have a very good idea, because it's already all happened to me.

I wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth. I went to state comprehensive schools. I wasn't gifted jobs by any friend or family member. I had no head start in life. It's true that I have no obvious disability or disadvantage either, unless you count a couple of drug addict alcoholic parents, but I still had other family members, teachers and friends who were nice to me. It's not a fucking competition. The point is that the variables are controlled. I neither had advantage nor disadvantage, but yet I arrived at this point, here, now, today.

It's not like we can say this is just a short-term crisis. Like this will fucking blow over.

It's not going to blow over. For 20 fucking years it's been the same. The same shit, different day.

Yes, there were times that were actually pretty good, but guess what... they weren't sustainable. I liked living in a hostel with a bunch of other homeless people. I liked not having a job and being a bum. I liked having no responsibilities. Who wouldn't? But that's not real life. We don't get to have a freebie just because 'real' life is killing us. It still cost £120 a week for my bunk bed in a dormitory that slept 15 people, with one fucking bathroom between us all. My current rent is only £240 a week and for that I get a double bedroom, an ensuite bathroom, a kitchen, a dining room, a dual-aspect lounge with panoramic views over London and a balcony overlooking the river Thames.

I should be happy, but I'm not. Happiness is not a choice, no matter what you read on some bullshit Internet meme inspirational quote.

All the right pieces are in place. My doctors are chuffed to bits that I don't drink, smoke, abuse drugs or in any way engage in health damaging behaviours. My blood pressure is amazing. My cholesterol is low. My eyesight, hearing, teeth, joints... all of it is perfect.

And yet, my mental health is in ruins. I'm so depressed. I'm so suicidal.

I'm doing everything right, and yet everything feels so wrong.

Of course I feel guilty for feeling like this. What the fuck am I supposed to do though?

Honestly, I feel like I want to spend the next 30 days convincing people that the most humane thing is to let me end my life. Honestly, despite the things that should be really great in my life, nothing feels great. Nothing feels good or nice. Nothing works. Nothing is working.

There's still the possibility of just running away and absenting myself from all responsibility, but then when I'm dirty and sick from a life of destitution... when I die then, will anybody understand? A tramp, a bum, a hobo, a junkie, an alkie... these people are all too easily dismissed by society.

What happens when highly paid banking IT consultants start dying? Well if they're white middle class thirtysomething men... not much. Who cares? Probably just a selfish socialite, having a tantrum because they can't do whatever they want, one newspaper article basically said, in the wake of one death.

What the fuck is anybody supposed to do about this fucked up life that we're supposed to live?

I really don't feel like I can live this bullshit rat race anymore, and the alternative is a long slow death, shunned by society and marginalised.

In the long run, we're all fucking dead anyway.

Apologies if I'm triggering raw and painful feelings about your beloved family member or friend who is busily fighting for survival, or who lost their battle. I really don't mean things disrespectfully, but I can't lie anymore. I feel this stuff and it's undeniable.

Call me narcissistic needy spoilt white middle class brat if you like, if it'll make you feel better. It certainly won't make me feel any worse, but isn't that so terribly melodramatic and attention seeking?

Can you understand, how exhausting it is, having to justify your feelings and apologise for wanting to be dead the whole fucking time?

It's a one-way ticket and for sure it needs careful thought, but aren't we being a bit unfair, shutting down the conversation by guilt-tripping people into hiding their feelings? Perhaps suicide is a smart choice for people who feel that they have no quality of life.

Tags: #suicide #depression #mentalhealth #addiction #alcohol #drugs #medication #nhs #hospital

This is a story about living a double life...

I don't know if you know this, but I've been working again these past 3+ months. I've been putting on my suit and going to the office and pretending like everything's just peachy. When I put on my professional clothes, I also put on a mask. "Hi! How are you? How was your weekend?" I cheerily ask my colleagues on Monday morning, instead of saying "this place makes me want to kill myself".

I like my colleagues and I like the project I'm working on. There's nothing especially objectionable about the company I'm working for. Every large multinational corporation has skeletons in its closet, and my current end client is no exception. But, I don't have a deep-seated concern that I'm propping up some too big to fail organisation, like I did at HSBC. The global project I'm working on is the number one IT project for a FTSE 250 company. It's a good project and it should be enjoyable.

When I was looking for work I was feeling pretty insecure. I had a run of short contracts that didn't end particularly well. Every job I took, I was inadequately enabled to make a difference. In every role, I was frustrated that I had very little decision making power. I was frustrated that my bosses weren't listening, and instead my Cassandra-esque prophecies came true while I was helplessly kicked to the sidelines.

So, I swapped from a purely hands-on technical role into a managerial one. I knew that I'd be able to ace the interview, and that it's virtually impossible to get sacked from a managerial job just so long as you keep your head down and do a reasonable job of organising your team.

I made a calculated gamble. I knew that I find purely managerial work totally soul-destroying, but also that I've made a reasonable job of running the projects and teams I've been given in the past. I knew that the interview process would be a lot less painful than the current crap that you have to do to get a developer job these days.

And so, I joined a failing project with a programme director on his last legs. Things were just as desperate as they were at HSBC, with total numpties in management whipping people to go faster and faster while the deadlines loomed ever larger, and it became clear that the software was going to be delivered late, and the performance and stability were going to be crap.

The project had - and still has - a huge staff turnover problem. People leave after just a few weeks because the atmosphere is so toxic. Almost every member of the original project team has left. Other IT contractors had warned me to actually stay away from this project. However, the job was offered with a fairly immediate start, and I could get my invoices paid weekly. It dug me out of a financial hole very quickly. It totally made sense to just shut up and put up with it for a little while. That was 3 months ago.

Now, a new management team have been installed. The old programme director got the boot, and we moved from totally crazy deadlines to a properly Agile project. In terms of the task ahead, things looked a lot more hopeful, but I still get shouted at by the grumpy customer every day, literally.

I have no idea if there are any happy projects in IT.

With my team, I throw a protective bubble around them, set them realistic deadlines, and shower them with praise for their hard work. My team have delivered all the work that they committed to doing for 12 weeks in a row now. My team is the most successful team on the project. I've had no problems with sickness and staff turnover in my team. Everybody who works for me is pretty much happy to come to work, and fulfilled in their role... apart from me.

I sit at my desk, and I'm bored.

It's actually quite easy to manage a high performing team. I've set them up to succeed, and my team members relish the opportunity to do a good job. People don't need micromanaging.

For sure, most of my job is pointing out where corners have been cut, or things that developers don't really like doing haven't been done. The code is never the problem. Instead, development is about giving everybody enough time to think about all the things that aren't code. Being a good developer isn't about being a good programmer. Good programmers are not necessarily good developers. Good programming means that something is logically correct. Good developing means that I have high quality features in an application that I can actually use in a meaningful way.

I should be able to have a lot of pride in my work, but instead I'm frustrated that I'm running just one of 8 scrum teams, and that any attempt to help the wider project would see me treading on toes and getting into trouble again, like I did at HSBC. In the interests of my own job security, and that precious cash that replenishes my damaged bank balance, I'm not rocking the boat. I sit there, quiet and miserable, while the whole project goes down the shitter.

My team is a diamond in the rough. It's not that my colleagues are necessarily doing things badly. There are historical reasons why everything is fucked. I'm sitting pretty with a happy motivated team who consistently hit their targets and deliver high quality software. I'm the golden boy, with the customer very pleased with the work we've done.

The difference between this contract and my last one, is that I'm listened to. I sat down with the new programme director and told him I was deeply unhappy that the project deadlines were so unrealistic, and that our end-client was so unreasonable in their expectations. He listened, and he even took the time on Friday to tell me that he's grasped the nettle and told the bad news to the customer. My previous boss would never have done that. I actually risked my job a couple of months ago by telling the customer that there was no way in hell they were going to get everything they wanted by Christmas. Although I got in trouble with my boss, I also impressed the client, so when shit went bad they got rid of him and kept me.

However, the pace of change is awful. It's taken forever to put a decent set of managers in place who have enough of a backbone to stand up to our stroppy customer. It's taking forever to change the toxic environment of the project.

The whole time at work, I'm bored. I can't bury myself in work. I can't roll up my sleeves and fight the biggest fire. Nobody would thank me for wading in, where others are struggling. Things are so siloed. I couldn't get involved without treading on toes. So, instead, I sit quietly, letting my team members get on with doing a good job. "I'm alright, Jack" is not my style. It's totally unlike me to just think about my own role and responsibilities, and try to ignore the bigger picture.

It's killing me, working like this.

I'm damned if I do, and I'm damned if I don't. If I had a regular developer job, I'd be frustrated that the team wasn't being run the way I like to do things. If I had a programme director job, I'd be frustrated that I couldn't help to manage individual teams. I want to be all things to everybody. I want to be in all places at all times.

It's frustrating that I can't just bury my head in code, and entertain myself learning new technology skills. It's frustrating that my hands-on skills are getting rusty, as I sit around doing manager stuff, which is mostly just being the punchbag for the grumpy customer at the moment.

Sit back and think of the money, right?

Well, yes, to a point. But the working day goes so slowly, that by the time I get to the weekend I'm filled with pent-up frustration that I haven't gotten to work on anything meaningful. I have almost zero chance of doing anything creative during the week, except for the odd blog post. Even writing short stories at my desk is hard, because there are enough interruptions to ruin my flow. I could try to learn some new technical skill, but it's so hard to do when you can't sit down and concentrate for a block of time.

My life seems remarkably easy on the face of it. Put on a freshly laundered shirt and dry cleaned suit. Put on my polished shoes. Grab my laptop bag and head for the tube. Rock up at the office. Have breakfast at my desk. Count down the hours until lunchtime. Go sit by the river and eat a sandwich. Count down the hours until I go home. Collect my cheque at the end of the week. However, it doesn't feel like a week. Every week feels like a year. A year of pain and boredom.

Yes, I'm probably sick. I seem to be suffering from persistent anhedonia. I get no satisfaction or enjoyment from anything. I have no energy or enthusiasm to do anything. I just write and I drink, and I wait for the next time I've gotta go to work. Day after day, week after week.

I'm grinding out the hours, in the hope that things will get a little easier every day, but they don't. Every day I'm questioning what the hell I'm doing, and then like stretched elastic, I snap. Every day when I get home, all the suppressed parts of my personality come rushing out in a complex tangle of mixed emotions, which I try to deal with by writing.

People at work have little idea that I'm dealing with depression and suicidal thoughts every day. People at work have no idea just how much I hate my day job, and how much it's destroying my soul and sense of wellbeing.

It makes no sense to an outside observer, because what they see is a capable member of the project who comes to work and manages to get the best out of the team. On the face of it, I'm succeeding: I'm well paid and I'm doing a good job. My bosses are happy. My team members tell me they're pleased to be working with me. I've managed to shield the developers and testers who work for me from the toxic atmosphere that's pervasive throughout the project. I've managed to wear my mask so well, that I doubt anybody at work suspects just how desperate I am, inside.

Maybe things will change. Maybe they won't.

I've been waiting for my depression to lift for so long now. I've been waiting for things to get better at work for months, and they haven't, although there is always hope on the horizon. I literally live in hope.

But you know what? It's exhausting, leading this double life. It's so exhausting, telling your team great job, and being sunny and upbeat about everything, rather than letting the whole toxic atmosphere and hopeless deadlines cause a morale problem for the developers and testers who I manage. "Take one for the team" is literally what I'm trying to do. That's literally my role: to be a human shield to protect my team from the stroppy customer.

It's also exhausting leading a double life where you're so depressed you can barely function, but you need to put on the corporate mask of being the reliable high-powered decision maker. I need to turn up and be consistent every day. The whole reason why I command a good daily rate is that I don't take time off sick or bring my problems to work. I'm not allowed to have an off day. That's the point of using contractors: they'll drag themselves into the office even when they're desperately sick.

If I was my doctor, I'd say stop, what are you doing? Give yourself a break. You can't continue like this. This job is making you unwell. However, how can I do that when I need to get a stack of savings in the bank so I can afford to have a nervous breakdown.

I've been bumping along at rock bottom for as long as I can remember. I never recover, because I'm always trapped in a corner. I'm forced back into work too early, and I'm forced to work stressful shitty full-time jobs, because I need to dig myself out of a hole. It's a Catch 22.

It's quite possible that if I can stick things out for a couple more months, my fortunes will change. Things won't look so bleak when I'm no longer working to simply keep a roof over my head and service debts. I'm going as fast as I can, and yet it's somehow still not fast enough. I'm trying as hard as I can, and yet it's somehow still not good enough.

Sure, my bosses are pleased. Sure, my team members would tell you that I'm doing a great job. But it doesn't feel sustainable. I'm living too much of a lie. It's too much of a compromise on my identity and sense of wellbeing. It's too demanding, having to wear a mask all the time.

I'm bloody good at it: hiding my problems. That's really what this whole blog is about. I've spent so many years covering up my problems and maintaining a blemish-free CV, and making sure that I always get a good employment reference, that it was inevitable that I would one day decide to burn it all down. You just can't live a lie forever.

It's not like I'm hiding a drug habit or alcoholism. It's not like I actually have anything active in my life that I need to keep secret, unless you count having to appear like some kind of perfect corporate specimen of a man, who never gets sick and never has any personal problems.

Would it really help, going to my bosses and coming clean about my low mood, boredom, depression, suicidal thoughts? Of course not. Nobody wants to have to treat somebody with kid gloves. Fit in or fuck off is the mantra of corporate life.

Fit in or fuck off. It's fucking me up, living this double life, just to be able to fit in.

Tags: #career

This is a story about punctuation...

When I was at primary school, aged 4 years old, I drew a picture of a visit to see my grandparents. Specifically, I remembered seeing my grandmother, with bleached blonde hair, and my grandparent's dog.

I was asked to also describe the family visit. Having written the story, I then considered the fact that I had not punctuated the tale. I knew that full stops - periods - were the most important punctuation mark, and so I proceeded to decorate my story with a few randomly placed dots.

Having scattered my full stops throughout the prose that I had written, I then thought that the little dots didn't look very big in comparison with my large and unwieldy handwriting. At age 4 years old, I hadn't achieved a nice neat flowing form of handwriting. In fact, I was lucky if I could get my 'b's and my 'd's the right way around.

In order to draw greater attention to my punctuative efforts, I then embellished each period with more emphasis.

Unsatisfied with the balance between characters and symbols, I decided that I should just put a great big ball between every single word. Extrapolating from the rule that every sentence must be terminated with a dot, I reasoned that every word would benefit from being demarcated with a gigantic black mark.

And so, a perfectly reasonable tale about me spending time with my bottle-blonde grandmother, became a rather bizarre study of how not to do punctuation.

Punctuation, now, for me, is something technical. As a computer programmer, the use of a semicolon is quite essential to mark the end of a concise instruction for a computer to follow. A wayward full stop can cause many thousands of lines of code to fail to successfully be assembled into a computer program. When I write, I assume that I am programming the minds of my readers, and that I must use punctuation to precisely instruct their minds, or else they will reject what I write with a simple error message: syntax error!

I was going to write you a lovely story this evening, about all manner of real-world matters that you could relate to, but instead I feel that I have to self-consciously apologise for the over-punctuation of my texts. I feel that what I have written to date is absolute garbage, because I haven't had the time to read it all and trim away the unnecessary commas that I inserted in the interests of legibility and clarity.

With the most casual of comments, a friend has drawn attention to the fact that I have a tendency to over-punctuate my prose, and it has caused me to call into question everything I have written to date. It's hard, neither having an editor - a proofreader - nor having the time to be able to pore over my output, and perform some kind of quality control process, myself.

If what I'm writing is unreadable crap, so be it. I've just got to get it out there at this stage, because it's been bouncing around the inside of my cranium for far too long. I bitterly regret not making greater efforts to achieve a higher standard of writing that may have avoided 'turning off' many of the people whose opinion I would value, but I've been shooting from the hip. I connect my brain directly to my keyboard, and out it all pours.

It seems like my love of commas has reached epic proportions. Even I think "maybe I have somewhat overdone it" when I glance briefly back over my text, before publishing. However, unless you have the time to read what you have written back again, and to test for the natural points where you would pause for breath, it's very hard to put punctuation in and get it right first time.

If my comma-heavy writing is destroying the enjoyment of what I write, I'm devastated. I've only ever tried to write in an accessible style; attempting to avoid pseudo-intellectual bullshit littered with words and a literary approach that is only ever designed to scream "fuck you! I'm smart!" at the top of my insecure lungs. Screw you, you English literature douchebags. Screw you, you fucking poncey twats with your past participles and split infinitives. Fuck you all to hell. Just write some fucking shit that people can read and understand. Fuck you with your use of a zillion words that your thesaurus told you would be equivalent to their more obvious counterparts. Fuck you and the horse you rode in on, for pontificating, posturing and your pomposity. Just write something readable for fuck's sake.

If what I write is unreadable, because of my over-eagerness to punctuate in such a way as to delimit each point that I make, then I feel that I have crashed and burned. I feel that everything that I have written to date is a dreadful failure, and I have screwed up in the most horrible way imaginable. I feel that I may have fallen at the first hurdle.

Tags: #writing

This is a story about pressured speech...

A lot of my life has felt like driving with the handbrake on. When I'm finally released from the crap that's been artificially holding me back, I go off at breakneck pace, because I don't know when the next time is, that I'm going to be thwarted by somebody who is simply getting in the way and slowing things down unnecessarily.

Teachers at school need to pace their lessons so that most of the kids in the class can keep up. I'm not saying I'm the brightest, but school certainly didn't stretch and challenge me to the point where I really had to concentrate or try hard. I had plenty of spare time to draw cartoons, write rhymes and stories, and to mess around with computers. It's lucky that it worked out like that, because my computer skills have been far more marketable than any academic qualification ever would have been.

I entered the world of full time work at age 17 as an experienced computer programmer who had written games, simulations and produced websites. It was a painful transition, because now I had layers of ineffectual middle managers, incompetently pushing paper and trying to justify their pointless existence. There's one job: build the fucking software. I don't need some pleb to 'manage' me.

When you make a computer game or a website, it's a fairly creative process. You have to design the look & feel of the software, as well as actually write the computer programs that make it work. The success of a piece of software hinges on how useable it is by people. If people can't intuitively use your software or website, it's a failure.

Making games is hard. If you can make computer games, you can do anything. Honestly, having written software that guides torpedos to blow up ships, I can say that computer games are way harder.

So, I found the world of work to be extremely frustrating. I learned how to program in machine code at college. That's the very lowest level programming language there is. All other computer programming languages compile down to machine code.

Programmers try to keep themselves entertained by inventing more and more abstract programming languages... C becomes C++ and C# etc. However, it's all just instructions in machine code that are executed by the computer processor... it's all ones and zeros at the end of the day: boolean algebra.

Am I blinding you with science? Really, please don't switch off... it's easier than you think!

The whole logical thinking part is the easy bit. The hard part comes when you start thinking about how a human is going to use your software. You can guarantee that somebody will click the wrong button, or type something that you just weren't expecting them to type. Attempting to guide and constrain humans into a machine interpretable set of predefined steps, is the biggest challenge, not the logical processes that happen in code.

What happens when your whole job is to control the variables, and make software into something functional and boring... no weird and wonderful bugs... no unpredictable behaviour? In a way, once you have a few strategies for solving these problems, there is no challenge left in the job. It becomes a paint-by-numbers.

There are probably more ways of developing a website than there are atoms in the universe. I pity the poor web developers who have to know tons of User Interface frameworks, but their job is essentially always the same: what colour do we want the fucking buttons?

I could take no joy from the 'creative' side of being a web designer. There's no creativity. It's just listening to the dumb ideas of your client, who has shit taste and no idea about what good design looks like. The client always wrecks the creative process, along with everybody else in the entire world, and their mother. Everybody's got an opinion on something so subjective as the look & feel of a piece of software. You can't take any joy in creating beautiful looking apps and websites, because you'll never please everybody and the person paying the bill will always wreck things.

So, having neglected my cartoon drawing for many years, I return to writing.

I sit at my desk at my boring job, and I write. But I'm always looking over my shoulder. I'm not supposed to be writing. I'm paid an unspeakable amount of money to manage a software project, but I know that I'll basically just make the lives of my developers fucking miserable if I micromanage them, so I just let them get on with things while I write.

However, I'm always wary of who can see my screen. Is my boss going to suddenly appear at my desk and ask me what the hell I'm doing? How can I relax and write away, when I should be 'working'?

And so, I hack away as fast as I can, to produce something before I'm interrupted, or somebody asks about what's on my screen. I need my little creative outlet, or else I would go insane. I need to write.

But, it's frustrating as hell, trying to get all my creativity out in snippets of time that I grab in the dead time on the run-up to lunchtime, and before I need to prepare my evening meal and go to bed to start the whole miserable cycle all over again the next day.

You might think that writing is a luxury, but it's actually a necessity for me. It's helping me to organise my thoughts and process what just happened to me. It's helping me to deal with the fact that I have to work the most depressing boring easy job in the world, just to plump up my finances again, after a traumatic couple of years.

So, I write, and I write lots. You might think that it's self indulgent, and maybe you've got a book in you too, but you don't have the luxury of sitting around writing. Well, if you were serious, you'd do it. I could rattle off 50,000 words in a week, I reckon. The words just have to come out.

What's super frustrating right now is how the quality really suffers, the more pressured I am. When I'm at work, when somebody is trying to talk to me, when I've said I'll go out and meet somebody in the evening... it's fucking agonising to have to rush. I write as fast as I can, but I don't get the enjoyment from the creative process that I should do. I don't get the full benefit.

I've already written once today, but I'm writing again because I'm not satisfied. I'm not satisfied because I never got to consider my words. I'm not satisfied that I because got to review and refine what I wrote. I'm not satisfied because I was so rushed.

But if I don't get this stuff down, the lack of creativity and challenge in my day job is going to kill me.

Tags: #writing #career #computing

This is a story about everything trapped inside my head...

I'm lying awake and my mind is going at a million miles an hour, thinking about all the things that I want to write about, need to write about. There's a lot of my story that still needs to be told before the 13th/14th of May. I'm not sure why anniversaries are important to us humans, but we seem to attach significance to the passage of 365 days and nights.

I want to write an open letter to my Mum, for her birthday on the 13th, but I don't want that to overshadow something more significant that happened at around the same time: The Finsbury Park Fun Run. My parents have become quite irrelevant really, and I'd like to keep it that way. The further they are from my life, the more I feel within touching distance of restabilising, recovering, moving forwards.

My parents will tell you that I shouldn't be thinking about myself at the moment, when there's been a death in the family and another family member is seriously unwell. However, as I've alluded to before, I'm not exactly off the critical list myself. I took a kitchen knife to my forearm only last night, daring myself to open my veins, to end it.

When I came to listen to all my old voicemails at the beginning of this week, there were heaps of messages from my Mum, berating me for not being emotionally available to her. I couldn't believe how I'm supposed to be the responsible, reliable, dependable member of the family, there as emotional support and as a punching bag, for my flakey drop-out loser parents. Ok, so I've thrown off the shackles of wearing a grey suit and being the career-minded sensible and conservative member of the family, after the best part of 20 years in financial services technology and 9 to 5 office humdrum. However, I reject both roles: punchbag & outcast.

I can't be both left out in the cold when I'm having a hard time, but yet supposed to be there for my family when they're having a hard time. Fuck them. Fuck them to heck.

Anyway, I've kept my safety barriers up. There's too much at stake at the moment. I'm under too much pressure and stress as it is, and things are too fragile, the green shoots have only just appeared. I'm not going to have it all go down the shitter because of my damn parents again, rearing their ugly heads at precisely the wrong moment, because they want something.

I already occupy a convenient space for my parents: a talking point. They are friendless, isolated, unhealthy and unhappy. Their abusive relationship is toxic, and the only way that they know how to function is by picking holes in other people, sitting in smug judgement over the world.

Anyway, enough about my damn family already. The sooner I'm disinherited the better. I may revisit the topic of my Mother, in an open letter, but otherwise it should be case closed. The open wound that was my horrible childhood will never heal while I'm still dragged back into that sick, unhealthy family.

END OF RANT

So, what else is going on inside my damaged little noggin? Well, I feel like I haven't really bridged the gap for my readers, between the happy me who had my shit together, and the drug addict homeless guy. There's a period of time that warrants further examination.

I appreciate that what I'm doing - picking at the scab, committing public reputational suicide - is rather strange, hard to deal with, almost impossible to comprehend. If you think about the damage that I'm trying to undo though, and how close I've come to death or permanent insanity (perhaps already there, ha ha!) then you might be able to see why I have to take such a bold step.

Somebody who has been through what I've been through should be suffering much more permanent and irreversible brain damage. I should be attempting to swat invisible insects, perhaps picking off my own skin to get to invisible bugs underneath. I should be shouting at unseen people, hearing voices. I should be consumed by paranoia... convinced that something or somebody is out to get me.

I've certainly unseated my mental health, which has always had dubious stability. I was clearly suffering from a mood disorder before I started putting copious amounts of powerful narcotics into my body. The two things really don't mix well and play nice.

It's hard to be self-aware, and it was certainly surprising when I was told that I was slurring my words and talking really slowly, back earlier this year, when I was swallowing loads of legal benzodiazepines and suffering the cognitive impairment of drug withdrawal from long binges on powerful stimulants.

I'm quite familiar with the brain-killing sluggishness of stimulant withdrawal. Normally it means I'm really sleepy and struggle to hold a coherent conversation or thread of thought. When writing, I might drift in and out of consciousness, and it'll take me ages to finish what I'm writing, which ends up flitting from topic to topic. You can see it in my writing, but it's masked by the fact that you have no idea how long it took me to write.

The benzos leave big gaps in my memory. Rohypnol, the famous 'date rape' drug is a benzo, and the amnesia-inducing effects are presumably what the would-be rapists are looking for, when they're spiking drinks. So, I guess I was spiking my own drinks. Who would do such a thing, and why? Well, another effect of stimulant comedowns is horrible panic attacks and anxiety, as well as disturbed sleep and appetite. Benzos help to calm everything down after a big stimulant binge.

But anyway, I'm getting waaaay ahead of myself. How did it even come to this? How did I even get off the rails in such a bad way?

In actual fact, you don't realise this, but things have improved massively. Things were much, MUCH worse. That's the thing about your journey downwards... you don't even know where you're headed yet. People talk about rock bottom, and I think that's a lot of nonsense. I never reached a rock bottom, but I can tell you that things started out slow, crept up on me and then got the better of me. No rock bottom, but I had to learn some pretty brutal lessons before I got the upper hand.

So, let me give you a little insight into how I became a drug addict. It starts with sex.

SEX ADDICTION

I've written before about experimenting with drugs to enhance bedroom antics, but what I haven't had a chance to write about yet is just how much of an addiction sex was. Perhaps it wasn't an addiction, but it was the yardstick by which I measured happiness and security. If I wasn't getting sex, my life felt pretty meaningless.

A few of my relationships were built on an almost purely sexual basis. One girlfriend, I really didn't find at all attractive, but at least I was getting regular sex. It was somehow important to me in my late teens and early twenties to get a lot of sex. I felt like I was making up for lost time, that I had missed out on a lot of those great experiences of first girlfriends, childhood sweethearts, school crushes etc. etc. I felt like I was 'owed' a debt of sexual gratification.

One of my close friends talks about notches on the bedpost as a way of warding off the relentless bullying endured at school, and it was this exact thing that I was trying to do myself, except I was just doing it with the one girl, rather than being the heartbreaking rogue that he is. Fact of the matter was, my self confidence was probably damaged, not enhanced, by being with somebody I really didn't fancy, and actually felt ashamed that I had 'sold out' and decided to date.

The truth is, I'm actually pretty vulnerable. Very vulnerable in fact. I'm so desperate to be loved, liked even, that I'll accept all kinds of mistreatment and being pushed into things that are really not in my favour. There are desperately needy things, like being friends with people who are just taking advantage of me. Then there is the sexually fucked up thing of having sex with girls I don't fancy, just because I don't want to be alone.

My ex wife was different. I did actually fancy her. I mean, I do kind of corrupt and twist myself though. I found her attractive, but in truth, I also tried to dump her when I realised she wasn't a nice person. I also realised that I wasn't even that compatible with her, the more I got to know her. However, there was one thing that we stuck together for: the sex.

I'm not sure what your relationship with sex is, but mine used to be like this: I felt I had to have it. If I thought I wasn't going to have it, I used to get stressed, upset, anxious. I had more of it than I really wanted, just because I was fulfilling some kind of ritual, reassuring myself that I could have it whenever I wanted. When I couldn't have it, I'd react badly, getting upset or threatening to go off to find it elsewhere.

Basically, I'm pretty sure I had all the hallmarks of a psychological addiction. When my ex mentioned she'd have to be away for a period of time, the pit of my stomach would feel sick. What about sex? Where am I going to get sex? When can I have sex? Will I be able to have enough sex? What if I want to have sex and I can't? This was a major issue for me.

I must be clear: I used seduction rather that coercion to ensure I had a steady supply of sex. I worked my arse off in the bedroom to ensure my ex wanted it as much as me. In a way, I addicted her to sex. I was a sex pusher. I gave her a great time in the bedroom, but my motives were not pure. I wanted her to be available to me, whenever I wanted. It took time, it took effort, but slowly I was building a co-dependent relationship based around sex. It's all we had.

There were other reasons why sex became such an unhealthy fixation in our co-dependent relationship. Namely, she was a really mean person to me. She isolated me from friends and activities I loved, criticised everything about me and generally dragged down my self esteem to the point where I was trapped by a sense of worthlessness and loneliness. All alone in a flat in the middle of nowhere that she insisted we move into. I was miserable as sin.

I'm covering old ground here a little, but it's important to go over this, as this was the groundwork for the really destructive stuff that was to follow.

CO-DEPENDENT RELATIONSHIP

It was always clear that the relationship was unhealthy as hell, and really needed to end, but it was virtually impossible for me to back out of it, because I had so little in my life except for the sex. So many friendships had been damaged and fallen into disrepair. Even my work was suffering because of this all-consuming fuck up of a relationship.

Eventually though, I found a reserve of strength and finally managed to break up with her. This was the catalyst for me forging a more entrepreneurial path. Mingled in with the breakup was some career changes, some business ventures... basically a lot of my pent-up creativity and strength came out in much more positive directions, around the time that we broke up, the first time.

Then, when things were going really well in my life, I decided to try and get back with her. Things were different. The relationship was less destructive, but the way that things quickly developed was deepening co-dependency, with the introduction of sex-enhancing drugs.

Yes, the introduction of drugs into our relationship brought a kind of stability. I've written before about swathes of time at weekends being taken up by the drug-fuelled pursuit of sexual ecstasy. I felt like drugs would bring us closer, and they certainly reduced the arguments, the agression and abusive nature of the relationship. However, it wasn't healthy. It was co-dependency taken to the next level.

With drugs, it's sometimes only a matter of time before you take things up a gear, if you're chasing a high. What started out with some MDMA (Ecstasy, Molly) and GBL/GHB then turned into rampant experimentation across the spectrum of available legal highs, before fatefully arriving at a compound nicknamed NRG-3.

MY FIRST DRUG ADDICTION

This is where the slowly-slowly creeping up thing happens. You feel like you're in control, with your accurate measuring scales and strict rules about dosages and keeping things limited to weekends, but you're playing with drugs that erode your self-control, willpower. I was the sensible one, but I was also a lot of the driving force too... this new level of co-dependency felt a little bit like we were in love and had a stable happy relationship, with me as the architect.

It would be me who carefully researched each chemical, measured doses and made sure we stayed safe. The problem was, I hadn't yet found my nemesis: my drug of choice.

NRG-3 was deemed by me to be too dangerous for us to try, and it remained an unopened packet, a closed Pandora's Box. I was right to treat it with respect... it turned out to be every bit as dangerous as my research had led me to believe.

But, addiction needs a catalyst. Me leaving Cambridge and facing the stress of how to grow my little company to be big enough to employ at least 2 people full time, plus resolve the intractable issue of where to locate the office, reached crisis point. A busy summer of relentless weddings taking up whole weekends was the straw that broke the camel's back.

Me and my ex were absolutely paralytically drunk at her brother's wedding. We had an absolutely almighty row in front of her whole family, and I ended up back home, alone, suicidally depressed. It seemed like the perfect time to try NRG-3.

People talk about drugs being near-instantaneously addictive, and I don't think that's correct. However, the circumstances under which I tried NRG-3 certainly conspired to create brain conditions that were almost perfect for addiction to flourish. I disappeared into the depths of my first ever drug binge. All the rules about dosage and measurement went right out of the window.

So, the rest is history right? Wrong.

Chronic drug addiction still doesn't happen overnight. At the end of my binge, I had an almighty panic attack, got really scared by it, and then life kind of got back to normal... except it didn't. There was now a little devil inside of me that wanted to repeat the experience, and was just waiting for an appropriate moment.

Enter the era of the 'secret drug habit'. My ex talked about my 'drug habit' during our divorce. What utter nonsense. By the time we separated, 2 years later, I was a raging drug addict. There was no hiding a 'habit'... I was actively turning parts of our home into a crack den. However, there was a period of 18 months where I tried my very best to keep the devil at bay, and hide my habit.

I'm actually putting myself in an excessively bad light here. I had no idea that addiction had taken hold so firmly. Yes, sure, it was me who played with fire and got burned. It was me who made bad decisions that led to an ever-worsening situation. However, as I've tried to explain above, one thing leads to another. It's impossible to separate my decision making from my state of mind and the circumstances surrounding it.

So, I started to try to use NRG-3 in secret, which wasn't a problem at first as my company was going down the shitter, so I could use drugs at home when I was supposed to be working, and my ex was at her job. Whether the drugs were the reason why my startup failed, quite possibly, but actually you could say that a terrible relationship was the reason why I did a startup in the first place, which later led to unmanageable stress that was the catalyst for my drug habit... one thing leads to another!

Within a month or so, I thought I was going to die. I was carrying a letter around with me at all times, that basically confessed that I was addicted to powerful stimulants. This letter was going to be given to the doctors at Accident and Emergency, in the event that my heart started giving out, or I went insane or something.

I was a little more proactive than this, and did reach out to community mental health services as well as addiction support specialists, but when I met other 'service users' I felt that my case was unworthy of their time. Meeting child prostitutes who'd had their children taken into care, and had poly-substance abuse issues as well as alcoholism, and grinding poverty... versus me, with my health intact plus a big pile of savings still in the bank. I felt like I was taking the piss by taking up the time of those treatment centres.

This is what I mean by saying that there were lessons I had to learn. I sensed the danger, but I still felt in control. The main problem was a recurrent lie that a lot of addicts tell themselves though: I thought I could use in moderation, and I thought I was better off hiding my problems and trying to fix things on my own, which actually turn out to be contradictory things.

There's a lot of times when drugs are talked about, not as something inanimate, but actually as if they have a life of their own. It's the drugs that are to blame we say, as if they have legs and walked right into your bloodstream all on their own. It's certainly hard to unpick the strange behavioural changes that addiction has on you, from the supposed free will that we all apparently exercise.

What happened to me, during my descent into chronic addiction, was the re-programming of my brain. Whenever my ex would say she was going away or she would be doing something, my brain would instantly say "great, more time to use drugs". When I wasn't using drugs, I was planning the next time I would be able to, anticipating it, aching for it, willing the time to pass more quickly so I could get to my next fix. This didn't happen overnight.

I used to be able to go for a week between getting a fix. Then it shortened to about every 3 days. Then of course, it started to be a daily habit. Then it came to the point where I would pretend to be staying up late to watch TV or something, but just stay awake all night taking drugs. Then it progressed to 'secretly' dipping into a bag of drugs when we were actually in bed together. By the time it gets this bad, you're not exactly hiding your 'habit'... you're practically a chronic drug addict.

Two things happened to significantly worsten the addiction: firstly, I started getting signed off sick for periods by the doctor, which in my mind were to be used 80% for drug taking, and 20% for recovery. I remember when I got signed off for 5 weeks, my very first thought was "great, that's 4 weeks drug taking and 1 week to recover". It had become automatic by then... I didn't choose to think like that... that's what addiction does to you. It changes your subconscious, your priorities, the way you think and act.

Secondly, conflict erupted between me and my ex, and my response was to corner myself. I would go into the spare bedroom, and she would kick and punch the door and scream at the top of her lungs. I was always afraid of her aggressive, violent, abusive side, and this was particularly harrowing when under the influence of powerful drugs or on a comedown, so I tried to barricade myself from these attacks.

THE PRISONER

Being barricaded into a corner, with somebody raging and snarling and raining blows on the only physical barrier that prevents you from being the object receiving the beating, is not conducive to good mental health. Siege tactics were employed, but hunger and thirst don't have the intended affect on somebody so psychologically traumatised, and under the influence of anoretic drugs.

Eventually it got so bad, that my ex could finally see that she was killing me. You can't leave somebody backed into a corner with no food, no drink, no toilet, and not see that your aggression is the reason why somebody is so physically wrecked. It was being cornered that destroyed me, as much as the drugs. It was being cornered that affected my mental health, as much as anything.

By the time we separated, we had entered a dangerous dance, where it was almost routine for her to spend entire weeks keeping me entombed in my sarcophagus. It was unrelenting, the screaming, the shouting, the hammering of fists and feet on the door. I don't think it's unreasonable to say that I felt shellshocked. I was hypervigilent: I could never relax for a second. I was in a state of constant fear, agitation.

If you'd like to blame the drugs in isolation for this, you're wrong. It's quite possible that the addiction would have developed in a different direction, without this mistreatment, but it's certainly true that what I went through was inhumane. I was a prisoner in my own home. Drugs just facilitated this, made me an easier target for abuse. I can barely convey to you the awfulness of being subjected to around-the-clock abuse like that, when so weak and so vulnerable.

Finally, our parents stepped in and enforced a separation to spare my life. I was fucked, and had made a desperate appeal for my release from captivity, to both her parents as well as mine. Mercifully, they arrived and stopped the relentless vigil at my flimsy barrier.

Am I being melodramatic? Well, find yourself a tiny room in your house and lock yourself in there with no food, water or toilet for days on end, with people coming to hammer on the door and scream abuse at you around the clock. See how long you last for. See how your mental health holds up, without even the amplifying effects of a drugs.

Why didn't I run away, go somewhere else? Well, this is where the illogical bullshit that addiction spews into your brain comes in. In my mind, my drug use was still a 'habit' that could be hidden, and it was only when a weekend or holiday arrived that this folly was exposed for what it was. The arrival of a weekend can even come as a surprise to somebody completely in the depths of chronic addiction... it was only the screaming and the yelling and the kicking and the punching that I had any means to mark the passage of time at all.

You have to remember that I was the weakened one here, I was the one in trouble, in distress, cornered and traumatised. You don't fight abuse with more abuse. Nobody's psychological problems were ever cured by screaming at them and cornering them. I had enough on my plate with drug addiction to deal with, let alone an abusive partner.

I did need to quit drugs, get cleaned up... addiction was consuming me and fucking up my life... but, abusing me only prolonged the agony. I learned nothing from being cornered and abused. All it did was to leave me with deep psychological scars.

Separation only opened the door to these psychological issues being resolved, over time. When some friends in London invited me to live with them, I was paralysed by fear of somebody hammering on the door, shouting at me. When I went to stay with my parents, they actually did hammer on the door and shout at me, which is what I had spent days anxiously anticipating... deepening my sense of threat, confirming my worst fears. Obviously, these feelings were irrational, however I had been traumatised to the point where serious psychological damage had been done.

London was chaotic and traumatic in whole new ways, but at least I was eventually released from the prison cell of being trapped in a room with no food, water or toilet. My life imploded to the point where I was actually in full public view, either in hostels or sleeping rough. All privacy, dignity was stripped away from me. I was laid bare for the world to see.

But London led me to social reconnection. Having interactions with people that weren't screaming, shouting, punching and kicking... it started to bring me back to the real world. As I built a network of friends at one hostel, my life started to stabilise. The more human contact, the more friends, the more ordinary conversations and interactions I had, the more normal I felt again, the more my dignity and self-esteem were restored, the more my chances of recovery increased.

RECOVERY

Johann Hari, writes that the opposite of addiction is not sobriety, but human connection. Addiction is about forming a bond with a drug, when healthy human relationships are not available. I had fallen back into the clutches of an abusive co-dependent relationship, miles away from my fellow startup founders, investors, mentors, family and in a part of the country where most of my friendships had fallen into disrepair due to the all-consuming and destructive nature of the relationship I had with my ex.

Of course I was going to get sucked into drug addiction. It replaced my ex perfectly. It was actually a superior relationship. I had everything that a co-dependent sex addiction gave me, in a convenient powder form. It was this drug - NRG-3 - that allowed me to finally break the habit that was my ex. We finally broke up once and for all, and I knew that it would be easier to quit drugs than to break up with her, so I felt relieved even though I was deep in the hole.

When me and my ex wife separated, I was using heroin, crack, crystal meth, cocaine, speed, diazepam, alprazolam, zopiclone as well as my drug of choice... NRG-3. Within a few weeks, I had cut it down to just some pure Dexidrene, which I was using to get over the worst of the depression and fatigue that would be inevitable after a lengthy period of addiction.

I was using 5mg of Dexidrene per day, to combat fatigue, cravings and poor concentration that would have ruined my recovery. It was a remarkable turnaround, but unfortunately it all got ruined by a complete lack of care for my wellbeing and future survival prospects, in favour of my ex's unreasonable demands to have the divorce processed her way or the highway. I wanted her to just take everything and leave me alone. My life and my health were the most important things. She continued to make my life hell.

Not that it matters, but today I've been abstinent for 7 and a half weeks, but not only that, I'm not drinking any caffeinated drinks or taking anything to help me sleep. I'm 100% drug free, and I'm not suffering unmanageable fatigue or cognitive impairment. I have no motor tics, and I don't have any psychosis or paranoia. This is quite remarkable. Considering how long and how deep this gash in my life has run, it's quite remarkable that I should be as close to normal as I am.

Anxiety and depression are unspeakably horrible forces in my life at the moment. I guess when I think about it, it's to be expected: withdrawal from benzos gives horrible rebound anxiety, and withdrawal from stimulants can trigger deep depressive episodes. The fact that I'm chugging along through a very stressful period of financial problems and job hunting, with very little support from friends & family, while going completely abstintent from all drugs... this is a big deal. It's not every day that people pull through things like this.

I'm sorry that last paragraph ended up a bit back-slapping, self-congratulatory. Certainly, any kind of complacency will lead to relapses. I've fallen foul of thinking "I can quit anytime I want" before, but the next challenge is to try and sustain recovery and put in place all the pieces that make a proper life. Everything was so temporary and fragile before.

Anybody who says "oh yeah, heard it all before" doesn't have a fucking clue what they're talking about. Every relapse has been due to either excess stress, or a collapse of the things I worked so hard to build. Losing all my hostel friends due to the pressures and stresses associated with the life change of moving from an unemployed homeless bum to being a guy working 9 to 5 in an office, plus a breakup with a girlfriend, plus the loss of a contract. Then, facing financial armageddon with a rent to pay and no means to do it, deep in a hole of debts, ridiculous pressure on the project I was working on, and bad mental health problems due to the sustained anxiety and stress I had been under relentlessly for so long, losing friends as well as colleagues when my work contract was no longer sustainable and I had to leave a job quite abruptly and inelegantly.

We've all faced bumps in the road, and these hiccups, these hurdles are inevitable. Part of sustainable recovery is once again being able to cope when things aren't going great. However, expecting somebody who's been through hell to be able to cope with an absolute clusterfuck as the challenge to their fragile, delicate, green shoots of recovery... I've got to say... what sort of cruel fucked up world would wish that upon somebody who's trying so hard.

That's fundamentally the driving force behind so many of my bitter, angry rants. I'm just incredulous that I'd be left to flounder by so many of my nearest and dearest, when the distress flares have been going up and the opportunity to rescue an entire ship before it sinks below the waves has been there for the taking. Raising a wreck is hard, when it's at the bottom of the ocean. Better to step in when it's just a little leak in the hull, rather than after the captain and crew have drowned and the boat's sunk.

It's not anybody else's responsibility other than my own, but you can fuck off if you're going to ring me up and leave me shitty voicemails saying I'm letting friends and family down. You want something from me now? Well, where were you when I needed support?

I know that a lot of friends have been there with support at the most unlikely of times, and in the most dire circumstances. I know it's seemed a little thankless, and that friends have even felt a little used or that trust has been abused. It's really not like that.

Yup, I've made some mistakes along the way. I'm still making mistakes. However, the tip of the iceberg conceals the great mass of the shit that I've been through, and yet, I still maintain some ethics, some sense of a debt of gratitude. I have a functioning moral compass, and I'm honest and acting purposefully towards repaying my friends for their help and support, showing them it was worthwhile, aiming to restore some semblance of a will to live to my shattered life.

That's what you're doing if you help me: you're saving a life. Don't believe any bullshit about 'enabling'... it's true that's possible if I'm wrapped up in active addiction, but I have the ethics, the sense of right and wrong to not ask for anything of my friends that would be squandered on addiction. The truth of the matter is that there are plenty of times, like now, where I'm not an addict. I'm just somebody who's struggling to rebuild their shattered life. I'm less of an addict than you, given that I don't drink tea or coffee, or even take headache tablets.

Yes, you could say I was reckless, I was irresponsible. Not really. I always paid my own way. I always covered my bets. I've kept track of where any debts or favours need to be repaid.

It's true, I felt a little entitled to have a complete breakdown. I felt entitled to lift the burden of responsibility from my shoulders for a time. For a time, I didn't feel guilty for being a risk taker and for the consequences that followed. Most of the consequences were suffered by me anyway.

CONSEQUENCES

Consequences, consequences. I've felt perhaps less than I should have done, but perhaps I have paid in other ways. I certainly feel like I don't want to rack up any more consequences. In fact, I'm back to the position of wanting to end my life quickly and cleanly if it looks like everything's going to go down the shitter again, rather than prolonging the agony and creating more problems for the world to mop up after I'm gone.

I feel a little bad that I would be depriving my sister of a brother, to be there to support her and my niece after my parents are gone, but at the same time I'm aware that I need to keep my distance from my niece, in case I don't make it. An uncle she hardly knew who's now gone is no big deal in the grand scheme of things, and certainly better than a drawn-out endgame that's just continuous "will he make it? won't he make it?" heartache, until the inevitable day that luck runs out.

Maybe you think I'm being melodramatic again, or using emotional blackmail. You think I talk about my suicidal thoughts lightly? You'd seriously call my bluff on this? I really think you'll regret it when I'm dead. I'm obviously not going to feel anything when I'm dead, except sweet sweet relief from a world that's been indifferent to my suffering and pain.

It'd be so easy for me to just decide, and act. I'm a very decisive person. I'm determined, stubborn, brave... everything that could quickly snuf my life out, if the scales tip just that bit too far. I'm keeping score, and if things get too unfair I'll just tip the whole boardgame onto the floor, along with all the playing pieces, dice and cards. You might think it's childish, flippant, knee-jerk, but it's actually cold hard rational, logical.

I feel like the writing I did when I slipped back into addiction doesn't make a fine account of me. I feel like the bitterness and anger towards unresolved issues with my parents made me come across as very unpleasant, as well as obsessively stuck in the past, and even launching tirades against people who only share some of the responsibility. I can't lay everything at the door of my horrible childhood and irresponsible and unpleasant parents. At some point, I have to draw a line that indicates where the division of responsibility lies.

The fact of the matter is though, that you've got to live with yourselves after I've gone. Coulda, woulda, shoudla... that's not going to mean jack squat when I'm gone. There's a smoking gun here. It's going to be hard to say that it was inevitable that I'd meet my untimely demise, when there's a record of periods of opportunity to step in and help, before things got too unmanageable for any human being to endure.

We should be fucking celebrating somebody coming back from the fucking dead. This is a fucking big deal, where I'm at right now. I shouldn't be here. The way I've been treated thus far in my life, I've been left for dead so many times. Aren't you going to fucking learn?

BACK FROM THE DEAD

It's not right to write people off, and leave them for dead. It's not right to nickel and dime people. It's not right to let the bystander effect be your excuse for not stepping in: let somebody else make the first move, surely it's somebody else's responsibility, not mine?

What the fuck happened to collective responsibility? What the fuck happened to a sense of community? What the fuck happened to helping each other out?

Where the fuck did this every man for himself bullshit come from? Are we Darwinian beasts, duking it out in the jungle, or are we a supposedly advanced race living in a modern civilisation?

I watched the film Se7en (Seven) again the other night, and I was taken by the similarity between me and the psychopathic killer. He had filled books and books with his thoughts, and then wanted to make a grand gesture to the world, culminating in his death. He thought that his actions would be studied, that they would make a difference in an indifferent world.

In a way, I'm drinking poison, hoping to kill somebody else. Everything I've done and written since I reached breaking point has in some way hurt me more than it's hurt anybody else. I threw away a very lucrative contract, I destroyed my professional reputation with a large number of individuals, I have spread word about my personal and private problems all over the internet and throughout my network of contact. If you search for my name and any company that I've worked for on Google, there's me.... right there on the first page, for all to see.

Here I am, with my guts hanging out. All my internal organs are on display. All my gory detail is right here, on these pages, for anybody to see.

What's worse, to die with some kind of false reputation? Your friends and family could always hold some mistaken belief about what your life was really all about, in the end. The more lurid details could be discreetly swept under the carpet, to save the blushes of your family, and to preserve your memory in some slightly more wholesome light. Seems like bullshit to me. I want people to know what drove me to the brink and beyond. I want people to have the facts, and decide for themselves. I want a world where we see that the only difference between people are the circumstances that conspire around them.

To say that this writing, this journal, this log, is a gift, that it serves some useful purpose... is grossly arrogant, deluded. However, it's all I've fucking got at the moment. Perhaps I am fighting to clear my name a little. Perhaps I'm not going down without a fight, and I'm taking hostages, taking some people down with me.

It's up to you, dear reader, to decide. I present you with my side of the story. It's up to you whether you dismiss me easily, as a madman and an addict, with no worth to my words. It's up to you whether you remember me as having the potential to be good, or the destiny to be bad.

Personally, I think it's immoral to make bets on living people's lives.

Tags: #parents #childhood #drugs #addiction #depression #suicide #career