This is a story about being a groupie...

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

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

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

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

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

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

How big is a million dollars?

$1,000,000

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

$1,000,000,000

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

$1,000,000,000,000

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I started thinking again. Big mistake.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You have to wake up out of your nightmare.

Tags: #politics #banking #capitalism

This is a story about Nick Grant...

Here's where I start and end each day. My side is the far side with all the pillows. This is how morning begins, with the gathering of pillows to prop myself up in bed. You can also tell this is a morning photo, because of the dressing gown casually tossed aside. Also, because it's day and not night. I spend most of my life in bed.

Here you can see the charger for my laptop within grabbing distance of the bed. Normally the laptop would be within grabbing distance too. My day would usually start with checking my phone for Facebook notifications, WhatsApp messages, Twitter notifications and emails that don't look too scary, like I'd actually have to do anything about them.

I don't normally get up at 'breakfast' time, but this is what I would eat if I could be bothered to boil water, pour it into a pot and stir for a couple of minutes. Sounds like hard work to me. I would normally go for two slices of buttered toast, which I would take back to bed, in order to get crumbs everywhere for that lovely scratchy feel when trying to sleep.

Ah, I see you've found my floordrobe. Here are clothes that are clean, or at least appear clean and don't have any sick or pooh on them. It's against my religious beliefs to eat lunch in a dressing gown, so I normally don the garment which is on the top of the pile, having checked for sick and pooh. Then I saunter into the kitchen to see what I can have for lunch, requiring the least effort.

Mmmmm... it's brunch. Breakfast is a drink - a protein shake with the aforementioned oats, but all you have to do is shake the bottle. Lunch is also a kind of drink - soup - but you have to microwave it for 6 whole minutes or else it's not pleasant to drink like the protein shake. Also, do not drink the soup in big gulps straight from the container like you would with the shake... or at least not until it's cooled down.

All that getting dressed and microwaving has left me ravenous. I have supplemented my brunch with several packets of crisps and enough cheese to clog most ordinary people's arteries. As you can see, I'm still very busy doing things on my laptop that don't earn me any money.

Right, time to do something producti... wait a minute. There's hundreds of Sky TV channels, Apple TV, Netflix, Amazon Video, Now TV and BBC iPlayer. Let's find something educational to watch. Perhaps a documentary about history or something.

I suppose I could read a book; expand my mind; grow my intellec... wait a second. THERE'S A MAN AND HE'S GOT A FUCKING DOG. HOW DID I NOT KNOW ABOUT THIS? I can see how my afternoon is going to be spent. This is what a productive day at home looks like... TO THE MAX.

Fucking books everywhere. It's the academic equivalent of flopping your dick out at a dinner party and saying "pretty impressive, huh?". Fuck off books. I have to find out what happens to that man. And his dog. It's important.

Awww the dog owners keep giving their dogs little treats. I think I deserve a snack. It has been a stressful day. So many snacks; so little time. All your snacks are belong to me.

I should really go out; get some exercise. You can't eat as much as I do when you're not doing any physical activity all day. I'd better check what it looks like out there. There might be a blizzard, or a hurricane. There might be robbers or nuclear fallout. Nobody ever got killed to death while watching TV, did they?

Ah there it is - the outside. In fact, I am outside on the balcony. This surely counts as going outside AND exercise. That will do for the day. I'm exhausted. Looks a bit dodgy down there - I'm sure it's wall-to-wall robbers. That sky is threatening too - I'm sure that hurricane is going to arrive any minute now. Safety first; time to go back inside where it's safe.

People have been talking about "the hum" for years now. Well, I found out what it is. This fucking thing hums 24 hours a day. You can hear it even with all the double glazed windows and doors shut. Well, I suppose that's why this flat only cost a gazzilion pounds instead of a bazzilion pounds. London... the place where you're grateful to live with a fucking loud humming noise, just to own a tiny flat. My flat's valued at twice as much as this one and doesn't have a hum and it's bigger... but I couldn't afford to buy it.

I never drink before midday, but sadly that only applies on weekends and holidays. I've got to wait until 6pm and there's no white wine or gin left, and the red wine will stain my teeth, which will be a dead giveaway that I've been on the booze all afternoon. I suppose I can just look at it longingly.

I might just wait here in the hallway for her to get home. I'm lonely. Why does she have to work and pay the mortgage and buy everything I eat and cook and clean and take care of my every whim? Perhaps this is why some cultures allow multiple wives. I don't see why I shouldn't be allowed my own harem. I'm sure men would be in favour of bigamy if we held a referendum, which is at least 50% of the vote.

This is kind of like Big Brother Live, except you only see a contestant very occasionally and very briefly, as they walk down the corridor. Admittedly, I don't think that Endemol are going to pay me very much for the rights to produce the programme. It's entertaining me a bit though, and maybe I will be here at the very moment she arrives home. If I just wait here... will my patience hold out?

I said I was going to cook tonight. I'm making meatball fornication. I've got balls and I'm going to fornicate. Seriously though, here is a meal on top of a stove. I can cook and everything. I'm a modern man.

Only kidding. If I was actually going to prepare a meal, it would be a microwave ready meal. I was kidding about the preparing meals thing too. She's cooking chicken fajitas, and I'm under strict instructions not to eat the ingredients which are in the fridg... oh fuck. I ate the cheddar. No grated cheese for us on our fajitas. Oh well; I did eat quite a lot of cheese earlier, so at least *I* haven't missed out.

Hurrah! She's home. That deserves a toast. I'm going to drink all the alcoholz. Gin & tonic followed by white wine as an aperitif, then red wine with dinner and dessert, and then 'special squash' which can only be made while she's in the toilet. Sadly, the noise of me unscrewing a bottle cap means I normally get busted. Also, I reek of booze.

Time for bed. I'd better just take my medication. They all say "do not consume alcohol while taking this medication" but that's just advice, right, like traffic lights when you're on a bike. The doctor also told me not to take the maximum dose of tramadol and not to take it at the same time as the codeine but what the fuck does that jumped up twat know with their fucking 5 years of training. Fuck off. I'm also prescribing myself a combination of zopiclone, xanax and diazepam... all at doses well exceeding what those stingy bastard doctors will give me. It's the only way to get a decent night's sleep. Note: there's the dexedrine to help me wake up from my lethal cocktail of drugs, assuming I haven't died in my sleep.

"I'm just going to turn the fan on" she says just before we switch out the lights AS IF THE FUCKING HUM WASN'T BAD ENOUGH. Why was I even born? Why must I suffer like this? I must have been a paedophile in a previous life or something. YES, PLEASE! MORE NOISE WHILE I TRY AND SLEEP. Then the drugs kick in and the next thing I know she's kissing me goodbye before she leaves to go to her so-called job that earns the so-called money that pays the so-called mortgage and bills.

As you can tell, I'm the breadwinner and the brains of the operation round here. Man of the house; master of my domain.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is my life.

Tags: #career #london

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That was December 2013.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Somehow, I managed to land the HSBC contract.

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

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

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

Are you spotting a theme yet?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That's a net result of two things:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anyway, that's where I am right now.

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

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

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

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

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

Tags: #drugs #addiction

This is a story about repeatedly making the same mistakes...

Do you remember all those times that you were made to say sorry when you were a kid? Maybe you were a bit of a bully and you kicked sand in somebody's face or pushed someone into the swimming pool. Maybe you were a bit of a thief and you tried to steal other children's toys. Maybe you were a bit violent, and got into an argument with somebody at school or playgroup, and you hit or kicked them.

You can't make somebody sorry. You can force them to say words which the dictionary defines as apologetic, but that's got nothing to do with them actually feeling sorry. In my experience, forcing a child to apologise to another child, could often result in later reprisals that far exceed the original offence. Plus, receiving an insincere apology - under duress - only serves to further demonstrate a lack of remorse.

Also, children may not yet have learned about taboo subjects, political correctness, proper comportment, social faux-pas, tact and a whole load of other subtle nuances in adult behaviour. Some adults may only ever reach a behavioural level that marginally exceeds that of a child. Some adults may believe that their behaviour epitomises the gold standard that we should all aspire to attain.

I spent some of my childhood in Oxford. The area we lived in was being gentrified. Among our neighbours were an MP, a City trader, a consultant heart surgeon and other high achievers. Also living in the neighbourhood, were poor people, who weren't there because it was an affordable up-and-coming trendy part of central Oxford, but because they lived in council houses... sorry, I mean social housing.

The nearest child of a similar age, lived at number 4, and we lived at number 10. There was also a boy who lived at number 1, on the opposite side of the street, but not much further up the road than number 4. The boy at number 1 was from a poor family who lived in social housing. The boy at number 4 was from a family that believed they had attained the aforementioned 'gold standard' behavioural attributes.

At number 4, there were two girls and a boy. The eldest girl was a little older than me and the boy was a little younger. We spent a lot of time playing together on the street outside their house, where their parents could keep an eye on us. Not that the 'gold standard' was shining brightly on the day their eldest ran across the road and got hit by a car, or when their youngest drank bleach from the cupboard under the sink. 

The development of a child's sense of morality and good behaviour might evolve thusly: I want that cake; I want that cake but I know I will get in trouble if I take it; I want that cake and I don't understand why I have to wait and I only get a portion of the cake; I want that cake, and I want all the portions of the whole cake; I want that cake, I want as many portions as I'm allowed, and I resent anybody else who has a portion; I want that cake, and I understand that too much makes me sick; I want that cake, and it seems to be social convention that cake is shared.

Therefore, we can see that the behaviour of a child who has eaten their own portion of cake and has now stolen another child's, might not follow adult morality and logic. Imagine if the cake is a birthday cake, and it's the birthday of the cake 'thief' child. Adult logic says the cake is for everyone to share, we should eat in moderation, and taking from somebody else is stealing. Child logic - the birthday child - says that the cake is theirs, because it's their birthday, but they consent to cake being shared out because that's established social convention, but taking any unattended cake is fair game, because it's all the birthday child's cake.

Some 'bad' behaviour is actually natural and normal for a child, who is not equipped with all the knowledge and experience that an adult has, of tact, political correctness, taboos and subjects that require a lot of historical context, before they start to make sense. Here's a test for you: are children racist?

If you put 29 little kids in a room with an obviously handicapped child, what are the kids going to remember, if you ask them individually at a later time? More importantly, what are they going to say? If the kids laugh at the handicapped kid, does that mean they'll laugh and point at people in wheelchairs when they're adults? If the kids imitate the handicapped kid, are they mocking people with disabilities?

If you put 29 white privileged little kids with a little black kid, what are the kids going to notice and remember? If they all single out the black kid, does that mean they're all racist, or does it mean they've got eyes? Children haven't learned the 'colourblind' behaviour that adults are supposed to have.

By the time you reach adulthood, you've learned to pretend not to notice that brain damaged person, strapped into a chair, making weird noises. You've learned to pretend not to notice if the skin all over somebody's entire body, is a substantially different colour from yours. You've learned not to stare, not to point, not to vocalise your observations, except with extreme care and subtlety.

Older children will develop empathy; a sense of care for those around them. Older children will find it rewarding to please their peers and adults, by sharing. Older children learn that other people can own things too, and that it's wrong to take somebody else's things. Older children become better at communicating, negotiating and controlling their emotions; physical violence and arguments become rare, replaced by reasoned debate.

Remember all those insincere apologies you had to give? Remember all those times when an adult made you share your sweets, but they were yours and you wanted them all yourself? 

"I'm sorry, it won't happen again" 

I hear adults say this all the time.

Firstly, they're not sorry. A genuine apology starts with empathy for the victim, leading to remorse, guilt and then some words to express regret, encompassing the remorse and the guilt. An apology starts with a painful conversation, where you have to face your victim and not only understand any physical consequences, but also understand the emotional impact - including the severity - for the victim.

Secondly, they're not going to change. We make promises all the time to change, improve, stop doing something, start doing something... whatever. By the time we reach adulthood, we're really well practiced at saying what we think the other person wants to hear, so they're placated and they'll leave us alone.

Change is hard.

You can't change to please somebody, or comply with an order to change. If you're already fat, you need to stop getting fatter and you need to lose weight - two difficult changes - and your aim is to avoid potential health complications, as advised by your doctor. If you smoke, you know the health risks, but you've smoked a lot of cigarettes and never got lung cancer, so your first-hand experience has more bearing than any statistics about future risks. What motivation is there in mitigating future risk, when there is nice food and cigarettes right now?

You can't change because of a threat, or otherwise under duress. Change is hard, as we discussed, and it's made so much harder when every slip-up is magnified by the thought that failure to change would result in terrible consequences. If you can try and fail, and have another go, you might eventually succeed. Changing to avoid a terrible punishment, creates unbearable pressure, makes a catastrophe out of every minor setback, discouraging any attempts to keep trying.

You can't change because you want to. Change for change's sake? That makes no sense. You change because you have to, such as a serious medical problem that mandates an immediate lifestyle change, or else you'll die.

You'll change when you're not even noticing. You'll change when what you care about in life, your passions and your priorities change. You'll change when you're having fun, doing things you enjoy, doing things you're motivated by.

Who do you want to change? Is it your wayward brother, your drunkard father, your lazy friend, your unreliable co-worker, your drug addict boyfriend?

Stop assuming that they should think and act like a model adult - or indeed pressuring them to be and reprimanding them when they're not - and presume instead that they are more like a child. You might not like it, but joining the long queue of people hectoring a person to act more adult, causes them to act more childish. When everybody disrespects you, patronises you and tells you what to think and how to act, then less responsible and more selfish behaviour is inevitable, as well as disengaging your brain and letting others do all the thinking for you.

Stop seeing the same mistakes happening again and again. They're not mistakes. Another person's perspective is completely different from yours. Yeah, he's drinking himself to death. Yeah, his wife's going to leave him and take the kids if he doesn't stop drinking. Yeah, he's wasting loads of money and he can't get a job when he stinks of booze. Yeah, countless doctors have told him the damage he's doing to his body. Yeah, he crashed his car, lost his license. So what? Of course those things matter, but in his mind, that stuff's already happened; he's resigned himself to his fate; you can't threaten him with anything worse than he's already prepared for.

We spend so much time and energy trying to turn our children into adults. Learning to be an adult is the fine art of knowing when to lie (often), be honest (rarely) and keep your mouth shut and your thoughts to yourself (most of the time). The right clothes and good manners do most of the hard work. Then, you just need to be serious, dour, solemn and boring. "Grow up!" and "stop being so childish" are phrases that epitomise a parenting style that thrashes any semblance of natural immaturity into an appearance of premature adulthood. Constant rebuke for failure to demonstrate adult qualities, eventually creates a deceptive character: polite, courteous, formal, apparently mature and responsible, certainly confident and capable. But, how quickly it all unravels when a thread is pulled.

Why the strange behaviour? Why do drugs & alcohol feature so often? Where is the social life? Where are the fond recollections of the halcyon days of school? So many avoidable conflicts leading to unnecessary losses of highly paid jobs. Suddenly so irresponsible, unreliable. Tired and preoccupied by thoughts of death, followed by peals of laughter at puerile humour aimed at children. Everything always on the verge of total disaster.

If you harass and harangue - a pair of old bullies outnumbering the victim, two against one - until you seemingly get what you always wanted: your child has turned out successful enough to give you bragging rights with your friends. Climbing the career ladder at high speed, switching companies all the time. Girlfriends, social groups, best friends, former work colleagues - nothing seems to last, and it all seems to be moving too fast to keep up.

Does it not seem obvious that drugs have become my loyal friend, who'll never leave me and never let me down? Does it not seem obvious that I've had it hammered into my skull, for far too many years, that life is miserable, full of endless boring responsibilities, and then you die?

Will I ever learn from my mistakes? You're asking the wrong question. I don't see any mistakes, but I see a lot of learning. Will I ever see the error of my ways and change my behaviour? It's you who has failed to see the changes in my behaviour. The only error I made was trying to be a sensible, serious, responsible adult.

I've got so much to lose at the moment, but I already lost so much and learnt how to get it back. I've come back from the brink so many times now. I don't want to keep starting over. I'm not scared of things like kidney failure. I'm scared of things like being bored out of my brain doing things I've done a million times before, to the point where I fuck up a perfectly good job and end up going round the cycle again.

My idea of change right now is to start drinking wine again.

Tags: #drugs #alcohol #career

This is a story about dance, trance and magic plants...

On the left hand side of the picture above, we see drugs that are considered to be medications. That is to say, they are considered to have some useful function in the practice of medicine. On the right hand side of the picture, we see drugs of abuse. Drugs of abuse are considered to have no useful function at all, and have been made outright illegal in all contexts.

In the middle of the picture are pills that are sometimes considered medicine and sometimes considered drugs. Probably the best example I can give you of such a dichotomy is ketamine (not pictured) which is well known as a horse tranquilliser. In fact, ketamine should be better known as a general anaesthetic, and the drug of choice for paramedics to treat pain in victims of traumatic injuries, for example in the aftermath of a road traffic accident.

Dihydrocodeine is an opiate, and opiates are analgesic. Analgesics don't cause numbness, but they do increase pain tolerance. With enough analgesic, you could saw off your own leg and feel everything, but you wouldn't care about the pain. Anelgesics are painkillers. Dihydrocodeine is a painkiller.

Tramadol is an opiate, therefore also an analgesic.

Zopiclone, Xanax, diazepam and etizolam are in the hypnotic/sedative/anxiolytic category. Zopiclone will help you have a good night of uninterrupted sleep and wake up without a drug hangover: it's an excellent sleep aid. Xanax is a fast-acting, short-lived tranquilliser: it's great for stopping panic attacks, and might be useful if you're suffering a bout of unbearable stress and anxiety or struggling to drop off to sleep. Diazepam is a long-lived tranquilliser that's good for longer term management of stress and anxiety. Etizolam is a result of prohibition: it's an imitation of diazepam that used to be legal to sell and possess as a 'research chemical'.

MDMA is the abbreviation for 3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (and yes, I did just write that without having to look it up) which is more commonly known as Ecstasy, molly, mandy or generally as 'pills' in a clubbing/rave context. It's a stimulant and empathogen: it stimulates empathy. Its peak effects last 6 to 8 hours, but takes about 12 hours to wear off completely. The experiences can be very profound and long lasting. MDMA is extremely draining on the serotonin system of the brain, which can lead to a form of delayed comedown, coming days after taking the drug.

Crystal Meth is the commonly known name - thanks to the TV series Breaking Bad - of methamphetamine. It's a very powerful stimulant with effects lasting 12+ hours, and it disrupts sleep long after its desired effects have worn off. The more astute reader may notice that the final part of the chemical name of MDMA is the same as the chemical name of meth. As you might expect, there are similar effects: loss of appetite, increased energy and decreased need for sleep. However, while MDMA stimulates empathetic behaviour - hugging etc - meth tends to stimulate rather more hedonistic behaviours, such as fucking and masturbating to pornography. However, both drugs - being amphetamines - cause a man's dick to shrink to a little nubbin that's no use to anybody. Polydrug abusers might use sildenafil (Viagra) or other erectile dysfunction medications in conjunction with meth, in order to sustain a decent hard-on.

Spread out on the kitchen counter top, there's probably about £300 worth of drugs.

MDMA is extremely cheap, coming in at circa £10 per gram, which is enough for 5 very strong doses. Far cheaper than getting drunk in a pub or a bar. Pound for pound, MDMA represents excellent value.

Crystal Meth is the most expensive, coming in at about £100 per gram. Because of the crystalline form of the drug, it's far harder (although not impossible) to cut it with other things. Cocaine has an average street purity of less than 20%, because it's so tempting for every person who handles the coke in the chain, to cut it a bit and increase their profits. All white powders look the same, and numbing agents - like baby teething powder - will give the numbing effect that cocaine has. Crystal meth is generally pretty pure. It's usually smoked or injected. You do not want to mess with this stuff.

Diazepam is frighteningly cheap. 100 pills containing 10mg of diazepam each, will set you back £30 or maybe even less. The price has fallen drastically, from £1 a pill, to now 30 pence. It's important to remember that diazepam is a benzodiazepine, and the benzodiazepines are physically addictive. You can die if you take a load of diazepam and then stop taking it. It's not something you should mess with.

Xanax, by comparison, is very expensive. Because it's convenient to be able to take it and not be spaced out the next day, it's become America's favourite tranquilliser. The Rolling Stones might have sung about Mother's Little Helpers - referring to Valium - but now the housewife's choice is Xanax. Physically addictive, blah blah blah.

Zopiclone is nice and cheap and works really well without nasty side effects. The only problem is, becoming too reliant on it for sleep. At some point, you have to stop relying on pills and alcohol to get to sleep, and learn natural ways of making sure you can drop off and get your precious 8 hours. Try blue-light filtering glasses, not having any screen time after 10pm and sleeping with your smartphone and other electronics in another room, so there's no temptation to pick them up and start looking at Facebook or whatever.

Tramadol and Dihydrocodeine will take you on the journey to opium, morphine, fentanyl and diacetylmorphine (heroin). The cheapest opiate of all is heroin, because of the simple economic law of supply and demand. People fucking love heroin. I've smoked heroin on a few occasions and I enjoyed the feeling of carefree sleepiness, but I never got a rush of euphoria like I imagine you must get when you inject. I've never injected drugs. One should be mindful that the vast majority of new heroin addicts in America started their journey with opiates prescribed by their doctor - oxycontin, for example - and then moved to heroin because oxy is prohibitively expensive. Tramadol and codeine are pretty cheap, but they're also very weak compared with morphine and heroin.

There's no need to be afraid of any of these drugs in the sense that they're not going to leap down your throat and cause you to instantly become an addict who's prepared to murder your entire family for 50 pence, so you can have one more tiny little hit. These drugs are not like Venomous Agent X, which can kill you almost instantly if you absorb even the tiniest amount through your skin. You do not want to touch a pin head sized amount of VX nerve agent, but you can safely handle Ecstasy pills, shards of ice (crystal meth) and all of the other drugs pictured, and you will come to no harm at all.

Taking these drugs once, or even twice or three times, is very unlikely to result in addiction. You may enjoy the sensations; the experience, but it's quite possible that you might find the effects of the drug to be extremely unpleasant. Certainly, MDMA can be very intense and the intoxication of tramadol can be alarming. Interestingly, the calming effect of the benzodiazepines is often the best treatment for a 'bad trip' that you very much want to end. Sadly, there's no 'off' switch for most drugs. It's like when you've had too much to drink and you're throwing up: you wish that you could stop feeling so sick and that the room would stop spinning, but there's no instant fix.

To have this vast array of drugs just lying around, seems to invite disaster and is a risk in terms of the illegality of possessing so many controlled substances. Are you going to ring the police? Do you think I should go to jail? Is it right to ruin my life, because we should follow the law to the letter, even though the law is an ass?

To address the second concern: doesn't this invite disaster? I've had enough disasters in my life. I've reached a point where I'm rather sick of the drama and the near-death experiences. I'm rather sick of the paranoia and the comedowns. The drugs don't even work any more, because my brain has become so used to powerful narcotics. My brain is literally saying "you've been doing this shit for far too long". I'm almost at the point where drugs bore me.

Right now, I need tramadol, because I'm in a lot of pain because of my leg injury. The zopiclone will be handy when I run out of pregablin, which I'm using to sleep through my pain and discomfort. Having Xanax and diazepam lying around is never a terrible thing. At least benzos are a lot cheaper than a bottle of wine or two, a lot less fattening and a lot less liver damaging. It is a slippery slope though, and it is easier to get hooked on benzos than it is to become an alcoholic, because there isn't really a hangover per se, with the benzos.

The MDMA and the meth should probably get flushed down the loo. I'm too old to go clubbing/raving, and the crystal meth tips me straight into a hypomanic episode and turns me into a total sex maniac.

The dihydrocodeine will gather dust in the medicine cabinet, as a strong painkiller, in case I ever have a nasty injury again and the doctors are dicks about giving me prescription drugs to relieve pain. I do think that doctors in America have been foolishly over-prescribing opiate painkillers, because they believed the marketing of the pharmaceutical companies.

I'm sure you think that this cornucopia of chemicals is crazy. I'm sure you think this deluge of drugs is deranged. I'm sure you think this mass of medications is madness.

However, it's fucking hassle having to get a doctor's appointment, wait for the allotted date and time, and then persuade the doctor to give you what you want and need. There's every chance that the doctor may end up sending you away empty handed. Far better to have your own well-stocked pharmacy cupboard, and have whatever you need whenever you need it.

Of course, the nanny state is there to protect us from ourselves, which is why we arrest people who are about to climb mountains, don't we?

Prohibition has failed spectacularly, because it has created highly efficient black markets. Prohibition has failed spectacularly, because it has needlessly ruined lives of otherwise law-abiding citizens. Prohibition has failed, because the middle classes take just as many drugs as poor people, but the rich middle-class people are very rarely prosecuted. Prohibition has failed, because drugs are just as widely available as ever, and the main beneficiaries are corrupt customs, corrupt police and organised crime gangs. Prohibition has failed, because it fails to acknowledge the inescapable fact that people are always going to make, sell, buy and take drugs, no matter what the law says. Prohibition has failed, because it makes people paranoid and exacerbates mental health problems. Prohibition has failed because it directs money that could be used to help the tiny proportion of people who struggle with addiction, instead of using vast amounts of resources to persecute ordinary law-abiding citizens, who just want to smoke a bit of dope or take a pill when they go clubbing on a Saturday night.

You know prohibition has failed spectacularly, when the government makes mushrooms - which grow naturally in the ground all over the UK - a Class A drug, in the same category as crack cocaine and heroin. Are you fucking nuts? Are you fucking telling me that we should stuff our prisons full of people who picked a fucking mushroom in a fucking field?

Imagine this conversation:

Prisoner A: What you been nicked for?

Prisoner B: Murder. What about you?

Prisoner A: I picked a mushroom

That is quite genuinely the situation that the government introduced into UK law. I'm being quite serious here. Mushrooms are considered just as bad as crack cocaine. I wonder what the government were smoking when they made that insane decision.

As we know, when a government bans a drug, then clever chemists create another one that's almost identical. In America, they have a law that makes analogues illegal, so only whole new classes of drugs can get around their laws. All kinds of obscure chemicals - legal highs - burst onto the scene thanks to America's attempts to get clever with prohibition.

The UK government has gone a stage further and attempted to ban anything that has a psychoactive effect. That means that we're all 'in possession' of illegal drugs, because our bodies are stuffed full of chemicals that are psychoactive. It also means that drugs will simply get sold in 'kit' form: mix the ingredients at home and hey presto! There's your drug of choice. People will always find a way around the stupidity of prohibition.

The fear that has been stoked up by these terrible prohibition policies, has created a squeamishness about being able to have honest open conversations about drug taking. We should be well informed, not ignorant. We shouldn't be paranoid about being persecuted by the authorities. You have to be fairly brave to stick your head above the parapet. A lot of corrupt officials make a lot of money, through the ongoing boom times of the black market. There is an insatiable demand for drugs - and there always will be - which is why there is so much resistance to making drug taking into something that's safer, regulated, quality controlled and a well understood problem, rather than something cloaked in secrecy and hampered by stigma.

I've had problems with addiction in the past, but it makes me a stronger more well-rounded person, to have been through that ordeal and to know what difficulties are faced by people who become ensnared in the traps that have been set for them: draining their bank balance, destroying their health, and driving them to criminality. Why can't I talk openly about my experiences? Why do I have to be anonymous, hiding away with other 'dirty' junkies, in church halls where we self-flagellate for our 'sins' and hang our heads in shame.

Obviously I've had enough of prohibition, but I've had enough of being stigmatised and shamed into silence and anonymity too. I've had enough of people's wilful ignorance, when it comes to drugs and the lives of drug users. I've had enough of ridiculous horror stories and misinformation.

Perhaps you didn't even read this far, if you're the kind of person whose mind I'm trying to open, but perhaps you did, because on the face of it I'm an educated middle-class white professional man, working for prestigious companies in seemingly important roles. You can't quite imagine me smoking heroin, can you?

I'm challenging your preconceived ideas. I'm making you question what you thought you knew, and what you thought was obvious and without exception.

Tags: #drugs

This is a story about the opium of the people...

God is dead. We killed him with our science and our medicine. We killed god when the healing power of doctors trumped the ridiculously unsuccessful power of prayer and divine miracle. We killed god when Thomas Edison invented the electric lightbulb and let there be light. We killed god when the Manhattan Project unleashed the energy bound up in the atomic nucleus, creating bombs powerful enough to destroy the world. We killed god when popes, bishops, vicars, priests, nuns, monks, rabbis, mullahs and other spokespeople for organised religion, were proven beyond all reasonable doubt, by the scientific method, to be snake-oil salesmen; charlatans; frauds... just like witch doctors, mystics, faith healers and anybody else who claims they can perform magic or speak to nonexistent entities.

With life stripped back to pure truth; pure reason, a life of suffering and decay seems rather pointless. There is joy in procreation: watching your own flesh and blood offspring fumble their way through a harsh and uncaring world. The bonding hormone - oxytocin - and vicarious enjoyment of your kids' childhood makes parenthood neurologically rewarding enough for you not to just fuck off as soon as the screaming incontinent midgets have been ejected painfully from your vaginas.

Life has been built to not give you much joy. You can fuck, but you'll need a rest in-between copulations, and over time your interest in sex with a single partner will wane, as life prompts you to go and fuck somebody new, who you may be a better fertility match with. We weren't designed to have so much sex with so few partners, and produce so few children. The French have a name for the post-orgasm feeling a man has: la petit mort. Lit: the little death. Every time you cum and you don't make a baby, you die a little.

In a world of push-up bras, gymnasiums, good diet, flattering garments and mostly indoor jobs, women look amazing for far longer than they would under less favourable conditions. We have a culture of strip bars, escorts, pornography and film, television & print media bombarding us with images of the world's most attractive women. Ordinary women have responded by making ever raunchier choices of clothing and make-up, as well as complying with men's desire for casual sex and promiscuity. The ease of finding a 'hook up' on a mobile phone app - which doesn't carry the stigma of paying for sex - has meant that many men are quite content to not have a monogamous relationship, further exacerbating the problem, as women struggle to find the 'nice guys' who are looking for a something serious, but must use sex to bait the hook.

When you've had your fill of contraception-protected sex, skydiving, water-skiing, deep-sea diving, hang gliding, windsurfing, motorcycle racing and everything else that gives you a little hit of something that tickles your brain 'naturally' where are you going to go from there?

We live in a world where you can have an instant face-to-face conversation with your pick of 3.2 billion people, as if they were there in the same room as you, without either of you leaving your house. We live in a world where you can get into a pressurised aluminium tube and 17 hours later you will be on the other side of the planet, where day and night are swapped around, as well as summer and winter. We live in a world where news and information is distributed globally at the speed of light. We live in a world where many of us have access to vehicles that can carry us almost anywhere we choose to go, on a whim, at speeds that are far greater than we were ever evolved to travel at. How are our bodies and brains supposed to cope with this modern world? There are so many unnatural stimuli, can you really say that anybody is truly living a natural life?

When you start asking around, it turns out that we can't really cope with the modern world, without modern innovations. We need tranquillisers to calm our nerves, after the overstimulation of the city lights that never switch off; the sirens; the car horns; the traffic; the congestion; the crowds; the towering phallic structures of concrete, steel and glass. We need stimulants to be able to concentrate and overcome the exhaustion of the daily assault on our senses, and the steadily rising demand for our attention at all times of the day: there is always something electronic somewhere, bleeping at us for our attention. We need things to intoxicate ourselves, to escape the madness of the world and briefly be set free. We need things to numb the pain and insulate us from the growing discomfort and inescapable truth of our inevitable decrepitude and death, which is followed by black nothingness. There is no afterlife. There is no heaven and hell. This life is all there is, and then it's over, forever.

Some mentally ill people have this thing called religion, which is where they find comfort in imaginary friends and they really believe the stories in the children's books they read, to be true stories. These mentally ill people suffer from delusions, where they believe that talking to nonexistent sky monsters will change the outcome of events. These mentally ill people suffer from terrible superstitions that make them act extremely weirdly, like not eating certain things, saying certain things, and they do really boring stuff like going and sitting in buildings with other people who suffer from the same mental illness, and performing rituals based on delusional beliefs. However, this madness somehow seems to ease the suffering of a few of the mentally ill people a little bit. When there is a death in the family, for no reason other than the random chaotic unpredictable nature of the universe, the mentally ill people have their delusions to fall back on, so they can mistakenly believe that there was some reason behind an otherwise totally meaningless event, which actually helps them not feel so afraid and alone in harsh and uncaring universe that's out to kill them in an infinite number of ways.

The universe quite literally does not give any fucks who you are.

Entropy will destroy your body, to the point that every single atom will be scattered throughout the universe and even those atoms will decay. It will be as if you never even existed. Entropy will tear down everything you ever built, in the blink of an eye. Entropy is an unstoppable force, that will take everything you think is ordered and understood and under control, and it will show you just how puny and pathetic you are in the face of its relentless power to smash everything up and reintroduce the chaos and disorder that reigns supreme in a universe of unimaginable magnitude.

In a way, I'm jealous of the religious. They must be so blissfully ignorant. They were too stupid or they were denied enough education to allow them to become able to question the obvious lies that they were told, setting them up for a life where they can ignorantly reject things that are plainly obvious to anybody with an inquiring mind. To believe that there is value in the study of ancient scrolls or parchment, instead of the discovery of new knowledge and the ability to make rational leaps of understanding, by joining up the dots and applying logic... much better to live with faith in gods and magic, than to know your unhappy fate in the world.

And so, with the spread of education, perhaps we have seen the spread of misery, anxiety, stress and the need for some salvation of our souls that would have otherwise have been provided by something spiritual. Instead of turning to our priests, bishops, vicars and the like, we turn to our doctors to heal us. Our doctors dish out the goodies, in the form of antidepressants, mood stabilisers, anti-anxiety drugs, tranquillisers, uppers & downers and chill-you-outers.

Can you imagine what would happen to the world if we woke up and there was no tea, coffee, betel leaf, areca nut, khat, coca leaf, opium poppy, hemp, tobacco and every other source of a tiny naturally occurring amount of bitter plant alkaloids that humans love so much, because they tickle our brains, just a teeny little bit.

You would have thought that if smoking one cigarette is nice, then smoking 100 at once would be incredibly nice. You would have thought that if one cup of coffee is nice, then drinking 2 litres of pure espresso would be amazing. In actual fact, you will find that humans have somehow evolved a dislike of too much of a good thing. Everything that's nice, is only nice in moderation.

Life functions perfectly well like this, until the sum of all these things tips you over the edge. Living in the centre of a huge city, with the International Space Station and a zillion satellites orbiting overhead, jets roaring across the sky, helicopters swooping down on you, tower blocks hemming you in on all sides, cutting off your view of the horizon, mobbed by a sea of people, with choking traffic fumes and the deafening roar of internal combustion engines, as trucks, cars and motorbikes zoom along all around you. You're bombarded with light from a million incandescent bulbs, fluorescent tubes and LEDs, as well as the other electromagnetic radiation from televisions, mobile phones, power cables, WiFi routers, bluetooth devices, walkie-talkies, microwave ovens and power transformers.

An ever-increasing number of us cannot function in a godless man-made world without being drugged-up. Alcohol aside, antidepressants are the number one choice for the masses to become better adjusted to a hostile universe. There's nothing wrong with those people needing those medications. There's nothing immoral about taking those medications. There's no shame in being sensitive and susceptible to the madness that surrounds us.

Slowly, we build up cocktails of medications that salve a particular ache or pain in our souls. Each medication has its side effects, so we add other medications to compensate for the other ones, until we rattle like a tube of smarties.

I don't believe in conspiracy theories like 'chemtrails' and other madness like that, but I sure as shit know that modern living has elements that the human body and mind just can't adjust to: the sum-total of the unnatural is beginning to overwhelm us. Our very sleep cycles are being changed - for the worse - by our addiction to social media, smartphones and communications apps like email and text chat. We used to joke about crackberry when we got our BlackBerry mobile email devices, at the turn of the new millennium. It seemed like a Brave New World but perhaps all that glitters is not gold.

Shiny shiny new tech.

I used to get so excited about new tehnological toys, but now I'm excited - relieved - to tear off the foil wrapper that protects the little pills in my daily ration of soma. I feel immediate psychosomatic relief when I swallow the little capsules, lozenges and pills, that contain magic ingredients to salve my aching soul.

Where would we be without these breadcrumbs that lead us deep into a dark forest? A dark forest that we would never enter, if we weren't chasing these tiny rewards... these little crumbs... these pathetic minuscule tickles that we can feel in our brain. We surely would never work these jobs, without our morning coffee and our cups of tea, our gin & tonic and our glass of red wine. We would surely never want our genitals to be torn apart by an alien bursting out of our groin, except for the tiny hit of pleasure from a brief exchange of bodily fluids in a sticky tryst of sweat, bad breath and a tangle of limbs and hair.

I've seen the future and it comes in pill form. A pill to feel loved. A pill to have the most amazing orgasm of your life. A pill to feel all wrapped up safe in cotton wool, without a care in the world. A pill to forget about your hunger and your thirst. A pill to be awake and a pill to be asleep. A pill to help you think and another pill to help you not think.

A pill for every ill; and yet none that quite hit the spot.

Tags: #drugs

This is a story about treatment for drug addiction...

Having been to four different rehabs, I feel fairly qualified to give a few insights into what happens behind closed doors. Residential rehabs often hide away in leafy suburbs, where there are large houses that can accommodate human trash: dirty junkies and nasty alcoholics.

"Death's too good for 'em! String 'em up!" I hear you say.

Yes, yes, don't worry. We'll get to the idea that an addict will always be an addict, and that we should just write them off as a lost cause.

Boscombe in Dorset - an area of Bournemouth - is where many councils choose to send their difficult members of society, from all over the country. Supposedly, being by the seaside will be good for recovering alcoholics and former drug addicts. There are certainly plenty of rehabs in the area. Even Paul Gascoigne has found himself shuffling around Boscombe's streets, buying bottles of gin from the local off-license.

Ironically, many years after moving to Bournemouth, I became addicted to drugs and found myself in the perfect place to get treatment for my addiction.

Let's talk a little bit about drug addiction.

Having a 'drug habit' is not the same as drug addiction. 'Experimentation' is not the same as addiction. Partying is not the same as addiction. Addiction will rapidly destroy your health, wealth and prospects. Hospitals, police cells and prisons are the institutional stomping grounds of the addict, on their rapid descent into the fires of Hell. If you're successfully hiding your habit from your friends, partner and boss, then addiction hasn't fully taken hold. Addiction is destructive.

What about detox?

You can't really rehabilitate while the drugs and alcohol have got their hooks in you. If you abruptly stop drinking, you might get the shakes, become delirious, have a fit and maybe even die. If you stop taking heroin, you're going to feel sick and in pain. If you stop taking cocaine or amphetamines, you're going to be unbelievably exhausted and depressed, to the point where you're in real danger of killing yourself.

"You should kill yourself if you're a junkie" I hear you say.

What you haven't understood is that drug addiction is slow suicide. Do you think the addict or the alcoholic isn't aware that their body is getting utterly fucked up, and they're going to go to an early grave?

Detox is about breaking the physical addiction that the body has to drugs and/or alcohol. Detox is about suffering the worst of withdrawal, in an environment where substitute drugs can be administered to make the process safe, humane and tolerable. An alcoholic literally risks death if they stopping drinking without Librium. Is it ethical to ask people to die just because you're hung up on ideas like "willpower"?

There's the term "psychological addiction" that needs to stop being used. It's better to think about addiction like this: why did somebody get addicted in the first place?

"Because drugs are fun" I hear you say.

There are shitloads of people who take drugs all the time but they aren't addicts. Every weekend, raves and nightclubs are packed full of people taking Ecstasy (MDMA). Vast quantities of cocaine gets hoovered up by the eager nostrils of young professionals in cities around the world. Every day, a huge proportion of humanity smokes cannabis or drinks alcohol. Why aren't all these people raging addicts and alcoholics?

If you ever feel like quitting, remember why you started.

Most addicts' lives were truly appalling before their addiction took hold. For sure, addiction doesn't improve anybody's life, but it's not like there's any hope of a better life just because an addict quits drugs. The cycle of petty crime, scoring drugs, getting sick, being hospitalised and being locked up... it doesn't look great, does it? But what's the alternative? Flipping burgers and still not having enough money to make ends meet?

So, it's obvious that the rehabilitation process will only be successful if it can return a person to a better life than the one they were trying to escape from with drugs and drink.

The first rehab I attended was in Bournemouth, situated in a grand house at the end of a sweeping driveway, surrounded by mature pine trees, on a road of millionaires' mansions. The place was full of people from Greater London and the surrounding counties, ejected by their councils to make room for more rich middle-class people.

The biggest issue amongst my fellow rehab residents was housing. Boscombe has vast numbers of crappy bedsits that can just about be afforded with housing benefits. London and the South-East has no cheap housing for undesirable members of society. My fellow rehabbers were gleefully pushed away from where they were born and bred - and their families - because they were written off.

A typical day at the Bournemouth rehab would consist of a breakfast of baked beans, white toast and cheap sausages, followed by many rounds of tea, coffee and biscuits, until the 'therapeutic' day began. There were two or three sessions a day, where everybody sat in a big room, slouching on comfy sofas, vaping on e-cigarettes and slurping drinks. It was supposed to be group therapy, but it was basically just listening to heartbreaking tales of people's children being taken into foster care.

Most of the day in Bournemouth rehab was given over to matters of court appearances, housing office appointments, social worker visits and attempts to obtain various forms of welfare benefits. Almost everybody in rehab was in poor physical health, due to a life of drug abuse. Almost everybody in rehab had some underlying mental health disorder.

Those were the dregs of society, but they were warm and welcoming and they accepted me as one of their own. I was warned by staff to leave my iPhone at home and watch my wallet, but I never felt for a single moment as if my peers were going to rob or take advantage of me. I was somewhat appalled by the staff members' low opinion of their service users, but I suppose there's an element of the gamekeepers and the poachers: anybody who's keeping you under lock and key is kind of fair game, because resentment is going to build about the power that staff exercise over people in treatment.

Over the course of the 28-day program, my fellow rehabbers and I would build up special privileges for good behaviour, such as being allowed to go to Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous or Cocaine Anonymous meetings. Being allowed to go into town, accompanied by a staff member, was the next privilege that accrued. Then, trips to town were permitted when accompanied by a peer who had attained 3 weeks of good behaviour. Finally, you might prove yourself to be trustworthy enough to go into town alone or as a chaperone.

Transgressions could include: not getting up in the morning, not doing your assigned chores, not attending group therapy, being caught with contraband, failing a drugs test and - most serious of all - going somewhere without permission.

Being expelled from rehab for going into town on your own might not sound like a terrible consequence, but almost everybody was there because treatment was mandated by the courts, as part of parole or an attempt to retain contact with children. Being chucked out of rehab could result in going back to prison, or never seeing your children again. The line between treatment and punishment was rather blurry.

My next rehab was 5-star luxury by comparison. You might have heard of it. It was The Priory.

If you're paying £12,000 for a 28 day stay in the countryside, you'd expect it to be pretty nice, wouldn't you? The Priory certainly delivered on making me feel special and cared after... for a high price. Therapists outnumbered patients, the bedrooms were very well appointed and comfortable, the food wasn't bad and there were luxuries like a gym and grounds to take a stroll around. Nobody was made to feel like a prisoner under house arrest.

Unsurprisingly, my fellow Priory rehabbers were rich compared to the Bournemouth lot. There were six-figure salary earning executives and heirs to multimillion-pound fortunes. Alcohol was also the predominant poison, as opposed to heroin.

One girl was so desperate for a drink, that she filled a mug with hand sanitising gel - which contained alcohol - and sweetened it with orange squash.

Therapeutic days were packed full of yoga, mindfulness, art therapy, educational videos, as well as group therapy. Supposedly following the 12-step program we only had enough time to complete the first two steps. AA and 'aftercare' meetings were held in the evenings at The Priory, which we were encouraged to attend, but most of us just watched DVDs in our bedrooms.

In my final week at The Priory, I asked "what next?"

Turns out that 28 days just isn't long enough to turn your life around. 28 days is just about long enough to get over the worst of the drug withdrawal and start thinking about how awesome the drugs are going to feel after a little break and three square meals a day. Aftercare programs are almost as expensive as rehab and last 3+ months: who's got that kind of money and can afford to take that long off work?

Having been through an acrimonious divorce, sold my house, rescued a tiny fraction of my most treasured possessions, boxed my life up, put everything into storage and suffered a horrible family Christmas, I was pretty fucked up by the whole ordeal. I needed to get cleaned up and straightened out again.

The next rehab I booked, I asked for a detox. I didn't want to have to get up in the morning and go to stupid group therapy. I hadn't slept or eaten properly for weeks. I'd been taking benzodiazepines for months and it was possible that I'd developed a physical dependency that could be life-threatening. I needed professional medical care.

The rehab I ended up in was like an alternative therapy spa break. There was a hot tub - called the sex pond - and a vibrating massage table, with whale music playing in the pitch black room. The main thing I was there for was sleep, food and a doctor on hand in case I had a seizure. Reluctantly, I consented to have acupuncture and to do some mindfulness: both of which I fell asleep during.

Most of the staff were kind and caring, but the guy who owned and ran the rehab was a complete egomaniac who clearly wanted his own cult. This idiot tried to force me to attend 'group' therapy, which was basically him giving interminable boring monologues about the time when he went into a Native Indian sweat tent. Believe me, the last thing you want when you're recovering from a near-fatal toxic combo of drugs, is to be a captive audience for some total moron.

While I was at that third rehab, a man was brought in, smashed out of his mind and covered in red wine. He'd been transferred up from the first rehab I'd been in down in Bournemouth. He'd walked out and gone into town to get pissed. Revolving doors.

I had to get away from that place. It wasn't therapy. Fuck knows what it was. Probably just a bit of respite for both family and addict alike.

Finally, I achieved what I wanted: I got back to London. Bullshit family Christmas was over. Divorce and house sale was over. I was free from horrible destructive relationships and nasty people, but I had picked up an addiction and failed to deal with it. My life to that point had been dictated by people who didn't care about my welfare.

I got myself into my fourth and final rehab: a 13 week residential treatment program in Kensington, West London.

Immediately, the place felt right. Rehabs are supposed to be run by former addicts and alcoholics. The guy who I met on my initial assessment had gold teeth and mean tattoos. The guy who ran the place had a massive scar across his face. These were people whose opinion an addict could respect, because they'd been all the way to rock bottom and back again: they'd seen friends die from overdoses and a lot of other rough shit too.

My most important lesson in rehab was how to do time. I had already been heavily institutionalised by working my whole career for massive corporations - with the limits that full-time work and education imposes on your freedom - but I still had lessons to learn about liberty. It helped a great deal that one of my fellow rehabbers was a young lad who'd been in prison twice by the age of 21.

Rehab is literally a kind of house arrest. You can leave anytime you want, but there will be consequences. It was fun to walk up to the gate (pictured above) and put a foot out over the pavement... just stopping short of taking a single step off the property.

It's not too hard to white-knuckle 3 or 4 weeks of abstinence. The first couple of weeks you'll feel awful, but your body is so abused that it's grateful for the sleep and the food. The next week or two are hard, but you know there's light at the end of the tunnel: you'll soon get your fix. You just have to count down the hours, minutes and seconds.

I don't believe you can rehabilitate somebody in just 3 months. So many things get fucked up when you're an addict. You need to get a job and go back to work, pay your bills and any debts that got racked up, repair and replace broken stuff and get a place to live. Everything got fucked up by my addiction: my shoes and clothes were wrecked and everything in my life was in total disarray.

Imagine being a company director through a period of addiction. My accounts and taxes were all messed up, and important paperwork was lost or misplaced.

What about my CV? How could I explain those periods of absence from work?

What about my routine?

Do you realise how much of your life runs itself on autopilot? You pay your rent/mortgage, council tax, electric, gas, water, sewerage, broadband, mobile phone, home insurance, life insurance, car insurance, road tax, MOT, TV license and a zillion other things. You get up every day, have breakfast and go to work. People know and respect you at work and you know how to do your job. You see your friends and socialise. You have your hobbies and you exercise. Do you think you can put all that stuff back together, running smoothly, overnight?

When you're an addict, everybody distances themselves from you. It's obvious that if you even so much as speak to an addict, they're going to steal your newborn baby and sell it to buy crack cocaine. It's obvious that anybody who injects marijuana or sniffs glue is a worthless selfish nasty person who's out to kill you.

Rehabs are necessary because family and friends are judgemental gossips who offer you useless advice like: "have you tried not taking drugs?" or "maybe you should just stop".

Rehab was a holiday from being judged to be an evil failure, morally weak and simply lacking in willpower.

Rehab showed me that I do have the willpower to stop taking drugs whenever I want. Rehab showed me that I'm not weak and I'm not powerless.

By the time I finished my four stays in rehab, I still hadn't run out of money, I had never been arrested, locked up, hospitalised or homeless. I had been nowhere near rock bottom.

I never actually reached rock bottom though. I experienced things that were awful at the time, but I needed to have those experiences.

Stopping drugs is the least of anybody's concerns. Drugs actually help when your life is unbearably shit. Just ask anybody who suffers from depression or anxiety if they'd like to give up their antidepressants or tranquillisers.

Obviously, I'm glad I never got a criminal record or sustained any life-changing injuries, but maybe I needed to come close. Being locked up in a police cell a couple of times and spending weeks in hospital, were not things on my bucket list, but I think they were necessary experiences to complete my adventure.

When the time was right, I got a place to live, a girlfriend and a job. Without those things, life isn't worth living, but equally, those things don't create recovery.

Bullying was relentless and intolerable at school for 11+ consecutive years. Nothing I did was ever right or good enough for my parents. My parents' relationship was appalling - full of verbal abuse and hostility - and I got involved with a girl who physically and mentally abused me, who I stayed with for many years. I got so used to broken, abusive relationships. Do you think that kind of stuff can get healed by 28 days in rehab? Do you think that all my problems came about just because I sniffed a bit of white powder?

You might think I act normally and sound perfectly reasonable, rational and able to string a sentence together, but it's the opinion of the medical professionals who've treated me, that I'm dealing with depression, bipolar and even borderline personality disorder. Clearly, I've had many episodes of mental health issues... including a period of many years before drugs even entered the picture.

This is called dual-diagnosis: the clusterfuck that is both addiction and mental health issues combined. The tail that wags the dog.

I've cherry-picked the best treatment and the most humane and compassionate approach to fixing my addiction and now I've arrived at the situation where - joy of joys - I'm 'just' dealing with depression and anxiety.

I'm itching to press the 'fuck-it button' because life is intolerably stressful, unrewarding and my depression is refusing to lift. What's the solution? Drugs? Been there, done that.

Rehab taught me how to quit drugs cold turkey. Rehab taught me that I'm in control, so long as my life seems worth living.

Addicts and alcoholics are taught on the 12-step program that they're powerless. I'm certainly powerless, but it's over things like whether I get offered a decent job that pays enough money to be able to live. Being powerless to influence the things that really matter to me in life, such as whether I can live with dignity or not, creates incredible stress and anxiety.

I can choose to stop drinking or taking drugs, but why would I, if the alternative is ESA assessments and having my inadequate welfare benefits cut off by somebody who's not even a qualified doctor? Why would I quit, if I have to prostitute my mind and body, to go and work some pointless bullshit job for somebody promoted into a position of incompetence, if I'm 'lucky' enough to be offered a pittance to do the job?

It's so hard to escape the things that drove us to drink & drugs in the first place.

Rehab was important for me to forgive myself for things that weren't even my fault. I didn't make a mistake, getting addicted to drugs: it was a deliberate act and I'd live my life exactly the same if I got to start over from scratch. Rehab was respite from those who wish to scapegoat sick people.

Fundamentally, rehab connected the 'clean' and the 'dirty' world and allowed me to see that they're two sides of the same coin.

Every saint has past and every sinner has a future.

Tags: #addiction #drugs #alcohol

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 political correctness gone mad...

The liberal metropolitan elites are on the right side of history, right? The neanderthal knuckle-draggers are simply poorly educated angry white men, who need to step aside and make way for the black one-legged Muslim lesbian immigrants to take all the jobs and go on the dole, right? I probably can't even say black. It's political correctness gone mad.

Right, I've probably successfully got your heckles up. Now, get your calculator out.

The average wage in the UK is roughly £26,000. The average house price is £260,000. Assuming you can borrow three and a half times your income, you can get a mortgage of £91,000. So, you'll need a deposit of £169,000.

For the current tax year, average take home pay is £1,737. Average rent in the UK is £900 a month, leaving £837 a month for council tax, gas, electric, water, sewerage, food & drink, toiletries, cleaning products, transport, clothing, mobile phone, Internet, home & life insurance, home maintenance, alcohol & tobacco, gambling & lottery, going out and saving money.

Let's assume that our average UK citizen is a super scrimpy person who lives on budget baked beans and never turns on the heating or any lights. They can probably save a maximum of £500 per month, which leaves them £337 a month to spend on everything else. To save up the £170k they need to buy a house, they'll need to be thrifty for the next 28 years... assuming house prices don't go up.

Of course, this also assumes that you can even get a job that pays about £12.50 an hour, when 80% of all new jobs being created pay less than £17,000 per annum. Most jobs pay less than the average, because the average wage is skewed by a small number of very high earners.

OK, but we can all just go on benefits, right?

Well, housing benefit doesn't pay enough to rent a place. Rents are higher than housing benefit. If you work more than 16 hours a week, your benefits will be cut off, so you can't use housing benefit to top up your income. If you're a 'snowflake' millennial, you'll have just £57.90 to live on each week, plus your housing benefit that isn't enough to pay the rent.

So, what's the solution?

Well, if you're an immigrant you might be prepared to live in an appallingly shit house, with several people in every room. Many of us grew up in houses with sitting rooms and dining rooms. If you have a look round a house full of economic migrants who are all working for minimum wage, you're not going to find any reception rooms: every room is a bedroom.

Who cleans the toilets? Who waits the tables? Who serves the coffee? Who picks up the litter? Who hoovers your office? Who washes your car? Who built your house? Who unblocked your drain?

When we want something, we demand rock-bottom prices. We believe all the bullshit about 'rogue traders' and 'rip-off Britain' when in actual fact we are mostly idle and spoiled. We wanted cheap goods, so the factories moved to the Far East. We wanted easy jobs, so the immigrants came to do all the shitty ones. We wanted big fat undeserved early pensions, so asset prices bubbled. The petit bourgeois rentier class is a parasite on young people who need somewhere to live.

"Build some more houses!"

Yes, but who's going to build them? You wanted people who work hard for peanuts, so you got Poles. It's a fairly established middle-class thing to do: to demand Eastern European builders, because your British counterparts are supposedly lazy and work-shy, but aren't you part of the problem if you're not rolling up your sleeves and getting on with the job yourself?

The UK population was 50 million in the 1950s. Now it's 65 million. If there were 30 children in a school classroom in the fifties, there would be 39 today. If there were 1 million cars in the fifties, there are 1.3 million now. Hang on! That can't be right, can it?

Yes, ostensibly our observations don't match the hard numbers. Our day-to-day experiences don't tally with the facts, data and opinion polls.

Of course, I picked a difficult example: car ownership has soared, along with our living standards.

Our living standards have soared, haven't they?

Well, why do so many people want to go back to some kind of golden era of yesteryear? Perhaps 1954 would be the perfect year for us to roll the clock back to: when rationing ended.

"Britain's full" we hear. Certainly, many of us perceive overcrowding, congestion, heavy traffic, problems making a doctor's appointment, problems getting our kids into the school we want our little darlings to go to. What the hell? And there's always some darkies in the queue too... it must be all those mozzies, right?

The liberal metropolitan elites [like me] will tell you that you're imagining things. You're just not colourblind enough. If you squint your eyes - like a Chinaman - you'll see that your crowded train carriage actually has plenty of seats, and the few passengers are white men wearing hats, reading broadsheet newspapers and puffing pipes.

There's clearly a mismatch between perception, reality and what the 'facts' tell us. How can Britain have filled up when the population has only increased by 30%?

Let's look at the example of the economic migrant.

I don't live in The City of London. I live out near Canary Wharf and commute into the Square Mile for work. I migrate each day, for economic reasons. The official population of the City is 12,000 people, but in fact the population on a miserable Monday morning is more like 400,000. That's a 33 fold increase. That's a helluva migration every day.

In the desperate struggle of the rat race, both parents are now working, when previously the husband's sole income was adequate for the household's meagre expenses. I'm sorry to be so heteronormative, but women were housewives and men were the breadwinners. With sexual equality comes a doubling of the workforce, taking up space on the trains and roads, struggling to get to work each morning.

If both parents are working, who's going to clean the house? We're going to need a Lithuanian cleaner. Who's going to look after the kids? We're going to need a Spanish au pair. Who's going to prepare lunch? We're going to need an Italian sandwich maker.

We cluster together where all the jobs are: London and the South-East. We all commute huge distances on horribly overcrowded transport networks, because it's cheaper for our employers to build massive office blocks. The more office blocks you get in one place, the bigger the pool of potential employees, creating a liquid market for commoditised humans.

Most of the UK is an also-ran. Who gives a fuck about job losses across the whole country, when London earns so much tax for the treasury and financial services dominates 80% of the 'economy'.

Of course, it's disingenuous to think that the coal mines are going to re-open, the demand for steel can remain constantly high forever, and there will always be a need for unskilled manual labour. However, didn't we forget that a lot of people have been thrown onto the scrap heap, because we only worship facts and figures, not lives?

Is it possible that the knuckle-draggers  -- who hanker for a yesteryear of homophobia, sexism, bigotry and an empire riding roughshod over the developing world -- also have a small handful amongst their number who are right? Their quality of life would have been a lot better when they could have afforded to buy a house, get married, have kids and earn a living without having to resort to government handouts, black market jobs, benefit fraud, drug dealing and other degrading things.

I feel like I need to be the liberal metropolitan elitist who empathises with the plight of the scrounger, the NEET, the JAM family, the council-estate dwelling na'er do well. It's terribly patronising, but what have the unwashed masses noticed that we haven't?

I'm not even allowed to raise the questions without tarring myself with the brush we lazily swish over the enemies of progress: bigot, xenophobe, homophobe, FASCIST!

I hate UKIP, Nigel Farage, Donald Trump and their ilk, but they're shrewd in their observation that people have detected a certain lack of greatness in their once-great nations. Perhaps they weren't great places to be an educated black gay woman, in those yesteryear eras, but isn't politics about the greater good, to some extent? We don't have to lynch the blacks for the benefit of the whites. Trump et. al. have emboldened the racists, and that's awful, but why are they so angry?

Until the liberal metropolitan elites can accept that "[poor ill-educated] white male" has become a pejorative term amongst a sneering set of arrogant, privileged people who rule over them, doesn't it seem obvious that the anger is going to boil over?

Football, X-Factor, Big Brother and all of the other distractions and titillations are inadequate to contain the dissatisfied masses: they don't have any prospects; they don't have anything to hope for, except for a life of miserable poverty; they're unwanted in 'their own' country.

That's what "take are (sic) country back" means... it means that through the Internet, the masses have figured out that they outnumber the rulers and their court, and they want their fair slice of the pie. They've been misdirected into blaming immigrants, because that's always the last desperate ploy played by the greedy people who control the country. The simple fools don't even realise that the rich get even richer during times of war and conflict. Who's going to fight this imaginary fight that we're being whipped into national hysteria over? It will be the poorest, least educated and least privileged who will lose out, yet again.

Sadly, unless income inequality and declining living standards are addressed, there's little to offer the angry people except a cathartic bloodletting. Obviously, it offends my liberal sensibilities to see anger misdirected at the hardworking immigrants who cook me delicious halal food and act as a kind of lightning rod, stopping me from getting beaten up as a yuppie... a gentrifier.

What happened to class warfare? What happened to the labour movement? What happened to revolution?

TV melted your brain, dude.

Tags: #politics

This is a story about being drunk...

I've been consuming far too much alcohol, but I don't really believe in New Year's resolutions or pointless periods of abstinence. For a bet, I beat my friend's 100-day sobriety record, but it proved nothing.

For my liver and my bulging belly, drinking less would be beneficial, but I'm not going to quit completely, just like I'm not going to join a gym or destroy my knees and hips running.

To say "I'm going to drink less" is ridiculous, because I always get the thirst for alcohol after the first couple of drinks, and then all self-control is lost.

I was so hungover today that I almost felt like starting drinking again, just to feel better. I guess I have a natural instinct that it would be the beginning of the slippery slope to alcoholism if I were to do that.

I've been drinking every day for quite a while now, but I don't think it's getting worse, nor am I turning into an alcoholic. I'm drinking as a very unhealthy coping mechanism, which isn't good, but what else should I do? Cut myself? Take up smoking?

Alcoholism and drug abuse are symptomatic of a need to self-medicate. Alcohol is a useful crutch, so I shan't be giving it up. I've already extensively proven that I can have periods of total abstinence, when I put my mind to it. Why bother giving up something that's a useful stress reliever, that the vast majority of people use?

I'm starting to sound a bit defensive, and I guess that's because I know that I'm drinking more than I'd really like to be, but that will change as my life improves. Alcohol does improve my life, up to a point, although I'm drinking too much at the moment.

Twice during the festive season, I thought "I wish I hadn't drunk so much" and had a horrible moment where the room was spinning when I went to bed. I haven't thrown up or anything so vulgar and juvenile though: the bucket pictured above was never used as a vomit receptacle.

I'm not an alcoholic because I don't go to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.

Tags: #alcohol