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Stuck Indoors

10 min read

This is a story about anhedonia...

Bright light

I'm not under house arrest. I'm not in prison. I'm at liberty to do whatever I want. I don't have to spend my evenings and weekends alone. I don't have to spend my working day in the office. The reasons for my choices are too subtle for anybody who makes a lazy appraisal of my life to discern.

My attention span and ability to concentrate during periods of extreme boredom is very poor. My perception of time is warped to the point of being unbearably and agonisingly slow. I just want it to be December already. I want to press the fast-forward button and skip all the monotonous bullshit between now and then. I know where I'm going and I know how to get there, so there's absolutely zero enjoyment of the journey; in fact it's pure torture.

My summer has been spent at a desk, in a hotel room, or lying on my sofa. My whole year has been characterised by endless suffering in a desperate attempt to get back on my feet financially. I'm out of the danger zone, I bought a car and rented an apartment. Those are the highlights of my year. Now I'm just going through the motions until I have enough cash to clear my debts. I'm well paid and my financial position is improving rapidly, but my perception of the passage of time is so messed up that it doesn't feel like I'm getting anywhere. When I do the maths and work out how far I've still got to go, it seems ridiculously far away considering how much suffering and sacrifice I've gone through to get to this point. Suicidal thoughts are back.

It might seem like I've got the leisure time and the money to do anything I want, but I would never have survived as well as I have done if I hadn't had periods where I suffered. It's the suffering that equates to cold hard cash. Do you think they pay 6-figure sums of money for doing work that's fun? Do you think you get rich by doing stuff that you love? That's a fantasy for rich spoiled brats. Most of us have to suffer if we want to make a quick buck. The more you suffer, the more money you make.

"You can do anything you want. Follow your dreams" people say to me. It's not true. I have responsibilities and moral obligations. I'm trying to make things right and that requires a great deal of suffering. There are plenty of people who'd run away from their problems, and I'd know about that because I'm owed thousands of pounds by people who seem to think that it's OK to pick my pocket. I'm trying to do the right thing. I'm trying to do the honest and honourable thing. I'm doing things the hard way.

I have enough money at my fingertips to live a life of profligate luxury, but all that money is accounted for. I'm not living in a hovel on bread and water, sure, but I'm certainly denying myself a lot of lifestyle choices which would seem like just reward for my suffering. The whole point of doing a job that you hate is because it earns you a lot of money. One simply has to choose between a rewarding and fun career, or work that's extremely lucrative, and usually requires a high living standard to justify the awfulness of putting up with the dreadful day job. You can be a penniless artist, or you can sell your soul to the devil: that's the choice we all have to make.

Perhaps my job and the work I do is not wholly objectionable, but it jars with my psychological make-up. There's zero excitement and creativity; nothing is novel or interesting; I'm not challenged. The challenge is simply in withstanding the boredom and the monotony. I live with unbearable amounts of dread: I dread the intolerable boredom. I dread the endless waiting. All I seem to be doing at the moment is just waiting; killing time.

I feel momentarily excited by the prospect of spending a bit of money. I want to buy a microwave and a dehydrator for the kitchen. I want to buy some more wine glasses. I want to want to buy stuff, but I know that I'll feel buyer's remorse, so I rein myself in. That's unusual for me.

I try to get excited about how much money I'm able to save each month, but it's not exciting at all. Each day is such a struggle that I end up feeling depressed about how little I'm earning, even though I earn an obscene amount of money. I should be happy about how quickly I'm managing to dig myself out of the hole, but instead I'm depressed about how slow time is passing and how long it's going to take. December seems like an eternity away.

The problem is that I'm solving problems I've already solved. I'm doing things I've already done a million times before, so there's no doubt that I'll be able to do them again. I already invented very successful strategies for becoming rich and successful, and it irks me that I'm having to start my life over. I feel like I already won - which I did - so somebody should just give me my damn gold medal already, rather than making me run the marathon again.

Of course, I pissed away a huge fortune. I had the enviable pleasure of going on a total rampage for years, doing whatever the hell I wanted. I bought whatever I wanted, travelled wherever I wanted, never had to wait for anything and generally spent money like it was going out of fashion. Arguably, I've had the fun so I should now pay the price.

In fact, most of my financial woes come from a very miserable and mundane period of my life, where the money was spent on nothing more than general living expenses: rent and bills etc. When I've splashed the cash with gay abandon, I've always had a lot more of a memorable and exciting experience, than simply lining the pockets of the capitalists. My impulse purchases have always brought an amount of pleasure that was commensurate with the price tag. Whenever I get excited about something, there's usually an angle which is financially beneficial.

My life is austere. I'm not excited about anything. I'm saving a lot of money, but I'm thoroughly miserable.

My last big spending spree was buying everything I needed for my apartment - plates, bowls, saucepans, cutlery, kettle, toaster, kitchen knives, utensils and the myriad other things which are essential for daily living. There was little joy in it, because I already had a house that was packed full of everything I'd ever want or need. I was repeating something I'd already done and there was no pleasure in it. You'd be surprised how hard it is to start over from a completely blank slate. You take for granted so many little things you've accumulated over the years.

My life is hyper-efficient. I'm living the minimum viable life. If I break or lose something it's fairly catastrophic, because I have exactly as much as I need, and nothing more. Sure, my apartment is ludicrously large for my needs. Sure I could use public transport instead of owning a car. Sure, I could live even more frugally, but I don't think you're talking about a viable reality. There are homeless people who struggle to even protect a single backpack with some precious belongings, and they manage to survive. Sure I could survive with a single backpack, but it wouldn't be compatible with other parts of my life, such as working a full-time job in an office. If you're a homeless person sleeping rough, that life isn't compatible with civilised society. Society expects me to have fresh socks every day and a crisply ironed shirt... although I've managed to avoid buying an ironing board and iron so far [I use the one in the hotel].

I've temporarily halted any attempt to have a social life. I took some time out from dating and relationships. I'm estranged from my family, except my sister who I exchange a handful of messages with each year. I've put everything on hold until I'm in a better position.

I hated it when I was dating earlier this year, and I was being pummelled with questions about what car I drove and whether I owned a house. At the time I was living in somebody's converted garage, effectively homeless. At the time I was carless. At the time I was virtually bankrupt. Every question that was designed to tease out whether I'm rich and successful - and a good provider - was in fact a dreadful reminder that I'm not yet a secure member of civilised society. In the blink of an eye, I could be back on the streets.

Pride and self-esteem are at stake, but also people just can't cope with the idea that somebody's been through rough times and lost everything. People would think there's something wrong with me and I wouldn't be able to get a job or get laid. How many times have they hired a homeless person where you work? Never. I've survived because I've been sneaky enough to never let on that I've had incredibly awful stuff going on in my personal life, and nobody would ever suspect a thing because it just doesn't happen - no homeless person would ever be so audaciously brazen as to apply for highly paid jobs, as if they're a regular ordinary person.

This protracted pantomime, where I'm having to pretend like everything is A-OK in my personal life when in actual fact I've been one tiny slip-up away from begging on the streets for the whole goddam year, has been indescribably exhausting and trying. You might think that I'm being too proud, but I really promise you that my personal life problems would not go down well in the office; my run of financial fortune would be quickly curtailed if anybody knew how desperate I am.

I'm stuck indoors and it looks like a choice, but it's not a choice. Nothing in my life is a choice. It's all carefully calculated and necessitated by circumstances. My circumstances dictate my behaviour, and the constriction and constraint affects more than just my decision about where I work and what kind of work I do. The circumstances dictate my mood, and my mood is every bit as miserable and depressed as you'd expect of any slave and prisoner.

At least you can win a race. I'm not part of the rat race; I'm just trying not to lose.

 

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Sprint Finish

10 min read

This is a story about marathon running...

Stansted Airport

I'm quite pleased that I have this blurry photo capturing the moment when a stranger borrowed my iPhone charger in an airport. That stranger became my accountant and he's been on the journey with me, from a newly incorporated business to the point where I'm now turning over a 6-figure sum of money and making decent profits. My accountant has been one of the few constants in my life during a period which has been extremely wild and erratic.

Another particularly notable feature of the 5-year journey which has brought me - finally - closer to the point of getting back on my feet, is that I've never stopped moving. Through frantic and frenetic activity I've managed to avoid death, bankruptcy and a million and one other dreadful fates. By persevering with a very simple plan - to earn a lot of money as a consultant - I've managed to weather some pretty dreadful storms.

I admit that I did try to have myself declared unfit for work and to obtain the state welfare support I'm entitled to, but most people I meet seem to quickly form the opinion that I'm perfectly fine and healthy. Most people think I'm entirely capable of rescuing myself from even the most diabolically awful situations. It's pretty obvious that I haven't been enabled by anybody, although I'd be dead as a dodo if it wasn't for my guardian angel, who helped me move from London to Manchester, then Manchester to Wales, as well as being there for me during various hospitalisations and wotnot. To say I've arrived at the point I'm at today all on my own is not true at all. Of course I wouldn't have lasted 5 minutes without help and support, but I haven't received any of the help and support from the government that you'd think would be available to a vulnerable person - the safety net simply doesn't exist.

You would think that all your taxes which you pay would give you some kind of insurance, so that you wouldn't be penniless and homeless if you couldn't work. You would think that all that tax would mean that you'd be looked after if you were incredibly sick and vulnerable. Unfortunately, the welfare state is not at all kind to anybody who appears - with a lazy glance - to be of sound body and mind. Despite letters from GPs, psychiatrists and social workers, there are gatekeepers who are so compassion-fatigued and have so few resources to dispense to so many needy people, that there's no safety net at all.

Early intervention would have saved me a lot of near-death experiences, hospitalisations, contact with the police, wasted money, wasted time, wasted energy and health damage. Early intervention would have been far more cost effective than dealing with the consequences of assuming - incorrectly - that I'd cope just fine if I was simply left to my own devices; made homeless and otherwise abandoned by a nanny state which always promised to protect me, in return for the vast sums of taxes I've paid. I wasted a lot of time and effort on the mistaken middle-class belief that the welfare state exists for the sole purpose of protecting the vulnerable members of society. I thought - as so many middle-class people do - that I simply needed to ask for help from the relevant services charged with doling out lifesaving support and I would received what I needed.

It turns out that the UK operates what can only be described as a hostile environment for anybody who falls on hard times. It turns out that vast swathes of the civil service - with a mission statement to supposedly to help society's most vulnerable - are actually acting as gatekeepers and making it almost impossible to access any kind of help or support. Instead, the rigmarole is intended to frustrate, annoy and exhaust until you become disillusioned, disheartened, discouraged and generally lose faith in a government which promised to look after you in the event of an unfortunate turn of events, in return for a hefty portion of your income. The safety net turned out to be a lie and you'd better not waste too much time being angry and disappointed, because you're still broke and homeless... you have to find your own way to survive. No wonder so many people in the UK grow and sell cannabis or peddle other drugs - the black market economy provides much needed cash to society's most vulnerable, impoverished and desperate.

I suppose the argument would be that I could walk into a job quite easily, but that's pure stupidity. It's impossible to get a job and keep it if you're homeless and you have severe mental health problems. It's impossible to get a job when you're hamstrung by addiction and alcoholism. It's impossible to get a job and keep it when you're flat broke. It's a catch 22 situation. There are plenty of people who could theoretically get back on their feet, but they'll never be able to without some initial help and support - they need somewhere to live and some money; they need treatment for their addictions and alcoholism; they need time to stabilise their medication and get counselling for their mental health issues. Allowing people to become homeless - destitute - and to commit suicide is barbaric. Yes, it might seem to the wealthy ultra right-wing conservatives like it's some brutal form of social justice - survive or die; fit in or fuck off. Personally, I want my taxes to be spent on people who can't work, even if it means that I have less money to selfishly spend on myself. I want to pay into a national insurance scheme which creates a safety net for the most vulnerable and impoverished members of society.

In the second half of 2014 it dawned on me that I was wasting my time asking for help from the state, so I complied with exactly what the hostile environment was designed to do: I tried to go back to work. Naturally it was a disaster. You can't force sick people to work. Sick people can't work.

I've struggled along working for 4 hit-and-miss years. I've had a rollercoaster ride. I have periods where I'm working out of sheer desperation, which of course makes me incredibly sick, so I crash and burn every time. Because I seem blessed - or cursed - with the appearance of a man who's got his shit together and is doing just fine, I end up quickly embedded in huge organisations doing very important project work. Because of past achievements I'm given responsibilities which nobody in their right mind would dream of giving to a homeless, bankrupt, alcoholic junkie with mental health problems. The projects are hard enough, without also having to worry about where I'm going to sleep, whether I've got enough money to survive from day to day, and of course dealing with my mood disorder and all the of the problems associated with substance abuse.

Imagine doing an opiate, benzodiazepine and alcohol detox while working a full-time job. Imagine doing drug rehabilitation while working a full-time job. Imagine undergoing psychiatric treatment for severe mental health problems while working a full-time job. Imagine living in a 14-bed hostel dorm while working a full-time job. Imagine not knowing whether you'll be able to afford to keep travelling to work until payday - the ultimate catch 22, where you can't even afford to work your full-time job. That's been my life.

Some of the practical difficulties have been eased in the short-term with vast quantities of debt. I've borrowed heavily to be able to make my living and travel arrangements more compatible with working. I've gone deep into debt on the presupposition that it will enable me to earn enough money to dig myself out of the hole. In addition to the hard problem of working when seriously unwell, I've also had mountainous debts threatening to destroy me.

All of this is exactly what the government wants. The government wants us all to be heavily-indebted wage-slaves who live incredibly insecure lives, so we're easy prey for the capitalists. The government doesn't want us to get fat, happy and lazy. The government doesn't want us secure enough to be able to demand fair and reasonable working conditions and remuneration commensurate with the value of our labour.

I've worked incredibly hard, especially so during the last 9 months. I've earned a lot of money, but none of it has flowed into my pockets - it's all gone to pay the capitalists for their loans, which was the only way I could stay afloat and keep playing the game. If I'd declared bankruptcy I'd never be able to earn a decent wage ever again, rent an apartment or buy a house. The system's set up to screw you whichever way you go; you're forced to become a slave.

With gritted teeth and dogged determination it's been possible to struggle through 9 dreadful non-stop working months and get to the point where it looks as if I'm getting on top of things. I've had a period of what appears to be stability. You could be easily fooled into thinking that forcing me to work when unwell has actually proven the right-wing ultra-conservatives to be correct - that it's OK to economically enslave people; that it's OK to tell society's most vulnerable that they have to choose between starving on the streets, or a minimum wage McJob which won't even cover the cost of incredibly frugal living.

It might not look like it but I've actually done an incredible marathon run and I'm doing a sprint finish. It might not be immediately apparent but it's quite remarkable that I've survived what I've been through and I'm still going. I need to keep going. If I can't keep going then all I'll fall back into the hole as soon as I collapse exhausted in a heap. Every time I'm forced to push myself beyond the point which is sustainable and healthy there's always a price to pay. There's a price to be paid for forcing vulnerable needy people into work.

It might not seem like things have been very hard for me if we extrapolate backwards, but we need to think about where I've come from and what I've been through, not what my current situation and prospects are. My current situation is still pretty dire - there's a long way to go before I can retain my gains permanently; I'm a long way from escaping the debt trap and being free from tyranny. My health is not reliable. My future is incredibly uncertain.

I'm having a difficult time adjusting to the present paradigm. My brain and body are built for crisis mode. I'm able to deal with an endless precession of catastrophic events and survive disaster, but I'm struggling to adjust to the present situation, where I simply need to coast along now that I've re-established myself somewhat. I'm finding it incredibly hard now that I'm no longer in the danger zone - I'm on high alert and super tense, but the worst of my troubles seem to have passed. It's been a living hell but I've beaten the odds. However, I have absolutely no ability to cope with ordinary pedestrian, plodding, slow-paced and hazard-free life. I don't think I'm able to deal with boring daily routine, because my life has been in non-stop crisis for so many years.

So, I'm sprinting to the finish line. I never manage to find steady sustainable consistent marathon pace.

 

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London Keeps You Fit

9 min read

This is a story about declining health...

Bike tyre

My mental health can be tracked reasonably well by thinking about the periods when I was so extremely unwell that work became impossible, there are gaps in my blog and there's photographic evidence that I was having an episode of stimulant psychosis and sleep-deprivation induced insanity. The evidence of my naturally fluctuating bipolar mood is very obscured by other major events, including job loss, money worries and periods of relapse and addiction. There, however, periods when I've been functioning well enough to start getting back on my feet, although these have been quite short-lived and usually occur at some point between May and October.

I suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) as well as bipolar, so my tendency towards mania has started to become linked to the summer months. As my life became more chaotic and unmanageable, depression and drug abuse started to appear during the peaks and troughs. I've suffered winter relapses and summer relapses. I've also spent endless months with seemingly unshakeable and relentless anxiety and depression, which has been unbearable while working boring bullshit full-time jobs.

Through all the difficulties of divorce, selling my house, moving to London and attempting to get back on my feet - getting a new place to live and new job sorted out - I've suffered a whole series of seemingly catastrophic events which have always threatened to destroy me, but somehow every year I managed to do some good work and earn plenty of money.

By the time I arrived in hospital for the umpteenth time, I was completely burnt out by the demands of getting myself off the streets, into my own apartment and working on an extremely high pressure project for an incredibly demanding client. However, I was remarkably fit and healthy. My blood pressure and my resting heart rate both indicated an excellent level of fitness.

I suppose I knew I was fit. I had been lugging my luggage all over London, from hostel to hostel, because I was homeless. I cycled everywhere and I cycled very fast and aggressively - I loved the buzz of weaving through London traffic on my bike with handlebars sawn to the exact width of my shoulders. When there was a tube strike, I cycled all the way from North-West London to East London through the horrendous traffic jams. Cycling anywhere took me less time than it would have done by any other means of transport, with the possible exception of helicopter.

Even when I stopped cycling regularly I still did a lot of walking. To commute to my job in the City required a fairly long walk to my nearest Docklands Light Railway station, and a couple of times a week I had to visit a client in South London, which required even more walking. Seeing friends meant more walking. Going to the supermarket meant more walking. Seeing my girlfriend meant more walking. I maintained a reasonable standard of fitness through 2016, although not quite matching the preceding years.

In 2017 my health completely failed me and I was in hospital on dialysis for ages. Psychologically, I wasn't able to recover from the setback. I watched my savings dwindle depressingly quickly and I knew that I was going to end up evicted from my apartment; bankrupt and homeless. I knew that I couldn't face the exertion of pulling myself up by my bootstraps and getting back on my feet, yet again. I'd had a remarkable 2014, 2015 and 2016, where those years had horrendously bad periods, but also periods when I was productive and earning a lot of money. I hadn't been able to reach escape velocity at any point, and get myself back to a position of financial and housing security, with a dependable source of income. It had been an almost relentlessly shitty 3 years in terms of having the gains I had made smashed to smithereens. I had tried hard to make things work in London for a long time I'd run out of road - I had to leave to avoid total destitution.

Fitness tracker

I've amended the graph I made a short time ago to include 2015, so it can be compared and contrasted with more recent years. Every year used to look like 2015. It's quite plain to see how 2017 and this year are not showing my usual summertime boost at all. I'm having a terrible time in terms of fitness and physical health.

My brief stay in Manchester - August 2016 - was too short to say whether it could have been healthy, but I very much doubt it would have been. I didn't want to be there. The place was not inspiring.

Wales - as the data clearly shows - has not been a healthy move for me at all. The air quality is worse where I live than it was in Central London. There's little reason to walk anywhere - my local job was too far to walk and it was too easy to just drive everywhere. I live on a very steep hill, which is somewhat of a disincentive to walk to the beach, the shops or the pub, knowing there's such an uphill struggle on the way home. For 3 months I was commuting from Wales to London, which of course meant I was doing a lot of walking and carrying a heavy bag - I was starting to get fitter. The chance to work closer to home was too good to turn down, but when my mood wobbled and I had a rough patch, I've been very inactive since. I hardly left my apartment for the best part of two months.

My lifestyle now involves hardly any walking at all. I jump in my car on a Monday morning and park outside my office. I drive to a hotel where I stay 3 nights a week and I always eat in the pub next door. I drive home and I don't leave my apartment, except to walk to the nearby corner shop to buy wine and unhealthy snacks.

What people don't realise about London is how far you have to walk to get around. Walking to the tube station, then walking up and down the steps and through the various passageways that connect the different lines. I would always be prepared to walk further to get to my preferred places to eat and buy groceries. Dating in London always seemed to require quite a lot of walking. I'm not particularly inspired to socialise, date or in any way engage with the place where I live in Wales. I just stay at home, drinking wine and watching TV.

I've made a concerted effort to cut down my drinking to 3 nights a week or fewer. I'm changing a lot of things all at the same time, which is very intense and hard to deal with, but I think I feel a bit of improvement. When I started my new job 4 weeks ago I was having panic attacks and hating most of the time I was in the office. I felt like walking out and killing myself. I was drinking a bottle of wine or 4 pints of beer every single night, and twice that amount on Friday and Saturday nights. I was abusing prescription painkillers and sleeping tablets and tranquillisers, in a desperate attempt to cope with the stress and anxiety.

Now I've stopped taking the sleeping tablets and I've stopped drinking midweek. I've managed to get through a couple of weekends where I've limited my drinking to less than a bottle of wine each night. It might still sound excessive, but it's a huge positive change from where I was.

I went out for a walk a week ago, and this weekend I went for a longer walk and I socialised with friends. That's a big change from a few weeks ago, when I hated the idea of leaving the house for any reason except to buy another bottle of wine from the closest shop.

In London I stayed fit and healthy simply because of the amount of walking I had to do to get to my job and drag my groceries home from the shops. In London I stayed fit and healthy because of the intensity of the place; the buzz I got from travelling around the place.

I had feared that I'd completely slumped recently, and I was destined to become a fat blob of a couch potato. My drinking had gotten out of control and I didn't want to do anything other than lie on the sofa getting drunk.

I don't exactly feel motivated to join a gym or start doing sports, but we have to consider the relative improvement. Things are a lot better than they were.

I have my cerebral preoccupations. I work with my brain not my body and I have my writing to do every day after work, which is surprisingly exhausting. I hope that when I reach my million-word target in a couple of weeks, I'll be more relaxed about my writing. I'm starting to regain my confidence at work and I'm getting more relaxed. Hopefully I'll be able to have a holiday or two in the coming months, without too much worry about jobs and money - hopefully I now have reasonably secure income for the foreseeable future.

I'm going to have to take some more pro-active steps to get fit and healthy than I'm used to. In London I got fit just doing the things I needed to do, like getting from A to B.

In theory, I should have more time, money and energy to spend my leisure time being fit and active, because people work fewer hours outside London and the cost of living is a lot less. In practice, I'm struggling to re-adjust.

I know that getting fitter will be hugely beneficial for my physical and mental health. Baby steps though - it's important not to try to do everything all at once.

 

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Dysfunctional

13 min read

This is a story about all the little things you take for granted...

Shopping basket

Take a look at your mobile phone recent calls - that tells you who you pick up the phone to when you're feeling blue or something bad has happened in your life. Your recent phone-calls is a good way to see who your social support network consists of. Maybe it's your mum, or maybe it's a brother, sister or best friend. Maybe your recent calls are all work-related, but work can provide support and meaning to life; purpose.

Now, think about the last few journeys you took. You live in a place for a reason - maybe it's where you grew up, or maybe you had to move there to get a job, but you've got connections to the area. You know how to navigate around the place, to get from your house to the shops, and to get to your job. You know how long it takes to reach other important places, like the train station, the bus station, airports, major road junctions and big cities. You know how long it takes you to get to nearby beauty spots and tourist attractions.

Think about all the things you routinely do. Think about where you shop for food and drink. Think about where you'd go if you needed to buy a new pair of shoes. Think about where you'd park and how you'd get there. Think about whether you'd need to pay for parking or whether you know somewhere you can park for free. Think about when it'd be busy and when it'd be quiet, and all the local knowledge you have about what shops there are, what they sell and where they are.

Think about where you'd go in a crisis. You know where the hospital is and you know where the police station is. You know where friends and work colleagues live. You know where to find people and you know where the crime spots are; you know which areas to avoid. You know which places are daytime places, and which places are night-time places.

You do your recycling don't you? You know which day you have to put the bins out, and what recycling is collected on what day. You know which colour boxes and bags have to be put out for collection, and you've gotten into the habit of separating your glass, plastic, cardboard, cans, food waste, garden waste and everything else from your general trash. You know where the dump is if you have to dispose of something bulky.

You have a vague idea of the meals you like to cook and eat. Maybe you plan ahead and you've decided on every meal you're going to eat for the next week. You know all the ingredients you need to buy. You write a shopping list. You know which supermarket you're going to go to and you know every aisle which has the products you want. You know when's a good time to go so it's not too busy. You know where you're going to park your car. You know how many shopping bags to take to bring your groceries home.

You budget and you have a good idea what your bank balance is at any particular point in time. You're saving up for a holiday. You know how much the repayments on your car loan cost you, and how much your mortgage is. You know how much the household bills are. You know what you spend on groceries every week. You know how much you spend on transport. You know how much spare money you have. You know how much you can spend on a night out at the cinema, at a restaurant or at a bar.

You know where your income comes from. Maybe you're on housing benefit and Employment Support Allowance. Maybe you get a paltry salary and your wages are topped up with tax credits. Maybe you have a regular average job which just about covers your monthly costs. You know exactly what your take-home pay is, and exactly when it will arrive in your bank account.

You're planning a holiday. You spent a long time choosing where you were going to go, and you'd been saving up for it for a long time. You're really looking forward to it, and you've planned the itinerary and you've budgeted to make sure you have plenty of spending money, so you can convert your money into local currency and enjoy yourself.

Your car needs taxing, testing and insuring every year, and you know exactly when those things fall due. You know that your car needs servicing and that it will cost a certain amount for tyres and other things every year.

There are birthdays. So many birthdays. It seems like every week there's a card to post off; flowers to send. Some birthdays require a trip. Some birthdays require presents.

There are births, weddings and funerals. There are family emergencies. There are elderly relatives to be cared for. There are friends who are having a tough time. There's your loser brother who's in hospital again.

Maybe you work. If you do, you've probably done the same kind of work for your whole adult life. You know what kind of working environment you belong in - whether that's an office, a building site or a hospital - and you know precisely the job titles and organisations which are likely to employ you. You know the jargon and buzzwords. You know what salary to expect. You know how to do your job blindfolded with your hands tied behind your back.

Maybe you've got kids. In fact, you probably do have kids. You know exactly when they have to get up, what they're going to eat, what they're going to wear, where they need to be taken and how they're going to get there, how long they're going to be there for, who's looking after them and what exactly they're doing when they're there. You know when you've got to collect them and which friend they're bringing home. You know what after-school thing they're attending. You know what paraphernalia they're going to need, both during the day and after school - gym kits, science projects, spelling homework, reading books borrowed from the library, the trumpet and trombone, their Brownie's uniform and the cakes they've baked, their swimming costume and the thing they're going to wear at the dress rehearsal for the play. You've thought about a nutritious and delicious lunch for them, which balances both healthy eating and their particularly picky tastes - you cut the crusts of their bread and scraped the seeds out of the tomato; you gave them the flavour of crisps that they like the best and a drink that's marketed as a "low sugar" version of the drink they really wanted.

You've probably got kids, and you've already decided who they are and what they're going to achieve in life. You've got their whole life mapped out ahead of them - you know what subjects they need to study and what grades they need to achieve and which universities they're going to apply for, and which career that means they'll end up in. You know how you're going to sharp-elbow your precious little darlings to the front of the queue. You know how you'd do anything to give little Henrietta a head start in life.

You haven't really thought about the fact that your kids are going to get into mountains of debt and emerge from university with a worthless degree into a particularly hostile job market where they'll be completely unable to secure employment in their chosen field. You haven't really thought about how the student maintenance grant will nowhere near pay for the cost of living while they're studying. You haven't really thought about how your precious little darlings won't be able to get on the housing ladder. You haven't really thought about how your kids won't be able to make their pathetic wages stretch to pay for even the basic essentials: rent and bills. You haven't really thought about how you're going to have to buy them a car, pay the insurance, pay the deposit on every place they rent and generally bankroll them because they have no chance of achieving financial independence in the current economic climate.

Your parents are getting older and their health is failing, but they're going to live into their eighties in their massive house with lots of empty bedrooms. Your parents will require an increasing amount of assistance to be able to continue living independently, but you already spend over 100 hours a week working, commuting and doing the school run. You're already maxed out. You're already stressed out of your mind and you spend every penny you earn. You can't afford to work part time. You don't have any spare time or money to deal with all the hospital appointments and minor operations in your parents' lives.

You feel like you're on the brink of a breakdown all the time. You feel like you're rushed off your feet 24 x 7. You know that you need 2 weeks in bed, but you can't stop for a single second because you're stressed out of your mind keeping all the plates spinning. People are counting on you. You're a breadwinner; you're the one dependable person at work and people keep asking you to do more and more in less time; you've got to deal with the kids and there's so much to do; nobody else is going to do it; you can't let anybody down.

You know who you are and what your place is in the world. You have a purpose. Your life has meaning, even if that meaning is as slave to the brats you spawned to replace yourself. You have an identity. You know how you like to wear your hair and what your 'style' is. You know what clothes are clean and what clothes you are going to wear at any given moment - you have work clothes, comfy clothes, cleaning and gardening clothes, fancy clothes, casual clothes, holiday clothes, winter clothes. You have shoes for every occasion and shoes for specific purposes - running shoes, tennis shoes, cycling shoes, wellington boots, walking boots, horse-riding boots, f**k-me boots.

You have pets. You have cats, dogs and your kids have rabbits, hamsters and guinea pigs. Your parents have pets too. The pets are part of the family. The pets have birthdays too.

You have stuff.

So. Much. Stuff.

You own a house; an apartment. You own furniture. You own curtains and carpets and rugs. You own a fridge, freezer, cooker, microwave, dishwasher, washing machine, kettle and toaster. You own a vacuum cleaner, mop and broom. You own bedding and towels. You own sofas, beds, dining tables, chairs. You own chests of drawers and wardrobes. You own sideboards and dressers. You own steamers, slow cookers, fryers.

Now I really have segued into a Trainspotting monologue, by accident.

You've sewn all this stuff together into a life which is more comfortingly familiar than you're even aware of. Yes, you might go away on a self-catering holiday for a week in Spain, and all the brands in the supermarket are unfamiliar and the kitchen in the s**tty apartment you rented is completely unfamiliar to you, but when you go home you're relieved to be home. Your home never went anywhere - you had two homes briefly, and you were just temporarily having a holiday, but you knew that your home was still exactly where you left it.

Try if you can to imagine losing all that. It's a near-impossible thing to do, to empathise with the plight of somebody who's been so uprooted that they've lost everything I've just described, and they find themselves to be lost and bewildered in the world which they detached from. The world's a very different place when you lose all your local connections, your support network, your possessions and your home comforts, and everything else that constitutes your entire life.

Sure, I have an apartment where I've lived for 5 months. Sure, I have a job where I've been working for 4 weeks. Beyond that, I have 2 friends in the place where I live and 1 friend in the place where I work. My list of recent calls on my phone is mostly cold-callers, although I am lucky enough to have a friend who phones me regularly, although I've actually never met him in person. My support network doesn't include anybody who I see regularly face-to-face. My list of contacts doesn't include anybody who I could call if I needed a hand getting home from the hospital, if I'd had an accident.

When I was in hospital on dialysis with kidney failure in London, I had visitors and it was lovely. I don't live in London anymore. I live somewhere where I don't have any local connections. I don't have much of anything, although I am lucky to have a roof over my head and a source of income, although it's somewhat insecure. I've been lucky enough to hang onto a few precious possessions, and I've even accumulated a few more along the way - not everything was lost.

I worry that person, who I've always thought of as one of my best and most loyal friends, is deliberately ignoring me. I feel like I must've done something wrong. I feel like I must've done something to offend or upset him.

My guardian angel is increasingly busy with her life in London, although we're still in regular contact. I feel like she's the one person who'd be there for me if I was deep in the s**t, but I've relied on her very heavily to rescue me from all kinds of sticky situations over the past few years. She knows me through my blog - we didn't know each other until I started blogging.

These are the fragile little hooks that I hang on, suspended over the precipice: I have a place to live, a job and a handful of people who I speak to via text message. Other than that, I'm pretty much cut adrift from humanity.

It's like I'm on a self-catering holiday in a strange country, except I don't have a home, friends and family to go home to.

 

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Burning Bridges

11 min read

This is a story about wearing a mask...

Cambridge bridges

A long time ago I used to be very careful about what I shared on social media. On Facebook I separated my work colleagues and other business contacts from my close friends, and I thoroughly considered my audience before I posted anything; I spent a great deal of effort managing my public image and attempting to pretend I was a squeaky-clean pristine perfect professional who didn't have any problems in my personal life.

At some point during my acrimonious divorce and the total collapse of my mental health, along with the destruction of my hopes and dreams of escaping the rat race and being my own boss, my depression became so bad that I purchased 2 grams of potassium cyanide. I'm not sure what possessed me - perhaps it was a cry for help - but I decided to put a photo of this deadly poison onto Facebook. The reaction surprised me: one friend was angry and accused me of jeopardising the life of his child [which I didn't] and another made a darkly humorous joke. Most people seemed to just ignore me.

My mental health has caused me an increasing amount of difficulties, resulting in hospitalisations. Initially, I was extremely careful about what I told colleagues. I tried - as much as possible - to cover up and hide my struggles in the hope that I would quickly get better and my image would be untarnished. I lost a couple of jobs and an entire profitable business during episodes of poor mental health, but my reputation seemed to somehow be fully intact despite my faltering ability to work.

At some point, I decided to put more and more of my dirty laundry onto Facebook. I think that the stress and strain of the divorce - having to sell my house in particular - completely destroyed any remaining hope and optimism that I would be able to recover, so I ceased to believe that it was prudent to safeguard my reputation. I jettisoned any caution about who was reading the gory details of my life's implosion and instead preferred to desperately reach out via social media, hoping to receive messages of support and to alert my friends to the danger I was in.

As I became increasingly unwell and addiction turned my life into unmanageable destructive chaos, I continued to overshare without any regard for the reputational damage I was doing to myself. I wrote things which must have broadcast my very darkest and most regrettable moments of struggle to former work colleagues and business acquaintances, completely tarnishing my own reputation.

To have fallen from grace is bad, but to tell the world that you've ended up in a complete mess is quite something else. I'm not sure if I just didn't care, or whether I was so sick that I didn't know what on earth I was doing, but I used Facebook to loudly proclaim the fact that I'd become an unemployable, useless, unreliable, messed-up waste of space. Surely I have left friends, former work colleagues and other people who used to like and respect me, in absolutely no doubt that I was a no-hope loser?

Meanwhile, I managed to keep working and completing projects successfully, and I kept my CV and LinkedIn free from any clues about my mental health problems and drug addiction. My career didn't skip a beat and my skills continued to be highly in demand. I seemingly suffered no negative consequences for all of my loose-lipped moments on social media. It seemed as if I was unable to completely burn every bridge and destroy my own reputation sufficiently to make myself unemployable.

Sharing on Facebook highly alarming stuff about suicidal thoughts, self harm, drug abuse, prescription medication dependency, poly-substance use, breakups, mental breakdowns and the bat-s**t insane ravings of a total madman, seemed to make little or no difference to my day-to-day existence. The response was muted, where my friends and former work colleagues really didn't know what to say, leaving a kind of awkward silence which clearly indicated that people were cringing with embarrassment on my behalf. On the other hand, I was not shamed into silence at all. The madness was so all-consuming that I couldn't even remember what I had shared on Facebook. I had no idea what I was doing.

I suppose that everything I put on Facebook was done in brief moments of extreme insanity. I was still generally cautious about sharing the candid and honest truth about things which portrayed me in a very unflattering light. Nobody wants to be thought of as a junkie, because everybody thinks that junkies are thieving scumbag liars. Mental health elicits some sympathy, so long as it's the milder kind. Nobody wants to be thought of as completely insane, because everybody thinks that madmen are deranged murderous unpredictable lunatics.

I suppose I had attempted to tell my Facebook friends that I was unwell with as much subtlety as I could manage, and I had tried to brush some of the unflattering facts under the carpet, such as my problems with addiction.

I suppose I always wanted people to know that mental illness and a horrible relationship were things that I had been dealing with alone for a long time, and that addiction only crept into my life much more recently. I suppose I felt that I could quietly deal with the addiction issues and nobody needed to know about it; I would just pretend it never happened.

When I started this blog, it was an opportunity to re-assert the 30-odd years of my life where I had achieved a hell of a lot. I wanted people to remember all the projects I successfully delivered and all of the places where I'd worked and made a big difference to the organisations and the teams I was part of. I wanted people to remember that I'd built profitable businesses. I wanted people to remember that I'd played a positive role in their lives; that I'd been a good person; that I had value. I wanted to remind everybody that for the vast majority of my life I'd been making a valuable contribution; that for most of my life I'd been an OK person who'd tried very hard to do good things.

I had imagined that my recovery would progress in a linear way, from bad to good, and every day would be an improvement on the day before. I imagined that I would be able to write a straightforward story about the struggles I'd left behind in the past and the increasing number of positive things that were happening in my life. I had imagined writing a fairy-tale rags to riches story, as I started my blog homeless and bankrupt, and finished the story rich and successful.

It soon became apparent that the journey was going to be a lot tougher than I had hoped it would be.

Every huge gain I've made has quickly been met by a major setback. When I managed to rent an amazing apartment in London, I then lost my job. When I managed to get a lucrative contract, I was then hospitalised with kidney failure. When it seemed like I was getting the perfect combination of friends, girlfriend, job, money, home and hobby, everything fell to pieces. If we look at the whole 3-year writing project, it perfectly captures the vicious swings between high and low which you'd expect of somebody with bipolar disorder, especially when exacerbated by money problems, insecure housing and patches of addiction problems.

After only 4 months of sharing the sanitised version of my life history, where I portrayed myself in the very best possible light, it became clear that I was going to have to write about the bad stuff too if I was going to carry on for a whole year, which was my initial plan. I wanted to write every day for a whole year, to prove to myself that I could be consistent and achieve something very difficult, despite my challenging circumstances. I hoped that the regularity and having a goal to focus on would help to stabilise my life.

Writing my blog has certainly given me a rock to cling to while I've weathered the storm. Writing my blog has certainly helped me to regain some stability in my life, as well as being a source of pride in the achievement.

At some point, it became habitual to be 100% unflinchingly honest, and not to care about what people think.

I'm aware that I've probably prejudiced my employability with a handful of former work colleagues who are also Facebook friends. I'm aware that my reputation is probably damaged beyond repair, if I wanted to try to enter an arena where reputation is more important than skills and experience. In the world of work which I inhabit, people only care about whether I can do the job, and not at all about the skeletons in my closet, so I've suffered no setbacks in my career. However, it does upset me that I've tarnished my image in some of the gossipy organisations where I used to be very well liked and respected. It upsets me that friends who are former colleagues and business acquaintances, who I like and respect, have been left in no doubt that I've been through some very tough and turbulent times in my personal life. Perhaps my opportunities in life have been more damaged than I'm aware of, because I've created doubts in people's minds about my reputation and reliability.

I continue to write using my real name and am slowly advancing towards page one of a Google search, which seems ludicrously stupid, but so far it's caused me very few problems in my career.

I don't think I could live without the regularity and stabilising influence that writing and publishing so publicly has given me. I don't think it would be healthy for me to lose the public oversight, and lose the huge amount of support that is available to me from the online community. I can't imagine going back to a life where I had to hide my struggles and rely on private communications to keep concerned people informed about what's happening to me. It's far too much effort to have to concern myself with image and reputation management when I've been fighting for my life.

There's no turning back now anyway. The genie is out of the bottle. All my friends, former work colleagues and business acquaintances have been left with absolutely no doubt that my mental health problems have caused me a great deal of difficulties, and extremely unpalatable and unflattering things have happened in my life, such as periods of addiction. I have no doubt that my reputation is in tatters in the eyes of anybody I'm Facebook friends with. I must be a laughing stock.

Amusingly, I've been able to deliver projects and impress work colleagues, surrounded by people who are completely oblivious to my personal life struggles and the bad things that have happened in the past. Because my Facebook, Twitter and blog are a world apart from my CV, LinkedIn and references, the two worlds have not collided and I'm able to go to work and do a good job without prejudice or stigma. I suppose it's reckless to risk my identities being connected by anybody who could be bothered to put my name into a search engine, but so far I've not burnt any bridges in the 'new' chapter of my career, since I re-stabilised myself, ironically by using my blog.

I think that's what I'd tell anybody who stumbled on my open secret and had reservations about my public identity: that it's a necessary coping mechanism and it's the reason why I've been able to act completely normal in the office, and to be a productive valuable member of the teams and organisations I work for.

Of course I sometimes worry that I'm taking too much of a risk by continuing to use my real name and writing without concern for the level of public exposure that I live with, but frankly most people are too wrapped up in their own lives to really give much of a s**t.

Sure, if stuff goes wrong I'm dangerously exposed. If I have a wobbly moment then I'm hugely at risk of some unpalatable truths about me from becoming more widespread knowledge. I think the risks are acceptable though. So far, I'm glad that I've laid myself wide open like this.

Some bridges have been burnt, but I'm glad I've set the record straight and I'm glad that there's so much written down here that even the nosiest person is going to quickly become exhausted if they go digging for dirt.

 

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Rehabilitation

12 min read

This is a story about civilised society...

Lots of pills

What is rock bottom? My life doesn't seem to obey the rules - the first time I was forced to sleep rough because of my drug addiction and chaotic lifestyle, I had about £50,000 in the bank. Of course I could have stayed in a very fine hotel, but the culture clash between me in my dishevelled state, the hotel staff and the other guests was going to create a lot of friction. The first time I ran out of money I owned my own home. The first time I had depression so bad that I wanted to kill myself, I seeming had it all: friends, girlfriend, good job, money in the bank, nice house, boat, cars etc. etc.

Rock bottom seemed to begin shortly after I landed a lucrative contract with Lloyds Banking Group, when I sat on my leg which caused circulation problems, resulting in a blood clot and deep-vein thrombosis (DVT) which then caused kidney failure and landed me in hospital on dialysis. It wouldn't have been so bad, but the DVT caused nerve damage and the pain was excruciating, so I was taking the maximum dose of tramadol, which is an opiate painkiller.

I started to get closer to rock bottom moments when I desperately sought relief from the pain - I obtained codeine and dihydrocodeine tablets on the Dark Web, as well as some extra tramadol. I was in too much pain and discomfort to work. The ludicrous amount of opiate painkillers I was taking left me a dribbling mess at the office. When I lost the job which I had fought so hard to keep, it destroyed me. I started swallowing a chemical cocktail which I'm very surprised didn't kill me.

The problem with opiate painkillers is that they cause very unpleasant physical symptoms. When you take opiate painkillers they make you sleepy and constipated, and when you withdraw you get diarrhoea, aching, sweating and a whole host of other flu-like symptoms. It's thoroughly unpleasant and withdrawal brings back the original pain twice as bad.

I had started taking a neuropathic painkiller called pregabalin - marketed as Lyrica - which isn't an opiate. I was also taking sleeping pills: zolpidem - marketed as Ambien - and zopiclone.. These are what you might call downers as they all have a sedating, tranquillising and soporific effect. The list of downers doesn't end there. I had started to use increasing amounts of diazepam - Valium - and alprazolam - Xanax - which have similar effects to the pregabalin, zolpidem and zopiclone.

So, to recap, I was taking on a daily basis: tramadol, codeine, dihydrocodeine, pregabalin, zolpidem, zopiclone, alprazolam and diazepam... and that's just the pills.

You can't function if you're as doped up to the eyeballs as I was, so I was also drinking strong coffee, Red Bull energy drinks, taking dexedrine and occasionally dabbling with crystal meth in an attempt to bring myself out of my stupefied state of drugged intoxication.

Somehow, I managed to get off the opiate painkillers. I went cold turkey and it was unpleasant, but after a week or so things started to improve. Life on opiates is a horrible merry-go-round of repeatedly having to take a dose every two or three hours to stave off the nasty withdrawal symptoms. I feel very glad that I was able to kick them to the kerb without too much difficulty.

Getting off all the other pills proved much more difficult. You can't just stop taking benzodiazepines - like Valium and Xanax - because you'll have a seizure if you've been taking them for a long time at high doses. Benzos are far more physically addictive than opiates - you can die if you suddenly go cold turkey.

During this extended period of unpleasantness, I broke up with the love of my life in a moment of spectacular stupidity and drug-induced insanity. To my ever-lasting shame, I continued my non-stop blogging and oversharing on Twitter and Facebook, broadcasting my idiocy to all my friends as well as on the public internet. That was - in retrospect - definitely rock bottom, but I was too messed up to see it at the time.

My super-expensive London apartment was burning through my cash and available credit at very high speed, and it became apparent that I was going to get into rent arrears if I didn't take drastic action. All my worldly possessions had to be boxed up and put into storage, and I didn't have enough money left to be able to afford to rent anywhere cheaper in London. I was forced to leave my home and my home city, in search of the first financially viable opportunity, which arose in Manchester.

You'd think that being effectively bankrupt and homeless would be rock bottom, but no, I still think that my rock bottom had been spread over an extended period when my life truly started falling apart. It started with the blood clot and the DVT in my leg/ankle and reached its peak when I broke up with my wonderful lovely amazing ex. It's very hard to pinpoint a single moment of rock-bottomness, because there was a chain-reaction of events which unfolded like a slow-motion car crash. Unlike a car crash, however, I was dimly aware of the disasterous decisions that I was making and should have been more in control.

I'm not an idiot, so of course I knew that I shouldn't risk becoming addicted to opiate painkillers. I'm no fool, so of course I knew that all the sleeping tablets, tranquillisers and sedatives were addictive and I was becoming dependent on them. When I relapsed back into fully-blown supercrack addiction the consequences were obvious: the sleep deprivation and the stimulant psychosis is enough to send anybody insane.

There was never a moment that was so utterly awful that I would call it rock bottom. In fact, the moment when I decided that I need to take evasive action and attempt to avert total disaster, was not a moment at all. I had known for a long while that the money I had managed to accumulate would only allow me to survive for a finite amount of time, and that my expensive London lifestyle was burning through cash at an astonishing rate. I knew exactly how long I could remain as a jobless junkie, before I became bankrupt, destitute and homeless. The only surprise to me is how lucky I am that total disaster was averted at all.

When I left London for Manchester I carried a horrible addiction with me. Benzodiazepines are insidious as they creep their way into your life, literally lulling you into a state of tranquility. Quitting benzodiazepines is not only extremely dangerous, but almost indescribably unpleasant as well - peaceful, tranquil and anxiety-free existence is replaced by incredible anxiousness, stress, worry, nervous tension, insomnia, restlessness and a general sense of all-pervasive and inescapable unease.

I ended up in a shitty apartment, being paid less than half what I'm worth, with an incredibly stressful and demanding job, in a city where I have no friends or family. I had a couple of "rebound" flings with girls, which had seemed promising at first but then ended miserably. Perhaps this was my rock bottom, because this was when I made my most premeditated and calculated attempt to kill myself.

I don't think I tried to kill myself because I was at rock bottom. There have been times in my life when I've been in much worse situations. I could see that there was no way I was going to be able to quit all the addictive benzodiazepines and make new friends and woo a new girlfriend and deliver my project at work and get back on my feet financially. I had a fleeting moment where I lost hope and I was so heavily doped up that it was a lot easier to kill myself. I was so full of medication that I quite calmly poured myself several pints of white wine, which I used to wash down about 400 tablets and capsules, most of which were very powerful and deadly opiate painkillers.

I should have died. I certainly didn't have better than 50/50 odds.

After they told me in hospital that I was going to survive, soon followed the moment which would seem most like rock bottom to a casual observer. I quickly had even more problems than when I had attempted suicide. I lost my job and my apartment and found myself not only homeless, jobless and virtually penniless, but also sectioned and locked up on a psych ward in a part of the country miles away from any friends or family. However, I'd suffered days of seizures while in hospital and had been through an incredibly rapid benzo detox. I was at least free from the shackles of my benzodiazepine addiction at last. It would have been impossible for me to detox on my own and without intensive medical assistance.

Having to sell my house due to my divorce was incredibly traumatic and destabilising, but I was glad to be rid of my horrible ex-wife. Becoming homeless in London and getting in trouble with the police was traumatic and I thought I'd never be able to recover from the shame of being arrested and locked up in a cell, but the police are kind and they helped me - they didn't want to ruin my life [or me to ruin it myself]. Sleeping rough and living in a hostel was an adventure and I made lots of new friends. Becoming a poly-drug abuser - addicted to a whole heap of medications - going insane and breaking up with the love of my life was incredibly tragic and I feel very guilty about what I put her through, as well as being heartbroken myself... however, I needed to escape the high cost of living in London and reduce the enormous financial pressure I was under. For every downside I see an upside. For every moment that was thoroughly awful at the time, I can look back and see that none of those moments were bad enough to be called rock bottom.

My life today could be characterised conventionally as 'desirable' by most ordinary people's standards. I have a large amount of so-called disposable income - although I use every spare penny to rapidly repay my debts - and I'm quickly returning to a position of financial stability. I have a lovely apartment with sea views, which is far more spacious than I need. I have a very well paid respectable job and I work with smart people. My commute is not too far. I enjoy a great deal of comfort and luxury, which belies my troubled past. I've never had to compromise on my lifestyle - although I've come within a whisker of bankruptcy on very many occasions, I've never had to economise or alter my habits of consumption.

On the flip side, I've lost contact with many friends and I have no local support network to speak of. I live a very solitary reclusive existence, where I spend 99% of my leisure time alone, reading, writing, watching documentaries and films. I'm unfit and I drink too much. I'm bored and unchallenged most of the time at work, and I'm depressed and anxious a lot. The tiniest things can inflict an incredible amount of stress, causing sudden and breathtakingly powerful suicide and self-harm impulses.

By anybody's measure I'm rehabilitated. In the last year I've worked for 4 different organisations and delivered 4 big projects successfully. I've earned a lot of money. I've got my own home. I've got money in the bank. I've got a car. I'm getting up and going to work and my colleagues have absolutely no idea what I've been through, and they would never suspect a thing. I'm quite a convincingly 'normal' productive member of civilised society. I've even managed to sail through background checks and security clearance, and found myself in positions of responsibility, which one would not normally imagine being given to an ex-homeless, ex-junkie, near-bankrupt person with mental health problems, who's known to the police.

If you believe that people can be rehabilitated - that deep down there's always some good in a person no matter how many bad things there are in their past - then I think that I could be a poster-boy for that idealistic belief. I hope that my story indicates that it's worth giving people a second chance; allowing them to pick up the pieces of their broken lives and to be rehabilitated without prejudice and stigma.

Of course, I still have the potential to f**k up spectacularly, but on the whole my net contribution to society must surely be a positive one. I am trying my very hardest to see if I can at least break-even.

Am I rehabilitated? Inside I feel very broken and that happiness and contentment are still an extremely long way away, but to all outside observers and by all objective measures I represent a great success: the proof that a person can re-enter civilised society and make a valuable contribution, provided they are given the chance.

Am I rehabilitated? I leave it to the reader, who is far better informed than most, to decide.

 

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Word Count

10 min read

This is a story about carelessness...

Grazed knuckles

I'm a regular at my local corner shop. During the month when I wasn't working, I think I visited the shop every single day to buy a bottle of red wine. The weekend before last I was buying some unhealthy snacks and my usual bottle of red, when I decided at the last minute to grab a bottle of white from the fridge, which was near the counter. My usual bottle of red was balanced precariously on top of the snacks I was buying, which then plummeted towards the shop floor where mercifully it bounced off the linoleum; the glass didn't break. Last Friday I grabbed both a bottle of white and a bottle of red. As I walked up the steep hill back to my apartment, I wasn't paying attention to my footing and I tripped over. I grazed my knuckles as I attempted to save my precious cargo of wine from being smashed on the tarmac.

I've definitely become a functional alcoholic.

I woke up on Saturday morning and I had a slight tremor. I don't get hangovers because I think my alcohol tolerance is so high. I can drink two bottles of wine and I feel fine. Obviously I'm not fine.

I've started to skip meals because I'm getting enough calories from all the wine. I could drink 5 bottles of wine over the course of a weekend, and the only 'food' that I would eat would be some salty snacks - crisps and suchlike.

I examine my eyes for any sign of yellowing. I prod and probe my abdomen for tenderness, firmness or any subcutaneous fluid. Surely my liver is taking a battering from a month and a half of extreme alcohol abuse?

Over the weekends I show no restraint at all. I'm making no attempt whatsoever to be the slightest bit healthy. The crap I'm putting into my body - unhealthy snacks and copious quantities of alcohol - combined with my sedentary lifestyle must be lethal. I'm either sat down or lying down. According to my step counter I've dropped from a peak of 15,000 steps per day to a paltry 2,000.

I need to figure out which broken part of the vicious cycle to fix. Stress leads to feelings of tiredness; depression leads to demotivation; anxiety paralyses me - I could start with fixing my mental health. Self-medicating with vast quantities of alcohol seems like the solution to anxiety, stress, boredom, loneliness and isolation, but it's pretty clear that alcohol is affecting my physical health and probably my mental health too. Exercise seems like a ridiculous suggestion, given how badly I'm coping with the basic demands of everyday life. I can't figure out if I'm too tired and stressed to exercise, or if exercise will bring a net benefit once I get fitter - which I know it will - but it seems unthinkable to get fitter when I'm so dependent on alcohol as a crutch.

I'm changing far too many things at once. I've only just started my 3rd week in a new job and I'm still finding my feet in the new organisation and ingratiating myself with my new colleagues. My memory is shot to pieces. I can't even remember how long I was taking sleeping pills for before I ran out. I had some leftover painkillers, which helped to reduce my anxiety enough to be able to sleep, but then I switched back to sleeping pills last week. All I know is that the second half of May was a big mess, June was a near-disaster and I only started getting myself sorted out a week before starting the new job in the middle of July.

The surprising thing is that I keep moving forward. I didn't lose my job despite a few really shaky weeks when I was really sick. I've managed to start this job and things are going OK. Well, when I say that "things are going OK" of course I don't include my mental health, mood stability, brain chemistry or any of those other things which I pretend are OK during office hours. It's a miracle that I've been able to cover up a major relapse, alcohol abuse, abuse of prescription medications and of course my rather worrisome mental health problems.

How long did my writing go erratic for? I know that I had to delete a lot of blog posts in the period between my relapse and the day I finally regained enough of my rational mind to see that I was picking fights which couldn't be won and saying things which shouldn't be said. I don't usually delete blog posts, but I'd lost my mind and I was meandering up dead-ends; I was unhealthily obsessing over things and acting carelessly.

My carelessness has manifested itself at weekends recently. I get super drunk and I write with a lack of care for coherence and storytelling. I've written at weekends in the knowledge that I have fewer readers on Saturdays and Sundays, which has made me feel like I can just ramble, complain, moan and write complete and utter crap. I've considered deleting or rewriting my daily blog posts which I've published at weekends, because I've wondered what the hell am I going on about? I've written and written and when the word count goes over 1,000 words then I decide that I'd better not write any more, but I haven't considered whether what I've written is any good.

Of couse, the end is in sight. I'm so close to a million words now. In fact, if we included the word count of all the deleted blog posts, then I'm well over a million words. The current total word count that's actually published on the public internet on this website is now in excess of 950,000. I'm repeating myself, but only because it's important in the context of my alcoholism. The last few months have been a blur. In my mind, the relapse, the breakup and the period of insanity that followed was over in the blink of an eye. In reality, I've been an intoxicated mess; I've either been doped up on pills or drunk.

Sometimes I hear myself speak and my voice buzzes in my ears and the sound vibrates my head. It feels like somebody else is speaking and they're using a megaphone directed at my head, which is so loud that the sound hurts and I can feel the vibrations. It's a dreamlike state. It's akin to an out-of-body experience. I feel like this when I think I'm completely sober but I think it's actually due to the fact that there isn't much blood in my alcohol-stream. God knows what other crap is still circulating in my body. I've abused a mixture of diazepam, clonazepam, alprazolam, pregabalin and zopiclone during the last couple of months, as I attempted to wrestle back control of my life before my supercrack addiction destroys everything I've worked so hard to rebuild.

Yes, that's right. The dreaded supercrack was back. I had relapsed.

To put things in context, I've worked a full-time job for 9 months out of the last 12. I've moved house 4 times. I've been hospitalised twice. I've been sectioned. I spent the best part of a month locked up on a psych ward. The main headline that most people would pay attention to is that I've earned a lot of money and done a lot of work. To all intents and purposes I've been a thoroughly productive worker and a valued member of the teams and projects I've been part of. This does not reconcile.

In my head, I'm brushing off serious problems with mental health, addiction and alcoholism like they're nothing. In my head, I'm as invincible as I ever was. In my head, I'm immortal and the evidence very much backs up that ludicrous idea.

I really don't want to have a reality check one day, where I find out that I've done irreparable damage to my physical health. I really don't want to keep testing my mortality to breaking point.

Yes, the numbers look incredibly good. Despite the insanity of my life during the last 12 months, I still managed to work 9 months out of 12 and my gross income has probably been well in excess of 3 times the national average. Somehow, I've managed to write more-or-less every day and churn out over 300,000 words since this time last year. How the hell did I manage to earn so much and how did I manage to write so much? How do the numbers look so good when my life has been a complete shambolic mess?

The numbers don't tell the complete story.

Yes, without good numbers my story wouldn't be very interesting. The world's full of junkies who went bankrupt. The world's full of alcoholics who drank all their profits. The world's full of people who have fascinating stories but they never write them down. I'm gunning for the convergence point where one million words meets one million pounds. I'm aiming to be an outlier: the guy who beat drug addiction, alcoholism, mental health problems, homelessness and - most importantly - bankruptcy. I've got the archives; I've collected the data. Plenty of people lost their house, their car, their wife, their cash and everything else, but how did they get it back? The game; the sport, if you like, is to have kept this narrative going through a 3-year period which accurately captures the false starts, the setbacks and the struggles... and at no point did I wipe the slate clean; at no point did I run away; at no point did I switch to a different tack.

Why would I change my approach? The numbers look good.

I'm going to reach a million words on my blog because I'm in control of my destiny and I can work as hard as I want; I can write as much as I want. I can choose when my project is complete, because I know the word count I need to achieve every day to make sure I hit the target.

Whether or not I clear all my debts and reach a thoroughly impressive gross income for the 3-year period covered by my blog, I'm not so sure. There's no way that hard work will bring the finish line any closer - it's simply a waiting game. All I have to do is sit and look pretty and the money flows in. I just need to be patient. It's an agonising wait, but it's profitable.

Being drunk all the time seemed like a solution to the waiting game; to make the time pass quicker. However, I need to be clean and sober when I reach the finish line otherwise it was all a waste of time.

I'm going to see if I can resist the temptation to get drunk. I'm going to sober up for a few days, to try to clear my head and get some perspective. I've been intoxicated for far too long.

 

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An Austere Life

5 min read

This is a story about simplicity...

Glass roof

"Work sets you free" according to the tyrants; the capitalists; the elites who never have to lift a finger; those who earn their money without labouring themselves. Our lives are controlled by those who were born destined for greatness: privately educated, public schoolboys, trust fund recipients and the sons & daughters of political, industrial and commercial dynastic families. Somebody who'll never work a day in their life has decided that work is good for you, so you'll have to work until the day you die.

My life is pretty basic at the moment. On a Monday morning I drive for 90 minutes to get to the office, I spend 3 nights in a hotel, eating my dinner in the pub next door, then I drive home on Thursday evenings and work from home on Fridays. Each evening I drink too much and try to keep my mind distracted with Netflix. Each morning it takes a huge effort to motivate myself to get up and go to my desk. Each weekend, I wonder if I'm going to be motivated to do something with my free time, but I never am: the boredom and the monotony and the prospect of months and years more misery seems to sap every bit of energy from me. I'm either at work, hating it, or I'm dreading having to go back.

Most people would seek social contact. Most people would quit jobs which caused them significant anguish. You'll find plenty of night owls who work in restaurants or bars, because they simply couldn't tolerate an office job. You'll find plenty of people who work outdoors because they couldn't tolerate being chained to a desk. You'll find plenty of people who create real and tangible things because they couldn't stand to be pushing paper for a so-called living.

It feels like I'm committing an act of self-harm by persevering with choices which are incompatible with my sense of wellbeing, contentment and happiness, but I've swallowed the propaganda that work will set me free. It seems - on paper at least - as though I only have to suffer in the short-term and I will then reap the long-term rewards.

I could pay off all my important debts today, but then I wouldn't have the working capital to be able to get to work, pay for accommodation & food, pay my bills. I could liberate myself from the tyranny of capitalism, but the alternative is homelessness and destitution. The road out of civilised society is a one-way street. Everything in mainstream society is set up to deny access to anybody who's taken an alternative path: with a bad credit score, no fixed abode, bankruptcy and other 'black marks' against your name, you'll never be able to rent a place to live or get a good job; you'll be trapped into poverty forever.

I'm trying as much as I can to shut off my brain, getting through the next few months in an intoxicated state as much as possible. I try to be drunk or unconscious whenever I can, desperately trying to make the time go quicker.

I'm repeating a life I've lived a thousand times before. I'm doing things I can do in my sleep; muscle memory. There's nothing novel, new or interesting in my life.

I was homeless again from September last year through to March. I rented another apartment, which briefly made me happy, but it's something I've done so many times before: moving house, renting or buying a place to live. Shelter is a basic human need.

I wasn't working from September through to November last year. I got another job, which briefly made me feel relieved to have an income again, but I've had so many jobs before. There's nothing new, novel or interesting about doing the same kind of job that I've done for 21+ years full-time.

I expect I could re-do any of the many things that I've done thousands of times before in my life, and cumulatively all those things will add up to a complete and functional life, but I'm pretty exhausted by the destructive cycle of losing jobs, losing my home, losing my friends, losing money and being on the brink of exclusion from society the whole time; living on the margins. It's exhausting, constantly having the threat of a 'black mark' against your name, which will ruin your chance of ever re-entering civilised society.

Sometimes I feel happy about the progress I've been making, but other times I feel depressed about the time & effort still required to reach the point where I feel free. All I'm trying to do is get back to zero; to get square; to make things even.

I'm attempting to travel the shortest distance between where I am and where I want to be. I'm attempting to travel via the fastest route possible. In my desperation to reach my goal as quickly as possible, I'm jettisoning almost everything which seems superfluous. My life is basically unliveable; intolerable... but I keep telling myself that it's just for another few months... another few months.

What will I do when I get my freedom? I don't dare to dream at the moment. There's too much suffering in the short-term to waste time dreaming about the future.

 

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Penblwydd Hapus i Mi

7 min read

This is a story about early retirement...

Birthday cake

I was pretty pleased with my life's achievements by the time I hit the age of 30. I'd earned a lot of money and been able to enjoy a lavish lifestyle, and I had plenty of material possessions as status symbols to attest to my accomplishments. My income vastly exceeded my expenditure and I'd amassed enough savings and assets to be able to support myself without a job for many years, without having to tighten my belt or live frugally.

I decided to quit the rat race and be my own boss. I retrained as an electrician and set myself up in business as a one-man operation: just me and my van... and my customers. Turns out that you always have a boss, whether you're a salaried employee or the founder and CEO of your own company. There's always somebody who you're dependent on for your money, like investors and customers who have to be kept happy. Perhaps only trust fund brats are truly free from the tyranny of having to kowtow to anybody, but even they have to kiss the ass of the trustees if they want to get their hands on more cash than their already more-than-ample unearned lifelong income.

My subsequent attempt to use my software smarts to earn money while I slept didn't turn out much better than my attempt to become a traditional tradesman. Realising that customers were harder to extract money from than I'd anticipated, and that I was going to end up giving away a substantial amount of equity and control to investors, I burned out and became very depressed about life.

I tend to win more than I lose when software's involved and my most recent attempt at earning money in my sleep was quite successful, when I bought Bitcoin miners which I kept in my summer house. I also ploughed every pound and penny that I could beg, borrow or steal and I bought Bitcoins, which then appreciated in value a hundredfold or more. Sadly, I needed to liquidate my assets to settle an acrimonious divorce, hence why I'm not [yet] a multimillionaire... well, and also to be honest I didn't think the value of Bitcoin was going to go much beyond $5,000 but that's another story.

To be fully retired and spend my days wandering around National Trust stately homes - or whatever it is that retired folk do - I think would be quite torturous and tedious. I was dragged around enough stately homes as a child, with my pushy parents mistakenly believing that educational leisure experiences would be somehow beneficial to me and my future.

Software is the gift that keeps on giving and I've worked an average of 3 months per year, during the last 4 or 5 years. That's pretty close to semi-retired. The remaining 9 months of each year have been spent sleeping rough, living in hostel dorms, in and out of hospital, locked up on psych wards or otherwise generally living a life which most people would not consider to contain much rest and relaxation.

I'm pretty exhausted to be honest.

I'm 39 years old and I'm knackered.

During the last 9 years I've done all the things which my parents told me not to. I've followed my dreams and I've ended up in a few nightmares too, but I've finally been able to experience life. I was a very well-behaved boy and young man: I was the well-mannered sensible child who did all the right things and was achieving all the things that grannies and aunties like to hear about when your parents phone or write to brag. There's a lot of snobbery in my family and I felt duty-bound to comply with very boring, rigid and old-fashioned ideas of success. I'd spent my life up to the age of 30 living somebody else's idea of how I should live my life. Then, I rebelled.

I really rebelled.

It took me a while, but I caught up. At the age of 32 I had been a straight-laced boring conformist who'd never stepped out of line and had never experienced life, in all its its horror as well as its beauty. By the time I reached my 35th birthday I was pretty much ready to start gently pressing the brake pedal. Now I'm only a year away from turning 40 I've got both feet on the brakes and I've pulled the handbrake too.

I don't think you can really say you've lived until you've been arrested, thrown in the back of a paddy waggon, locked in a police cell, sectioned, locked up on a psych ward, been hospitalised, been in critical care / intensive care, been on a high dependency ward, had organ failure, had dialysis, had a horrific injury requiring general anaesthetic and major surgery, become homeless, slept rough, lived in a hostel dorm, run out of money, been physically addicted to drugs and all the other things which came about when I decided to abandon all caution and just do whatever the f**k I wanted for a few years.

I really made up for lost time, but I don't regret any of it. If I have any regrets, it's only that I listened to my parents and I behaved myself and I was sensible. I wish I followed my dreams earlier. I wish I did what I wanted sooner, rather than attempting to please my parents and gain their approval, which turned out to be impossible anyway.

To continue my life in the way I had been living it until a year ago would be quite disgraceful. There's no dignity in being 40+ years old and doing the kind of crazy s**t that I've been doing during a lot of my thirties... in fact I think it's a real shame to see people who haven't been able to stop the madness when they've reached an age where they should supposedly know better.

In light of the fact that I only have a year until my 40th birthday, I am now semi-retired. I have almost fully retired from my life of crime, drugs and insanity. Now, my life consists of a cushy government job which requires very little thought or effort and gives me a lot of disposable income and leisure time. Life is a lot less exhausting without the police cells and the hospital beds.

Over the coming months I'm going to complete my 1-million word writing project, pay off all my debts, replenish my savings and write a new chapter in my life: the comfortable semi-retired existence of a highly paid consultant doing government work; the return of some of the lavishness of the lifestyle I used to enjoy when I was a much younger man.

I am a little sad to say goodbye to the version of me who could say and do whatever he wanted, but the consequences almost killed me on numerous occasions and my luck was going to run out sooner rather than later.

39 isn't the usual age where people start a laid-back life of semi-retirement, but I think it's appropriate in my case to dial back the insanity from 11 to a much more reasonable 3 or 4.

I hope the previous 12 months I'm writing about this time next year are much more becoming of a gentleman celebrating his 40th birthday. I'm pleased that I've got a year to get things sorted in my life, so I don't feel like a total failure.

Happy birthday to me. 39 today.

 

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One Year in Pictures - a Photo Story

7 min read

This is a story about the last 12 months...

London sunset

The story begins in London, looking out at the skyline of the capital from my balcony. This is the last photo I took from my apartment in London before I had to leave to go chasing cash... I was practically bankrupt.

Self storage

That's everything I own all boxed up and put into self storage. That's all the stuff I've managed to hang onto through the past few years. I'm amazed I even managed to accumulate and retain this much stuff, considering that a few years ago I was homeless and even sleeping rough. In a way, it's liberating that my life can be boxed up and moved so easily.

Packed suitcase

That's all I could manage to carry on the train to Manchester, leaving my beloved home city of London. I'll always think of London as home first and foremost, because I've spent more time there than anywhere else. Yes, I got my ass kicked, but the place was relatively kind to me. I've still got plenty of friends there, at least.

Manchester apartment block

Here's the apartment block where I was moving to. I'd never set foot in Manchester before in my life. I'd never been inside the apartment. I didn't know anybody in the city. In fact, I hardly know anybody in the North of England. In retrospect it was insane to move to Manchester, but I was desperate - I was bankrupt and I couldn't afford to pay the rent in London anymore, so homelessness and destitution were imminent. I did what I had to do.

Ironing board

I was lonely but there were girls. I was so busy with my work that there wasn't a lot of time for making new friends. I was really gutted about a breakup a couple of months earlier - she was such an amazing girlfriend - and it seemed to make sense at the time to meet somebody new. It made things more bearable, having a partner.

Tramadol capsules

Things were fragile; delicate. I was under so much pressure and I'd been through such emotional upheaval leaving my home and moving to a new city, as well as the exhaustion and the stress of it all. I often thought about killing myself. I even took this photo of one of the boxes of capsules I used as part of my massive overdose suicide attempt.

Psych ward

Psych ward. Not just any psych ward - this was a PICU (Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit) and my fellow patients were very sick. I arrived here after my suicide attempt, having spent days in a coma on life support.

Nettles

Wales. What the hell was I doing in Wales? I might've been born in Wales but I've never lived here. The hospital were going to discharge me into some kind of supported housing, but I had no idea where in the country I was going to be housed. I've got no local connections anywhere. I could have stayed in hospital and taken a gamble on social services finding me somewhere tolerable to live, but instead I accepted the kind offer from a doctor who read my blog - I moved into their converted garage. I was homeless and it was the state's responsibility to house me because I was vulnerable, but there was too much danger I'd end up housed somewhere where I didn't know anybody. It turned out the doctor was married to somebody my friend was friends with... there was a connection.

Warsaw snow

Warsaw. What the hell was I doing in Warsaw? I needed money and I needed it fast. An old friend put in a good word for me with his boss and the next thing I knew I was packing my bags for a business trip to Poland.

Busy underground

London again. This time I was commuting from Wales and living in AirBnBs. I stayed in 12 different AirBnBs. It was a horrible existence, spent on trains and in really crappy accommodation. I nearly ran out of money. It was unbelievably stressful, having to pretend like everything was OK and normal, when in actual fact I'd already been through 6 months of hell and things were worse than ever. I was no fixed abode, living off the charity of a doctor who read my blog and emailed me, and I was almost out of cash but I still had to get to work every day and pretend like everything was normal.

Train cancelled

Dating again. I decided that there was no point in dating in London because I didn't plan on staying in London for any more than another couple of months... I couldn't stand the commuting and the AirBnBs. I was dating, but I still didn't have any money, or a car, or an apartment - I was still virtually bankrupt and no fixed abode. What the hell was I doing dating?

Garage

I got a local job. That meant I needed a car so I could get to work. I had a horrendous chest infection, but I needed a car and I needed one fast. I barely had enough money for the car, the road tax and the insurance. In fact, I didn't have enough money - I had to go into even more debt in order to get myself back on the road.

Apartment keys

I managed to rent an apartment. That was stressful. They were asking for the whole 12 months rent up-front at one point. I was struggling to prove that I was able to pay the rent, of course... I'd spent the past 9 months on the brink of bankruptcy so of course I was worried that my credit score was destroyed and I wouldn't be able to rent an apartment. Once again, I spent every penny I could lay my hands on and went deeper into debt, but I desperately wanted some security... a place to call home with a legally binding tenancy agreement... no longer dependent on the charity of the kind people who'd let me live in their converted garage.

Cod and chips

A brief moment of domestic bliss. I had a car, an apartment, a local job and a local girlfriend. We were a "dinky" couple - dual income, no kids. We ate out or had takeaway nearly every night, or cooked luxury ready meals. We were planning a holiday together.

Baked beans

Easy come, easy go. I broke up with my girlfriend. The work project had been completed and the local company were letting me go. My windows were covered with paper so nobody could see in and I was eating cold baked beans out of a can with a business card as an improvised spoon.

Holiday

Instead of a week lying on a sun lounger by the swimming pool, on holiday, I managed to snatch a weekend mini-break to a European city with an old friend. It was exhausting, but of course great to see my friend. My week-long holiday was cancelled. I haven't had a proper holiday for 2 years.

Leaving gift

A leaving gift from my local job. They got me a card and everything. The gift was alcohol. It was a nice gesture. I like alcohol.

Time to talk

Another day another dollar. I got another job. It's still in Wales but it's 90 minutes drive away in rush hour traffic. My mental health is destroyed and I find it ironic that there are posters everywhere in the office saying "it's OK to talk about mental health" but there's an unwritten rule that says I'm supposed to be a reliable, steady, dependable worker who never complains and just gets on with the project... I'm not allowed to take sick days. I'm back living out of a suitcase again. I'm still a long way away from where I need to be.

Pint in the pub

This is my life now. Drinking in the pub next to the hotel, which is near my new office. My new colleagues are nice - and super smart - and the project is interesting, I guess, but I really need a bunch of local friends, a local girlfriend etc. etc. and I could really do without the loneliness and the boredom and the isolation and the pressure and the stress, which are all as present as ever.

A pretty crazy 12-month rollercoaster ride. I'm very surprised that I'm still alive.

 

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