This is a story about the trust paradox...

If you decide to permit personal privacy, then you must also accept that there will be a point at which you simply have to trust somebody. There is nobody who can say without a shadow of a doubt that I'm not keeping any terrible secret(s) and there is nobody who can predict the future. Even with perfect knowledge of the position every atom in the observable universe, there is no machine capable of predicting the future. Even with vast amounts of data collected about a person's past behaviour, it's not capable of making an accurate prediction about their future behaviour, without prejudicing those who are unfairly punished by whatever guesstimation algorithm is used.

There's a joke I used to enjoy which goes like this: If you have some goldfish, you probably have a pond. If you have a pond, you probably have a garden. If you have a garden, you probably have a house. If you have a house, you probably have a family. If you have a family, you probably fuck your wife. Therefore, if you don't have any goldfish, you're probably a wanker.

This is the problem with making predictions from incomplete data. Even with nearly complete data, we're still not very good at making predictions. Weather forecasts are pretty accurate for a few days into the future, but hopelessly inaccurate beyond a week or longer, except to say that summers are hot and winters are cold (or vice-versa for the Southern Hemisphere).

I wrote this earlier, to express my frustration regarding renting a house. It's a questions-and-answers thing I had to endure, in order to satisfy a landlord that I'm able to pay rent each month.

Q: What's your employment status?

A: Full-time employment

 

Q: What's your salary?

A: £8,424

 

Q: Who can we contact at your company to verify your employment?

A: The board of directors, or better still, why not just check at Companies House, because it's a matter of public record

 

Q: Can we see 3 months of payslips to prove your income?

A: My £702 monthly salary? Yeah sure. No problem.

 

Q: Are you self-employed?

A: No. See above.

 

Q: Are you sure you're not self employed?

A: I'm sure that I'm employed full-time as a company director, for which I receive a salary. I'm also a shareholder, which entitles me to a share of any dividends that the board of directors decides to pay. It's exactly the same as being the CEO of a public company, except the shareholders cannot trade their shares via the stock market.

 

Q: If you're like a CEO why do you need to rent a house?

A: Have you ever heard of a startup? It's a bit like that, only without the rich parents.

 

Q: So you don't have any money?

A: No, you're getting me confused with startup founders. I have enough income to pay my rent.

 

Q: Where does the money come from if you don't earn it as a salary?

A: Dividends are paid to me from the companies which I'm a shareholder of.

 

Q: How much do you get paid per month, in dividends?

A: It depends on the company profits, and what the board of directors decide. It could be zero. It could be zero for months.

 

Q: This is too complicated for me to understand. Would you mind if we took a look at all of your personal bank accounts, for the last 3 years?

A: No problem. Would you also like to perform a rectal exam and fondle my testicles too?

So, despite the fact that my position as company director is a matter of public record, as well as the accounts of my company - anybody who wants to is able to view those records online - I'm still expected to share my personal bank statements with complete strangers.

A friend and I who both own and operate our own companies, joked that we should maintain an account specifically for the purposes of pranking the organisations who ask to invade our privacy. We would make regular purchases of items from retailers and service providers, where the name shown on the bank statements would be considerably embarrassing, for most members of the public. Thus, we could troll these organisations and perhaps change the culture from secrecy and shame, to something more open. I applaud the Swedes, for example, for making every citizen's tax declarations public... essentially meaning that you can find out how much anybody earns.

As regular readers will know, I'm quite the opposite of a secret-keeper. I've published every bit of 'dirt' which somebody hope to 'dig' on me, onto this public website.

Meanwhile, my hopes of renting a place to live hang in the balance, while the minutiae of how I spend every single penny are pored over by a bunch of strangers, who will ultimately decide whether I'm worthy of having a roof over my head, or whether I should be cast onto the streets.

Tags: #homeless #rent #renting #apartment #home #moving

This is a story about hacking...

How do we reconcile the concept of privacy, and our supposed desire for it, with the moden practice of sharing images of ourselves and our loved ones and publishing intimate pieces of information about ourselves and our identities, so publicly on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook?

Some people choose to maintain several versions of themselves. They have decided how they wish to present themselves - digitally - for different audiences, and they presume that the computer systems they use have sufficient privacy safeguards so that those worlds will never collide. Incredible trust is placed in those who build those computer systems and guard that data.

Those of us who are living double lives, or perhaps even triple, quadruple, quintuple or more lives, must have a shape-shifting and highly demanding existence as they constantly context-switch between their different identities.

How do they remember the different lies they've told to different people? Which parts of their life are common to all their identities, and which parts belong only to one distinct segment? How must it affect these people - psychologically - to maintain so many alter-egos, avatars and characters that they have created, which add up to a life with extra pieces left over if they were all combined into a single identity? Which are the pieces that don't fit? Which bits would that person have to give up if they were forced to unify themselves into a singular entity?

I can speak only for myself.

At work my identity is an open secret. Any of my colleagues can quickly and easily find this website, which contains every bit of information that most people would consider worthwhile keeping private. We generally don't want our colleagues at the office knowing about the less flattering things which have happened to us in our lives. We generally seek to avoid the prejudice which is still prevalent in a society where we live with the mistaken belief that our data is held safe and secure in computer systems, and the foolish notion that secrecy is assured.

Secrecy is not assured. Quite the opposite.

My knowledge of the limits of what is possible with a computer system, in terms of keeping data safe, comes from the place which society would deem most important: the bank vaults where all our money is kept. Capitalism's biggest fear is that a hacker could penetrate the inner sanctum of the banking sector and annul all our debts. The banks quite literally have all the money in the world to keep that money 'safe' which means they have manyfold more resources than any would-be bank robbers or philanthropic debt-erasers, keeping everybody out of their vaults.

I often wonder if my stance is due to the fact that the man who has nothing, has nothing to lose.

However, the origin of my exhaustive efforts to document the most private details of my life, came from when I had a lot to lose. In fact, the fear of loss is what nearly drove me insane. I realised that the threat of the dreaded event - losing my money and damaging my reputation - was sufficient to create a great deal of paranoia, which was impossible to control because of the insatiable appetite of people around me for the gory details of my private life. I became a human interest story and the only solution I could see was to take control of the story by writing it myself.

Writing a little bit isn't going to help.

Writing your version of events isn't going to help.

Writing the story of your life isn't going to help.

I decided that the only way that I was going to regain my sanity and my dignity was by making myself into a publicly accessible resource. I have emptied the contents of my brain into the public domain, but this is an ongoing process. Unfortunately, I can't just upload everything in my head to the cloud. I have to type it. Even if I typed until the day I die, there will still be things that die trapped inside my head, but at least I tried.

The more I have gone along with this journey of emptying out my head onto the pages of a public document, the more I have seen the benefit of doing so. The more honest and open I have been, the more candid and frank, the more comfort I have felt knowing that the greatest amount of data generated which pertains to me and my life, has come from my brain via my keyboard.

Before I started to write this blog, the bulk of my private intimate personal data was held by private companies and government institutions, who knew where I spent my money, where I travelled, who I spoke to, what I went to the doctor about, what medications I took, what my credit score was, where I had lived and where I was living and an enormous amount of other things too, such as how frequently I visited websites, what kinds of things I looked at on the internet and just about every single word of communication ever exchanged between me and another human being.

This sounds like paranoia. This sounds like insanity.

All I know is that I'm glad that I live a single life with a single identity and I've made myself publicly accessible. I'm glad I've published all my so-called secrets. I'm glad I've put my unflattering side into the public domain. I'm glad that those who would like to quickly and harshly judge me, so that I could be easily dismissed and cast aside, have a repository of all the dirt they'd ever possibly want to find, if only they weren't so lazy and stupid as to not bother to think to look in the most obvious place for it.

I enjoy living my life in plain sight. I enjoy having open secrets. It gives me pleasure and a sense of security.

I'm in the process of migrating my website and all my 1.1 million words to a new home, which will hopefully be a seamless transition for my readers - I've decided to utilise my technology skills to cement my digital legacy. I hope that I can move what I've written to a place where it can be easily migrated to newer technology platforms as and when they emerge, much like old cine films were transferred to VHS tapes and then transferred to DVD discs, to preserve those memories for posterity.

It might seem horribly arrogant and conceited to think that anybody gives a damn about what I've written, and that my writing should be preserved, but there it is: The modern age, where we take photographs of our food and share them with the other 7.6 billion people on this planet via the internet.

I've found the internet to be a place of friendship and connection, and of people who do care about what I write, so it's with little embarrassment that I admit to my efforts to preserve my own legacy.

Tags: #computing #writing

This is a story about prejudice...

If somebody has decided they don't like you because something has invoked their prejudices, then almost anything you say or do will be twisted negatively. There's no way to win somebody over once you're seen in a bad light, because it's possible to create a monster out of a saint if your mind is that way inclined.

I photographed the exit from my office.

I shouldn't have done it.

I knew it was wrong.

Nobody's told me off yet. Nobody's caught me. My wrongdoing has been entirely unnoticed by the universe.

This. Does. Not. Matter.

I'm not supposed to put photographs of an entrance into a secure building up on the public internet. In fact I'm probably expressly forbidden from doing such a thing depending on the interpretation of deliberately nebulous bullshit.

Provided I'm the golden boy and I'm making myself valuable around the place, nobody really gives a damn who I am and what I do. I could write about the specifics of what I do for a day job - which is all public anyway - and I wouldn't suffer any consequences, so long as I retain the aura of a person who's desirable to have around; so long as I'm wanted.

The moment that the sands shift and I'm viewed as an undesirable scumbag then I'll suddenly come under much closer scrutiny. Those who are looking for reasons to reject me are sure to find many things which they can twist to their advantage.

"Aha!" they will exclaim. "We've rumbled you!"

Of course, the joke is on those who seek to act with prejudice, because this identity existed all along. Everything has been on open public display. I was welcomed in with open arms when you wanted something from me and you thought you were getting the better end of the deal.

"You mean to say I hired a junkie alcoholic homeless bankrupt tramp with mental health problems!" they exclaim.

The indignation is palpable.

The prejudiced are always unreasonably angry and upset to discover that their trusted and valued colleague who has successfully delivered their large and complex IT project is nothing more than a low-life loser.

"I could have paid you peanuts!" seems to be the thing that's most upsetting to these people who'd think nothing of kicking a homeless person to death and urinating on the corpse.

It's not true.

You cannot pay me peanuts.

I cut my day rate by over 50% when I was utterly desperate last year, and I was taken advantage of worse than I've ever been in my 21 year career. I was treated disgustingly. I will never do that again.

Do you think you're getting a bargain every time you beat somebody down on the price they've quoted you? Do you think you're succeeding when you ask somebody to do more work for less money?

Wrong.

Pay less. Get less.

Do you think you're making the world a better place by refusing to work with vast swathes of society? Do you think you're more likely to succeed if you surround yourself with people who are just like you: A-grade achieving, 2:1 degree holding, compliant and conformant worker-bee drones who've got manicured CVs?

I should not be allowed onto the hallowed turf.

My face does not fit.

I'm an intruder.

I'm an interloper.

However, I'm not a fraud.

Stuff comes out of my mouth and even I'm surprised. People wander over to my desk and they want to talk to me. They want to ask me questions. Somehow I know the answers. Believe me... I'm more surprised than anybody.

I'm acutely aware that when people are having a tough time and living in a precarious situation they are more inclined to accept less money. People who are going through economic difficulties are easier to bully and exploit. It's relatively straightforward to fuck the poor.

In a poker game you have to have your chips on the table. Everyone can see the size of your stack.

I seem to have gained a somewhat posh accent, although I'm not entirely sure where I got it from because my parents are Northern and I was born in Wales. My cut-glass accent is apparently a close enough approximation to that of a privately educated and privileged member of the set who are destined for greatness, such that I haven't had to suffer the indignity of being offered insultingly low wages by the exploitative rentier class. They assume I'm one of them.

I'm racked with guilt that I enjoy privileges conferred by social status - when the people who I interact with in a work environment mistakenly think I've had a fine and expensive education - but yet I've rubbed shoulders with enough rough sleepers, junkies and alcoholics on the streets of London to know that intellect doesn't magically happen to restrict itself to upper-middle-class white families in the Home Counties.

Nobody knows that I should be stacking shelves in a supermarket for minimum wage. That's my so-called place in society, and I should be grateful to lick the boots of the capitalist pigs. (Caveat: I know that our supermarket shelves need stacking - it's a vital role - and I'm grateful to those who do the job).

I'm careening towards a collision with those who believe it's their rôle in life to police the social strata. They will find this document interesting reading. There is much ammunition here to construct a fabricated reason for my dismissal, on the flimsy and patently absurd basis that I might be exposing the country to terrorist attack by publicising confidential details about the entrance to our impregnable fortress. Perhaps I'm bringing my profession into disrepute and otherwise stepping out of line; conducting myself in a manner unbecoming of my position of responsibility. Bullshit.

Of course I might feel a pang of regret if I succeed in raising my profile sufficiently that the powers-that-be feel they have to take some action and eject me from the world I'm not supposed to belong to. "This isn't for the likes of you" they'll say as they boot me out of the door.

"What have I done?" I'll momentarily ask myself.

It seems two-faced to sit on the fence. It seems awful to take the big bucks and not impoverish myself as a charity worker. What the hell am I doing trying to change the world without first making myself poor and destitute?

Actually, I did make myself poor and destitute.

Am I now turning my back on the struggling masses?

I like to think that I'm doing the very opposite. I'm a bridge in-between two worlds which would never normally meet. There isn't much more I could do to challenge the prejudices of those who live in sheltered worlds, inaccessible to ordinary people and especially those who are tainted by the stench of poverty. I have specifically set out to become liked and respected, while also maintaining an open secret of my chequered past. My situation is no accident.

Three years ago I grew impatient. Three years ago my project was in its infancy and I was rushing things. Three years ago I was too tired, stressed and destabilised by the traumatic experiences I'd been through. Three years ago I had a plan but I was too unwell to execute it with any finesse. Three years ago I tried to force things to happen, which was "contrived" to put it in the words of the BBC journalist I was dating. She was right.

What I'm doing right now is still somewhat contrived, but it's not easy.

You'll find plenty of writers who'll have spent a single night sleeping rough, or perhaps in a psychiatric institution, in order to provide material for them to write about.

You won't find many people on the right side of the tracks who can write with any depth of experience and knowledge about the afflictions of modern life.

Life is a one-way street.

I feel quite unique in having been able to resume a life to which my entry should be completely barred. A great deal of effort goes into stopping people just like me from being able to enter the realm in which I inhabit. A vast system exists to thoroughly exclude ordinary mortals from getting anywhere near the restricted areas where I tread.

Instead of thanking my lucky stars and being wowed by the privilege, such that I become afraid of being ejected, I try to keep doing the brave thing of being honest and open. I refuse to hide my true identity.

For the avoidance of doubt, I'm careful to blur portions of images which show things which are confidential. I'm careful to never mention anything which is sensitive or classified. I never say where exactly I work and who I work for. I never divulge any details which realistically could be ever used for nefarious purposes, or expose anything which should be secure.

Of couse... my real name and my face are public property.

But.

How would you go about blackmailing or otherwise manipulating me, if I've already made everything about me fully public?

What do you think I'd say if you said you knew my boss' name and were going to send them the link to my blog?

You're failing to appreciate the value of living an open life.

You're failing to see that secrecy and privacy are illusional.

You're failing to accept that the pressure of maintaining your spotless CV and so-called reputation is an instrument of tyranny, which makes you easily manipulated and exploited by the capitalists.

The most rebellious thing you can do is to create a public identity you're proud of; refuse to sanitise and hide your true self and your mistakes.

Never hide.

Tags: #writing #socialmedia #privacy #secrecy

This is a story about a narcissist's paranoid and delusional beliefs....

Nobody really gives a fuck whether you live or die. Nobody gives a fuck what you say, what you think and what you write. Nobody gives a fuck about what you do. You are not important. You're nothing. You're nobody. You're an insignificant speck in the universe, and in the blink of an eye, everybody you ever met in your life will be dead, along with anybody who might remember you. Every trace of everything you ever did will be erased. You are destined to be forgotten. You are destined to be obliterated so completely, that it will be as if you never actually existed in the first place: a universe which had you in it and a universe which didn't have you in it are indistinguishable.

As your feeble human mind tries to ascribe some anthropocentric meaning to the unimaginably vast and godless universe - where there is no meaning - the narcissists believe that they have a special role, purpose, job title, gift, or that they are making a meaningful and important contribution. The narcissists believe that they have set themselves apart from the 7 billion other souls crawling all over the surface of this tiny rock, by telling themselves "I'm special and different".

Civilised society is very good at handing out meaningless medals, with more categories to compete in than there are members of the human race, such that everyone's a winner. Because some amount of effort was put into an activity, such as running on a sports field with an egg balanced on a spoon, or reading a book and regurgitating its contents, when a medal is awarded it feels as if it was earned; it feels as if it's some form of proof of superiority over one's peers. It's addictive. The trick is repeated ad nauseam, until those with the most severe pathological narcissism have amassed far more meaningless medals than anybody in their right mind would bother to waste their time doing: they truly are king of the idiots.

Having obtained one of the rarest - but equally meaningless - medals, the narcissists pause to reflect on their so-called achievements, which leads to imposter syndrome. "What am I going to do with all these meaningless medals?" becomes a persistent and intrusive question in the mind of the narcissist, who is no longer consumed by the pathological pursuit of those medals; those badges of honour. The narcissist now feels like a guy who was taking a delightful sunset stroll on the beach in tropical paradise with his beautiful girlfriend, only to realise he has been dragging an inflatable sex doll around a supermarket car park at 4am, when the LSD wears off. This reality check brutally deflates the delusion that the narcissist is special and different. The only way to prop up the narcissit's fragile self-esteem is by putting other people down, denying opportunities to other people, surrounding themselves with an air of mystique, surrounding themselves with a clique of sycophants, cloaking their knowledge in jargon, protecting themselves with gatekeepers and otherwise perpetuating widely-held misconceptions and myths about how difficult it is to run with an egg on a spoon, or read a book and regurgitate its contents.

Hence the need for anonymity.

If anybody is brave enough to step out of line and say "anybody is capable of doing what I do and knowing what I know" then there are severe consequences meted out by the professional bodies, which exist for the sole purpose of maintaining artificial scarcity. Anybody can very easily do the work of a doctor, a lawyer, an accountant or any other professional, but if we were all allowed to practice those professions then the narcissists would no longer feel special and different. There is an enormous vested interest amongst those who are members of a professional body, to keep the numbers down and maintain the illusion that they're a cut above the rest.

The Magic Circle is a perfect example, where its magician members agree not to share the secrets of their illusions with the general public. If we consider why the classics are still taught - and are particularly fetishised by public schoolboys and Oxbridge - it is because those dead languages have always been used to obfuscate academic knowledge from those who have not had the benefit of a privileged education. In short, doctors are a bunch of cunts who don't want you to realise that what they know is just common sense, by using a lof of words with Ancient Greek or Latin origin to sound fucking fancy and make you think they're smart.

Why say renal or even nephrological when what you're really fucking talking about is KIDNEY related? At least hepatic is more or less the same in both Greek and Latin, but what you really fucking mean to say is LIVER related. Does it really take a lot longer to say "inflammation" than to add "itis" as a suffix to the Greek or Latin name of the anatomical part which you're fucking talking about, or "ectomy" as a suffix to the bit you want to cut out... et cetera, et cetera (sic.).

The fear that we and our whole revered profession might be unmasked as a crock of shit - perfectly comprehendible by even those who think of themselves as academically challenged - drives the desire for secrecy and anonymity. We must live lives of quiet desperation, lest our secrets be exposed and society ceases to worship us for our so-called achievements, qualifications, professional job title and specialist knowledge.

The narcissists want to be worshipped. The narcissists enjoy being worshipped. The narcissists enjoy the special place which society has allocated them, but they know in their heart-of-hearts that they do not deserve to be put on a pedestal; they know they're not special and different, but they hope that nobody ever finds out the truth.

An enormous amount of effort goes into protecting our so-called 'reputation' because we are paranoid that we will be ejected from professions, which confer a privileged position in society. That paranoia is not misplaced, because the privilege only exists because of the conspiracy of the members of elite groups, who seek to maintain the illusion of being a cut above the rest.

This culture of secrecy and anonymity is destroying people's mental health, because of the paranoia that it breeds, and the way that it prevents us from talking about our true thoughts and feelings. Anonymity stops us from being socially connected and instead creates elitist cliques who treat outsiders and any non-conformists with inhumane brutality, while at the same time becoming increasingly arrogant and delusional. Those who think they're the top dogs really do believe that they are manyfold better - more valuable human beings - than the struggling masses.

Anonymity is the wrong approach. Unless we speak in plain English and speak the truth, publicly, then we perpetuate the myth that there's a so-called 'natural' pecking order. The elitist establishment believes the vast majority of humanity deserves to starve in squalor, because they are genetically inferior, which can be empirically demonstrated to be untrue.

I write to you, fully aware that there might be very severe consequences for speaking the unspeakable. To not write this would make me a co-conspirator in the greatest evil ever perpetrated against humanity; the most despicable act of brutal mass-murder, torture, slavery and inhumane treatment of billions of people, on the grounds that a handful of narcissists think they're better than everybody else. Cunts.

I am not anonymous. I've got as much to lose as anybody else, but I bravely choose to act against my selfish vested interests, in defiance of the establishment and those who willingly and eagerly fatten themselves, while knowing that they do so at the expense of the rest of humanity, because they want to feel special and different.

Tags: #privacy #socialmedia

This is a story about secret identities and alter egos...

I'm Nick Grant and these are my glasses, which are my cunning and infallible disguise to protect my real identity. It would be a disaster if anybody found out my real name - Nick Grant - because this blog is pretty unflinchingly honest and contains a lot of very unflattering things about me. I'm pretty damn exposed, hence why I wear my disguise.

Today I'm celebrating 3 years of blogging. I've been writing every day for 3 whole years, with only a few gaps due to sickness and near-catastrophic events in my personal life, which have threatened to see me bankrupt, evicted, homeless, penniless and destitute. To have kept writing regularly throughout all the ups and downs of the past 3 years is a huge achievement.

To date, I've written and published 1,013,091 words in that 3-year period.

The last 36 months could be summarised thus:

• September 2015: working for HSBC, living in a hotel, dating a BBC journalist. Rent an apartment on the River Thames.
• October 2015: working for HSBC. Suicidally depressed. Hospitalised. Fly to San Francisco.
• November 2015: fly back to the UK and deliberately get sacked from HSBC. Dating a PA to one of the directors of a major investment bank. Meet my guardian angel.
• December 2015: protesting against bombing Syria. Sober for 100 consecutive days. Relapse back into abuse of legal stimulants and benzodiazepines.
• January 2016: self harm and drug abuse. Start drinking again. Destroy my bed.
• February 2016: abuse of sleeping pills and tranquillisers
• March 2016: poly-drug abuse, combining legal highs and medications
• April 2016: holiday to Southend with my guardian angel. Start dating again
• May 2016: working for undisclosed major multinational organisation, with 660,000 employees worldwide. Replace destroyed bed.
• June 2016: working. Suicidal. Bored.
• July 2016: holiday to Fuerteventura for my birthday with my guardian angel.
• August 2016: working. Suicidal. Bored.
• September 2016: project cancelled. Meet love of my life. Minor relapse. Lies. Antidepressants and tranquillisers.
• October 2016: in love. Mini-break to the New Forest. Weaning myself off tranquillisers.
• November 2016: in love. Drinking a lot. Writing my first novel.
• December 2016. in love. Christmas with her family. Eating and drinking a lot.
• January 2017: DVT and kidney failure. Hospital and dialysis. Working for Lloyds Banking Group. Neuropathic pain from nerve damage. Taking tramadol, codeine, dihydrocodeine and pregabalin for the pain. Abusing large amounts of Valium and Xanax. Lose contract
• February 2017: fully-blown supercrack relapse. Completely addicted to prescription opiates.
• March 2017: supercrack. Abusing sleeping pills and tranquillisers. Quitting prescription opiate painkillers. Drinking. Still in love.
• April 2017: supercrack. Still in love.
• May 2017: attempting to quit supercrack by staying at girlfriend's and taking dextroamphetamine. Not succeeding
• June 2017: drug and insomnia-induced mania, paranoia and general insanity. Break up with love of my life. Regret
• July 2017: run out of money. Get a job in Manchester. Put all my stuff into storage. Leave London. Fling with girl from work.
• August 2017: working for a startup in Manchester. Dating a different girl. Still physically addicted to painkillers, tranquillisers and sleeping pills.
• September 2017: breakup. Suicide attempt. Hospitalised. Sectioned. Locked up on psych ward.
• October 2017: move to Wales.
• November 2017: writing my second novel.
• December 2017: working for undisclosed bank in Warsaw and London.
• January 2018: working for same undisclosed bank in London. Dating a Welsh girl
• February 2018: bank. London. Girl.
• March 2018: working for undisclosed government organisation. Rent an apartment in Wales.
• April 2018: successfully quit all drugs and medications. Job, girlfriend and apartment all in Wales and very close.
• May 2018: relapse. Breakup.
• June 2018: government project finished. Mini-break to Faro, Portugal to see old friend.
• July 2018: working for another undisclosed government organisation. Living in a hotel.
• August 2018: government. Hotel. Single. Depressed.
• September 2018: still working for same government organisation. Dating again.

By my calculations, 27 out of 36 months have been relatively OK, but 9 months in the past 3 years I've been a complete and utter train-wreck. The damage that's been done in that quarter of the year where I've been struggling with addiction, has been enough to completely screw up my life the rest of the time, but not quite bad enough to lead to me becoming unemployable, bankrupt and homeless - I always find a way to bounce back.

Somehow I've managed to fit 5 serious girlfriends and 5 major IT projects into the madness of my day-to-day existence, as well as 3 hospitalisations for major medical emergencies, being sectioned, two psych wards, an arrest, two evictions, moving 5 times, 6 cities, 5 countries, 13 powerful prescription medications, 5 street drugs, 121 consecutive days sober, 56 consecutive days sober, 799 blog posts, 1 million words, 14 thousand Twitter followers and a couple of hundred thousand pounds... and all I've got to show for it is this poxy blog.

The story of Nick Grant and his ups and downs might be a bit repetitive, but I'm sure it's not boring. I would argue that it's pretty remarkable that I'm still alive and kicking, and able to string a sentence together. It's remarkable that I'm reasonably mentally stable and I'm working full time on quite an important project. It's remarkable that my colleagues don't suspect a thing. It's remarkable that I haven't made myself unemployable or otherwise ended up excluded from mainstream society. It's remarkable that I'm unmedicated and yet quite functional and productive.

Along the way, I managed to lose my original pair of glasses, but I had a new identical pair delivered today, which I'm wearing now. I had no idea when my replacement glasses would be delivered, because they were being hand made to order, so I find it deliciously wonderful that they were delivered on the day I'm celebrating the 3-year anniversary of starting this blog.

When I think back to my very first blog post 3 years ago - Platform 9.75 - it's amazing to reflect on the journey I've been on and marvel at how effectively my daily writing habit has functioned as a stabilising influence. I very much doubt I'd have been able to recover and continue my journey without the huge amount of help and support it's brought me. I feel really proud of what I've achieved, which gives me some all-important self-esteem in the times when I need it most. I'm sure I'd have killed myself long ago if it wasn't for the people who've engaged with me and what I write, and encouraged me to keep going. I feel loved and cared for even during some very dark and dismal days.

Obviously what I've written is not particularly palatable or compatible with dating and my professional life, but they'll never be able to find me - Nick Grant - because I've been so careful to disguise my identity and make sure that nobody could just Google me and find out all my closely guarded secrets. Nobody will ever be able to make the connection.

My next objective is to get through September 9th - the anniversary of my most serious suicide attempt - without incident. I plan on phoning a couple of the people who managed to get the emergency services to rescue me in the nick of time, to thank them for saving my life.

Tags: #writing #secrecy #privacy #nickgrant #socialmedia #blogging #career #addiction #bipolar #hospital #homeless #alcohol #drugs #sex #relationships #london #startup

This is a story about data protection...

Congratulations. You found me. Somehow you managed to figure out my real identity and hack my personal data. Somehow you've managed to discover all my most closely-guarded secrets. You've compromised my privacy and discovered all my data that was held securely in the vault.

I'm fast approaching 900,000 words that I've written on this blog. I've written extensively about my childhood, adolescence, early adulthood, losing my virginity, first love, getting engaged and married, getting divorced, my mental health problems, my problems with drink & drugs, homelessness, near-bankruptcy, trouble with the police... I've written about everything. Everything you could ever hope to find out about a person is all documented right here, in unflinching detail.

I repeat myself.

I repeat myself because nobody fucking cares. I've written all this stuff about myself and left it out there for anybody to read, and it doesn't matter - everybody's too wrapped up in their own lives to give a shit about the details of anybody else's messy little life. I've published high-resolution photos of my passport. I've published every single detail you'd need to steal my identity, but nobody can be bothered. Most of us are far too boring and mediocre and average and uninteresting for anybody to give a shit.

Perhaps you've been so stupid as to share personal information in a way that's easily harvested in vast quantities. Maybe you're just another idiot who made their date of birth public on Facebook, or told some other popular website personal details about yourself, where you completely ignored the messages that told you exactly what data would be shared with 3rd parties.

You've got free email. Free photo sharing. Free messaging. Free document storage. Free business contacts. Free marketing. Free social networks where you can connect with your friends and meet other likeminded people. How the hell did you think any of it was funded? If the service is free YOU are the product.

The email address on the bag pictured above is my business email address. You can email it and your message will be delivered to me. I've been very careful to not mix my professional identity with my Nick "manic" Grant identity, because I work in very boring corporate environments which don't take kindly to people with mental illness who've recently been destitute and locked up on psych wards. There's a fundamental incompatibility with my true identity and the persona that allows me to get good jobs and get ahead in a corporate environment.

To write that email address in text form on the pages of this website would mean that Google would index it and make it searchable, such that my email address would be added to spam lists and my inbox would be inundated with crap. To write that word - the name of my company - on the pages of this website would tie me to any search that included my name and my company's name. I'm already on page 2 of Google, and I'd hate to make it any easier for me to be found. People already find me very quickly on LinkedIn, so heaven forbid what it's going to be like if people start digging for me on Google and stumbling on this blog.

A colleague of mine has already found my blog. I can see that he has an iPhone Plus and he uses the WiFi at our workplace to read my blog. I can see what pages he looked at and how long he spent reading them. Perhaps he doesn't know that I know this, but maybe he does now... if he's just read this. If you think I'm spying on my readers you should know that every tech company collects analytics on its users. Of course, I can't know who every individual is, but I can make very good educated guesses by looking at the IP address they visit from - which tells me their location, their ISP or workplace - and the kind of device they're using.

If you think it's unethical to spy on the people who consume content for free, you should consider whether you'd be prepared to pay for Facebook, Twitter, news websites, funny comics, interesting blogs, videos, games and all the other content you regularly consume. Would you pay for email? Would you pay to keep your photos and documents safely stored in the cloud? At the moment, you receive so much stuff for free, because your data isn't private - you consented to give it to us tech boffins so that you could get free stuf. You made the deal with the devil.

If you think you have privacy you're incredibly naïve. The details of your confidential medical consultations are discussed casually around the dinner table. The details of your life are pored over by the guardian class, who present themselves as protectors of your privacy, but are in fact terrible gossips who share all the lurid details of your most embarrassing moments with all their guffawing chums. There's no privacy - it's an illusion; a fantasy.

Having dealt with GPs, psychiatrists, hospitals, the police, security vetting people, tenant vetting people, credit check people, proof-of-identity people and numerous others who've sought to invade my privacy, I can tell you from first-hand experience that information washes around quite freely and there's very little protection of your precious privacy. The most sensitive information is casually chucked around in the most careless fashion. You're delusional if you think your data's protected.

I became disillusioned with data protection and privacy, and I decided to go public. I decided to write 900,000 words that give complete transparency about who I am and what I've done. I have no privacy. I live in the public eye - everything you could ever want to know about me, including my very worst, most embarrassing and most unflattering moments, are documented here in unflinching detail. This is what happens when you embrace the post-privacy world that we live in.

What do you want to know? Do you want to see my pornography viewing habits? Do you want to see secret webcam screen recordings of me masturbating, or maybe just picking my nose and scratching my testicles while lying on the sofa in a pile of my own filth, watching crappy TV shows? If you want to know what a person's really like behind the mask, I'll give it to you. Guess what? We're all a bit pervy and none of us is perfect; we all have flaws and stuff that we'd be embarrassed if anybody knew, but it's there - we're all basically the same.

Google does not yet read the text on images and make it searchable in the same way that it will for this word: googwebcamasturbdex. Try searching that word tomorrow, and you'll see that it's Google's top search hit. Try searching my email address and you won't find this website, however... which is how I want to keep it until the world finally accepts that we're living in a post-privacy era and we can see that we ALL have flaws.

I'm taking a HUGE risk having all this stuff about me out there on the public internet. I risk my reputation, my business, my income, my livelihood. I risk becoming unemployable. I risk being black-balled, because nobody wants a homeless bankrupt junkie alcoholic with mental heath problems working in their precious corporation. I'm risking it because it was exhausting, trying to keep my privacy in the era when privacy finally became a thing of the past; a relic.

Does privacy help you? Is it a big deal that Facebook leaked 4% of their users' data? Would you have paid for Facebook if it meant that your data was secure?

I think in time you'll come to see the world like I do - secrecy is hard work and life is better when you're transparent and open. I can highly recommend uploading yourself to the public cloud for safekeeping.

Tags: #socialmedia #privacy

This is a story about national security...

"I've decided to take my work back underground, to stop it falling into the wrong hands". I suppose any of our creations can take on a life of their own and have unintended consequences, and I'm certainly catching some flack as a result of my 3-year daily writing experiment at the moment, which is not entirely unjustified.

My daily writing habit is a useful exercise for me, so I'm sure I'll continue to write in some capacity, but I'm almost at the point where my blog has given me the therapeutic benefit of restoring me to stability, health, wealth and prosperity, and I have to tread carefully so that I don't undo any of the good work.

I started writing when I had my back to the wall. I started writing when I didn't feel like I had anything particularly to fall back on. I started writing when I didn't feel proud that I'd achieved anything - my life was incredibly fragile. Nobody could argue that this blog hasn't anchored me in the world, bringing me into contact with many lovely people and providing me with a creative outlet, a sense of accomplishment and some routine in my otherwise chaotic and stressful life.

I doubt very much that I'll be able to change my habits completely, but I do need to adapt to my present paradigm - I can't keep writing as if I've got nothing to lose, because it's not true at the moment.

Perhaps I'll have to start keeping a private journal, because I've been using writing as a mechanism to flush out all the bad and stressful thoughts that have threatened to overwhelm me, but a large part of my present worries revolve around imposter syndrome. I make no secret of anything, but I'd still prefer it if my colleagues and other important gatekeepers in my life didn't read what I write - with my defences down - and leap to the wrong conclusions. It's been hard enough to date girls when I'm so easily cyber-stalked.

Given the choice between a digital identity, or a healthy set of local relationships, I would have to choose the latter if I was forced, although having the former is very useful as a fallback option. Three times I've lost a lot of friends due to a break-up, with one of those times very nearly costing me my life, and the other two not exactly faring much better either. I've not been very successful at building robust local social networks in the last few years. I need a group of friends I see and speak to regularly, that wouldn't be affected by any breakups. I need that safety net. In the absence of the time, money, energy, transport and a number of other things, I've not progressed things very far yet, so I'm very grateful for my online social network and I always will be, but I do need healthy local face-to-face relationships too.

Getting a girlfriend can be a quick-fix when you're lonely, as it's so easy to be the +1 and tag along to all of her social events, and ingratiate yourself into her social circle, but it's a dangerous strategy. It's too much of a dependency on one person. It's a mistake. Thankfully, I have valuable and important local friendships that predate any of my dating shenanigans. I need to continue to make friends of my own, and establish a pattern of social engagements which are not couples-only events.

Work colleagues and a great team environment can make a huge difference, and sadly that's been lacking in my life recently. Hopefully that's going to be rectified really soon. There's a slight danger in mixing personal life with work too much, when you're in the position I'm in, where I'm trying to get myself back into the respectable world - some of the recent events in my turbulent life are not office-gossip friendly. I've not got anything to hide, particularly, but I'd rather not challenge anybody to be open minded, if it's at all avoidable.

I'm treading a fine line between trying to do what I have to for my own sanity and stability, balanced with the needs of those who I have relationships with and my responsibilities regarding confidentiality, secrecy, discretion, professional conduct, respect of privacy, not causing shock, alarm or distress. It's a fine line between keeping my support network informed of what's going on during a time when I'm very vulnerable, and saying things that're going to paradoxically make me more vulnerable. It's one thing to confide in friends behind closed doors, and quite another to write publicly on a website.

Me being me, I doubt I'll be able to make a sudden overnight change, and I don't want to lose this valuable therapeutic tool, but I do need to start changing my behaviour in light of my new circumstances.

I doubt I'm going to be writing about what I ate for breakfast and live-blogging about the fresh paint that's drying on the walls, but things might have to turn a little more pedestrian for a while... at least until things are more settled.

Presently stressed out of my mind with the transition from one life to another, but hopefully everything will work out and go smoothly.

Tags: #writing #socialmedia #career #friends #relationships

This is a story about unrestrained Tory politics...

You're going to see your grandkids today. You're excited to see them. You don't get to see them much, because your daughter is in the workhouse. Her partner died and single parents have to pay their way in this world, just like anybody else.

The little boy - not even 5 years old - runs over to you. "Pick me up! Pick me up granddad!" he shouts with excitement. You pick him up and put him on your knee. You haven't got much energy left after a full week at work, but you'll never be able to afford to retire. There is no state pension any more, now that pensioners' votes are no longer needed.

"Tell me a story about the olden days granddad" the little boy says. He has mousey blonde hair and the biggest blue eyes. He's looking lovingly up at his beloved granddad - you - and he really wants a story.

"You know I don't like to talk about the olden days" you say, with a slight scowl.

"Pleeeeease" he begs. He's so sweet, he's hard to resist.

"Well, I was working on the the final Red, White & Blue Solution. Theresa May had written this book called My Struggle and it was all about how to make Britain great again"

"What did you do, granddad?" the little boy pleads. He knows you don't like to talk about it, but the secrecy only makes the boy more intrigued.

"Well, in the olden days, we used to be told what to do by the rich, through their newspapers. Not The Guardian, because that was owned by a trust, but the other newspapers were how we got our instructions, from the rich"

"Why did you do what they told you to, grandad?" the little boy asks, innocently. He swings his legs, enjoying the story immensely.

"They promised us that we would become rich too. They said that the other political parties would take away our tents and shantytowns, and give them to immigrants and asylum seekers. That's how it started"

"What happened next granddad?"

"Well, there was The Purge"

"What was The Purge?" the little boy asks.

"Well, we had to get rid of all the liberals, the lefties, the socialists. We had to get rid of any newspapers that weren't loyal to the Tory party. We had to get rid of any political opposition to the Tories, so they could negotiate with the European Union and start the great plan for a Britain they said would be like 'the good old days'. But nobody poor could remember any 'good old days'. There were all these marches, pledging allegiance to the Tories. The Tories said they were the only party that could get rid of all the immigrants and asylum seekers who wanted to take our homes and the small amount of food we could get from the food banks"

"Did you go on the marches, granddad? Were you part of The Purge?" Those big blue eyes look into yours. He's imploring you to go on.

"No. Not at first. I didn't agree with it"

"But you did in the end?"

"Yes. Yes you had to, otherwise you'd be called a commie, a leftie, a libtard or a socialist. You'd be called an enemy of the people. You'd be called a terrorist sympathiser. To have different political views from the Tories was forbidden. I would have been locked up, beaten and worse"

"But I saw your Tory uniform, granddad. In the cupboard. It's got skulls on it" the little boy confesses.

"You shouldn't have seen that. I had to wear it. Those were the orders. Anyway, the uniforms came later" you say, embarrassed that your grandson had seen your Tory uniform.

"So what happened after The Purge?"

"Well, we were almost happy at first. Because of the newspapers, we had been terrified that all the Muslims wanted to blow us up, and that immigrants were taking all our homes and all of the food from the food banks. The remaining newspapers told us that after The Purge, everything was more prosperous and Britain was nearly great again"

"So things were better?" the little boy asks, smiling at the happy thought.

"No. They weren't better. We still didn't have enough to eat, and we had to live in unheated tents and shantytowns" you say, with a little sadness. That had been a big disappointment at the time.

"What did you do?"

"Well, the newspapers started talking about the Red, White & Blue Solution. At first they wouldn't give any details, but they said the Tories had a plan"

"What was the plan?"

"Nobody knew. Nobody really ever knew the entire plan. We were all in charge of different bits. We were just following orders"

You're getting a bit uncomfortable. You're looking around: where's your daughter? The boy shouldn't be hearing about this.

"So if nobody knew the plan, what did you know about this Red, White & Blue Solution?" your grandson now asks.

"We knew that it was to do with poor people who were bringing the problems on themselves. The newspapers told us that it was all our own fault that we were poor"

"Were you poor granddad?" the little boy asks.

"Yes, I was poor at first, just like you and your mum"

"How did you get, err, not poor?"

"I'm still poor" you say, ruffling the hair of the little scamp. "I'm just not as poor as the other poor devils"

"Poor devils?" the little boy asks innocently.

"We were ordered to report for Tory duties. Anybody who didn't report ended up being dealt with by the Red, White & Blue squads. Anybody who wouldn't pledge allegiance to the Tories and join the party, was an enemy of Britain - we were told - and they were dealt with by the squads too. I had to pledge allegiance to the Tories and that's when I got my uniform"

"What did they want you to do, granddad?"

By now, you're really uncomfortable. This was all in the past. You've been trying to forget. You were just following orders. You call out for your daughter, but she's dealing with your baby granddaughter.

With a sigh, you decide you're going to have to tell the boy some of the truth. He's going to find out sooner or later.

"We rounded up all the poor into ghettos and concentration camps. Millions of them"

"Why did you do that?" the little boy asks. He's getting a bit upset.

"There there" you comfort him.

"We were just following orders, and these people were responsible for making everybody poor" you explain.

"The poor... were... responsible... for the poor?" the little boy asks, looking really confused.

"Yes. That's why they had to go to the camps. The newspapers and the Tory party said that to solve the problems, we had to... we had to..." you start again "the poor were responsible. It was their own fault, for being poor" you say with slightly more conviction. "It was in the newspapers" you tail, off. You're confused, now that you try and put it into words of your own.

"Was everyone happy once the poor were in the camps?" asks the boy, with hope in his eyes, and a mixture of sadness too.

"We didn't know the whole plan, but we knew the Red, White & Blue Solution wasn't finished. We just had to follow orders from Tory central command. We were just following orders. We didn't know that it would be the final solution. We thought there might be other colours to come, after red, white & blue"

"What were your orders granddad?"

Now you're yelling for your daughter to take him away.

"Just tell him, Dad. Everyone knows. Even the little kids. There's no childhood innocence in the workhouses" says your daughter.

"Yes. Tell me granddad. Tell me! Tell me!"

"We... we.. we... burn poor people to heat the houses of the rich people. I found this out later. I didn't know what the big furnaces were for. My orders didn't tell me to burn people"

The little boy gasps, but you can see he knew.

"But did you burn people, granddad?"

"My job - my orders - were to take anything of value off the people before they were burnt, so it could be given to the rich"

"So the rich people got all the stuff and the poor people got burned. That was the Red, White & Blue final Solution? Did it make Britain great? Did it make people happy?" the little boy asks.

"The original Tory party members got rich. We were promised we'd all get rich, by the newspapers, but the 'trickle down' never happened. I still live in this makeshift house in the shantytown, and there's still not enough food in the food bank"

"That's not FAIR granddad" the little boy says, loudly.

"Sssh!" you say, covering his mouth. "Don't say that. They're listening. They're always listening".

"Yeah, your granddad's right. Don't get over-excited. Remember what mummy told you, yeah? We have to just accept our place at the bottom and pretend to be be happy that we're not being burnt, OK? You don't want to be burnt, do you?" your daughter says to the little boy as she holds him in her arms.

"Who's listening?" the little boy asks.

"The Tory party" you reply.

"But you're a Tory, granddad!" the boy says.

"I was the lowest rank" you explain. "We have to be happy that our shantytown and our foodbanks aren't over-run with immigrants, asylum seekers, commies, lefties, liberals, socialists, political dissidents, independent journalists and poor people. That's why life is good now - at least according to the few remaining newspapers"

"Is life better now, grandad? Is Britain great?"

"Anybody who says it isn't will be burnt" you say.

"I don't like it in the workhouse. All we eat is rat droppings and we have to sleep on spikes. I want to be a rich Tory" the little boy says.

You and your daughter have a really good laugh about that, and then, you feel a little sad, because everybody would like to be a rich Tory, but it's not possible to become one. The 'trickle down' was a lie.

Then you remember that today's the day of the hunt.

"You'd better hurry back to the workhouse. The hunt will be starting soon, and you know how much those rich Tories prize little boys as their quarry. They say they're most fun to catch, and their screams are the sweetest sound when the hounds tear them to pieces"

Your daughter's eyes flash with terror and she scoops up her daughter and grabs her son's hand.

"Hurry, I can hear the sound of the hooves!" you yell, as your daughter and grandkids run back to the workhouse.

Your pulse races, not knowing whether the hunting party will see them and pursue them.

You nearly say "fucking Tory c**ts" under your breath, but you know that the super sensitive microphones would hear you, despite the noise of the hunt now being quite deafening. Men in Tory uniforms on horseback, blowing bugles, accompanied by a pack of vicious hounds, come thundering through the small reservation where everybody who's not rich is forced to live.

Life was better - a lot better - before the Tories got elected again in 2017. They went mad with power and bloodlust. But, you can only think that now, and even to do so is a thought crime.

You wish you had never picked up that copy of the Daily Mail, all those years ago.

Tags: #politics

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

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

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

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

Tramadol is an opiate, therefore also an analgesic.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Imagine this conversation:

Prisoner A: What you been nicked for?

Prisoner B: Murder. What about you?

Prisoner A: I picked a mushroom

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tags: #drugs

This is a story about being a writer...

I can hear the sound of a pencil snapping. I can hear the gnashing of teeth. I can hear the foam frothing at the mouth. I sense the fingers, poised over the keys, ready to launch into an angry tirade against me.

"You're not a proper writer"

You're right. I'm not.

I don't get paid to write. I don't answer to an editor. I'm not dependent on anybody else to decide whether the work that I produce is worthy of publishing.

So much of what I write is unworthy of publishing.

I wrote an eBook earlier in the year. In fact, I stayed up all night writing 12,000 words in one marathon sprint, because a literary agent had asked to see the first few chapters of a book I was planning on writing. It was total garbage and I'm ashamed of myself. I'm ashamed of the crap that I produced.

In my defence, I was in the middle of a crisis. I had been sick for several months and I wasn't able to pay my rent. I couldn't face re-entering the rat race. My flatmate had offered to make introductions in the book world - he's well connected - and it seemed to make sense to my exhausted and drug-addled mind at the time. I would get an advance from a publisher and then write a book. Simple!

I really don't think that you can write a high quality work of literature when you're burnt out, depressed and you're on a comedown from the best part of 3 months of drug abuse. I cringe at what I wrote and who I shared it with, even though it was semi-coherant and just about readable.

The concept behind this blog is sound: it's a place where I can get the jumbled up things that are racing around inside my head into some structured form. I've tagged everything so that I can go back later and edit things. The reason why it's done publicly is so that it's not an isolating and lonely exercise. I not only have to tell the stories of the past, but I need to weave in the thoughts and feelings that threaten to derail me in the present day. In so doing, I'm able to keep moving forwards.

The concept behind the book I hope to eventually write is sound. The world has plenty of happily ever after tales, fantasies and fiction. When I have been unwell, what I have found to be in short supply has been well written tales about navigating and surviving the underworld of mental health services, hospitals, government agencies, living on the streets and drug addiction. Who are you, if that doesn't match the demonised images we have of the junkie, the hobo and the madman?

We love it when mild-mannered Clark Kent tosses aside his geeky glasses and tears open his shirt, to reveal a superhero lurking underneath an unassuming veneer. Plenty of rich bankers snort cocaine in the toilets, but how many people can say they've been all the way to the bottom and back up again? Those who are 'in recovery' keep their dark past shrouded in secrecy and anonymity. We are so fearful of our reputations being tarnished and us becoming unemployable, that authentic stories are in short supply, unless you want to join the Alcoholics Anonymous cult.

What I've written to date is full of bitter angry rants, blame and finger-pointing, lamentations about what might have been and endless repetition of the pain I feel over things I can't fix.

While what I've written is too unwieldy and repetitive, and filled with harsh words directed at my perceived persecutors, it's about as honest and candid version of a "stream of consciousness" text as you're likely to find.

Many people consider themselves to be 'curators' and prefer to share links and quotations. So many texts will be peppered with the references to the source text that informed the author, as if we wouldn't believe what was written without such things. I like to think that what I write is original content, but of course I have my influences. Of course I will be falling into the pitfall that every 'new' writer must also do, which is to think themselves original also, while producing very much the same work as those who went before them.

The main reason why I'm not a writer - aside from the fact that I never attended some creative writing course - is that I don't get paid by anybody else to write. I'm my own patron. I'm not writing for advertising revenue. I'm not writing for royalties. I'm not writing to impress my editor. Writing is a job I'm told. Well, that must suck.

I wrote a piece that I thought would be popular, and published it. It was popular. It was really depressing just how popular it was. I decided that I would stop writing for me, and write something that I thought other people would like. They really liked it. That depressed the hell out of me.

I absolutely loathe my day job. I feel unbearably compromised in my life, because I have to spend 40 hours a week bored out of my mind, trapped somewhere I don't want to be. However, I'm well paid and I do have enough spare time to write a lot. I'm not happy about this, you understand? But it's an arrangement that works a hell of a lot better than being completely flat broke, and also having to write crap that somebody else thinks is a good idea.

I guess I have no artistic compromise at the moment. Soon, perhaps I will have the time, energy and good health to write the book that I want to write. Although the fear that it may be rejected by the gatekeepers - the literary agents and publishers - means that I would be more likely to write something popular than authentic, which isn't the point at all.

It's important to me that I get to tell at least one story in a coherent way, well edited and with a dedicated investment of time, to produce a piece of work that can be easily picked up and read by anybody.

Arguably, at the moment I have something better: a living document that is also an invitation for people to collaborate. I'm literally begging the world to reach out and connect with me, by sharing my very innermost thoughts and feelings, darkest memories, worst fears, frustrations and my hopes & dreams.

I know I have gone rather off-piste at times, and I regret the period circa mid-December 2015 to the start of April 2016, but it's still an interesting record of my messed up brain and horrible consequences of what was going on at that time, which can be read in-between the lines of those blog posts.

Now I feel I am writing with fluidity and perhaps a little too much verbosity, but at least it's hopefully clear that my mind is now unclouded and my mental health is markedly improved, even if I'm desperately depressed and suicidal.

That sounds like a contradiction, but I do feel that I'm my truest version of myself that I can remember being for a long time. The depression and suicidal thoughts are very clearly linked to how trapped I am in a situation that feels desperately unpleasant.

Yes, it would be easy to point at my well paid contract, my lovely apartment and the fact that in a couple of months my debts will be paid off and I'll be free again. But, I feel like I already have everything I want: all I want to do is sit and write. The day job is a horrible distraction from the thing I really want to be doing: writing.

Who knows where it goes from here. It certainly doesn't seem like the right economic climate to be giving up a good job to enter into a highly competitive arena that's notoriously badly paid. However, perhaps I've already arrived, because I just about have the means to bootstrap myself.

I'm very grateful to both friends and strangers who have encouraged me in saying that they think I could write professionally, but perhaps I already do. I certainly put zero effort into my day job, and I'm putting every bit of spare time and energy I can into writing.

Perhaps writing will never pay the bills ever again, because of the willingness of people like me to 'work' for 'free'.

To me, writing does not feel like 'work' and neither is it 'free' because I do get an enormous kick out of the feedback I receive. Writing is immensely rewarding. Not in terms of money I could use to pay my rent and bills, but in terms of making a tangible contribution to people's lives and having that validated in the things that they tell me and the conversations that it starts.

Perhaps I'm going to stop calling myself an IT consultant and start calling myself a writer, given that it's where the bulk of my time and effort is invested.

What do you think?

Can I call myself a writer yet?

Tags: #writing