This is a story about quotations...

I live a fairly isolated existence. Work, sleep & eat. None of my friends live very nearby, and I'm in a strange part of London that you'd probably only visit if you were working in Canary Wharf.

Of course, I'm not short of ideas for what I could do with my leisure time - if I had any - in order to get a bit of a social life going again. If I had the time and the money, I could be having plenty of fun. It's just that it's hard to do that when I'm so drained from working a full time job that's utter bullshit. Most of the time I can't even handle speaking to people on the telephone. I just want to be left alone to compose my thoughts and try to unwind, in the few waking hours where I'm not trapped at my desk.

On a Wednesday night, I go to the pub with a friend. We have 3 pints of weak continental lager and put the world to rights, sitting in the beer garden. It's lovely.

Every so often, a friend will chat to me on Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp. That is also nice. I stayed up chatting until 3am on Friday night / Saturday morning.

From these chats, I often take away lovely things that were said, to treasure.

A psychiatrist once said to me "we can only play the cards that we are dealt" and when I was struggling with accusations that I was weak and that I was making up mental health problems, attention seeking and all kinds of horrible blame and stuff being thrown at me, it was a lovely nonjudgemental thing to hear.

Having been labelled as some kind of devil child by my parents, or subjected to relentless abuse by my ex-wife, it's been such a relief to have some kinder points of view at long last.

"Anybody who has a second kid after a 10 year gap is just looking for a free babysitter"

I love my sister to bits, but I could never understand why we couldn't be siblings. Why did I have to be so mature? Why was I - a child - chided for being childish? So fucking ridiculous.

My friend who pointed out how ridiculous it is to have such a big age gap between kids, also pointed out that it's healthy to have your kids play together, keep each other company. It's really boring and lonely playing on your own while your parents are getting drunk and taking drugs. Sure, I can entertain myself. Sure, I have a good imagination. Sure, I can sit down and work on a project in total isolation from all social stimulation. However, those first 10 years of my life shaped me into somebody who assumes that I never get to keep any friends, because my parents kept yanking me out of school to go traipsing all over the fucking place. Parents, I assumed, were just people who sat around lazily - off their fucking heads - and never wanted to play with me.

I ingratiated myself with other families, and spent far more time immersed in their family life than my non-existant own. I knew that something was inherently wrong at home. I could see the differences in our home lives. I could see how things were supposed to be: brothers and sisters playing together, being kids, but I was always just a visitor in those lives.

There's a lot of important social development that goes on in the first 7 years of a child's life. It's hardly like I'm selfish and never learned how to share or play nice with others, but I certainly don't feel any security in relationships. I'm completely mistrustful of all friendships. I assume that everything is just transitory, fleeting, superficial.

"[Your parents] have to protect their own self image. No way will they say [they] fucked up.

[Your mother] will occasionally drunkenly exclaim "oh it's all my fault!"

But it's attention seeking and the response sought is "of course it isn't".

They just get so entrenched in their own self serving view of what happened"

It's exhausting, being expected to prop up your parents bullshit view of the world. I wondered why I would feel so drained from a visit to see my parents, or a phonecall, and it's because they've not been working to raise a healthy happy child. They've been working to try and cover up and bury their guilt for being drugged up alkie fuckups.

I've been expected to work so hard on keeping up appearances. It's bullshit. It's ground me down. I've had enough. Hence this blog, and the full disclosure of the bullshit I've put up with.

It is remarkable how many people have gotten in contact to say their mothers are/were functional alcoholics too. It's remarkable how many parents there are out there who think they're some kind of aristocracy who get to palm their kids off on the hired help, and then swan off doing their high society bullshit. Except that they don't have any hired help so in fact the kids simply get palmed off on the state schools and other families that are more loving and welcoming.

Sure, you could accuse me of being a manchild. An overgrown baby.

I refuse to just bottle this shit up. Sure, it might be a case of arrested development. It might be a case of a bunch of stuff that supposedly I could just get over. How? How am I supposed to move forward?

I got to today, and to some outward appearances it looks like I've got my shit together, but clearly all that happened is that I did grow up, man the fuck up, put a brave face on stuff and generally just get on with it. However, it doesn't seem to have taken away the need to actually feel loved and cherished for a little bit. Maybe this is a bit spoiled princessy, I don't know. I'm just trying to purge these feelings and get to a point where I want to go on living.

It was super nice when a lovely family in Ireland took me in for some desperately needed shelter from the disintegration of my life. Just being in a loving family home - even if it wasn't my own - has kept me going.

Actually, thinking about it recently, I thought how much it would upset that lovely Irish family, to know that they helped me and that I ended up taking my own life anyway. Even if it was only a few weeks that I spent in their home, I'm still acutely aware that they deserve better than any implied ingratitude for their help.

But, I'm still missing enough regular social contact. What I get is great, and I'm super grateful to those friends who drop by, suggest meeting up, email me and contact me on messenger. It does keep me limping along.

My hope is, that as I start to get on top of the debts I ran up just staying alive, I will loosen the purse strings and start to take a risk in thinking about some work that might be more rewarding. There's no way that I can dare to dream at the moment, because I simply have to knuckle down and put money in the bank, even though it's soul-destroying and I hate it.

To reach November sounds like no time at all, but I think that only takes me to zero. It'll be the depths of winter. Perhaps my work contract won't be renewed. I'll have 11 months left on a 12 month rent contract, with my flatmate already 4 months in rent arrears and not having paid any bills for as long as I can remember. It's quite a lot of pressure.

I'm setting myself these little goals and breaking up the blocks of time. It was friends who encouraged me to take some time off here and there, but it prolongs the suffering.

It's easy to dream up a million different things I might do when I reach breakeven, but it feels so far away, even if it isn't when you're happily just chugging through your healthy fulfilling and stimulating life.

I'm loathe to upset the apple cart. There are a couple of bridges that are worth leaving unburnt. I'm probably not even in debt enough to declare bankruptcy at the moment, but it doesn't take long for the circling vultures to put you in the shit again. You have to run just to stand still. I just can't stand the bullshit of the rat race. I just can't stand the relentless pressure to pay money just to be alive, breathing.

I'm trying to string together all the sporadic social contact I have, and use all the little messages of support, to limp myself along.

At some point, I can imagine that I will look back and laugh, while also cringing with embarrassment, about just how much I've moaned and complained. In retrospect, the pain and discomfort will be quickly forgotten, and I'll wonder why I was making such a big fuss. Either that, or I won't actually make it.

It has been a long time that I've been dealing with depression. It has been a long time that I've been dealing with suicidal thoughts. I'm grateful when my friends give me a reality check, but also, I do have to still go home at some point and face facts. It's great to talk about this or that amazing venture, but the fact is that bills still have to be paid, debts have to be serviced, people still want their pound of flesh.

It must be hard on my friends, because I have good physical health, skills that are in demand, no dependents and plenty of other advantages in life. I'm quite pleased that only a very small handful of my friends have trotted out the old adages of "be grateful you have a job" etc. etc.

I get quite a lot of "chin up" and "look on the bright side" which is OK because I know people mean well when they say it, and it's a common mistake to make. It's not even a mistake, because it does show that people care, which is nice and helpful.

Probably the most fruitful discussions I'm having at the moment have been around how it's OK to be upset about things. We try so hard to put a brave face on things and pretend that everything's OK, that we perhaps don't even admit to ourselves how close we are to snapping. "A right to be angry" is something I never explored before.

There's just all this societal pressure to be grateful. But that whole gratitude argument breaks down when your life becomes sheer depressed misery. What am I supposed to be grateful for, if life is miserable? Am I supposed to want more misery? Am I supposed to be excited to have another 30 or 40 years of misery to look forward to?

It's easy to extrapolate from my position, today, trapped into a horrible corner. But, what's the alternative? The 'dream' job that will lead me to financial problems and bankruptcy because I can't afford the cost of living and I can't repay my debts? Quitting the rat race, that will lead me to social exclusion and being spat on in the street by people who think I'm a worthless bum? A life on benefits where I'm despised by ignorant mean selfish shits, who tell me to "get a job" and think I'm a scrounger?

It's actually pretty hard and pretty scary, thinking about starting over again when you're not in the first flush of youth. It's pretty challenging, rebuilding your social life and getting the people around you again that give you enough love and support to make your life liveable again.

I know I need to try harder to reconnect with friends. I need to travel to see people. I need to put myself out there. I need to invite myself into people's lives.

Perhaps things will be different once I've broken through the psychological barrier of this work/debt problem that I'm suffering at the moment.

Tags: #friends #parents #childhood

This is a story about clock watching...

In 3 weeks' time I celebrate a year of blogging [almost] every day as well as 6 months 'clean' (whatever that means). I'll have pretty much proven my point that stress, anxiety, depression, hypomania, addiction, homelessness, destitution, social isolation and every other ailment that threatens every single one of us, can be swept under the carpet.

My life is hideously painful: basically, Fuck My Life.

Nothing has any purpose or any meaning. To volunteer at a soup kitchen makes a mockery of everything, if the vital exercise of feeding the homeless is seen as a fucking hobby. To spawn children because it's fulfilling to nurture things, is to ignore the fact that there are already plenty of hungry mouths, the planet is fucked and existence is pain and suffering.

I'm going to continue until the 21st of September, keeping everything the same, in the hope that my depression will somehow lift. I doubt that my mood will improve without medication, or impoverishing myself by setting myself on collision course with destitution and homelessness again. Who wants to be functional in a dysfunctional society?

On the 21st of September, I have to make a choice: whether to continue for another couple of months, to possibly reach financial security and wealth again. Would loosening of the purse strings and retail therapy make life more palatable? It's distasteful to say that money brings happiness, but it's obvious that lack of money brings stress and anxiety.

Through comfort eating and alcohol, I'm limping along. My waistline is suffering and I'm getting quite depressed about my physique too. It's a vicious cycle, because depression is one of the reasons why I feel so drained and unable to stay active. You might think that a boring day at work should leave plenty of energy to do other things, but in fact quite the opposite is true: it's so draining being bored all day.

It doesn't make any sense that I'm so exhausted and depressed. I do all the right things: good sleep hygiene, good diet, good routine. I do a lot of walking, some cycling. I occasionally see friends or have a little more interaction with my work colleagues than the bare minimum. I'm working my job, saving my money, paying down my debts. I'm a model fucking citizen.

Yes, a lot of people find their lives mundane and boring, but if those people are as desperately suicidal as I am, then society is about to collapse at any moment, because I'm always just on the brink of either drawing the curtains and going to bed for 2 months, killing myself or running away, where nobody can send me a fucking bill or harass me on the telephone. If there are vast swathes of people who think like that, because they have a modest dislike of the rat race, society is utterly fucked and why the hell aren't they speaking up?

I had no choice but to speak up. I could have died in silence, misunderstood, and with people keen to mis-label me. At least by recording my thoughts and feelings in great detail, I have a fighting chance of dealing with hateful people who would wish me buried as a madman and an addict, even though I can clearly be neither if I'm holding down a highly desirable job, paying my rent, paying my bills. Can't anybody see that the attempts to pigeon hole people are ridiculous, insulting and desecrate the memory of those who can't stand the bullshit any longer?

I steer clear of talking about conspiracies, because that's the hallmark of somebody who has succumbed to paranoia. When a mind implodes, the vultures of organised religion swoop on the poor fool, and fill their head with all kinds of falsehoods about deities and miracles. Sometimes, when a person's grip on reality is loosened by the relentless hardships of life, they will start believing that the universe is conspiring against them. Even though we are ruled by cruel and evil plutocrats with insatiable greed, no conspiracy could really work successfully to control 7 billion people.

Instead, we are collectively the architects of our own demise. Every time we say "I was just following orders", "I was just doing what I was told" and "I was just doing what everybody else was doing" we illustrate the fact that we hide behind pathetic excuses for behaviour that is to the detriment of the greater good. In the relentless pursuit of the impossible dream that we might one day be elevated from struggle and poverty, we actually collectively enslave each other.

My aim is to play by the rules, so that I can die with integrity. I aim to cut away from the mainstream as soon as I have reached the point of break-even. To become fixated with the unattainable goal of 'getting ahead' is to make myself a lifelong slave. Who gives a shit if I can retire fabulously wealthy, if I gave away my youth and my health so cheaply?

And so, I watch the clock tick down. I'm just killing time. All I'm doing is waiting. Waiting for the day that I can show that my point is proven: yes, it's possible to look like a fine upstanding member of the community, wearing my smart suit and going to work in a fancy office. It's possible to be valued immensely by the capitalist system, and very well remunerated. It's possible to do without drugs & alcohol. It's possible to do without doctors, medications and psychotherapists. Then, with everything we supposedly hold dear in life, I reject it all because I think it's morally wrong to prop up a corrupt system that enslaves so many.

The end of the collective insanity can only come to an end, when individuals are brave enough to vote with their feet and risk their lives and their livelihoods.

So many poor fools are buying lottery tickets and working dead-end careers hoping for a promotion that will elevate them from a position of financial insecurity, into a tolerable situation. This mistaken belief that there's some pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is akin to the donkey that keeps trudging along to try and get the carrot that's suspended just out of reach... always just out of reach.

You've got to pay to play, and you have to run just to stand still. Even the homeless are criminalised. Anybody who doesn't conform is bullied and tortured. You're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't.

At some point, it's time to give up.

Tags: #writing #suicide #depression

This is a story about brain hijack...

Who's in charge around here? Do you believe in free will? Do you believe that your choices are completely unbiased? Do you believe that every decision that you make is based on rational thought? Do you believe in willpower?

Addiction is a terrifying thing. Most of us have a fear of needles. When we hear the word "addiction" we wince with anticipated pain, as if somebody had stuck something sharp into our sensitive flesh. We squirm with the idea of the pain, which is associated with memories of every time we cut ourselves, hurt ourselves on thorny plants and visited the doctor's surgery for inoculations.

There's a widely held belief that if you so much as look at a syringe filled with heroin, you will immediately be compelled to murder your grandmother and steal her valuables. Just being in the same room as some cocaine will compel you to steal a car or rob a bank. It's an automatic reaction. The drugs will take over your mind, and turn you from whoever you are today into some kind of monster, the moment that poisoned chalice touches your lips.

In reality, you are probably completely unaware that some of your friends are popping one too many opiate-based painkillers. You are completely unaware that a bunch of your respected work colleagues are out partying at the weekend, high as a kite. You are completely unaware that a huge proportion of everyone you know, has used marijuana on a regular basis, at one time or another, and somehow managed to resist moving onto crack cocaine.

We need to be careful, because drugs impair our judgement. Just because most of us don't die when we try weed, cocaine and ecstasy, we can then be convinced that we're in no way exhibiting addictive behaviour. Some of us will be emboldened to try 'hard' drugs.

People are finding out that drugs are not actually instantly addictive, and those who experiment with drugs don't immediately jettison their morality and go out on a crime spree. This creates complacency. This creates a culture where we mistrust the warning messages, because they are full of lies and over-exaggerations.

However, drugs do dull your wits. You probably think that you're super smart and you're saying some really profound stuff. You're probably think you're taking a walk on the beach with your girlfriend, watching the sunset, until the drugs wear off and you realise you're dragging a mannequin around a car park.

Children are particularly receptive to subtle changes in their parents' behaviour and mood. You might think that getting stoned in front of your kids makes you a cool parent. "Yeah! I'm a hippy!" and "Yeah! I'm fighting the power! Counter-culture revolution! Yeah!". In actual fact, you're just turning yourself into a dribbling wreck, emotionally distant from the subtle cues that tell you to hug your kids and otherwise pay attention to what's going on. There's a reason why a nursing mother's senses are heightened after the birth of a child, and it's not so you can find those crumbs of crack that are hidden in the carpet.

Even smoking is super selfish. The health risks of passive smoking are well known and understood, but consider the weight difference between you and your baby. Let's say your kid weighs 7kg (15lbs) and you weigh 70kg (154lbs). That means that you weigh 10 times as much as your child. If you're inhaling 2mg of nicotine from your cigarette smoke, your child is inhaling 20mg. If you smoke in your car with your kid, you're making them smoke the equivalent of packs and packs of cigarettes. You are addicting them to nicotine and making them quit smoking, over and over and over again.

We were always driving places, when I was growing up. Small car. Both parents smoking. They call it 'hot boxing' now, when stoners are keeping all their dope smoke in a confined space, so that everybody gets really intoxicated on the chemicals. That's what selfish smokers are doing to children. I'm super glad that there are now laws in place to protect children from their selfish parents' addictions.

And so, I arrived in adulthood with a brain that was no stranger to addiction and withdrawal. I have far stronger willpower than either of my parents, because I have been able to resist the urge to smoke, and I have quit many addictive drugs cold turkey. I've got more will power than my parents could even dream of: they would not even give up smoking for the health of my sister and I, despite the obvious damage that it was doing and the financial consequences.

This is the power of addiction: even though you are destroying the health of your children and putting them through a horrible experience, you tell yourself that it's somehow OK to do that, despite an unambiguous message from doctors and other healthcare professionals. The only reason not to comply with the necessity of doing the best by your children, would be pure bloody-minded selfish stupidity... which is the addiction part.

I find it very hard to respect somebody lecturing me on addiction, when they're puffing on cigarettes and drinking tea, coffee & alcoholic drinks.

You may be surprised to learn that rich addicts do not become homeless junkies, destitute and forced into a life of crime. You may be surprised to learn that, given the opportunity to quit drugs on their own terms, most people's addictions will just fizzle out.

The brain is a homeostatic organ, and whatever chemicals you put into your body to get a buzz or a high will soon lose their potency. Pretty soon, the pursuit of drugs gets boring. Addictions are naturally self-limiting.

Rats who live in sterile cages with no stimulation, socialisation, sex or interesting food, will kill themselves with drugs. Rats who live in a pleasant environment will shun drugs, because they're getting everything they need in their happy ratty little lives. It's shitty lives that create the conditions where addiction can exist.

I work my arse off in a shitty boring unstimulating job, with no disposable income to be spent on fun and socialising. I go to work, I come home, I write because it doesn't cost any money. I don't spend any money on extravagances. I just buy basic food. I eat, sleep and work. And where's it getting me?

Of course thoughts of addiction are present. The thought process goes like this: my life is shit; I want to die. Then I think I could just run away and become a hobo. Then I realise that will soon lead to the stress of being cold and hungry and dirty; with people thinking that I'm worthless scum. This is how a person arrives at the idea that addiction takes care of both the short term need to feel better, and the long term view that you're going to die anyway. So much easier to have a brief period of happiness and then kill yourself, than to have a long period where you slowly starve to death and suffer the health consequences of living on the street. It's better to burn out than fade away.

Abstinence is easy. Living a shitty hopeless life is hard.

Because I've mastered abstinence so easily, I can get a little complacent about the appeal of simply relapsing and quickly reaching death's door. If this year has taught me anything, it's that the struggle isn't really worth it. All my hard work has yielded so little improvement in my mood. I'm so depressed all the time, and things really aren't improving. To go to the doctor, chasing happy pills, is just on the same addictive continuum. When the happy pills wear off, I'll have to go back for stronger and stronger drugs, until I end up in exactly the same place. Skip to the end. Cut out the pointless bit in the middle.

I had thought that because I obviously can't be going through any kind of drug withdrawal or comedown, and abstinence is a simple and easy thing, that I had gotten on top of addictive thoughts, but actually they just went into my subconcious.

Last night I had a nightmare where I had obtained some drugs, and nobody would leave me alone. I was just being chased and harassed. I never actually got to use the drugs, which is maybe what made it such a stressful nightmare, but it's interesting how badly I did want to use those drugs in my dream. I expect the whole thing was triggered by the fact I'd been looking at a website selling drugs, the night before.

In actual fact, I'd rather just kill myself. It's been long enough to show that addiction, abstinence and willpower are just utter bullshit. I'm completely "clean and sober" as fucktards like to say. Addiction has nothing to do with drugs and everything to do with unbearable lives. I'd rather kill myself in protest at an unliveable life, due to unreasonable demands to work a bullshit job with no hope of ever doing anything fulfilling or purposeful.

The coroner can take samples of my hair and blood, and see not a single trace of any drugs in my system.

Only a fool does the same things expecting different results. Why would the conditions that created an addiction, not also keep somebody in an addiction, if they were still the same?

It seems logical that I should kill myself, as a protest about how unbearable a meaningless life of wage slavery is.

It doesn't seem selfish to want to commit suicide. It doesn't seem like depression is telling me lies. It seems like a brave thing to do, to stand up to an oppressive and miserable life and take a stand against exploitation by the ruling class. It seems like a brave thing to do, to refuse to be told I'm weak, broken, faulty. It seems to be a brave thing to do, to show that I'm not OK with turning my back on the suffering of humanity.

Lots of people impoverish themselves in their attempt to help other people. Lots of people will make mistakes, despite being dedicated to trying to improve the lives of others. It seems better to simply reach a point that is beyond reproach, and then kill yourself.

What's the difference between a saint and a sinner? Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.

It's not a case of "once an addict, always an addict". It's simply the case that anybody can fall from grace at any time. Anybody can make a mistake at any moment.

If you have money, kids, a lovely home and a loving family, you are probably safer than most because you have some security, purpose, happiness. However, one slip and you're fucked.

Tags: #addiction #drugs #suicide #depression #capitalism #parents

This is a story about spreading yourself thinly...

I write too much. I wake up and I want to write before I go to work. I want to write before lunch. I want to write in the afternoon. I want to write when I get home. I want to write when really I should be going to sleep.

On paper, I'm not working very hard at the moment. I only work 40 hours a week. I'm only working Monday to Friday. However, there is zero creativity, zero problem solving, zero critical thinking and zero challenge in the day job. Therefore, I write whenever I can.

By the time I get home, it's like I'm a shaken can of fizzy soda and my frustration just explodes when I get in front of a keyboard. It's a challenge to write concise 700 word 'reader friendly' pieces that would allow people to keep up.

Anybody who reads one of my blog posts will probably think that I don't do much proofreading and editing. That's because I'm reliant on a couple of friends to cast their eye over what I've written, and spot anything I've missed. I'm so keen to publish, that I just hit the button, and then go back and re-read what I've written.

I know that often times when I read something, the smallest spelling and grammar mistakes can make me judge the content to be garbage. I can't help but judge the author, if they weren't able to make a passable attempt at the basics.

Because I've been quite successful in my career, I arrogantly assume that my skills are transferrable to whatever I try. It's been humbling to learn some really basic things in the last couple of years. You might laugh, and I hope you do, but here are a couple of things I only recently got to grips with:

• Lose and loose - I don't think I ever used "lose". I knew how to pronounce them, but I would more often than not write "loose" when I meant "lose"
• Complement and compliment - I very rarely mean that something complements something else. What I mostly talk about are compliments
• Less and fewer - I think I instinctively knew the difference, but I still have to proof-read before I spot the occasional mistake
• Capitalising mum & dad - I knew that there were instances where these needed capitalising, but I didn't know the rule
• Capitalising Internet - I always used to capitalise it. Then I stopped. Then I realised that I'd misread what a friend had written about capitalising it, so I had to start capitalising it again

There's a tendency to want to try and use big words that I recently learned. There's a tendency to want to show off. I want people to think I'm smart. I want people to think I'm a good writer.

However, I do love George Orwell's advice on writing, and in particular when he says never to use a long word when a short one will suffice.

My writing is probably filled with clichés, mixed metaphors, dangling participles, split infinitives and lack of the subjunctive. However, the quality probably falls somewhere in-between Earnest Hemmingway and the comments section of a Britain First Facebook post; although quite possibly closer to the latter than the former.

It's quite exhausting, working a full time job and also writing 3 or 4 times a day. I put a lot into it. I genuinely open up the taps and give it my all when I'm doing it, even if the editing that I do is a slow process of refinement that happens over the course of several days. I refine. I make lots of little tweaks and changes. I read, re-read and review what I've written and then I try to polish the turd.

Of course, I'm careening out of control. I have no idea where I'm headed or why. I can easily be distracted from one idea or theme by some pressing emotion. Powerful emotions keep bubbling up, causing nauseating repetition and laboured points to crop up again & again.

Probably my favourite authors are those who have been published posthumously. In particular Robert Tressel and John Kennedy Toole. This is not because of some morbid fascination, but actually the fact that there's something desperately frustrated that comes across in The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists and A Confederacy of Dunces. There's something wonderful about Tressel's 250,000 word book, because it labours the same point over and over so many times - it's almost unreadable, but well worth persevering with, because you want to know how it ends.

Joseph Heller's sarcasm, irony and dry wit makes Catch 22 impenetrable at first. Every sentence packs a powerful punch. You have to understand Heller's humour before you can make any headway with the plot. In terms of the density of what he packs into that novel, it's a breathtakingly good work of fiction.

Of course I don't compare myself to, or even attempt to emulate these authors. All I know how to do is record my stream of consciousness as best as I can, in the hope that I leave some small mark on the world. I feel so worthless and insignificant sometimes, when laid low with depression and low self-esteem. I live with the crushing fear of dying as a misunderstood person whose memory would be desecrated by my persecutors.

I leave no descendents. Who's going to tell my story accurately?

That's why I write. The closer I feel to losing my will to live, the more I write.

Publish or perish.

Tags: #writing

This is a story about temptation...

Flat 188 doesn't actually exist. Flat 188 never existed. Flat 188 was invented by me as a drop-off location for drugs being delivered from around the globe, mostly originating in China.

I'm not sure if the production of 'research' chemicals in China is done in clandestine laboratories, or with full state sanctioning and full quality control that you would expect of goods produced in the Far East. However, in countries with drug laws that are less draconian than our own in the United Kingdom, some fellow psychonauts submitted their Internet-procured chemicals to laboratory quality testing, and found that what they had bought was often greater than 99% purity.

My first foolish foray into the stupid world of research chemicals and experimentation on myself, was with the original piperazine of abuse: BZP. This chemical is basically only good for worming cattle. The piperazines are great anthelmintics, which means that they get rid of parasites from your digestive tract, like roundworms, pinworms, tapeworms, hookworms, whipworms and other little bastards that live in your gut.

Because of loopholes in the law, many analogues of banned chemicals became available to order on the Internet as 'research chemicals' with packaging that labelled them as "unfit for human consumption" and "toxic". Naturally, everybody who bought these toxic chemicals heeded the warnings and had no intention of the substances entering their body, but there were a few accidents now and again.

Obviously, I'm being very flippant. Purchasing some random compound off the Internet and ingesting it seems pretty foolish, on the face of it, but anybody who has dabbled with street drugs knows that they are far more likely to be sold any old shit that the dealer had lying around when they decided to cut their nondescript white powder with something to bulk it out.

The solution is not to do drugs right? Well, get this through your thick skull: people don't "do drugs". What people do is they buy escapism. People buy escape from their shitty intolerable lives. Drugs work far better than that red sports car that was supposed to make you attractive to the opposite sex and make all your problems go away. Advertisers sell a certain dream. Drugs deliver dreams... temporarily, and for a price.

Tonight, I broke my "don't tempt yourself" rule, by looking at a purveyor of research chemicals on the Internet. I didn't look at the website in Holland where my drug of choice - supercrack - can be purchased. At least, I presume it can still be purchased on there. I haven't bought any for nearly 9 months. The stuff is so fucking cheap that if I still had half a gram still knocking around somewhere, that'd last me for over a month of life-destroying insanity, without food, without sleep.

So, I looked at a research chemical seller on the Internet. Basically, the website is now clearly just a front for a Chinese vendor who will ship directly from the Far East in packaging that's so discreet that it will easily slip through customs unnoticed.

What would I order? Synthetic benzodiazepines. Mother's little helpers.

What's the big appeal of benzos? Well, it's 11:35pm on a Monday night and I have to go back to a job I hate for the next two motherfucking months just to break even. I have to keep turning up with my fake smile and sitting quietly in my chair and not rocking the motherfucking boat. The chance of me having to actually apply myself, stretch myself, challenge myself is precisely zero. I might as well be asleep in the chair, except that would attract attention.

It's so fucking hard to put myself into a trance and just put up with the dreadful bullshit that I've seen a million times before. I'm in autopilot. I'm running my bit of the project very well, and I haven't even taken my mind out of neutral gear yet. I haven't even actually engaged my brain. It sounds arrogant, but you would be amazed at how much of a paint-by-numbers exercise everything is. The hardest thing is keeping my big mouth shut.

I work with a few cool people who have been through some shit before, and we exchange knowing glances at each other, as we're all mercenaries doing the same thing, but it's so soul-destroying. Basically, to attempt to extract any meaning or purpose from my day job would only be to sabotage an extremely highly paid contract.

I'm economically, financially incentivised to put myself into a drug-induced coma, so I can sit in my chair and quietly look intelligent. I've done enough to prove that I'm a worthwhile member of the team. I can coast until the end of the project now, never breaking a sweat. It's just a case of watching the clock tick down to zero.

And so, I want to send my brain to sleep. I want to be in a drugged-up benzodiazepine haze, so that the time just melts away into a foggy amnesia where I wake up in 2 or 3 months time, and all my financial problems have gone away because I sat in an office chair keeping it warm.

It really is that simple. Sit in my chair popping pills, and keep collecting the cheques at the end of each week. People will love me for keeping my mouth shut and not making a fuss. It's truly the best thing I could be doing for myself and the project. Nobody would thank me for trying to help out in areas that I'm not responsible for.

It's so sorely tempting to order a couple of hundred innocent little pills that will make a couple of months fly by that would otherwise be maddeningly boring to the point where it might drive me insane with frustration.

If you can sense that I'm trying to talk myself into this, and justify it, you're correct.

It's too easy to live in a drug-induced coma, when the working world is such utter bullshit.

If I was going to do it, I would probably not have shared this with you. In a way, my blog gives me accountability. My blog gives me full transparency. My blog makes me kinda honest.

There's nothing dishonest with drug taking per se. It's stigma that drives behaviour underground into the shadows, but everybody's got to find a way to cope. Everybody has to find a way to get through their days.

This feels like a watershed moment. During my 'advent calendar' last year, I knew that a crisis was brewing. I knew that something had to give. However, I wanted to keep my cards close to my chest until my "Cold Turkey" joke on Boxing Day.

Now, the joke's on me but I don't care. I'm having a crisis and there's nothing I can do about it except be honest and document how it unfolds.

Tags: #drugs #addiction

This is a story about fear of death...

I had 3 major admissions to the Royal Free Hospital on the hills of Hampstead, overlooking central London. I snapped this shot after waking up with canulas in both my arms, 10 cables attaching me to an ECG machine, a motorised drip pump shoving fluid into me as fast as it could go. I was a pincushion from all the blood samples that had been taken.

Doing a quick body scan, my right leg was horrifically swollen. My right knee was damaged. The operation to reunite the two halves of my calf muscle, repair 4 severed tendons and reconnect 2 nerves, was still healing. I had a big burn on my lower abdomen. There was throbbing dull pain just under my ribcage at the front, and either side of my back, where my liver was torn and my kidneys were failing. There was fluid on my lungs. My chest was tight and constricted.

Was I scared? Did I call out for a loved one? Did it bother me that my prognosis was pretty grim? Do you think it even crossed my mind that I might die alone, except for one or two strangers in the mostly empty ward?

The photo captures the sun low in the sky, not long after dawn.

As long as I die in London, I know I tried my best to find my way back to the land of the living. I have no fear of death in London. Nobody dies of shame in London. If you can't find your will to live in London, you can slip away peacefully. You're never truly alone in London.

I had a 4 hour operation under general anaesthetic to fix the injury inflicted upon me by my parents. I travelled home on the bus on my own after a few days recovering in hospital. My leg was in plaster cast, held in severe dorsiflexion and was not weight bearing. I was as weak as a kitten. I let myself back into my friend's house, hopped up the stairs to the guest bedroom and collapsed in bed.

I had already spent several days in Oxford John Radcliffe Hospital in their high-dependency care unit, while they tried to stabilise my muscle damage and save me from kidney failure. I'd made my way back to London with a blood sodden bandage that was little better than the field dressing that I had improvised with sanitary towels and a dressing gown cord, before paramedics arrived. I had assumed that despite the wound being down to the bone, it was nothing that a couple of stitches at a minor injury clinic couldn't fix. It wasn't me who called 999. I was just trying to get back to London.

Back in London and finding myself with a spare evening before my operation, I had gone to a adventure sports film festival, hobbling along with my lame leg. The severed tendons meant that I was not even able to raise my foot any more, and it dragged and caught on kerbs and steps, causing great pain.

Having never experienced a general anaesthetic, I felt the same trepidation that I felt before my first skydive or another extreme leap into the unknown. However, there was never any doubt that it was something I couldn't face on my own. Just go along with it. Trust to fate, skilled professionals and technical equipment. Blind faith.

You should see the way I ride my bike. One slip and you're a goner, when you thread your way in-between the massive heavy goods vehicles, transporting steel beams for the construction of Crossrail. The double-decker bus drivers are amazingly skilled and seem to manage to not squash too many cyclists. However, when you mix together the debutanté Über drivers in their Toyota Priuses, hard-up black cab drivers, various small delivery vehicles, plus the unpredictable mix of abilities of people driving around central London, it's no wonder that paramedics call bike riders "organ donors".

When I hear that yet another of my fellow commuters has hurled themselves under a tube train, I burst into tears. It's too much to bear, thinking that some of my fellow Londoners have reached the end of their rope too. Perhaps those less personally affected by suicidal thoughts are the ones who tut about how selfish it is that a huge underground station has to be evacuated so that the human remains can be bagged and carted off to the coroner. The disruption to the capital's transportation network seem huge, but there are so many other veins and arteries in the heart of the nation, that people find alternative routes quite easily, with minor delays.

I'm not emotional when it comes to my own death.

I have fantasised about going on a scouting mission to a nearby tower block that has an open-air balcony with a 40 floor drop. My only concern would be landing on some poor unfortunate on the pavement below - hence the need to check the drop zone in advance.

I would never throw myself in front of a train. It would be too traumatic for the driver and the people on the platform. Even people on the train would feel a bump and judder as the wheels crushed bone and flesh. I know they would. People have described to me exactly what it's like for a tube train to run over a passenger, and I've had to run out of the office crying. Strangely, I don't cry for myself.

Jumping off a bridge in London would be pointless. None of the bridges are high enough, unless you were able to scale Tower Bridge.

Killing yourself in a public place is a bit selfish though. It's bound to leave a big mess to clean up and cause distress for an unpredictable number of people.

I didn't want to commit suicide while I was staying with friends. I felt that it might have been seen as some negative reflection on their hospitality, and would leave bad memories in the guest bedroom where I had been staying, which would tarnish their home.

I'm mindful that whoever I'm living with is burdened already with the uncertainty over whether my resolve to keep myself alive and well is not slipping.

When I am seized by the sudden urge to take myself and a sharp knife to the bathroom and open my radial arteries into the bath, I worry if I would cry out in pain as I dug into the joint on the inside of the joint of my arm, searching for the blood vessels with the sharp point of the blade. Then I worry whether I would be able to contain the mess within the bath, as my heart pumped my circulatory system dry.

Before I have gone any further with these thoughts, I realise that it would be grossly unfair to leave the discovery of my body and handling the police to a friend who doesn't deserve such a responsibility.

I think about setting myself aflame with petrol, in political protest at capitalism, inequality and social injustice, right in the centre of Canada Square. I think about how desperately agonising it would be to be burnt alive. I think about how suffocation would be as deadly as the heat, as the flames consumed all the available oxygen. Gasping for breath, and in unimaginable agony, death would be neither swift nor immediately assured. Dying of the burns over the course of the coming days would not be a great way to contemplate any last regrets.

It's the halfway situation that's the problem. A failed drug overdose so often results in organ failure and a much slower and more painful death than originally intended. Being knocked off your bike while wearing a helmet could mean paralysis rather than death. I know what it's like to score my arms with a razor blade. I know what it's like to wonder what the scars are going to look like when they heal. I know what it's like to experiment to see how deep you have to cut to reach the veins. However, so many cuts will stem the bleeding enough to preserve life, despite leaking profusely at first.

If you spend any time in psychiatric instituions, you meet suicide survivors. Most have had their stomachs pumped or filled with activated charcoal. Many will have their wrists bandaged. Scars from previous half-hearted failed attempts and self-harm, indicate a certain revolving doors nature to our treatment approach. Some of my fellow patients confide in me that they are saving up the very pills that were prescribed to them to prevent their suicide, so that they can have another go. One guy saved his tablets for 8 months and had things well planned except for an unexpected visitor. He was in intensive care for several weeks. He now faces a life of dialysis because his kidneys failed due to the toxic load. He was planning on attempting suicide again at his earliest opportunity.

I met a beautiful young Australian paramedic in hospital. You would have thought that she would value life higher than anybody, but the lesions to her neck indicate that she'd used her medical training to attack her jugular veins.

I read that media coverage of suicide can trigger a spate of copycat suicides. Newspapers are discouraged from reporting on the suicide method used. It's said that jails are like universities for criminals to swap tips and make connections. Could it be that mental health institutions are the same for the suicidally depressed, with more people being likely to end their lives using ideas gleaned while in hospital?

Frankly, there isn't much stopping a resourceful person from finding a way to kill themself. I've considered everything from inert gas to the application of an electrical current across my chest to send me into ventricular fibrillation. The one that is most appealing is drifting off to sleep and not waking up.

There's a famous quote by one of the few people who survived jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge, where they said they regretted it as soon as they had let go.

When I once took a drug overdose, there was a momentary twinge of regret that could have lasted about as long as it would have taken me to fall and hit the water, having jumped off a high bridge. There was a period where I would have been able to eject the toxins from my body, if I was suddenly determined enough to save myself. Instead, I then found myself accepting my fate, and a strange calm came over me before the chemicals hit my bloodstream. I was resigned and relaxed about whatever happened next. Death or organ failure. I didn't care.

It was only after a couple of days when my paralysis temporarily lifted and it was clear that the only way I was going to die was very slowly through the accumulated damage to my body, malnutrition and dehydration. I was pissing copious amounts of blood, and I knew I had to make a choice: an agonising slow death where I could be discovered, but it would definitely be the end of my kidneys, or a trip to the hospital and re-evaluate the situation.

I tidied my room. Took a shower. Packed my bags. Called a taxi. Sat in Accident and Emergency for hours.

When I was examined I was immediately admitted and I spent nearly 3 weeks in hospital.

It wasn't the right time to die. This was before I had worked my contracts at Barclays, HSBC and my current client. This was before I had somewhere nice to call a home of my own again. This was before I put together a 370,000 word document that explained who I was and how I arrived at the decision to take my own life.

I lay on the floor, semi-paralysed, and I thought about what kind of message I could scrawl in my incapacitated state, that would make it clear that I knew what I was doing. The circumstances leading up to that moment were a mess. It was too ambiguous. Even a suicide note would be seen in the context of great misfortune and stressful events in my life leading up to that point.

I had planned on starving myself to death or in some way doing myself in on the 1st of January, as some kind of protest at the way that we surmise a suicide with a neat soundbite that's supposed to explain all the reasons why somebody took their own life:

• "depression"
• "financial worries"
• "drug problems"
• "broken heart"
• "loss of status"

Take your fucking pick.

Without a conversation, we desecrate the memory of a dead person, by trying to oversimplify the complex problem of what could drive a person to arrive at the decision to kill themself.

In Japan, suicide is an honourable thing. The act of seppuku might be a protest over a decision or a preferable fate to torture. Preparation for the act includes writing a death poem.

Do you really want to be that crazy old homeless guy, yelling "I used to be somebody" as the world pays no attention and the streets finally swallow you into anonymity?

All glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.

Tags: #hospital #nhs #suicide #injury

This is a story about fact vs. fiction...

It's hard to defend yourself when you're sick. It's easy for people to take advantage of a soft target, and invent their own version of events. It's easy to discredit somebody, when you've left them dead and buried. The dead can no longer speak up for themselves.

I needed to break up with my abusive ex-wife and rebuild my life in London. London is where all the good IT contracts and jobs are. London is where I have a good chance of reconnecting with significant numbers of friends and business contacts. London is where good stuff happens.

I had an excellent credit rating. I was going to arrange for a bridging loan to cover the expenditure of relocating back to London from Bournemouth. The loan was risk free, because I had such a large amount of equity in my house. The credit risk was underwritten by the fact that as soon as the house was sold, the loan could be repaid.

I was going to arrange credit with a commercial lender, so that I had the security of knowing that I had the funds to cover me until I got a new job back in London. However, my parents insisted that I could count on them. My parents told me that I didn't need the extra stress and hassle of arranging credit, and worrying about money and administrative affairs, when I had the extremely upsetting task of leaving my home and setting up life again in London.

However, when I then said that I needed to borrow the money - secured against the large lump sum of equity tied up in my house that was being sold - they then reneged on their promise. They left me high and dry. They dumped me in the shit. With no excuse, they fucked me over. Unacceptable.

Don't make promises you have no intention of keeping.

Don't offer to support vulnerable people, and then screw them over.

It's not a fucking joke.

It's not fucking funny.

It has consequences.

Far reaching consequences.

I never got an apology or an explanation from my parents for fucking me over like that. I can only assume that they liked the idea of sounding like real parents, but actually they don't have a single shred of decency. They don't have an ounce of honesty. They are untrustworthy. They are liars. They are utter c**ts.

It wasn't like I'd asked them for support. I was putting my own commercial borrowing arrangements in place to cover my relocation. My parents insisted that I could count on them to bridge the gap. It made sense... there was no risk, because the debt was underwritten with the equity in my house, which was vacant and being sold. It made sense that they should profit instead of a commercial lender. I was doing them a favour, because they would earn a better rate of interest off me than they would from any savings interest.

But.

Let's assume that they decided I was going to blow all the money on drugs.

My drug of choice - the one I got mixed up with by accident during the agonising destruction of my relationship and my business - is something that I've jokingly nicknamed "supercrack". As the name suggests, it's highly addictive. It used to be legal, not so long ago.

A strong dose of supercrack is 15mg. That's 0.015 grams.

The length of time that a dose of supercrack will last is about 18 hours. It's an incredibly potent stimulant.

On the dark web, you used to be able to buy 5 grams of supercrack for $150, including postage. That's enough to last 333 days, assuming you sleep 6 hours a night.

If you take supercrack around-the-clock you will not sleep, and therefore your immune system will get very low and you will soon die. The longest I ever took supercrack in a round-the-clock binge was 10 days. That's 10 days without sleep or food. I don't think you could go much longer without dying.

When I moved back to London, I was no longer using supercrack.

If I was using supercrack, from the day I moved back to London to today, I would have spent the princely sum of $450.

In fact, to use supercrack for 50 more years - long past my natural life expectancy - would only require 274 grams of the dangerous drug, which would easily cost me less than $10,000. In fact, I could probably have bought 1kg in bulk for $5,000, which would have been enough for 200 years of drug abuse.

So what did happen to all my money?

Well, I made it to my first Christmas back in London by buying Bitcoins on my credit cards and with my overdraft, which then increased 1,200% in value. I hadn't been able to work, because the stress of not having any money, and having your parents and ex-wife completely dicking you over, while also having to move the contents of a 3 bedroom house into storage and rebuild your life again, was rather too much to ask.

My parents expected me to go to their house for a jolly fucking family Christmas, when they had royally fucked me over. What a joke.

December was all too much, and by the 27th I was in full-blown relapse (which only cost a few dollars in drugs).

However, rehab doesn't come cheap... and guess who was going to pay? ME!

I've paid around £30,000 for private treatment. Guess what? It doesn't work.

Unless you have a supportive environment, treatment doesn't work. Don't bother going into rehab, unless you're going to get rid of toxic people, toxic places and toxic jobs from your life.

My first stay in rehab (The Priory) was long enough for me to see that I was being abused by my ex-wife and we needed to break up. My next stay in rehab was long enough for me to get over being dicked over by my parents. My last stay in rehab gave me just about enough strength to make a plan to cut my toxic parents out of my life altogether.

Since then, I now know the knack of quitting drugs.

Amino acids such as 5-HTP, L-Tyrosine and Phenylalanine replace the depleted neurotransmitters in your brain. Bupropion and amphetamines (like dexedrine) can cushion the cravings and depression, lack of energy and cognitive impairment.

Benzos and Z-drugs are a great way to amplify an addiction. Sleeping off the comedown by taking 'downers' to take the vicious edge off the 'uppers' means that you start to believe you are able to get all the upsides without any of the downsides. However, all you're doing is storing up the mother of all comedowns for a later day.

Coming off benzodiazepines is the single most awful thing you are likely to ever experience in your life. I'm not sure if you've ever had a panic attack or insomnia. Certainly, you must have experienced stress and anxiety. Imagine having a round-the-clock sense of horrible unease, fear, dread. If benzos calm you down, the payback is in rebound anxiety. What goes up must come down, and living with anxiety is terrible.

Something like diazepam is very long acting, so you find it's in your bloodstream for ages even after you stop taking it. The withdrawal from it lasts weeks: insomnia & anxiety.

Coming off stimulants isn't that bad. You're exhausted, suicidally depressed, physically weak, uncoordinated, slow witted, and cognitively impaired. You might be in terrible physical shape from lack of food, lack of sleep and over-exertion. It's nothing that a month in bed can't fix.

Obviously, coming off all drugs at the same time is a clusterfuck, because you'll have anxiety and insomnia, keeping you awake through your exhausted suicidal depression. But, this is the payback for polydrug abuse. What goes up must come down.

In September 2013 I escaped addiction by swapping from supercrack to dexedrine and then tapering my dose down. I further cushioned the blow by using zopiclone to get my sleep back on track. It was relatively easy and painless, especially as I also completely changed my whole environment by moving to London and reconnecting with old friends. I got a new girlfriend and started helping my homeless friend, Frank.

Drug addiction is a teeny tiny bit about the brain chemistry, and it's a whole lot more about toxic environments. Believe me, the more stress, disruption, isolation and mistreatment is perpetrated against me, the more I'm itching to pull the "fuck it" trigger.

Drug addiction is both an easy and a difficult existence. If you haven't got the guts to actually end your life quickly and cleanly, it will get you to your grave faster than you think. I think every addict knows where they're headed, but they don't give a fuck because everybody else is pushing them down that road too.

You would have thought that addicts would be our most cared for and nurtured members of society, because they're pretty much walking around with a noose around their neck, advertising their intention to kill themself. However, my experience was that my own parents and ex-wife couldn't wait to see me dead and buried.

When I eventually accepted that experimentation had become addiction and I needed professional help, I said to my ex-wife that I needed a 28-day detox. She said she would rather that I died. She actually categorically said that she would rather be a widow. These were her words. This was not a general comment. This was her saying that she would prefer it if I didn't have 28 days treatment and get better. This was her saying that what she wanted was for me to die, not get better.

When I got clean and moved back to London, my parents essentially made the same choice. Rather than honour their unsolicited offer to profit from my need for a bridging loan, they saw the opportunity to pull the rug out from under my feet and plunge me back into chaos, stress and destruction.

When things are going wrong now, I assume that I'm totally alone, and that everybody is totally hostile. I assume that doors are going to be kicked in by an abusive and violent ex or parent. I assume that treatment is going to be withheld. I assume that people would rather that I was dead.

Abuse leaves psychological scars. Calling somebody a liar, and treating them disrespectfully denies them any self esteem. Pulling away a person's means of supporting themself, and generally attacking their opportunities to escape and recover is not proof that the person is a failure and vindication of your decision to fuck them over. Let's take a look at cause and effect.

Drug addiction is a place that a person turns to when their life is unliveable. The more you mistreat a person and deny them any opportunity to recover, the more they're going to say "fuck it" and go back to killing themself slowly.

Recovery can be quick and painless if action is swift, decisive and early intervention is taken. Addiction is like a house on fire. The sooner you put out the fire, the more of the house you save. There's no point sitting around to see if the fire goes out, and then putting out half the fire. "The fire is mostly out" or "we'll just put a bit of water on the fire and see if things improve" is just utter bullshit. You're looking for an excuse to fail that person if you act like that.

I'm angry.

I don't know if this is coming across. I'm really fucking angry.

I'm spinning everything like I'm a victim. Well, that's because I'm sick of victim blaming. I know that taking the position of the victim is not a good place to start, but it's maddening because the facts are clear: the strong have exploited the weak, and tried to kick a vulnerable person into an early grave. Secrets die with a person, and it's a lot easier if a victim is dead.

I made plans for my business and my future based on the idea that I had a loving, supportive partner. I made plans based on a "for richer, for poorer" and "in sickness and in health" marriage vow that we made to each other. I made divorce and recovery plans based on an unsolicited offer of support from my parents. Parents are supposed to support their children. People are supposed to honour their word. Plans are based on agreements.

How can you make any plans or do anything if nobody keeps their word? How can anything function without people acting with a shred of integrity.

I paid for nonjudgemental reliable support, at great personal expense. The rest I did on my fucking own. Who the fuck got me out of the park and into a hostel? Who the fuck got me out of the hostel into a contract and a hotel? Who the fuck got me out of the hotel and into a flat? Who the fuck got me more contracts when the previous ones didn't work out for long enough for me to get ahead?

Recovering from depression, bipolar disorder, the destruction of your business, ruining of your career reputation, divorce, the selling off of your home and the giveaway of many of your precious possessions, having to relocate across the country, having to re-establish your life again. You think that comes easily? You think that comes cheaply? You think that can be done all on your own? You think that can be done while people jeer and take the piss from the sidelines, calling you horrible names and creating additional obstacles for you?

Now, sprinkle in substance abuse.

Drug addiction is the easy part. I should be getting a fucking ticker-tape parade for what I've been through. I should get a fucking gold medal. I should get my picture in the motherfucking paper, with lots of quotes from all my adoring fans.

Some drug addicts are driven to lie, cheat and steal. We are told that addicts leave dirty needles in children's playgrounds and try to sell drugs to your kids to get them hooked.

What exactly could anybody's problem be with me? I've paid for all my own treatment. I've never stolen any money to buy drugs. I never even bought drugs from anybody who could conceivably be accused of putting money into crime and terrorism. All I've ever wanted to do is get back to London, and restabilise myself.

What does stability look like?

Like this:

• Place to live
• Income to pay for food & accommodation
• Social contact
• Free from debt and financial stress

And I've come to realise it also means:

• No more toxic people in my life: especially my parents
• No more klingons: I can't carry any dead wood
• No more arbitrary measures: being teetotal is unnecessary. I'm going to do whatever works.
• No more shame: I've got nothing to be ashamed of

The compromises, sacrifices and things that I put up with to keep hope alive are not inconsiderable. My adherence to integrity and personal standards means that I am taking on additional challenges that I could easily circumvent by simply declaring bankruptcy and depositing myself in the care of the welfare state.

I've paid an absolute fucktonne of tax in my life, so I should feel entitled to a handout, but I don't. I don't want a life that's dependent on the state giving me a small amount of the money back that I've paid into the national purse. I'm proud and I've worked hard all my life. I've worked hard to dig myself out of a very deep hole, and I deserve a fucking break.

I'm writing this now, completely free from any drugs. My mind is my own. I have let my brain recover, and now I have nothing but pure rational thought.

Where's my money gone? It's been spent on surviving. It's been spent on keeping the possibility of recovery alive.

Recovery from drugs?

No.

Recovery from the shit that drove me into the arms of addiction.

Will I be able to recreate the past, and get back the things I lost? No, never. Of course not!

So, am I bitter and full of regret?

Actually, I'm working my bollocks off just as hard as I've always done throughout my life FOR THE FUTURE. In 4 or 5 months I could be back in the same financial position that I was in before everything imploded, except I will be in pole position to continue at a much accelerated pace. I have a much greater chance of building a happy new life, now that I am rid of the toxic people who sabotaged everything I had worked so hard to build.

Every day in the rat race is an unpleasant reminder of the fact that I got screwed over, and this is the source of my bitter rants. I am tired. It has been exhausting to rescue things.

But, it's in my nature to build and repair. It's in my nature to look to the future, not look to the past. The only reason I do look to the past, is that I'm saddled with the consequences of being dumped in the shit by people who let me down and broke their promises.

In the world of startups we talk about a pivot. Take your lessons learned from going in one direction, and take them in another to find your sustainable competitive advantage.

Through this fucked up world of pain that I've been through, I've found several important stories that need to be told.

There is the story of the people who are disadvantaged. Those who are discriminated against because they have mental health problems or who have struggled with addiction. There are society's undesirable members. There is the issue of homelessness, and the harsh and uncaring world that waits for single people who fall on hard times. There is the arms race in the war on drugs, with legal highs and the cat and mouse game between chemists and governments. There is the battle that rages inside our heads: mania and depression. There are the differences in perception: who is mad and who is sane.

A rich white middle class investment bank employee, IT consultant, software engineer, homeowner, husband and neatly presented boy with good manners, well educated and well behaved. Young, fit and active. Adventurous, outgoing and gregarious.

If it can happen to me, it can happen to anybody.

The stories have got to be told.

Tags: #addiction #drugs #divorce #parents #legalhighs #mentalhealth #homeless

This is a story about arrogance...

It occurs to me that many people might be offended by the vulgarity of me discussing - with candid honesty - the good fortune that has come my way, and decide that I feel entitled in some way to those things bestowed upon me by pure blind luck.

In the UK, it's considered to be in bad taste to talk about money. However, we are given to flamboyant displays of wealth, which are obviously our way of screaming "LOOK AT ME!! LOOK HOW SUCCESSFUL AND AMAZING I AM!!" at the top of our reserved British lungs.

I once shared on social media a document that I had discovered that had the rates that a bunch of us banking IT consultants charge our clients for a day's labour. The amounts are obscene.

When I first started as an IT contractor at the tender age of 19, I was paid twice as much as I had been in my previous job, and it totally went to my head. I bought Harrods hampers as Christmas gifts and whisked my girlfriend and I off to New Zealand on a business class flight, chartered a yacht and stayed 5-star all the way. Take the bullied kid from school, treat him like shit his whole life and then shower him with wealth and he might just end up rubbing your nose in it, because it's sweet relief after 12 years of playground and classroom hell.

That first contract paid just under £40 an hour, by the way. I was living in Winchester and working in Didcot, near Oxford. It was good money for a non-banking project outside of London, even by today's standards. I offer you the precise number, because I want you to judge me.

Imagine the whole time you're at school is made pure hell by endless bullying. Imagine being a social outcast. Imagine not even being able to cultivate a teenage romance until you left school at age 17, because you carry too much of a reputation of being an unpopular geek. Imagine all those beatings and lonely times where you're singled out because you're quiet, sensitive and then simply labelled as a soft target. Once you become the bullied kid, you stay the bullied kid and nobody's going to want to know you because they don't want to risk becoming bullied too.

What do you do instead, if you're denied friends, popularity, girls, a social life? You stay home and tinker with computers.

So, if it appears boastful when I talk about landing a well paid contract for a major UK corporation when I was just 19 years of age, it's because I fucking paid a lot to get it. Remember your first kiss with your first girlfriend? Remember hanging out with your friends? Remember how fun your school days were? Well, imagine swapping all that out for 35 hours a week of being bullied around the clock, for 12 straight years.

I'm exaggerating slightly, because I got to do my final 2 years at a 6th form college, which gave me a bit of a chance to re-invent myself away from the image that my dad had destroyed by expecting me to cycle to school from fucking miles away on a stolen girl's bike, every fucking day, past all the other kids arriving at the school entrance. Kids don't forget shit like that.

Did I have friends? Yes, I was very grateful to have a small handful of other geeky bullied kids who I count as my friends. We stuck together, as the hated soft targets. We tried to take a stand. It only made us hated by teachers and headmasters/mistresses, because we made the bullying problem more conspicuous.

So, I became a young adult with hideous insecurities. My parents were c**ts. Almost everybody at school had been a c**t. Naturally, this mistreatment denied me any self-confidence that would have allowed me to get a girlfriend. Somehow, I fell into a couple of trysts with girls from other schools, and even managed to lose my virginity at 15, but this was through the artificial confidence that drugs gave me, the one time I used amphetamines in my teens.

I found my way into sailing, rock climbing and mountaineering, and those things gave me a bit of an identity beyond that of a geek, but there was so much damage to be repaired. It was only in the final couple of years at school that I was a member of Lyme Regis Sailing Club, Dorset. It was only during my couple of years at 6th form college that I learned how to rock climb, and went on a couple of expeditions to the Alps and the Dolomites.

Having money was the first vindication that I had value as a person. I bought a flash sportscar, and I'm ashamed to admit that it improved my confidence. I found it easier to talk to girls with the crutch of a fast motor vehicle. The status symbol worked as it was supposed to: a fanny magnet.

Of course, the more money I got paid, the more I felt that I was worth. I did become arrogant. I did think that I was 'worth' the money. Again, I ask you to consider the context: I was a young insecure geek, who suddenly had a cash windfall. Of course I was going to use money to prop up my fragile self esteem.

Today, if I tell you about the lovely apartment I live in, how I earn obscene amounts of money, or that I'm working on important projects, then you can infer this: something has wrecked my world to the point where I am slipping back into old insecurities. It's not boastfulness. What it is, is pure terrified protection of the last dregs of my self esteem.

Some pseudo-psychologist will tell you that it smacks of egotism. Not true. Over time, I have developed humility and come to recognise the complete disconnect between what I'm paid, what I do, and how much value I really have. I consider myself overpaid, what I do as trivial and unimportant, unnecessary even, and I've been humbled to see that I contribute very little of value to the world.

Every time I talk about this or that thing that I did... it's because I'm really suicidally depressed and I desperately want people to sit up and pay attention, and say "hey! He isn't just some expendable worthless piece of shit. Maybe it would be a bad thing if he died".

I'm desperately trying to see the value in myself, even though in pure pounds, shillings and pence, I can see that I'm very much 'valued' by my employers. However, I now no longer associate salary or contract income with value, because I can see no link between what I do and how much I get paid. It maddens me that I'm so much better paid than, say, your average artist who gets paid £10,000 per annum.

In-between my first contract and my second contract, I did my yacht skipper qualifications with the Royal Yachting Association. After my second contract, which paid £470 per day, I was able to purchase a yacht. Did I buy the yacht because I loved sailing? Partly. But the real reason I bought it was because I felt insecure. Owning a yacht is quite a big status symbol. It's also a massive waste of money. Just keeping a yacht in a marina costs thousands of pounds every year.

As each year passed after school, I maintained the advantage of the head-start in computing I gained at the expense of an enjoyable childhood. The bullies from school struggled, while the geeks inherited the Earth. It was hard not to become cruel towards those who I perceived as having persecuted me, and rub their noses in it.

The Square Mile has a certain macho culture, as well as encouraging vulgar displays of wealth. For a while, I was eating out in expensive restaurants, taking taxis and drinking in wine bars. Did I do it because I enjoyed it, or did I do it because I could at such a young age, and I knew that it was sticking two fingers up at the bullies?

What happened next is that I had a couple of nice girlfriends, and I started to feel less insecure. Everything was going my way, and I started to feel less like I needed to flaunt my financial success, just to prove that I wasn't scared of the bullies anymore. I started to feel less like I had to pack as much fun in as possible, to make up for lost time.

For a brief time, I was reasonably secure and happy in myself. I had developed my own identity. I had grown my self confidence. I actually felt popular for the first time in my life. My life was no longer about money and status symbols.

However, I was still desperate for love. I felt like I had missed out on having a childhood sweetheart and a university romance. Then an abusive partner and a messy divorce deprived me of my comfort and confidence I took from owning a house and having beautiful hand-picked things. By this stage, having a speedboat and a hot tub was about having wild fun with my friends, not about shoving my wealth and good fortune in anybody's face. I had a fast car because I enjoyed driving, not because I needed it for my fragile male ego.

Everything got smashed to shit during my divorce, and I found myself sleeping in my friend's guest bedroom, trying to rebuild my life, but having nowhere near the capital reserves to re-enter London society. My ex-wife made everything as stressful and destructive as she possibly could, and dragged out proceedings using every conceivably unpleasant and spiteful tactic she could, depriving me of even the collateral that was locked up in my home.

With nothing but a rapidly dwindling stack of money, I was in no position to start another business. I had to go back to IT consultancy. Some may say that it was hardly a bad option, but I had worked hard for 16 years so that I didn't have to do the bullshit rat race anymore. It was heartbreaking.

I let everything burn to the ground, and I got very sick indeed. 2014 saw me spend some 14 weeks in hospital and other kinds of inpatient treatment - I was dreadfully sick. That truly was an annus horribilis, even though I did manage 3 months of consultancy for Barclays at the end of the year.

2015 was pretty shit. I still had not managed to reach the escape velocity and launch myself into a stable orbit. It was a rough year, but I still managed to do 4 months of consultancy for HSBC in the summer/autumn.

2016 got off to a really shit start, but I should be able to do 5 months of consultancy for an undisclosed client before I absolutely lose my mind with the fucking rat race.

I have to be in some total shite part of Greater London for an 8:30am breakfast meeting tomorrow (Wednesday) and I already just want to jack in the job because it's predictable bullshit that's doomed to failure and is being hopelessly botched. However, it's easy money and in the context of the shitty situation I'm in I need the cash.

For context, I earn 28% more than I did when I was 20, which means I've been getting an annual pay rise of 1.75%, so excuse me if I'm not exactly thrilled to be getting out of bed in the morning. Especially considering the day job is even more boring than it was back then when I was young, fresh faced and inexperienced.

Of course, I'm able to see that I'm well off. I know that some people are getting pay cuts in real terms, and still others are out of a job despite their eagerness to work. I'm aware that in absolute terms, I get paid an eye-watering sum of money.

However, all my money is just going towards paying back the debts I ran up keeping myself alive. I actually paid for a great deal of private treatment, because it didn't seem right to burden the NHS with the costs in light of my potential earning power.

I am limping towards the day when I basically reach zero, so I can die with dignity knowing that my life insurance policy can be left as an estate for my sister and niece, and not be squandered on trivial debts run up simply because my own family and the welfare state offered me no assistance. Camden Council didn't offer me so much as a cardboard box to sleep in, let alone a hostel bed.

I simply don't have the energy to keep turning the pedals in such thankless pursuit of nothing. It will have been an exhausting marathon to simply reach zero again. Of course, with further months and years of IT consultancy for big corporations, I could in theory become rich again, but I'm at the limit of what I can stand. I've had enough. I'm ground down. I'm through. I'm done. Stick a fork in me, I'm cooked.

The pointless toil... for what?!?!

And so, if you think I'm entitled, arrogant and boastful, I hope you can see that it's simply because I'm exhausted and scared and insecure. Of course I see the value in the garbage collector and the nurse. I just don't see the value in myself, now that I am spent.

Tags: #bullying #suicide #career #childhood #computing

This is a story about office life...

Look closely at the image above. It appears like I already wrote this blog post. It certainly feels like that. Haven't we been here before? Deja vu?

When you get stuck into a cycle, how do you break out of it? When the loudspeakers scream with feedback, because the sound that the microphone captures is being amplified and re-amplified, how do you reset, without cutting the power?

My behaviour might look self-sabotaging, but I'm actually deliberately burning bridges so that I have no line of retreat back to the places that made me unhappy in the first place.

When I worked in the City the first time around, I used to have 3 or 4 strong macchiato coffees every day. That's 12 espresso shots. I used to get drunk most lunchtimes and after work. I needed 2/3rds of a bottle of red wine to get to sleep, after all that coffee.

Uppers and downers, round and round. We rode the rollercoaster nonstop until we were sick. Every day, every week, every month, every year... they were the same.

When I was in my early 20's it wasn't such a big deal. We used to tank up on caffeine, churn out a load of code that would form the backbone of the world's economy, and then go get drunk to try and calm down a bit. We thought we could carry on like that forever, with our uppers and downers.

I saw colleagues get sick with stress, anxiety, depression, alcoholism. Some of my colleagues needed liver transplants. Some of my colleagues died. The system chewed us up and spat us out.

By my mid 20s I'd owned a yacht, a speedboat, sportscars... for some reason no amount of material possessions and status symbols seemed to quench the massive insecurity and frustration with life. Take a socially awkward, unpopular geek, sprinkle in wealth and the illusion that you're being 'successful' in life, and you wind up with a pretty confused adult.

While my schoolfriends paired off with lifelong partners and started to have children, I would suddenly decide that a loving relationship would be my salvation. I moved to a Surrey commuter town with a girlfriend, and started to play golf and generally start to think & act like a middle-aged family man. That was a bit of strange thing to do for a 21 year old.

Back in London after my first experiment into becoming a happy adult had failed, I satisfied myself with extreme sports, Internet discussion forums and lots of holidays and weekends away with nice big social clan. The London Kitesurfers 'club' was a lovely thing to be part of for several years. However, I still felt that I was missing that 'love' piece of the puzzle.

Some nice scientist kitesurfer girl seemed to tick all the boxes, and I launched myself with great intensity at a long-distance relationship that was never going to work. Relocating to the South coast, I quickly got involved with a geek girl who was into adventure sports: she seemed ideal, on paper.

I set about building the framework for a comfortable family life: the house, the steady job, the sensible car. However, I ignored the massive red flag: my girlfriend was a mean person.

I'm not easily dissuaded from my goals. Whatever obstacles I encounter, I just go around them. I'm a completer-finisher. I try to fix, improve, change, rather than throw things away or start again.

Anyway, I was flogging a dead horse. No matter how many times I painted a perfect picture postcard of how life could be, I'd found somebody who was stubbornly resistant to the idea of being nice and kind and supportive of the person who potentiated a 5-star luxury lifestyle for both of us. There was plenty of space for us both to shine, but sadly, she wanted me to be subdued and subserviant. She had gotten used to being showered with praise and being top of her class. She wasn't used to sharing the stage. She wasn't prepared for both of us to be happy.

I abandoned that life. I lost my business, my reputation with the major employers in the local area, my house and a substantial chunk of my wealth. I was fighting for survival, so I didn't have the time to go and carefully unpick the things that I had spent years building. I had no need of a house and shedful of things. What was I going to do with all that stuff? It was an unncessary millstone around my neck.

Now I find myself following a tried-and-trusted formula for wealth and 'success'. I'm rapidly putting together a lovely home again. I'm rapidly rebuilding my cash position. I'm rapidly rebuilding my reputation. However, I've seen it all and done it all before. I'm just going through the practiced motions.

"How did you know that was going to happen?" my colleagues ask me, like I'm some kind of clairvoyant. My ability to 'predict' the future is nothing more than making educated guesses, because I've been seen it all before. It looks prescient, but it's no more amazing than somebody who's learned from their mistakes.

That means my day job is pretty dull. I finish people's sentences, and I take great delight in giving people things they need before they ask for them. I'm ahead of the game. In the oft-quoted words of Wayne Gretsky, I'm skating to where the hockey puck is going to be.

I'm aware that this seems very arrogant. I'm not delusional. I know I'm not special or different. I know I'm no smarter than your average Joe.

I've done a 'gap' analysis, of my unsatisfying, unfulfilling and depression-filled life, and it seems like I need a dog, a cat, some kids and a loving supportive partner. If you ask children to draw a picture, they'll normally draw a house, the sun, some clouds, their parents and brothers & sisters, their pets. It seems like a pretty tried-and-trusted formula for life.

However, I even feel guilty about my cat living with my parents because he comes from a broken home. My cat, Frankie, has had to move house once in his kitty life, and I feel bad about the disruption and stress I caused him. I would love it if Frankie could live with me, but it would be cruel to make him live in a 4th floor apartment in a busy city. Having Frankie adopted by my parents, with their generous garden and surrounding Cotswold countryside, was the least bad option, but I still feel guilty.

Can you imagine how bad I'd feel if I had kids and they had a stressful home life? Can you imagine how guilty I'd feel if I knew that I selfishly chose to have children because they would give my life purpose and meaning, but I failed to adequately consider that the world I bequeathed to them is dying?

I'm running in autopilot at work. My brain is on tickover, doing my job. This unfortunately leaves a lot of time to consider the plight of the world's poor and struggling people. I have a lot of time to think about war and preventable diseases. I have a lot of time to think about inequalities and morality. I seem to be like a sponge, sucking up all the pain, suffering, cruelty, anger, hostility, selfishness, greed and immorality that seems to characterise the human race.

I could cut myself off from reading the news, but what would I do all day while I'm bored at work?

I can read the news, and if I get caught then nobody's really that bothered because I'm on top of my work and performing well. If I write my blog and try to stay on top of these feelings that threaten to overwhelm me, then I'm always nervous that my mask is going to slip.

I'm flirting with disaster anyway, wearing a semicolon tattoo just behind my ear, that advertises my struggle with depression, anxiety, addiction, self-harm and suicidal thoughts and suicide attempts.

When you have a problem, you can try to solve the root cause, or you can find a workaround. I know what the workarounds are. I know what the root cause is. I'm just not really satisfied that I can either do much about human nature and a selfish race intent on destroying itself, and neither am I very happy to attempt to insulate myself from reality, using drugs and money to put myself into a protective bubble

Begging is illegal in the City of London. Canary Wharf is a private estate, so undesirable members of society can actually be thrown out of the rich little enclave. You can kid yourself that there aren't any problems in the world, because you don't see them - out of sight out of mind - but that's why we got in this mess in the first place.

What happens next is as much a question of morality as it is a question of personal survival. Is it better to have lived life with some values and standards, rather than just saying "I was just doing what everybody else was doing" as if that's some kind of defence.

I know this is very lecturing, and once you've got skin in the game you have no choice but to try and do the best for your tiny tots, but I have a choice. I actually choose not to get a dog, because they're polluting (dogs need to eat masses of meat) and I choose not to have a family, because I can't make any guarantees that there's going to be a liveable planet for them to grow up on.

It doesn't make me a morally superior person. It's just the way I personally think. I know parents are racked with worry about the kind of world that their kids are going to inherit. I do empathise with the stress and challenges faced by families. Doesn't mean that's an excuse for me to join in though.

Tags: #family #capitalism #climatechange #career #london #banking #computing

This is a story about responsibility...

What a difference a day can make. 24 little hours. Now imagine that your life is nonstop round-the-clock bullshit perpetrated against you because you're trapped into a death spiral by people who profess to actually giving a shit about human life.

A great deal of preparations have gone into preparing the excuses why our own sons, brothers, nephews and other male members of our society are abandoned to a slow death ending in suicide. There's a lot of arse covering that has happened.

I'm an expert in arse covering.

I've seen arse covering throughout my career. I know it when I see it. I can smell bullshit and arse covering from a million miles away. I know when some utter dead-wood piece of shit is just covering their arse. I know when total cunts are throwing their colleagues under the fucking bus.

From my very earliest memories of childhood, I can remember my parents getting their excuses ready for why they were such utter cunts. Apparently I was a difficult child. It wasn't their fault. Apparently I used to cry in my cot out of spite. Apparently I used to shit my nappies to deliberately inconvenience my mum & dad. Apparently my very arrival on this earth was all part of the devil's plan to ruin my ma & pa's drug taking binge. Apparently if you were to shave my head you'd see the numerals 666 on my skull.

So, I have no doubt that my parents have covered their own conscience from the very day that I was born. I have no doubt that their own drug fuelled paranoia has meant that they've spent plenty of time getting their story straight. No your honour, he was always just evil you see, they'll say. Two against one. My word against theirs. Cunts.

If a plant was withered and dying, we would be in little doubt that it had been under-watered, perhaps had insufficient daylight or the soil was not very nutritious. Only in the madness of the world do we declare children to be evil little shits. Only in the folly of drug-addled parenthood would two grown adults believe that their child was a satanic agent sent to ruin their buzz. Cunts.

So, shame on them, not shame on me.

I've taken enough shame over the years. I've taken an unfair proportion of blame. I've taken an unreasonable amount of responsibility for my own birth. I've been saddled witth the debt of my parents' guilt and bullshit, but it's not my burden to carry. I'm fucked off with it all.

Shame on you, those who would tell me I'm a bad person from the day I formed my very earliest memories. Shame on you, those who would make me feel like a fucking inconvenience my whole life.

I'm sorry, not sorry, if I ever stole the limelight from you during your drug binges. I'm sorry, not sorry, that I ever deprived you of precious cash to spend on booze and drugs. I'm sorry, not sorry, that there was a tiny amount of time investment needed to palm me off on the state, so that I could be raised by my teachers and my friends parents.

You got a free fucking ride, in replicating your genes into me, but this is where the buck stops. You don't get to clone your selfish fucking genes any further. I have no intention of ever allowing the lineage of your selfish fucked up character traits to be perpetrated on humanity for any further generations. You absolutely awful people.

There's a sickness inside me, in the genes that I carry, passed on from lazy, arrogant, paranoid and selfish, self-centred arseholes who care about nobody but themselves and their drug taking, but this is where it ends. This is the end of the line. This is where somebody takes a stand.

Do I have anything to be ashamed of?

My parents constantly shamed me. Nothing was ever good enough. Unsatisfied with me, my parents took further steps to humiliate me and destroy my self esteem and happiness. Repeatedly, my very identity was violated and destroyed by the self-centred cunts who ruled my life until the day I could finally escape their clutches. There is nothing I want to give my parents credit for, except my unshakable belief that their genes should die as soon as possible.

Taking responsibility is about not perpetrating more pain and suffering in the world. Shame on you, my parents.

Do I have things to be ashamed of? Of course.

Have I paid my debts? Many, many, many times over, and now I'm exhausted.

Do I die in shame? Not at all. I couldn't have done any more in the circumstances. There's no pride, but I know that there's nothing left to give, and I maintained my integrity.

To perpetuate the misery that was inflicted upon me, would be a crime. The stain that my parents have left on the world must come to an end. In their old age, they'll pass away peacefully in their sleep. When I'm dead too, the nightmare is more or less over.

Eating poison to hurt your enemy is foolish, but my very existence serves to support this bullshit notion that children fucked up their drug binge, and they were cursed with an evil child sent by satan himself. I know it's ridiculous, but I can't take the risk of this horse shit continuing.

I'm so sick and tired of being told to live in shame, when I have little to be ashamed of.

I stand by my sins. I welcome the end.

Tags: #parents #childhood #suicide