Contents

Chapter 1: The Caravan

Chapter 2: Invisible Illness

Chapter 3: The Forest

Chapter 4: Prosaic

Chapter 5: The Van

Chapter 6: Into the Unknown

Chapter 7: The Journey

Chapter 8: Infamy

Chapter 9: The Villages

Chapter 10: Waiting Room

Chapter 11: The Shadow People

Chapter 12: Enough Rope

Chapter 13: The Post Offices

Chapter 14: Unsuitable Friends

Chapter 15: The Chase

Chapter 16: Self Inflicted

Chapter 17: The Holiday

Chapter 18: Psychosis, Madness, Insanity and Lunacy

Chapter 19: The Hospitals

Chapter 20: Segmentation

Chapter 21: The Cell

Chapter 22: Wells of Silence

Chapter 23: The Box

Chapter 24: Jailbird

Chapter 25: The Scales

Chapter 26: Descent

Chapter 27: The Syringe

Chapter 28: Anonymity

Chapter 29: The Imposter

Chapter 30: Wish You Were Here

6. Into the Unknown

Going to university as a mature student had been hard work but a lot of fun. Lara was only a few years older than most of the other student nurses and their training wasn't like a normal degree course. 50% of the time the nurses did their university work in a building that was a long way from the main university campus. The other 50% of the time was spent in the clinical environment of the local hospital. Lara's university days weren't spent partying and skipping lectures - the workload was relentless and she was soon doing long shifts to gain all the necessary hands-on experience she needed to qualify.

With Neil's salary, savings, some money from her parents and a bursary, Lara and Neil managed to keep their home life relatively unchanged after Lara quit her office job to retrain. A little bit of belt tightening was necessary, but the couple managed to struggle through 3 years without Lara's salary.

Although she avoided living in a dirty and messy student house, Lara didn't miss out on any of the social bonding with the rest of her course-mates. During those three years at university, she made a lot of good friends.

After qualifying Lara's friends had been scattered all over the country. Some of them wanted to specialise. Some of them wanted to get jobs in particular cities or closer to family. There were a lot of jobs in London, which attracted many friends to move there, but Lara wanted to stay in the local area. For a lot of her friends, they were bored of the unremarkable university town they had spent three years in.

Working at a big hospital as a general nurse, there was a lot of variety in the day-to-day challenges. There were a lot of staff. There were a lot of departments. There were a lot of different procedures that could all happen within that large hospital building. The NHS had been closing smaller local hospitals, in preference for larger facilities, so that fewer items of expensive equipment had to be purchased nationally.

One of the few things separated from the general hospitals was mental health care. While the hospital had a handful of mental health specialists, they were in a psychiatric liaison role. Any physical health issues would be treated at Lara's hospital and then the patient would be transferred if they required inpatient care for mental health issues. There was a clear demarkation between general medicine and mental health and the few people Lara knew who had specialised in that area had followed a very different career track from her.

As a medical professional, Lara felt frustrated that she didn't know more about mental health issues and there was little opportunity at work to have a casual conversation with any of the doctors. The doctors in the hospital had specialised in the treatment of physical ailments, disease, surgery. She only knew a few doctors who she should speak to if a patient was behaving strangely. In Accident & Emergency the hospital would treat drug overdoses, alcoholics and people who had physically injured themselves while in a crazed state, quite often accompanied by police officers. The police normally had a better idea of what psychiatric issues the patient suffered from than the hospital staff. It seemed as though the police were at the front line of mental health issues.

Although she had bandaged lacerated wrists and dealt with patients who had swallowed handfuls of pills or poison by treating them with activated charcoal, Lara never really knew the story behind what had brought them to the brink of suicide in the first place, or what happened to them after they were physically healthy enough to be moved to a psychiatric facility. The patient notes for the nurses contained details such as blood pressure and medications. Very few details about the psychological problems that troubled these people were in the notes she saw.

When the weekend arrived, Lara found herself turning to the Internet to find out more about depression and how it was diagnosed and treated. It seemed strange that despite her training and experience, she should have to turn to websites for information, but she didn't know who to speak to. She knew friends had suffered bouts of depression, but it felt insensitive to phone them and say "Hey! You've been down before. What can you tell me?" Those friends who had become depressed never discussed the details of their prescribed treatment openly.

Lara knew her mum had become depressed after giving birth to her little brother. Her mum had sought help from the family doctor. Lara's mum said that a little time talking to the doctor about her feelings had been exactly what she needed. That was over 20 years ago. GPs didn't have much time to talk to their patients anymore. At the local doctor's surgery, Lara seemed to see a different doctor every time she visited.

Therapy conjured up images of whiney New Yorkers, self-indulgently talking about how their daddies didn't love them enough, on a psychotherapist's couch, spending hundreds or even thousands of dollars. Lara thought that to suggest counselling might make Neil more upset. Many people derided therapists as "quacks".

Having spent the week without socialising amongst their usual circle of friends, Lara now faced further isolation all weekend, as the couple cancelled their plans. There was little that Lara could do to help at home. Even asking Neil "are you OK?" could be a barbed question, when clearly he was not. It was very British to say "I'm fine thanks" as an automatic response whenever anybody asked how you were, no matter how dreadful life was feeling at that moment. Neil and Lara's parents had been raised in an environment of post-war austerity, where stiff upper lip and concealment of any inner emotions was considered the preferred way to conduct yourself. The touchy-feely stuff was not dealt with well by either family.

By Monday morning, Lara was relieved to be able to immerse herself back in her work. Throughout her shift she barely had a moment to herself to dwell on personal issues. For the sake of the patients and her team, it was imperative that she was positive and upbeat, concentrating, not distracted. She was expected to be a pillar of strength and exude confidence when patients were scared, in pain and discomfort. Context switching was surprisingly exhausting, but it didn't hit Lara until she left the hospital.

As the week wore on, Lara found that she was less and less able to carry the caring face she wore all day at work into her home. She felt like she had lost the support of both her partner and her social group and she could barely keep her own head above water. By Friday, some tiny slip of the mask must have betrayed how truly drained she felt, because the Ward Manager called Lara into her office at the end of her shift.

"Is everything OK, Lara?"

"My fiancée hasn't been very well for a couple of weeks, but I really didn't want to bring my problems with me to work, Judy, sorry" replied Lara.

"It's OK. You just look a little under the weather. I hoped you weren't coming down with something. Your work has been fine this week. No complaints from me" said Judy.

"Yeah, I'm fine. I'm just going to sleep all weekend and let my batteries fully recharge" said Lara.

"Well, look after yourself. Are you getting the support you need at home?" asked Judy.

"Yeah. We're getting by. I'm sure Neil's going to be feeling better and back to work soon" replied Lara.

"Neil. That was it. I remember you saying you'd got engaged, but I must admit I'd forgotten your fiancée's name. Any news on the wedding?" asked Judy, turning the conversation more light and casual.

"No, we haven't even started planning yet" replied Lara.

"Oh well. No rush" said Judy, glancing down at some paperwork on her desk.

"See you Monday. Have a good weekend" said Lara.

"You too" replied Judy, busily scribbling notes onto a yellow form she had been filling in when Lara had entered the office.

Lara fetched her coat and bag with some sense of relief, but also the nagging feeling that she had somehow trapped herself. Next week at work, she would have to work hard to keep a brave face on things. It would be harder now to admit that she wasn't coping well. All she could hope for was that things would be getting back to normal sooner rather than later.

Anne was hurriedly pulling on her coat as she jogged along the corridor to catch up with Lara, who was making her way to the lifts.

"What was that all about?" Anne asked.

"Oh, she was just asking if I was OK" Lara replied.

"And are you?" Anne asked.

"Not really" said Lara.

Next chapter...

Contents

Chapter 1: The Caravan

Chapter 2: Invisible Illness

Chapter 3: The Forest

Chapter 4: Prosaic

Chapter 5: The Van

Chapter 6: Into the Unknown

Chapter 7: The Journey

Chapter 8: Infamy

Chapter 9: The Villages

Chapter 10: Waiting Room

Chapter 11: The Shadow People

Chapter 12: Enough Rope

Chapter 13: The Post Offices

Chapter 14: Unsuitable Friends

Chapter 15: The Chase

Chapter 16: Self Inflicted

Chapter 17: The Holiday

Chapter 18: Psychosis, Madness, Insanity and Lunacy

Chapter 19: The Hospitals

Chapter 20: Segmentation

Chapter 21: The Cell

Chapter 22: Wells of Silence

Chapter 23: The Box

Chapter 24: Jailbird

Chapter 25: The Scales

Chapter 26: Descent

Chapter 27: The Syringe

Chapter 28: Anonymity

Chapter 29: The Imposter

Chapter 30: Wish You Were Here

2. Invisible Illness

The sense of dread and impotence had followed Lara around for her entire shift. Neil had showed no signs of improvement when she left him at home in bed, earlier that morning, to leave for work. She felt sure that he would still be in bed when she got home. He had turned his mobile phone off and she knew that he would let the landline ring until the answerphone picked up. There was no way of knowing how he was doing, but she had the sinking feeling that he wasn't improving. This was the fourth day in a row that he hadn't gone to work, and now she was starting to worry on his behalf about his job.

Lara had made a career switch to nursing, having previously worked as an office administrator. She was naturally caring and liked helping people. The office politics and limited scope to make a tangible difference in anybody's life had ground her down in the medium-sized company she used to work for, with its bloated management structure, endless bureaucracy and red tape. The National Health Service was no picnic, but working directly with patients and other front-line staff made the job far more rewarding than her previous career, where she had never met any of the company's actual customers.

Neil was a well respected and valued employee at the company he had worked for since leaving college. He was a CCTV and intruder alarm engineer, who travelled throughout the country, installing new systems, doing maintenance and repairs. Over the years, he had built up a lot of technical expertise and was now considered one of the most senior members of the team. He'd had the option to move into staff training or management, but he'd always preferred to remain "on the tools".

Most of Neil and Lara's circle of friends had originated from Neil's job, with Lara befriending the 'significant others' of Neil's male-dominated engineering friends. There had been a spate of weddings recently amongst the couples they knew and on Valentine's Day, Neil had proposed to Lara. They were engaged to be married some time the following year, although they had not yet started to plan the wedding.

Lara had received text messages from her female friends asking if Neil was OK, because their other halves hadn't seen him at work for a couple of days. What could she say? She knew it was unusual for Neil to be sick, but it wasn't at all clear what was wrong with him. He just seemed very fatigued and hadn't been able to face getting up or even phoning in sick. Lara had phoned his boss for him, while he buried his head under the duvet and pretended to be asleep.

It was easy to be sympathetic with Neil, because he was evidently going through a hard time due to something but the frustrating thing was that it was neither identifiable, nor would Neil go to the doctor to ask for a diagnosis. Through her own medical training, Lara knew there was nothing obviously wrong with Neil: no fever, no pain or discomfort, no nausea. In fact, no symptoms beyond the fact he looked tired, drained, stressed and somewhat afraid, in his facial expressions. She knew that he wasn't the type to complain about a bout of man flu.

The first couple of days that Neil was off work, she had attributed to the kind of duvet days when she herself would phone in sick, if she really couldn't face another boring day in the office. By the third day, she could hear her parents' derisory words about "yuppie flu" ringing in her ears, from her childhood in the 1980's.

The burden of having to phone Neil's boss each day had now escalated. He had politely but firmly reminded Lara that Neil now needed to go to the doctor and get a sick note, because he'd been away from work for more than three days. Neil knew this too, but hadn't acknowledged it. In fact, he'd made it subtly clear to her that he just wanted to be left alone. He didn't want her to open the curtains for him; he didn't want her to bring him food; he didn't want her to arrange for anybody to visit to make sure he was OK during the day. Little changed in his withdrawn demeanour from when she left in the morning for her 12 hour shift, to the moment he barely acknowledged her when she returned from work, except to say he was OK and he didn't need anything. The most animated that she'd seen him in four days was when she offered to phone in sick for him, which he said he'd be really grateful for if she did. She didn't seem to be able to do anything else to help. It was frustrating.

The drive home from work was very unpleasant for her. She knew the house would seem lifeless: no lights on. She knew that she would go upstairs to the bedroom in order to get out of her work clothes and see the motionless shape of Neil's body under the duvet, in much the same position as she'd left him in the morning. She'd know from the rhythm of his breathing that he was awake, but she would have to speak first. He would be polite, pleasant even, but somehow clipped and formal. The subtle cue was for her to leave the bedroom, turn off the light, and leave him with whatever he was struggling with. It cut her up to feel shut out, unable to help.

All of their normal rhythm and routine had suddenly disappeared, leaving a gaping hole in Lara's life. Their usual discussions about evening meals, cooking and eating together, watching videotaped television programmes or films, exchanging stories about their working day, planning the next social event, or talking about an upcoming holiday: all of this was suddenly gone, and Lara found herself eating on the sofa, alone, watching whatever was on TV at the time, but not really paying any attention to it.

The hardest thing was having nobody to talk to. Her parents had made their views about "work shy" people vociferously known and she didn't want to get into an argument, where she felt defensive about Neil having to take some time off sick. Most of their group of friends all knew each other, and she knew that by talking to even one friend, word would soon get around that something was wrong with Neil that was out of the ordinary. She dreaded to think what would be concluded in the speculative gossip at the dinner parties at each others' houses.

Lara started mentally preparing herself for friends dropping by the house to see if they were OK and if there was anything they could do. If there was nothing she could do, what could they possibly do? It would be easiest just to make excuses and try to shoo them away from the doorstep without even inviting them in. What would she say? How could she be polite and maintain the impression that their usual relaxed open house policy was in full swing, but at the same time swiftly get rid of any would-be visitors?

Despite a salary drop for Lara, the couple had still managed to get a large enough mortgage to purchase a modestly sized terraced house near the town centre that had plenty of space for entertaining guests. Under normal circumstances, Lara and Neil had a gregarious and welcoming nature and were given to spur-of-the-moment gatherings in their home with their friends. Several couples lived within walking distance, and impromptu cheese and wine, cards or board game nights were a common occurence.

The house had an attractive Victorian façade with a modern interior. The brick archway above the front door stated that the house was built in the 1870s. The previous owners had extensively renovated, building a bright open-plan kitchen diner extension at the back, and preserving a cosy but surprisingly spacious snug at the front of the house, with a cast iron fireplace and wooden fire surround. Furnished with carefully chosen second hand furniture that mixed shabby chic with pieces that could be mistaken for iconic vintage design, the house was punching above its weight for the meagre budget of Lara and Neil's income.

Decorating and furnishing their home had been a labour of love for Lara and Neil, and they were extremely house-proud and meticulous in how they had planned each room to accentuate the available space, light and few remaining period features. This hiccup in Neil's health was certainly no part of a master plan which had seemed to be going perfectly for the couple, up to that point.

Entertaining guests held a certain amount of desire for their friends to see their home improvements, and to show off their excellent taste in interior design and home-making. It was showy without being unpleasantly in-your-face. It was hard to dislike Lara and Neil as they weren't a couple obsessed with status symbols and oneupmanship.

Behind closed doors, the relationship was far from perfect. Neil's reluctance to turn down overtime and work fewer hours had led to Lara's desire to find a more rewarding career of her own. Financial pressures and resentment over each other's strong desire to satisfy their own needs and find fulfilment at work, had overspilled into many unpleasant arguments. Most of their friends chose to accept the happy, smiling, front that Lara and Neil presented at face value. Those who were closest to the couple could see the mask occasionally slip. The occasional unpleasant jibe; the twist of the knife; the obvious hints at an unresolved argument. There were issues that were festering, unresolved.

Nobody could say that they weren't a fully committed couple. They had been together a long time and had managed to come through a rather tempestuous and fiery initial period, before reaching a kind of uneasy truce. When in the company of friends, they were in fine spirits - and this was no act - but too much time spent alone with each other and trouble would inevitably erupt.

Neil was not self-indulgent in his convalescence, but he was completely unaware how isolated this left Lara, given the interconnected web of friends and connections to Neil's work that existed. Neil had no idea how burdened Lara felt, defending Neil's spotless record as a dependable hard worker, and as a sunny upbeat happy-go-lucky likeable social character. The man under the duvet in the dark bedroom upstairs would not want anybody to see him like that, and Lara knew it.

Whatever regrettable words had been spoken before, it was water under the bridge. Lara would not betray Neil in his hour of need.

Next chapter...

This is a story about a pill for every ill...

There was a young man who swallowed a lie, about how hard work and loyalty to his company would make him successful. It left him exhausted and with depression, that wiggled and jiggled inside his brain. I don't know why he swallowed the lie. Perhaps he'll die.

There was a young man who swallowed 150mg of Bupropion - a fast acting antidepressant - to cancel out the depression and exhaustion, that wiggled and jiggled inside his brain. Perhaps he'll die.

There was a young man who swallowed 5mg of Olanzapine - a mood stabiliser - to cancel out the hypomanic highs that were created by the Bupropion, that was supposed to fix the depression and exhaustion, that wiggled and jiggled inside his brain. Perhaps he'll die.

There was a young man who swallowed 15mg of Mirtazapine - another antidepressant - because the Bupropion wasn't working so well any more on its own, to fix the depression and exhaustion, that wiggled and jiggled inside his brain. Perhaps he'll die.

There was a young man who swallowed 25mg of Lamotrigine, to raise his seizure threshold so he could take more Bupropion, stabilise his mood more and as a third antidepressant, to fix the depression and exhaustion, that wiggled and jiggled inside his brain. Perhaps he'll die.

There was a young man who swallowed 10mg of Diazepam - an anti-anxiety drug - because by now he was pretty jittery from all the damn drugs, that were supposed to fix his depression and exhaustion, that wiggled and jiggled inside his brain. Perhaps he'll die.

There was a young man who was going to swallow 2,000mg of potassium cyanide, to end the depression and exhaustion, that wiggled and jiggled inside his brain. Of course he would die.

Top picture, from left to right: Mirtazepine, Olanzapine, Bupropion, Diazepam, Lamotrigine.

Tags: #depression #bipolar #medication #suicide #career

This is a story about the undead...

I got sick. I stopped blogging. I'm sad I broke my daily writing routine. I would have hit 365 blog posts by now, if I had kept going just a little longer.

When people say "keep going, you're doing really well" the sentiment is lovely. Keep going where though? Have I been there before? Is it a good place to keep going to? Also, what does it mean to be doing really well? Does it mean superficially? Is the most important thing to look like you're doing really well, on the outside? Are you doing really well even if it's all an act?

I'm no faker; no actor.

I do however have to do something that I can keep going with, while genuinely doing really well. My last contract could not keep going. I was not doing very well.

Perhaps getting sick wasn't an inevitable consequence, but it takes more than letting off steam through personal writing to harmlessly neutralise the 'toxic' build-up, due to months of stress, boredom, lack of stimulation, lack of social interaction, no new challenges, no creative outlet etc. etc.

Equally, my solo hack-a-thons have been challenging and creative, perhaps a little over-stimulating, and have made me sick through social isolation and stress.

There must be a cool project with a team here in London that ticks the other boxes.

Anyway, I need to get well again first.

Tags: #career

This is a story about milestones...

There are so many people who either "don't smoke" or call themselves "social smokers". People say "I only smoke when I drink". There are so many people who claim that they are free from drink and drugs, but they're actually popping Xanax, antidepressants, Oxycontin, Solpadeine, Co-codamol (codeine), Vicodin and tranquillisers. There are so many people who sneer at substance abusers, but they drink, smoke and consume lots of tea, coffee and energy drinks, without realising they're dependent on alcohol, nicotine and caffeine, just to cope with normal everyday life.

In 6 months, I got through those 59 tablets - a combination of diazepam and nitrazepam - in an attempt to avoid a nervous breakdown and to survive an extremely stressful situation, where my whole career, solvency, home and life as a respectable member of society, hung in the balance.

If you take benzodiazepines continuously for over 3 months, you have probably become physically addicted. What that means is that you might have a seizure and die, if you were to abruptly stop taking the medication.

I've run out of benzodiazepines today.

I'm not worried about this.

59 tablets, of 2mg to 5mg strength, spread over 180 days, is a piss in the ocean. There's no way that I'm going to have withdrawal symptoms from stopping taking benzodiazepines. I might be a little anxious; I might have a little insomnia; I might feel a bit panicky. However, I'm not going to die.

A couple of years ago I took myself off to rehab. For over 3 months I had been swallowing a little cocktail: 6x 10mg diazepam tablets, 4x 2mg Xanax, 2x 10mg Ambien, 2x 15mg Zopiclone. Maybe it wasn't quite that much. I have no idea. Benzodiazepines cause amnesia. All I can remember is that I used to fill up the palm of my hand with various pills, and swallow them all in one go. Lights out. Wake up 2 days later.

You're in a hell of a mess when you're mixing uppers and downers; stimulants and tranquillisers; but that's what we do every day, when we have our morning coffee and a glass of wine when we get home from work. If you have a strong coffee after a boozy dinner, you're basically having the middle-class equivalent of a speedball (cocaine & heroin, injected).

Obviously, I'm irreverently mocking your self-delusion, when you tell yourself that you're not "hooked" on anything.

I've used alcohol and the occasional tranquilliser tablet, in order to limp through the last 6 months. I haven't been having tea, coffee or other caffeinated drinks.

I've actually tapered off the alcohol and the benzos, to the point where I only drank 2 days in the last 14. I didn't take any benzos all weekend.

The thing is, if you're smart and you're disciplined, addiction is something you can master. It is possible to give up anytime you want. It is possible to become really good at quitting drugs and booze. I'm a fucking expert in abstinence.

Almost like an alarm clock going off, my subconscious revealed that I had simply been waiting for 6 months.

School was absolute shit for me. Getting through the long school days of bullying was awful. Getting through the long terms of bullying was unbearable. Getting through year after year after year of bullying was absolutely dreadful. All I was doing was waiting for the end of school bell, the school holidays, and the day that I could finally leave school and get the fuck away from the bullies.

Family life was absolutely shit for me. I couldn't wait to move out of home, and get away from my arsehole parents. I've loved paying my own rent and bills. I've loved being independent. I do have all the fucking answers. I went out into the world, got a place to live, got a job, and never looked back. Up until then, I'd just been waiting for the day I could finally leave home, and it couldn't come a moment too soon.

So, I spent 17 years, just waiting. I was biding my time. I know how to suffer patiently. I'm an expert in suffering patiently.

Then, I applied my expertise in deferred gratification to the working world. I took shitty entry-level jobs and worked my way up. I stuck with shitty projects, and shitty companies, so that my CV would look good. I stuck with shitty bosses and put up with glass ceilings. I stuck with idiots who couldn't see my potential, and I just suffered because I had a game plan.

I can patiently wait anything out. I've had to spend about 16 weeks with very limited liberty, being treated as an inpatient. That's not including the time I've spent in hospital receiving emergency treatment. In theory, I could have discharged myself, but there would have been consequences. I spent 7 weeks with somebody who'd been in prison twice, and he acknowledges that I have a mindset that suggests I know how to do time.

I mean, Christ, I spent the best part of 5 years working for one damn company, in one damn building, with the same damn people. Day after day, month after month, year after year. I've done 19 bloody years on the IT gravy train, solving the same damn problems again and again and again, and seeing the same damn mistakes time after time.

And so, I wondered to myself, why didn't I have a packet of drugs to tear open, in celebration of the fact that I have so easily completed a 6-month period of abstinence?

What you'll find with many addicts, is that they're liars. When they say that they're abstinent, they're actually lying to themselves and others. I've done "6 months clean" before, but that hasn't counted "the occasional weekend" and one or two "lapses" (note: a lapse is a 'small' relapse). In actual fact, you're still addicted, but you're limping yourself along by hiding your habit, from yourself and others. You start to believe your own lies.

I've arrived at 6 months "clean" and it really is clean. As clean as anybody in the history of anything, ever.

Most people who quit smoking will drink more, have more coffee, eat more. Most people who quit anything, will find some way of compensating. It might be exercise; it might be work. Basically, humans need shit. We're not fucking robots. Humans have always had intoxicating substances. Wine was being made 6,000 years before Jesus Christ was even born... that's over 8,000 years ago!

Anyway, I started looking at websites of awful toxic Chinese "legal" highs. Then I had a look at the Dark Web. The amount of drugs that are available to order over the Internet is just staggering. Prohibition has spectacularly failed. The designer drug industry is enjoying such a boom time, thanks to ridiculous laws that force chemists to get creative. Technology's answer to the eternally insatiable human demand for mind-altering substances has created a whole swathe of online marketplaces stocking every drug under the sun.

There's something for everybody in the cornucopia that has been created by the war on drugs.

My finger hovered over the "Buy Now" button, because I've damn well proven my point. Pick some arbitrary milestone, and I'll hit it, easily. But, what do I have? My life is miserable. All I have ahead of me is stress and loneliness; insecurity and pain; suicidal thoughts and a sense of abandonment. Fairly easy to justify a relapse, isn't it, when you work so hard and you're not getting anywhere.

Then, I thought, what could I do that's slightly more sensible?

With a bit more searching around on the Internet, I found that you can consult a doctor online and have a prescription despatched next day. In the space of 7 minutes, a doctor agreed to prescribe me a fast-acting antidepressant called Wellbutrin. I needed something because I felt certain that I was either going to commit suicide quickly by cutting an artery, or commit suicide slowly by relapsing back into drug abuse.

Wellbutrin is a wonderful medication, because it's fast acting, it doesn't make you drowsy, and it doesn't ruin your sex life. Have you experienced the boredom of patiently fucking somebody who takes an SSRI antidepressant, waiting an absolute age before they possibly cum, but probably won't be able to? Who wants a sex life like that? I don't want my emotions blunted. I don't want 'brain zaps' and uncontrollable crying when I try and stop the damn medication.

Yeah, who knows what the fuck happens next. Tomorrow, I have a 2-month supply of a fast-acting antidepressant that you can't get on the NHS being delivered. Maybe life will look a bit less hopeless when I'm drugged out of my mind, like virtually everybody else I know.

It feels like selling out, but it's nearly killed me having to fight tooth and nail just to have a roof over my head and a job, while also being nearly stone cold sober. I don't have kids to remind me why I get up and go to work. I don't have pets to look after. I literally have no reason for living, except to achieve some arbitrary goals.

I thought, as an added bonus, that I would also be celebrating one year of blogging today, but it turns out that happened a couple of weeks ago. Today is my last day at work, and I've had a couple of leaving dos, which is nice, but I do of course have to go though all the stress and hassle of applying for new jobs, interviewing, making a good first impression etc. etc. How ironic that things seem to have conspired to happen today.

As luck would have it, a colleague has recommended me for another job, which I might end up interviewing for tomorrow and could even be asked to start a new contract as early as Monday. If I do that, I'm damnwell going to need a few happy pills to carry me through, because I had been thinking that I was going to have a minor nervous breakdown.

Anyway, a milestone of sorts. Nice to leave work with a few slaps on the back and "well done"s. Nice to know that I didn't 'cheat' with my 6 months of abstinence from addictive stimulants. Where's my fucking reward? Surely I should feel better than I do, but I'm depressed and anxious. I'm overwhelmed by the task of having to hustle again, to keep the momentum going.

But really, is there momentum, or did I just wait for 6 months, in order to have a well-earned breakdown?

Is that what life is? Just waiting to die, miserable as fuck?

Tags: #depression #suicide #addiction #drugs

This is a story about unhealthy coping mechanisms...

I've been surviving on a combination of barely concealed loathing and contempt for my job, copious amounts of alcohol, occasional use of tranquillisers and a lot of passive-aggressive blogging. It seems to have worked, according to my bank balance and my CV.

In four months, I had one day off sick and a one-week holiday. That's not bad. Just 6 working days that I was unproductive. 1 out 82 working days unwell is only 1.2%.

It's been killing me in unusual ways though.

I've been comfort eating a lot. When I first started my contract, I was munching my way through loads of sweets and nuts at my desk. I was having a great big lunch. I was having cakes and pasties. I was having super-size meals at McDonalds. I was coming home and stuffing my face with crisps, ice cream and unhealthy meals.

I've been drinking far too much. To begin with, I was picking up a bottle of wine on my way home, every single day. I switched to beer because I could drink more of it, but there would be less alcohol in it. There's 94ml of alcohol in your average bottle of white wine. There's 75ml of alcohol in 3 cans of lager, even though the beer is double the volume. Then, things got out of control briefly. I was having two bottles of wine, or 6 cans of beer. The alcohol was a real problem, but then so was the job. Sobering up at my desk was a way of getting through the day.

Early on in my contract, I decided that I wasn't going to blog at work. I wanted to do my best to look busy. I didn't even want to surf the web and read the news websites that I like. I certainly didn't want to be looking at Facebook on my phone all day long. However, that just made things worse. Getting through the empty boring days was excruciating agony. By the time I got home, I was so relieved, but so stressed out, that I felt I needed alcohol to relax and face the next day.

Then, I started to read the news. I found myself constantly clicking refresh, willing something to happen. The summer months are fairly dreadful anyway. The politicians have gone off on holiday, the markets are quiet. Not a lot was going on. Brexit provided a very unhealthy obsession for a while, and I took great delight in trolling the closet racists and xenophobes. Post-Brexit was quite anti-climactic, and just tragic.

I decided that the only way that I was going to stay sane was to write 3 times a day. I was briefly mailing short stories that I was writing to a couple of friends. They helped to keep me sane by being the willing recipients of my bleak allegorical tales of wage slavery: read Alan the Alcoholic if you want to know what I mean.

Finally, I decided I would allow myself to blog at work. I had the additional problem of being told I could no longer use my personal MacBook and I would have to have some piece of shit PC "because data security" or whatever. Anyway, I then didn't have access to my photo library - I try to use images that I own the copyright for - and I didn't have Photoshop to be able to make high quality edits. There's also a slight worry about what kind of corporate spyware is watching what I'm doing.

Somehow, I've nearly limped through to the end of my contract, and I even managed to work my notice period, which is something I haven't done for 6 or 7 years. I'm even getting a couple of leaving dos, as opposed to being escorted off the premises by security (that's never actually happened, but things haven't been wrapped up 'neatly' in recent years).

Obviously, I'm on really dodgy ground, because I'm going to be looking for a new contract in a fortnight or so, and I suppose prospective new employers could stumble on my Twitter profile, Facebook page or this blog. So, to be sensible, I probably have to blog "nicey nicey" for a couple of weeks, so that all the juicy gossip is buried deeper than most miserable corporate drones would ever dig.

I'm not sure what the magic formula is for recovery from clinical depression / major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, substance abuse (dual diagnosis), borderline personality disorder, functional alcoholism and all the other labels that get bandied around. However, I'm pretty sure that it looks like this:

• An absolute imperial fucktonne of cash. I mean LOADS.
• Rest & recuperation. I don't just mean a couple of weeks. We're talking months or years
• Surround yourself with addicts and people with mental health problems. Nobody else 'gets' it
• Cut horrible toxic people out of your life
• No compromise
• Force yourself to do things you don't like very much
• Do something that requires discipline and routine, and stick with it for months, if not years
• Set yourself some achievable goals, where you're in control

That last one is probably the most important. I absolutely love the fact that I've been blogging for over a year, and I'm on track to write 365 blog posts and 450,000 words in less than 13 months. I've blogged from psychiatric hospital. I've blogged from San Francisco. I've blogged from a desert island off the coast of North Africa. I've blogged through a couple of projects from hell. I've blogged through depression. I've blogged through addiction. I've blogged through isolation. I've blogged through loneliness. I've blogged through suicidal thoughts and self harm.

The only thing I haven't quite done yet is to blog through happiness and contentment, but either that's coming or blogging is keeping me trapped in a certain mindset and stopping me moving on with my life.

I don't think writing like this is keeping me stuck in a rut. I can't imagine my life without writing now. Writing has become such a part of me. I'm more a writer than anything else. There's nothing else I live for, as much as writing. There's nothing else that I put as much passion and energy into. There's nothing else I'm as enthusiastic about.

I guess for many people, work is what defines them. "What do you do?" is the classic middle-class party icebreaker question, when meeting new people. What do you even say if you hate what you do, or you're flailing around to find something new? What should I say, on Thursday, when I'm out of a job again?

If I tell people I'm an IT consultant, that's slightly misleading, because that's a thing that I do just to get money when I'm desperate, and I won't even be consulting for any clients on Thursday, or for at least a fortnight or so after that.

However, I'm not going to stop writing when I finish my contract. I can't see me ever stopping writing, now I've started. What would I do with myself? How would I structure my day, without writing?

Obviously, writing is not a panacea, and it's a dangerous strategy to turn yourself into an open book. So many people will gleefully abuse your honesty, in order to gain a competitive advantage over you, put you down. So many people are looking for an excuse not to hire you, or to sack you. I'm giving my enemies all the ammunition they could possibly want.

However, isn't there something poetically wonderful about loading the gun, handing it to your enemy and turning your back on them? If they choose to shoot you in the back, with the bullet that you loaded in the weapon that you gave to them, isn't that going to eat away at them for the rest of their life?

Isn't there something exciting about deciding to say things that you're not allowed to say because of the conspiracy of silence? People are so afraid about becoming unemployable, and tainting their professional reputations. I almost want to start linking to this blog from my LinkedIn. Of course, every time I write the word "LinkedIn" the higher up the Google search index I will climb when somebody types "nick grant linkedin" into the little search box.

I'm not sure how much the 9 to 5, Monday to Friday routine has given my life some useful structure. I think, on balance, it's been more damaging to my mental and physical health to have a shitty project and an offshore team, than any benefit that I have gained by forcing myself to get out of bed every morning. I have no difficulty getting up and getting on with being productive, when I'm working on something that isn't mind-numbingly boring and depressing anyway.

The suffering has been worth it, financially, and with money comes opportunity: the opportunity to find something better to do with my limited time on the planet. Life is short: too short to be working a job that's like death itself.

Who knows how I'm going to feel when I wake up on Thursday. Will I feel elated, depressed, motivated, anxious?

I'm not exactly in a rush to get my CV out into the marketplace and find myself in another shitty contract. I want some time out, and I want to be more picky about the project I choose next time, even if I am still in a precarious financial situation. It's unwise to become complacent about your employability. Catastrophic market events can happen at any moment, and work can dry up overnight.

Will I be able to cut down my drinking, eat less, exercise more, or will the task of job hunting loom large and make me unbearably anxious? I certainly lost a lot of sleep during the week that my contract was terminated early and my flatmate revealed that he didn't have any money to pay his rent & bills for the 4th month running. Life's never straightforward, is it?

Health vs. wealth. That seems to be the battle that is being fought. Is it possible to have it all? Watch this space.

Tags: #career #mentalhealth #addiction #depression #bipolar #alcohol

This is a story about IT projects...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just getting a basic website running requires you to be:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tags: #career #agile #computing #bipolar

This is a story about looking after yourself...

I'm an incredibly calculating person. When I take a risk, it's a calculated risk. If you want to be a sailor, a rock climber, a mountaineer, you've got to be able to weigh up multiple factors. You look at the difficulty of the route or passage. You look at the weather conditions. You look at your equipment. You think about your crew, your rope party. You consider your own abilities. Failure means falling to your death, or drowning.

Let me give you an example.

I was at a petrol station, and I was paying at the counter when a car that was on fire was driven up to the pumps and then abandoned by the driver and passengers. They fled for their lives. The car was there, going up in flames, right next to the petrol pumps.

What would you do?

There didn't seem much point in standing around waiting for the fire brigade. There certainly didn't seem like a moment to lose, as there were passengers sat in their cars, waiting for the drivers to pay for their petrol and come back to their vehicles.

Selfishly, the best thing to do would have been to stay where I was, at the counter where I was paying, or to flee out the fire exit at the back.

I didn't think "I want to be a hero". I thought "can I put that fire out?". I decided that I could.

I went out onto the forecourt and shouted for everybody to get out of their cars and get the fuck away from the petrol station.

Then I picked up a couple of fire extinguishers and went and put out the fire. It wasn't unbearably hot because the whole car wasn't yet on fire. The whole engine compartment was on fire, but with the wind behind me, it carried the smoke away from me, along with some of the heat. I managed to direct most of the foam from the extinguisher into the engine compartment, and the flames were quickly put out.

That was a calculated risk.

I'm currently working a job that is destroying my mental health. It was a 6 month contract, and I calculated that in that time I could reach financial security. Financial security is an important component in wellbeing, given how shockingly appalling the welfare state is. It's more important that I'm able to support myself financially, than it is that I suffer 6 months of depression, putting me at risk of suicide.

My assumption is that when I have reached the point of financial security, I can have a mini nervous breakdown, and then start to recover without sinking back into financial hardship. If I have financial security, I can recover without becoming homeless and destitute again.

If I have learnt anything about my mental health to date, it's that I can recover from almost anything, given enough time & money.

It's sad to see lives thrown away because we treat them so cheaply.

If I can do it, I will have proved that it's possible to plumb unimaginably awful depths and recover, if only we would take the chance and invest in people. If only we trusted people. If only we respected people.

So many people get written off as if they're as good as dead, and that's disgusting.

It should be a collective stain on our conscience that we prefer to prop up the ideas of the "lost cause" and to discriminate against people because of the mistakes of their past, rather than looking at their potential.

Instead of chucking me into some "care in the community" bucket as an incurable madman, or kicking me into the gutter as a hopeless addict, I'm looking forward to proving what an injust death sentence that is. My parents are reprehensibly disgusting people for abandoning their own son when I was vulnerable and alone. My parents had insisted that they would help, only to renege on their promises at the vital moment.

I've done nothing but try to improve the lives of others. I'm not a thief, a liar. I'm not a violent man. I'm not even a criminal.

My dad's a criminal. My dad has a criminal conviction for his drug offences. The police have seen fit to caution me 4 times for various things, but the police have seen that there is no criminal intent with me that would warrant prosecution. My dad has broken the law and he has a criminal record. Why would he treat me like a criminal? Why would he treat me as if I've committed crimes, when it's him who has the criminal record?

I suppose we judge people based on who we really are. If you're a bad person, you see bad in other people. I've always given people the benefit of the doubt. I've always helped people, and even forgiven them when they've screwed me over.

I don't think I'm necessarily a good person, but I try to be. I try to help people. I try to see the best in everybody. I try to invest in people's potential.

It's a calculated risk, being nice to people. Sure, I've lost loads of money as people have taken advantage of me. I doubt anybody thinks I'm a mug though. I doubt anybody feels proud or pleased that they profited at my expense.

One of the best ever moments I can remember was when a young addict couldn't believe that I'd forgiven him for - as he saw it - scamming me out of a load of money. In actual fact, my risk was hedged. It was a calculated gamble. I just hope that he benefitted in some way. My life certainly wasn't any the worse off.

Anybody who says "don't give money to an addict or an alcoholic because it'll do more harm than good" is simply wrong. If you're poor and you steal from the rich, you don't feel guilty about it. But if somebody is kind to you and trusts you, and you betray that trust, it eats you up inside like crazy.

By helping people to be solvent you can help restore their sanity. For many people who live lives of poverty, this can be surprisingly cheap. I could get my friend Frank a hostel bed so that he wasn't living on the street for £120/week. I could help get Frank a room in a shared house for £500. Nobody had taken that kind of chance on him before.

Fixing my situation has been more expensive, because I'm more leveraged. When my parents fucked me over, I borrowed what I could on credit cards, bought Bitcoins, and made 1,200% profit. That was a calculated gamble. When I was homeless living in the park, looking for a well paid IT consultancy contract, I was using my creditworthiness to stay alive and get back into lucrative work: that's leverage. The peaks and troughs of my debt and my solvency are erratic and stressful, but you'd be a fool to bet against me.

Obviously, the idea is to link two lucrative contracts back to back, or have one last long enough to give me a financial cushion to at last be safe from homelessness and destitution. I desperately need a break from these boom and bust cycles. I desperately need a run of good luck.

The luck is not forthcoming, as my 6 month contract has been terminated 2 months early, but I have a little time to rest before the stress and torment of having to find a new job.

If you put all this into the context of relentless depression, suicidal thoughts, threat of homelessness, bankruptcy, destitution, reputational destruction, and everything else that threatens to consume me, I'm surprised I'm still standing.

All I know is that I'm able to just about make a swap for my mental health and sense of wellbeing, for a chance at financial security. It's a calculated gamble.

Tags: #suicide #depression #mentalhealth #bipolar #career

This is a story about prescriptions...

Are you underemployed? Are you unchallenged? Are you jaded? Are you disillusioned? Is your existence meaningless? Are you lacking purpose, goal? Are your ambitions, creativity, ingenuity and resourcefulness being thwarted? Are the prime years of your life draining away, washed into the gutter?

I want to write 3 times a day, at least.

I need to write 3 times a day.

I get to work, nearly an hour late. I have a quick 10-minute call with my team. Then, I have nothing to do until lunchtime. If anything is going wrong I try and fix it, but my whole job is to try and steer the ship strategically so we don't ever get into trouble. I'd love it if a big crisis kicked off, but I've managed things effectively, so everything runs itself with little drama. Sensible, but boring.

So, I need to write something in the morning to get me through to my mid-day break.

I take a 2-hour lunch. I get away from my desk and go and read a book somewhere. Sometimes I sit in the park. Sometimes I sit by the river. I'm only supposed to take an hour for lunch, but who's going to question it when my team are so far ahead of the project deadlines and the client is happy?

Then, I need to write something in the afternoon to get me through to home time.

I stay on top of any queries. I'm watching like a hawk in case there's anything I need to deal with. One strategy that I've employed in the past is to let things build up and build up until there's an artificial crisis that I've created, and then I deal with the backlog in a flurry of activity. Through this strategy of putting things off I made a depressing discovery: most 'work' is unnecessary and can be forgotten about. Nobody's going to die if the crap that I do doesn't get done.

When I get home, I have pent-up frustration that I haven't been productive. My energy and enthusiasm for completing tangible tasks with meaningful output, has been completely unmet during office hours.

Sometimes I draw. Sometimes I make music. Sometimes I make a video.

What I really want to be doing is writing. There's nothing nicer than relaxing on my sofa with my laptop, brain-dumping. I have so much to say, and there's so little time. Words come flooding out of me. There's no shortage of things I want to write about. Researching what I want to write about means that there is even more to write about. Research sets off a chain reaction. The number of topics that I'm passionately interested in grows exponentially.

When I get home, I take off my suit and hang it up. I put on my civilian clothes. I relax, but I'm still not quite in a relaxed mood. It's not like I want to go out for a run, or to go out drinking or dancing. I'm not quite able to shake off the shackles of the rat race, despite the fact that the last thing I would ever think about doing is flipping open my work laptop or giving my project a moment's further thought.

My thoughts revolve torturously around "how am I going to get up and do it all over again tomorrow?".

Drawing, music composition, video editing... these things require a considerable amount of effort. Writing is something I'm compelled to do. Freedom of expression is important, and I've allowed myself to be completely free to write, when time allows. I do not self-censor. The only people whose identity I'm careful to protect are my friends. The only people whose feelings I consider are those who care whether I live & breathe. It's remarkably liberating, not caring if some mean judgemental family member takes offence. It's terrifying thinking that every word I write could make me unemployable, but so exhilarating to thumb your nose at a job you have total contempt for.

A simplistic analysis might conclude that I have transferred my 'addictive personality' to writing, but doesn't our society applaud the workaholic? The serial entrepreneur who puts him or herself through enormous stress is lauded as a captain of industry, an engine for growth, a valued member of the economic community. Whatever I do, I'm unlikely to approach it half-heartedly. If I'm going to work a job and make money, I'm going to work as hard as I can, and make as much money as possible. If I write, I'm going to write until my fingers bleed and I have to be prised away from the keyboard.

Society applauds my bipolarity. Not so much the depression, but the fact that I can achieve 'overnight success' during my hypomania means that I have no shortage of achievements in my portfolio. My shrewd opportunism means that cash windfalls have always carried me through the inevitable crash in my mood.

In fact, the whole working world is structured to celebrate the person who does the heroic big push to meet the deadlines. The steady eddies who just quietly get on with their work, have nothing remarkable to help them to stand out from the crowd. Even the idea of working at the level of intensity that we do in academia and employment, is destabilising. Cramming for exams, dealing with unrealistic workloads, and then collapsing during the holidays, barely recovering before the next painful bout of work or study. Who cares if your nerves are frazzled, as long as you're getting the "A" grades, right?

The project I'm working on is being cancelled, because it's failing. My team is way ahead of the deadline and our part is the big success of the project, but the other 7 teams have failed. It's a big mess. An expensive white elephant. A big embarrassment for the consultancy and the end client.

My attitude has been completely different to the projects I have worked on in the past. Normally, I don't care what my official role & responsibilities are. Normally, I go and find the biggest fire and try to help put that out.

I decided to adopt the attitude of focussing only on my responsibilities. I decided that I would concentrate on the job that I'd been originally been asked to do. I didn't go looking for trouble. I didn't tread on anybody's toes.

The net result is that I have happy bosses who are overjoyed with my work and I'm getting a good reference, but the overall project is a failure. Whether or not I would have been able to make a contribution to the success of the wider project is debatable, but I do have a track record of helping to turn around late or failing projects. I've made a habit of running into the burning building when all others are fleeing for their lives.

It's so bizarre and surreal that I've spent 4 months keeping a low profile, writing, doing as little as possible, and I'm far more appreciated than when I was working 14 hours a day, 6 days a week.

I used to get rung up routinely every weekend, to run conference bridges and orchestrate things on the failing project I worked on before this one. When shit was hitting the fan, I was there rolling up my sleeves and at least trying to be a calm head, even though I obviously claim no credit for the hard work of my colleagues.

That previous project ended with me finding out my security pass and access to email had suddenly been revoked and I was persona non grata with the senior management team who had previously been begging me for my help.

This current project is finishing with the work that my team have produced being lauded as some kind of 'jewel in the crown'. I'm being hailed as some kind of amazing manager, when in truth all I've done is sit unobtrusively in the corner of the office and write my blog.

I'm certainly one of the highest paid writers that you're ever likely to meet, but yet I was hired to run a software project, not to write.

For all those people who say "art is just a hobby" you're wrong. I spend the bulk of my time and effort writing, and being an IT consultant running a software project has been a little side project for me.

People walk up to my desk to ask me a question, and I quickly minimise what I'm doing. I then give the first answer that pops into my head. My whole body language seems to suggest that I'm very busy and my time is precious, so there isn't really a culture of lengthy discussions and debate in my team. It might sound horribly autocratic, but it certainly seems to get the software built and my team report a high level of job satisfaction. There is actually a great level of teamwork and mutual support in my team. The language we use with each other is very positive and complementary. We spend time applauding each other's efforts and celebrating our achievements.

So, I'm torn. Clearly I'm doing something right. It just feels so wrong.

Imposter syndrome means doubting your skills and abilities. I feel like a double imposter, because not only do people tell me I'm doing a good job, but I know that I spend most of my time writing my blog.

Things are coming to a head even more in my final week. My team are pulling together pieces of work that I asked them to do as part of a strategic plan, and it's working. In the final analysis we will finish up with a piece of software that's amazing quality and yet neatly packaged up to be thrown in the garbage. My team will all go off to new projects, knowing how to follow industry best practices and having seen them successfully implemented.

So many things in software get hopelessly botched: Agile project management, test-driven development, code quality, technical debt, continuous integration, release management, production stability, automated regression testing and intuitive user interfaces. Even for me, it's felt like a dream to see that some of these things can be achieved in a corporate environment.

My usual attitude of agreeing with bosses - "yeah yeah yeah" - and then just doing things the way I was going to do them anyway is unchanged. The only difference this time is that I've used my spare capacity to work on a personal project - this blog - instead of trying to think about the wider project.

It's quite exhausting - faking it, looking busy, watching out for anybody who might look over my shoulder - while also attempting to alleviate the boredom and fight the uncomfortable feeling of knowing that you're being unproductive, wasting time.

On the face of it, it looks like a good prescription for stability, financial success. I've turned up to work every day. I got paid every week. What more could you want?

However, how sustainable is it really, to live such a lie?

Tags: #bipolar #career #agile #writing

This is a story about coping strategies...

The jury is out: do I have a medical problem, or don't I? It's so hard to control the variables in somebody's life, that it's almost impossible to know how circumstances are affecting your mental health.

One thing's for certain: psychoactive medications are extremely hard to stop taking once you've been taking them for a few months or years.

There's a simplistic view of addiction that says that the easiest way to not become a drug addict is to not take drugs in the first place. The simplistic view of addiction says that the easiest way to quit drugs is to simply stop taking them.

By extension, the same is true of psychiatric medication. The easiest way to not become dependent on medication for your sense of wellbeing is to not start taking the medication in the first place. The easiest way to live a happy drug-free life is to stop taking all drugs, including psychoactive medication.

This simplistic view ignores three things:

1. How shitty was your life before you were driven to drugs or medication?
2. When you stop taking drugs or medication, how shitty is withdrawal?
3. How shitty will your life be when you're no longer taking drugs and medication?

If the answer to 1 & 3 is the same, then it's your life that's shit and nothing has changed. If your life is shit you're a dumbass for thinking about things as a medical problem. However, how many of us really has the opportunity to improve their life.

Many of us will feel duty-bound to stay near family members, because we are responsible for caregiving. It makes sense to stay near friends and in an area you're familiar with. Moving somewhere new, making new friends, being far away from family - these things are hard.

Huge numbers of people can barely miss more than one or two paycheques before they're in financial trouble. The need to work whatever shitty job we can get is the thing that dominates our shitty lives.

The welfare state is a myth. It can take months or even years before government support is forthcoming, and it's a one-way street. Once you're finally in the benefits system, it's hard to leave. If you work more than 16 hours a week, you can end up putting your home at risk, therefore there's no opportunity to work your way out of poverty.

Point 2 is extremely important.

Quitting benzodiazepines or alcohol can mean weeks of anxiety, insomnia, restlessness, indescribably horrible dread. However, it's doable, and I've done it. It's not easy, but it's not impossible.

Quitting opiates will leave you feeling sick and in pain. I've not had to go through junk sickness, but plenty of people do it 'cold turkey'. It's not life threatening at least, unlike benzos and alcohol.

Quitting stimulants will leave you tired, cloudy-minded, depressed, suicidal even. Quitting stimulants is hard because of the cravings, which some people might mistakenly mis-label 'psychological'. Is hunger psychological? If you reckon you could starve yourself for a month, and overcome those hunger pangs, by all means go ahead and belittle stimulant withdrawal as purely psychological.

From what I can tell, withdrawal from antidepressants and anxiety drugs is worst of all. Have you heard of "brain zaps"? Almost all antidepressant users who've been taking those medications for months or years will complain of absolutely intolerable withdrawal symptoms when they try to reduce their dose or stop taking the drugs altogether. Brain zaps are described as "imbalance, tremors, vertigo, dizziness, and electric-shock-like experiences" in what is being called antidepressant discontinuation syndrome.

You know what? I don't really like the sound of that. Antidepressant discontinuation syndrome sounds a lot worse than any drug withdrawal that I've ever been through, and you know what else? The easiest way to avoid withdrawal is to not take the drugs in the first place.

Sure, it's appealing the idea of taking drugs. "Take this... it'll make you feel good" is what the drug dealers and the doctors say. I desperately want to feel OK. Depression is a shitbag. Being suicidal is dangerous. However, I'm not prepared to have some medically sanctioned addiction to some drugs that are really hard to quit.

And so, I'm limping by on as little alcohol as I can get away with, but I'm still drinking too much and it's making me fat.

Alcohol is undoubtedly a terrible drug. I can see how much my health is suffering, just by the belly fat that's suddenly appeared in the last 4 months. I'm drinking myself to death.

However, I needed to put some money in the bank.

I work, I eat, I sleep, I drink, I moan about it on this blog. It's a financially successful formula. Even if I spent £20 a day on alcohol, just to struggle through, I'm going to finish this contract in a remarkably better financial position than when I started.

I've started to wean myself off the booze using a little diazepam. Tapering off the diazepam will be hard, but in less than a week my horrible contract will be over and I can allow my moods to self-regulate again. I'm imagining that I'm going to sleep for 12 to 14 hours a day. I'm imagining that I'm going to close the curtains and just hide under the duvet for a week or two... maybe even three.

If you think I'm over-sharing. If you think I'm whining about my job, my situation, too much... look at it this way: it's a healthy coping strategy, a cry for help and also a suicide note.

Anybody who says "get a therapist" or "go see your doctor" is just naïve. There aren't magic healers out there who can cure the fundamental problem: bullshit jobs.

In 2008 I quit one bullshit job, tried another, found it was exactly the same, so I became a technology entrepreneur. From 2008 through 2011, my depression was 'cured'. If I felt shitty, I just stayed in bed. Yes, my mood was up and down, but at least my life was liveable and I was healthy and happy overall. 2012 & 2013 were wrecked by divorce. 2014 & 2015 I was trapped back into the rat race. It wasn't even that bad at Barclays and HSBC, but they didn't let me reach escape velocity.

This year, I've suffered in silence, in the interests of maximising my earning potential and hopefully gaining freedom again, but I've damn well got a right to complain about it because it's killing me.

Therapy is a joke. What the hell is one hour a week going to achieve? Been there, done that.

Our antidepressant culture is fucked up. What? I'm supposed to dope myself up so that I can be an uncomplaining rodent in the rat race? Fuck that. I'm not depressed. I'm allergic to capitalism.

Yes, there are huge financial and societal pressures for me to medicate myself into blissed-out stupidity, so I can sit at my desk grinning. I'm not going to do that. It's morally outrageous that the only way to live in this society that we've built, is by drugging our workforce.

If I end up martyred in protest at the madness of the situation, it will have been worth it.

Tags: #depression #suicide #drugs #addiction #career #mentalhealth