This is a story about wanting to feel better...

My mood viciously see-saws between two poles at the moment. Thursday night and Friday night were delightful. Monday morning and Friday morning were abysmal. Sometimes I feel like I have boundless energy and enthusiasm, and other times I just want to curl up and die. I feel weirdly mixed up - both manically high and suicidally low at the same time. I think I'm experiencing what's known as a "mixed state".

Not wanting to get too bound up in navel gazing and examining every minute change in my mood, I'm not going to write too much today. It's the same old stuff that's bothering me - a job that's boring and isolating, and a lifestyle that's unsettled and exhausting. In a few hours I have to get on a train, travel to the other side of the country and then check into yet another AirBnb that I've never been to before: The bedroom will be different; the bathroom will be different; there will be different noises that go bump in the night, waking me up. My life has very little stability and consistency.

I desperately want to reach for substances that will make me feel better. I'd love to pop some pills - like the California Rocket Fuel pictured above - in order to feel more happiness than sadness, but it would be highly likely to push me into out-and-out mania. I really want to quit my job and hide under the duvet for a month or two, but I can't afford to do that.

By the end of February, I'll have run out of money again. I'm burning lots of money on expenses, and I only get paid 61 days after having done my work, because of a strange contractual arrangement. Big outlay and big risk - I'm spending money I don't have in the hope of recouping it in future, which leaves me with nothing but stress.

It seems worthwhile to continue to work through February, even though it's making me sick. If I can finish the month, then I'll have a big paycheque at the start of March and another at the end of March, which will make me solvent again. If I quit now, I'll almost be worse of than if I hadn't bothered. It feels like I've achieved nothing.

My mood is desperately low, but at least my thoughts have turned away from suicide, and instead I think about running away to a hot country, or just stopping work and refusing to get out of bed.

I'm carrying some extra weight from Christmas. I'm unfit. My skin is pale and pasty. I'm still having to carefully budget, lest I run out of money before I complete my contract - my finances are still in a pretty dire situation. I wonder where the reward is for not killing myself. I wonder when - if ever - I'm going to feel glad that I'm alive.

My life is not entirely bleak, and I have brief moments where I'm really happy. There are things I look forward to occasionally. However, it's pretty misery-making that the pressures on me - career and financial - are taking me away from the things I care about, and the things that are good for my mental health. Circumstances demand that I continue to suffer long train journeys, lonely hotel rooms and a bullshit job that's pure torture.

I'm trying to vent and whinge and complain and moan like crazy, in the hope that it'll help me to limp along until the end of the month. I keep telling myself "it's only another X weeks" and counting down the hours, minutes and seconds, but it's pretty unbearable.

I wonder to myself if I should start drinking coffee again. I wonder if there's some kind of pill or powder I can get my hands on that will give me some relief from the dreadful depression. I wonder if there's some way I can earn money and retain my sanity, because the present situation is killing me.

I'm going to stop writing now, because I'm just making myself more miserable. There's nothing more to say. There's nothing that can really be done. I know what I have to do, and I know how much I hate it and how sick it's making me, but I've got to do it.

Tags: #career #depression #bipolar

This is a story about the hands of time...

I have a breadcrumb trail of images that allow me to retrace my steps and understand where I've come from and attempt to estimate whether I'm spiralling downwards or slowly recovering. If I look through my photo library at the images and videos that I captured exactly one year ago, there are three strange videos that I recorded, which clearly indicate that I'd had a major relapse. Three days later both my kidneys had failed, my left leg had ballooned to twice its normal size due to DVT and my blood was toxic enough to kill me at any moment.

Every year for the past four, I've had a Jinxed January. It's true that depression, hypomania and addiction have reared their ugly heads year-round, but January is a particularly awful time. I cured the November wobbles by writing novels. I cured the December wobbles by cutting my toxic parents out of my life. The next problem I've got is how to solve Jinxed January.

My present strategy is to shackle myself to my desk, doing a job that I absolutely hate and is completely incompatible with my mental health. If I can survive this January without doing anything stupid and self-sabotaging, I should have the wind behind me and a downhill stretch of road to help me coast into the spring. The odds will be increasingly in my favour as the days get longer and the weather improves.

I'm emerging from the fog of addiction, intoxicating medications and copious quantities of alcohol. It was impossible for me to really comprehend how bad things had gotten, while I had so much toxic crap in my body. I'd lost all perspective and ability to perceive reality. I struggle to relate to a lot of what I've written in the last few years, because that person who was under the influence of such vast quantities of drink and drugs feels like somebody else. I can read my own words, I can see the distress and I can remember the things that were driving my thoughts and emotions at the time, but not everything in my world was entirely real and grounded in reality. I'm not seeking to distance myself from the things that my body did - including saying and writing things - but it's a little bit hard to imagine that it was me. If you want to get obsessive about blame and responsibility, then f**k you, buddy... go read somebody else's blog you tiresome bore.

Of course, I feel very bad about the way I treated - for example - my lovely girlfriend who gave me a wonderful Christmas with her family, cared for me when I was in hospital, and was extremely nonjudgemental and understanding when addiction got its hooks back in me. I didn't treat her well in the end. I regret it and I'm sorry. I did that. I'm to blame. I'm responsible.

However, in the context of unpicking everything, I can see that there are repeating patterns and things that trigger other things - cause and effect are very complicated to understand. To fully understand the likely consequences and plan ahead, like playing a thousand simultaneous games of chess against grandmasters, is a completely unreasonable and unrealistic thing to expect of me.

Searching back through my photo archives, I can see that I obtained a prescription for an antidepressant - bupropion - shortly before one relapse. I can see that I obtained another - California rocket fuel - shortly before an episode of hypomania where I broke up with the aforementioned brilliant girlfriend. In fact, whenever I seek chemical relief from depression, that's usually an indication of a desire to feel better at any costs, having suffered weeks and months of suicidal thoughts. Am I to blame for seeking relief from my intolerable feelings of depression?

Scanning through my library of images, I can see how I become obsessive over sleeping tablets and tranquillisers, as I rely upon the pills in order to cope with dreadfully stressful situations, which would send even the least-anxiety prone amongst us running screaming in the opposite direction from the source of the stress.

This time last year I was about to start work doing yet more IT consultancy for yet another bank. I was not incredibly enamoured at the prospect, but I needed the money. Circumstances conspired to force me back into an unhealthy environment.

Sadly, I'm not rich enough to do whatever I want, and I'm not even financially comfortable enough to do something tolerable - I've got to do the thing which pays the bills, and that's IT consultancy for banks, unfortunately. It's a fact of life that sometimes we have to do things we don't like very much.

So, I've avoided the antidepressants this time, because they always seem to send me loopy. I'm white-knuckling it to the end of Jinxed January, because I just need to get through this god-awful month, come hell or high water. I'm constantly reminding myself that even to dabble with so-called recreational drugs or get mixed up with girls in a big way, is likely to be destabilising. I live like a monk - work, eat, sleep, repeat.

Because of the extraordinary quantity of benzodiazepines I was abusing, I have huge holes in my memory. It feels like such a short time ago that I was hooked up to my own dedicated dialysis machine, on a high dependency ward. It feels like only yesterday that I regained consciousness with a machine breathing for me in intensive care. I managed a spectacularly terrible sum total of just 11 weeks at work in 2017, and virtually all the rest was pure insanity. I spent about 7 weeks in hospital, so with that 11 versus 7 ratio, you can see that my year was pretty messed up.

This year is brutally drug-free and medication-free. My brain screams in agony at the unbearable levels of depression and anxiety, but I've seen that to reach for any kind of substance for relief is opening the flood gates to fully-blown addiction. I'll convince myself that whatever chemical I'm using to feel better is not effective, and I need to take more, more, MORE! Before I know it, I'll be back on the supercrack.

It might seem obvious to an outside observer that my cyclical life is due to bipolar disorder, and I should rush to my psychiatrist and beg to be given mood stabilisers immediately. However, those who superficially observe me would remark that I'm very stable: I get up, shower, get dressed, have breakfast, go to my job, spend my evening watching TV and writing and get eight hours sleep. To the casual observer, I seem like the most functional and stable person who you could possibly hope to ever meet.

The reality of my existence is one of continuous battle with depression, anxiety and a craving to spectacularly self-sabotage with addiction. Getting out of bed in the morning and overcoming debilitating anxiety are comparatively easy, having built up the mental strength to overcome the urge to take one of the most addictive substances known to man. I'm not meaning to compete with those who find their lifes to be completely unliveable due to depression and anxiety, but merely to say that I've found it easier to overcome things which would have kept me bed-bound, after having been through what I've been through. Every cell of my body screams in protest at the bullshit I'm putting myself through at the moment. Every bit of my brain yells in agony at the daily punishment I suffer, but what does an extra bit of suffering matter compared with the endless comedowns and drug withdrawals I've been through?

As I look back on the last year, I realise I've been through opiate withdrawal from tramadol, codeine and dihydrocodeine; through benzodiazepine withdrawal from diazepam and alprazolam; through stimulant withdrawal from crystal meth and supercrack; through withdrawal from pregabalin and alcohol; through withdrawal from sleeping tablets like zopiclone and zolpidem. In terms of detoxes, I've had the detox from hell. In terms of quitting addictive medications, I'm a Guinness World Record holder. I really do deserve a medal.

As I look back on the last year, I realise I've been through so many health issues, housing issues, financial issues, legal issues, employment issues, relationship issues and everything else that would wreck your head and rob you of your sense of stability, comfort, contentedness and happiness. I'm surprised I'm not sleeping in a cardboard box, just to escape the clutches of a society that wants its pound of flesh at any costs. I'm exhausted by the constant stress of it all.

If I make it through Jinxed January, I have little to look forward to. There's nothing jump for joy about. Anybody who tells you you'll feel better if you quit the booze and the drugs and the pills is a fucking idiot. Anybody who tells you that you'll have improved self-esteem and all the other good stuff, if you get yourself off the streets and into a job, is a fucking idiot. I'm an extremely rare example of a judge, policeman and a social worker's wet dream - a bankrupt homeless mentally ill junkie who's got themselves scrubbed down and gone back to civilised society, but I've got to tell you in no uncertain terms that it's awful and I hate it. My life is a living hell.

Perhaps this is the ultimate comedown. Perhaps all the chickens are eventually coming home to roost. Perhaps this is the payback, given that I somehow miraculously avoided prison, a criminal record, bankruptcy and permanent health damage. Perhaps I'm finally paying the price for all that partying.

But, I haven't been partying. It's not like I haven't paid the price every time I fucked up. It's not like I haven't tried hard to do the all the right things and contribute to society. It's not like I've robbed, and manipulated and been a parasite on society. I've already paid for my transgressions. Where's the reward for getting myself sorted out? Why did I bother?

As I look back, I have rose-tinted glasses. As I look forward, I see the world through a blue filter. The past wasn't so bad and the future looks bleak. Perhaps this is the final stage of recovery from addiction, when my memory of the horrors of the past is becoming faded and I fondly reminisce about the few moments that were OK in all that insanity. It was certainly an easier life, to be on a rocket-ride to hell.

I try to look back and remind myself just how bad things were, but I find myself smiling and laughing in a way that I just don't when I think about the eight hours I spent going through hell at my desk today. In my mind, I perceive the present unpleasantness as far greater than anything else I've been through in the last year. That's strange, isn't it? To have suffered multiple organ failure, loss of my home, loss of my job, a suicide attempt, incarceration, getting sectioned, psych wards, addiction, loss of my girlfriend and all the other atrocious things that I went through in the last year, and the very worst thing is my current working arrangements.

Obviously, I think that my perceptions must be warped by my state of semi-recovery from addiction and other mental health problems, but I don't think it explains everything. There is something awful about being all alone in an AirBnb, working a job I hate because it's boring, easy and doesn't bring me into contact with a single soul... it's so lonely and isolating.

I'm churning words out into the ether, because I'm in such discomfort and I'm so afraid.

It's strange that I'm not afraid of ending up back in hospital, isn't it?

Tags: #addiction #recovery #mentalhealth #depression #bipolar #medication #career

This is a story about quick fixes...

January is traditionally jinxed for me. I haven't had a problem-free January for many years. I seem to be stuck in a never-ending cycle of recovery and disaster. So far, this January has not been a complete disaster but we're only just over halfway through.

The thing that's causing me most distress at the moment is my job. I'm very lonely and isolated. I don't have anybody to talk to or any real reason to interact with anybody in the company. I've got my list of deliverables and I just have to sit down and churn out the results - easy, huh?

I really don't think my job is my problem. Although my job doesn't give me much of what I need except for money, it's not a bad job. My job is not aligned with my values or my personality and it provides no distraction from my crisis, but it's an OK job. My job doesn't motivate me to get up and go to work, but whose does? When I've thought that my job is causing me problems in the past, I quit, only to find that I didn't realise how good I had it until after I left.

I think the problem lies elsewhere.

I'm certainly unfulfilled at the moment. I have very little scope to influence my day, my week, my month or my year - it all looks like a solid unrewarding slog to get nowhere. All I'm doing is my easy job that I can do with my eyes closed, in order to get money to pay off debts. That's hardly a reason to jump for joy, is it?

So, is it that my expectations are unrealistic? We can't all be bouncy castle testers or cake tasters. We can't all be puppy dog strokers and lifestyle bloggers. Somebody's got to scrub the toilets and empty the bins.

2017 might have been unhealthy but it was certainly action-packed. There are no surprises in my day-to-day existence. If this year is going to be considered healthy and productive then I need to turn down the dial from 11 to somewhere around 3 or 4. Last year was off the charts insane. However, how am I supposed to find any motivation when 2018 is going to be one of the dullest on record? I thrive on adrenalin.

I thought about the two things that would get me out of bed today. The first was the complete self-sabotage of my life with a drug binge that would be likely to kill me and destroy everything I hold dear. The second was the purchase of a deadly poison with the intention of killing myself. They're pretty much the same thing, aren't they?

I've been signalling my suicidal intent for a long time now. I've written this blog since 2015. I've been sending up distress flares. I've been sounding the alarm. I've been yelling at the top of my lungs. What the hell am I playing at? Why don't I crack on and do it already?

When I made my most serious suicide attempt I was probably at my most unstable. I was taking a potent mix of benzodiazepines and sleeping pills in combination with copious amounts of alcohol and prescription painkillers. I had destabilised myself with sleep deprivation, recreational drugs and a toxic relationship, living in a city I'd never been to before, with no friends or family nearby, and working an incredibly stressful high-pressure job. I'd just escaped from certain homelessness, bankruptcy and being sued into oblivion by my landlord and creditors. It was an unstable time.

Now, I'm possibly at my most stable. I have the support of friends. I don't have the pressure of high monthly rent and bills. I have a job. I've quit all the medications and drugs, and cut my drinking right down. It's been months since I did something utterly insane.

So, why do I keep having suicidal thoughts? Why am I so depressed that I can't go to work?

I definitely feel very trapped. I'm trapped into making the smart choice, which is to travel hours away from my home to stay in depressingly shit AirBnBs in crap parts of London, and go to a job that pays fabulously well but is incredibly stressful and isolating. It's heaps of pressure on me with not a lot of excitement. I know exactly what I need to do and how I'm going to do it, but I know that it's going to bring unbearable levels of anxiety. I'm just counting down the hours, minutes and seconds until I'm free.

I feel like I'm holding my breath. I feel like my lungs are burning and my eyes are bulging and my throat is gulping, but I can't suck air into my lungs. I know that it makes sense, rationally, to hold my breath like this, but life must go on even though my situation is thoroughly incompatible with my mental health.

I'd love to quit my job and think about what's next, but I know I'll regret it. I know that my life is in danger by putting myself in such a horrible situation, but I know that the longer that I do it, the more glad I will be in future. Pain now for future gain. Pay now, benefit later.

So I vent: I whine and I whinge and I complain. I try to get out all the negative stuff that's threatening to sink me. If I sound bitter and cynical and hate-filled, it's because I'm trying to dump out all the emotions that could destroy me. It isn't working though.

I've had three days off work and I feel incredibly guilty. What the hell am I doing turning down well-paid work? What the hell am I doing bunking off?

What the hell am I doing putting myself in a situation that's exacerbating my suicidal thoughts to dangerous levels?

It seems patently obvious that I should go back home, to where I have the love and support of my friends and I plan to make a long-term life for myself. It seems absurd to put myself through so much suffering. It's plain to see that I need to find some work that's compatible with a liveable life, doesn't it?

I'm aware, however, that the combination of the stress of a new job and Christmas, combined with the depression and superstition that Jinxed January always brings, would drive me to suicidal depths. Everything looks awful when you're at the bottom of a very deep hole. I could so easily throw away a perfectly decent opportunity, just because I'm so sick that I want to curl up in a ball and die. I really don't think the job's the problem - it's my mental health, although the two are somewhat related.

Yes, I'd love to retrain as a juggler or an ice sculpter, but that'll bring a whole raft of other problems. Better to concentrate on problems I know I can solve.

I remain resolutely committed to my chosen path. When you're going through hell, keep going etc. etc.

Tags: #depression #suicide

This is a story about escaping...

I just realised that I couldn't tell you anything about how these wines tasted. I drank them without savouring the smell and the flavour. I drank all these bottles of wine on my own and I can't remember a thing about them. If I had to choose which one I enjoyed the most, I wouldn't be able to - I didn't drink them for enjoyment. I drank them to get drunk.

When I took a sip from my glass last night, I still had a very bad hangover from the night before. The wine tasted sour and unpleasant. I had been in two minds about drinking anyway, but something prompted me to drink - I think it was anxiety about fast approaching Monday morning and returning to the office; another agonising week doing a job I hate. There was anxiety about my financial situation too. I had run out of money and spent my final £10 on wine and a cheeseburger. I was skint.

Alcohol has become liquid diazepam for me. Alcohol is a very poor substitute for benzodiazepines though. At least with benzos you don't have dreadful hangovers. At least with benzos, you don't get a fat tummy from all the excess calories. At least with benzos, it's possible to be very precise with a dose. Benzos slotted pretty easily into my everyday life, in a way that alcohol doesn't. I would take a benzo to go to sleep, and another to be able to get up and go to work. I was functional on benzos. Alcohol is unhealthy. Alcohol is not going to lead anywhere except becoming unfit, overweight and suffering from various alcoholism-related illnesses. Taking my tranquillisers in pill form is far more preferable to having to guzzle gallons of booze.

Why would I be getting so intoxicated anyway? Surely my life is wonderful?

There's a little bit of loneliness and boredom. I'm working away from home and living in a hotel. There's nothing much to do except drink. I was running out of money, so it's not like I could go out and do things. Also, did I mention I was running out of money? When you know that you're running out of money, it's really stressful. Stress means that you can't relax and you can't sleep. Constant anxiety is a terrible thing. When you're running out of money, anxiety is constant. When you're not sleeping, anxiety is with you all night long, tormenting you. There are no easy solutions to my problems, but money's a good start. If you don't have any money, you might as well just get drunk.

"How do you afford to get so drunk if you've got no money?"

Well, it's about priorities. The six bottles of wine pictured above probably cost me about £42. How much would I spend on gym membership? How much would I spend on a night out seeing friends? How much would I spend wooing a girl? It's not possible to simply not exist, and still earn money. Earning money requires existence - nobody pays you unless you're in the right place at the right time. The only way to get me into a shitty situation that I hate - living out of a suitcase and working a job that makes me sick - is to oil me up with a load of booze or tip a packet of pills down my throat. It's completely necessary to have booze when I'm doing something that's otherwise incompatible with my mental health.

Thus, we arrive at my central theme: drinking myself sober. The route to sobriety does not just include abstinence. The route to sobriety also needs to include things that are compatible with life. Modern life requires money. The way to get money is to do a job that you hate. The more you hate your job, the more you'll get paid. I REALLY HATE my job, so they pay me LOADS AND LOADS of money.

I finally got paid today.

Now I have money but I also have a big booze habit. I was pissed out of my mind the whole of Christmas and New Year, because I really didn't want to go back. I'm quite an articulate fellow but I really struggle to quite convey just how unhappy my particular line of work makes me.

"Retrain! Be a famous pop singer! Drive Formula One cars! Be an astronaut! Be a professional footballer!" I hear you shout.

Yes, but there are economic fundamentals at play in the capitalist bullshit society we all live in. It makes far more sense for me to be paid absolutely bucketloads of cash, and suffer a very great deal, than to be paid absolute peanuts and suffer loads anyway for different reasons.

I got paid today.

An alcohol habit, I can deal with, I think. When I had a massive problem with sleeping pills and tranquillisers and painkillers, life was a different story. There was no way that I was going to be able to quickly and easily cut down my addiction to prescription medications. I was actually physically dependent on benzos to the point where I would have seizures and possibly die if I stopped taking them abruptly. I was trapped. Now I'm not trapped. I have a booze habit - I drink more than I want to - but it's manageable. I don't drink spirits. I don't drink every day. I don't drink in the morning. I don't get pissed at work. It's a much better situation than when I had such a bad benzo addiction that I was on diazepam around-the-clock.

Sleep is one of the reasons why I've historically had a problem with booze and benzos. Zopiclone is called a nonbenzodiazepine, but it's still a benzo. Zopiclone is addictive. I used to have a few glasses of red wine to help me sleep. When I discovered zopiclone it became my drug of choice for helping me to sleep. I took it for most of 2017.

Now, I'm doing all the right things for sleep. I practice good sleep hygiene. Lowering the lights, avoiding strong blue light, having breakfast, completely avoiding caffeine, having 5-HTP (a precursor to melatonin) and magnesium supplements. All of these things make a difference. I get a little exercise too.

But, on the flip side, when you stop taking diazepam, alprazolam, zopiclone, zolpidem, pregabalin, mirtazepine, lamotrogine and a whole heap of other sedative/hypnotic/tranquilising/sleeping-pill type drugs, you get a horrible amount of rebound anxiety and insomnia. Words can barely express how horrible it is to live with a constant gnawing sense of dread, doom and dismay. I'm not talking about a few nerves that can be waved away with bloody breathing exercises or yoga. I'm talking about living for 24 hours a day with the unshakable sensation that you're about to die. It's not something that's going to be fixed by your quack snake-oil cures, because it has a biochemical origin. What goes up must come down. If you take heaps of pills, they're really really hard to stop taking and you'll feel awful when you do stop taking the medication.

So, I've been self-medicating for the combined anxiety of running out of money, having to start a new job, doing work that I absolutely loathe and that makes me sick, having to live away from friends and family in a lonely isolating environment and not having any bloody money to spend to make it bearable, while withdrawing from bucketloads of addictive medications. I think £42 for six bottles of wine is a bloody bargain, when you consider that this unhealthy coping mechanism has actually helped me to cope. I've done it. I've bloody done it. I worked and I got paid - that wouldn't have been possible without chemical crutches to prop me up.

Hurrah for alcohol. Better the devil you know. It should be straightforward to now reduce my alcohol intake to healthier levels. Some moderate alcohol consumption is actually desirable. I can't imagine living on this shitty overcrowded rainy island, without wine and beer to drink. I can't imagine anything worse than living life completely sober.

Of course, there's a risk that I swing the other way, and my drinking worsens. There's a risk that I'll reach for the harder stuff - which I've never touched a drop of in my life. There's a risk that I'll lose control.

At the moment, I'm really chuffed with where I'm at with my addiction to substances. To have quit all those dangerously addictive drugs, and now be left with a very negligible habit is quite impressive. What does a couple of glasses of wine matter?

The next challenge is to try to stay off the zopiclone and taper off the tiny amount of pregabalin that I've been relying on. It's taken longer and it's been much harder than I thought it would be. I'm amazed just how terrible I still feel, as I reduce my dose of all the pills I was addicted to to almost zero. It's amazing just how much of a strong hold on my mind those pills had. I'd reach for those pills to go to sleep, and I'd reach for those pills just to cope with hideously horrible stressful shit, that made my life unbearably filled with anxiety. Now, I occasionally have some red wine. That's not bad is it?

I really can't decide which way to go at the moment. I'm not going to drink tonight, but I've had to take 50mg of pregabalin to be able to cope with anxiety. I shouldn't be stressed - I finally got paid - but it's going to take a little while for me to re-adjust to the new circumstances. I've been living with the threat of bankruptcy hanging over me for so long, I can't quite believe I dodged that bullet.

I'm not sure if anybody who's followed my turbulent ups and downs can detect any improvement or change from where I was at when I was under the influence of enough medications to tranquillise an elephant. It's really hard to gauge in myself whether I'm any different at all. Am I able to better perceive reality? Am I communicating with more clarity? Am I getting better? It's impossible for me to judge.

One thing that should be noted is that my decision to reduce and quit a whole host of highly addictive medications, alcohol and other substances, was my own. I also don't think I could have quit everything if I was forced to go cold turkey and quit abruptly. In fact, it would quite literally have killed me to do so - you can't just stop when you're physically dependent on substances. Alcohol, for all its faults, is at least available as a ubiquitous form of self-medication. If I'd had to rely on doctors to give me what I needed, I'd never have been able to get through such a torturous period of re-adjustment. It's inhumane to not offer any kind of substitute prescribing or realistic tapering of doses, to help people escape from the trap of addiction.

Yes, I laughed at the amount of effort that junkies will go to in order to get a tiny bit more methadone or subutex, but that's the point - you do you. You know what you can take and you go at the pace that means you succeed. You know what you need and you should damn well get it. Anything other than this is going to be doomed to failure, and cause undue suffering.

I've suffered and it's been hard. It's still hard. But, I got through something really tough and I still have the comfort of knowing there's a bottle of wine waiting for me in the off licence down the road if everything gets thoroughly unbearable. Hurrah for red wine.

Tags: #addiction #alcohol

This is a story about sequels...

Two years ago, I was experimenting with my blog. I thought it would be profound to write a public suicide note, record a video and go jump off the Golden Gate Bridge. I thought I would get sacked from my job and illustrate how the stress would push me into acts of extremism. I decided to sleep rough close to the skyscraper I had been working in. I thought I was going to starve myself for 25 days and spend Christmas Day in a tent. I thought I was going to kill myself by going on hunger strike.

For 25 days I wrote an advent calendar type series of blog posts. The whole thing was leading up to the punchline: boxing day. Really, what I was doing was building up to the revelation of the truth: that I'd had problems with addiction. It was a big admission. It took a lot of courage to be honest.

Why did it take me so long to acknowledge my problems with addiction?

Generally, addicts don't get a very favourable hearing. Addicts are amongst the most stigmatised people on the planet. If you're looking for a sympathetic non-judgemental ear, it's probably best if you don't mention any addiction problems you've had until somebody's got to know you.

So, people had to get to know me.

My friends, family and work colleagues knew me. Those people who've gotten to know me have seen that I'm an OK person. I'm not a monster.

But am I a monster?

It's surprising how little it takes for us to question everything we ever knew about a person. Sometimes, there's a revelation about a person that can completely shake our perceptions of them. Suddenly, it's as if a person we knew well is a stranger to us, and not just any stranger: a horrible nasty stranger who's going to rob us and kill our children and eat them. Everybody knows that addicts leave a trail of HIV-infected needles lying around everywhere they go, especially in areas where children play. Everybody knows that addicts enjoy nothing more than random acts of killing. Also, if you discover that somebody's had problems with addiction, you can pretty much forget everything you ever knew about them.

Hang on a second though.

How quickly can you completely re-evaluate an entire person and decide that they're a completely worthless hopeless junkie, who'd rob you without a moment's hesitation in order to score their next fix? How long does it take to write somebody off completely and dismiss everything you ever knew about them? Why are junkies just so damn easy to hate and what happened to the person you used to know?

While there are some very unfortunate people whose morals will be corrupted by their addiction, that's not the case for most addicts. Not every addict is a liar, a cheat, a thief and somebody who would recklessly endanger the lives of your precious children. Not every addict is flakey, unreliable, untrustworthy, unscrupulous and immoral. Not every addict is worthless, hopeless and doomed to forever seek and take drugs. Not every addict is a menace to society, and should be treated like a leper: shunned from work, friends, family and all the other things that give us a functional life. Not every addict should be marginalised and demonised.

Of course, I write with a vested interest. I don't want to be mistreated. I don't want the stigma attached to me.

So, why don't I share my stories of addiction anonymously? Why don't I join Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous and Cocaine Anonymous and Crystal Meth Anonymous, and while I'm at it Gambling Addicts Anonymous and Sex Addicts Anonymous? Why don't I keep quiet and just pretend like I'm normal? I don't even take drugs.

Nobody thinks that gambling addicts inject packs of cards, so why is it that when you think of me - an addict - you immediately imagine dirty needles? Where did the OK Nick that you used to know go? Why did you eject the pleasant memories you had of me, and replace them with an imagined version of me, where I was mugging grannies for their life savings?

It's necessary for me to concentrate on the prequel to my story, in order to receive a fair hearing. I need to explain that adverse childhood experiences, an abusive relationship, stress, burnout and mental health problems, all created a fertile environment in which to grow a substance abuse problem. I need to explain that my mood instability - bipolar - predisposed me to reckless sensation seeking, such as substance abuse. I need to explain that my motivation was self-medication, not getting high. I sought relief from symptoms, not enjoyment. I was trapped and I needed a way out. I chose the wrong one. I made a mistake.

We might take a quick glance at a situation and utter the words "why don't they just...?". Why don't they just what? Leave their abusive partner? Stop moping around and get out of bed? Stop taking drugs? Move somewhere else? Sort themselves out?

When you're secure and happy, everything looks pretty easy. All people have gotta do is get a house, a job, a sexual partner, friends, hobbies and interests, a loving family, a supportive environment, a healthy lifestyle, coping mechanisms, substantial financial resources and favourable socioeconomic conditions. That's it. That's all. Just get on and do it!

For some, remaining addicted is not about the ongoing want for drugs, it's actually slow suicide.

That last point is worth re-iterating. One of the reasons why some people won't stop taking drugs, is because they don't want to live anymore. They literally don't care if they die. I would say that most addicts are very well aware that their addictions are going to kill them, but they carry on anyway - they're committing suicide, slowly.

Looking at teens and twentysomethings who smoke, we might see that there's a general belief that "it'll never happen to me". In our youth, we tend to believe we're pretty indestructible. By that same token, we might assume that a drug addict believes that they'll be one of the lucky ones, who addiction will spare. I don't think that's the case.

As an addict, it quickly becomes apparent that control has been lost and you're on collision course with health problems and early death. Repeatedly, the addict will have extremely aversive experiences which scream loud and clear that the path of addiction is going to lead to death and destruction. Do you think every lecture about what an addict is doing to themselves falls on deaf ears?

Equally, do you think that addicts just don't care? Do they want to die?

Committing suicide - including addiction - is not about wanting to die. Suicide is driven by hopelessness and inescapable awful feelings. If life only has pain and misery to offer, why wouldn't a person choose early death? If building any kind of liveable tolerable life is an insurmountable task, what hope is there? Who'd want to spend the rest of their life miserable, depressed, anxious and in pain?

It's easy to say "keep putting one foot in front of the other" or "take things one day at a time" because you don't have to live through that misery. It's easy to ask somebody else to tolerate the intolerable, because it's not you who has to suffer: it's them. Eventually, a person can conclude that there aren't going to be any good days, or that the few pleasant times don't outweigh the multitudinous bad times. On balance, one might conclude, life's not worth living.

When you've made that decision that life's not worth living, it's pretty hard to find any reason to not have that next hit of drugs, even when the drugs are killing you.

I write to you today clean, sober and with no intention of obtaining and taking drugs.

However, I think it's highly likely that I will take drugs again, both recreationally and abusively. The number of protective factors - friends, family, work, money - have increased, but my life is still very badly broken. There are innumerable things that predispose me to relapsing onto drugs, and on the flip side there is a huge list of things I've got to fix or get in my life in order to have enough on the other side of the scales to balance things out. I look to the year ahead: what do I have look forward to other than hard work, living out of a suitcase, paying off debts and otherwise scrimping and saving? I'm sorry, but I'm not exactly thrilled by the prospect of living off sandwiches that I've made in a hotel room, spreading the mustard with a shoehorn.

But, perhaps also there's a desperate desire to self-sabotage because life was simpler as an addict. Even the synthetic cannabinoids have enough of an attractive intoxication for addicts to jettison the stress and strain of paying rent and bills, and having to hold down a job, in favour of homelessness. The bureaucratic burden of civilised society is wearisome and ridiculous. The form-filling and pointless makework of bullshit jobs is absurd. It's not just about the drugs - it's also about dropping out.

You'd think that dropping out would be a terrible thing. You'd think that the shame of the loss of status would be unbearable, but it's liberating. You know that you have to work hard to keep up your mortgage or rent payments. You live in constant fear of losing your job, which would quickly lead to eviction. When you become homeless, it's a relief - a thing you feared the most has happened, and it's not as bad as you thought it would be; somehow you manage to cope.

I'm averse to the idea of a miserable dead-end McJob. I'm averse to the idea of spending any more time stressed out of my mind, helping my boss get richer; helping my landlord get richer. I'm averse to the idea that the peanuts that most people get paid, in any way compensates them for giving up the prime years of their lives. I don't see that society is working well for most people. I see that stress, anxiety, depression and other mental health problems are rife. I see that suicide is the biggest killer of the group of people who are our most productive members of society. That's not fair.

So, I need to find a middle way. I need to find a way that's not suicide, not drug addiction, but it's not a miserable dead-end job either. I refuse to get a bullshit job that pays peanuts. I'd rather die.

At the moment, I'm clean from drugs and I'm working a very well paid job. I'm learning stuff. It's stressful, but it's not boring. I'm increasing my value - my employability - as well as doing a good job. It feels fair.

I'm starting 2018 at a considerable disadvantage. I'm deeply in debt. I don't have a girlfriend. I don't rent or own a home. Why bother?

It's been 6 months since I had an addiction. I'm clean. Why would I even write about addiction? I've won, haven't I?

In fact, addiction is always there: a dependable companion. Very little effort is involved in resuming an addiction. Addiction will always be everything you expected it to be. Addiction never disappoints. Conversely, a happy functional life with all the components necessary to make it work, is very very far out of reach; almost unattainable. You might think that because I'm only 6 months away from putting a lot of the pieces in place, that it'd be easy. 6 months is no time at all, right? In fact, 6 months without all the things you take for granted, might as well be a billion years. It's never going to happen. Try getting in a bath filled with ice cubes. Try holding your hand over a naked flame. What you perceive as quick and easy is not quick and easy when you're in pain.

My present situation might look infinitely preferable to my life as an addict, but it's not. Addiction could last me forever - until the day I die - but what I have today is only temporary; it's fake. I can't stay where I am forever. My contract will come to an end and I'll have to find another job. I'll need to rent or buy a place to live. I need to keep moving around: 3 and a half hours on the train, one-way, and moving from hotel to hotel, AirBnB to AirBnB... always moving on. I'm tired, even though it looks like I should be well rested. I'm stressed, even if it looks like things are going in the right direction.

Addiction's there as a one-stop-shop. Addiction means that I can stop pedalling so damn fast. Addiction means relief. Addiction means there's an end in sight. I'd be a liar if I didn't admit that when I'm alone with my thoughts, I don't immediately think that addiction is infinitely preferable to the mountainous task ahead, to merely build a mediocre life of disappointment and depression; boredom and bullshit.

Going cold turkey doesn't prove anything.

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

This is a story about cyclical patterns...

In 2014 I was homeless and addicted to drugs. I got myself a job at a bank, got myself a place to live and paid off all my debts. Then, I lost my contract. I went to a shop in Soho and bought two packets of a legal high powder and proceeded to undo all my hard work. Within a matter of weeks, I was back on the supercrack.

In 2015 I was homeless and addicted to drugs. I got myself a job at a bank, got myself a place to live and paid off all my debts. Then, I lost my contract. I went online and bought two packets of legal high powder and two packets of legal benzodiazepine tablets. Within a month, I was back on the supercrack.

In 2016 I had a lovely apartment. I was clean all summer. I went on holiday. I met an amazing girl who I was totally in love with. I wrote my first novel. I had a brilliant Christmas with my girlfriend and her family. Then, I got myself a job at a bank. My left leg swelled up to twice the size of the right leg, both my kidneys failed, I was put on emergency dialysis and I had to be admitted to hospital for a couple of weeks, on a high dependency ward. Then, I lost my contract. Within a fortnight I was back on the supercrack.

In 2017 I had a lovely apartment. I took supercrack. I tried to quit the supercrack. I got depressed. I tricked my doctor into giving me California rocket fuel - a combination of venlafaxine and mirtazepine antidepressants. I went hypomanic and split up with my amazing girlfriend. I bought enough supercrack to last me two years. I went insane with stimulant psychosis and was thoroughly beastly towards my amazing girlfriend. I ran out of money. I moved to Manchester. I got another girlfriend. We broke up. I tried to kill myself. I spent a couple of days with a machine breathing for me in intensive care. I got sectioned and got locked up on a secure psych ward. I moved to Wales. I wrote 42,000 words of my second novel. I got myself a job at a bank. There isn't enough time left in 2017 to get back on the supercrack. I'm worried I'm going to relapse in January. I haven't lost my contract yet.

If we dip into each year a little bit more closely, 2014 was a really dreadful one. I was an inpatient for about 14 weeks. I lived in a bush in Kensington Palace Gardens and slept rough on Hampstead Heath. I was in two rehabs. I lived in a 14-bed hostel dorm, but that was actually one of the highlights. I abused a lot of benzodiazepines and amphetamines, as well as the supercrack. I got in trouble with the police. Twice.

2015 looks tame by comparison. Although I abused stimulants and 'downers', I had a couple of visits to a lovely family in Ireland, who looked after me. Strangely, it was working 12 hour days and working 7 days a week that exhausted me and tipped me into hypomania. I spent a week suicidal on a psych ward then suddenly decided to fly to San Francisco. I went straight to the Golden Gate Bridge, which I had contemplated jumping off. I was sober for 120 consecutive days. I deliberately got my contract terminated, because I had ethical objections to what the bank I was working for was doing. I started blogging.

2016 is unusual - perhaps there is no easy pattern we can spot - because I got myself clean and into work much earlier than I'd managed in previous years. I worked a whole contract - notably not for a bank - without going mad and getting sacked. I got a good reference and my team were really pleased with the way I ran the project. My life was quite stable. However, I was a sneaky bastard. I was using supercrack and benzos in secret, and lying to my amazing girlfriend to cover up my drug abuse.

2017 was off the charts. I've never been so sick. I've never been so close to death. For the first half of the year I had binge after binge after binge. I abused opiates, sleeping pills, tranquillisers, club drugs and stimulants. My drug abuse was definitely going to kill me. I had a physical dependency on benzodiazepines that looked impossible to cure - how was I going to escape from the death trap? I decided I couldn't escape, so I took a massive overdose. The hospital gave me a 50:50 chance of pulling through.

I'm worried that I'm repeating old patterns of behaviour. I always go back to the banks when I need money, because they pay so well and it's the quickest way of digging myself out of debt. I'm living out of a suitcase, moving from AirBnB to AirBnB. It's exhausting and stressful: factors that tipped me into hypomanic insanity back in 2015.

What is unusual is that I'm going into the New Year with a contract in place: I have my job and it's going well. I'm starting 2018 with money on the way, as opposed to the fear of bankruptcy and eviction. I'm going into next year with far fewer stresses than I've had for a very long time. Perhaps it's good that there aren't even any girls in the picture at the moment. Love and sex always have a bit of a destabilising effect on me.

Writing this summary of my hit-and-miss boom-and-bust crazy life, I wonder if I'm doomed to forever repeat the pattern.

One thing that's notably different this year is living with a family. I care about them. I imagine what it'd be like if the kids asked "where's Nick?" and the answer was that I was dead, or as good as dead because I'd relapsed onto supercrack.

This year, I quit supercrack, tramadol, codeine, dihydrocodeine, diazepam (Valium), alprazolam (Xanax), zolpidem (Ambien), zopiclone and pregabalin. I was prescribed venlafaxine, mirtazepine and lamotrogine, but I don't take any of them now. I had 30 consecutive sober days during October. In fact, I was sober from more or less the start of September to early November. My brain has been completely drug-addled at times, but I'm clean as a whistle at the moment - I'm unmedicated and I'm not taking any mind-altering substances. I don't drink caffeinated beverages.

I'd like to tell you that I feel wonderful, but I don't. I have a cold. It's winter. Winter is shit.

You might look at all the times I've tripped up and conclude that I'm bound to trip up again. However, you might look at all the things I've fixed and conclude that I'm pretty good at fixing up my life when it's fucked. All I've got to do is bring together all the different elements: friends and family, work and home, money and rest and relaxation, stability and exercise and hopes and dreams, love and romance and sex. Easy, right?

If you're wondering what my drug of choice is, and thinking that it's supercrack, you're wrong. Look more closely at the picture at the top of this blog post. What's that thing in-between my legs? It's not my male member, it's a wine glass.

With closer examination of my entire adult life, we can see that alcohol features heavily. In fact my latest job came about as a result of being friends with a lovely guy who's an alcoholic. We spent a week getting pissed, when I was supposed to be finding my feet with the new job. Somehow, I've managed to drink my way through a very successful career. Without booze I'm somewhat out of kilter. Without booze, how would I self-medicate for my mood fluctuations?

Yes, without booze, my bipolar disposition rages out of control. I work too hard. I take everything too seriously. I fly off the handle.

I'm not genuinely suggesting that booze is harmless or the cure of all ills, but it's been such a big component of my adult life that I don't really know how to cope without it. How would I have survived the recent stresses and strains of a 2,500 mile round-trip, to go and gather money from the latest bank I'm working for, without alcohol? How would I square away my deep unhappiness with the work I do, with the need to earn money, if it wasn't for drowning my sorrows? Alcohol might be a terrible solution, but it's the one I've got and I know it works.

Is it lunchtime yet? I'm not an alcoholic, because I don't drink in the morning. I just make sure I lie in bed until it's after midday.

Tags: #drugs #alcohol #addiction #mentalhealth #bipolar #career #banking

This is a story about living out of a suitcase...

This is my life now. Spreading mustard and mayonaise onto long-life bread with a shoehorn, placing sweaty pre-cut cheese squares in-between the slices and chowing down on a hotel-room made sandwich, while swigging from a can of strong European lager. This is the life of a business traveller who can't really afford the expenses - I'm faking it until I make it. I'd be sleeping in my car... if I had a car.

It'd be fairly easy to look back on the journey that started with near-certainty that I was going to get sued for non-payment of rent, whilst also being evicted... of course, I had no money. I still don't have any money. I have negative money. I have negative negative LOTS OF DEBT MONEY. When I get paid, things won't be so bad. When I've been paid for a few months, things will look positively rosy. "That wasn't so bad" you'll say. You're wrong. It was bad.

Things are often a lot easier said than done.

A lot of the experiences in my life have been awful at the time, but later on I've been able to laugh about the dire straits I was in. In fact, the only way I've been able to come to terms with some ridiculous stuff I've been through is to tell my hair-raising tales of near-death experiences and destruction to the world. You might think that I glorify events of the past, or wear bad stuff as a badge of honour. That's not true, but what am I supposed to do with all those negative experiences? Am I supposed to walk around with a glum face and tell everybody how terrible I am? Am I only alive to serve as a living reminder to people that they shouldn't make bad choices like I did?

Choices.

Yes. Do you really believe in free will? I imagine that you believe in Santa Claus too. There's no free will. Our choices are always heavily biased. We're cornered and coerced. Would I have gone back to IT consulting for an investment bank in London if I wasn't flat broke? Am I making free will choices, or am I just doing what I've got to do to survive?

Survival.

My version of survival probably looks pretty ridiculous to you. The kind of money that's going to be coming my way soon is pretty obscene - banks pay very well. So, does that mean that I'm not surviving? Am I actually completely fine and dandy? I'm just making a fuss about nothing, right? In fact, if you saw the numbers, you might be angered; you might conclude that I've been fine all along... nothing to worry about and never in any danger.

A friend often challenges me on why I would keep myself on the endangered species list. Why would I continue to advertise my distress? Surely I'm safe and secure now. Well, how long ago was it that I was made homeless, jobless, having some dealings with the police, locked up on a psych ward and facing certain bankruptcy with mountainous debts?

So, I got a job. I worked that job. I did a good job. Money is on the way now. Case closed?

Actually, can you imagine how stressful it was to have to hit the ground running and pretend like I've got my shit together all of a sudden? Just because I'm pretty damn good at acting like I'm a cool customer and I can handle anything that life throws at me, the reality is that my inner monologue goes pretty much like this: "shit! shit! shit! everything's on fire! everything's too hard! it'll never work! everything's ruined and it'll never be fixed! it's too hard! I can't do it!".

Of course, a lot of people find new countries, new cities, new jobs, new work colleagues, new offices, new challenges, new accommodation and the stress of the unfamiliarity of circumstances, to make them very anxious. I'm not the only one who feels stressed and anxious when taken out of my comfort zone. I'm not the first person ever to have butterflies in their tummy about a new job.

Ha ha.

If only it was just a new job. Try plucking homeless unemployed bankrupt drug addicts who are known to the police, up from locked psych wards, giving them a scrub down, putting them in a suit and plonking them at a desk in another country. See how many times that works out for you.

To top it all off, there is the ever-present danger - and there still is - that I'll run out of money before that first payment lands in my bank account. If you think it's just a case of budgeting you're an idiot. You can't budget if the numbers just don't add up - sometimes there just isn't enough money to pay for everything. Sometimes, you can't afford to go to work, because you can't afford to get there. Catch 22.

If you think that I'm not a representative example, you're right. Most people will fall at one of the many hurdles. Most people would find themselves marginalised and excluded and blacklisted and without a hope of ever recovering their poise; hope of ever returning to normal life. You're right. I'm not most people. I'm not special though. I'm not different.

I cashed in one of my "get out of jail free" cards. I don't have any aces left up my sleeve. I've called in pretty much every favour. I had help, of course. People don't survive without help.

Arguably I wasn't a very worthy cause to help. Arguably, I'm arrogant and ungrateful; I credit myself where no credit is due - surely the situation I find myself in today is entirely thanks to other people, and I'm just a passenger... I've been gifted everything I've got from generous people; I haven't worked a day in my life.

To a large extent, I agree that luck and other people's generosity are the main factors in my life. So what? Would you prefer me dead?

Of course, I question my utility; I question the value of my productive output. I'm not rescuing children from burning orphanages after all, am I? Isn't it about time that I built a school in Africa or distributed food and clean water in some war-torn area flooded with refugees? With all my software development expertise, why haven't I created an app that cures cancer, or programmed a supercomputer to find the solution to world hunger? Isn't it about time that I stopped being so pleased with myself and did something to help other people? Isn't it high time that I stopped being so selfish and self-centred?

Easier said than done.

Take a look around. OK so your friend Sharon did a fun run that raised a lot of money for spastics, but she went on and on about it A LOT, going on about how fucking amazing she is for having done that, didn't she? Those 30 minutes that she spent puffing and panting, running around the school sports field hasn't changed anything has it? Did that rock concert that you went to succeed in ending poverty? That's right... you were really philanthropic, by going to see those bands play. How wonderful of you.

So many of us say "I'd like to do more, but I'm struggling myself". It's true, people really are struggling to find the time and the money to get through ordinary life, let alone perform selfless self-sacrificing philanthropic amazing acts of charity. There isn't a culture of helping each other. We mainly eye each other up suspiciously: are our peers getting more money than us? Why does SHE have a bigger house than me? Why are THEY getting a new car this year?

It's pretty easy to take a superficial glance at a person and say "WHY ARE YOU JUST SITTING THERE? GET UP AND DO SOMETHING". We've got all the solutions to other people's problems, haven't we? Isn't it the easiest thing in the world, solving other people's problems? If only people would listen, right?

I am thinking about changing my alarmist "suicide note" blog title to simply read this: addict.

I want people to stigmatise me. I want people to jump to the wrong conclusions. I want everybody who thinks they've got an easy answer to come forward and 'save' me from myself. "Have you tried not taking drugs?" being one amazing suggestion that I'd never thought of before.

I've failed to wean myself off sleeping pills. I've failed to stay off the pregabalin - painkillers - that I worked so hard to quit. I started drinking again, and I've been drinking a whole bottle of wine every night. I'm an addict, even though you might take a lazy glance at my life and conclude that I'm perfectly fine.

As I journey back to Wales for a Christmas break, having completed a nervy few weeks back at work, you could be forgiven for thinking that my life's back on track. Talking to me, you'd think that I've overcome all those obstacles that would normally cause a person to stumble and trip - a mentally ill homeless junkie bankrupt known-to-the-police type person. You'd be forgiven for thinking I'm normal. You'd be forgiven for thinking I'm just like you.

I am normal.

I am an addict.

Surely this is cognitive dissonance. Addicts aren't normal, right? Well, how's about this one: I don't even abuse substances. Why on earth would I label myself as an addict? Surely I've won? Surely I've broken free from everything that threatened to destroy me? Why would I want to publicly wear the most awful label that we can give to a person?

I'm not going to write a world-changing app. If apps had the capacity to change the world for the better, they'd have done it. I'm not going to start a world-changing charity. If charity had the capacity to change the world for the better, it'd have succeeded.

So am I giving up?

Am I putting on my oxygen mask before helping others?

The answer is neither. I'm not doing either of those things. I neither accept that the world's fucked and there's nothing I can do about it, nor do I believe that I have to help myself before helping others. It's true that my situation was unbearable, and it will continue to be unbearable for some time. I'm going through some awful stuff, even if you think my life is blessed and I live a charmed existence.

There's a family in Wales who've helped me. They've seen me during periods when it appears to them like I'm not helping myself. They've torn their hair out with frustration that I've been stubborn at times, when there's been obvious solutions that have been right there, just waiting for me to reach out and grab them. The whole world's problems could be solved overnight if only people would listen, right? Simple. Things are really simple, right?

The asceticism of my life - making my own sandwiches in a hotel room - seems like an obvious solution to a problem to you. No knife to spread the mayonaise on the bread? No worries, here's another solution for you...

However, if you have to actually live with a person while they go through the millions of trials and tribulations in their life, then you start to get a sense that things are not as simple as they appear at first. The case of getting my passport back from a bank in Manchester being a particularly illustrative example.

I'm about to spend Christmas in the bosom of a loving family, living on a gorgeous farm in the Welsh countryside. Of course, things aren't all about me. Christmas is about family; it's about giving, not receiving. How must this family feel though?: they've succeeded. They've nursed me back to health. Money is on the way. I'm back in the saddle, aren't I?

January.

January is my nemesis. Of course, I'm not the only person on planet earth to feel down in January. Of course, we all have winter blues and credit card bills hitting the doormat in January. Great. Let's just see how things go, shall we? I'll be back to living out of a suitcase in January.

Tags: #family #addiction #mentalhealth

This is a story about editing...

I decided to re-read my first novel. It surprised me just how well it starts - I was prepared to cringe with embarrassment at something that had not stood the test of time well, but it was OK. Later in the book, I fumbled with a couple of things - perhaps I was hurriedly bashing out a chapter, without a clear plan of how the scene should unfold. Towards the end of the book, there was a glaring error that was due purely to a lack of research: I had been a little lazy. The ending tried very hard to be enigmatic, but I imagine that it would have been confusing for many readers, and a little underwhelming.

Wouldn't it be arrogant to assume that I would be able to sit down one day and pen a good novel? Of course my first full-length story was going to be a learning exercise, and I was going to make mistakes. All I had was the first scene, the general plot outline and a twist - I had no idea how I was going to end the story. Writing dialogue is not something I'd done a lot of, so I had to develop that skill as I went along. I would spend quite a long time trying to remember what I had and hadn't told the reader, so that I wouldn't contradict myself or spoil the surprises I had planned. As a learning exercise, it was brilliant.

As November 1st approaches, I'm getting increasingly excited about starting my second novel. My first book explored an individual, and the other characters were purely set dressing in a story which was about loneliness and isolation. My second book will study relationships; societies - my mind buzzes with ideas, because there's so much scope to play around with multiple actors in my new story.

The opening scene is very important, to set the tone for the rest of the story I'm telling. I keep adding little bits to the image I'm creating in my mind - it's so much more than an image. I think about the textures, the mood, the sounds and importantly, the smells. I want to make the book as much an olfactory experience as is possible to do without having to impregnate the pages with scratch-n-sniff chemicals.

It seems amateurish to break the fourth wall, and to be 'so meta' as to talk directly to you, the reader, about the process of writing a work of fiction. To have hijacked my blog to talk about my next book project, is an indication of just how overexcited I am about writing another novel, such that I can't quite contain myself. I'm terribly afraid that I'll be suddenly overwhelmed by the challenge when I start on Wednesday - the blank page in front of me will intimidate me, and I will be afraid to make the first mark.

As I did last year, I plan on publishing my first draft live, as I go along. I'm thinking that I might publish on medium.com this year, so that I'm sharing a popular writing platform with other authors who are partaking in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo 2017).

Many publishers will tell you to shove your manuscript up your arse, if you are foolish enough to tell them that you wrote it during NaNoWriMo. There's quite a glut of crappy unedited manuscripts that gather in the inboxes of literary agents, during December. Like people who join a gym straight after the Christmas holiday season, as a New Year's resolution, those fat unfit faces soon disappear as the year wears on. I know that if have serious intentions of becoming a bestselling author, I will need to become a better editor.

Like I did last year, I'm inviting edits, improvements and suggestions, as the new novel emerges from the depths of my imagination. It was immensely pleasurable, to have my friends trying to guess what was going to happen next, and to be then able to gauge whether the pace that I was telling the story was too fast, too slow, and whether the twist in my tale was too obvious or not.

I had a wonderful girlfriend and her incredibly supportive family, egging me on to complete my book last year. This year, I'm living with friends on a lovely peaceful farm in the Welsh countryside - the kind of environment which would leave most aspiring authors green with envy.

Completing the project - 53,000 words - was the name of the game last year. To actually finish a novel is very hard - many budding writers won't have the discipline to keep up the word count. The initial excitement and energy can quickly dissipate, to be replaced by a sense of dread, when one thinks about returning to the neglected manuscript. This is the brilliance of NaNoWriMo, which encourages you to finish the project within the month of November, and then worry about going back and editing the damn thing. As a completer-finisher, it suits my personality perfectly: what point is there in an unfinished book? Perfectionism will get you nowhere, if you never get to the point of publishing.

Tomorrow I have boring chores to do and I will write an ordinary blog post, which is a deliberate demarkation between "Nick the blogger" and "Nick the novelist". I'm thinking that I'm going to pause my blog, partly because I want to divert my readers to my draft manuscript, and partly because I don't think that I can context-switch between storytelling mode, and blogging mode.

I'm afraid to lose the comfort of writing my blog. I'm afraid that I'm going to fail. However, it's a really exciting time: I'm like a kid before Christmas.

The working title for my next novel is High Dependency.

Tags: #writing #nanowrimo

This is a story about life on the farm...

Yesterday, I was too depressed to get out of bed. Being awake was horrible - I tried to doze for as long as I could. I was irrationally afraid of having to get up for some reason; on edge that there might come a knock at the door. My friends make me feel incredibly welcome, and I would always have somebody to talk to if I was feeling lonely and desperate, but I also feel like I should demonstrate my willingness to help wherever I can.

Today, it's been sunny and mild; very good weather for the time of year. Hiding under the duvet doesn't feel so bad when it's grey skies and raining, but I feel guilty about wasting the day when it's nice outside. Nice weather can paradoxically make me feel even more depressed.

I'm naturally a restless, anxious and fidgety person. "Where am I going? What am I achieving?" I continuously ask myself when I'm not consumed by a task; fixated on a mission.

At the beginning of the week, I dragged myself out of bed to go to the seaside. It was a drizzly foggy day, so the picturesque beach wasn't going to yield any nice views, but still, it was an outing. Rain-drenched families trudged through puddles. "Why are all these children not in school?" I asked. Apparently, it's half-term school holiday time in England - not so in Wales.

This jarring disparity; this acute difference between what consumes my thoughts, and what most other people are concerned with, is being well highlighted in my current environ. I was cut off from the world in my London apartment. It was wonderful to have the space & time to think & write, but I was very far removed from the day-to-day reality that most of humanity experiences. In the past few weeks, I've been reminded about school-runs, commuting to work and long days in the office, car maintenance, housing, pets, children, cooking and cleaning, although I can claim absolutely zero personal involvement in the running of these affairs - I'm an idle observer; a tourist.

Of course I worry that I'm lazy; worry that I'm mooching; worry that I'm a leech; a parasite.

"Yes, we'd all like to be a thinker; a writer; an artist; an intellectual; a professional layabout" I imagine people saying. "Your art is just a hobby... get a job" is what I imagine people are thinking. I feel guilty for not producing anything more tangible than the words on this page.

I started to get a little stressed about November, when I plan to write my second novel. "How am I going to find the time to write?" I wondered to myself, which must sound a little ridiculous to you. Why am I even writing anyway, when I'm not overtly commercialising my creative output?

There's something more socially acceptable about saying "I'm sorry, I need to write my book" as opposed to just "I'm sorry, I need to lie in bed feeling incredibly anxious and depressed". I wonder if more people would have breakdowns and refuse to go to their stressful and boring jobs, if it wasn't so stigmatised. Wouldn't we all love to just spend all day with our children, and not get out of our pyjamas? Why can't we skip breakfast and have cereal instead of a cooked meal, and completely reject the demands of society?

I feel immense guilt for not having a proper job, spending hours of my life stuck in traffic, being bored to tears by a bullshit job. What's my contribution to society? Why am I allowed to pontificate, when I haven't done my 9 to 5 grind?

I'm not so naïve as to think that the good life doesn't have to be bought and paid for with human misery. For every beautiful countryside cottage set in manicured gardens, nestled in lush green countryside, there is also an immense amount of suffering that's gone into delivering that dream. The children who wait 5 minutes, staring at a single marshmallow on the table in front of them, will receive two marshmallows as a reward for their patience. Those same patient children will shed tears when they are packed off to boarding school, but it'll all be for a good reason one day.

Are we even supposed to be so patient; so tolerant of intolerable cruelty? Are we any happier for all that homework? Are we any happier when we get "A" grades and go on to get a fancy job, miles and miles away from our home and our family? Are two marshmallows sweeter than one?

I feel like the cuckoo in the nest: I'm no genetic relation of the lovely family who I'm living with. Why do I get to enjoy the comfort of a farmhouse straight from the pages of Country Living magazine? What's my contribution to the household? What's my contribution to humanity?

Extrapolating, I can easily imagine that I will have produced my second novel in a little over a month from now, but I will have very little else to show for my time, not to mention the food and energy that I will have consumed. To say that I have been working on restabilising my mental health and attempting to rediscover my reason(s) for living, feels a little untrue given the trajectory of my mood. To turn a blind eye to my very real concerns about the difficulty of obtaining paid employment during the Christmas & New Year period, seems short-sighted - November will be over in the blink of an eye.

Throwing a ball for the dog in the garden, sucking in lungfuls of clean fresh air that's blown inland straight from the Atlantic Ocean, my physical health is undoubtedly improving. I'm seeing an aspect of existence that I'd long forgotten, trapped in a polluted concrete jungle, and surrounded by the seething masses in densely overpopulated cities. This life is so much healthier and happier than the rat race, but I can't afford it - it feels as if I'm enjoying a retirement I haven't paid for.

Perhaps you imagine that my time is free for the pursuit of leisure. Perhaps it is. If so, why am I so damn stressed?

Tags: #family #depression #writing

This is a story about missed connections...

Like many people, I have a large collection of digital photos. My library starts in 2005, when a group of friends and I pooled our holiday snaps from a trip to Venezuela. Travel photography is the main thing that featured until my life started getting erratic. I have an increasingly random muddle of photos and screenshots, like a breadcrumb trail leading back to saner and more stable times.

2008 was the beginning of a much more exciting life than I had led before. I quit my investment banking career, developed some iPhone apps, retrained as an electrician, called off my wedding and went back to IT consultancy work. Having lived under the dark storm-cloud of an abusive relationship for far too long, I finally decided I'd had enough and broke up with my fiancée. I made a new group of friends and rebooted my life - as a prescription for depression, that shock treatment worked perfectly.

Fast-forward to 2011 and I knew that my relationship - back together with the girl who my friends call "the poison dwarf" - was destroying my world and ruining my happiness. I spent 3 amazing months in Cambridge and I'd fallen in love with somebody else, but I was too loyal; too faithful; too committed to give up on a failing relationship and go for what I really wanted.

In 2012 I capitulated and tried to follow doctor's orders - I started taking medication - and went back to the life I hated. I returned to the investment bank I'd previously worked for and tried to pretend like I was OK with that. I even got married to "the poison dwarf". I tried my very hardest to put on the boring grey suit and pretend like I was able to work doing the 9 to 5 office routine that I'd done for years and years, but my heart was broken.

I guess I never really got over the fact that I hadn't followed my dreams; followed my heart.

2013 brought the inevitable divorce, which necessitated selling my house and figuring out what to do with all my worldly possessions. In short, I didn't want anything to do with my toxic old life: the place and the things and the pain of everything getting ripped to shreds was just too much to bear. I wanted the whole lot to burn to the ground so I could start over. I wanted a fresh start.

I tried to court that girl from Cambridge who I'd fallen in love with - she liked me too and things were going well. It looked like I was going to break free from the gravity that tried to pull me back into a black hole. Despite me telling "the poison dwarf" that she could take as much as she wanted, she tried to destroy me. She just needed to leave me alone to get on with my new life, but she made the process of divorce into an unbelievably horrible disaster. Despite my attempts to make things quick and painless and give her a big cash settlement, she sabotaged my every effort.

In the midst of the acrimonious divorce, I tried to get away from the worsening British weather and get some rest and relaxation before Christmas. I was going to go to Florida and do some skydiving, and then I was going to go to San Francisco to see my friends in the Bay Area. The house should have been sold; the cash should have been in the bank - it wasn't, because "the poison dwarf" had screwed up the easy house sale that I'd worked so hard to make happen.

I was too sick to take my flight to America.

I think of 2014 as my annus horribilis given that I spent about 11 weeks receiving inpatient treatment, essentially for the problems caused by getting screwed over as a vulnerable person, by my ex-wife. She'd demanded a quick divorce and I'd said "take whatever you want" but then she made it unspeakably awful. After a rotten birthday where I found myself well and truly homeless, I repeated my magic trick of 2008: I got myself back into IT consultancy and made a load of new friends; I flew off to Tenerife with my new girlfriend and went kitesurfing. From the depths of despair and near destruction, I rose up and rebuilt myself.

What happened in 2015, 2016 and 2017, combined a winning formula of highly paid IT consultancy work and my ability to make new friends and rebuild my life, with the sensation-seeking desire to maintain a novel lifestyle: if nothing else, my life has been very exciting for the past few years.

Whereas most people live in fear of tarnishing their professional reputation and losing everything they own and hold dear, I found those things became incredibly cumbersome when I was unwell. To maintain appearances and pretend like everything is just fine, is immensely energy-draining. It's almost driven me insane, worrying about what former work colleagues and bosses think about me; what people know about my chequered past. Far, far, far more than the abuse my body has suffered, and the mental health problems I've been through, the biggest problem in my life has been worrying about people finding out the very things that I've catalogued on the pages of this blog, quite publicly.

We are now approaching a third San Francisco flight that has been booked, but there is a great deal of uncertainty regarding whether I will be going or not. I dearly wish to see an old schoolfriend who was pivotal in raising the alarm on social media, to the fact that I was in the process of killing myself - in essence, he was the last person I spoke to while still alive, telling him that I was sorry I wouldn't be seeing him in November [because I'd be dead].

It fucking horrifies me that the managing director of the company who I was working for at the time - who booked my flights out to San Francisco - was in the process of attempting to terminate my employment while I was on life support in intensive care... because he'd read this on Twitter!

Given that I've stubbornly refused to die, I feel like taking the trip to San Francisco in defiance of the arsehole who didn't care whether I lived or died. That gobsmackingly awful human being deserves to have to see me alive and well, taking a trans-Atlantic flight to go and see an old friend who actually cared about my life.

I feel like I might be calling on you - my social media friends - to help me raise Hell to show that vulnerable people shouldn't get screwed over by unscrupulous arseholes.

So, this is my call to action: I'd like to speak to you and I'd like your support in turning up the heat on people who put personal profit ahead of human lives. I've been wondering what to do with myself, and this feels like an important point; this feels like something symbolic.

Whether it's my ex-wife who literally said "I'd rather be a widow than a divorcee" or my ex-boss who literally fired me for being dead, I want to stand up to these fucking arseholes.

Tags: #career