This is a story about irreversible decisions....

Nearly 400,000 people killed or injured themselves using a gun, in the United States in 2016. That's 1 one 1,000 Americans, who them will shoot themselves each year.

In the United Kingdom, the only way for me to get a gun is to buy one on the dark web. For me to possess a firearm without a license and keep such a weapon without a locked gun cabinet, contravenes many British laws. In short, deadly weapons are outlawed in the United Kingdom and to 'bear arms' could see me imprisoned.

For £8.40 I obtained 112 tramadol capsules, which are contained in the brightly coloured box pictured above. The aggregate weight of the deadly opiate within this box is 5.6 grams. An overdose of tramadol is considered to be anything above 0.4 grams. Therefore, this box contains 14 times the maximum 'safe' dose. Death would be a certainty, if I was to swallow little more than a couple of mouthfuls of this medication.

Perhaps, you are thinking, that I procured this deadly substance through the dark web. In fact, I had been prescribed this pain relief treatment by my doctor, and I had collected three of these boxes quite legally and within my rights as a British citizen.

For £25, I had stockpiled enough pills to end my own life several times over.

In a deal I struck with my psychiatrist, I surrendered two out of three of the boxes that I was entitled to possess. My general practitioner (GP) had authorised a pharmacist to dispense this controlled substance to me... little did they know that I had already weaned myself off these addictive opiates and had amassed a total of 336 capsules, which contained approximately 17 grams of tramadol in total.

For many citizens of the USA, they consider it an inalienable right to own guns. Equally, I reserve the right to end my own life peacefully, painlessly and without undue suffering.

In the UK, people throw themselves under trains or hang themselves. If you are kiled on the railway, the driver of that locomotive will have to live with the recollection of seeing you hurl yourself onto the tracks; somebody will have to collect your body parts, put them into a body bag and take them to a hospital morgue. If you hang yourself, somebody will find your lifeless body suspended by whatever cord you chose to make a noose out of... they will have to cut your lifeless corpse down, and there will be clear evidence that your final moments of life were not at all pleasant for your body: your bowels and bladder may well have been involuntarily emptied and the ligature to your neck will have caused significant trauma.

The smallest amount of blood, semen, faeces or urine, seems to spread out far more than any other substance. A person who has chosen to evacuate the contents of their veins and arteries will be as white as a sheet, and there will be a shocking contrast with the dark red life-giving substance - their blood - that has been deliberately emptied from their body. 

Does it not seem better that if one has to deal with a cadaver, that it should be less physically mutilated? Does it not seem humane that people should die with the most peaceful expression that's possible in the circumstances?

What should I say about the sudden darkness that descended on me yesterday? There's little point in offering fake reassurances that everything's OK. The truth of the matter is that I live life with daily precarity, and with only a few bare bones of a social skeleton around me - seemingly inconsequential events lead to a disproportionate response. "It's not the end end of the world" somebody might say, and they're right, but when you're already close to the tipping point, it doesn't take much for it to be the end of your life.

I've done a zillion things impulsively in my life. None of those rash decisions have led me up a dead-end alleyway, yet.

There's something tantalisingly alluring about swallowing a couple of handfuls of pills and then slipping peacefully into unconsciousness. Even if I was to have seizures before I finally gave up the ghost, I would be completely unaware of my body's struggle to keep itself alive. How wonderful, to have the option to end the suffering on a whim.

To think that I'm being flippant or making light of the final decision that I'd ever make is not true.

One of the reasons I quit drinking a couple of years ago - for 120 consecutive days - is that I was afraid of acting impulsively while intoxicated. It's one thing to wake up with a hangover, thinking "why the fuck did I say/do those things?" but it's quite something else to not wake up at all.

I live with a toxic combination of a high-stress job, financial pressures and limited social support. Beyond Facebook and Twitter. I've retreated into a world of technology. The few close friends that I have are hand-picked because they're loyal and sympathetic towards my circumstances, which - I assure you - are not a result of free-will choices or preplanning. To have a seemingly minor setback might cause irrational behaviour, but so fucking what? Please show me the contract that my brain has signed up to, saying that it will always think rational things.

This blog was supposed to be a short and sweet message of reassurance, after a 'cry for help' yesterday. It was not nice wandering around the city centre for a few hours, hoping that the awful imperative to hurt myself, would pass harmlessly.

Tags: #suicide

This is a story about mass consumption...

"I need to stop drinking so much" I think to myself ridiculously frequently. Alcoholic drinks are very fattening and I'm not doing enough exercise. A combination of a sedentary job, depression and a physical injury, have conspired to give me every possible excuse I need, to spend my spare time in a state of intoxication. Banks grease the wheels of commerce - so we are taught in economic theory - and alcohol is the oily lubricant for every kind of social situation imaginable: births, weddings, celebrations & commiserations. I doubt the United Kingdom would achieve a fraction of its productivity, without the motivation of knowing we can have a beer or a glass of wine, when the working day is done.

It should come as no surprise to you that having lived on the ragged edge my whole live - an adrenalin junkie and extreme sport enthusiast - I would turn every knob and dial up to "11", give it 110% and to take things TO THE MAX, yeah!

The UK's chief medical officer recommends that I drink no more than 140ml of alcohol per week, which is 20ml per day. A conservative estimate for my current alcohol consumption would be 100ml per day, which is 5 times the recommended healthy limit. Each week, instead of drinking 140ml, I am drinking 700ml at least.

I have 3 pints of 4.8% strength beer after work, with my colleagues. An imperial pint is 568ml, and 4.8% of 568ml is 27ml. My daily allowance is 20ml of alcohol, so a single pint of beer already exceeds my daily drinking allowance by 35%. By the time I've drunk all three pints, I've had 82ml out of my weekly allowance of 140ml - 59% gone in a single social outing, and just 41% left for the rest of the week.

I have a bottle of wine at the weekend - a two glasses on Saturday, and a glass with my Sunday lunch. Wine bottles contain 750ml, and wine is around 13% ABV, so therefore that adds up to 98ml more alcohol, on top of the the 82ml I already drank, making a total of 180ml for the week - an excess of 40ml versus my recommended weekly allowance, which is 29% more than I'm supposed to consume.

The reality is that I easily drink two pints of beer or ⅔ of a bottle of wine each day. 14 pints of beer contains 382ml of alcohol. 3.5 litres of wine contains 455ml of alcohol.

Does that make me an alcoholic, you must be wondering.

My psychiatrist accused me of being an alcoholic, to which I replied "pish and fibble; what flabbergasting nonsense". We can do some easy calculations, to work out if I am an alcoholic or not.

Let's take the worst-case scenario where I consume 100ml of alcohol per day. Ethanol is metabolised at a constant rate in the human body. That is to say, the quantity of blood in your alcohol-stream does not follow some kind of exponential decay calculation. Assuming I drink for 4 hours each evening, by around 6am in the morning, I'm completely sober. This means that I'm stone cold sober for 13 hours out of 24, which is 54% of the time. This simple mathematics shows that I'm not an alcoholic, quod erat demonstrandum.

My psychiatrist is clearly not capable of recalling her basic medical training, which would have taught her that alcohol is metabolised by the liver in a completely different way to more complex molecules. Very specific proteins and enzymes are required to chemically decompose inorganic (i.e. invented in a laboratory) medications. We can do a simple test, to again prove whether I'm an alcoholic or not.

Again, taking the worst-case scenario where I consume 100ml of alcohol per day, if I was to abruptly stop drinking alcoholic beverages, we should expect me to exhibit alcohol withdrawal syndrome within a few days of sobriety. Assuming that I suddenly ceased all alcohol consumption, I should - at the very bare minimum - get shaky hands and other physical symptoms that would prove that my body has become physically dependent on alcohol. The fact of the matter is that I can stop drinking for 2 or 3 days, and suffer no ill effects beyond a psychological craving for intoxicating liquor. This simple test, again shows that I'm not alcoholic, QED.

Despite the failings of my highly qualified physician - my psychiatrist - who has specialised in the alteration of brain function through the blunt instruments of psychoactive medications, she unarguably stumbled upon a truth in amidst her lazy and untrue accusations of alcoholism: I do drink too much.

Another definition of an alcoholic or an addict, is somebody whose life is adversely affected by drink or drugs, but who does not respond to the negative consequences in a rational manner. If you put your hand in a fire it hurts, right? So, why would you put your hand in the fire again? The perverse behavioural pattern of continuing to act in a way that is undeniably harmful, has also come to be recognised as another definition of alcoholism and addiction.

One only needs to consider the question "why do people smoke?" to see that there is grey between the lines. Smoking is expensive, makes you smell, stains your teeth and makes your mouth taste unpleasant to any non-smoker whom you kiss [with tongues and stuff] - these are the immediate consequences of smoking tobacco. In the medium term, smoking will give you a revolting phlegmy cough as well as literally burning enough cash to purchase a reasonable quality second-hand motor vehicle, or enjoy several foreign holidays. In the long-term, emphysema and lung cancer will bury smokers in an early grave.

It's oft-quoted that "the liver is the only organ in the human body that can repair itself" but this is patently untrue. Chronic cirrhosis - scarring of the liver - will not heal itself. Conversely, many drug addicts who have overdosed and been declared "brain dead" have gone on to make full recoveries, despite a consensus of medical opinion that life support should be withdrawn. The BBC commissioned Louis Theroux to make a series of documentaries about life in Los Angeles, and the episode entitled "Edge of Life" recorded the 'miraculous' recovery of a man whose brain was deprived of oxygen for at least 12 minutes, which is well beyond the limits of what we believe any human to be able to withstand.

Many of those who have been unfortunate enough to be a victim of a stroke, will go on to recover the ability to speak, walk and recover other functions that were lost as a result of brain injury - this is underpinned by the inherently plastic nature of the brain. Plasticity does not mean 'made of plastic' - it means adaptable to change, including the ability to recover from trauma.

An alcoholic may easily consume a litre of vodka per day - perhaps some 400ml of alcohol - which would equate to 2,800ml of alcohol per week. Given that the recommended weekly intake for a man or woman is just 140ml, alcoholics - of whom there are very many - consume at least 20 times as much alcohol as they should do, according to the UK's top doc.

It seems unsurprising that somebody who drinks to an incredible level of excess - where they are intoxicated from the moment they wake up to the moment they lay their head to rest - should sustain an injury to their liver, rendering the organ irreparably damaged.

This essay does not seek to argue that I would not benefit - in terms of my physical and mental health - by abstaining from alcohol consumption. However, one must be mindful that drinking is endemic in UK culture and to be a non-drinker would impose significant societal pressures and judgements upon me. I have, in the past, been falsely accused of being a "recovering alcoholic" merely for the reason that I chose to be teetotal for a period of over a hundred consecutive days. I decided to be alcohol abstinent for a competitive challenge - one of my best friends had completed a period of 100 days of sobriety. In the end, I beat his sober-streak by 20 days.

If you're concerned about your alcohol consumption, drug habit or the quantity of psychoactive medications that you guzzle into the cavernous hole in your face every day, then you should simply ask yourself this one question:

Are you shovelling more and more mind-altering substances into your body each day, or have you found a steady quantity that satiates your want and need for intoxication?

While you fret about eating a 'balanced' diet and being 'healthy' you forget that for 4,000,000,000 years, organisms - just like us - have had to cope with a world that's too hot, too cold, too acidic, too alkaline, too oxygen rich, too carbon-dioxide rich, too sulphurous, too contaminated with arsenic & other toxins, and generally fucking hostile to anything that we define as 'alive'. Humans inherit all of the many abilities to deal with everything from the icy wastes of the frozen poles to the dry & scorching sandy deserts.

The ubiquity of alcohol represents the antidote to the curse of becoming self-aware; the torment of perceiving our own mortality; the torture of realising that life is fucking bullshit, and we all die alone. If we don't go crazy we'll lose our minds.

I do not seek to dissuade alcoholics from seeking treatment, nor do I encourage anybody to recklessly endanger their health. I would hope that any reader who has been able to follow the thread of my thesis to this point, would be able to see that I'm mounting a robust attack on those who seek to perpetrate alarmist & sensationalistic nonsense, onto a populace who have been harmlessly intoxicating themselves since well before any form of any recorded history.

If you are teetotal, I applaud you and I advise you to maintain your alcohol-free existence, but you probably possesses some characteristics that predispose you towards abstinence, not shared by your brethren who imbibe intoxicating liquor. Please; do not smugly think of yourself as morally superior.

By happy accident, I never addicted myself to nicotine, so I look upon smokers with a detached sense of amazement that tiny quantities of a plant alkaloid - in the order of a grain of salt - can induce antisocial behaviours in those who are in the vice-like grip of nicotine: a chemical compound whose psychoactive properties are formidable. I apply a cool objective reasoning that I am able to enjoy, to other addictions that I do and do not partake in.

It's Friday, and in the time that it has taken me to compose this essay, I have consumed 35% of my weekly alcohol allowance.

Cheers!

Tags: #alcohol

This is a story about changing beyond recognition...

This 25 year old Londoner was hopelessly addicted to kitesurfing, and had secured a job in Bournemouth, where he would work mornings and evenings, leaving his afternoons free to go to the beach. Working for a huge international organisation, he had secured a ludicrously good deal - salary and relocation allowance - and the Human Resources (HR) people who he negotiated with had no idea that the real prize was to be able to kitesurf every day.

Despite being confident and outgoing, he was hiding crushing insecurities about his attractiveness to the opposite sex - a complete lack of self-esteem - and was struggling to find the girl of his dreams, who would be the cherry on top of a lovely cake. Being a hopeless romantic, and pretty inexperienced despite his 25 years on this Earth, he could fall in love at the drop of a hat and be heartbroken when a simple fling didn't turn into anything more serious.

Overcoming his ineptitude with women, he got together with a girl who looked perfect on paper and she was a pretty and petite blonde. He was smitten. She was a science graduate and a computer programmer. She even worked for a client that he'd worked for 6 years before, and he knew many of her colleagues.

In the words of one of his best friends, she was a "conversion project". He would teach her to kitesurf, and then they could travel the world together, chasing warm wind, soft sand and water that was mirror flat or had perfect waves. Brazil, Venezuela, Cape Verde, South Africa, The Canary Islands... there was an endless list of exciting countries to visit with this beautiful girl, and kitesurf together.

There she was, giving it a damn good go in Poole Harbour, under his tuition. Why she was wearing a buoyancy aid in water that's so shallow you can stand up in it, was anybody's guess, but I guess it made her feel more confident. Kitesurfing in those days was super dangerous - the emergency release mechanisms were just being developed, and if you let go of the bar, you'd be dragged along out of control, like being tied to the back of a speedboat being driven by a maniac, until you crashed into one of those harbourside houses.

After a year, he decided to propose. He asked her dad's permission. He did all the things that he thought he should do: buy a house, get married, get a pet, have kids. Thankfully - for the kids' sake - they stopped short of doing that last one. Just looking after their a cat had a very strong bonding effect. Their cat is probably the reason they stayed together as long as they did.

They got married in Hawaii, of course. He was allowed to wear flip flops, but not board shorts. In fact, he had a tough time from bridezilla for almost the whole trip until he put his foot down and said he just wanted to sit by the pool or on the beach, drinking ice cold beverages. She wanted to be sightseeing in a decrepit camper van that they weren't insured to drive. He checked them into a luxury hotel, which cost a small fortune - it was Christmas time after all - and finally, for a brief moment, he had a tiny bit of holiday relaxation.

Notably, they didn't take their kites or kiteboards. Travelling with a wedding dress and linen suit was a teeny bit difficult, but not as hard as lugging a 30kg bag that's nearly as tall as person. However, Hawaii has wind, waves. warm water and beautiful sandy beaches. Barely a few hundred metres from where Barack Obama was spending his holiday break, our missing young man was forced to try pole dancing (windsurfing) for the first time, in desperation to get his 'fix'. There was the shame and indignity of being a beginner windsurfer he was an experienced kitesurfer in a paradise location, who could have been having the time of his life.

After landing at London Heathrow, after over 20 hours of flight time, it turned out that his new wife had used an online booking website to arrange the taxi home, but had not accounted for the fact that they would be away over New Year's Eve. An innocent mistake, but it left them stranded, exhausted, in the middle of the night.

Within a month, he was in private hospital. It was all too much for him. She would rage and throw tantrums when things didn't go her way. He would bite his tongue and try to fix everything. The pressure to please her was unbearable... but it was never enough. He'd bought her a hot tub because she said she had loved having one in California. He'd shown her the world, staying in the best hotels and eating in the best restaurants. He'd married her in one of the most romantic destinations you could ever choose, and he'd even agreed not to wear board shorts. She was threatening divorce while he was sending her a different flower every day, from hospital, to show he still loved her. Despite him being a generous lover, she was on 'no strings attached' dating websites, looking for sex.

If crêpes Suzette, flambéed at your table, with the best views of any restaurant in Malta, is not enough to whisk a girl of her feet, he was left bamboozled as to how he could possibly please her. He was completely naïve, believing that if he treated her like a princess, she would love him as much as he loved her. He was wrong. It hurt and he was heartbroken.

It made no sense. People would come to their summer garden parties and be served home-made burgers and marinated chicken, plus endless varieties of sausages hot off the barbecue, while a range of delicious salads that she had prepared, were laid on for the vegetarians and to garnish the plates with. Fire pits and patio heaters kept people warm after the sun went down, and there was the hot tub kept at a toasty 38 degrees (100 degrees Fahrenheit).

It made no sense. People would come out for trips on his boat to see one of the largest natural harbours in the world. Him and his wife were a natural host and hostess. They were a great team when they were entertaining guests.

For her birthday one year, he took her in his boat up the Wareham River, moored up outside The Priory Hotel, and they ate lunch on the patio, which was some of the finest dining in Dorset - cooked by Michelin star standard chefs - with beautifully manicured lawns leading down to the river bank.

Why they quarrelled and grew apart is a mystery. She wanted to learn to sail and he was an RYA dinghy sailing instructor and experienced yacht skipper. She wanted to rock climb and he had the qualifications and experience to teach her. She wanted to climb mountains, and he had spent months in the high Alps and was a mountain leader (guide) experienced in dealing with emergencies, working with groups of varying ability, and acclimatising to altitude. He taught her how to snowboard and was grinning from ear to ear when she followed him off piste without a moment of hesitation.

However, he was baffled and slightly insulted that she spent a lot of money to go and learn from other people. He'd taken her sailing multiple times, and taught her a lot. He'd taken her rock climbing, and shown her the ropes; pardon the pun. He'd taken her into the mountains and shown her the basics of navigation, safety, route planning and even how to retreat when things don't go to plan. That's our missing man and his ex-wife, in every picture above except the mountain one. where he's the one taking taking the photo.

He was, undoubtably, looking for the love of his life, but married the wrong person. Friends warned him that him & her weren't a good match. "The poison dwarf" was too hot to handle, especially for a sensitive guy who was relatively inexperienced with women and still nurtured the Disney "happily ever after" idea of finding true love. He mounted a kindness offensive - an attempt to satisfy her every whim, her every ambition, but yet it still wasn't enough. He was delicate. She was aggressive.

It made him sick - mentally unwell - all this arguing and rejection. He wanted to just grab her and squeeze her tight until she felt safe and loved. Maybe that was the problem: she felt trapped and smothered. They met when she was only 23, which I guess is quite young, considering that he proposed when she was only 24. For their parents' generation, that would not have been unusual, and he did things the old fashioned way: buying a house to start a family. However, she complained she hadn't seen enough of the world; experienced enough of life's adventures. He set out to rectify this, but what she was really saying is "I'm not ready to be a one-dick woman just yet".

His best friend coined the phrase "conversion project", which is to take a girl and turn her into a kitesurfer; a sailor, a climber; a mountaineer. This friend literally asked "are you ready to be a one vagina man?". Soon after that, this friend went on a trip to sow his wild oats across Scandinavia, before coming home to marry the poor girl who'd had to tolerate this temporary break-up in the full knowledge that his motive was completely unreasonable. They're a happy couple with twins and a lovely house now, so maybe he was right. At the time, his wife wanted to punch his friend in the face or testicles, or probably both.

Before his petite blonde wife, the happy smiling 25 year old - pictured when our story began - had tried to make it work with a kitesurfer who lived 186 miles away, and nowhere near the sea. He'd tried to make it work with other kitesurfer girls too. An incredibly beautiful Burmese kitesurfer girl seemed to be flirting with him when she was on holiday with him in Sardinia, but he was so shy and inexperienced, he didn't dare try to kiss her.

Our missing man tried to make it work with his wife, again and agan and again and again, and eventually it broke him. He broke down and sank into depression, bipolar disorder, alcohol abuse and made a stupid mistake which was his ultimate demise: the abuse of legal highs. This was the beginning of the end.

In the chaos, confusion, stress and trauma of divorce, selling his house, saving his most precious possessions, leaving the town he'd called home for 8 years and all his friends... all mixed in with toxic additives like mental health problems, addiction and alcoholism, he was a little lost boy. He's been missing for nearly 11 years. There have been times when somebody who appeared to be him popped up briefly, but like an apparition, he melted away into nothingness again.

Is it any wonder that he disappeared? He gave so much of himself away - his love - trying to make relationships work; trying to make girls feel special and cherished and loved and like princesses; trying to please; loving unconditionally.

This blog contains the bitterness; the accusations of wrongdoing - the evidence of the inexcusable and terrible behaviour that was perpetrated against the author. This blog tells the story of why that young man went missing, and why he's still missing. Perhaps why he'll never be found. If he's missing, perhaps, you shouldn't search for him.

Perhaps there's no place in this world for a naïve little boy who has so much love to give, but nobody to give it to. So many times in life he was left reeling, hurt and wondering what he did wrong, when all he tried to do was to be as nice as he could possibly be. Perhaps that silly little boy got it all wrong, and life's not about being nice and kind to people; it's about using people and getting what you want at all costs. The boy was not made for this world - he was like an alien from another planet.

Look at this old man. Look at the sadness that he tries to hide, but something in his eyes betrays him. He knows he's nothing like that happy smiling 25 year old young man, photographed 12 years ago. He knows that all the kings horses and all the kings men couldn't put him back together again. He knows that whatever it was that happened, it damaged him badly. Unconditional love, infectious happiness, a sense of contentment and the enthusiastic exuberance that characterised our missing little lost boy, are qualities that this old man doesn't possess - they're completely different people.

It's a tragedy when we lose somebody who brought fun & excitement, adventure & exhilaration, thrills & spills, into people's lives. It's a tragedy when many lives are touched - improved - and then we lose that person.

I don't think we'll ever find him though. He's gone forever.

Tags: #relationships #depression #bipolar #mentalhealth #alcohol #drugs #suicide

This is a story about reasons for living...

When you find yourself checking your life insurance, to make sure that it's adequate to cover your debts and leave a small legacy for your only sibling, and you bought the policy specifically because it covers suicide, that's a whole new dimension on 'financial planning'.

I've led a charmed existence. The only things left that I want to do are to visit Tokyo and New York. Everything else I ever wanted to do, I've done. Some of those things, I just did on a crazy spur-of-the-moment whim, like going to San Francisco - booking a flight so soon there was barely enough time to get to the airport, let alone pack a bag.

I could use my remaining creditworthiness to tick those last two boxes, or try to die of a heart attack from a final, unrestrained, orgy of hedonism. The latter probably not exactly being that great for whoever's joining in the drug-fuelled sex, suddenly having to deal with ambulances, police and whatnot.

I've written about it at length, but I'm going to quite considerable effort to rectify a situation that has been steadily deteriorating for 6 months... and it started pretty bad. Acute kidney failure and a hospital's high-dependency renal unit. Dialysis and a 25cm tube in my groin. A foot and ankle, numb and immobile. That's how it started. Followed by losing my employment and then just a financial tailspin; a nosedive. Somewhere in the mess, there was a breakup and in what felt like the blink of an eye, it didn't even seem worth bothering to try and rescue things anymore... they were too fucked up.

That's pretty much where my thoughts keep ending up. I think about all the effort involved, and the stress, of repairing what's broken and starting afresh where necessary... there will be doors open to me, if only I can find the energy and the will to go through the necessary suffering to get... to get... to get... where exactly? I'm only getting older and my health can only get worse. I have friends in their sixties who are still very fit & active - doing extreme sports - but they also have kids, which seems to be one of the main reasons for living.

I've been a rich bachelor. Why would I work my little socks off just to get back to being that person? Depression has struck even at times when I've seemingly had it all - the girl, the house, the cars, the boats, the bling, the stack of cash in the bank, the great job... whatever. The main things I miss in the world are my sister (who I hardly ever see), my niece (who I hardly know and wouldn't even recognise me) and my cat (who, sadly, can't be expected to live for many more years). Of course, I miss my friends, but most have left london and started families; they're busy people with busy lives.

I know people would like to have me around, so they've got the option to see me... not that many do see me, as they're raising children and working all hours. It was very touching to have a bunch of visitors when I was in hospital. I'm pretty sure I could count the number of people who made that trip on one hand though. Not a criticism of my friends: hospitals are not happy places, and living in central London makes me pretty inaccessible unless you happen to be in the capital anyway. However, staying alive, just so that people have the option is not really enough of a reason to live.

My increasingly scarred left arm is more indicative of the emotional pain I'm in, rather than serious suicidal intent. It's not a cry for help. It's not attention seeking. It's a physical manifestation of the severity of the depression, stress and desperation I've been dealing with.

I've still got at least 5.6 grams of tramadol. 8 grams would virtually guarantee my death. I can't really see me surviving with 5.6 grams, especially if I augmented it with codeine, dihydrocodeine and half a bottle of vodka. A gutful of benzos and sleeping pills, and death would be painless. The expression on my dead face would probably be one of peaceful tranqulity, not that I would want friends or family to have to see it. Remember me like I am in the image above, on my birthday some years ago. I seem to look fairly happy with life then.

I'm crying now, and I don't know why. I don't feel like I want to live. I'm not afraid to die. There's no realistic future that I can imagine, where things are not just getting worse and worse and worse. I've gathered enough data - the trend is obvious.

"Don't do it" they say. "You'd be missed" they say. Well, I'm alive, in these 750,000+ words and in hundreds of photos and videos. There's enough of a digital version of me to satisfy anybody's desire to know me. All we ever want to do is hear a little of what's going on in other people's lives, and then talk about our own life anyway.

I think I'm crying because I know I'm at the end of the road. I'm crying for myself, like the conceited twat that I am. I'm crying at my own funeral, because I feel so certain that death is the only option now: I don't have the strength, the energy or the reason to go on living, under this dark storm-cloud.

There's obviously some planning and preparation necessary, so don't dial 999 just yet, but it's remarkable how you can reach a point where you know all the reasons why suicide is a final solution for a non-final problem, but yet you want the peace, the tranquility, the escape, the end... you want it anyway, even if people are going to call you selfish; even if there's some trauma involved for people you care about.

Call it dying with dignity, if you want an analogy.

Tags: #suicide #depression

This is a story about whether it's right to stay with an alcoholic and/or an addict...

Poor me, poor me, pour me another drink. Like every alcoholic and/or addict I have a million and one reasons why I had one too many bottles of wine, or why I lapsed or relapsed into drug addiction.

I mentioned on Facebook earlier today that I rearranged the furniture in a hotel room in Bournemouth, right at the very worst most moment of my divorce. If you think that "worst moment of my divorce" caveat is me getting my excuses in early, then you're wrong. Let's get this straight: I didn't break anything or chuck a telly out of the window, but I made a lot of extra work for housekeeping.

I was actually so concerned that I was in such a bad frame of mind that I was actually going to throw a telly out of the window, so I phoned the duty solicitor. The duty solicitor gets phoned after you've been arrested, if you don't have your own solicitor.  I had not been arrested, but I didn't like the way things were going.

The duty solicitor was rather bemused by a person ringing up to chat about things before they're arrested.... in anticipation. He said that he didn't think the police would arrest me, and I should probably just ring friends and family. I was loathe to involve friends & family in a mess that I had made.

Eventually, having tried several other local solicitors, I rang the family solicitor, who phoned my Mum, who told my Dad to phone me. He was exceedingly unhappy that one of his longest friends had suggested that I might be in the need of a bit of support during a messy divorce.

I rang my friend Tim, who texted an ex police constable, who confirmed that the police would not press charges given the circumstances. Tim came to the hotel, and said it wasn't bad at all and we could fix it up in 5 or 10 minutes, but I just wanted to get home.

Despite a couple of offers of financial compensation for any inconvenience or damage the hotel manager laughed, being rather experiences with the wrecked hotel rooms due to the large amount of stag dos who visit Bournemouth. His housekeeping staff had not even commented. However, I still feel guilty about that today.

That was December 2013.

Let's make one thing really clear before we go on. My ex wife did not addict me to drugs. She's not responsible for any of my addiction: then or now.

My startup company fell to bits because I was under unbearable pressure to deliver Investment Banker lifestyle on startup wages, and base my company in Bournemouth, where there are no angel investors, no venture capitalists, no startup scene, no customers, it was over 2 hours away from my co-founder and his new baby girl. It was an irreconcilable problem, with my ex-wife being least willing to compromise despite having a job she could work anywhere in the country. But, that's not her fault. It's my fault. It's my fault that I made myself CEO instead of my co-founder. It's my fault I couldn't handle the pressure. It's my fault I wasn't strong enough to leave a toxic unsupportive relationship.

Drugs - legal highs - appeared on the scene in the autumn, as I sat at home, desperately depressed about the situation. I had already tried about 5 different antidepressants by this point, and had even moved on to trying over 10 extremely rare antidepressants that are extremely rarely prescribed, even in treatment-resistant depression cases.

It's not like I didn't recognise the problem. I accessed local drug & alcohol drop in centres, where I sat listening to teenaged alcoholic prostitutes talking about their children being taken into care, knowing that I owned my own home, cars, boats, hot tub, summer houses and had tens of thousands of pounds in the bank. I left, because it feel like sheer selfishness to deprive the time that could be given to somebody more needy.

I spent a day in a residential rehab as a day patient. By the end of the day, I had brushed up all the leaves, done all the washing up, hoovered, mopped and done just about everybody's weekly chores. The people's lives were fascinating, but most of the day was drinking tea & coffee and sitting around.

I don't know if I was successfully hiding my habit, but I gave a talk to a bunch of startup founders in London, and a few came over and said they'd heard me speak in Cambridge, and they thought my public speaking had improved a lot. Go figure.

The only real problem for hiding my habit was school holidays - my ex being an educator - when I wouldn't have the daytime to take drugs. Christmas holiday was unspeakably awful, with me sneaking off in the middle of the night to take drugs.

Getting clean and staying clean is my sole responsibility, but I found it telling that the only book on addiction my ex read parts of was called "Nag your loved one sober".

After Christmas, my ex demanded that my parents take me away. Naturally, they resisted and I resisted. My dad came down, and my ex had been nagging our mutual GP about how hard it was on her to deal with my addiction. Deal with my addiction? She didn't even know about it until a week earlier, when I struggled to hide it during the school holidays.

I was completely spooked by the sudden appearance of my dad and my GP, through no request of my own. The idea of leaving my home, my friends and everything else I'd spent years building around myself, to go live in a house I'd never lived in, trapped in a village where I didn't know anybody. That's fucking offensive.

Anyway, the psychiatrist I saw just before I left Bournemouth told me to taper off the legal highs gradually - over the course of 6 to 8 weeks - because nobody knew what withdrawal would be like.

Having gotten rid of me to my parents' house, my ex then refused to take my phone-calls and generally treated me like dog dirt.

I would say, that if it turns out you're dating an addict and/or alcoholic, you should make a decision - based on how long you've been together - as to whether they're the type who's going to bleed you dry and move onto the next unwitting victim, whether you're prepared to help them - and trust me, it's really fucking hard - or whether it's your moral duty to help them because they became unwell while they were your husband, wife or long term partner.

Anyway, my ex continued to be a right ***** until someone who isn't me hacked her email account and found out that no sooner had I left MY house, she had been dating other people. I confronted her with her infidelity, and she started treating me like a human again. Unfortunately, I thought a leopard could change its spots, so I spent £4,000 on flights to Hawaii to get married and £3,000 on an engagement ring. As you can tell, I'm the kind of junkie who spends all their money on themselves.

I struggled with sobriety, but held down a couple of good jobs and continued to be a good provider. My ex could have called off the wedding at any point.

The wedding, which was supposed to be stress-free with no guests, somehow became one of the most stressful things I've ever had to deal with. The whole holiday was ruined by my bridezilla. In the end, I threw a tantrum and said I could no longer deal with teepees and camper vans that break down and other eclectic but stressful shit that I had to organise, and booked us into the $800 a night Hilton. I had cocktails by the pool and it was bliss, but there were two days until we had to go home.

I relapsed as soon as we got home. It didn't help that my then-wife had booked a taxi online, specifying the wrong year. We could have stayed at Heathrow and waited for 4 hours, but having been on a plane for most of a day, I wanted to get home: unexpected £180 taxi ride in a black cab that I managed to negotiate.

My then-wife must have ordered my parents to come and 'deal' with me, because my dad marched into my house and said "you're an addict. you're an addict. Can't you see you're a dirty addict?" which was rich coming from a man with a history of drug use. That's not the kind of treatment you should ever receive in your own home, nor did it take account of the fact that I'd been in a lot of correspondence with several specialist psychiatrists who could deal with my specific condition: dual diagnosis. I was bipolar before I was a junkie, and the two do not complement each other well.

My mum had decided that she could 'smell' drugs on me. Unless she has a gas chromatograph mass spectrometer for a nose, she is wrong. You can smell smoke and cannabis on somebody's clothes, but drugs that you snort, swallow and inject are excreted through kidneys and faeces. It's a completely disproven hypothesis. Anyway, My then-wife did nothing to vouch for my sobriety when my mum had a go at me on my sister's wedding day (I was clean).

I'd gone back to working at JPMorgan, and they coughed up £12k for me to go to The Priory for 28 days, without a single qualm. My general psychiatrist had said I needed treatment in a therapeutic environment, which clearly my home was not. My then-wife said that she'd divorce me if I followed his advice and got treatment, and that she'd rather be a widow than a divorcee.

On my first day at The Priory, I phoned the local florist near our home, and asked them to leave a different flower each day under the windscreen wiper of my then-wife's car, before she left for work. She however, joined the dating sites again and decided not to visit or phone me.

During my stay at The Priory, we established that I was not well supported at home, and indeed, perhaps my relationship did not contain the prerequisite levels of respect, love, care, compassion etc. etc.

I panicked on day 27 of rehab, realising I had to divorce my wife, sell our house and decide what I was going to do next with my life. I spent the day talking to a few friends about different ideas, and returned for my final day a lot happier.

Straight after that was the birth of my niece. My loving then-wife did not attend. In fact. I remember her once being extremely put out that my grandmother had the temerity to die at an inconvenient moment. I think my friends had been right all along: she really was "the poison dwarf".

Anyway, after being under virtual house arrest, where I must admit I abused a lot of drugs as I tried to grapple with the magnitude of selling a house and downsizing. Probably moving to London. The friends who would take sides. Having to get a new job. I got fed up with my then-wife making me feel absolutely terrified by her unjustified rage and abuse, so I took to cocooning myself into a single room of our ample 3-bedroomed house, and even built myself a man cave in our summer house. She was never content to leave me be, and would hammer and scream all the time at whichever door I cowered behind.

Then, I sent an SOS email to our parents, to come and force our separation. I was starving. I had no toilet, no shower. Do you think that's the way that people get clean & sober?

My friend Posh Will kindly offered his spare bedroom to get back into London life. I was clean & sober, riding my bike all over London, incorporating a new company and touting for consultancy work. I was entrepreneur-in-residence at PlayFair capital and I was loving the London startup scene. I was making new friends and I quickly got a beautiful new girlfriend. I know I wasn't the first to commit adultery, because someone who isn't me hacked my then-wife's email and found out she was fucking a married man with kids.

Then, divorce turned nasty. A six week house sale turned into a six month sale, simply because my then wife wanted to drag it out, knowing I had no income yet in London. She kept making me do the 4 hour round trip to Bournemouth to do trivial things she could do herself, like get estate agent valuations. Finally, we arrive in December 2013, where I went to a hotel because our house was sold but I was so angry and frustrated by my wife dragging out the sale to the point I almost ran out of money, I was going to trash the place.

Sure, I then did a 5 days of a 10 day detox, at a place where they didn't know what a detox was, or how to deal with somebody with a benzo habit. I then did 7 weeks at a proper residential rehab. My parents were on my no-contact banned list, but my mum still wrote to me with Louise's divorce demands. I told her from the start I wanted to rent out the house, defer the divorce and deal with it all when I had my health. When she refused, I said take whatever you want, but just don't drag it out. If I wasn't the kind of person who assumes that everybody's OK deep down, I'd say that it was all because she's a vindictive, abusive, greedy, *****.

Anyway, after a mix-up at my parents about what day of the week it was, my dad demanded that I get dressed in front of him and leave immediately. I agreed to leaving immediately, but I refused to get dressed in front of him, on the grounds that it would be one of the most degrading things you could ever ask a person to do. He manhandled me and a mirror got knocked off the wall, slicing my shin muscle in half along with 4 tendons and 2 nerves. Only then did he allow me to get dressed in privacy.

After my operation, I was taking fentanyl and tramadol - both strong opiate painkillers - for the pain, and yet I managed to avoid becoming addicted to these drugs. Having to wear a plaster cast kinda means you're going to have to destroy a nice business suit, and who wants to hire somebody who's sick?

My friends said it was time for me to get a place of my own, although I was still on crutches. I rented a room nearby. I went for dinner with Posh Will, and I was honest with him about my addiction struggles, and his attitude towards me changed visibly immediately. Our friendship was almost ruined, because he had such strong preconceived notions about what drug addiction is. He virtually accused me of being at risk of coming round to his house to steal stuff to feed my habit. I had the money from the sale of my house and some successful Bitcoin investments. I didn't need to steal from my friends. I cried myself to sleep and then tried to commit suicide.

Hospital discharged me, but I'd lost my flat, so I was homeless. I lived in hostels and Kensington Gardens. I guarantee you that not many people get clean from drugs when they're homeless.

Anyway, I finally got a great group of friends at a hostel in Camden, and a beautiful girlfriend. Those were some of the happiest months of my life. I also got an IT contract for Barclays and a room in a student house in Swiss Cottage.

I did have a couple of 'lapses' on mild drugs, but I was clean and I was happy. Then Barclays terminated my contract and I was evicted (the landlord was selling the apartment).

I tried to put a brave face on things and have a happy family Christmas, but I'd broken up with my girlfriend, lost half my friends, lost my contract, was homeless again. A lovely family in Ireland saved my life, looking after me at one of the most depressing and vulnerable times of my life.

At the suggestion of Posh Will - ironically - I stayed in a hostel in Shoreditch. Initially I had a whole dorm to myself, but when they realised I had an OK personality and was a long-term resident, they moved me to the infamous 'Ward P'. The drink and the drugs were off the scale in that place. I had to leave because I was off my face around the clock, but it seemed normal because everybody was.

I started staying in AirBnB places, because they were homely and I could do short [but expensive] lets. I'd recently reconnected with an old friend, so it was nice to live near him, in the East End.

I was running out of money again, so I stayed in a really awful hotel that's covered quite extensively in the blog post called Finsbury Park Fun Run.

That got me back to the Camden Hostel, but I was still hopelessly re-addicted to drugs. Trust me, it's hard to hide a drug habit in a 'regular' tourist hostel, and the tourists don't really love it if you're acting all weird because you're so strung out you can't even see straight.

Somehow, I managed to land the HSBC contract.

I ran out of money. Working for HSBC while living in a hostel is just not possible either. More drugs - whole week AWOL from work. Got away with it.

Stayed clean all the way to Christmas pretty much. I was a wreck on Christmas Day. I hadn't eaten for days. My Kiwi sofa surfer had kindly cooked the turkey but he'd pretty much cremated it, and it'd taken him hours to coax me out of my bedroom. Still, it was super kind of him to cook the world's most depressing Christmas lunch.

Then drugs, drugs, drugs to March 21st. I had a bag that could quite easily have kept me supplied for 3 years. That's the problem with being rich and choosing a cheap and powerful drug - you're never going to run out.

Are you spotting a theme yet?

January, February and March are my nightmare months. If I'm off kitesurfing at some exotic location, no problem. If I'm working a contract, no problem.

This year, I've had acute kidney failure and severe and ongoing leg/foot trauma AND the loss of my contract at Lloyds to deal with. However, I had the best Christmas ever and I'm also dating the world's most amazing girlfriend, so perhaps these things should cancel each other out?

I have to think about drugs at the moment, because my leg is so damaged that I need a cocktail of strong opiate painkilllers, nerve blockers and a sleep aid, just to be able to partially function. I wake up every 4 hours in the night in excruciating agony.

Through the urgent need to re-stock on painkillers, I found myself back on the Dark Web. It was a stupid move. I kinda knew I'd never be able to resist the urge to go window shopping. I tried to order weaker drugs that might satisfy the craving that was instigated by nothing more than buying other products, but lapse and relapse were inevitable.

My most amazing girlfriend in the whole wide world is somebody I could spend 100% of my time with, and never get tired of her company. We like the same trashy TV. We enjoy the same high-brow movies. We both have an insatiable appetite for feature-length documentaries. We love London. We love the same things and we love each other.

Why then would I relapse onto incredibly dangerous and destructive drugs?

The watchword you need to look for here is trigger. When I was with my ex-wife, if she ever went on holiday on her own - which is something she did regularly during the death throes of our relationship - it built a Pavlovian association with an opportunity to take drugs without having an aggressive abusive ***** attempting to kick my prison door in and screaming horrible things at me.

I found a black market seller who would supply just enough for me to have a moment of fun, but not enough for me to end up in a destructive binge. Then that supplier disappeared, and I ended up buying the next smallest bag I could find: 100 to 200 mild to medium strength doses.

The net result is that I spent all yesterday evening and all last night trying to jam my locked bathroom door closed with a pair of nail tweezers, because I was convinced that angry neighbours had phoned the police, and even a mob had formed outside my apartment, ready to heckle me when the police led me from the building, cuffed in shame.

That's a net result of two things:

1. Having more than you need of a highly addictive drug is bound to lead to a binge
2. It's impossible to measure milligram doses of drugs without excellent scales. The difference between no effect, and psychotic overdose, can not be seen by the human eye

I sold my scales because I've successfully been having long periods of abstinence, and it makes sense to get rid of drug paraphernalia that could 'trigger' a craving.

Of course, I should have controlled my craving. Of course, I knew what the worst-case scenario would be. Of course, it seems to suggest that the love of my beautiful girlfriend is not enough.

All I can say in my defence is that my life is pretty depressing right now. I'm on such strong pain relief that I can barely even concentrate on writing. I'm not well enough to go back to work. I've been stressed about running out of money and being evicted.

Life is also awesome right now, because me and my incredibly fetching and intelligent and knowledgeable girlfriend both have riverside apartments, and we take turns to spend nights watching sunrises and sunsets.

She has a really difficult decision to make right now. My longest period of abstinence from drugs is what? 9 months, since becoming addicted. My longest period of sobriety was 121 days. All my money has been frittered away on private healthcare, periods where I was too unwell to work, and yes - perhaps as much a 5% - has been spent on drugs. Would you choose somebody like that for your boyfriend?

Alright, so my drug habit isn't going to lead me to a life of crime. I've been cautioned by the police 4 times, but there's not much point in wrecking my career because I'm an addict is there, when I'm not shoplifting, dealing drugs, robbing, doing fraud or committing any other crime.

However, this weekend has shown that I still have the capacity to get myself in a life threatening mess. I was ready to stab myself in the carotid artery this morning, rather than have my life ruined by a criminal record and have all that shame on top of what has already been a pretty awful February and March.

Of course, nobody can deny that I brought this on myself and that the behaviour is just the same as it was over the last few years. Is my addiction getting better? It's certainly not cured.

If you want to know if my addiction is getting better, you could look at my medical records for 2014. I was an inpatient for 14 weeks. You could consider the fact that the longest period I had without my drug of choice was 2 weeks, for the first couple of years. You could consider the fact that I'm in a meaningful relationship with a kind, caring and compassionate girlfriend who's sympathetic and well informed. I'm not lying to her to have a drug habit behind her back. I've lied to her twice when she went away on holiday, both times shortly after I had lost a contract and was a bit depressed.

Ask yourself, am I worth knowing as a friend? I could drop a dirty HIV or hepatitis infected syringe in your kid's playpen. I might replace your salt with cocaine for a prank. I'll probably take money out of the purse and wallet of everybody in your house. I'll nick anything that isn't nailed down. All I want to talk about is drugs drugs drugs and my life story's not interesting because it just goes addiction addiction addiction. I'll bring shame on your family and you'll get in trouble just because you're friends with me. Not worth it, is it?

What about dating a junkie? Well, everything they say is a lie, and you won't like having sex with them all the time because you know they're probably thinking about a syringe of heroin while they're doing it to you. They'll take all your money and ask for more. Nobody ever got cured of drink & drugs. Death's too good for 'em.

I do feel terrible about the lies [two] and the betrayal of trust. Also, she knows that a binge could easily hospitalise or kill me. She's also trying to have a relaxing holiday break, but she knows I'm sick, haven't had any sleep and haven't had anything to eat.

She can't watch me like a hawk all the time. She can't spy on me using webcams when she's on holiday. She doesn't know what I get up to at home when she's at work.

Why take a risk on a loser with such a poor track record?

I've told her if she wants to break up with me, I'll fight to save the relationship, but I won't just say anything to talk her out of it. I actually advised her to break up with me, because I'm a month or two away from earning money again, I've got depression, bipolar and maybe even borderline personality disorder, along with the death sentence of dual diagnosis. Would you want your kids to have those faulty genes? Would you want your family to find out one day that you've been dating a loser?

Anyway, that's where I am right now.

No amount of stick will stop anybody from taking drink or drugs. I need to find a social group to regularly attend. I need to get out of the house more. Through socialising will come enjoyment of even more people's company, as well as routine. There will be new opportunities. Maybe a new hobby? I'll get a new contract and throw myself into work. Once the money starts rolling in, me and her can have holidays and plan adventures.

Could I replace everything and everybody in my life with supercrack? Almost. It is pretty fucking good. Still, how much money would you need? Even if you lived in a tent, I still reckon food & drink would cost you £150-200k over your shortened lifespan. I do however think you get sick of it after a while, but the bastard thing is so fucking good when you go back to it after a little break.

What can I tell you? That's the truth?

So am I honestly comparing a night with the love of my life, with a sniff of supercrack? No. The comparison is facile. If you choose the tent dwelling supercrack life, there's no coming back from that. Also, I've never been in such a good relationship in my life: it just keeps getting better and better.

One final question to ask yourself? Even if you think you have the perfect partner, perfect friends, perfect job and generally perfect life... do you still occasionally do something that looks totally insane in the context of your amazing life, like get too drunk, or take a recreational drug even though you never do drugs? Do you think the fact that you do that, means you love your partner any less?

Tags: #drugs #addiction

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

22. Wells of Silence

She had to leave him. She couldn't be certain that she was making things worse, but she certainly didn't seem to be making things better. It was so painful to see the man she loved in a steady decline. All her attempts to help seemed to antagonise him and make him more secretive and defensive.

But she couldn't abandon him. She almost immediately regretted making him feel rejected. She knew he already felt completely isolated and alone, and leaving only made it worse, but she'd had to protect herself.

She stepped into the bedroom, invading his precious private sanctuary. It was dark but the scene was still horrific.

His body.

Laying awkwardly, his naked skin was purplish and yellow in parts, as if covered with terrible bruises. There was a paleness to the rest of his body where the blood had drained away completely. The small amount of flesh covering his bony frame had swelled, leaving his skin tight and shiny.

He was undoubtedly dead.

She didn't gasp, scream or flee the scene. Her mind reeled with a sense of responsibility. How could she protect him now? How could she defend this undignified end to his life? How would she deal with the police, family?

She scanned the room. There were so many things lying around that she wanted to pick up and dispose of that it was completely overwhelming. How could she stay here and deal with a cleanup operation, tip-toeing around his dead body?

Having stood rooted to the spot, surveying the scene, the situation was clearly hopeless. She wouldn't know where to begin. She left to phone the police. 

She didn't feel guilty that she hadn't been able to do more after he'd died, but she wasn't able to forgive herself for leaving him.

"What if I'd stayed?" she sobbed.

It wasn't her fault, the police, her trauma counsellor, her parents, her brothers and her friends all told her. How could they be so sure? How could they know whether things might have turned out differently if she hadn't left him?

Next chapter...

Background Info

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) takes place every November, when aspiring authors attempt to write a 50,000+ word novel within 30 days. This means averaging 1,667 words per day.

My 360 odd blog posts to date have averaged 1,246 words per day, so it shouldn't be too much of a stretch for me to write a bit more each day and achieve the goal. Plus, I have the support & encouragement of all the other authors who are taking part in this challenge.

Since leaving school, I have done very little creative writing, so a whole novel may be rather more difficult than I anticipate.

Hijacking my blog for the next 30 days seems unusual, but the general advice to authors is "write about what you know" so you may find that my novel is a natural extension of my blog, in actual fact.

Anyhoo, the working title of my novel is "Poste Restante" and without further ado, I shall begin #writing.

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

1. The Caravan

Neil's consciousness sparked back into existence. This was not like waking up, as if he had been dreaming. This was not like coming round after an operation in hospital, under general anaesthetic. It was much more akin to a sudden re-ignition of his brain activity, after head trauma, perhaps after being knocked out cold by a punch or a blow to the head with some other blunt object.

At first, Neil's mind was confused; everything was jumbled up. He could make no sense of what was going on. His thinking was cloudy; cognition impaired. Then, the blurry mess and unfamiliar shapes that had previously filled his field of vision now came into sharper focus. He started to see things in his surroundings that he could identify, even though he still didn't know where he was or why he was there.

Neil lay on a bed at one end of a caravan. The bed filled the width of the caravan and extended all the way to the bedroom door, which was wide open. At the opposite end of the caravan was a dining table, surrounded by a U-shaped bench of seating, with windows behind. The bench was upholstered with a pink floral pattern. The table had a wood veneer, although it was clearly made of chipboard, exposed around the edge. A small kitchenette was on one side and a toilet and shower cubicle on the other.

The interior of the caravan was not in good condition. Mildew stained everything. The ceiling had dark black patterns where the permanent dampness had allowed everything that was water permeable to fester in the moist atmosphere. The carpet, which seemed to have been some sort of dark maroon colour originally, was soggy and stained. Mud was trodden into the pile of the carpet around the entrance to the caravan. The carpet had started to rot and there were patches of blue furry mould growing in places. A lightly coloured textured wallpaper peeled away from the walls in places, revealing a layer of polystyrene insulation, as well as the glue behind, which had now turned an orangey-brown colour as it had aged and dried.

The bedroom windows were covered by navy blue curtains. These had been neatly stapled to the wall below and at the sides, so that little light could penetrate through each of the three windows at the bedroom end of the caravan. Where the curtains hung on the curtain rail, a small amount of light crept in and it was clear that it was daytime.

The other windows had been covered with self-adhesive opaque plastic, which allowed light into the caravan, but you could neither see in nor out. The plastic had been applied with little attention to detail: there were air bubbles and the edge had been cut rather raggedly, exposing some of the clear glass near the white plastic window frames. Paper masking tape had been applied around the edges of the windows, to cover the gaps between the plastic and the frame. The large window at the opposite end of the caravan from Neil had newspaper stapled above the curtain-less windows, draped down so that it covered two thirds of the window. On the left hand side, a bedsheet had been stapled above and at the side of the window. The staples were haphazardly placed and the sheet had folds and creases in it, hanging hopelessly from the wall, and no use as any kind of curtain. The staple-gun lay on the dining room table, abandoned.

In places, there had been small craters scraped crudely in the polystyrene insulation of the walls, so that the thin aluminium exterior skin of the caravan was exposed. In each of these craters in the wall, a hole had been punched through the aluminium. Beams of sunlight shone into the dingy interior of the caravan through the holes. These beams illuminated swirling mists of moisture within the caravan, almost like the silken threads of a spider's web, heavy with morning dew and shining in the sun.

Clothes were scattered throughout the caravan. Some were torn, others stretched or unusually knotted; all seemed ruined in some way. There was the debris of habitation: discarded food wrappers, dirty plates and cutlery on the floor. There were many other objects made of bits of broken plastic, rubber and string that seemed to be the twisted, mangled and knotted remains of other things that had been dismantled, torn, bent and otherwise manhandled to the point that they were no longer clearly identifiable as anything in particular. Things were strewn all over the floor, with no discernable pattern.

There were many containers distributed around the caravan: plastic bottles were filled with fluid in various hues of yellow and orange. Then there were mugs, saucepans, bowls and glasses that were filled with orangey-brown liquid. A glass on a shelf near Neil's bed had a layer of red at the bottom, then an opaque layer that was milky pale yellow and the topmost liquid - which filled the majority of the glass - was clear and brownish in colour.

After his sight, the second of Neil's senses that returned was his sense of smell. His nostrils were assaulted by a strongly pungent but not putrid smell. The smell was extremely unpleasant, but not so much so that it was causing Neil any feeling of nausea. The smell had a kind of nasty allure, like a strong ripe cheese. There was the smell of mould, damp and decay of soft furnishings, mingled with the smell of bodily odour, and distinctly a smell of urine. Sweat intermingled with the general dampness in the caravan and ran down the walls in droplets. The windows were completely misted up with condensed moisture. The cheap sponge of the upholstery and bed had soaked up a lot of this foulness. Clothing and bedding had also absorbed some of the humidity from the air.

Neil's memory of how he found himself in this position now slowly returned to him. Things made little sense to him. They had found him; they had surrounded him; they had been readying themselves to storm his little stronghold and they would tear him from the private surroundings which he had attempted to create for himself. They had antagonised him; they had spent an incredible amount of time making noises and assembling themselves for the onslaught; the invasion of Neil's privacy, now that they had found him. They had hidden in the shadows and attempted to remail unseen, but Neil had seen them: fleeting glimpses, as he looked out of the peepholes. Counter-espionage: they were spying on him, so he would spy back at them.

Neil had no idea what their motivation was. Why was he so relentlessly pursued? Why were they so voyeuristic, wanting to intrude on his private world? Why were they so childishly antagonising? Why did they tirelessly toy with him, so close, but waiting and waiting before they made their move? He was angry with them. Quite rightly too. He had gone to such incredible effort to create a bubble of privacy, far away from anybody he could possibly disturb, or who might happen upon him by accident. He was in such a remote hidden location. How could anybody have possibly taken offence at his presence?

His final memories before he blacked out were of a night filled with terror and blind panic as the people he had tried so hard to avoid and evade were now making their final advances. All the dim shapes he could make out in the surrounding gloom of the trees were of figures, coming towards the caravan. He could see the movement of people in the shadows that danced on the ceiling and walls of the caravan. He could hear twigs snapping underfoot as they were stepped on. He could hear the sound of bushes being brushed past and branches being bent to make way for the advancing horde.

He passed out. When he came round they were gone.

Tentatively, he started to try and sit up and make his way to one of his peep holes so he could look out, but he realised he had blacked out with his leg jammed awkwardly underneath himself. His foot had gone to sleep. Incredible pain swept through his leg as the blood started to flow again and the feeling came back into his numbed limb.

There was momentary relief as the pain in his leg subsided, but then he was flooded with pain from multiple parts of his body. His hips ached, many parts of his legs seemed bruised and swollen, his back and neck were very stiff and painful; his body was covered with cuts and grazes, especially his knees and elbows.

In agony, Neil managed to prop himself up by the nearest of the peep holes and pushed his face up against the wall so he could look out. He saw nothing. Just trees. Where had they gone?

How long had he been unconscious for? It had been night time when he had blacked out and now it was daytime, but there was no way of telling whether it was the next day, or the one after that. He had lost all sense of time: days and nights had blurred into one.

Neil had spent a long time, afraid to leave the caravan. How long, he couldn't be sure, but he knew that they had laid seige to him and now his situation was desperate. He was dying in that caravan. He was so thirsty. He was in a great deal of pain. It was clear that there was a lot of blood in his urine. He felt so weak. He really didn't want to confront his persecutors and he had hoped that they would act first so that he didn't have to make the decision. Now he was confronted with the dawning realisation that they had won. Surrender was his only option if he wanted to live.

He collapsed back onto the bed to contemplate his next move, not at all able or willing to fully comprehend the staggering unpleasantness of the situation he was in.

Next chapter...

This is a story about self healing...

Does brain damage mean game over? Is it right to write off somebody who has suffered brain lesions, neurotoxicity, a stroke etc. etc.?

At one time, my left eyelid had started to droop and I had a pretty bad facial tic. My body jerked and shook with pseudo-Parkinsonian symptoms. My speech was slow and slurred. No wonder I was treated as if I was as good as dead, right?

But you know what? With good diet & sleep, you can quickly recover your heath, depending on the severity of your situation.

Bizarrely, I was able to get a job and get through an eventful and highly stressful re-entry into the working world, while my poor brain was busily trying to repair itself. How is that even possible?

I've done the same job for the best part of 20 years. In fact, my friend Ben taught me how to program a computer when we were 12 years old, and I'd been messing around with computers since my first forays onto my friend Joe's Dad's Apple Mac, in 1985.

With repetition, your brain lays down pathways that become more permanent with age. Neural pruning - the loss of less used connections between brain cells - makes your brain into something that has become well adapted for the common tasks you perform. Some people call this "muscle memory" but of course it's your brain, not your muscles, that has the memories. Practice makes permanent, as they say. Just like riding a bike.

So, I relied on instincts and techniques, knowledge and experience that has been unchanging for my whole working life. I still use the same job search technique, the same interview technique, and the job of developing software is unchanged, despite the constant creation of new acronyms and jargon for things that do exactly the same job in exactly the same way.

Just like riding a bike, I was able to navigate the corporate landscape and just about get away with a day job that involved my damaged brain pulling the levers to operate the battered mince-puppet that was my body, in a vaguely convincing way, to cover up the fact that I was basically at death's door.

With physiotherapy for the body, your recovery can be improved, and I'm sure that brain training exercises would be useful for those with brain injuries, but the stimulation of trying to get myself off the streets and escape bankruptcy and destitution was challenging and stimulating enough.

Fundamentally, time is the great healer. The brain is a homeostatic organ that will try to restore itself to a stable base state, once external forces are no longer pulling it hither and thither. I was able to have nearly 6 months abstinent from stimulants and over 3 months abstinent from alcohol, in order to give my brain a fighting chance of finding equilibrium again.

But, just as important as cessation of putting powerful narcotics into my body, was stopping drinking tea & coffee, as well as other caffeinated beverages. Even though my brain screamed out for stimulants, because it was going through withdrawal, they are terrible things when your brain needs to adapt and heal.

Caffeine is very bad for your neuroplasticity. That is to say, the ability of the remaining undamaged neurons in your brain to try to compensate for whatever trauma it has suffered, and repair itself. Caffeine impairs your ability to recover.

If you have some boring repetitive task to perform again & again, then caffeine is your drug. Once you've mastered the simple steps that most jobs require, the boredom becomes unbearable. Caffeine solves this problem, and allows us to maintain concentration on the most mind-numbing dumbarsery that ever disgraced the working world.

Most of the world is just doing stupid shit, time & again, because they're in a trance-like state performing repetitive actions and making the same old mistakes over & over, because they've medicated themselves up to the eyeballs with the powerful stimulant called caffeine.

By stopping my caffeine intake, I was able to recover from the symptoms of fairly harrowing neurological damage, spot patterns in my behaviour and even re-learn new healthy behaviour. I genuinely believe that this would not have been possible, with caffeine in my life.

I did supplement my diet heavily with amino acid building blocks:

• 5-HTP to help my serotonergic system
• L-Tyrosine to help my dopaminergic system
• Phenylalanine to help my adrenal / epinephrine system

I ate vast quantities of biltong (dried beef) and other protein supplements, to give my body everything it could possibly need to repair itself, and replenish its stores.

In theory, I should have been left in a permanently psychotic state, with delusions, paranoia, inability to emotionally regulate, facial tics, poor concentration, poor memory, nerve damage on one side of my face etc. etc.

However, I put out the fire before it consumed me. When somebody is sick, you don't write them off and watch them wither and die. That's immoral!

I was watching a Louis Theroux documentary, and one hospital patient they followed was declared brain dead after he asphyxiated from a heroin overdose. The doctors were absolutely certain there was no hope, and that the life support systems should be switched off. I agreed, and I thought it was madness that the family were holding out any hope at all. After 37 days, the young man in a coma woke up. His family saved him from a premature and unnecessary death, by refusing to cut off his life support.

My life support has come in the form of kind strangers, policemen, nurses, doctors and indeed unwitting work colleagues, who have been willing to overlook the immediate situation and imagine that things can and will get better, given time and opportunity.

I'm physically, neurologically, a completely different beast to who and what I was a little over a year ago, when I was totally fucked.

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

This is a story about pounding the mean streets...

Here's a map of the fun run route that I followed. I wasn't actually following a route or a map, as you will see from the tale I'm about to tell.

Picking up again, where we left part two of this story, yesterday. I had just left my hotel bedroom, in pursuit of the woman and her family, who had been antagonising me all day. In my mind, this had become a game of hide & seek.

I dashed down the back staircase of the hotel, and found myself in the kitchen. Everything was dark and deserted. I went to the front windows and looked out. The police helicopter was still there, shining its light onto the front of the hotel. I decided to try and get out the back of the hotel.

At the back of the hotel was a room full of building materials, as well as the fuseboard controlling all the electrical circuits in the building. Everything was falling to pieces, with plaster hanging off the walls, doors hardly on their hinges, and some kind of makeshift extension on the back of the building. The back door wasn't locked.

Going out of the back door led me into a kind of car park, that was also a bit of wasteland. I started heading away from the hotel, but then noticed that there was a security guard at the gates. I pretended not to have seen him and to be looking for my car. Then, the lights from the police helicopter shone over the top of the hotel, and I rushed towards the back wall so as not to be seen. I explored the other end of the car park, where it was just overgrown and derelict, but there wasn't anything there of interest.

I spotted another entrance into the hotel, but that seemed to be serving a function room and I didn't want to freak any other guests out, so I headed back to the back door where I had originally come out from, turning my jacket inside out as I went, as some kind of 'disguise' as I planned to try and come out of the front entrance and I didn't want to be recognised by the police.

I was scared that I might have been spotted by the security guard, going in and out of the back entrance, so I hid myself behind a big stack of rolled up insulation and other building materials and waited for 20 or so minutes to see if I would hear anybody coming looking for me. I heard nothing.

I made my way out of the hotel, where there was a man on a scooter, talking incessantly on the radio and watching me. I walked down a side street, changed my jacket again, and went back into the hotel. This time, I went to the other side of the building, down a ground-floor corridor.

I descended a staircase into the basement and found a stack of plasterboards which I hid behind. I wanted to know if the hotel staff had been spooked out by me acting all weirdly, and if I was being followed. I tried to hide myself in the gap between the plasterboard sheets and the wall, but it wasn't easy. I was making a lot of noise and generally acting extremely strange, and felt sure that I was going to get in trouble with the hotel or the police. Surely I was disturbing other guests? It had been about 45 minutes of running around already.

I came out of hiding and found another corridor, this one had guest bedrooms on it. I heard somebody talking in what sounded like a bad German accent, and followed the sound. I decided that I was sure to be confronted by hotel staff though, and near the sound of the voice I decided to hide in a maintenance cupboard. Strangely, none of the maintenance cupboards were locked.

This particular cupboard I hid in didn't have a proper floor: it was just the floor beams. There were also two water tanks for 2 bedrooms' ensuite bathrooms, plus various pipes. It was also really dusty and cobwebby in there. I struggled to hold the door shut and regulate my breathing. I must surely have been overheard by guests, hiding in this cupboard.

I bumped into the girl who had been speaking in the German accent. She didn't seem shocked to see a dust-covered man, hiding in a cupboard right outside her room. She appeared to be beckoning me inside her bedroom, but I couldn't be sure exactly what her body language was saying. She certainly wasn't freaked out. I had no idea what to do. I was receiving no clear communication, and my thoughts were jumbled, confused.

I decided to go back to my room, but on the way there, I freaked out about somebody seeing me and decided to hide in another cupboard. This one was much the same. However, it sounded as if my noises had upset a guest. I could hear them phoning somebody. I imagined that they were freaked out by the sounds emanating from the flimsy walls, which were probably very clearly audible in the ensuite bathroom of their room. It certainly would have freaked me out.

I marched up to reception, and explained that I might have disturbed a guest, and that I was very sorry. I must have been quite a sight, covered in dust and cobwebs. There was a man sat in the lounge near reception, and he muttered something about "what a disgusting state" when he saw and overheard me, and wandered off when I made eye contact with him, and agreed with his sentiments.

I returned to my bedroom, and wasn't sure what to do. I was sure that the police would surely arrive at any minute. I didn't want the police to think that I had tampered with any evidence or anything, so I went to the window, and sat on the sill with my hands behind my back, so they could be clearly seen from the helicopter, if it was still there. I waited there a long time.

The night passed with much confusion. There was no sign of the police and I even rang the non-emergency number to see if there was anything they could tell me: was I in trouble? Things seemed to quieten down.

As it got light, I got changed and made my way outside. There were some young lads hanging around. They offered me drugs, which I declined "I don't do that anymore" I told them. I'd never encountered open drug dealing in a suburban residential area. Perhaps it was because I looked a wreck, or perhaps it was a setup, I mused.

I went back inside the hotel, to my room. The noise of other guests moving around was starting to rise. I heard a big group leaving, and looked out of my window to see a large family party getting on board a coach. A girl saw me looking out of the window and she waved and beckoned me. I was very confused about what to do.

Then, there was a voice. "Are you coming down?" it said. There then ensued a kind of argument, between me and a couple of voices, where I basically said I'd had enough... I'd been running around playing this silly game all night, and I still didn't know what I was supposed to be doing or why. I started to say "do your worst, you can't hurt me anymore, I've been bullied loads and some more won't matter" but these people, these voices, threatened to 'tell' everybody I knew what a disaster area I was.

It seemed I was being ransomed in some way. The footage from the spy camera, and perhaps other things, was going to be used against me in some way.

I sat down on the bed and decided that I wasn't going to play anymore. I was sulking. I was fed up of being bullied. I'd had enough.

Then, I thought, sod it, I'll go and see what they want me to do. I grabbed all my bags and went down to reception, where I put them into left luggage, except for my backpack which had my laptop and my mobile phone which was plugged into an external battery pack, for extra charge. I then left the hotel.

I heard somebody shout "wanker!" and I made my way down the street towards where I thought I had heard the voice from. As I walked down the street, I heard other catcalls of abuse. "Tosser" I heard, as I went past another house. I noticed that some windows were open on the top floors, but there wasn't anybody to be seen.

I walked up and down the road, noticing that the yelled abuse would come from a few of the same places, but nobody was showing their face. I was very confused about what I was supposed to be doing.

I started walking further and further along the road. There was lots of building and decorating work going on at various houses, and I would hear clanging that was much more like somebody trying to get my attention rather than somebody doing some work. I went to investigate these noises.

Eventually, I started to feel like I was being directed by these clangs and bangs. Somebody clanging, hammering or shutting a car door seemed to be my cue to cross the road, or to turn 90 degrees right. Two slams would see me do a U-turn.

As I made my way up and down the road, I noticed that as I passed somebody, they would run off down the street or get on a bike and ride past me. As I came and went, making several trips, it seemed like I was being made to walk a circuit so that I would see a bunch of people face to face. I started to say "thank you" to the people who I saw, who were all looking for my eye contact for some reason.

I started to jog along, and the vehicles got larger and larger. Starting first with a stream of bicycles, then cars, then vans, then lorries... I seemed to have to greet a larger and larger number of people with a "thank you" while I was running in circles, directed by people slamming doors and banging on scaffolding.

I realised that a huge number of people were involved in this dance, and I could be holding up their day. I wanted to show that I cared that they'd all got involved in 'helping' me and that I was going to put in as much effort as I could. I tried to run as much as I could, with my heavy backpack.

There appeared to be co-ordinators. People would jump on their mobile phones as soon as I passed them and they'd say "yeah, he's just gone past" and other things to suggest that I was running late, behing schedule. I tried to pick up my pace.

I had been hoping to get the ordeal over with quickly, and had assumed that it was only the road that the hotel was on that was involved, but it soon became clear that I was then starting a much bigger circuit. I started being directed through roads taking me away from the hotel. How big was this route and how long was it going to take me?

I kept kind of hoping that I would run into the usual crowds of commuters and normal London life, and this strange experience would be over... I'd just be mingling with everyday Londoners and there would no longer be this sense that I was being guided on a pre-planned journey around Islington, choreographed by people banging on building sites and slamming doors.

I ran, and I ran, and I ran, hoping that I would soon be done, hoping that I would have seen and been seen and said "thank you" to everybody I needed to, and the route would turn back towards the hotel, and I could collapse in a heap with exhaustion. However, the route seemed to be taking me nowhere near the hotel. I had no idea where I was going or how far I had to run for.

I started to feel really dehydrated and that I was getting dangerously tired. The backpack with the expensive and heavy electronics was a real burden, and the shoes that I was wearing, although they were waterproof, were really heavy - designed for walking, not running. There was a bottle of isotonic fluid in my backpack, but I felt bad stopping to drink it.

Eventually, after many miles, I decided I needed to stop and drink the half-bottle that remained. I heard jeering as I paused to get it out of my bag, but I couldn't go on without something. I was drenched in sweat, and I put away the fleece I had been wearing and carried on running.

As I ran down a big wide open road, with a park in the middle, and large grand Georgian terraced houses either side, I noticed that I was being followed by an ambulance. Whatever I was part of, it was certainly well organised. I started to get the idea that I was being tracked by GPS, so that I wouldn't be lost, and there was a little restraint being shown by the organisers. I wasn't going to be hounded to my death. I had to trust these people, I told myself.

I ran down one road, and a girl and her boyfriend stopped me. "My boyfriend did this too, and it helped him get better" the girl told me. They were a sweet looking young couple and were linked arm-in-arm, and looked very happy and in love. I was touched that they told me this, and it spurred me on to continue.

I ran down another road, past a school playground, and all the kids yelled "Nick! Nick!" I thought I really had lost my mind, so I went back and ran past again. "Nick! Nick!" all the kids yelled in unison, once again as I ran past. This was getting pretty surreal.

I then ran into a less residential area. There were people there that were clearly minding their own business. I was starting to get into ordinary London, and it was clear that nobody was paying a blind bit of notice to me. I started to think that perhaps it was over. Then I realised where I was... I ran right past my bike, where it was locked up on the road, where I had gotten into a bit of trouble, and really upset somebody, about 4 or 5 days before this whole weird fiasco.

I looked around, as I ran past my bike, to see if I could see the injured party, who had perhaps been the trigger for this entire event, but I could see no sign. I kept running. At times I assumed that I had perhaps reached the limit of the 'zone' where I was supposed to be, and I was outside the influence of the people who were directing me, but then surprising things happened...

Whenever I needed to cross the road, there was always a gap on both carriageways, opened up by the cars, vans, lorries and busses. This was uncanny. Also, the ambulance was always there, somewhere nearby, presumably on hand in case I collapsed. The traffic thing was really spooky though. London traffic rarely parts like the waves to make way for you.

I kept running and running, but I was getting tired and dehydrated. It had started to drizzle with rain, but it wasn't doing much to keep me cool. I tried to scoop up the water as it settled on railings and benches, to put on my face, to cool down. I really needed some more water as I had run a long way and quite fast with a heavy backpack.

I started to get dizzy and my balance was getting dubious. I started to wonder where the 'finish' line was likely to be for this crazy event. I imagined that it would probably be right at the top of Finsbury Park, where I knew there were some large function halls. I imagined that there was probably going to be an 'intervention'-like event up there, with me having to face the people I'd somehow upset.

I decided to get my phone out and look at a map to see where I was. I could hear groaning and jeering. People in cars started to toot their horns at me and yell at me. I knew I was quitting something too soon, but I didn't know how far I had left to go. I didn't feel like I could carry on any longer, without water, without a break.

Using my phone, I made my way to the top of Finsbury Park. There were lots of hostile yells now, mainly coming from people in cars. The drizzling rain got more persistent and there was a real air of disappointment in the air. I felt like I'd let people down, but at the same time, I felt in my heart-of-hearts that I'd given it my best shot, and to continue would mean passing out from exhaustion and dehydration.

I reached the buildings at the top of Finsbury Park, and there were lots of people milling around. I looked to see if there was any acknowledgement of me, but there was only hostility. It looked like whatever was happening there was being packed up. I heard things being yelled at me.

There was a water fountain in the park, and I greedily guzzled water down, and splashed my face and neck. My feet were in agony and my muscles ached. I was also soaked through with drizzle now.

I set off in the direction of the hotel, or so I thought, but I emerged onto the Holloway Road by accident. I had taken a wrong turn. I decided that I couldn't carry on by foot and tried to hail an Über using the app on my phone. It said the wait time was 35 minutes. I went into a local cab office and waited there for ages, but there didn't seem to be any cabs.

Lots of people were hanging around, sheltering under shop awnings and under the eaves of buildings from the rain. Holloway Road seemed to have reached gridlock. The traffic was bumper to bumper. People still seemed to be yelling abuse at me from cars and vans though. There were occasionally people who passed me on the pavement, and gave me a withering stare, as if I'd personally failed them somehow.

As I stood, sheltering momentarily from the rain, I heard the familiar voices of the woman and the main man I had been talking to. I looked around. Where the hell were they? How the hell did they get here? "We're in your phone" they cackled with laughter. I felt like such a fool... how obvious it suddenly seemed, that these voices had been coming from my phone, which had done the entire journey with me, in my backpack with a 12,000 mAh battery backup pack attached.

The GPS data from my phone confirms the precise route I followed, on this crazy caper. I plotted the GPS data onto Google Maps, which is shown in the image above.

I phoned my friend Cameron, who lived nearby, and left a message saying I really needed his help. I realised that I had left my wallet back at the hotel, and besides, I was exhausted.

I started to wander up the road aimlessly. I was sure that I was still a long way away from the hotel. Then, miraculously, I bumped into Cameron. He hadn't got my message, we just happened to be crossing paths. Anyone who knows London will tell you that this is a very unlikely occurrence.

I begged Cameron to get me something to eat and drink, and help me get a cab back to the hotel. Cameron got me fed & watered, and then into a black cab, to collect my bags and get me back to the hostel in Camden, where I collapsed and went straight to sleep for 24 hours.

I tried explaining to Cameron what had happened, and had imagined that he might have even been involved, as it seemed so co-incidental that I'd bumped into him at that moment. I also knew that he was very interested in street theatre and had organised a kind of zombie apocalypse 'run away from the undead' type event, as well as attending a couple of these events put on by professional outfits in London and Bristol. I thought that his sister, an actress, could perhaps have provided the 'voices' for this personalised event that I had just experienced. He listened to my wild theories, but didn't seem to be doing anything other than humouring me.

The next day, in Camden, I went on a similar long run, where I tried to respond to the slamming of doors and clangs from building sites. I think I was just insane though... completely freaked out by what had happened, and exhausted.

My feet were screwed: two bloody stumps, covered in blisters and with my toenails black and hanging off. I'd completely soaked two sets of clothes with sweat. I'd been through a physical ordeal, to match the mentally horrific things I'd been putting my brain and mind through with powerful stimulant drugs.

It's hard to know what the hell happened. I've looked back at emails and messages I sent from around this time, and it's clear that my brain was barely functioning, and what it was spewing out was total gibberish. I had been through some fairly stressful stuff and I was definitely losing my grip on reality.

However, I know what I saw. I know that I interacted with people. I know that it's pretty hard to go absolutely bat-shit insane and not attract some attention to yourself. The fact I didn't end up in trouble with the police or in hospital is either a miracle, or there's something fishy about the whole mad caper.

In a way, I came back to London so I could let an episode of insanity work its way out of my system. The anonymity of the place, and the fact that most people turn a blind eye to even the most alarming behaviour, means that you can go stark-raving bonkers without causing a scene. Perhaps this was just the ultimate realisation of that urban solitude, and me pushing that envelope of insanity to the very limit.

I often think that in all the parallel Universes where I have died or gone insane, I'm obviously not able to tell the story. Therefore, at that moment when I should have died of a drug overdose, or my mind should have finally splintered and collapsed from all the abuse, chaos and trauma... at that point, the only possible outcome was for something incredible to happen to stop me in my tracks.

I've got to say I'm incredibly grateful to this fantastic city - London - for being everything I have ever seemed to need. I have no idea how I've managed to scrap through such ordeals as I've been through, but I seem to be pretty much unscathed, which is not the case for the crappy things that have happened to me outside London.

I guess it's fairly clear to me, in retrospect, that my sanity is hanging by a very slender thread. Another bout of addiction would be sure to finish me off, either physically or mentally, I'm sure.

It bugs me, not knowing what was real and what was in my mind, but in practical terms, it's given me a sense that I owe it to those who helped me on that day, to see that lots of people want to see me stay clean from the powerful stimulants that I was hopelessly addicted to. I have no idea who they are, or what brought them together, but there was kindness and compassion there. That girl and her boyfriend will always stick in my mind.

I wish somebody would reach out and tell me that they were there, they know what happened, but I know it's unlikely to happen for whatever reason.

Anyway, sorry it's so long and there aren't any pictures. I hope you've managed to read the whole story and been able to follow it, even though it does sound every bit as crazy as it was.

Hopefully, I'm well and I'm sane at the moment. I certainly feel fit and healthy and in OK mental health, apart from a bit of anxiety and depression. Anxiety and depression are nothing compared with a talking mobile phone.

By the way, I don't recommend you getting a Google Android phone or using the Google Gear watch... I've been very suspicious of these devices, and a lot of the apps on the Google Play app store... I suspect that one of the many many free apps that I had installed had some kind of ransomware software in it, but that's just a hunch.

I'm just praying I'm not mad.

Tags: #mentalhealth #addiction #drugs #london

This is a story about things that can't be changed...

London represents opportunity to me. People talk about the streets being paved with gold, and this city has always provided for me, when I've been going through hard times or thought I had reached a dead end.

Obviously, it's people not the place, that has meant that I've had a roof over my head, and the chance to work again, when I would otherwise have sunk, stagnated, rotted and died.

I've been very bitter about my ex-wife and parents, who haven't helped, and have even been obstructive. The bitterness is partly because I've not yet been able to have a sustained period of recovery, to show to those who have helped me that it was worthwhile.

I've considered going back and deleting or editing some of my bitter, angry rants at people who've let me down, obstructed my recovery, even injured me and taken me away from friends, work, my life. It's obvious to me how stuck in a rut I am, how boring and repetitive I've become, how obsessive and negative I sound.

There are several challenges I've set for myself at the moment:

• Get back to work
• Fight depression
• Tidy up a load of administrative loose ends
• Stay 'clean'

It probably seems like I'm making mountains out of molehills, having a storm in a teacup, but there are few words to truly convey just how dysfunctional my life was. Post was shoved out of sight, bills piled up, finances got in a terrible mess, out of contact with all my friends, conflict with my family. The threat of bankruptcy and homelessness was imminent, around the clock.

I know that you have probably had times when you've worried about making ends meet, how you're going to pay the bills, how you're going to pay the rent or the mortgage. I'm sure you've felt like you're not going to do it, that you're going to fall on hard times and be evicted from your home. Try living like that for a few years, and see what your stress levels are like.

A lot of my bitteness stems from the fact that the depths I sank to, the problems I've had to overcome... a lot of it was so easily avoidable. A very small handful of people just had to honour their commitments, their word, their duty and their obligation as supposedly decent human beings, and my situation could have been very different.

However, I need to move forward. I don't feel in a particularly forgiving mood, so instead I'm going to blame myself. I'm going to blame myself for trusting people. I'm going to blame myself for taking people at their word. I'm going to blame myself for thinking that other people were dependable, reliable, trustworthy, pleasant, decent human beings.

I can improve on that. I can actually say that I learned some important life lessons. "In sickness and in health" are just empty words to some people, and some parents are just terrible, terrible people. My faith in humanity is damaged, but I will probably benefit from becoming cynical, untrusting, negative, selfish and unreliable... just like them.

I need to make it clear here that I'm not talking about all those many people in London, who have been my friends, my support network, my saviours in my hour of need. London has provided me with clothes in hospital, where my parents have left me for dead. London has provided me with a dry roof over my head, where my ex-wife would see me go homeless. London has provided non-judgemental friends, where others have recoiled in prejudiced horror at the propaganda pedalled by my ex and my Dad.

One of my great sadnesses is that where these worlds have collided, and the chaos and trauma that I have been through has overspilled into all areas of my life, long-standing friendships have been damaged. I can not and will not criticise my friend, who made me a guest in his home, for the fact that he believed things said behind my back, which his naïvety led him to believe, but it's hard to know how to fix things up between us.

There's a saying amongst people dealing with mental health issues:

Nothing about us without us

It's quite simple really. You have no idea what a person is going through, when they're suffering the chaos and trauma associated with mental health issues (including substance abuse) and 2nd or 3rd hand information is just tittle-tattle, and will not help anybody.

It sounds like I'm ticking my friends off, and I'm really not. Where people have tried to help, I have nothing but gratitude. I don't expect people to understand, to make allowances, to go out of their way to educate themselves. I have no entitlement, beyond the basic human decency of not making assumptions based on stuff that's been discussed behind my back, but I can understand that there might be honest good intentions.

This is all starting to sound rather paranoid, confused. Yes, that's the psychological damage that's done when you overhear hushed whispers about yourself, and news spreads via gossip and contact behind your back that you aren't party to.

As a sick person, I felt like a failure. I blamed myself for being defective, and later for 'choices' I made. I viciously attacked myself, criticised my inability to cure my ailments and restore my former stability, reliability, order in my life. When you feel terrible about yourself, you carry a huge burden of shame. You try and hide yourself away, minimise your footprint on the world, withdraw from human contact and the public gaze.

It's very strange, pretending you don't exist, because you're ashamed, embarrassed. You live in fear of anybody discovering that you're not well. You live in fear of anybody finding out how much of a failure you think you are. Of course, this breeds paranoia. Of course, you are hypersensitive to people talking about you behind your back.

Of my friends, there's no blame here. They tried to help. They wanted to help. Their motives were good. They aided. They helped, they didn't hinder. I have only regret that I haven't yet been able to use the patchwork quilt of support that I've received to put it all together into something more positive... yet.

Certain beginnings haven't reached the end yet. This story's not over

Tags: #london #friends #parents #divorce #bipolar #depression #mentalhealth