This is a story (with pictures) about a typical day in my life...

Here's where I slept last night. This is the spare room. The chair and the red thing are my crap attempt to block out some daylight - the windows are floor-to-ceiling, but the glass is frosted on the bottom half, and the blind only comes down halfway. I get woken up by the morning sun if I sleep in here on non-cloudy days.

As you can see, I always keep a range of electronic gadgetry within grabbing distance of the bed. I get woken up so early, that if I'm browsing Facebook on my phone (I'm so addicted to that) I keep nodding off and pressing buttons - very often that means a video will start playing and the sound will wake me up.

You might notice two pairs of studio-grade headphones. I have quite a collection of high-end headphones. It's retail therapy for me, to buy headphones.

This is my drug shrine. I come here to worship, mostly at night. I swallow a cocktail of everything from opiates to benzos to sleeping pills to stimulants to mood stabilisers to antipsychotics... you name it, I've got it. The only ones I really like are the Xanax.

This is my real bed. It was pristine, but then I stabbed it with a knife, stole two bedslats and bled all over it. Oh, yeah, and I stole a metal bar from it too, that was a handle to allow you to lift it up and get to the storgage underneath. Rather quite a lot of insanity has gone down in this bedroom. I tried to lift up the mattress and get under it, with my ex on the other side. Remarkably, she didn't say a thing or budge an inch. I guess people have just gotten used to my erratic behaviour.

This is my desk of depression. You might notice a set of intrays (collapsed) and a couple of shoeboxes. Those were my early attempts to get more organised. As you can see, I've given up and this desk has become a kind of no-mans land. My passport and €500 are buried here, somewhere.

There's my missing duvet and pillows. I put them there so they didn't get messed up when I was messed up. Hiding under that pile are two laundry baskets, which are full of dirty washing.

In the washing basket are a couple of clean pillowcases and my leg splint. Also in this general area are things that I have thrown from a distance at the pile. There isn't really a system, per se.

This is the world-famous Nick Grant patent Floordrobe™. Socks and pants go in the rightmost box, but every other box is a lucky dip. I can't say that it works very well for finding specific items of clothing, but it works really well for putting away clean washing - you just tip it onto the boxes and then spread it around until it's roughly level. You should try it.

There's a couple of dents I punched in the bathroom door when I was drunk. I don't know why I did it. I regret it now. The other marks are from where I was trying to stop bad people from getting me, when I was in my bedroom. They were going to come in the bathroom window. Or at least, that's what my totally sane and logical brain said.

I always take a shower... except when I'm depressed. Then I take a shower if I'm going on public transport or meeting the Queen or something. I do have some 'canned shower' which is also known as body spray. Enough of that will mask the smell of my rotting flesh.

My ensuite also has a bath. I only take baths if I'm having a stimulant overdose. Cold baths. REALLY cold baths. I could probably go into shock and die, but I'd also rather avoid the organ damage caused by malignant hyperthermia. I could not take dangerous drugs instead, or be more careful with my measurements, but those sound like ridiculous suggestions.

There must be something here that can cure me. Probably the bleach. Most of the bottles are amino acids and vitamins. There are also dressings and antiseptic wipes, in case I decide to slash my arms to pieces again.

If I was going to work, I would get a crisply laundered shirt out of here, and a smart suit, which I would pair with a nice pair of formal leather shoes. The other side of the wardrobe is full of boxes of stuff from my house, which was sold as part of my divorce. I do not look in the boxes. Not because I'm upset that I had to divorce that evil b*tch, but because the stuff in them was in storage for so long, it's clearly surplus to requirements.

WTF is this at the bottom of the wardrobe? A mixture of tools, a tent, a squash racquet, bits from a crutch, a bent fork. I can spend hours playing with these toys, when I'm loopy and I've decided that bad men are going to break into my flat and get me in my bedroom.

The coast is clear. No bad men today. Or at least, not yet. A few days without sleep and I'm sure they'll be back. They always are. How do they know that I've not been sleeping so I'm vulnerable? They must have bugged my room.

I should go out on my bike. It's a nice sunny day. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe never. I like the blue bike the best, but the rear wheel is buckled. Riding the black bike is joyless experience, like fucking your ugly wife.

Ah the kitchen. Not looking too bad. Probably because I live on pot noodles and pot porridge. I'm about to have some pot porridge now. Do you want to see me make it? You do? Ok then.

There you go: pot porridge. You take off the superfluous plastic lid, tear off the foil and pour boiling water in, up to a line that you can hardly see. Then you have to stir it. The stirring is what makes it cooking. I do cooking, me.

Pot noodles have exactly the same process, except there's no plastic lid, which makes the pot noodle the most efficient of all the pot meals.

I could eat at the dining table. That way, I would get less shit all over myself. I never eat at the dining table. I was using the dining table as a dumping ground for post, but it depressed me. I would eat at the dining table if I had cooked a meal to woo a girl. Not a lot of wooing going on at the moment, or cooking.

Here's where I'm going to eat my breakfast. In fact, here's where I'm going to eat all my meals. I even slept here the other day, because I'd managed to mess up BOTH of my bedrooms. It's an awesome sofa, because it has a reclining view of the TV and a reclining view of the river, and you only have to turn through 90 degrees to enjoy both.

There's the guitar I never play, with a Vox valve amp that cost a bomb. Sounds cool even if you're just plucking individiual notes though - let the effects do the work. I can play Star Spangled Banner and sound like Hendrix, just because the amp is so good.

There are also plants which I don't water. I struggle to feed, clothe, wash and hydrate myself. What the fuck am I going to do with plants?

Another toy I never play with. It's got Oculus Rift virtual reality. It feels like you're actually inside a racing car. It's awesome, but I've got the attention span of a goldfish, thanks to what I presume must be the consumption of copious amounts of hard drugs.

I suppose I should open the blinds. I've been hiding from the builders, but there's only ever two of them and the project is two months late. Still, they do enough hammering at 8am to remind the whole block that they're completely useless fuckwits.

Yeah, this sign has been up for months.

There we go. Some of my view, with some scaffolding, which slightly spoils things.

I'm on the balcony. Shhh! Don't tell the builders or I'll be killed to death. Actually, you might struggle to find them.

The London Eye is on the left, then The Shard is fairly obvious. There's a new skyscraper springing up to the right of that. The tops of Tower Bridge are visible. There's the bloody walkie talkie. To the left of it is the dome of St Paul's Cathedral, and to the left of that is the BT tower. Over in the City, you've got the Cheesegrater, Tower 42, Gherkin and Heron Tower. There's probably some other landmarks I missed, but you get the general idea.

There's the 'beach' as well as the communal garden for the flat... and some more scaffolding of course. If you were to look the other way, you'd see my nearest Pokemon gym. Yes, I was so bored at work that summer, that I started playing Pokemon.

Being a West-facing apartment, the garden is sunniest in the afternoon.

Looks like it's going to be a nice day. Better close the curtains again so I don't feel guilty about wasting it.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is my life today.

Tags: #depression

This is a story about a better world...

On the topic of how the human race should divide labour & treasure - the products we manufacture and the food we harvest - a friend and former boss challenged me to come up with "something new and truly revolutionary" because I'm "a smart chap". Challenge accepted.

To my friend, the "constant drone of the right and the left is incredibly boring". Ok, fine. Let's set aside all political parties, their ideologies and their manifestos.

Right now, in the UK, we are a rudderless ship. Parliament was dissolved. All those constantly droning politicians are out campaigning, rather than doing what we elected them to do, which was to make new laws which we thought would make our lives better.

So, what the hell is going on? Why isn't there rioting in the streets? Why do I still have power in my apartment and water coming out of the taps? Why haven't a revolutionary group stormed the gates of the Palace of Westminster, and forcibly taken up residence in the House of Commons, declaring themselves as our new rulers?

In our day-to-day lives, we're quite familiar with parts of our national heritage. You picked up the letters off the doormat, with The Queen's head on a stamp. The jolly postman drove off in his red Royal Mail van. The train you travelled on to get to work, ran on tracks that are maintained by Network Rail. The road you drove on to get the kids to school is maintained by the Highways Agency. If you crash, the police and ambulance service will get you to a National Health Service hospital. When you eat any food, DEFRA will make sure that it's fit for human consumption. The electricity that boils your kettle was transmitted through the National Grid. Your house was built to national building regulations, the electrical system conforms to the national wiring regulations, the gas supply conforms to national standards. The Met Office warned you of any bad weather and made sure that various flood gates were opened to protect residential areas. When you got home, you watched British Broadcasting Corporation television programmes. Let's not forget the Foreign and Commonwealth Office who will look after you if there's trouble abroad, and of course the Passport Office who issued you with valid travel documents in the first place. The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency will make sure that the nation's roads are free from unsafe drivers, and the Department for Transport will make sure that every vehicle is inspected and tested to meet national standards. Her Majesty's Land Registry makes sure that nobody steals your house and the police make sure nobody steals your possessions.

Then, there are parts of our national heritage which are quite unseen. As a maritime nation, Britain imports and exports a lot of goods. UK Export Finance will lend to private companies who are exporting British goods, so that cashflow isn't held up while the container ship makes way for whichever port it's destined for. The Ministry of Defence is busy dreaming up new ways to kill people in nasty ways, while also forming part of the United Nations permanent peacekeeping forces, which keep a lid on pockets of unrest in faraway lands, which hopefully maintains a degree of global stability, although this is a controversial point. The MoD also have at least one Vanguard class submarine at sea, hidden underwater from the prying eyes of satellites, containing 16 Trident thermonuclear missiles, which in theory stops anybody from nuking us. Although not really acknowledged as existing, MI6 is busy gathering intelligence - i.e. spying - to protect us from foreign threats, which at the moment is mainly radical Islamists and the IRA.

All of those droning politicians haven't done a single thing except drone, since parliament was dissolved, so why is the UK still continuing to function perfectly well?

One might argue, why do you really care whether your electricity came from a state-owned monopoly power station, or a privately owned and operated one? In terms of the benefit to us all, the question is always the same: where did the money go, and how was it distributed?

In an unrestrained system of free-market capitalism, a foreign company will build their power station here in the UK using foreign labour and foreign materials. They will then sell us the electricity. Obviously, the foreign power company now has some pounds that they don't really want, so they sell them for another currency. This drives down the value of the pound, as well as creating a net currency outflow: more pounds leaving the UK than coming in. This attracts asset strippers and other vultures, who buy up valuable assets at a price that seems cheap to them, but expensive to anybody who lives in the UK. Look at the soaring value of London property prices: most of the transactions have been foreign investors; many of whom won't even live in the houses and apartments they've bought.

Eventually, if privatisation is allowed to continue, everything we need in daily life - housing, energy, food, clothes, water - will profit a foreign investor and our pounds will be virtually worthless, so things will be really expensive. The idea of competition works well when you're buying something you don't really need off the Internet, but are you going to move house every time the landlord puts the rent up, because the place next door is more competitively priced? Efficient markets only work when there's liquidity. Have you ever tried changing your bank or your energy supplier? It's a massive ball-ache.

I like living in a country where buildings don't fall down, I don't get electrocuted, the roads are safe and if I am unfortunate enough to have an accident, then I'll be sewn back together by world-class surgeons and looked after in a super well-equipped hospital.

My utopian ideas revolve around self-sufficiency. My utopia is probably a steel-hulled self-righting sailboat, with wind and solar electricity generation, big batteries, water purification and desalination. For food, the main boat would tow a super-tough floating greenhouse containing some kind of gimballed field to stabilise it in the waves. I would grow genetically-engineered beefburgers and other high-yield crops, and tow my floating greenhouse along with me in calm weather. In an unexpected storm, I could cut away the greenhouse-boat, and then retrieve it later using radio transmitter tracking. Most of the time I'd be moored up in some cove that's sheltered from the prevailing winds. Line-caught fish and squid would be a large part of my diet, but underneath the field-boat would be lots and lots of ropes growing mussels. I think a family of 5 could live a fairly decent life until the next generation were old enough and experienced enough to take to the seas on their own vessel.

Obviously, utopia doesn't scale, so most political discussions unfortunately, revolve around questions of ownership and wealth inequality; plus there's the important point about people who steal from the UK, by not paying their taxes and moving their money offshore.

As for revolution; that's just foolish. We need political reform: proportional representation and preferential voting. We need to abolish wealthy donors buying peerages from political parties. In fact, I'm in favour of abolishing political parties altogether. We need very low caps on how much money you can spend on political campaigning.

I'm less of a Marxist/Stalinist/Leninist/Maoist/Trotskyist than you think (well, maybe the latter a little bit) and I'm most concerned with the staggering amount of wealth that's hidden in tax havens, and tax that's avoided using accounting scams like Vodafone and their ilk. I'm also concerned by CEOs and politicians who don't "eat their own dog food" - if you run a bank, you should keep all your money in a bank account with the bank you run (hint, hint, Stuart Gulliver) and if you're a Member of Parliament, you should send your kids to state school and have regular NHS healthcare: no private options for those who seek to govern.

There isn't really an -ist that describes me, nor can I be pigeon holed as left, right or centre. My views and opinions are influenced by some ideas, but to say that I think that there's some autocrat, political party or ideology that works perfectly, is quite wrong. The world is a messy place, and there are plenty of people who'd like to poop your party just to show you up, even if you ever conceived the perfect system for society to conform to.

Summing up what I want from our society: social justice, income spread of no more than 100% from the lowest paid to the best paid, state-owned monopolies on essentials like health, energy, transport, education and housing, investment in science and technology, investment in massive infrastructure projects that are a source of national pride, minimum income (as opposed to full employment), 100% inheritance tax and your house/apartment reverts to state ownership after death, beefed up Competition and Markets Authority with a mandate to attack any area that has become a significant part of ordinary people's monthly expenditure, halve spending on defence and spend that budget on the UK Space Agency, decriminalise all drugs, regulate and tax sales of Cannabis for medicinal use, drug law enforcement budget to be spent on addiction treatment and education instead, the creation of a state-owned national investment bank and laws to restrict the use of financial instruments, make charging interest illegal.

That's quite a lot, isn't it? Implementing it all would be a pigging pain without treading on a lot of toes; hence the boat idea.

Tags: #politics

This is a story about sun tans...

For orientation purposes, that's the bottom of the Isle of Dogs, where I live. I'm standing South of the Thames, taking the photograph, facing due North. You can see the towers of Canary Wharf in the distance. My apartment block is around the corner to the left, where the river meanders into central London. The O2 centre and the Thames Barrier are downstream to the right. You can't see the right-hand sweep of the river in this photograph, but the river goes North-South on both sides of the Isle of Dogs, which isn't really an island at all. Go figure.

This relaxed trip to the supermarket should have been a jolly affair, where I was free to peruse the shelves for all manner of tasty goodies. After sex comes food and fine wine. What other joys are there in life except for hard drugs? Childbirth you might say, but birth gives rise to responsibilities, guilt. At the moment, I'm my own man: no boss is going to chastise me for taking a leisurely stroll during working hours; no mother of my child is going to be angry that I'm not bearing my fair share of the burden of childrearing. I can kill myself and not leave a trace.

When I was working, I used to manage my moods using my skin tone. The more tanned I was, the more relaxed, happy and easy-going I was. Starting to go pale and pasty sounded alarm bells in my head that caused me to book a nice two-week break somewhere hot & sunny. Why the hell do I live somewhere that is engulfed in grey clouds 90% of the time? Probably because I never care about the weather outside when I'm working.

At the moment, I'm white as a ghost. People who knew me during happier times would barely recognise me without my all-year-round tan. Perhaps being untanned is good though at the moment: the scars that run the length of my forearms don't really show. I cut with a razor blade, which was so sharp that my skin healed with very thin scars. I can see the scars. I know what they mean.

Sun tanning is like meditation. It can be forced relaxation, if you're really determined to lay down some skin tone. At times, it's a byproduct of simply being in a hot country doing outdoor adventure sports. Even in the UK, you can pick up quite a tan if you're out on the water all the time - where you get twice as much radiation due to the reflection of the sun's rays. It's not quick, easy and painless. There will be times where you overcook yourself, and you'll have to apply moisturiser carefully for the next week. There will be times where you've got a lovely brown front, but your back is white as white. If you wear sunglasses you'll get panda eyes; if you don't you'll get squint lines (and possibly damage your eyes).

Who's that white guy wearing sunglasses?

My kitesurfing friends would meet an unrecognisable version of me today. Gone is the laid back surfer type guy with sun-bleached hair and clothes, rough hands and olive skin. Instead, comes a bundle of stress and nervous energy - or lack of energy - who seems defeated and stuck in a rut, ruminating over and over about what might have been but never was; growing old disgracefully and inelegantly; making a buffoon of himself. Who is this tramp, more suited for swigging cans of strong lager and bottles of cider in the park and fighting over cigarette butts and pennies? Who is this jester, who would turn his own legacy into some kind of running gag? A joke, but not a funny one. Just sad and pathetic, and unapproachable. "Leave him be, there's nothing we can do for him" they say to each other; the people he once travelled the world with in search of the trade winds.

Relaunching myself was supposed to be a third time lucky affair, following the same winning formula of highly paid IT contracts for banks in London, plus kitesurfing holidays to hot & windy countries. It was a costly relaunch. A small amount of money to get scrubbed up and respectable for Barclays. A slightly larger amount of money to get hosed down and straightened out for HSBC. Then, an absolutely incredible amount to finally launch myself far enough to complete a contract for a very happy client and even take a kitesurfing holiday smack bang in the middle of it - see picture above. Regrettably the momentum wasn't continued and I started to get obsessed with the idea of finding love and achieving something in life to be proud of: writing a novel.

I can't afford to be sitting around, taking in the river views and strolling along, taking my time, while the gap in my CV grows ever larger; my skills get rustier; my fear of failure grows; my anticipation of the misery of paying back the money it cost to simply stand still, drives a stake through my heart. Vanquished, I feel.

Two of my friends have had triplets this year, at about the same time. Just about all of my friends have left London, settled down and had kids. Down on the South Coast, an old colleague offered me work. I know that there is plenty of sand, surf and wind to be had in Dorset, as well as the potential for some much needed income, but what about love; what about proving everyone wrong and making it work against the odds? I'm almost forcing the hands of the clock back so I can have it all - the wealthy lifestyle, the loving wife and at some point later, the kids - despite the fact I'm 37 years old and I really haven't got time after two failed attempts and a third that I didn't capitalise on.

Bournemouth, Dorset. My nemesis. I could so easily get trapped down there. Imagine the conversation I'd have with my ex-wife if I bumped into her:

Ex: "Hi"

Me: "Hi"

Ex: "How're you?"

Me: "Depressed and desperate"

Ex: "I thought you were earning insane amounts of money in London"

Me: "I was, then I wasn't, then I was, then I wasn't, then I was and finally I gave up"

Ex: "Oh"

Me: "How are you doing?"

Ex: "Met a great guy. We bought a nice house. Just about to have our second kid. We both work part-time"

Me: "Yeah, I remember that was always the plan <sigh>"

Ex: "Well, good luck"

Me: "Actually, can you phone the mental health crisis team for me, please, because I think I'm going to stab myself in the neck with a plastic fork"

Ex: "Look, we got divorced and I'm not involved in your shit anymore. Look at the mess you're making of the supermarket floor"

* she storms off *

Me: <gurgling noises>

* our hero collapses dead in a pool of his own blood, his jugular vein severed by the plastic cutlery that accompanies a supermarket takeaway salad *

That's pretty much how I imagine how it goes, hence never going back there. Hence being terrified of being sectioned there and being seen by former friends and colleagues, shuffling along heavily medicated up to my eyeballs as the staff members of St Ann's Psychiatric Hospital take the crazies out for a walk, to get some fresh air.

Bournemouth is not a place where you want to be suffering from mental health problems, addiction or alcoholism: they're too well prepared. They'll swoop on you and the system will just scoop you up and absorb you. You'll become part of the horde of other dreamers who made their way to the seaside, but found that it's a dead-end: the sea is an impassible barrier.

London's tried to eject me every which way it can, but it hasn't succeeded. I feel slightly bloody minded in staying, despite the risk to my life, but I also think that if I kill myself, I've at least got one thing to be really proud of: I fought off those who wanted to see me swept out, like I was some leaf that blew into your house. I got back to London, and in some ways, I made it work.

Rest in peace, me.

Tags: #suicide #london #career

This is a story about climbing the social ladder...

When you're lying in the gutter, you're looking at the stars. When things are really and truly shit, you reach a point where you stop caring what the world is going to throw at you next, and you recognise that the simplest thing - a sunny day or a £10 note lying on the pavement - can transform your day; your life.

When you're top dog; a fat cat with a cellar stuffed full of vintage wine, a garage full of supercars, yachts and speedboats, a swimming pool, acres of manicured grounds, horses & stables, farmland, a profitable business empire, wealth squirrelled away offshore or in anonymous safe-deposit boxes... you're not going to fall very far. Even if you secured business loans against your UK house, you're still going to be able to live in some tax haven in a penthouse apartment, in relative luxury, for the rest of your days. The money that's held in trust for your children is untouchable; secure. Most of your own wealth is hidden. You can escape with your filthly lucre, flee overseas and stay safe from extradition... you can't really fall that far at all.

When you're in the middle, you're reading OFSTED reports on schools and trying to work out catchment areas and where you can afford to buy a house for you and all your spawn. You're trying to do the delicate balancing act of being two working parents, while also doing school runs and all the pickups and drop offs necessary for the after-school activities that will turn your offspring into well-rounded individuals, who hopefully will have plenty to talk about at their interview for Oxford or Cambridge. You've been giving your thick little shits extra maths tutoring in the hope that they'll pass the 11+ exam and you can force them to go to a grammar school that they don't want to go to, because all their equally unacademic friends are going to the local comprehensive. You spend at least half the night awake worrying about your teen daughter getting pregnant, and the other half worrying about your teen son getting addicted to drugs. You spend your holidays visiting sights of historical or cultural significance, or abroad where your little darlings get to say "où sont les toillettes, s'il vous plaît?" or "ich möchte wurst, bitte" or whatever language you're insisting they learn, to improve their university application. You spend your evenings with the rasping, scraping, screeching noise of a badly played violin and thunderous farting noises, amplified a thousand times through the brass torture implement that is a French horn. Every shitty note of every shitty practice session that the kids don't want to do, but you want them to maybe get a music scholarship, and Oxbridge looks kindly on musicians. Homework is a constant argument, as your children bare-face lie to you about having done it when they haven't, because they want to go and play with their friends. Those friends who you wish they wouldn't hang about with anyway, because they're the wrong sort of children. All the while, you're one redundancy or sacking away from the whole house of cards collapsing, because all your money is eaten up by the mortgage you over-stretched yourselves to get, the car loan, the loans for those musical instruments and the private lessons, all the petrol you burn driving your little darlings around and all those cultural, historical, educational outings. One fuck up and the whole thing comes tumbling down and you'll be back in your clogs.

When you're 'working-class' housing benefit covers most of the rent. Employment support, disability living, jobseekers allowance and income support allowance somehow provides not quite enough to do anything except shuffle miserably small sums of money around and scrimp and save, buying all the loss-leaders in the supermarkets and supplementing your income with a bit of cash-in-hand employment, dealing [mostly] harmless drugs and shoplifting. On the estate you live on, there are hundreds of families who are struggling just like you, and you all swap tips on how to make ends meet, as well as trading, borrowing and loaning... a thriving black market. Whatever happens, you at least feel solidarity with your neighbours. You're English and proud. You were born here, and you've got a right to live here. The government has a duty to support you and your children, and it's damn hard work keeping the little tearaways under control. You have ten children, all called Steve, which is not confusing because you use their father's surname when you want to get their attention. You're not even aware that you're a Jeremy Kyle cliché, because you have been stuck into a ghetto of equally impoverished people, with equally abysmal opportunities, and it's been the same for generations. You don't know any different. You're not trying to climb the social ladder, because the route is barred and nobody ever tried or knew how to try. You're not afraid of falling, because you're the bedrock foundation of British society: the very definition and product of the welfare state and the neglect of the poor; the result of social experiments with high-density housing in the 60's; the living embodiment of upper-class fears that the working-class would breed more, given half a chance.

Clearly, it's the middle-class who are sharp-elbowed, trying to fight the way to the front of the crowd, trying to get their little darlings a slight advantage, in the race for those few places at the best schools and at the best universities. It's the middle class who myopically can't see that marking exams to a grade curve, where a predefined percentage of children will achieve A* grades, means that education has become an arms race. It's the middle-class who believe in destroying their children's present in the interests of their future, despite the pure insanity of it. "The future of our children is at stake" is half-screamed out of a middle-class parent's mouth, which foams and froths. If you want to see the living embodiment of Hell on Earth, try being a fly on the wall during the period of secondary school selection, GCSE exams, A-level exams and university application. Middle class parents will tell you that they can't deal with their teenagers, without any comprehension that the filial obedience they enjoyed before has been exhausted: the children have finally figured out how to zone out and ignore that constant nagging and cajoling. Why this desperation? Why does it seem to be such a matter of life-and-death to these middle-class people, who live in the luxury of the wealthy West?

Most middle-class people, with their good jobs and their ample but dowdy houses, will tell you some kind of folklore tale about how hard they worked to achieve what they've got. Many middle-class people will claim to be working-class made good, telling you that their mother was a hamster and their father was a window cleaner, or whatever claptrap lies they've told so many times that they now believe. Fact of the matter is, if you're a middle-class homeowner with teenaged kids, you've enjoyed a house price bubble that's made you feel wealthy - on paper - even though you haven't worked very hard, except all that stress with the kids, right?

While you've been working very hard to make sure your kids don't fuck up their future, people who are richer and smarter than you have been funnelling vast quantities of money offshore, where it can't be touched. Your fucking ISA or other savings account that you hope will soften the blow of having to support your kids through university, is a piss in the ocean. In the event of an economic downturn, you're fucked, aren't you?

Our middle-classes trample each other; grasping for the next rung on the ladder; grasping for something to hang on to; grasping for safety; grasping for security. Living a life which can fall to pieces and thrust you into the Jeremy Kyle world of the working-class, that you've so desperately tried to insulate your children from - it's a fate worse than death, to you. If there's one thing you fear above all else, it's that your children should end up mixing with Britain's poorest and most disadvantaged; as if your children might 'catch' poverty. In fact, there may be no choice in the matter. Without those offshore trust funds, and a desirable property that's far bigger than you need, where's your safety net? It's the council house on the estate filled with denizens that you never wanted your children to ever meet or interact with, lest they be led astray into a life of teenaged pregnancy and drug abuse.

This is why the Tories win votes from people who you'd think were otherwise quite ordinary and decent: because they're afraid. They actually have achieved very little in life, and they're acutely aware how easily they could lose their place in the queue that they fought so hard to get [at the expense of everybody they trampled to get there]. There's a sense of entitlement, because there has been so much worry; so much insecurity. It feels like it's OK to be a bit selfish. It feels like, because of the myth of how you rose from the gutter, with terrible tragedy in your life and no opportunity, you pulled yourself up by your bootstraps and you became successful through sheer hard work, grit and determination. It's utter bullshit, of course, but it's why you're going to vote Tory, isn't it?

The middle-classes live in fear, and the more afraid they are, the more they vote Tory, for fear of losing what little they have; for fear of having to mix with the undesirable working-class folk who they've tried so hard to keep their children away from.

That's why you vote Tory, isn't it?

Tags: #politics

This is a story about nonlinear progression...

There's my bedroom door. As you can see, you can bolt it closed, which is a security feature I added myself. Later, I decided to slide a knife behind the wooden surround and screw that into the wood that surrounds the door. Then I decided that a second knife was probably needed, in case the first one snapped as the blade flexed. Then I decided that I needed something else and finally arrived at the decision to dismantle one of my crutches and part of my bed, so that I had a wooden slat and an aluminium tube, which in theory provided some kind of extra security.... I don't know. I'd been doing this for hours by this point, completely exhausted.

What you're really looking at is the mind, after losing five or six nights of sleep, skipping fifteen to eighteen meals, and being confined to one room, with all the windows obscured.

Who would want to come and do me any harm? Well, when you attempt to balance a crutch and a bed slat on a door handle at 4am - in total darkness - I imagine anybody within earshot would probably want to see me lynched.

I used to go and hide in the bathroom, because it had a proper lock, but then my flatmate unlocked it from outside with a butter knife. Luckily I was right by the door so I locked it again. He was only checking if I was alive, but it's strange how nobody talks to you when you descend into one of these periods of isolation.

In my mind, the lock on my balcony door had been picked. Then, the large glass patio door had been noiselessly slid open, and men clad in black wearing stealth shoes had been able to cross my wooden floor without alerting me to their presence. Meanwhile, more men clad in black, had entered my spare bedroom through a window. These men removed the 'security' features from my front door - for example, a hammer that falls on the floor if the door is opened, which is a kind of improvised intruder alarm - allowing more of their team to enter my flat and prepare to batter down my bedroom door.

Hiding in bathrooms is awful. The floor is freezing tiles and that's about it. There's plenty to drink and you can answer the call of nature, but other than that, it's just cold and boring. I spend half my time barricading the bathroom door and the other half looking through the crack under the door, to see if I can see the men in black in my bedroom. It's a really narrow crack and you can hardly see anything, so you start to imagine that you've seen things. This is why I've stopped hiding in bathrooms.

I have a bed that lifts up so you can store stuff underneath it. If you didn't know, you'd just think it was regular Ikea bed. I actually slept under there for 8 hours or so. It's fucking roasting and I'm sure there's inadequate air recirculation, but I seemed to survive.

Every time I get so hungry or thirsty or just fed up with the bullshit of it all, I take down the barricades and say "come on then, men in black, do your worst!". Then I usually just collapse in bed and sleep for hours and hours. Nothing bad has happened in my home, ever. The police have kicked the bedroom door in a couple of times at my parents', which is what triggered this whole paranoia. That's my parents for you: they'd rather have a door smashed off its hinges than talk to their son. I've tried the basics, like saying "use your words" but that's obviously too much effort for them.

That's the thing about paranoia: it doesn't come from nowhere. There are seeds and they grow into nightmares. Doesn't it creep you out, the idea of some twisted sick voyeur watching you while you take a shit or even just sleeping peacefully in bed? Doesn't it creep you out, the idea of your bedroom becoming a viewing gallery, where people come and go as they please, to watch whatever you're up to?

I haven't written in a while, and that's because I'd given up hope. I'd given up hope that my foot/ankle could be fixed and I could stop the massive doses of painkillers, that were making me so doped up I couldn't work. I'd given up hope that I had enough runway left, to be able to get another IT contract, especially after HSBC lowered my overdraft limit by the best part of £2,000. None of the sums added up. None of the calculations could show that there was a way that I could make my money last until I got some more income.

Then, a windfall from an investment I was managing on somebody else's behalf. A gift from a kind and caring person. Some help getting my spare bedroom ready to rent out to a flatmate - it had been left in an awful state by the last guy, who owes me approximately £6,000 - which will bring deposit money and cut my burn rate by half. Finally, I managed to get a bridging loan, which is getting paid into my account today. Turns out my credit rating is pretty awesome. One of my non-HSBC credit cards just had its limit doubled, so I can live on that to some extent. My interest bill is awful, but put in the context of what I can earn as an IT contractor, it don't mean shit.

I'm crashing at my girlfriend's so that I'm in a different environment. Also, because there are workmen replacing the planking on my balcony, but the amount of noise they're making, you'd think they were demolishing the entire block of flats.

The lounge/diner/kitchen massive room in my flat - with patio doors onto the balcony at one end and a dual-aspect panoramic view of the River Thames - is fucking awesome, but when I'm depressed I only go in there to get more unhealthy snacks, which I take back to my stinky bedroom, with the curtains drawn, to watch endless amounts of on-demand TV.

I don't like it when alcoholics describe themselves as 'in recovery' when they've been teetotal for years and years. I'm 'in recovery' in that I lost at least 14kg in body weight, since my peak (although that was somewhat skewed by fluid retention). I lost more sleep and skipped more meals than you'd ever believe. I need to recover. I need to catch up on sleep. I need nutrients and to allow my body to lay down a bit of fat. I need to have some time where I'm not worried about men in black kicking the door in, and where I can have sex with my girlfriend without worrying that some sicko voyeur is watching through a tiny gap in the curtains.

Working so hard, with such enormous effort and stress, to get out of hospital and get to the first day of my new job, was one of the most difficult, challenging and against-the-odds things I've ever done. I did it. I fucking did it. Then, to have it snatched away was a cruelty that broke me. It broke me. It broke my will to live. It broke my will to keep trying. I had to hide from the world for an entire week, just in shock, unable to allow myself to think, because my thoughts would have turned straight to suicide. I had to get through a week without a single bit of thinking, otherwise I was dead; it hurt me that badly and left me in such a shitty situation.

Since then, I've been careless with my life and everything in it. I've got an amazing girlfriend, but I risked losing her. I've got a super helpful friend who's always there for me, but I risked pushing them away. I know people are monitoring the situation through this blog and social media, and would act if they were worried, perhaps to send the police round to find my corpse. It'd be a better idea to just reach out and ask if I'm OK and say you're worried, using any of the tech communication channels we have - SMS, iMessage, Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger, Twitter DM... the list is endless.

My long-suffering girlfriend ended up speaking with somebody I know through my blog and Facebook, because he was quite rightly concerned. I'm really touched when I find out about these little webs of people who are like a safety net. Nets have holes and I might fall through one - as I have fallen through many of the cracks in life - but it does feel like I have more to live for, knowing that people care enough to speak to each other; share information; discuss what to do.

I'm now admiring my newly flat stomach (but seriously, don't do the supercrack diet) and feeling a little bit more relaxed about having some runway to get back to work once my foot/ankle is fixed... although ironically, I stopped taking the painkillers, but I broke my wrist, so go figure.

You'd seriously hate me if you knew everything about my charmed existence. I left my apartment which faces West - a view of almost every famous London landmark: Shard, London Eye, Tower Bridge, St Paul's Cathedral, Walkie Talkie, Cheesegrater, Gherkin, BT Tower etc. etc. - and I'm now recovering in my girlfriend's apartment which faces East, so I can look at the cable cars going over the Thames, the O2 Centre (a.k.a. the Millennium Dome), the Cutty Sark and Royal Naval College and other parts of beautiful old Greenwich.

I'm off most of the meds now. Coming off a high dose of Tramadol, I wondered why I was itchy, nauseous and sweaty, and realised I was junk sick. Opiate withdrawal ain't that bad really.

I've had an MRI scan of my foot/ankle, and on Friday somebody is going to test the nerve wiring from my foot all the way up my leg, to check for any broken connections. Then, there'll be another consultation and possibly an operation. Things are going quite quick because the NHS outsourced me to a private hospital.

Just need to remember not to get too relaxed at the moment!

Tags: #addiction #london #career #relationships

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

This is a story about what happens when the slender thread that holds Damocles' sword dangling above, is severed...

I live a highly leveraged life. When things go well, I can find my savings replenished, debts repaid and the threat of destitution lifted. When things go badly, I can quickly find myself in distress.

Something went 'twang!' in my leg. I'm not sure whether it was muscle tearing, tendon snapping, or something else, but I stood up from where I had been seated on the floor for a couple of hours, and my foot and calf were partially numb and I had lost some range of movement.

That injury - or perhaps damage to an old injury - happened two days before I was due to start a new contract. I needed that new contract. I needed the income from that new contract to pay the rent, bills, service debts, pay friends back who lent me money and generally get on top of a deteriorating financial situation. I was very close to running out of money.

Unfortunately, my leg and foot got worse, not better. There was lots of swelling and I stopped urinating. It was pretty clear that my kidneys had shut down. I had to go to hospital.

The company that hired me said they'd delay my start date by one week. I thought that would be adequate, if I could be quickly discharged. Then, I realised that it was going to take more than a week of treatment to get my kidneys going again. I delayed my start date by another 3 days, and then 2 more days. In the end, there was a total delay of just two weeks, which doesn't sound too bad to me, considering just how sick I'd been in hospital.

I had to discharge myself against medical advice on the weekend before I started my new job. My foot was still swollen and I was taking a lot of painkillers. My kidneys still weren't working efficiently, and the hospital wanted to keep me on dialysis.

I clomped into that new job, wearing an ankle splint that held my floppy foot in place, and expanded enough to not put pressure on the swelling. I worked a couple of days with the ankle splint, and then switched over to a slipper and a crutch. A slipper was the only footwear I could find that would stretch enough to accomodate the swelling.

I worked 4 days and made a good first impression. I put in a lot of effort into hitting the ground running. Unfortunately, I had to go back to hospital for blood tests and potentially more dialysis. I got the all clear from the hospital, which was a big relief. However, nobody had done anything to fix my leg/foot and I hadn't even been able to get my painkiller prescription refilled.

The following Monday morning, I was taking a cocktail of whatever medication I'd managed to get my hands on. We had a meeting where we all stood up. I was unsteady on my feet. My mind was cloudy. It was fairly obvious that I was unduly affected by medication, right at that unfortunate moment. My boss suggested I take another week off work, to recover properly. I was incredibly grateful for that.

I spent a week in bed, popping painkillers. My foot improved to the point where I could wear a normal shoe and I didn't need a crutch, although my walking was rather ungainly. On the Monday I went back again, the adrenalin of the situation carried me through that all important first meeting and everything seemed to be going OK.

Then, nausea surged up inside me. I spent the whole morning, feeling like I was about to throw up at any minute. I had all kinds of meetings to attend and I had to sit there, feeling sick, just keeping my mouth shut about it and pretending to be OK.

At lunchtime, I forced down a can of cola, knowing it contained some anti-emetic chemicals that might calm my nausea.

Things were not improving and a colleague asked how things were going. I said that the day had started OK, but I'd been struggling a bit. I said I'd be OK.

My boss called an informal meeting with me and asked if everything was OK. I explained that I felt everything was fine in the morning, but then I'd been having waves of nausea. I said that I really didn't need to go home or anything and that everything would probably be OK. I really didn't feel fine. I felt sick and I wanted to lie down. My boss suggested I take some more time off, and come back when I was feeling better. I had secretly wanted to go home and lie down that afternoon. I was grateful to not have to sit bolt upright at a desk, feeling so sick. I said I'd be back the next day, or the day after at the latest. Colleagues cheerily waved goodbye.

When I got outside the office, I didn't feel relieved. I felt like I might have been tricked into taking the bait. I felt like I had fallen at the final hurdle. I felt like I had failed a final test. I should have toughed it out. It felt like I gave up too easily. It felt wrong.

I got home and collapsed into bed. By this point I was sweating hot & cold as well as overcome by nausea. It was a slight relief to be able to lie down in a quiet darkened bedroom. Then, I noticed a bunch of missed calls from my agent. I immediately knew what that would be about.

I wanted to put it off but I decided to face speaking to the agent right away. Using the layers of complexity of end-client, consultancy and agency arrangements, they cooked up some cock-and-bull story that was basically: "Whatever your boss said about going back to work when you're feeling better, that's not the case. You're not going back to work. Your contract is terminated".

I earned 4 days money. That was enough to pay for a month's rent & bills.

There's no way I can apply & interview for another another contract, get the legal and accountancy things set up, start working, submit my invoices and get paid, before I run out of cash.

My foot's still busted and I'm still taking painkillers - albeit at a much lower dose now - and I'm not exactly in much of a fit state to start work, let alone face another gruelling battle to find and win a new contract.

There's just no way the numbers add up. There's just no way I can be lucky enough to pay this month's rent - which is due in 4 days time - and get my cashflow moving again fast enough to not run out of money entirely.

I need to move all my stuff into storage and leave my apartment. I need to try and get the lettings agent to find somebody to take over the apartment from me, or else lose my deposit.

I need to box up all my stuff, and get the hell out of my home. I just can't afford it. I've run out of runway.

Where I'm going to live, I don't know. What I'm going to do next, I don't know.

My confidence has taken a huge dent, and I can't see myself facing gruelling interview panels anymore. I can't see myself suffering the highs and lows of the job market, after such a horrific recent ordeal. I can't see any kind of way that things are going to get sorted out, without total collapse and destruction.

Suffice to say, depression and suicidal thoughts stalk me at every turn. Of course I just want to die. Of course I don't want to lose my home and suffer the indignity of being destitute. I can't face the stress of fighting back from nothing again. I've been to the bottom and back, and I know I can do it, but do I want to repeat that? No way. I'm exhausted. I'd rather just lay down and die.

I was touched by the outpouring of support on Facebook, during my acute kidney failure. I'm aware that there's someone in my life who's grown very close to me. I have a sister, a niece. However, I can't picture any kind of recovery from this point. I just can't see a route forward, to any kind of position that I'll be able to tolerate. Things are going to get wrecked, and things are going to be almost impossible to repair and replace. That kind of devastating blow is a hard one to take and come back from.

Right now, I'm just avoiding dealing with reality. I'm sleeping, watching feature length documentaries and generally trying to bury my head in the sand.

Everything is far too overwhelming, and I know that my thoughts will automatically leap to the conclusion that suicide is the best option.

She was amazing while I was in hospital. In fact she's been amazing full stop. But, it's been exhausting and stressful for her, and it's negatively impacted her life, her health and her great career. I'm dragging her down. I'm bad news. She's genuinely going to be better off without me, now that I lost that contract and all hope is sunk.

I'm not going to make the argument anymore today, but that's what I'm going to make my next few blog posts about: an attempt to persuade you that the humane thing to do is to let me escape any further pointless suffering, and to spare the drawn-out pain that those who care about me will witness, as my life gets ripped to pieces by the vultures.

Fine margins. Things can come down to the finest of margins. One little thread goes snap, and a whole life comes crashing down.

It's the beginning of the end.

Tags: #suicide

This is a story about family...

I was born in Aberystwyth, Wales. This is the first house I lived in. We moved around lots when I was growing up - I went to 8 different schools - so I don't really know where to call home. For me, home is where I make it: I have a grab bag in my apartment in London, with a tent and a sleeping bag. I'll survive, but there isn't a family home I would visit ever again. Homelessness is the only option.

I was wondering to myself earlier whether I'm a misanthrope or not. I certainly dislike the stress of rush hour travel and battling crowds. You must wonder why I live and work in London, where it's so densely populated, but I find that it has amazing people, food, culture and lots of jobs for my skills and experience. I live by the river and it's actually pretty quiet down on the Isle of Dogs, as is the Square Mile, where I often get contracts.

I've decided that I don't hate people, but a lot of people seem to hate me. Changing schools so much is disruptive to a child's life. Instead of learning how to make friends and become popular, there's little point if you're going to get yanked out of some place you're happy with and dumped somewhere else. It's fairly obvious that the more disrupted a child's environment, the more they will retreat inwards, in search of some stability and consistency.

Bullying was a big feature of my childhood. It was a daily feature of life until I went to college. It's easy to make a child into a bullying victim: just give them something that marks them out as different. Take a look at the way all the children in school are dressed and make sure you dress your kid differently: turn-ups on their trousers, a jumper when all the other kids are wearing blazers, Clarks shoes when all the other kids are wearing Doc Martens. If they're a girl, dress them like a boy and vice-versa. If they're a boy, make them ride a pink bicycle with ribbons on it. Et cetera, et cetera.

My parents' only hobby was drug taking. In their imagination, there were fucking unicorns and rainbows everywhere and everything they said was profound and important. In their minds they were hard working and intelligent. In reality, they were sat around in a dirty house, dribbling like morons and unable to say a single syllable that was understandable. Their brains were intoxicated by drugs and alcohol and they were antisocial: preferring to spend as much time as possible alone indoors with their drugs.

I'm not sure if my parents are misanthropes, but they sure as shit don't have any friends. They have each other and they seem to think that they're the two smartest people on the planet and everybody else is thick as pig shit. When I feign snobbery and arrogance, it's easy because I just imitate my parents. They used to talk about friends and colleagues behind their back. I would get in trouble if I ever let slip a "mum says..." which taught me about two-faced hateful nasty people.

It's kind of fun to gossip behind people's backs, but having been the victim of social exclusion, bullying and also witnessed the nasty nature of horrible people who say mean things about people behind closed doors, I now try to stop myself. I'm not getting up on my high horse and saying I'm morally superior: I just mean to say that I have strong feelings about it, as it's affected my life. It's almost as if I was the one who suffered for my parents' desire to be hostile to everyone.

There I am. It's fairly obvious from those murderous eyes that I'm pure evil and had been plotting to do all sorts of dastardly deeds, while I was a sperm and an egg.

"My girlfriend" is how my dad referred to my mum. He made me call him and my mum by their first names. I wasn't allowed to call them "Mum" and "Dad". There was open hostility towards me, as if I had planned to ruin their drug binge and screw up their easy carefree life; as if my birth was some pre-meditated malicious atrocity. That's a pretty freaky thing to accuse a small child of.

What else do I know about myself?

Well, I was lonely. I was so desperate for secure, loyal friendships, that I would get very overexcited when I got to spend time with friends. I was super intense and hyper: I had to pack in all the friendship I could, when the opportunity presented itself. Sleep was always of secondary concern to maximising the time available, so it was exhausting seeing me for the short intense bursts that my parents permitted.

A number of my childhood 'friends' were the children of people my parents deemed good enough to hang out with occasionally, because they liked to take drugs. My parents made all objective judgements of people based on whether they liked drugs or not, rather than on personality or intellect. My dad rather styled himself on a man known literally as Mister Mean, who charged his wife and young children rent to live in 'his' house. What a cunt.

The biggest event in my life was the birth of my sister, when I was 10 years old. Parents are supposed to be outnumbered. Children are supposed to grow up with brothers and sisters. It's fucking abusive to have lonely isolated miserable children. Guess what? Children like playing together. Children like being children with other children.

It occurred to me that we spend so much of our time and energy trying to get children to act like adults, which is disingenuous and bound to lead to frustration and misery all round. If you want adult company, go make friends with people your own age. Kids need to be kids, which means play and socialising with their peers. Punishing a child for being childish is abusive.

Yeah, I'm banding round the term 'abuse' quite freely and easily. I'm sorry if there's a very specific context in which you find that English word acceptable, but it has a definition that you're at liberty to look up in the dictionary if you need to. I'm calling things abusive, because they've had life-altering negative effects on me and caused prolonged periods of abject misery. If you've fucked up your child's chances to form meaningful, secure happy relationships and partake in society as a well-rounded individual, you've really fucking abused a kid, OK?

This is turning into a bit of a "poor me, poor me" whinefest, but it's the background of the who am I type stuff I've been thinking about. I know it's horribly egocentric, but tell me, which pill do I take to just forget about this stuff and move on?

"Give me the child until he is seven and I will give you the man" -- Aristotle

Finding myself unable to get along with my peers and finding my parents to be disappointed that I wasn't born as a grown adult independently wealthy Victorian butler, I eventually found that friends' parents and some teachers were very nice to me. Having been raised to act with 'maturity' many adults found my good manners and strong communication skills to be charming. While I could do nothing right at home, I found that the adult world was mainly about kissing arse and saying intelligent sounding things at the right time. Naturally, my peers saw me as aloof and arrogant, which I guess I was.

It's easy to see how I got a head start in life: because I was lonely and isolated. I played on computers when others were playing with their brothers, sisters and friends. When I went to my first job interview, I wasn't intimidated because I felt more comfortable in the adult world than I did with children. When it came to making a good impression at work, people judged me on the fake image of maturity that I projected. In short: I seemed more grown-up than I was.

We're all a little insecure, but I desperately wanted loyal friends and a loving girlfriend. That lifelong damage that you do to a kid when you fuck up their childhood, means that they feel unloved, they don't know how to make friends, missed out on childhood sweethearts and feel distant from their peers. That shit carries over into adult life. Where's the confidence, the gregariousness, the outgoing nature? Where are you going to get that stuff, if all you know is bullying, isolation and disruption to your life that destroys every friendship you've ever cherished?

Every time I've been clingy, intense or a little too full-on... that's coming from that hole that was left in adolescence, where most people are swigging cider in the park and having fumbling trysts in the bushes.

But, I've also been affected by drugs. I'm not afraid of drugs. I don't have a healthy fear and respect of drugs, unlike people who've never been exposed to them. I'm in the situation of having in-depth knowledge of drug taking, but I'm surrounded by educated middle-class professionals who know nothing about drugs (except that if you inject a marijuana you will immediately murder a grandmother to steal her money).

It's crazy to think that the spotty, nerdy unpopular awkward geek who was bullied as fuck, took amphetamines and lost his virginity at the age of 15. Is it crazy? Well, a lot of people think drug taking is cool. It's seen by some simple-minded fools as an act of rebellion. Idiots see themselves as being part of a counter-culture movement, when they make themselves dumb and apathetic, spending their money on a trillion dollar commercial industry, never actually doing anything revolutionary or productive because they're sitting around indoors dribbling and babbling incoherently.

Doesn't it seem only natural that with insecurity and isolation, I would follow in the footsteps of my parents? It sounds like I'm blaming my parents for my addiction, but I'm not (directly). The debate about free will and our ability to make choices, is a complex one. 

"Boring! We've heard all this!"

Yes, but I'm retelling. I've been through Hell and I'm trying to understand everything myself. Through my writing, I'm coming to terms with a mind-boggling amount of experiences that I have to slot into place, in order to make sense of the world and where I fit within it. Life is not black & white; good & bad. I can't simplify things to the point of simply saying I'm a "bad kid" like my parents seemed to decide from very early on. Blaming myself for everything has gotten me nowhere.

No apology or even discussion was forthcoming from my parents, so it's up to me to figure everything out and make the correct judgements based on the evidence and rational investigation of the facts. Yes, it's nice and easy to jump on any one particular thing that seems to be the 'smoking gun' pointing to the fact that I must be an evil little shit sent from Hell to terrorise the world, but there comes a time when that story really doesn't stack up.

I've been wondering why I do a lot of looking back. I have very little control over the future. My future is bound up in the hands of decision makers, who will either give me a role that I'm qualified and experienced to do, in order to get the cash that's needed in this bullshit capitalist society. Otherwise, my life will be ripped to pieces by the vultures that prey on anybody who doesn't fit the mould.

Life's definitely a lot easier when you're not penniless, sick, homeless and addicted to drugs, but it's not as simple as that. What's your purpose? Who are you? What's your identity?

Being a vagrant is actually a fairly strong identity. There is something cool about being half-dead. There's something attractive about the hollow eyes, pale skin and skinny body of heroin chic isn't there? If you don't belong to a sports team; you weren't one of the popular ones at school; you aren't trying to get as many letters after your name as possible; you haven't conflated your professional and private identities... then who the fuck are you and what the fuck are you doing?

Drugs neatly encapsulate both identity and reward. Instead of getting small dopamine hits by bragging about your promotion at a dinner party, you can get a big dopamine hit by staying at home and taking drugs. Also, you feel that you 'belong' to a special club: you learn to identify other addicts and you feel a connection to them... a sense of belonging.

If you can roll a joint and you have weed, you'll have 'friends'. If you have enough money to buy cocaine, you'll have 'friends' and you'll want to share it because you're not an addict, right? Except you are.

I found - by accident - that drugs gave me the self-confidence that had been stolen from me by my parents. I was able to chat to girls. Pretty much most of the time that I had sex, it was on speed (amphetamine), mushrooms (psilocybin) or Ecstasy (MDMA).

Eventually, I discovered - through dangerous experimentation - a drug that was so powerful that it was a far superior substitute for my abusive ex. She was no longer needed. She was abusive, mean, selfish and unpleasant and I was very glad that the spell was broken, even though it cost me a period of addiction and a lot of money. I wasn't strong enough to leave her, without the drugs.

Now, I'm all cleaned up. I'm a good boy.

But, I'm left wondering about that whole purpose & identity thing.

Tags: #childhood #parents #divorce #drugs #addiction

This is a story about bad debt...

When a person or an organisation defaults on their debts, it affects their credit rating. For a company, their bonds will be 'junk' and as such, they are not considered investment grade. It will be much harder and much more expensive to borrow money if you've defaulted on debts.

Arguably, life would be much easier if we could all borrow money at close to 0% interest, directly from the central banks. We could go on a non-stop credit binge of epic proportions. Buy now, pay later.

But what about It's a Wonderful Life?

In theory, a bank takes deposits from savers and lends out the money in the form of loans, overdrafts and mortgages. In theory, if you default on your loans, you're risking people's hard-earned life savings.

Of course, the banks should hold enough reserves and do enough know your customer checks to make sure that they're not lending to hopeless idiots, with no sense of a moral obligation to keep up the repayments on their loans. In practice, our demand for relentless growth and ever greater profits, means that the banks have done a shitty job of being able to withstand sudden spikes in distressed debt: people losing their jobs and businesses going bankrupt, for example.

I'm sympathetic towards people who lose their jobs through no fault of their own. I'm sympathetic towards people who can't work because of sickness or disability. I'm sympathetic towards people who are honest and hardworking. I'm sympathetic towards people who need a break.

Banks have to put up with a certain amount of fraud and a number of reckless bankrupts. However, what about the idiots who shouldn't even be in business, because they're hopeless with cashflow; careless, unrealistic and dishonest? Well: it's pretty hard to get a bank loan unless you're a credible person with integrity.

So, why borrow from me? I guess because I trust people and I expect them to act with common decency.

Actually, the only thanks I've gotten for my trust & generosity is the pile of soil on my floor, things taken from my apartment and being ignored on Facebook by a couple of entitled moochers; bankrupts; parasites.

This is my message of Christmas cheer. I'm in a financially precarious situation, not enjoying the festive season as much as I should be, because a couple of entitled parasitic people picked my pocket. They'll go and stay with their mummies, in the bosom of the family home. I don't have that option.

Tags: #london

This is a story about being well presented...

It was gone two o'clock in the afternoon and I was woken up by my phone ringing.

"You've forgotten haven't you?"

It transpired I had an interview in the tower of broken dreams for a contract with Megabank Plc. I was late and I had to get from Camden to Canary Wharf. A journey that would take at least 40 minutes.

"Get going and I'll make an excuse for you."

There was no way I was going to be able to get showered, put on my suit and get across London in an acceptable amount of time. There's only so long that a recruitment agent can stall for. There's late and there's ridiculously late. I went back to sleep.

The phone rang again.

"OK, they're going to wait for you. Are you on your way?"

I lied, saying that I was. I collapsed back on my bunk. How had I managed to keep my suit pristine? How had I managed to have a neat line pressed into my trousers? How had I managed to keep a shirt freshly laundered and uncreased? How had I managed to keep a pair of leather shoes so shiny? My interview outfit was hanging on the bunk bed in the hostel dormitory, ready to go. Reluctantly, I hauled myself off to the communal shower, shared with 13 other people. It was the middle of the day, so at least I didn't have to wait.

How long have I been doing this for?

Surviving by the skin of my teeth.

When you get ejected from the system, it doesn't know how to cope with you. There are valves, barriers, gatekeepers. It's a one way street. You can fall from grace, but there's no way back. Entrepreneurs brag about their bankruptcies. Startup founders brag about the mistakes they made. The world of career, reputation, CVs, references, credit checks, proof of address and security clearance doesn't have any way of coping with somebody who's going through hell. You're doomed to slide all the way down the greasy pole to the bottom, and stay there.

You literally have no idea how hard it is to get yourself off the streets and back into the system.

I've papered over the cracks pretty well. It's remarkable how beneficial it is having a place to live, but it still takes a huge amount of time to restabilise. You might take it for granted that you've got all your Direct Debits set up, your stuff all in one place and unpacked, and your life running fairly smoothly, but my life was smeared all over London's streets. I moved around so many times. So many things were lost or damaged.

Just renting an apartment was exhausting and destabilising. Living out of a suitcase and working on an incredibly stressful project, I was skating on thin ice. The added stress of the London rental market and dealing with a letting agent tipped me over the edge. I had a place to call home, but it cost me my health and my job.

Anyway, this isn't a sob story.

The point is, that when I pulled my overcoat out of the wardrobe for an interview, I could see very visually just how worn down I am: I'm in need of replacement parts. There are scars and war-wounds. The evidence of a very shit few years is still there, if anybody examines my life with any close scrutiny.

I'm wondering, just how obvious is it that I'm out of place? I'm not supposed to come back from the dead. People who've gone through what I've been through are not supposed to dust themselves down and resume their careers.

My suit -- that I proudly wore on Demo Day at the end of the Springboard technology accelerator program in Cambridge -- is now so threadbare that the dry cleaner told me they couldn't wash it more than a couple more times. I need a new pair of black shoes. I need a new overcoat. I need some new shirts.

I'm banking on the fact that scruffy engineers usually have their mind on the job rather than their appearance. I'm banking on my skills and experience carrying the day. I'm banking on people not looking too closely, and seeing that I'm looking a little worn out.

My fatigued business attire is a metaphor for me: past it; has-been; burnt out wreck; failure; loser.

Obviously, I don't believe that. It's nothing that a shopping trip couldn't solve, but if I'm doomed to failure, splashing cash on fancy clothes and shoes would be a waste of money. I can't quite bring myself to have the double-whammy of having the office doors slammed in my face, and having to look at a lovely new suit and overcoat gathering dust in the wardrobe.

I managed to get a good contract earlier in the year, despite my shitty business attire. I considered covering up the semicolon tattoo behind my ear with a sticking plaster, but I risked it. Nobody ever commented on my tattoo for that whole project. Perhaps we only see what we want to see. The superficiality making smalltalk and pretending to get along with our work colleagues: we barely take in what we're seeing.

Why on earth would anybody suspect that I have some secrets? Why would they think I have a dark past? What reason would they have to believe that the man in a suit and a 19+ year career in IT might have had a troubled period?

"So, tell me about mental illness, divorce, drug addiction, homelessness, near-bankruptcy, the loss or destruction of nearly everything you own and the other shit that doesn't seem to have made it onto your CV."

That just hasn't come up... yet.

Tags: #career