This is a story about goals...

A friend of mine said in 2010 that he was going to blog every day for a year, to see if had the discipline to be able to write a book. He achieved his goal and now has 2 books published, as well as continuing to write his blog for over 8,000 subscribers, and tweet to nearly 4,000 followers. He's an inspiration.

What's impressive about what a couple of friends have done, is that they've managed to blend their professional expertise with things that they're passionate about. A couple of inspirational friends' blogs include a mix of creative writing, photography, their hobbies, as well as being part of their work portfolio.

Given that I'm passionate about mental heath, addiction and homelessness, and ways of improving the lives of vulnerable members of our society, that rather clashes with my day job of being an IT consultant to a bunch of elite and uncaring capitalists. My colleagues would shit themselves if they knew what was going on behind my neatly presented and unassuming façade.

I wandered up a bit of a career cul-de-sac. "Do what you love and money will follow" is just utter bullshit. There are so many people in caring professions, or very creative people, who are absolutely flat broke. Hate the boring shit that you do and money will follow has most certainly proven itself, over the years.

You've got to be quite flukey to hit that sweet spot, where you love what you do and you're well paid to do it. Please stop telling people who are demotivated and disillusioned with the rat race to quit their jobs and do whatever they want. Cottage industries are allowing people to just about eke out a living, but only as a form of charity where we feel that we should support our friends and family in their dreams. Of course we don't really want to buy all those cupcakes or hang those revolting paintings on our walls, but we feel that we should do our bit to support them.

When you get yet another charity sponsorship request, and you can see all the names of your friends and colleagues who have donated, you are duty-bound to make a similar contribution. What are you really contributing for? Are you contributing for the good cause, or are you contributing so that your friend or colleague can delude themself that they're making a difference.

While charities tell us they're being innovative and making a difference, with everything from rock concerts to gamification, the reality is that the rich:poor divide is growing. Charity has failed. The middle classes give away pocket change. The working class are forced to donate through taxes on their stupidity, like the National Lottery. However, the rich are absolute selfish c**ts.

And so, I find if very hard to reconcile the rhetoric of the world - "do what you love" - with the reality of needing to pay my rent and bills. I find it very hard to ignore the pragmatism of working for somebody who will pay me the market rate, versus being exploited by somebody else because I enjoy what I do.

I write this blog, because there is no other outlet that will pay for my creative output. I can draw as many cartoons as I want, write as much as I want, sing, dance, record videos of myself... everybody else is doing just the same, and it all costs absolutely nothing.

Some writers on Reddit said that I should see writing as a job, and pointed out that if people are prepared to work for nothing (and so many are) then of course the wages will tend towards zero. Only the high-profile columnists and established authors with the marketing power of a publisher behind them, will be able to keep their heads above water and be heard in the midst of the deafening white noise.

I'm 11 months into my little project and I have over 6,000 Twitter followers and my blog's been read in nearly 100 countries worldwide. However, it's hardly like I can quit my job and declare myself to be a writer, even though I love writing and mental health is an important issue: an epidemic.

I need to grind out the next month.

One month from now, I will almost have reached financial security for the first time in 3 years. I will have had 6 months clean, which is a big deal, because I've been limping along with relapses for so long. I will have also been writing every day for a whole year.

My mental health is in a shockingly bad state. The stability of my life still hangs by a slender thread: how would I pay my rent and keep a roof over my head if my contract was unexpectedly terminated? The state of my finances is improving every day, but I'm still several months away from building up any kind of safety net.

However, one more month and I have something to celebrate: the wolf will be somewhat further from the door.

Doing "Go Sober for October" was probably a mistake, because I rely on alcohol to cope with stress and anxiety. Being stone cold sober landed me in a psychiatric hospital, because I had zero protection: nothing to cushion the blows and relentless pressure from the horrible hostile cut-throat business environment.

Yes, in theory I could go a little easier on myself, but in practice it's not true. I have a narrow window to make things work. When your mental health is unreliable, it's a good strategy to get rich quick. It doesn't look unusual to have a string of short contracts, but my mood disorder would stand out like a sore thumb to some HR person, poring over the gaps in my CV, if I was in the dreaded arena of permanent employment (a.k.a. worker exploitation).

I'm being a scrappy little hustler, and clawing my way up the cliff face. I might make it. I might fall to my death. Let's wait and see what happens.

Tags: #writing #mentalhealth

This is a story about surprises...

We are very keen to jump to conclusions. So many of us read the headline and assume that we know the story. Surprisingly large numbers of people will comment on a social media post without even clicking through and reading the content. It's so easy to walk in on a chapter of somebody's life and assume that you know the whole story.

Mental health problems? Blah blah blah... go and see a doctor, get some happy pills and all your problems will go away. No need to hear the end of that story. All problems can be medicalised and will be just fine if you just speak to the right specialist. For sure there are people out there who deal with this kind of stuff. Not my problem. Go away.

Drugs? Say no more. We know how this ends. Yes, your story is bound to involve selling your own grandmother to unscrupulous rogues in order to raise money for your dirty habit, and basically you're filthy scum and don't even deserve to have your story heard. GET OUT OF MY EYES AND EARS and go away.

Nervous breakdown? Why not take up yoga? Stop and smell the flowers. Do cartwheels in a field. Other people have things so much harder than you so I don't even know what you're complaining about. Everybody's life is terrible. Get a grip on yourself. It's all in your head. Why don't you exercise more? Salsa dancing? Homeopathy? I'll write the end of your story for you: all your problems went away and you were magically transported to the land of milk & honey. The end. Go away.

Sex addiction? You filthy pervert. Go away.

Workaholic? You should try sitting around on your arse on a continous jolly holiday. Why don't you retire or take up knitting? If you force yourself to smile, you'll suddenly feel much happier about everything. Take some deep breaths. Have you thought about shutting down the system and rebooting? Failing that, you can reformat the hard-disk and reinstall the operating system.

Isolated, lonely and suicidal? Chin up. Look on the bright side. Suicide is so selfish. Suicide just leaves a big mess for other people to clean up. You're so attention seeking. Cry for help. If you were serious you'd have done it already. Go away.

We are being told that problems are all in our heads, and the only person holding us back from achieving our full potential is ourself. This is utter bullshit. There are so many barriers to entry and things that are holding us back. Life is more complicated than every self-help book, motivational quote and trite soundbite that sounds inspirational but is actually really depressingly useless.

People who are happy and fulfilled are the ones who go to the gym, cook organic freshly prepared meals, don't smoke, don't drink, do yoga, meditate, smell the flowers, swim in the ocean and generally swan around having a lovely time. Doing those things is not the cure or the answer to anything. Doing those things is a symptom of the fact that your life is pretty bloody perfect. There's a reason why people are depressed, stressed and anxious, and it's not that they haven't done enough yoga.

The yoga can wait. It really can. I'm far too worried about earning enough money to pay my rent, bills, food, transport and other cost of living expenses, while also keeping myself washed, clean shaven, hair cut, nails clipped, nose and ear hair trimmed, and with enough clean clothes that are not completely threadbare in order to have a reasonably professional appearance. I'm far too worried about servicing my debts, staying on top of my taxes, keeping up with the administrative headaches that our bureaucratic government forces upon us, as well as turning up at work and keeping a seat warm from Monday to Friday. The yoga can wait. I'm far too preoccupied with my soul-destroying job that makes me suicidally desperate for escape, but escape is eternally just out of reach.

So you're going to quit your job and go travelling? What about your kids? What about your pets? What about your family? What about money? Oh, you don't have any money? Well you could save some up, couldn't you? Oh, you've been trying to save some up, but you're having a crisis NOW? Well, can't you just postpone your crisis, perhaps for another 30 years?

So you're going to quit your job and find a new career? What about your rent? What about your bills? What about all the money you need to pay for tuition and certification? What about the money you're going to need to fund yourself when you're looking for an entry-level job? What about the huge drop in income you're going to have, having no experience in your new career? What about the tent that you're going to buy because clearly you're going to go homeless if you lose your source of income?

So you're going to leave the city and get away from the rat race? What about the fact you don't have any friends or family anywhere else? What about the fact that there are no opportunities anywhere else? What about the fact that you've got nowhere to live, no car, no van, no tent, no cardboard box?

Oh yes, the world is stuffed full of opportunities to avoid the sources of stress that are destroying you. Yeah, sure it's all in your head and you should just imagine what you want to be, snap your fingers and it will come true. How's about a ballerina, footballer, pop singer, astronaut, fireman, deep sea diver? Yeah. The only thing holding you back is YOU you stupid dummy. How silly of you.

Or you could just do some yoga. Yoga fixes everything.

Here's the image that you had to click through to see, and scroll all the way down here. I hope the reward was worth it. Well done. Gold star.

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

This is a story about self sabotage...

What the hell am I doing, blogging about stuff that could get me fired, sued and make me unemployable? Why the hell am I burning so many bridges, and destroying my own reputation? Is this simply self-sabotaging behaviour?

If we look at the wider context of my story, the rat race has made me unwell. The boring office jobs propping up the instruments of capitalism so that an idle wealthy elite can ride roughshod over the proletariat, has made me unhappy. Compromising on my moral, ethical position, five days a week is not healthy. Working in an unstimulating environment that is unchallenging and uninteresting is a fate worse than death.

It's very easy to keep doing what you do because you fear change and it's the path of least resistance. I've been moulded into a certain career and industry sector. I'm the perfect guy to have join your massive corporation and quickly get up to speed with the bureaucracy, systems and processes. The bulk of the hard work in a big organisation is not the actual skilled thing that people are qualified to do, but just dealing with the crap that gets built up by a zillion little Hitlers all micromanaging their tiny empires they're building and trying to justify their pathetic jobs.

It's interesting who I'm friends with on Facebook, and who follows me on Twitter. In fact, with very little digging you can even find this vast cache of dirt, on Google. This is not about how important and influential I am, because I'm not. This is about public exposure. I took a decision to lay my soul bare, and I stand by that decision. But, for a moment, let's consider the kinds of people who I know or suspect have at one time dipped into my social media and online accessible over-sharing:

• Ex colleagues from JPMorgan
• Ex colleagues from HSBC
• Cohorts from a technology startup accelerator
• Two influential and well respected directors of startup accelerators
• Mentors from startup accelerator
• My accountant
• People who are influential and well respected in the technology sector
• Friends who work in tech and/or industry sectors that I work in

I've stopped short of actually tying my LinkedIn profile back in this direction, towards my blog. I've stopped short of in any way linking my limited company back towards this new alter ego of mine, although I did briefly get myself in a muddle over some suicide watch startup idea that I had. That was on September 21st... right when I started this journey of deciding to go public with every struggle I faced when I finally lost my grip on my career, my company, my reputation, everything.

For sure, I'm a nobody. However, people still talk. There is a rumour mill, no matter how small and insignificant you are. And people who work in offices are particularly interested in lurid tales of people who're doing anything that is out of the ordinary, even if that's losing your mind and ending up in the gutter.

By now, my tale of the toxic combination of stress, abusive relationship, mental health problems, heavy drinking, drug abuse (in that order) leading to suicide attempts, hospitalisation, homelessness, destitution and even police involvement, is well documented.

Well, I guess it's not that well documented, but it's out there in the public domain.

I have no idea how much was known before I decided to embark upon a mission of full disclosure, but I know that my abusive ex-wife was particularly indiscreet and insensitive. I'm sure that my friends did their best to save my blushes and protect my reputation as much as they could, but people still knew that I was getting more and more unwell.

Obviously, at times during my descent into melancholy and the infinite madness, I sabotaged my own reputation amongst my Facebook friends. I once shared a picture of some potassium cyanide that I had bought with the express intention of ending my life quickly and cleanly. The lethal dose is about 250 milligrams. I bought 2 grams of the toxic chemical: 8 times more than was strictly necessary.

Depression now has less stigma associated with it. We pretty much all know somebody who suffers with depression, and takes anti-depressant medication to help them with their low mood. These things are no longer taboo to talk about, and many people are able to still continue to hold down good jobs and be in positions of responsibility. Suffering from clinical depression is not a death sentence, certainly as far as a person's professional reputation is concerned.

Bipolar disorder has almost become cool to have. There are a list of celebrities and politicians as long as your arm, who have come forward and declared that they are living with the condition. Obviously, the ability to turn your hypomanic episodes into hyper-energetic flurries of productive activity, means that you can get shit done. In a way, we celebrate the person who has these mood episodes, because they can produce the 'overnight' successes we so revere in society.

Alcohol is everywhere, so unless you're swigging from a bottle of vodka hidden in your desk and reeking of liquor fumes as you breathe on people, just about any amount of drinking is socially acceptable. It's only if you declare yourself an alcoholic and have a stay in rehab that people start to stigmatise you. You can cover up your 28 days in The Priory, by saying that it was private hospital treatment for stress and anxiety.

Drug abuse is the last taboo. You pretty much don't want to put that one down on your CV. Cocaine use is widespread throughout London, and coffee gets stronger and stronger to the point where you're practically swallowing amphetamines. A few cans of Red Bull is the socially acceptable equivalent to snorting a couple of lines of some stimulant. Students are increasingly using Modafinil, Ritalin and Adderall to improve their concentration span and fact retention, as well as to stay awake during long revision binges.

If you think that these things feature in my daily life, you're wrong. These issues are simply incompatible with day-to-day existence. Depression robs you of the energy to get out of bed and face the day. Bipolar hypomania robs you of the contents of your bank balance, as it all gets ploughed into crazy schemes. Alcoholism is hard to hide, not that I've ever been physically dependent on booze, thank God. Drug addiction is all-consuming: there's no hiding it when you've lost the battle with addiction and it's taking you on a white-knuckle ride to an early grave.

So, if I've won the battles, why would I make it public knowledge that I fought them? Why would I take the time to declare, beyond all reasonable doubt, that I'm a flawed individual? Why would I spell it out, that I could relapse into any number of life-destroying illnesses at any moment?

Well, we could all succumb to these things at any moment.

I was 28 years young when I was knocked flat by clinical depression. I was 32 when addiction got its hooks in me. Just because I'd been a good student, a well behaved polite boy, a model employee, a career go-getter, and on the face of it I had a perfect little life, it doesn't mean that I was immune from anything.

But "it could never happen to me" right?

We believe that smart life choices will keep us safe. We believe that we have free will, and that therefore we would never choose to do something stupid. We believe that past performance is indicative of future results, even if the disclaimers always tell us the opposite.

There's something ugly about academic and corporate life, where we put a black mark against people's name if they fuck up even once. Screw up your school exams and you'll never get a chance to go to university. Screw up in your career and you'll be frozen out of the good jobs forevermore. Screw up in life and you'll be a dirty leper who nobody will want to know or to help.

This is the bleak outlook for so many people, who were simply unlucky or made a decision that was obviously regrettable, but life is continuously setting us traps and pitfalls. Why do consequences have to be so long lasting? Oh, you got in financial trouble? Here, let us help you by now charging you fines and punitive rates of interest, plus denying you opportunities and making the cost of living sky high because you have a poor credit rating.

The punishment for not having any money is that you have to pay more money. The punishment for your crimes is the deprivation of your liberty and the destruction of your future opportunities.

Apparently people are mocking those who have chosen to get a semicolon tattoo, but let's think about this for a minute.

I work in a big office and I see hundreds of people every day. In all likelihood they have seen that I have a semicolon tattooed behind my ear. If you were to Google "what does a semicolon tattoo mean?" then you will see that it's mostly to do with struggles with depression, addiction, self-harm and suicide attempts. I wonder how many people are thinking "why the hell did we employ this guy?".

When I did my interview, I sat so that my interviewers were on my right-hand side. The people who interviewed me never saw that tattoo, until soon after I started in my new job. I wonder if they'd have hired me if they had seen the tattoo.

Tattoos are actually uncommon amongst investment banking IT consultants. Certainly visible tattoos are even declared as not permitted, in many banks dress codes. I even thought about putting a sticking plaster over the mark on my skin, for my interview.

However, that's all I ever did for years and years. That's our whole approach to mental health and the problems that people face in their private lives: put a sticking plaster over it.

I've written at length about how angry I am that our first line of defence for people who are stressed out and depressed by their shitty unfulfilling office jobs, is to give them powerful psychoactive medications that artificially alter their mood so they can continue to work their dreadful jobs.

I'm angry that I'm so pressurised by wider society to cover up my problems, in order to retain a blemish-free reputation. I feel like the need to appear pristine and infallible to potential employers, fellow work colleagues and bosses, is largely to blame for why I had a massive breakdown and implosion, instead of things getting fixed before they got out of hand.

We are brainwashed to believe that we can't have any gaps on our CV that we can't explain. We are brainwashed to believe that we can't take our foot off the gas pedal for a single second. We are brainwashed to believe that a stain on our reputation will hang around for the rest of our careers.

You know what the problem is? It's our fucking careers. The treadmill. The rat race. It's making so many people mentally unwell, as well as causing physical health damage due to the sedentary nature of the work. No amount of standing desks or free gym membership is going to compensate for the problem.

I backslid into office employment because it was easy and I was desperate. My back was against the wall, and it made perfect financial sense to go and suffer another stretch of agonising misery back doing the shit that I'm most qualified and experienced to do, but it's fucking killing me.

It's important to be values-aligned, but it's also so easy to be tempted by 'easy' money. The cash rewards for doing the kind of mind-bogglingly boring work that I do are substantial. In theory, I only have to do this work for short bursts, and then I have spare time and cash to do whatever I need to do to balance the books, psychologically. However, in practice, all I'm doing is servicing debts that were built up just staying alive.

The welfare state took a dim view on my situation. Why do I need help, when I can go and get a job that pays fabulously well? Well, guess what? I tried it. I tried getting one of these shitty desk jobs that kill me, while I was homeless living in a hostel. And guess what? Working one of those jobs that made you unwell in the first place while you are still unwell really fucks you up.

This whole exercise of blowing my existence and private life wide open serves to document the ridiculousness of the mental health destroying lives that we are forced to live. If this whole experience ends up killing me, at least I've left the evidence: the smoking gun.

Nobody really cares when white middle class, well educated men in good jobs kill themselves. Why would they? Well, look around you. Do you see people getting happier? Do you see mental illness declining? Do you see suicide rates declining? Do you feel secure, fulfilled? Do you feel like the human condition is improving?

I look around and I see war and I see poverty. I see ordinary British people being forced into zero hours contract minimum wage McJobs, and still unable to afford basic amenities. I see loneliness and depression. I see a lack of real local community. I see families pulled apart by the need to go to large urban centres to seek your fortune. I see people locked into their own little world: headphones plugged in, eyes cast downwards at their smartphone, not talking to anybody face to face except to ask for their morning coffee.

Is this just a London thing? Is my view tainted because I'm struggling with depression myself? Actually, London is the canary in the coal mine. The sensitive people who have their head up looking around, sensing for danger, are usually on to something. Everything is pretty shit and fucked up right now.

And so, I am rejecting the conventional. I'm rejecting the sensible, rational and tried-and-tested. I'm burning the bridges that lead back to places I should never return to.

Yes, I might be making a fool of myself. Yes, people might be sniggering at me, safe behind their computer screens. Yes, important people are judging me and they have the ability to thwart me because of their prejudice, and make my life hard and even impossible. I could find myself unemployable, but not know why, because nobody has to tell me. I'm giving away all the ammunition you need to destroy me, and people are eagerly taking it.

But you know, who's the real winner? If you take what I gave you and use it against me, how are you going to feel? We're all doing that. We're all exploiting weaknesses that we discover in each other, in order to get ahead in the rat race.

How do you win a rigged contest? If everybody is cheating, do you cheat too?

The other option is to martyr yourself. For sure, you'll be hated and excluded. Nobody will thank you. But at least you can sleep at night, in the gutter.

Prisons can mean anywhere you feel trapped and your liberty is restricted

Tags: #career #london #computing #banking #depression #suicide #mentalhealth

This is a story about taking responsibility...

What did you do to get fat, poor, alcoholic, addicted to drugs, mentally ill, bored and unfulfilled in your job and your life, into an abusive relationship, trapped onto benefits or otherwise cornered?

Those who think of themselves as having made smart life choices are quick to criticise those less fortunate than them, believing that the difference between them was simply one of choice.

A fat person simply chose to eat more calories than their energy requirement. If you mostly sit around watching TV, you don't need any more calories than those required to pump the muscle of your heart, move the diaphragm of your lungs, and for your cells to create enough heat to keep your blood at 37 degrees Celsius.

A poor person simply chose to not study very hard at school, and to not seek a lucrative career. If a poor person wants to become richer, there is an established path of acquiring academic qualifications, and then working your way up through the ranks to gain the experience you need to get a better job.

An alcoholic simply chose to not stop drinking before their body entered a state of alcohol dependence syndrome. The first time that you get the shakes after drinking, you could quit and possibly avoid delirium tremens and having a seizure.

A drug addict simply chose to continue to seek whatever escapism and pain numbing they found comforting in their drug of choice. A drug addict could simply choose to live with the pain and issues that they're trying to escape, or kill themselves in a much quicker way.

Mentally ill, stressed, anxious, depressed people simply chose to put themselves into an overwhelming situation that doesn't meet their needs and constantly bombards them with things that they have to do that they can't cope with. A depressed person could simply stop working, draw the curtains closed, and wait to be sacked and evicted onto the streets.

People in abusive relationships are simply choosing to not give up on their partner and remain optimistic about things getting resolved, or are simply choosing to be trapped into a cycle of abuse that fills them with so much fear that they feel unable to remove themselves from the situation. People in abusive relationships are simply choosing to not run away from the family home with their children, and live where? On the street?

People on benefits are simply choosing to not take a zero hours contract McJob on minimum wage that would see their benefits slashed as well as also having to spend all their paycheque on childcare so that some stranger can raise their kids, who they never get to see anymore because they're at work the whole time. People on benefits are choosing to live on a government handout that is not enough to pay for the basic essentials that they need, and puts them into a hand-to-mouth stressful existence with no hope of escape.

Maybe you could combine all these things, so that somebody is an overweight drunk with a drug habit, depressed, anxious, under-qualified for any decent job, and wedded to both the welfare state and an abusive partner, both of which have their claws into the person such that they can never escape.

Do you think it sounds appealing, the idea of living life without the comfort of food and eating? Life without the simple pleasure of sugary and fatty snacks. Do you think it sounds appealing, being stone cold sober and straight, with absolutely zero chemicals to alter your perception of the world, when your world consists of collecting benefits cheques that disappear like sand running through your fingers, with no hope for any kind of different future? Life without the numbing power of intoxicants, and the brief moments of joy that might be brought by other drugs, in an otherwise bleak and depressing existence.

Imagine having to give up your home, your partner, your family, your chemical crutches, your favourite food, and live in the cold harsh light of a reality of being single, alone, homeless, withdrawing from drugs and alcohol, dealing with depression and anxiety with nothing other than this magical bullshit thing called "willpower" alone.

Yes, it's all very well criticising the poor and unfortunate from your villa in Tuscany or the deck of a yacht. Yes, it's all very well talking about poor life choices, while you sit in your second home counting your money.

The truth of the matter though is this: the difference between successful people and unfortunate ones is pure blind luck.

We don't pick our shitty irresponsible lazy parents. We don't pick how wealthy our family is. We don't pick our schools. We don't pick whether we will have academic aptitude or not. We don't pick whether we can apply ourselves to the task of getting a lucrative job, or whether we hold onto unrealistic fantasies of becoming a pop singer or a Premiership footballer for far too long, before reality finally dawns on us. We don't pick whether we get to throw ourselves into our careers, our homes, our families, our pets, our hobbies... or whether we end up running to the bottle, the pills, the powders and the needle, in order to deal with the extraordinary shitness of daily existence.

Life is short. Life is shit. If your life is not shit, you're in no position to tell other people that it's because they're lazy, irresponsible, stupid and they made bad life choices. If your life is not shit, it's because you were lucky enough to be born into a family of reasonable wealth and education. You were lucky enough to fall into something that was lucky enough to work out. Yes, you made choices, but there was a huge component of luck that it worked out. Plenty of people made the same choices as you, but through no fault of their own, things didn't work out well for them.

In the blink of an eye, you can have an accident that will have life-changing consequences. In the blink of an eye, your one golden opportunity can pass you by, and you'll be shunted off the smooth tarmac and onto the rocky road. In the blink of an eye, your fortunes can change, and you find yourself cast into the seething mass of humanity, all crawling over each other like crabs in a bucket, trying to escape.

Just because you were lucky enough to make your escape, doesn't mean that anybody else can follow your special recipe, doesn't mean that anybody else can find their perfect job, can find fulfilment, contentment. Just remember: one slip and you're just as fucked as all the other people who weren't lucky like you were.

One slip and you're fucked.

Tags: #politics #homeless #abuse #alcohol #drugs #addiction #mentalhealth #depression

This is a story about self healing...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is a story about helping each other...

How does one go about putting Humpty Dumpty back together again? The idea of some patriarchal figure - e.g. a king - has largely failed. Instead, we see that complex psycho-social problems are better solved by a community that is filled with mutual support and respect.

In order to get me to the point I am at today, it's taken a social worker. But not a social worker who was employed to help me, but instead a loveable Kiwi who was sleeping on my couch, who took it upon himself to think about my welfare.

It's taken a psychologist. Not a psychologist who I pay to sit on the couch of, while I pour my little heart out, but actually my beloved flatmate, who listened to me while I brain dumped in the small hours of the morning, or coaxed me out of whichever corner I was backed into, suffering almost PTSD-like symptoms.

It's taken a bunch of fellow people with mental-health problems, who "get it". They know that a "positive mental attitude" is just utter bullshit, and you can't just snap out of a severe depression or whatever ails you, when you already know that what you think and feel is irrational, and you would really rather not be feeling the way that you do, if it was a simple choice.

It's taken a bunch of addicts. Not necessarily needle-wielding junkies in the throes of active addiction, but people who aren't so holier-than-thou that they don't admit to their own fallibilities and judge you, lest they acknowledge the demons within themselves. Non-judgemental support is essential, for any way forward.

It's taken all my friends, from all corners of the globe. You might not think that a simple 'like' on social media would mean much, but the implied support has been my lifeblood. To say that I've been attention seeking is plain wrong. Everybody needs to feel that they have people that like them, support them, wish them well.

It would be massively premature to declare things a done deal. I need to make it through a winter somehow, without incident. Current thinking is simply to take off for the Southern Hemisphere for a while... follow the sun.

The plan has always been the same, since I decided to cut and run from my ex wife and Bournemouth: get back into IT contracting for the banks, go kitesurfing. Obviously, you also need a place to live and be on top of your finances. Obviously, you still need the occasional bit of midweek socialising to get you through to the weekend.

Am I some Goldilocks type character, who demands that everything is "just right"? No. I don't think that's true at all.

I accept that there is going to be loneliness, boredom, stress. I accept that things are going to take time. I accept that things are going to go wrong. I accept that it's highly improbable that everything will be going OK all at the same time. However, my basic life formula is pretty simple: work & play.

I tried to take direct action in somebody's life - Frank - when I returned to London. That was a relatively short burst of time & effort, and I can't tell you precisely how things worked out there, although I did see Frank about 18 months later and he was doing really well.

To round off my own story in a satisfactory way, I need to show that things are sustainable, I need to show that I'm not just mooching off people in order to continue on a reckless and irresponsible path through life. I need to close things out neatly: with integrity.

I know people are rooting for me, and it's nice to say that presently, I have a great place to live, a well paid job, and I'm getting back into the hobby I'm passionate about. I'm also increasingly getting back in contact with long-lost friends, as well as hopefully improving the tone of my communication: from bitter and negative, to philosophical, positive & hopeful.

My friend who drove me to the coast today, and has consistently been a pillar of support for me this year, always reminds me that recovery is nonlinear. I know that bad days and setbacks will follow an amazing day at the beach. Monday morning will be miserable, and life has a fully stocked arsenal of slings & arrows... but things seem a little bit better when your skin is salty from the sea and glowing from the sun and the wind.

It's oh-so clichéd, but that Beatles lyric seems apt:

I get by with a little help from my friends 

If it doesn't seem like I've acknowledged your help & support here, I apologise. Every little message, text, email, comment... it all adds up. I do appreciate it. I do appreciate, respect and love every one of my peers. Thank you.

Tags: #friends #kitesurfing #frank #mentalhealth

This is a story about haters...

Nobody wants to be called vain. Nobody wants to be accused of being a narcissist. Nobody wants to be seen preening, or self-admiring.

However, how are you going to get a girlfriend or boyfriend, if you think you're unattractive? How are you going to pass that job interview, if you're not self-confident? How are you going to feel that you even deserve to be alive, if you're denied the right to at least feel that you have a little bit of value?

There seems to be this irrational paranoia, like we're all going to fall in love with our own reflections, and it will somehow be the end of the world if we allow shallow selfie culture to take root. However, I think there are a generation who have been denied the right to feel good in their own skin.

For sure, people are taking things too far, in an effort to look good. Addiction to plastic surgery and other cosmetic procedures has reached epic proportions, and some people look like a real train-wreck due to the amount of money they've poured into their appearance.

However, why don't you get your teeth straightened and whitened? Every time you see your smile in the mirror and in photographs, you're going to feel a little better about yourself. For sure, why don't you let yourself get a bit of a tan? Everybody looks healthier and happier with a rosy glow in their cheeks.

Do you know what will happen when you stop letting people tell you that you're narcissistic and vain for wanting to look good? Well, you'll start feeling a lot more comfortable in your own skin, and other things that you struggled with will fall into place. Instead of hating yourself for having that extra slice of cake and not going to the gym more often, you'll find that your weight, or at least your perception of your weight won't be such a problem.

We've all heard of body dysmorphia, right? Well, nobody can deny that there are curvy women who are just as sexy as the skinny ones. There is no absolute body size that is attractive or unattractive. Attractiveness is more a function of self confidence than something quantifiable.

I'm sure we've all looked at a couple and thought "why the hell is she/he with him/her?". There appears to be a shocking disparity in looks. However, one partner might be very secure with their image, and hence not looking for somebody to validate their own worth, while the other might need to feel that they're punching above their weight, to compensate for cripplingly low self-esteem.

It's also possible to internalise low self-esteem. Instead of buying a fancy sports car, wearing expensive jewellery and luxury clothing brands, and having a trophy partner, there are a bunch of people who become introverted in response to their low self esteem. They are shy and avoid eye contact in new and unfamiliar situations. In fact, maybe they avoid new situations altogether, because it's too much of a painful reminder of just how unpopular and unlovable they feel.

Nightclubs are the very epitome of the introverted person with low-self-esteem's idea of hell. The idea that you should basically flirt with eye contact and barely perceptible body language hints, in order to pair off with somebody through an entirely looks-based evaluation of each others attractiveness, is frankly ridiculous, if you don't think you're exactly "hot stuff".

But it doesn't take much to tip the balance. Getting drunk, having a sniff of cocaine or having your teeth whitened and a trendy haircut could make all the difference. Feeling good in your own skin is about self-perception, and it can take surprisingly few tweaks to feel completely different about yourself... it's just that you're not letting yourself do those things, because you think it's vain.

My advice: do it. It could make all the difference to your self-esteem, your confidence, how outgoing you are, and ultimately how happy you are.

It sounds so shallow, but what have you got to lose?

Tags: #mentalhealth

This is a story about counterintuitive results...

Conventional wisdom tells us that sobriety is the route to salvation. If you're being treated for substance dependency, most approaches are abstinence-based. But what if these approaches are totally wrong?

I had 'too much' to drink last night, but yet this morning I was on time to work for the first time in ages. I was also on top form during a 2 hour meeting that was highly pressured and intense. Clearly my work performance, my productivity, was improved by alcohol, rather than hindered.

Alcohol works for me as a substance that I can titrate the dose of to control my mood fluctuations. When I quit drinking last year, my anxiety levels became unbearable after 30 days sober, and I had to go into hospital and be on suicide watch. I then went hypomanic and quit a well paid job, and did a bunch of other mad shit, before finally relapsing onto hard drugs and slashing my forearms with a razor blade, after 101 days sober. Hardly an encouraging result.

The fact of the matter is: my job is boring and shit. My life is empty, unfulfilling and stressful. Of course I need something to help me cope with an intolerable daily existence. How the hell am I supposed to get through the crap I'm going through without a chemical crutch.

Just about everybody you know has some kind of substance that they depend upon to cope with modern life. Maybe it's antidepressants, sleeping pills, tranquillisers, opiates. Maybe it's cigarettes, tea, coffee, coca-cola, Red Bull, beer, wine, spirits. Maybe it's cannabis, cocaine, amphetamines, heroin, MDMA, GHB, M-CAT or any one of the myriad other legal and illegal drugs. Humans love drugs.

Clearly, I know what my 'drug of choice' is, and I know that there's no way that I can use it in moderation. Thankfully, alcohol is not something that I've struggled to live without, except where life choices that are forced upon me - such as having to work a shitty job - demand that I find some kind of coping mechanism.

I don't have any kids or pets, so I get no natural endorphins. I don't have any time or money to pursue sports or go to the gym, so I get no natural endorphins and adrenalin boosts. My job is dull as ditch water, so I don't even get any kind of thrill from my work.

But, good news! I've found a formula that worked for me for years & years & years & years: self-medication with alcohol.

Yes! Hurrah for alcohol. It kept the lid on my hypomanic episodes for years.

Basically, the reality that we must all face up to, is that modern life is so fucking shit that we've all got to be drugged up and drunk to get through it.

I could get my cat back from my parents, and get some plants to water and care for. I can soon get a car and some new kites, and go and get my adrenalin and endorphin fix at the beach. However, without those things, I'm forced into puting chemicals into my body, to allow me to keep my shitty job and keep functioning in this crazy society that values corporate profits more than mental health.

My life really sucks, but I'd rather drink a few bottles of wine and keep my highly lucrative contract, so I can escape the rat race at some point, rather than have another repeat of last year's failed experiment.

Tags: #alcohol #addiction #drugs #mentalhealth #bipolar #depression #suicide #hospital

This is a story about deja vu...

What the fuck am I still doing here? This is the endgame, surely ?

Around the year 2000, I moved to the Angel Islington, and lived right next door to where Boris Johnson now lives on Colebrooke Row, just by Upper Street. I revere my time there as the best time of my life. I had a pretty girlfriend, lived with two strippers in an achingly trendy area of London, had a red sports car, went kitesurfing every weekend and generally lived the high life. What the actual fuck went wrong?

It had always been the plan to live and work in London, and I'd pretty much lived and worked in the Big Smoke since the late 1990s. I had fallen in love with glamorous West London on cultural museum trips with my mother, to the Science Museum and the Natural History Museum, like all well mannered little boys who are supposedly destined for great things, in the eyes of their pushy parents.

What was attractive about London, in my mind, was the tube. The tube epitomised freedom for me. I just wanted to ride the metropolitan transportation system all over town, on my own.

There's something about an A to Z map of London that's wonderful. The colour of it, with all the intricate streets. The index is an impenetrable list of roads and lanes. There are pages and pages of brightly illustrated street maps, and it seems like you could never truly know every nook and cranny of London. The very complexity of London is its entire draw, its appeal.

Having discovered drugs in my late teens - namely Ecstasy - London was clearly the place to rave. Under the grubby railway arches, and in grim venues in dingy suburbs. There was always some unlikely place that was attracting the best DJs, despite the fact that everywhere looks largely the same when it's dark and you're off your head on pills.

Of course I went to the superclubs. The Ministry of Sound was the first club I ever went to, as a friend was able to get me on the guest-list. Seeing DJs Sasha and Pete Tong play in The Box was a precious moment, and I hadn't even discovered the joys of MDMA at that point. I just liked the music, the atmosphere.

I saw DJ Paul Oakenfold play a set where he was paid a record-breaking fee, at an ill-fated club on Leicester Square, that had none of the character or charm of the grimy places that were in otherwise unusable parts of London, due to the noise pollution of nearby rail or tube trains.

The goods yard, out the back of King's Cross was one particular mecca for the clubbers of the 90s. Bagley's Studios and The Cross were legendary, and The Scala wasn't far away.

I can remember the opening of clubs like Fabric, as if they were the new kids on the block. I still think of the East London clubs as the newer challengers to the well-established set of clubs in North London, the railway arches of Vauxhall, and Brixton.

I remember when the Ministry of Sound chucked out all the drug dealers, and it became a tourist attraction, bereft of any heart & soul.

Here's the tablet that launched more brilliant nights than I care to remember. Reminiscing about drug taking experiences is probably not healthy or useful, but there we go. There's no denying the past. This was a formative period, and perhaps defined my entire adult existence.

It's a strange Catch 22. I could never live anywhere outside London. I just can't survive, thrive. However, London is brutal. The crowds are relentless. The stimulation of your senses is overwhelming. There is nothing ordered, clean, predictable. It's not in the least bit relaxing.

But, there is the very essence of the city: in the place where you can never quite be off-guard, and fully relaxed, how would you ever re-adjust to a slower pace of life? How can you sleep at night without the sirens, horns and dull rumble of traffic and aeroplanes overhead? How could you feel alive, without humanity all around you, at all times?

When you go clubbing, you are crammed into an overcrowded venue, pressed together with other sweaty bodies. There is no personal space. You literally have to barge people out of the way to get to the toilets or to the bar. You are bumping into people all the time, for hours and hours of dancing. Nobody loses their cool. In fact quite the opposite. You flash smiles to hundreds, maybe thousands of strangers. You hug. You share your energy with strangers and together you build a crescendo of frenzied dancing.

I've arrived at this weekend, feeling exhausted and depressed, and like I just want to sleep for the whole time.

I travel on the tube every day, and there is all the invasion of personal space but none of the celebration of the brilliant experience that is dance, trance and magic plants. People are silent, unsmiling. It must be hard to understand why anybody would subject themselves to the daily onslaught that you experience in London's brutal rat race.

I forgot...

I used to live for the weekends. I could put up with any amount of boredom, because there was always going to be another weekend of smiles, of pure ecstasy. Yes, I was tired, my feet hurt and I wanted to cry around the middle of the week, but the cycle carried me along. There was anticipation that started to build on Thursday, and on the Friday I was happy because it was nearly the weekend.

This is how so many people live - living for the weekends - and it's all I've known all my adult life. I'm not built for consistency. I'm not built for Monday to Friday. I'm built for Saturday & Sunday.

My life is unliveable, miserable, depressing. Without my weekend fix of dancing & drugs, I'm absolutely fucked.

I flipped my addiction to clubbing over into an addiction to kitesurfing at weekends, in my mid twenties, but it was exactly the same kind of rhythm and routine. The pursuit of adrenalin neatly slotted into my life and replaced the pursuit of MDMA and pounding techno music.

My life is incomplete at the moment, and it's leading me to drink to numb the pain, boredom, lack of purpose, lack of direction, loneliness.

I'm not sure whether I'm going to get those pieces of the puzzle back in place in time. I'm writing now - at 3am - because my soul is screaming out for something that it's been deprived of for so long. I'm crying now as I write this. I'm sobbing my eyes out, as the waves of emotion sweep over me, as I realise how unfulfilled and empty my life has been.

I need kites and I need a vehicle to get to the coast. These are simple practical considerations, but you have no idea how dysfunctional my life has been. It seems like I'm close, as money is now flooding in from my latest contract, but everything is so finely balanced, so fragile.

It's never too late to start over, but the more broken things become, the harder the journey back to the safe road. I don't even give a shit about trite platitudes, or other people's attempts to tell me that they've been through some rough times too. I know how close I've come to prematurely reaching the end of my rope, and if that sounds melodramatic, you can go fuck yourself.

What I know about hardship, fear, challenges and hard work, is that it all looks very different when you're looking back. "That wasn't as hard as I thought it would be" is something we often think. But, the truth is, it was fucking hard... it's just that once you've been through it you're flooded with the sense of relief. When you've pulled through, you're full of joy that you made it, and that colours your memories, so you don't remember just how fucked you were, and how awful things were.

I've got this problem, where I'm thinking "I've already overcome obstacles like this before". Getting an IT contract, finding a place to live, making friends, finding a passion, overcoming boredom and loneliness... these are problems I've already solved once in my life. It was awful when I was in my late teens and early twenties. I had forgotten. It's just as shit now I'm in my mid 30s, even though I have all the advantages of knowing how to do it all over again, and knowing that I can do it.

There's a temptation to re-live my youth. I wanted to go out dancing and take drugs, tonight.

There's no reason why it wouldn't work. Every time I've tried to re-apply the well proven formula to my life, it's worked just the same as it did nearly 20 years ago.

However, I don't have to repeat the steps. I know that kitesurfing brought me more happiness than clubbing and taking drugs, so I can skip that step. It's hard though... because I know that I can walk out of my front door and go dancing pretty much any night of the week, for the modest cost of the entry fee and a few cans of Red Bull.

Hopefully, I will choose to do something at least a bit positive - like going dancing - rather than killing myself, but life is tough as fuck at the moment. You might think "he's been working for months and he earns a buttload of cash" but you've failed to see the reality: my life is desperate, unsustainable.

Life's not all about pleasing your boss and earning heaps of cash. It's a good start, but that's the easy part, in actual fact. I'm employing strategies that I learned when I was 19 years old, when I first started IT contracting. Nothing's changed there. But do I want to go back to how I felt when I was 19? I was so lonely, so depressed, and didn't know how to express my feelings and solve my distress.

Where do we run to in times of great stress and need? We run to places of known sanctuary. For some people that might be their family home. For others it might be drink or a drug. For me, it's London and clubbing, IT contracting and the gentrified life of the yuppie.

I left the misery of parents who I could never please and schools where I was relentlessly bullied and re-invented myself. Ecstasy helped me to love myself and feel connected to humanity, in a way that transcended simple hedonism. I had an identity, and it was all mine. I was secure and happy for the first time in my miserable life.

The detail that's almost irrelevant here is how I was let down by my ex-wife and parents, who were supposedly decent human beings, but turned out to be more selfish and untrustworthy than many strangers who I've had the good fortune to receive assistance from during my eventful return to London.

So, what have we got now? Well, it's a clean slate. It's a chance to start agin. I know the moves to make. I know the magic formula. Everything seems to still work, but the instructions still have to be followed. There are no short-cuts.

I find myself dusting off my CV, contacting agents, putting on my suit, and going out into the world of work again. It's just the same as it ever was. I earn about 25% more than I did when I was 20 years old, which is actually still plenty of money, even though it's 16 years later.

But I'm not 20 years old, and I'm not fumbling my way through life anymore. I know where I'm headed. I'm no longer guessing or making things up as I go along. There's a master plan, and everything is falling into place. But I still can't make the hands of the clock move any faster.

I learned some new tricks. Like benzodiazepines are a good way to wake up one day and wonder what the fuck happened to a large chunk of time. Like supercrack is a good way to kill yourself if you don't have the guts to actually run a blade across your major blood vessels.

However, I can cherry-pick. I can point at times in my life and say "THERE! I want that back!". And why can't I have it back? Why can't I recapture that lost youth? There's no reason that I've found so far.

It just takes time and it's fucking unbearable in the 'short' term. It's fucking unbearable because I've been here before, and I know how bad it was then, but it's twice as bad now, because I know just how hard it was to climb up the greasy pole once already, and I know that there's no rushing things, no short-cut.

Very few people, perhaps even nobody, can follow my thought process. Until I present a fait accompli nobody can see and understand where I was headed all along. You think this is fucking luck, that I am where I am? You think that through all the ups and downs, dead ends and disruption, there isn't still a single thread that guides all this? You think there isn't a goal? You think there isn't a fucking plan?

Yes, it's lucky that I haven't sustained life-altering injuries, brain damage. It's lucky that I've escaped prison and a criminal record. It's lucky that I've avoided bankruptcy. It's lucky that I'm no longer homeless, drug addicted or unemployed. But those things were never part of the plan, so is it luck?

There's no arrogance here, only frustration that people and events have gotten in my way. Only frustration that promises have been broken, and people haven't gotten with the program and supported me. Only frustration that those who have sought to thwart me or try to ride my coat tails have had to be cut out of my life, like a cancer. Only frustration that a whole heap of unnecessary shit has delayed me from reaching the original goal I've had all along.

I'd say "don't get in my way" but I don't operate like that. If you share the risks, you share the rewards. I don't think it's delusional to say that I add value wherever I go. I build, I improve, I inspire, I share, I teach, I take whatever resources I'm given and make them into something greater than the sum of their parts. If I'm not doing this, then I have truly lost touch with reality and I don't deserve to be alive.

I've mentioned this, but we used to say "Peace, Love, Unity, Respect" when we were raving. We were loved up, and we knew how to wear our hearts on our sleeves and be kind to one another.

London and its inhabitants have done more to keep me alive and make me happy than my parents and 99% of the people who I went to school with, so why wouldn't I consider myself reborn into this great sprawling metropolis? I couldn't live anywhere else. I could never leave.

That's what the fuck I'm doing in London, and I'm so fucking close to making a breakthrough.

Tags: #london #career #divorce #parents #childhood #drugs #addiction #suicide #depression

This is a story about getting rich quick...

Don't get high on your own supply, they say. It's good advice, because weed seems to dull the wits of my friends, and to curb their enthusiasm for anything more than the getting of more weed, and the consumption of shit food and crap TV.

When I meet young people who feel like they're part of a counter-culture revolution, because they smoke a bit of marijuana, I think how easily they have been duped. How foolish you are, to think that you're fighting the establishment, through your choice of intoxicant.

Governments and the police are mightily pleased to have a stoned population, who are too doped up to be bothered to get off their arses and do anything about social issues, or involve themselves in politics. Chuckling at low-brow humour that is designed to appeal to the stoner brain, is never going to change the world.

The energy and passion of youth has been quashed by the dreaded weed. You're not cool or "fighting the power" by smoking dope. You're actually playing into the hands of the establishment. The cannabis leaf - that ubiquitous emblem - sells tons of merchandise. Camden Market is London's second most popular tourist attraction, and it's mostly because of drug culture.

But what hopes have young people got? They're never going to be able to afford a house, pay for a wedding and be able to support a family, without topping up their income somehow. For those kids with wealthy parents, they might be able to go with their begging bowl to Mum & Dad, but it's hardly the independent self-sufficient life that we should all be entitled to live, is it?

You bust your balls all through school, get some grades, and now what? You can get a massive student loan that will only cover your tuition fees, and you still have to figure out how to pay for accommodation, food & books for your 3 years of undergraduate studies.

Maybe you can save up money before you go to University, but under-18s will be paid £3.87 per hour. Do you think a 17 year old is less capable of stacking a supermarket's shelves than a 64 year old? Why on earth should a young person be paid just 54% of what an old person earns, for doing the same job?

While you're at University, you'll be paid slightly more for your bar work, waitressing or whatever part-time job you can get. You'll get a whopping £5.30. That's still 26% less than somebody with arthritic joints and early-onset dementia. Who would you want working behind a bar? The young attractive, energetic student, or the miserable old codger who shuffles around?

So, what do the most enterprising individuals do, to cope with the crippling debt burden that they face, with little hope of elevating themselves from a position of poverty? Well, some of them will sell their bodies, and sell drugs.

If you deny people a legal route to pay for a quality of life that they're entitled to, they will turn to a life of 'crime'.

The two bestselling commodities, in the history of humanity, are sex & drugs. Ugly people need to fuck, and people want to get high and forget about their shitty lives. The drive to get intoxicated is not even a uniquely human thing. There are plenty of examples from the animal kingdom of non-human species that get off their faces, using various substances.

You might think that demanding plenty of interest on your life savings and wanting a nice fat pension, is OK, because you're entitled to a cushy retirement. However, your young, beautiful and fresh faced daughter or grand-daughter might have few options to live independently, other than being a stripper, escort or 'flatmate with benefits'.

If you browse the London property adverts, you will see a shocking number of offers of free accommodation in return for sex. This is the society that has been created, by structuring everything around the pension funds, instead of investing in young people.

Can't get the job without the experience, can't get the experience without the job. That's the Catch 22 that entraps most young people into minimum wage jobs and living in shared rooms in atrocious quality housing in big cities. It's no fucking picnic being young at the moment, and weed is probably the only thing that allows people to forget the hopelessness of their situation.

A pint of beer in London is £5 or more. That means I can buy two pints for £10. For the same amount of money, I can buy a gram of super-strong skunk weed, and get dribblingly intoxicated for at least a day. Two pints would make me slightly tipsy, and because I'm well-off, I could then easily afford to have 3 or 4 more pints and get violent, abusive and urinate and vomit in the street. However, it's more economical - as a young person - to get stoned out of your mind and not do anything.

The girls who have sugar daddies, hustle for tips as waitresses and strippers or even sell their bodies - these aren't fallen angels, forced to prostitute themselves because they have a drug habit. Often times, the drug habit is a result of having to use what mother nature gave them, as a means to make money. These girls have a plan. They're smart. They've figured out that no amount of shelf stacking for a supermarket will allow them to ever escape poverty.

Our prettiest daughters and grand-daughters are living in luxury apartments in the city centre, taking taxis, eating in expensive restaurants and ordering cocktails at the bar... but how is that lifestyle funded? Every gorgeous pouting selfie you see on Facebook or Instagram... doesn't that say something about the sexualisation of an entire generation, through economic necessity, to you?

The boys will grow weed, or cut coke. The girls will strip or fuck. This is what we've wished for. The olds sit idle in their big empty houses, while their sons, daughters and grandchildren have no option but to pursue the most economically profitable path they can: drugs & prostitution.

I'm painting a bleak picture, but I don't think it's inaccurate.

"It's only a bit of harmless dope" right? Wrong. Can't you see that people's eyes are dulled. The fire has gone out of people's hearts when they're just sitting around stoned. Where is the energy and enthusiasm to change society for the better?

Tags: #drugs #addiction #society #politics #capitalism #sex #police