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 being a groupie...

On the steps of the podium stand the winners of the 2007 Poole Animal Windfest. There is a girl and a boy for 3rd and 2nd place. If you look closely, where is the boy who won 1st place?

In 2007 I was involved in building part of the software system that processed over a quadrillion dollars worth of toxic bullshit for JPMorgan, in a single year. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't a bad job and they didn't treat me badly. In fact they kept a private driver waiting down by the seashore; engine running; waiting for the kitesurfing competition to finish. Then I jumped in the Mercedes with smoked glass windows and we sped off to Heathrow for me to catch a flight. I didn't even have time to wash the salt off my skin or sand out of my hair... or collect my prize for winning the competition.

There used to be a time when JPMorgan's main office in Bournemouth had squash courts and a gym onsite. There was a bar. There were enough car parking spaces for everybody, so everybody drove to work. Then, they grew; and they grew; and they grew. Investment banks were - and still are - ludicrously profitable. The IT budget that paid for my little team of 30-odd people was circa $10m per annum. You're never quite sure what the real numbers are though, when you work for an organisation with 130,000 direct employees.

Slowly, prefabricated office buildings sprang up on parts of the car park. The bar, gym and squash courts were turned into office space. That was OK. We still had several tennis courts and a sports centre nearby with badminton courts and 5-a-side football pitches. You could park nearby in an overflow car park. It was still a great place to work, and nobody had a fucking clue what they were doing or what impact it would have on the world, unless they really stopped and thought about it.

I've always been one of those pain-in-the-ass employees who does stop and think about the ramifications of everything that's being done. When it turned out that senior management had decided to support outsourcing a lot of our software development, I was very vocal about my displeasure and concerns. I was a thorn in the side of everybody more senior than me, in the hope of JPMorgan seeing sense: cheaper employees do not equate to cost savings. You get what you pay for.

So, I got landed with a stinker of a project. To train up about 20 brand new offshore employees, in Mumbai, and also to build a piece of software that was not only late, but was a critical component in a global initiative to get all the toxic bullshit warehoused in one place - a depository - so it could be figured out who the fuck owed who what, and how much? Who was holding the toxic debt? Who was bankrupt?

How big is a million dollars?

$1,000,000

It's hard to say, but it's probably a few times bigger than the value of your house, or twenty times bigger than your salary. Now, let's multiply that by a thousand.

$1,000,000,000

Now what you're looking at is a billion dollars. 1% of a billion dollars is $10 million. You'd be pretty happy with $10 million, wouldn't you? That'd set you up for life. Now, let's multiply that by a thousand.

$1,000,000,000,000

This is quite obviously a trillion dollars. 5 trillion dollars is the value of all the world's 'money' - the cash in your pocket, the coins in your purse, your bank balance etc. etc. Now, let's multiply that by a thousand.

$1,000,000,000,000,000

We've reached a quadrillion dollars. 1% of a quadrillion dollars is $10 trillion, which is twice as much as all the 'money' in existence. So, how the fuck does JPMorgan process over a quadrillion dollars in a single year? Two answers for you: 1) Derivatives 2) Financial crisis of 2007/8

A derivative is a financial instrument that derives its 'value' from an underlying security. By security, I mean something tangible: a fucking house or a metal coin that has its value stamped on it. Derivatives are just pieces of paper that say "in the event X, I will pay Y"... for example "if the stock market goes up, the value of this derivative goes up ten times as much". Derivatives contracts have been created that have become more valuable than all the 'money' in the world. As much as a thousand times more valuable. This is just worthless paper, and nobody has the money to pay up: insufficient collateral.

I know, right? Don't stop and think about this stuff too much. Nobody else did. There was too much money to be made.

So I get landed this stinker of a project, drive off from the beach at Sandbanks to Heathrow airport in a luxury car, in order to train 20 or so Indians on how to build a piece of software that's going to be instrumental in the Financial Crisis of 2007/8. I'm an engineer. I solve problems. I stopped thinking about the madness of outsourcing to India when JPMorgan was already plenty profitable. I stopped thinking about the madness of there being quadrillions of dollars worth of derivatives contracts, when there was only $5 trillion of money in existence. I started thinking about software designs and who I had in my new team to build this software system.

At some point, I was seduced. I was seduced by limo travel, private drivers, 7-star hotels, business class flights, everything paid for on expenses, company credit cards. I was seduced by everybody telling me what an important project it was, and what an honour it was to be in charge - the manager - when I was only 27 years old; so young & ambitious. Giddy with this seduction, I started to see the world in different colours. Things were rose tinted. I was sucked in. It was like I was dreaming.

A year later, I'd woken up from a nightmare where I'd played a significant role in helping the Investment Banks to hold the world to ransom. "Pay up, or we'll crash the global economy and plunge the world into a depression that will make the 1930's look like nothing" they said. And the ransom was paid. Every government; every central bank coughed up hundreds of billions, so the bullshit could continue and none of the bullshitters had to lose a cent. In fact, the only people I knew who lost their jobs were the ones who were replaced by Indians I trained.

I started thinking again. Big mistake.

I took to the bottle. I drank every lunchtime and every evening. I was drunk most of the time. How could JPMorgan sack me or even reprimand me? What they'd paid me to do; what they'd asked me to do... they could never make that right. They just let me do whatever I wanted, which was mostly to go to the pub and get drunk. Nobody ever questioned it.

As Bear Stearns was being taken over by JPMorgan - asset stripped under the auspices of being 'rescued' - I'd had enough. Building software for banks made me sick. I was sick at what they did to their own people. I was sick of what the industry was doing to the world. I was sick of producing nothing of value; helping nobody except the lucky few who knew how the con-job worked.

Don't get me wrong, I should have looked the other way; kept taking the fat bonus cheques and big salary; kept those golden handcuffs on - loose enough that they never chafe - but I wanted to get as far away from it as possible. The whole thing left me feeling like I had blood on my hands. Every company that went bankrupt; every person who lost their job; every home repossessed; every suicide due to financial worries... I was one of the co-conspirators who fleeced them out of their money and assets.

Some colleagues stayed, but most of the cynical ones - like me - drifted away. Some died or at least nearly did, as they beat themselves up with alcohol for their sins. JPMorgan paid for a lot of people to go to The Priory to dry out. Those who couldn't face working again were pensioned off early. You only had to work for a year, and then you were covered by a generous insurance policy so you never had to work again. Occupational health were busy, getting rid of an entire generation of engineers who had built the bedrock foundations of the global financial services empire, now shakily propped up using public money. Masses of public money.

Ten years on, I watch in horror as those hastily made repairs to a fundamentally broken system start to crumble.

Record high national debt and record low tax receipts. Our economy is 80% financial services - an industry that's booming if you haven't noticed. You probably haven't noticed unless you work in the Square Mile or Canary Wharf. You've probably seen stagnant wages, a lack of jobs and insecure employment, such as zero-hours contracts. There's always a McJob, if your self esteem is finally fully eroded by the capitalists.

Brexit had a frontman - Nigel Farage - who was a trader from the City. Brexit had billionaire donors, like the stockbroker Peter Hargreaves, who literally said "insecurity is fantastic" - referring to his desire to see workers abused by their employers, in the interest of profits.

I don't wish to segue into commentary on current affairs, but you have to be aware who you're dealing with. Who's putting words in your mouth? Who's planting ideas in your head, through the newspapers and TV channels they own?

You have to wake up out of your nightmare.

Tags: #politics #banking #capitalism

This is a story about Nick Grant...

Here's where I start and end each day. My side is the far side with all the pillows. This is how morning begins, with the gathering of pillows to prop myself up in bed. You can also tell this is a morning photo, because of the dressing gown casually tossed aside. Also, because it's day and not night. I spend most of my life in bed.

Here you can see the charger for my laptop within grabbing distance of the bed. Normally the laptop would be within grabbing distance too. My day would usually start with checking my phone for Facebook notifications, WhatsApp messages, Twitter notifications and emails that don't look too scary, like I'd actually have to do anything about them.

I don't normally get up at 'breakfast' time, but this is what I would eat if I could be bothered to boil water, pour it into a pot and stir for a couple of minutes. Sounds like hard work to me. I would normally go for two slices of buttered toast, which I would take back to bed, in order to get crumbs everywhere for that lovely scratchy feel when trying to sleep.

Ah, I see you've found my floordrobe. Here are clothes that are clean, or at least appear clean and don't have any sick or pooh on them. It's against my religious beliefs to eat lunch in a dressing gown, so I normally don the garment which is on the top of the pile, having checked for sick and pooh. Then I saunter into the kitchen to see what I can have for lunch, requiring the least effort.

Mmmmm... it's brunch. Breakfast is a drink - a protein shake with the aforementioned oats, but all you have to do is shake the bottle. Lunch is also a kind of drink - soup - but you have to microwave it for 6 whole minutes or else it's not pleasant to drink like the protein shake. Also, do not drink the soup in big gulps straight from the container like you would with the shake... or at least not until it's cooled down.

All that getting dressed and microwaving has left me ravenous. I have supplemented my brunch with several packets of crisps and enough cheese to clog most ordinary people's arteries. As you can see, I'm still very busy doing things on my laptop that don't earn me any money.

Right, time to do something producti... wait a minute. There's hundreds of Sky TV channels, Apple TV, Netflix, Amazon Video, Now TV and BBC iPlayer. Let's find something educational to watch. Perhaps a documentary about history or something.

I suppose I could read a book; expand my mind; grow my intellec... wait a second. THERE'S A MAN AND HE'S GOT A FUCKING DOG. HOW DID I NOT KNOW ABOUT THIS? I can see how my afternoon is going to be spent. This is what a productive day at home looks like... TO THE MAX.

Fucking books everywhere. It's the academic equivalent of flopping your dick out at a dinner party and saying "pretty impressive, huh?". Fuck off books. I have to find out what happens to that man. And his dog. It's important.

Awww the dog owners keep giving their dogs little treats. I think I deserve a snack. It has been a stressful day. So many snacks; so little time. All your snacks are belong to me.

I should really go out; get some exercise. You can't eat as much as I do when you're not doing any physical activity all day. I'd better check what it looks like out there. There might be a blizzard, or a hurricane. There might be robbers or nuclear fallout. Nobody ever got killed to death while watching TV, did they?

Ah there it is - the outside. In fact, I am outside on the balcony. This surely counts as going outside AND exercise. That will do for the day. I'm exhausted. Looks a bit dodgy down there - I'm sure it's wall-to-wall robbers. That sky is threatening too - I'm sure that hurricane is going to arrive any minute now. Safety first; time to go back inside where it's safe.

People have been talking about "the hum" for years now. Well, I found out what it is. This fucking thing hums 24 hours a day. You can hear it even with all the double glazed windows and doors shut. Well, I suppose that's why this flat only cost a gazzilion pounds instead of a bazzilion pounds. London... the place where you're grateful to live with a fucking loud humming noise, just to own a tiny flat. My flat's valued at twice as much as this one and doesn't have a hum and it's bigger... but I couldn't afford to buy it.

I never drink before midday, but sadly that only applies on weekends and holidays. I've got to wait until 6pm and there's no white wine or gin left, and the red wine will stain my teeth, which will be a dead giveaway that I've been on the booze all afternoon. I suppose I can just look at it longingly.

I might just wait here in the hallway for her to get home. I'm lonely. Why does she have to work and pay the mortgage and buy everything I eat and cook and clean and take care of my every whim? Perhaps this is why some cultures allow multiple wives. I don't see why I shouldn't be allowed my own harem. I'm sure men would be in favour of bigamy if we held a referendum, which is at least 50% of the vote.

This is kind of like Big Brother Live, except you only see a contestant very occasionally and very briefly, as they walk down the corridor. Admittedly, I don't think that Endemol are going to pay me very much for the rights to produce the programme. It's entertaining me a bit though, and maybe I will be here at the very moment she arrives home. If I just wait here... will my patience hold out?

I said I was going to cook tonight. I'm making meatball fornication. I've got balls and I'm going to fornicate. Seriously though, here is a meal on top of a stove. I can cook and everything. I'm a modern man.

Only kidding. If I was actually going to prepare a meal, it would be a microwave ready meal. I was kidding about the preparing meals thing too. She's cooking chicken fajitas, and I'm under strict instructions not to eat the ingredients which are in the fridg... oh fuck. I ate the cheddar. No grated cheese for us on our fajitas. Oh well; I did eat quite a lot of cheese earlier, so at least *I* haven't missed out.

Hurrah! She's home. That deserves a toast. I'm going to drink all the alcoholz. Gin & tonic followed by white wine as an aperitif, then red wine with dinner and dessert, and then 'special squash' which can only be made while she's in the toilet. Sadly, the noise of me unscrewing a bottle cap means I normally get busted. Also, I reek of booze.

Time for bed. I'd better just take my medication. They all say "do not consume alcohol while taking this medication" but that's just advice, right, like traffic lights when you're on a bike. The doctor also told me not to take the maximum dose of tramadol and not to take it at the same time as the codeine but what the fuck does that jumped up twat know with their fucking 5 years of training. Fuck off. I'm also prescribing myself a combination of zopiclone, xanax and diazepam... all at doses well exceeding what those stingy bastard doctors will give me. It's the only way to get a decent night's sleep. Note: there's the dexedrine to help me wake up from my lethal cocktail of drugs, assuming I haven't died in my sleep.

"I'm just going to turn the fan on" she says just before we switch out the lights AS IF THE FUCKING HUM WASN'T BAD ENOUGH. Why was I even born? Why must I suffer like this? I must have been a paedophile in a previous life or something. YES, PLEASE! MORE NOISE WHILE I TRY AND SLEEP. Then the drugs kick in and the next thing I know she's kissing me goodbye before she leaves to go to her so-called job that earns the so-called money that pays the so-called mortgage and bills.

As you can tell, I'm the breadwinner and the brains of the operation round here. Man of the house; master of my domain.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is my life.

Tags: #career #london

This is a story about learning through doing...

Why would somebody try to enter politics? Because they think it's easy? Obviously, there are an immense amount of obstacles in the path of anybody who seeks to challenge the two-party status quo, where the electorate mistakenly believes that any vote cast for a smaller party is a wasted one. It's specifically because it's such a hard challenge - to learn the complexities of the UK political system and stand for a seat in parliament -  that one would wish to do it. I want to do it just to learn how it all works.

The Monster Raving Loony Party are quite helpful to would-be Members of Parliament who are lunatics. They've furnished me with a step-by-step guide, which I assumed would be quite useless for a long while. I thought I would have plenty of time to prepare for a local by-election or an early general election. Bloody Tories. I'm wrong-footed from the very beginning. They must have heard about my political ambitions.

I now need submit the names of 10 people on the electoral roll in my constituency, who are prepared to back me as a political candidate: Manic Grant of The Monster Raving Loony Party. Then, I can start campaigning for votes.

The Tories and Labour are membership-driven organisations, and as such, their MPs will have to campaign under their party's manifesto and be constrained by a national political agenda. Any Labour or Tory politician who offered to fight to reverse our exit from the EU, would be making false promises, given that both parties are committed to acting on the 1.9% majority, who wished for the UK to leave the European Union at the time of the last referendum.

Monster Raving Loonies are more akin to independent candidates, in that each prospective MP can have their own manifesto. Should the Loonies gain the majority of seats in the House of Commons, then the party would struggle to elect a leader and form a cabinet, let alone agree on anything and successfully govern. It's rumoured that the Loonies have only one election promise: to call another general election if they win a majority. However, that rumour is untrue.

There is a deposit that has to be paid and other electoral expenses, but most Loonies can enjoy a certain amount of free publicity, public goodwill and donations from bookmakers - many betting men and women like to have a flutter on the prospect that a Monster Raving Loony MP is elected, or even that the Loonies win the majority of seats.

Politics has moved towards the centre and money has flooded into Labour and the Conservative party, from wealthy donors hoping to buy themselves political favours or even a peerage. This money pays for national advertising campaigns, branding, PR, spin doctors and a whole host of other advantages not enjoyed by the smaller parties. The immense size, power and wealth of the entrenched top two parties, plus their bland centrist manifestos, has been a massive turn-off for many eligible voters, fuelling a general disinterest in politics.

So many - especially younger - people believe that politics has no bearing on their lives. This widely held view has proven to be a massive success for those in power, who have governed without the constraints of an electorate who connect their daily struggles in life with the failings of their government.

The EU referendum seemed to awaken politically dormant segments of the electorate and highlight a lot of ordinary people's frustrations with the political machinery. However, it was a binary vote on a single policy issue. It seems unlikely that many of the voters who otherwise considered themselves disinterested in politics, are now going to be active participants in the general election.

What is a general election anyway? A vote for a colour: red or blue? Certainly, a lot of money is spent telling you that there are only two horses worth backing and that a bet on any other is a waste of time & money. Nobody likes to be on the losing side, do they?

With UKIP's aim seemingly achieved, much of the populist vote will swing with the weather on the day. If it's nice and sunny, why not vote Tory? As the days grow longer and it starts to get warmer, things seem to be improving. The stats show that weather is the best predictor of whether the incumbent government retains power or not. June 8th ought to have a good chance of being a nice day.

Corbyn has successfully divided his party and Labour supporters, into true socialists who have principles and stand resolutely by their beliefs, and idiots who just want to seize power at any cost. "New Labour" is a synonym for "nothing to do with the labour movement or the working class". It's true that the working class haven't held much political power historically, so successful election campaigns have sought to appeal to middle class greed, fear and bourgeois aspirations.

Who could ever vote Liberal Democrat again, after they formed a coalition with the Tories? What a betrayal of trust! What an absolutely disastrous outcome! What unimaginable horror!

We desperately need political reform, with proportional representation and preferential voting. The current system actively discourages voting for a smaller party, lest they form a coalition with the Tories, like the Lib Dems did. Perhaps voting slips could just contain an "anybody except the Tories" box.

Through all this complexity and excessive media fixation on politics, we the people, feel overwhelmed and unable to participate in the democracy that supposedly serves our interests and concerns.

I write this with a broken wrist, while heavily medicated for the pain of torn muscle and ligaments in my leg. Trapped and damaged nerves are slowly repairing themselves, which is uncomfortable at the best of times, and agonising at others. My cash reserves dwindle rapidly and bankruptcy and destitution beckon. I desperately need to be working, but I might need to have an operation to repair damage in my leg. I can't imagine having to use a mouse and keyboard all day, five days a week, and commute to work on my damaged foot/ankle. I can't imagine having to concentrate on work, when I'm on so much medication.

I was looking forward to playing around in the UK's political system when the opportunity presented itself - which it now has - but I've not yet even been able to deal with the more pressing concern: getting back to work before I run out of money.

So, it looks like professional politicians win again. I'm too embroiled in the struggle of daily existence to participate in the political games. Only those privileged few - especially public schoolboys - are able to involve themselves in the matters that affect the lives of every UK citizen. It seems like a great injustice and a perversion of what democracy is supposed to be about.

Like many of our wealthy professional politicians, I have been away from the seat of power, enjoying an Easter holiday. Perhaps I will be sufficiently enthused by politics when I get back to London later this afternoon - closer to the Westminster bubble - to overcome my depressed hopelessness. It would certainly solve my lack of a job, if I was elected as a Member of Parliament.

Tags: #politics

This is a story about living an easy life...

Our behaviour is shaped by circumstances far more than free will and conscious decisions. I suddenly stopped using my smartphone, looking at Facebook and writing. Did I decide to stop wasting time, pointlessly reliving old memories and making myself look like a fool on social media? No. I broke my wrist.

My generation, and a few generations before me, found ourselves in the right place at the right time. No skill, hard work, good judgement or other factors are attributable to us other than being born in a rich country during a period of peace.

The Americans wasted a lot of time and talent on the Vietnam War, which allowed Britain to become a world leader in banking software and the global financial markets. Silicon Valley is on the opposite coast of the USA from Wall Street. London has everything you need all in one place.

British men have sheds, in which they tinker and invent things. There's a proud tradition of geekery in Britain, which includes trainspotting, stamp collecting and pipe smoking. I'm a member of the last generation who were able to turn their geeky hobby and wasted youth into cold hard cash.

Most parents have dismally similar plans for their offspring: to pressure them as much as possible to try hard at school, in the hope that they'll survive the onslaught and be able to go on to university and become an accountant or a dentist or something... take up a profession. Medicine, law, architecture, surveying.... basically anything with a Royal Institute. Something to give you letters after your name. Something respectable.

Barrowboys from Essex and the East End made a killing as stock market traders, because they already had an eye for a good deal and a head for numbers. Later, software became something that anybody could stumble into, if they had the aptitude.

All those years at school and college proved a waste of time, when the fast-paced world of technology demanded magicians, wizards, sorcerers: anybody who could conjure up working computer software, no matter what their academic credentials looked like. The curriculum vitae was overlooked in favour of technical tests and whether a candidate knew the latest jargon.

Briefly, the snobbery over Oxbridge graduates and the class of degree that one had attained, was overturned and the prized star employees in the multitude of software houses and consultancies that sprung up, were often self-taught and not considered academically gifted, in the traditional sense.

Filial obedience proved disastrous, when many parent-pleasing academic high-achievers entered corporate law firms, only to find that the remuneration in no way compensated them for the hours that they worked and the pressure they were under. The story was the same everywhere you looked: hard work didn't pay.

Private school fees, university tuition fees and loans for maintenance, would all be far better off simply invested in property. Buy your kid a house and let them sub-let rooms out. They'll be richer and happier in the long-run. House prices are an asset bubble that just refuses to burst: we all need somewhere to live.

Now I find myself in the position where I haven't been dismissed in disrepute from the professional body, to which I belong. I haven't been struck off the GMC's register, or expelled from the Law Society. I can still practice software and nobody gives a fuck, so long as I can make the magic happen.

When it comes to imposter syndrome, and the sense that you can't possibly be worth the money that the market is prepared to pay for your skills, there could be nothing worse than knowing that you took up your particular career, because it was a gift that was handed to you, requiring no effort: you just happened to have an aptitude and be in the right place at the right time. I can't point to a fancy diploma that took me many years to obtain. I can't rely on my membership of an exclusive professional body, to give me a sense that I'm somehow deserving of a certain salary or consultancy day rate.

Following the path of least resistance has allowed me to find my place: where I'm most qualified to work and the market pays the most for my skills. However, I'm full of self-doubt. Am I too old for this game? Have my skills gotten rusty? Have I missed the boat on a new development, and taken myself up a technology cul-de-sac?

I can point to exceptional things I've done as evidence that I'm no slouch, but it's often hard for a salaryman to understand just how hard it is to run your own business, for example. In fact, having run your own business is something that is often held against you.

I find myself somewhat trapped. Nobody will hire me as a permanent member of staff because I've been contract for so long. I can't use my highest achievements to their fullest advantage, because they're things that your 9 to 5 regular guy just won't wrap their head around. I can't even consider escaping and living a simple minimalist life, until I deleverage: I'm financially trapped.

It's strange that the path of least resistance would lead here, with me somewhat able to sit by the riverside, writing, but paying an extremely high price for the privilege.

It's almost the final straw, to break my wrist and be unable to even write.

Tags: #career #banking #london #writing

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 the right to bear arms...

Defence budgets are soaring. The UK is spending £205 billion to upgrade the nuclear deterrent. The annual NHS budget is half that amount. We could give the NHS an extra £350 million per week, for over 11 years, instead of spending our money on weapons of mass destruction.

There are two vans full of armed police parked outside Canary Wharf station, every single working day. I pass them on my way to work. Now, there are also mounted police.

Our foreign policies are abhorrent. The rhetoric used by politicians and the media has whipped up a frenzy of nationalism, xenophobia, bigotry and racism. I used to be proud that Britain was a diverse and inclusive nation, but now I'm embarrassed to discover that there is a marginal majority who have this crazy idea about raising the drawbridge and lowering the portcullis: fortress England.

I saw a meme the other day that asked what the hell is wrong with you if you're so afraid of ISIS that you're not prepared to grant asylum to women & children who are fleeing ISIS. It's a damn good point well made.

The great success that is hidden in the decline of the British empire, is that we managed to leave things in relatively good order. The partition of India and Pakistan was mostly successful, except for one stupid idiot who had no idea about the Kashmir region, but drew the border anyway. Britain is still on good terms with both India and Pakistan and I have no problem getting a visa to visit either country. I've been to India many times and they've embraced English as an official language. The railway system and a lot of other bureaucratic systems are run exactly as they were under British rule.

Again, when Britain left the Middle East, Gulf States and North Africa, after World War II, it was a masterclass in diplomacy and how to divide and rule areas that would otherwise be torn apart by internecine strife. Yes, it's true that dictators were installed. However, before the Gulf War, there was a thriving middle class and excellent infrastructure, not only in Iraq but throughout the whole Middle East. The standard of living in Libya was amazing. Bashar al-Assad brought the Internet to Syria in the mid-nineties, and Assad was somebody who the British had excellent diplomatic ties with: he was one of our best friends in the region.

Britain's policy had always been to rule through diplomacy and bureaucracy. Britain's policy was not one of invasion, conquest, occupation, arms races and domination through sheer military might. The reason Britain had a huge empire is because we are a mercantile nation, who negotiated many trade deals and established much of the flow of goods over land and sea that we see today. Britain didn't want war. Britain wanted to be friends with everybody, so they could trade with the world.

Now, with the American 'shock and awe' tactics, with SCUD missiles raining down on innocent civilians from hundreds of miles away, with no warning, we're fucking hated. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine not even hearing the approach of an aircraft, seeing the falling bomb and having a second to duck and cover? Can you imagine you're sitting there watching TV, and the next thing you know your house is rubble and your whole family have been killed or maimed?

The American occupation, or simply their military presence, in the Middle East was highly offensive and threatening. America likes to flex its military muscle. America likes to boast about its cutting-edge 'defence' technology... which we all know means offensive weapons.

Where's the fucking bravery of warfare, if you're controlling a drone from some air-conditioned office type place, in a building in America, blowing up people in a country thousands of miles away? How that fuck is that being a brave soldier?

And so, we saw the birth of asymmetrical and guerrilla warfare. What we call insurgency is simply the only way that the occupied nations stand any chance of fighting back against the invading forces. The people who we call insurgents are really freedom fighters: fighting for the freedom from invasion and occupation by the country with the world's largest 'defence' budget - America.

I'm going to keep putting 'defence' inside inverted commas like that, because it's not fucking defence. Those weapons get used for offensive purposes far more than for defensive purposes.

The top selling guns in America are hand guns. The top gun retailer is Walmart... we know them as ASDA supermarket in the UK. The top selling bullets are rounds that go in hand guns. What the actual fuck? Surely 1 bullet equals 1 dead person, if you're using a hand gun. I can't imagine that anybody goes hunting deer with a hand gun, can you?

This culture of fetishising deadly weapons - brandishing them and carrying them on the public streets - has become ubiquitous. Giving guns to every ordinary policemen and women. Encouraging people to own a gun at home and introducing laws like stand-your-ground have caused a massive spike in the number of guns and bullets sold, and the number of people who are killed in shootings.

My fear is that Britain moves closer and closer to the American model of foreign and domestic policy.

I would hate it if our police were all armed with guns. No policeman should be judge, jury and executioner. I would hate it if private citizens were allowed to own handguns, which serve no purpose other than to shoot people. The self defence argument crumbles to dust if you can keep guns out of everybody's hands. I would bet you that 99 out of 100 burglaries in the UK are committed by people who are not carrying guns.

The more the rhetoric and the hate ramps up, and the more our strong historical positive diplomatic relationships with many leaders in the Middle East deteriorate, as well as the whole region descending into a chaotic power struggle, the more that Britain becomes a proxy target for the many many people who hate America, because America killed their children, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, parents, cousins, friends and countless other innocent victims of cowardly missile, bomb and drone strikes.

"Don't shoot until you can see the whites of their eyes" they used to say. Soldiers used to have to live with the horror of knowing they'd taken the life of another human being. Now, your drone controller hops in his car and drives home to his family, at the end of his shift. He has no idea what kind of carnage and destruction was unleashed in the aftermath of his drone strike. He has no idea whether the intelligence was correct, or if he just murdered a bunch of innocent people.

The American way of doing things is not making me feel safe. Donald Trump does not make me feel safe. Border controls and slamming the door in the face of people fleeing persecution and war, does not make me feel safe. Dropping bombs on Syria does not make me feel safe. The 'special relationship' with America does not make me feel safe.

We belong to Europe, and we owe it to our former colonies to maintain peace and stability. We are fucking up two of our greatest postwar achievements, and letting America ruin world peace.

I don't feel safe.

Tags: #terrorism #london

This is a story about repeatedly making the same mistakes...

Do you remember all those times that you were made to say sorry when you were a kid? Maybe you were a bit of a bully and you kicked sand in somebody's face or pushed someone into the swimming pool. Maybe you were a bit of a thief and you tried to steal other children's toys. Maybe you were a bit violent, and got into an argument with somebody at school or playgroup, and you hit or kicked them.

You can't make somebody sorry. You can force them to say words which the dictionary defines as apologetic, but that's got nothing to do with them actually feeling sorry. In my experience, forcing a child to apologise to another child, could often result in later reprisals that far exceed the original offence. Plus, receiving an insincere apology - under duress - only serves to further demonstrate a lack of remorse.

Also, children may not yet have learned about taboo subjects, political correctness, proper comportment, social faux-pas, tact and a whole load of other subtle nuances in adult behaviour. Some adults may only ever reach a behavioural level that marginally exceeds that of a child. Some adults may believe that their behaviour epitomises the gold standard that we should all aspire to attain.

I spent some of my childhood in Oxford. The area we lived in was being gentrified. Among our neighbours were an MP, a City trader, a consultant heart surgeon and other high achievers. Also living in the neighbourhood, were poor people, who weren't there because it was an affordable up-and-coming trendy part of central Oxford, but because they lived in council houses... sorry, I mean social housing.

The nearest child of a similar age, lived at number 4, and we lived at number 10. There was also a boy who lived at number 1, on the opposite side of the street, but not much further up the road than number 4. The boy at number 1 was from a poor family who lived in social housing. The boy at number 4 was from a family that believed they had attained the aforementioned 'gold standard' behavioural attributes.

At number 4, there were two girls and a boy. The eldest girl was a little older than me and the boy was a little younger. We spent a lot of time playing together on the street outside their house, where their parents could keep an eye on us. Not that the 'gold standard' was shining brightly on the day their eldest ran across the road and got hit by a car, or when their youngest drank bleach from the cupboard under the sink. 

The development of a child's sense of morality and good behaviour might evolve thusly: I want that cake; I want that cake but I know I will get in trouble if I take it; I want that cake and I don't understand why I have to wait and I only get a portion of the cake; I want that cake, and I want all the portions of the whole cake; I want that cake, I want as many portions as I'm allowed, and I resent anybody else who has a portion; I want that cake, and I understand that too much makes me sick; I want that cake, and it seems to be social convention that cake is shared.

Therefore, we can see that the behaviour of a child who has eaten their own portion of cake and has now stolen another child's, might not follow adult morality and logic. Imagine if the cake is a birthday cake, and it's the birthday of the cake 'thief' child. Adult logic says the cake is for everyone to share, we should eat in moderation, and taking from somebody else is stealing. Child logic - the birthday child - says that the cake is theirs, because it's their birthday, but they consent to cake being shared out because that's established social convention, but taking any unattended cake is fair game, because it's all the birthday child's cake.

Some 'bad' behaviour is actually natural and normal for a child, who is not equipped with all the knowledge and experience that an adult has, of tact, political correctness, taboos and subjects that require a lot of historical context, before they start to make sense. Here's a test for you: are children racist?

If you put 29 little kids in a room with an obviously handicapped child, what are the kids going to remember, if you ask them individually at a later time? More importantly, what are they going to say? If the kids laugh at the handicapped kid, does that mean they'll laugh and point at people in wheelchairs when they're adults? If the kids imitate the handicapped kid, are they mocking people with disabilities?

If you put 29 white privileged little kids with a little black kid, what are the kids going to notice and remember? If they all single out the black kid, does that mean they're all racist, or does it mean they've got eyes? Children haven't learned the 'colourblind' behaviour that adults are supposed to have.

By the time you reach adulthood, you've learned to pretend not to notice that brain damaged person, strapped into a chair, making weird noises. You've learned to pretend not to notice if the skin all over somebody's entire body, is a substantially different colour from yours. You've learned not to stare, not to point, not to vocalise your observations, except with extreme care and subtlety.

Older children will develop empathy; a sense of care for those around them. Older children will find it rewarding to please their peers and adults, by sharing. Older children learn that other people can own things too, and that it's wrong to take somebody else's things. Older children become better at communicating, negotiating and controlling their emotions; physical violence and arguments become rare, replaced by reasoned debate.

Remember all those insincere apologies you had to give? Remember all those times when an adult made you share your sweets, but they were yours and you wanted them all yourself? 

"I'm sorry, it won't happen again" 

I hear adults say this all the time.

Firstly, they're not sorry. A genuine apology starts with empathy for the victim, leading to remorse, guilt and then some words to express regret, encompassing the remorse and the guilt. An apology starts with a painful conversation, where you have to face your victim and not only understand any physical consequences, but also understand the emotional impact - including the severity - for the victim.

Secondly, they're not going to change. We make promises all the time to change, improve, stop doing something, start doing something... whatever. By the time we reach adulthood, we're really well practiced at saying what we think the other person wants to hear, so they're placated and they'll leave us alone.

Change is hard.

You can't change to please somebody, or comply with an order to change. If you're already fat, you need to stop getting fatter and you need to lose weight - two difficult changes - and your aim is to avoid potential health complications, as advised by your doctor. If you smoke, you know the health risks, but you've smoked a lot of cigarettes and never got lung cancer, so your first-hand experience has more bearing than any statistics about future risks. What motivation is there in mitigating future risk, when there is nice food and cigarettes right now?

You can't change because of a threat, or otherwise under duress. Change is hard, as we discussed, and it's made so much harder when every slip-up is magnified by the thought that failure to change would result in terrible consequences. If you can try and fail, and have another go, you might eventually succeed. Changing to avoid a terrible punishment, creates unbearable pressure, makes a catastrophe out of every minor setback, discouraging any attempts to keep trying.

You can't change because you want to. Change for change's sake? That makes no sense. You change because you have to, such as a serious medical problem that mandates an immediate lifestyle change, or else you'll die.

You'll change when you're not even noticing. You'll change when what you care about in life, your passions and your priorities change. You'll change when you're having fun, doing things you enjoy, doing things you're motivated by.

Who do you want to change? Is it your wayward brother, your drunkard father, your lazy friend, your unreliable co-worker, your drug addict boyfriend?

Stop assuming that they should think and act like a model adult - or indeed pressuring them to be and reprimanding them when they're not - and presume instead that they are more like a child. You might not like it, but joining the long queue of people hectoring a person to act more adult, causes them to act more childish. When everybody disrespects you, patronises you and tells you what to think and how to act, then less responsible and more selfish behaviour is inevitable, as well as disengaging your brain and letting others do all the thinking for you.

Stop seeing the same mistakes happening again and again. They're not mistakes. Another person's perspective is completely different from yours. Yeah, he's drinking himself to death. Yeah, his wife's going to leave him and take the kids if he doesn't stop drinking. Yeah, he's wasting loads of money and he can't get a job when he stinks of booze. Yeah, countless doctors have told him the damage he's doing to his body. Yeah, he crashed his car, lost his license. So what? Of course those things matter, but in his mind, that stuff's already happened; he's resigned himself to his fate; you can't threaten him with anything worse than he's already prepared for.

We spend so much time and energy trying to turn our children into adults. Learning to be an adult is the fine art of knowing when to lie (often), be honest (rarely) and keep your mouth shut and your thoughts to yourself (most of the time). The right clothes and good manners do most of the hard work. Then, you just need to be serious, dour, solemn and boring. "Grow up!" and "stop being so childish" are phrases that epitomise a parenting style that thrashes any semblance of natural immaturity into an appearance of premature adulthood. Constant rebuke for failure to demonstrate adult qualities, eventually creates a deceptive character: polite, courteous, formal, apparently mature and responsible, certainly confident and capable. But, how quickly it all unravels when a thread is pulled.

Why the strange behaviour? Why do drugs & alcohol feature so often? Where is the social life? Where are the fond recollections of the halcyon days of school? So many avoidable conflicts leading to unnecessary losses of highly paid jobs. Suddenly so irresponsible, unreliable. Tired and preoccupied by thoughts of death, followed by peals of laughter at puerile humour aimed at children. Everything always on the verge of total disaster.

If you harass and harangue - a pair of old bullies outnumbering the victim, two against one - until you seemingly get what you always wanted: your child has turned out successful enough to give you bragging rights with your friends. Climbing the career ladder at high speed, switching companies all the time. Girlfriends, social groups, best friends, former work colleagues - nothing seems to last, and it all seems to be moving too fast to keep up.

Does it not seem obvious that drugs have become my loyal friend, who'll never leave me and never let me down? Does it not seem obvious that I've had it hammered into my skull, for far too many years, that life is miserable, full of endless boring responsibilities, and then you die?

Will I ever learn from my mistakes? You're asking the wrong question. I don't see any mistakes, but I see a lot of learning. Will I ever see the error of my ways and change my behaviour? It's you who has failed to see the changes in my behaviour. The only error I made was trying to be a sensible, serious, responsible adult.

I've got so much to lose at the moment, but I already lost so much and learnt how to get it back. I've come back from the brink so many times now. I don't want to keep starting over. I'm not scared of things like kidney failure. I'm scared of things like being bored out of my brain doing things I've done a million times before, to the point where I fuck up a perfectly good job and end up going round the cycle again.

My idea of change right now is to start drinking wine again.

Tags: #drugs #alcohol #career

This is a story about the opium of the people...

God is dead. We killed him with our science and our medicine. We killed god when the healing power of doctors trumped the ridiculously unsuccessful power of prayer and divine miracle. We killed god when Thomas Edison invented the electric lightbulb and let there be light. We killed god when the Manhattan Project unleashed the energy bound up in the atomic nucleus, creating bombs powerful enough to destroy the world. We killed god when popes, bishops, vicars, priests, nuns, monks, rabbis, mullahs and other spokespeople for organised religion, were proven beyond all reasonable doubt, by the scientific method, to be snake-oil salesmen; charlatans; frauds... just like witch doctors, mystics, faith healers and anybody else who claims they can perform magic or speak to nonexistent entities.

With life stripped back to pure truth; pure reason, a life of suffering and decay seems rather pointless. There is joy in procreation: watching your own flesh and blood offspring fumble their way through a harsh and uncaring world. The bonding hormone - oxytocin - and vicarious enjoyment of your kids' childhood makes parenthood neurologically rewarding enough for you not to just fuck off as soon as the screaming incontinent midgets have been ejected painfully from your vaginas.

Life has been built to not give you much joy. You can fuck, but you'll need a rest in-between copulations, and over time your interest in sex with a single partner will wane, as life prompts you to go and fuck somebody new, who you may be a better fertility match with. We weren't designed to have so much sex with so few partners, and produce so few children. The French have a name for the post-orgasm feeling a man has: la petit mort. Lit: the little death. Every time you cum and you don't make a baby, you die a little.

In a world of push-up bras, gymnasiums, good diet, flattering garments and mostly indoor jobs, women look amazing for far longer than they would under less favourable conditions. We have a culture of strip bars, escorts, pornography and film, television & print media bombarding us with images of the world's most attractive women. Ordinary women have responded by making ever raunchier choices of clothing and make-up, as well as complying with men's desire for casual sex and promiscuity. The ease of finding a 'hook up' on a mobile phone app - which doesn't carry the stigma of paying for sex - has meant that many men are quite content to not have a monogamous relationship, further exacerbating the problem, as women struggle to find the 'nice guys' who are looking for a something serious, but must use sex to bait the hook.

When you've had your fill of contraception-protected sex, skydiving, water-skiing, deep-sea diving, hang gliding, windsurfing, motorcycle racing and everything else that gives you a little hit of something that tickles your brain 'naturally' where are you going to go from there?

We live in a world where you can have an instant face-to-face conversation with your pick of 3.2 billion people, as if they were there in the same room as you, without either of you leaving your house. We live in a world where you can get into a pressurised aluminium tube and 17 hours later you will be on the other side of the planet, where day and night are swapped around, as well as summer and winter. We live in a world where news and information is distributed globally at the speed of light. We live in a world where many of us have access to vehicles that can carry us almost anywhere we choose to go, on a whim, at speeds that are far greater than we were ever evolved to travel at. How are our bodies and brains supposed to cope with this modern world? There are so many unnatural stimuli, can you really say that anybody is truly living a natural life?

When you start asking around, it turns out that we can't really cope with the modern world, without modern innovations. We need tranquillisers to calm our nerves, after the overstimulation of the city lights that never switch off; the sirens; the car horns; the traffic; the congestion; the crowds; the towering phallic structures of concrete, steel and glass. We need stimulants to be able to concentrate and overcome the exhaustion of the daily assault on our senses, and the steadily rising demand for our attention at all times of the day: there is always something electronic somewhere, bleeping at us for our attention. We need things to intoxicate ourselves, to escape the madness of the world and briefly be set free. We need things to numb the pain and insulate us from the growing discomfort and inescapable truth of our inevitable decrepitude and death, which is followed by black nothingness. There is no afterlife. There is no heaven and hell. This life is all there is, and then it's over, forever.

Some mentally ill people have this thing called religion, which is where they find comfort in imaginary friends and they really believe the stories in the children's books they read, to be true stories. These mentally ill people suffer from delusions, where they believe that talking to nonexistent sky monsters will change the outcome of events. These mentally ill people suffer from terrible superstitions that make them act extremely weirdly, like not eating certain things, saying certain things, and they do really boring stuff like going and sitting in buildings with other people who suffer from the same mental illness, and performing rituals based on delusional beliefs. However, this madness somehow seems to ease the suffering of a few of the mentally ill people a little bit. When there is a death in the family, for no reason other than the random chaotic unpredictable nature of the universe, the mentally ill people have their delusions to fall back on, so they can mistakenly believe that there was some reason behind an otherwise totally meaningless event, which actually helps them not feel so afraid and alone in harsh and uncaring universe that's out to kill them in an infinite number of ways.

The universe quite literally does not give any fucks who you are.

Entropy will destroy your body, to the point that every single atom will be scattered throughout the universe and even those atoms will decay. It will be as if you never even existed. Entropy will tear down everything you ever built, in the blink of an eye. Entropy is an unstoppable force, that will take everything you think is ordered and understood and under control, and it will show you just how puny and pathetic you are in the face of its relentless power to smash everything up and reintroduce the chaos and disorder that reigns supreme in a universe of unimaginable magnitude.

In a way, I'm jealous of the religious. They must be so blissfully ignorant. They were too stupid or they were denied enough education to allow them to become able to question the obvious lies that they were told, setting them up for a life where they can ignorantly reject things that are plainly obvious to anybody with an inquiring mind. To believe that there is value in the study of ancient scrolls or parchment, instead of the discovery of new knowledge and the ability to make rational leaps of understanding, by joining up the dots and applying logic... much better to live with faith in gods and magic, than to know your unhappy fate in the world.

And so, with the spread of education, perhaps we have seen the spread of misery, anxiety, stress and the need for some salvation of our souls that would have otherwise have been provided by something spiritual. Instead of turning to our priests, bishops, vicars and the like, we turn to our doctors to heal us. Our doctors dish out the goodies, in the form of antidepressants, mood stabilisers, anti-anxiety drugs, tranquillisers, uppers & downers and chill-you-outers.

Can you imagine what would happen to the world if we woke up and there was no tea, coffee, betel leaf, areca nut, khat, coca leaf, opium poppy, hemp, tobacco and every other source of a tiny naturally occurring amount of bitter plant alkaloids that humans love so much, because they tickle our brains, just a teeny little bit.

You would have thought that if smoking one cigarette is nice, then smoking 100 at once would be incredibly nice. You would have thought that if one cup of coffee is nice, then drinking 2 litres of pure espresso would be amazing. In actual fact, you will find that humans have somehow evolved a dislike of too much of a good thing. Everything that's nice, is only nice in moderation.

Life functions perfectly well like this, until the sum of all these things tips you over the edge. Living in the centre of a huge city, with the International Space Station and a zillion satellites orbiting overhead, jets roaring across the sky, helicopters swooping down on you, tower blocks hemming you in on all sides, cutting off your view of the horizon, mobbed by a sea of people, with choking traffic fumes and the deafening roar of internal combustion engines, as trucks, cars and motorbikes zoom along all around you. You're bombarded with light from a million incandescent bulbs, fluorescent tubes and LEDs, as well as the other electromagnetic radiation from televisions, mobile phones, power cables, WiFi routers, bluetooth devices, walkie-talkies, microwave ovens and power transformers.

An ever-increasing number of us cannot function in a godless man-made world without being drugged-up. Alcohol aside, antidepressants are the number one choice for the masses to become better adjusted to a hostile universe. There's nothing wrong with those people needing those medications. There's nothing immoral about taking those medications. There's no shame in being sensitive and susceptible to the madness that surrounds us.

Slowly, we build up cocktails of medications that salve a particular ache or pain in our souls. Each medication has its side effects, so we add other medications to compensate for the other ones, until we rattle like a tube of smarties.

I don't believe in conspiracy theories like 'chemtrails' and other madness like that, but I sure as shit know that modern living has elements that the human body and mind just can't adjust to: the sum-total of the unnatural is beginning to overwhelm us. Our very sleep cycles are being changed - for the worse - by our addiction to social media, smartphones and communications apps like email and text chat. We used to joke about crackberry when we got our BlackBerry mobile email devices, at the turn of the new millennium. It seemed like a Brave New World but perhaps all that glitters is not gold.

Shiny shiny new tech.

I used to get so excited about new tehnological toys, but now I'm excited - relieved - to tear off the foil wrapper that protects the little pills in my daily ration of soma. I feel immediate psychosomatic relief when I swallow the little capsules, lozenges and pills, that contain magic ingredients to salve my aching soul.

Where would we be without these breadcrumbs that lead us deep into a dark forest? A dark forest that we would never enter, if we weren't chasing these tiny rewards... these little crumbs... these pathetic minuscule tickles that we can feel in our brain. We surely would never work these jobs, without our morning coffee and our cups of tea, our gin & tonic and our glass of red wine. We would surely never want our genitals to be torn apart by an alien bursting out of our groin, except for the tiny hit of pleasure from a brief exchange of bodily fluids in a sticky tryst of sweat, bad breath and a tangle of limbs and hair.

I've seen the future and it comes in pill form. A pill to feel loved. A pill to have the most amazing orgasm of your life. A pill to feel all wrapped up safe in cotton wool, without a care in the world. A pill to forget about your hunger and your thirst. A pill to be awake and a pill to be asleep. A pill to help you think and another pill to help you not think.

A pill for every ill; and yet none that quite hit the spot.

Tags: #drugs