This is a story about keeping up appearances...

I have a tattoo that I can't cover up, which tells the world that I've had problems with suicide attempts, self-harm, depression, bipolar, alcoholism and substance abuse. I have a blog which puts me on page 2 of Google if you search for my name. I have a Twitter account that has the most followers out of anybody who shares my name. I'm hardly being shy and retiring about my dark past. I'm hardly keeping my skeletons in the cupboard.

One of my work colleagues has already found my blog - by Google'ing me - and has visited a few times. I can see that he uses the WiFi at work and I can see that he uses his Apple iPhone Plus. That's happened waaaay too soon.

An old friend who I know from the kitesurfing community recommended me for the job. He's friends with another colleague on Facebook. I don't use Facebook much, but when I do, it's usually because I'm having suicidal thoughts and it's a cry for help. If my friend commented on something I put on Facebook, my other work colleague might see it.

It's a small world, so that's why it's a good idea to be open and transparent. Nothing to hide, nothing to fear.

Of course, people who suffer from mental health problems - including addiction - are heavily stigmatised. If I didn't think I was able to do my job highly effectively, with an excellent level of professionalism and reliability, then I'd be slightly more reluctant to publish the inner-workings of my mind, and make my struggles a matter of public record.

I take my readers on a journey on me, and some of them will become sympathetic towards me and my story. Generally, if you read forwards and follow along with me, you'll gain a positive view, but if you read backwards then you'll dislike me and imagine that I enjoy the benefit of hindsight, which I don't.

It was particularly telling, the difference in reactions to my attempted suicide last September. My colleague who had followed my progress on my blog was sympathetic and caring. My colleague who read back through my blog, starting from the point where I believed I was going to die, was so unsympathetic that he sacked me and evicted me from my home, because I was on a life-support system and therefore unable to phone and say that I was going to be out of the office for a couple of days. He literally didn't care that I was in a coma with a tube down my throat and a machine breathing for me. That's the difference that it makes, reading my blog backwards versus reading it forwards - it can make a person not care that I'm dying, or it can elicit a sympathetic response to my plight.

For the avoidance of any doubt, I'm through the worst of my suicidal moments, now that the stress levels in my life are subsiding. Naturally, being homeless, close to bankruptcy, jobless, friendless, single, new to an area and generally having nothing and nobody is pretty damn awful for a person's mental health. In the space of 6 months I've made some friends, got a girlfriend, earned some money, bought a car, rented an apartment, got a local job and gotten myself a bit more settled, although I'm still a long way off having security and stability.

What might annoy my colleagues is thinking they've got a bargain - that I'm an expert in my field and I've got talent and experience - when in actual fact they've got a homeless bankrupt junkie alcoholic with mental health problems who never even knew how to switch a computer on until yesterday. Surely I could have been bought for minimum wage, because I'm desperate and vulnerable? This was certainly the case with the guy who didn't care that I was on life support - he felt ripped off, when he discovered the truth about me, even though I had nearly completed the first phase of the project I'd been working on, and the results had been fantastic.

I think really horrible people are few and far between. I think unethical exploitative bosses are few and far between. I really don't think it's going to be a problem that my real identity doesn't quite marry up with corporate expectations. I'm always well presented at work. Nobody would be any the wiser about my dark past, except for the aforementioned tattoo, of course.

I'm mentioning the tattoo and putting up a picture of myself without my infallible disguise quite deliberately, of course. Of course I know what I'm doing. I'm not exactly unhappy about anybody knowing about who I am, because I find it too exhausting to wear the corporate mask and pretend I'm perfect. It's not nice to have to live a lie and cover up any struggles I might have in my personal life.

It's been nearly 8 months since I had any problems with my mental health. I don't take any drugs or medications. I drink in moderation. I'm not suicidal. I'm not self-harming. I'm delivering high-quality work to the satisfaction of my bosses. My finances are improving. I've got my own place. I've got my little car. I've got my girlfriend. I've got my friends. Things aren't perfect, but they're improving and they'll continue to improve as long as I'm allowed to keep working and earning money.

It's a big gamble to keep this big digital presence alive. I obviously can't write about anything that would be unprofessional, breach my code-of-conduct, bring my profession into disrepute, breach confidentiality or any any way shape or form be considered unacceptable behaviour, but to delete my blog and my Twitter and Facebook account and expunge myself from the internet would be a considerable loss to me, and would be likely to negatively affect my ability to cope and function.

I hope that if my colleague(s) continue to read this, they can see it for what it is - my healthy coping mechanism, and something I need, because it brings me great comfort and a lot of care and support.

So far, I only know for definite that one work colleague is reading my blog. I hope to make friends at work. I need friends. I don't see it as a bad thing that somebody's reading.

I don't want the secret identity thing. I don't want the double-life thing. I've got nothing to hide; nothing to be ashamed of.

Tags: #writing #socialmedia

This is a story about crossing a line...

To say I'm not sorry, I'm unremorseful, I don't live with regrets and I've never made a mistake, would be completely untrue. My life is fairly simple - work, eat, sleep - so I have a lot of time to think about things. I'm always prepared to consider the possibility that I've overstepped the mark; that I've gone too far.

The level of isolation I live with is something that 99% of people would find intolerable. Humans are sociable creatures. I'm quite a sociable guy, but my life completely collapsed and I haven't rebuilt it yet. I started a new job a little over a month ago and I'm starting to build a good relationship with my colleagues, but it's early days and I have to tread carefully because I really need the job and I don't really want everyone to know that I've been really unwell. I only moved to the area a little over 6 months ago, and I've spent half that time working in London, so I've not had much opportunity to make new friends yet.

I wake up, I drive to work and I think about what I'm going to write. My job's pretty easy, so I spent lots of time at work thinking about what I'm going to write. I get home and I write. I then spend a lot of time thinking about what I've just written. I often think that what I've just written doesn't accurately reflect how I'm feeling because I feel differently after writing. On reflection, I often feel like I've gone too far - I've been too passive-aggressive and critical; I've been a little negative and cynical. However, if I let my frustrations build up I'd explode or be driven mad.

You probably don't realise just how much you use your support network every day, because you take those people for granted. If you're feeling upset about something, you can pick up the phone or talk to somebody face-to-face. I often don't have that. At work I put on my corporate mask and pretend like everything's perfect in my personal life. With people who I rely upon for my money and my accommodation, I have to present a fake front, because my life depends on it. I'm very rarely able to be myself, and when I am able to finally talk with people who I can be honest and open with, they tend to be my social media contacts, because of my isolated life.

I have a girlfriend and she's great, but I can't have a dependency on one single person - that's too much pressure. My girlfriend suggests seeing a therapist, but that's expensive and you can only talk to them for an hour a week... provided you even like and respect them, of course. Finding a good therapist is a hard enough challenge in and of itself.

If you imagine the amount of traumatic experiences I've had in the past few years - a horrendous leg injury, suicide attempt, kidney failure, police, sleeping rough, crisis house, hostel, police, lost job, evicted, hostel, police, psych ward, DVT, kidney failure, dialysis, homeless and virtually bankrupt, suicide attempt, police, psych ward - then I hope you realise that an hour of week of speaking to a therapist isn't really going to cut the mustard... hence the blog.

I arrive at the point I'm at today, heavily traumatised.

You can't see the trauma, but I know it's there because I keep getting invasive thoughts that stab me like a knife in the guts.

The shit I've been through doesn't give me an excuse to be shitty to people and not be sorry when I upset people. The shit I've been through doesn't give me an excuse to say and do whatever the fuck I want. But, I've only got a limited amount of patience for anybody who makes my life any harder than it needs to be. I've only got a limited amount of patience for anybody who thinks they've got quick fixes and easy solutions. I can only humour people for so long.

Dealing with this post-traumatic stress is taking a long time. There's a lot of shit to work through. There's a lot of stuff I'm getting over. I only just managed to get myself into secure housing and start a job that I can tolerate. My finances are still shitty and I'm only just getting to the point where I'm a couple of weeks away from a cash injection I desperately need. There's been a mountain of practical stuff to sort out, on top of the psychological damage; the trauma.

Frankly, I'm surprised that I'm not more vindictive and nasty, because I've been through a right load of shit and I'm still deeply traumatised. It's true that people have been hurt who don't deserve it, but it's not true that I'm not sorry... in 99% of the cases, I'm sorry when somebody got hurt by me lashing out.

I don't really have anybody who regularly provides some kind of checks & balance on my behaviour. Most of us talk to our friends and family and then our initial anger and indignation dissipates... we feel like we're being unreasonable, when we voice our frustrations to our trusted confidantes. My blog is my trusted confidante, because my life collapsed and I'm dealing with a clusterfuck of post-traumatic stress.

Yes, my blog is public, but I also avoid using names or other things that might identify people. Yes, my blog is public, but how else am I supposed to get the support that I need, when I'm in such a dangerously low and precarious situation? Yes you might feel personally attacked, but are you absolutely certain that it's you I'm talking about? If you think it's you, is that because you've got a guilty conscience?

So, sorry I'm not sorry. But I also am sorry too, in those cases where I overstepped the mark; where I was unnecessarily unkind.

Tags: #writing #ptsd

This is a story about borderline personality disorder (BPD)...

If you've ever wondered about being detained against your will in a mental hospital - on a locked psych ward - then this is how it all begins... a 'section'. Being 'sectioned' means you're being legally detained under a section of the Mental Health Act (1983). The police can section you for 24 hours under section 136 of the Mental Health Act. After an initial assessment you might be sectioned for 28 days, under section 2. If you're assessed again you might be sectioned for 6 months, which is section 3. As you can see above I was sectioned under section 2.

I've been diagnosed and treated by 13 different psychiatrists. I've spent 10 weeks under lock & key on psych wards and a total of 18 weeks as an inpatient, receiving treatment for my mental health problems.

All the psychiatrists agree: I have bipolar disorder.

One unqualified doctor has been so bold as to ignore the fact that they completely failed their psychiatric long case, and ignore the fact they're utterly incompetent when it comes to making a sound mental health diagnosis. This unqualified doctor apparently read a book about borderline personality disorder and then tried to diagnose me, despite their obvious shortcomings and prior failures in the area of mental health. That pissed me off. That idiot doctor ignored all the years of evidence and the unanimous opinion of 13 specialist highly experienced and fully qualified psychiatric doctors, because their ego is over-inflated, and frankly, they're a bit of an idiot arsehole.

So. I have bipolar disorder. That's beyond question - it's been confirmed and reconfirmed. I've had a second opinion. I've had a third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth opinion.

I did not ask for a fourteenth opinion.

In fact, I made it expressly clear that I DID NOT WANT another opinion... especially one from an unqualified doctor who skim-read the first few pages of a book. Especially an opinion from somebody who I think lacks empathy and compassion for vulnerable people. People with mental health problems aren't safe around that unqualified doctor, who doesn't seem to have taken on board the fact that they failed their psychiatric long-case and are therefore unqualified to be practicing psychiatric medicine.

Furthermore, when we are thinking about a borderline personality disorder diagnosis we have to consider co-morbidity.

If a person is under a great deal of stress due to housing, job, finances, relationship and other external influences, it is not possible to diagnose borderline personality disorder, because of the co-morbid adjustment disorder. Adjustment disorder is just a fancy way of saying "your life is hell right now". Naturally, it's not possible to unpick mental health problems from the stress and anxiety that anybody would be feeling when their life's in tatters.

Just as a little reminder... I'd been through a breakup with my girlfriend, had to leave my apartment in London, move to Manchester, start a new job, I broke up with another girlfriend, tried to kill myself, lost my job, lost my apartment in Manchester, moved to Wales to live with strangers, ran out of money, got another job, went to Warsaw, went back to London and ran out of money again. That is more than enough stress to give anybody adjustment disorder, making any new diagnosis impossible. There is too much co-morbidity.

Also, when alcohol and drug abuse are co-morbid, diagnosis is impossible. This does present a bit of a paradox, because alcohol and drug abuse are quite often present in cases of borderline personality disorder, but they are also very often present in bipolar disorder too. There's a specific diagnosis for that co-morbidity: dual-diagnosis.

I know a lot about dual diagnosis because I spent 4 weeks in hospital seeing the country's leading specialist almost every day, and I continued to speak to that specialist regularly for a long time after I was discharged from hospital. While substance abuse was a problem in my life, my diagnosis was quite clear: dual-diagnosis (bipolar disorder & substance abuse disorder).

Finally, we must consider loss of status.

There are excellent data showing that loss of social status causes emotional instability. If you think about it, it's pretty obvious. Imagine that you lost your wife, your kids, your job, your house, your car, all your money, the respect of your friends & family... do you think your self-esteem would be intact? Do you think you'd be fine with that and you'd be carrying on with your life like normal? Of course you'd be emotionally unstable - it's a normal human reaction to that devastating loss of social status. You can't just say "it's just stuff" because it's not - it's intrinsic to your identity and your sense of wellbeing.

It's not possible to diagnose borderline personality disorder - also known as emotionally unstable personality disorder (EUPD) - when there are concrete and undeniable external factors that would contribute to a person's loss of self-esteem, social status and consequently make them emotionally unstable. It's simply not an appropriate diagnosis for somebody whose whole life has collapsed and is in ruins.

The arrogance of Dr Death to attempt to give an unwanted and unqualified fourteenth opinion, ignoring the unanimous verdict of thirteen highly qualified and experienced specialist doctors, is highly offensive and antagonising. This opinion was aggressively thrust upon me when I made my wishes crystal clear: "do not diagnose me, Dr Death, because your opinion is worthless unqualified irritating tosh that will only upset and anger me". The fact that Dr Death proceeded to do what the f**k they wanted anyway only serves to further prove how arrogant and lacking in any compassion they are... this is a person who's not even my doctor.

So, please don't play pretend-psychiatrist and give me your amateur diagnosis... I've spent 10 years in and out of the mental health system, and I've done extensive research of my own. Shove your crackpot theories about me up your ass.

I dearly wanted to get to the point where I've been symptom-free and medication-free for long enough to declare I'm 'cured' but for now I reluctantly accept the opinion of 13 very experienced and qualified specialist psychiatrists, who are experts in their field and highly respected. I accept their opinion - that I have bipolar disorder - and I reject f**king idiots who skim-read a few pages of a book and hardly know me. F**k off Dr Death.

I was disappointed to learn that I probably have type 1 bipolar disorder, not the milder type 2 that I thought I had, but I've had 6 months without medication and without an episode, so I seem to be managing the illness very well, especially considering the fact that I've moved 4 times, been in hospital twice, attempted suicide once, had 3 jobs, been through 3 countries, bought a car, narrowly escaped bankruptcy three times and finally managed to rent a new apartment and have a healthy happy relationship with a lovely girl. I mean... sheesh... that level of stress would send anybody insane, wouldn't it?

So...

I have bipolar disorder. That's it.

Tags: #bipolar

This is a story about nodding off...

I was expecting my alcohol-free week to pay dividends, but it's not [yet]. I've had three awful nights of sleep and I've been struggling to keep my eyes open at work during the afternoons. My body clock is all screwed up - I'm struggling to get out of bed in the mornings and I'm struggling to get to sleep at night. The only variable is the alcohol, so I know that my sobriety is to blame.

I'm strict with my bedtime and mealtimes. I dim the lights and avoid using my laptop and smartphone in the evenings. I'm doing all the right things but I'm tired and I'm getting more tired by the day, because I'm not sleeping very well at night.

I've noticed an improvement in terms of weight gain already - my trousers had been feeling a little tight. Alcohol piles on the pounds because it's so calorific. I think it's worth having a break from booze for the benefit of my liver and waistline.

I think I'm having bouts of depression and anxiety as a result of abruptly cutting my alcohol consumption to zero. I keep thinking that I'm bored at work and that I should walk out and go home, because I can't stand sitting around twiddling my thumbs. I keep feeling depressed about the fact that I'm months away from financial security. I feel like I can't yet afford to take a holiday - I need to earn every penny I can to dig myself out of the hole and get myself into a strong situation.

My situation is pretty damn good really. I'm managing to get up and get to work nice and early. I'm making it through the working week without too much struggle. My finances are improving. The weather is improving. I have a lovely home. I'm sure I'll feel a lot better after a restful laid-back weekend watching TV while I lie on the sofa. It'll be great to have some weeks without any stress or disruption, to really get into a good routine.

I took a big gamble in making a big change, by stopping drinking so abruptly. I was sensible when I made all the other big changes, like tapering slowly off various medications, but it was really hard. By stopping drinking suddenly I've risked nasty side effects, which I'm very much experiencing right now. I'm sure my body and brain will be very grateful for having a break from booze, but right now I'm exhausted... I'm not feeling the benefit yet.

I guess things always get worse before they get better.

Tags: #alcohol

This is a story about seeing things through a blue filter...

Three years ago I rented a lovely apartment by the River Thames. It was very stressful going through the process of getting off the streets, out of the hostel and into a place of my own, but I did it. Soon after moving in, I realised that the whole ordeal had taken me to the brink of a nervous breakdown. I had myself admitted to hospital - a psych ward - because I was afraid that I was going to commit suicide. The London apartment completely over-stretched me financially, necessitating a big money contract to pay the rent, although as a proportion of my income it was very affordable.

I'm attempting to rent somewhere new. The cost is only a fraction of what my rent was in London, but I'm earning the same amount of money as I was in London. The cost of living is so much less in Wales. I've managed to earn enough money to pay lots of rent up-front if I really needed to, so I'm in a much stronger position than I was in London. It's still stressful though.

What am I going to do if everything goes to plan? I'll have nothing to complain about.

Perhaps I seem like a broken record, complaining about my lot in life when I'm very lucky, fortunate and blessed. It must seem to you like I lead a charmed existence. It must seem to you like everything goes my way and I get everything I want. It must seem to you like I worry and complain about nothing.

I complained about my cashflow; my finances. I complained about living out of a suitcase. I complained about being bored, isolated and lonely; not working with a team of people. I complained about having to go through a security clearance vetting process. Now I'm complaining about the tenancy application process. It seems like I just love complaining.

I don't love complaining. I need the things that you take for granted: friends, a partner, money, a job, a car, a home. I complain when I'm missing something essential from my life. I complain when something's not right and it's unbearable; intolerable. It's true that I had a job and I complained about it... that's because I didn't have any work to do or anybody to talk to, which was horrible. I don't complain without good reason.

For three consecutive years it appears like I managed to get everything I ever wanted and needed, but then I screwed it all up and threw it all away. Only a year ago I apparently had it all, only to then self-sabotage. Maybe I don't really want to sort my life out?

The amount of time and effort involved in repairing my life is quite staggering. It's not easy to come back from the brink of irreparable disaster. It's not easy to come back from the dead. The kind of self-resurrection process that I've made appear quite easy and routine is not easy at all. The kinds of 'everyday' stress and anxiety that you think that you face in life - such as starting a new job or moving house - are actually incredibly rare occurrences that cause you a great deal of distress. Imagine having all the most stressful experiences in your life condensed into a time period of approximately a month - that would surely be too much stress to handle, wouldn't it?

Yes I'm a broken record and I'll probably keep repeating myself until I have a signed tenancy agreement and a bunch of apartment keys in my hand, or my [current] worst fear is realised and I'm marginalised; destined to remain homeless.

Yes, other people experience stressful events in their lives too. Good for them. I'm not looking for reasons to be negative. I don't think that I'm not going through the same kind of job-hunting and apartment-renting processes that other people have experienced in their lives. It's just that things are a little more life-or-death for me because I've been through hell to get where I've got and I'm exhausted; I'm at the limit of the shit that I can take.

Sorry for repeating myself.

Tags: #apartment

This is a story about working...

I want to be busy. I want to have the distraction of being engrossed in a project. I want to feel like I have a purpose and I'm working towards a goal. I want to feel like hard work will get me to the end result quicker. I want to feel like there's a relationship between the effort I put in during my waking hours and the net result. The rewards should feel commensurate with the energy expended.

I'm writing less and that's because I'm making some progress. In the absence of another outlet for my creativity, all my pent-up energy gets poured into writing. In the absence of another more productive distraction, I write a lot.

I've still got a lot to say but I don't feel the pressing need to write about anything at the moment. I have a huge list of blog post titles that I could use to get me started, but I'm actually feeling fairly content to have a period of lower output. I expect that if something upsets me I'll be pouring my heart and soul out, but I'm feeling alright at the moment.

Work is going alright. I'm in the process of renting an apartment. My cashflow is OK at the moment. Things are going OK with my girlfriend. I'm seeing friends and doing activities. My life's generally a lot healthier and happier than it was a few weeks ago.

Writing doesn't feel like it's very energy-consuming, but it's exhausting living with a lot of anxiety and in fairly dreadful and toxic circumstances. It's awful living without much hope of life getting better. I feel like things are improving and I've got some hope for the future, so I don't need to write so much. Things are not so desperate.

I need to learn how to take it easy and plod along at a steady pace. I need to stop working as hard as I possibly can and travelling as fast as I can. I've been rushing everything because I've been under so much pressure. I've been so close to disaster for so long that when there's a window of opportunity to fix my life I have to be quick. Things are going alright, so I need to back off the gas pedal and engage the cruise control for a while.

My life has become quite sensible all of a sudden. I go to bed early. I get up early. I'm in the office on time and I work less than 8 hours a day. I take my time and I don't rush my work. I'm working at a sustainable pace, rather than burning myself out.

It's been incredibly draining to get to this point, but hopefully I can limp along and I'll slowly recover from the ordeal that led me up to this point. To all intents and purposes my life appears to be getting fixed up very rapidly, so you might find it offensive that I talk about the struggles I've been through, but it's true - it wasn't very long ago that I was absolutely screwed and had no hope of fixing my life.

It's going to take months and months before I'm well and truly in a good position with an apartment of my own and a pile of money in the bank. It's going to take a long while before I prove that my stability hasn't been just a fluke. I can't really believe that I've managed the best part of 4 months at work without a major incident, despite it being the crappiest time of year and there being a heap of stress in my life. I need to keep going and get into a really good routine. I need to get back to position of financial and housing security and regular social contact, and maintain that for a good long while. I'm slightly nervous that I might be experiencing the calm before the storm, but I've managed 6 months without a destructive mood episode or any self-sabotaging behaviour, so it's a good omen.

The next challenge is to get the keys to the apartment I'm renting and move in without having some kind of breakdown. When I rented the place in London on the river it nearly killed me. I don't want to repeat past mistakes, but everybody needs somewhere to call home. No more sponging parasites trying to ride my coat tails and ripping me off for thousands of pounds of unpaid rent and bills this time. No more Klingons.

I'm optimistic. I'm enjoying my new job. My finances are in reasonable shape, although cashflow's going to be a little tight what with buying a car and renting an apartment in the space of a few weeks, plus buying some clothes I need for work and other unavoidable expenses. You have to speculate to accumulate.

I thought I was going to write just a few hundred words but I seem to have written much more than I was expecting to. Oh well. Better out than in.

It's Friday and I feel like I've worked hard to get to this point and I'm seeing some rewards. I know that I don't really 'earn' my money per se, because my job is very easy and I'm overpaid, but there are lots of ways that I DO work really hard, so I'm going to go ahead and pat myself on the back for what I've achieved. I know there's lots more hard work ahead, but I'm going to celebrate a little bit - another working week completed and more money on the way, hopefully. I'm digging my way out of the hole little by little.

It's frustrating that hard work often doesn't pay off, but I feel like I've always been rewarded for my efforts.

Tags: #career #homeless

This is a story about the gravy train...

If you think that I'm in a cyclical pattern that I need to break out of, you might consider that we are all in a cyclical pattern - Monday to Friday, 9 to 5, weekdays and weekends, morning and evening, summer and winter. Round and round we go.

It occurred to me that I'm repeating so many things I've done in the past - buying a car, starting a new job, renting an apartment, getting through the working week. The paycheques will start to get queued up and one month will look very much like any other. I'll be well and truly back into the never-ending cycle, but the 'good' one.

Renting an apartment is going to be stressful, and the last time I did it I was left exhausted and financially exposed, which tipped me over the edge - I presented myself at my doctor's surgery and said that I was afraid that I couldn't keep myself safe. I was hospitalised after 13 hours of waiting. Could I be risking a repeat of that?

How many times have I managed to start a new job and get myself into a place of my own without having some kind of breakdown? 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017... every year I managed to keep a roof over my head and enough money to pay the bills, although I got into debt when I got sick. I don't think it's the wrong thing to do, to get a job and rent an apartment. One of these days things are going to go smoothly for me. One of these days I'm going to have a run of good luck.

Yes, there's a lot of repetition in my life. There's repetition in your life too - you eat three meals a day, sleep in the same bed every night, drive the same car, go to the same job, sleep with the same partner. It's not the repetition that makes my life have repeated crises. In fact it's the disintegration of good things - social groups, stable accommodation, secure employment, healthy finances - that prompts and gets intermingled with the problems... cause and effect are hard to unpick, but you need a whole host of things if you want to have a sustainable and liveable life. You should try living in a hostel, losing your job, losing your friends, running out of money... those things are horribly stressful and destructive to anybody's mental health. When you get a whole clusterfuck of issues all at once, that's more than anybody could ever cope with.

I tried to focus on money alone, knowing that other things would slot into place more easily with money behind me. It was three months of hell, but I built up enough of a financial cushion to make some big changes, like getting a girlfriend, buying a car and getting a local job. Next is getting a place of my own and building up some more cash reserves. Life is more tolerable, now that I'm no longer having to work in London, live in AirBnBs and be isolated and alone. Life is more tolerable now that I work with a nice team of people who I see every day.

My week was very relaxed, except for the early morning starts. The early mornings have their perks - it means I can leave early and beat the evening rush hour. I was home by about 4:30pm this afternoon, which is phenomenally good. I'm very lucky.

A couple of weeks ago I dreaded going to work, I dreaded going to London and I had hit the wall - I couldn't go on anymore. I'd reached the limit of what I could endure anymore. Now, I've actually finished the working week feeling really good about how things have gone. It was a rough start to the week, but things have steadily improved. I can't quite believe how quickly and easily the week has gone. I've managed to work 40 hours instead of the dismal 16 that I was managing in the previous job, and the time has flown by. It was such a struggle in the previous job and the time really dragged, but this week's been so great in comparison to my working weeks in London.

Things are so damn relaxed in the new job. Yes, people get to work early but they leave really early too. My colleague left the office at 2pm. I left the office at 4pm. I've really not been working very hard at all, but yet I've achieved plenty - I'm exceeding expectations. I'm quite comfortably able to meet the demands of my job without much effort, which is actually a good thing. I could do with coasting for a bit. I could do with some easy laid-back living for a while.

Round and round I go, stuck in my cyclical pattern, but hopefully I'm getting into good habits now. I'm going to bed early so I can get up early to get to work. I'm cutting down my drinking and I've stopped taking sleeping pills. I'm socialising. I'm shopping and going to the cinema and having meals out. My life is very rapidly becoming quite pleasant. Monday morning was shockingly awful, but Friday afternoon has been every bit as good as it should be - a good job well done and a load of money earned... another step closer to getting back on my feet.

As always, I'm a little paranoid that something's going to go wrong. I don't want to be completely crushed if something doesn't work out. I don't want to be psychologically destroyed if things don't go as planned. I'm trying to be cautiously optimistic, and not allow myself to get carried away. "Don't spend it until you've earned it" is a mantra I've always subscribed to, but you don't get to be financially prudent when your life and your health disintegrates. I've always kept rainy day money aside and not over-stretched myself. I had a life that could withstand a lot of shocks, but so much stuff got broken that I've ended up in pretty deep shit, but I'm on the mend. I'm not going to relax until I have a substantial financial cushion again, plus the friends, girlfriend, job, apartment etc. etc.

So, it's Friday evening and my work is done for the week. I'm not dreading Monday morning, which is great. Maybe I'll get that sinking feeling on Sunday. We shall see.

Tags: #career

This is a story about being bloody minded...

I've been subjected to the most bizarre accusation: That I can "get better" anytime I want; that I enjoy being depressed or somehow need to have a mental illness because it's part of my identity; that I want to be unwell. Part of the accusation hinges on my Twitter following - I'm accused of being two-faced: Writing blog posts and tweets which don't somehow manage to convey that sometimes I'm not suicidal.

I'm a bit confused to be honest. I don't think I could be any more authentic. I don't think it would be possible for me to be any more candid and open. My blog isn't supposed to be a diary, accurately recording the day's events. My blog is therapy for me - I write about the things that are upsetting me the most; the things that are causing the most pain and anguish.

Perhaps I'm being given credit where no credit is due. Perhaps I'm perceived as intelligent enough to be able to rationalise away my problems and force my moods to bend to my will. Perhaps the decisions I've taken out of desperation have been mistaken for choices. Perhaps my determination to stick with a plan which will boost my finances and continue to give me a lucrative career, is seen as deliberate self-sabotage: I'm purposefully making myself sick, in the eyes of my accuser.

I can see the positives and the negatives of different "choices" without assistance from somebody else to help me 'see'. I'm not so cognitively impaired that I need somebody to point out the bleedin' obvious to me. For everything that I moan about because it's making me ill, there are many benefits which make my choices worthwhile. My work, travel and living arrangements are not conducive to good mental health, but neither is poverty and hinderances that would make me less employable. The playing field is not level. I do not get to make unbiased choices - I've got to do what I've got to do, even if it's unpleasant.

I'm accused of being the problem. It's not the job, it's me. It's not the commute, it's me. It's not the lonely AirBnBs, it's me. Apparently, everything's all my own fault and I can choose to be healthy and happy any time I want, according to my accuser. Personally, I think that life's a lot easier when you've got money behind you and you've got a stable home life. Personally, I think that we are healthier and happier when we get the pieces of the puzzle in place: friends, family, a home, an income, financial security and something we're passionate about. Let's leave aside the blame game of how I ended up in the present situation. We can even assume that everything's all my fault if you want to, but that doesn't change the fact of the matter: I am where I am and I need to get back on my feet. Blame doesn't change my needs. Blame doesn't change my situation or my mood. To accuse me of fucking up my life AND deliberately keeping it fucked up is dumb. One of the big reasons why I'm suicidal is because I've tried so hard to fix the things that are broken, but it's been a miserable exhausting experience and my life's still pretty messed up. I really am trying very hard to get things sorted out. It's a lot easier said than done, I'm afraid. Sorry about that.

I think there's a lot of ego involved. People want to be helpful, but then they start thinking like they've understood me and I can be 'cured' with simple solutions. When the simple solutions to an oversimplification of my problems don't work, then the 'helpful' people get annoyed with me... like I'm deliberately messing up their useless suggestions. I seem to have really frustrated my accuser, that I'm so determined to be a real living person, with a real life, instead of some simple little thing that can easily be fixed. "Oh I'm so silly! How brilliant of you to point out the completely obvious solution to an easy-to-solve problem that I don't have! Thank you!" I'm expected to say all the time, on top of dealing with real life.

There aren't any quick fixes. Things take time and effort to get better, and it's exhausting. Things have to be done in the right sequence. Sometimes, it costs a lot of money to make changes. Sometimes we have to wait for the things we want and need, because we can't get them immediately. I can't - for example - switch jobs until I have a financial cushion to give me some runway to make the change. Every change I make brings with it a whole new set of problems, so I need to deal with things in a step-by-step way. There's a plan, even if somebody thinks that I can just teleport straight to the end goal. Sadly, life doesn't work like that - we have to suffer in the short and medium term, to achieve our long term objectives. You have to pay to play.

I'm not short of ideas for what to do when I have surplus time and money. I'm not short of ideas of what I'd do if I could do anything, because money's no object, but it's bullshit to suggest I'm able to just abandon my current source of income and go off and do something else. I can't be a student again. I can't be a poet or a dog walker or a sculptor or a circus clown. Life doesn't work like that. Even if I took a shitty McJob, I would still need to afford to travel to work every day for a month or so until I get paid. How do you think capitalist society even works? I'm making smart economic choices which are painful at the moment, but will give me the financial means to pursue something more rewarding and better for my health. I'm giving myself the working capital to be able to pick and choose my next options.

I might have spent some of today playing like a big kid and enjoying myself, but that doesn't mean that my mood can't be plunged dangerously low when reality bites: Monday morning will come around, along with the realisation that almost nothing in my life is quite where I want and need it to be. There's so much unpleasant hard work ahead, and so little reward in the short term, that it's quite understandable that I'd get worn down and decide to reject life altogether. What looks like a few short months of hard work to you, is somewhat of an insurmountable obstacle for me, because of the journey I've been on. I've fought my way back from nothing, and I'm still fighting, but yet it feels like I'm getting nowhere. Where's the reward for my effort? Why is life still so miserable, most of the time?

In the company of my friends, or going on a date with a girl - for example - life can briefly seem wonderful, but the bulk of my existence feels like packing and unpacking bags, moving from place to place, sitting at a desk and hating every second... unsettled and unpleasant. The dread of the rat race - the treadmill - is enough to cast a dark shadow over other times. When I should be enjoying the last few hours of my weekend, I'm already depressed about another week shackled to the job I do out of economic necessity. I make a fuss, but it's not over nothing and it's not me. I'd pick up dog shit if it paid as well as my current job... at least it would feel like I was making a real tangible difference to my local community, if I was doing something like that.

There are a whole raft of issues at play, including my desire to be free from medications. It might seem obvious that my depression could be 'cured' with pills, but it wouldn't be a cure - my depression is a reaction to my toxic circumstances. I don't want to become medication dependent, when I've worked so hard to wean myself off so many different pills. I'm quite close to being 100% substance free.

I want to plan a holiday. I want to buy a car. I want to dream, but dreams require money. The dreaming part is the easy bit. Life's a lot more complicated than it seems for a casual observer. It's easy to come up with a million "you should do..." ideas, but they're infeasible if you don't have the time, money, company, energy, motivation and a million other things that are the product of getting some building blocks in place: a home, a girlfriend, some friends, a tolerable job, some money in the bank, disposable income etc. etc.

There are myriad broken things in my life, and no quick fixes. If I haven't fixed something yet, it's not because I want it to be broken. I'm not choosing to be depressed. I don't want to be sick. I'm perfectly capable of imagining a life that would be healthier and happier, but it takes time, money and energy to make it happen.

Moaning on my blog is what I do for therapy. Moaning on my blog is what I do, because it's cheap and it helps me to limp along while I'm getting the cash together to be able to do whatever I want to do next. Moaning on my blog is not my identity - it's my outlet because there isn't any other healthy way to cope. I'm trapped by circumstances and there's no escape, except through the path I've "chosen". I do not choose to be depressed, miserable and suicidal.

I don't know why I'm accused of being the architect of my own depression, when I'm working so hard to fix my life. The accusations don't even make any sense - they just seem to be an egotistical version of "have you tried being more simple so that I can solve the problems that you don't have?" and "have you tried being me instead of you, because I think I'm great?".

I've exhaustively documented the challenges that I'm facing. It upsets me that somebody would want to oversimplify things, just because of their own ego and a desire that I should blame myself and generally feel like I'm lazy and stupid, despite the fact that I HAVE TO LIVE 24 HOURS A DAY WITH SUICIDAL DEPRESSION and I'm the one who does all the actual hard work fixing my life. Pointing out the blatantly obvious is not a hard thing to do. Leaping to incorrect conclusions is not a hard thing to do.

There is a prerequisite condition for having an opinion on "what's wrong with me" which is to have read what I've written. If you want to know what's wrong with me, I've exhaustively documented everything I'm going through right here. If you want to tell me what I should and shouldn't do with my life, it needs to take into account the reality of my day-to-day existence, which I have accurately explained the most challenging parts of on this blog. If you want to give me "you should..." type instructions, then they need to be grounded in reality or else I'm just going to ignore them. Please don't get upset when I ignore your unhelpful suggestions. Please don't accuse me of wanting to be miserable and depressed.

I've written more than I intended to. I'm wondering why I'm writing. What's the point? But, that's what this blog is. It's not an attempt to manipulate sympathy out of my audience. This is a living document that records my distress in unflinching detail. This is where I pour out all the stuff that's really upsetting me. Here's where I work things out that are going round and round in my head. This is therapy for me.

One other accusation that I've faced is that my blog is making me sick - my blog is causing me to get stuck, ruminating on things that I'd otherwise let go. I think that's bullshit. My blog is where I've been able to finally let go of things that have been upsetting me. It's taken a long time, and I've repeated myself A LOT but that doesn't mean it's not working. If you take a lazy glance, you might think that I always write about the same stuff and that I'm therefore stuck in a rut, but if you look at the full story, you must surely see that I've been through some pretty traumatic stuff and this blog has helped me to cope. Writing is my healthy coping mechanism. People don't often pull through the things I've been through, and go back to being healthy happy productive members of society. I give credit to this blog for allowing me to deal with things that would otherwise have caused me to lose my mind.

I could probably edit this down, or just delete it and rewrite it, but I'm going to publish it because I want the public scrutiny. I want to document what I'm going through. I want to capture a piece of my consciousness, without censorship.

Yes, I'm lashing out, but I don't deserve to be accused of not helping myself, when I'm working so hard.

Tags: #writing #suicide #depression #mentalhealth #bipolar #friends #family

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tags: #career #depression #bipolar

This is a story about performance enhancing drugs...

As is often the case for people in the New Year, I decided to try to cut down on unhealthy habits. I decided to drink less, stop taking sleeping pills and stop taking a medication which is sometimes prescribed for anxiety. The net result has been an enormous rebound in my insomnia and anxiety levels. I was not at all functional this morning. I didn't go to work.

If you think that depression, anxiety and other mental health problems are due to a moral failing, you're an imbecile. "We'd all like to take the day off. People in Africa don't lie in bed because they're depressed" etc. etc. If you think like that then I'd like to curse you with a panic attack. Anxiety is a terrible thing - it's not just a feeling that can be wished away or accepted. The whole point about anxiety is that it's invasive - if it could be ignored, it wouldn't be anxiety.

Having spent most of 2017 physically dependent on benzodiazepines, it seems inevitable that I would have lost my ability to cope with low to moderate anxiety without relying on pills. Also, there's a lengthy period where the withdrawal from substance dependency creates a gnawing miserable round-the-clock inescapable anxiety, that makes every passing second feel like a year. To quit benzodiazepines is the hardest thing you'll ever do.

I was lucky enough to be able to concentrate on getting through the nasty withdrawal process. I was in a lovely environment to go through the worst of the horrible withdrawal syndrome. Because I didn't have so much pressure and stress, I was able to quit diazepam, alprazolam and pregabalin. I reduced my zopiclone by half. To quit those 4 medications in the space of four months is unprecedented. Well done me.

I had to go back to work. I was running out of money. The fact that I went back to work doesn't show that I was well; that I was recovered. The fact that I went back to work shows just how desperate my financial situation is. Necessity, not good mental health.

My mood improved when I got back into work. My destiny seemed to be in my own hands - all I had to do was work and money would come flooding back into my depleted bank account. However, the stress and pressure created intolerable anxiety. It was inevitable that I would drink more alcohol, as an unhealthy coping mechanism.

For a while, I've been less suicidal. I've even entertained some thoughts about what I might do when my finances are looking healthier. Surely to be thinking about the future shows a remarkable improvement from where I was, when I was having endless suicidal thoughts.

In fact, without the crutches of medication I'm still a sick man. I couldn't function today. I couldn't face the day. You might make light of how bad things were, but it was enough to make me immediately want to end things - to kill myself. In the blink of an eye, the tiny amount of hope, optimism and opportunity could be snuffed out. Without something to help me deal with unbearable stress and anxiety, I was very sick; incapacitated.

So, I feel forced back onto the pills. I feel like I have to choose: my money or my life. I'm being ransomed. What choice do I have?

You might struggle to relate if you've never suffered from anxiety that's so bad that it's paralysing. It's worth remembering that I've climbed cliff faces, mountains and jumped out of planes. I know anxiety very well and how to cope with it. I'm quite familiar with techniques for managing my own anxiety levels. I've done things that you'd probably never dream of doing because you'd be too afraid. I'm a fucking expert on anxiety.

Perhaps you could replace "people in Africa don't complain" with "it must be bad if Nick says it is" because you know I jumped out of perfectly good aeroplanes. I don't mean tandem either, where somebody else jumps and I'm just a passenger attached to them. When I jumped out of those planes, it was all me... I had to decide whether to jump out or not. I made those leaps of faith. I know what anxiety is. I'm qualified. I'm qualified to judge, and I'm qualified to say what's a tolerable level of anxiety, and what isn't.

I'd rather not be on any pills, but I have to choose: pills or my job.

The sleeping tablets probably aren't too bad, but the anxiety-reducing painkillers are preventing the nerves in my left ankle from healing properly. There are very real negative consequences for continuing to take a medication that I'd be much better without... if only I didn't have to work while I'm recovering.

Recovery is not a quick process. When you're talking about a clusterfuck of substances, then it can't be rushed. How do you suppose you'd cope with stresses that are barely tolerable at the best of times, plus a whole load more unpleasant feelings that very few people can ever handle? Talk to anybody who's taken a psychoactive medication for any length of time and they'll tell you: those things are an utter shit to get off, and most people never manage. Medication changes are one thing that most patients won't tolerate. Most patients get anxious even thinking about medication changes, let alone stopping their medications altogether.

From January 2017 until now, I've stopped tramadol, codeine, dihydrocodeine, pregabalin, zopiclone, zolpidem, alprazolam and diazepam - all at the max dose. Tell that list to any doctor and there'll be shocked disbelief. Patients just don't quit all those addictive psychoactive medications so quickly. There are consequences to quitting every single one of them. Quit tramadol and you'll have sweating, nausea, diarrhoea, aches and pains, and cravings for tramadol. Quit zopiclone and you'll have insomnia, restlessness and anxiety. Quit all of them and you'll be completely dysfunctional; your life will be unliveable; unbearable.

Thus, I'm forced to keep going with some of the medications, just to be functional. I can't lose my job. I can't lose that money. I'm financially fucked.

It's a catch 22 situation.

Tags: #medication