This is a story about the most depressing day of the year...

I had a game plan for this week. I thought everything was going to be OK. I woke up and I felt awful. Then, I started feeling progressively more awful.

Past performance is not a guide to future performance. Just because I had an OK day on Friday, doesn't mean that I'm going to have an OK week this week. Just because I can appear to be functional at times, doesn't mean that I'm cured of depression and other debilitating mental illness. Just because I did my job doesn't mean I'm going to be able to crank out day after day of great performance at work. Most of the time my life sucks.

Of course, a lot of people's lives suck. A lot of us are stressed and exhausted and overwhelmed. A lot of us have almost intolerable levels of anxiety and other mental ailments that make our heads feel like they're going to implode. A lot of us say to ourselves "I can't do it; I can't go on; I can't cope"... but we do.

Just because we're appearing to cope doesn't mean that we really are coping. Some of us are building up to a breakdown of some sort. Some of us are pushing ourselves to the limit and beyond in an unsustainable way that's going to end in disaster.

I do a lot of whinging, don't I?

Of course I don't think I'm unique. Of course I don't think that my problems are worse than anybody else's. Of course I don't think that issues are insurmountable. Of course other people have survived worse. Of course I'm aware that my perceptions are warped by depression and anxiety, such that everything seems to be broken and disastrous and intolerably unbearably awful. But none of that matters - the fact is that one day you wake up and you just can't go on. One day, no amount of bullying and coercion will get you out of bed.

I used to stroke my cat and talk to him. I used to potter round my garden and talk to my plants. I used to talk to my significant other. Now, I talk to myself. I'm alone with my thoughts around-the-clock.

My job is incredibly isolating. I have no real reason to talk to anybody. I'm expected to be plugged into the Matrix, quietly making software. I'm expected to be some kind of robotic software-making machine, sitting silently in a corner churning out software systems, with zero human interaction required.

My home life is 5/7ths isolating, sitting alone in hotel rooms trying to connect with the world via the internet. London's not an unfriendly place, but locals definitely think you're a bit strange if you try to start a conversation with them. I suppose I could go looking for groups of gregarious tourists who'd be happy to chat to somebody who knows this city well, but it's exhausting doing all that getting-to-know-you stuff. It's exhausting to work all day and then have to carry on working just as hard - if not harder - to put myself out there and meet people.

So, here I am, in yet another room I'd never set foot in before. The noises are all different. The light is different. The bed is different. The bathroom is different. At night, different things wake me up. My body and brain are on high alert in this alien environment. I'll get used to it, but it's exhausting staying somewhere new every week.

I should have been at work today. Work is a known quantity. I know exactly what work I've got to do. I know roughly how I'm going to do my work. Nobody else is going to do anything - it's all down to me. My work will still be there, exactly how I left it. It's a job I've been doing for over 20 years, so there are no surprises. The familiarity makes it exhausting somehow - I get anxious about solving problems I've solved a million times before. I get anxious, because I know exactly how it makes me feel.

I hit the wall today. I couldn't get up. I gave up.

It's not like I had the flu or arterial bleeding gushing from a gaping wound. It's not like I had a legitimate excuse for not going to work, I just felt really shitty.

How can I explain it to you, that I really felt like I couldn't get up and face the day? How can I explain that although I was able to get up and buy myself something to eat at 3pm in the afternoon, I couldn't leap out of bed and dash off to the office at 8am? How is it possible to reconcile the fact that if I could be bothered to breathe, then surely it would have been possible to go and do 8 hours work?

I feel run down but I don't feel sick. I don't have nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, pain, swelling, tenderness, bleeding, bruising or any other physical symptoms to speak of. I feel exhausted, but I haven't recently run a marathon or climbed a mountain. I feel sad but I haven't recently lost a loved one. I feel anxious but I'm not trapped in a cage with a tiger. In theory, I shouldn't be feeling anything other than tip-top, ready and raring to go to work.

I don't know what to say, other than that I feel guilty about feeling like this. I feel guilty that I haven't gone to work when so many other people have done today. I feel guilty that I've spent time in bed when I haven't got any obvious physical symptoms of illness.

When I've felt like this before, I've been tested for thyroid problems and even AIDS. I've been subjected to a barrage of tests on my kidneys, liver and blood. I've been poked and prodded for any possible physical reason why I'd feel tired and unable to leap out of bed and enthusiastically rush to my desk in my office. No physical illness has ever been discovered. I'm not physically sick. I must be making it up. People in Africa wouldn't lie in bed like I do.

I sometimes wonder if we're supposed to get up when it's still dark, in the middle of the wettest and coldest months of the year, in order to go to jobs that are soul-destroying.

I wonder if one day, somebody's going to be brave enough to say "actually, you're having a sane reaction to an insane world" and give me a prescription for exemption from the bullshit of the rat race. It's surely grossly unhealthy to experience as much unhappiness as I do. It must be damaging to be as stressed as I am. It must be enough to make me sick, to be so isolated and lonely.

I walk down the road, or I sit at my desk, and I chatter away to myself. I write this blog because I need somebody to chat to. I have no regular healthy human contact. Everything shifts around me constantly. New places; new people. I assume that everything's all transient; temporary. What's the point in getting attached to anything or anybody? What's the point in feeling settled and contented - my whole world gets smashed to smithereens all the time anyway, so what's the point of anything? What's the point of life?

There's this massive gash; an open wound. I've got a staggeringly terrible injury, but nobody seems to acknowledge it. It's like I'm walking around with my arm hanging off and blood pissing out onto the ground, and everybody's just ignoring it. "It's just a scratch. You'll be fine. Just go to work like everybody else. You don't see other people making such a fuss, do you?"

But, I am making a fuss. I'm bunking off work, which always pisses people off ("lazy scrounger parasite" etc) and I'm lying in bed, which also pisses people off ("layabout idle waste-of-space" etc). What's my excuse? Because I don't feel very well? Not good enough. What possible reason could I have for not feeling very well? What's my excuse?

I've got antidepressants, but I don't take them. I've never taken antidepressants.

"Well, there's your problem"

Erm, yeah... if you say so. But what causes depression?

"Chemical imbalance"

Right. So what causes the "chemical imbalance"?

"I dunno. Genes or something"

Ok, but did you know that two genetically identical mice can end up looking completely different depending on environmental cues that cause different epigenetic expression of genes? That is to say, two mice with identical DNA won't always end up being identical individuals. Even with identical DNA, the environment can influence identical twins to become non-identical in appearance.

You're right, I don't live in Africa. I don't live in a warzone. My life's just peachy. What could I possibly have in my environment that would induce anxiety and depression in me?

In the last year, what's the ratio of traumatic events versus consistent things you have in your life? Did you stay in the same home? Did you stay in the same job? Did you stay in the same area of the country? How many kids do you have? Did you have the same partner? How many family members do you see and speak to on a regular basis? How many times were you hospitalised? How many times were you arrested? How many times did you think you were going to go bankrupt? How many times were you homeless? How many times did you think you were going to die?

It's not a competition and I'm not trying to elicit sympathy.

I'm exhausted and depressed and anxious, and I don't really know why, but it's not because I don't take antidepressants.

Tags: #depression

This is a story about the origins of [my] bipolar disorder...

Here are a couple of select conversations from the last year that might help you to understand the circumstances that influence my mood instability.

Me: "I'd like to discharge myself from hospital, please"

Doctors: "No. You are on a high dependency ward. You will die"

Me: "It can't be that bad. I want to discharge myself, please"

Doctors: "Your kidneys aren't working. You need dialysis. Your blood has dangerously high levels of potassium in it and you could go into cardiac arrest at any moment"

Me: "But I need to go to work otherwise I will lose my job"

Doctors: "You can't work if you're dead"

Me: "I'm going to have to risk it"

Why would I do such a staggeringly stupid thing? Why would I risk my life like that? It seems patently absurd, doesn't it?

For my whole career, bosses and shareholders have demanded only one thing: do more, faster.

I decided that I was being exploited. I'm the one who makes the software. Without my software, there's no product; there's no business and there's no profit. Without software that I've built, no amount of lawyers and salespeople and middle managers and jumped-up idiots with important sounding job titles, would have anything to do other than burn what little money the company had left. If the software is the product, then you've got nothing if you've got no software. If the software is what allows you to do thousands of times more volume than you'd be able to do without it, then you haven't got a business if you haven't got the software - your business model would collapse. Your business is software.

I'm not saying that software is important. Software can't build a house. Software can't plant carrots. Software can't dispose of your sewerage. Software is bullshit. However, most of the economy is bullshit - at least 85% bullshit here in the UK anyway.

So, anyway, some jumped-up little twat with his daddy's money comes up to me saying "I'm an entrepreneur and I've got a genius idea... I just need a geek to make the software". On closer inspection the software is where the genius lies. When the business idea is examined with close scrutiny, it turns out that none of the important details have been figured out. Turning an idea into a working business - the execution - is something that gets figured out by the lawyers and software engineers. The "entrepreneur" just provides his daddy's money, while he walks around with his chest puffed out pretending like he's a serious businessman.

The next thing that happens is that I say "how much money have you got to spend and when do you need to have a working product?". The answer is always the same: "I haven't got any money and I need it yesterday".

Where did the budget go for the software? It seems to have all been spent on employing a bunch of old schoolchums to do "brand consultancy" or "business development". Basically, the directors fly all around the world attending conferences and "networking", which is very costly because they're running up huge expenses. Meanwhile, the geek is expected to churn out the software - "I don't know what it is, but is it finished yet?" - as fast as they possibly can. It's quite common now for very capable young computer programmers to work unpaid, or on slave wages, because they're desperate to gain commercial experience. Some idiots even think that I'd enjoy working on a software project for free, like it's a motherf**king hobby or something.

So, I arrived at the situation where I would always work at top speed. I've pleased my bosses and shareholders, not because I give them what they want, but because I've generally been much faster and much cheaper than anybody they've used before. In short: I deliver.

I was working so damn hard all the time and not seeing much of a reward for the dedication I put into my job, so I started to work for myself. I made software and I sold it. I made some iPhone apps and I sold them. One of my apps took me half a day to code and it was downloaded thousands of times. This made sense to me - the whole reason I work with computers is because they can do things while I sleep; a computer can perform many thousandfold tasks than I ever could. It makes sense that I would use a computer to leverage my talents and efforts.

I didn't quite understand that the whole reason why I came to be writing iPhone apps was because I'd been burnt out by my employer. I'd landed a hell of a project. The world's biggest project, in fact - "Nick, would you mind creating us a system that can process a quadrillion dollars worth of credit default swaps, please? Have it done as soon as you can, please, there's a good chap... we've got a global economy that needs wrecking".

I didn't quite understand that I burnt myself out again writing iPhone apps. I coded as fast as I could. I catnapped and skipped meals. I worked 7 days a week. I knew that every moment that I wasn't coding was another moment that my competitors were potentially going to release a similar app. I had to be first to market with my ideas. I had to be the first person in the Apple App Store with an app that did something that nobody else had thought of yet.

I decided to start a proper business. I decided that I'd create a piece of software with a recurring license cost. I decided to create a piece of Software as a Service (SaaS) and then I'd be able to earn money while I slept, once I'd completed the system. I didn't have any of my daddy's money to spend though. I didn't raise any money from friends and family. I just had me and my idea, my software engineering skills and 24 hours in every single day.

I didn't quite understand that I burnt myself out doing my startup. I didn't understand that writing the software - the hard bit - was only the beginning of what I had to do. I had to raise investment to be able to market my product. I had to sell the product. I had to support the product. I had to do all the business administration. I had to raise investment to be able to afford to hire people, so that I didn't collapse under the weight of all those competing demands. I didn't go fast enough though, so I did collapse.

With every burst of intense focus and effort, there would be a windfall. Particularly in investment banking, if you do a good job then you get a big fat juicy bonus. If you make an app that goes to #1 in the App Store charts then you get a windfall. Even if you do a startup, you can sometimes get a reward - my startup was at least profitable; investable.

The pattern of behaviour was established. It made sense to me to work as hard and as fast as I could, because the rewards seemed to be there.

When I run a software project - a team of people who work for me - then I put developer welfare as the top priority. I set realistic deadlines. I allow time for people to catch their breath. If the pressure starts to increase, then I move the deadline rather than asking people to work longer hours. Bosses should hate me, but I underpromise and overdeliver, and I run happy motivated high-performing teams. I get great feedback from the people who work for me.

When I'm coding, I seem to forget about my own mental health. When I've got a tough deadline and a tough deliverable, I'll work as hard as I can. I get scared. I think I've forgotten how to code. I feel like my skills are rusty and outdated. I feel old and useless. So, because of this fear, I go as fast as I possibly can.

It hasn't helped that I've never quite managed to gain a comfortable financial cushion that would allow me to feel like I can consider my health and general mental wellbeing, as well as just delivering the software. I always put work as my first priority.

Me: "I'm going to go to London to do some IT consultancy for an investment bank"

Psychiatrist: "But that's what you always do, and you know it makes you unwell"

Me: "But I need the money"

Psychiatrist: "You need to look after your mental health"

Me: "My mental health can wait. I'm nearly bankrupt"

Psychiatrist: "Well go bankrupt then. Allow yourself time to recover"

Me: "But then I'll never be able to work in investment banking again"

Psychiatrist: "That might be a good thing. It makes you unwell"

Me: "Yes, but it also makes me rich"

In the interests of completing the picture: I am not rich. The amount that I earn would make me rich if I could stay well for long enough to keep working, but the stress and the pressure also mean that I almost always get sick. It's a horrible catch 22.

So, I've completed another software system and it's live - it's up and running and people like it. My boss is pleased. Am I burnt out? Yes, I am a little. I had to bunk off work yesterday. In fact, I've bunked 3 out of the last 9 days. Is this the beginning of me starting to take a little more care of myself?

The cycle is very much not over. I need at least another one or two decent length contracts before I have that all-important financial cushion. It's going to take me until the end of the year to get back to financial security. It's going to be months and months before the ever-present threat of running out of money goes away, even if some money is slowly starting to trickle into my bank account.

It's quite ludicrous that I was on collision course with certain bankruptcy, and now I'm solvent and I've delivered another project on time and on budget. Last year was the year where I gave up. Everything was just too damn hard. I had a great contract, then my kidneys packed up. I had an OK contract but the boss didn't seem to realise he'd hired a bit of rock star at a bargain basement price. I got a contract, but I only just had enough money to be able to afford to go to work... I was running on petrol fumes.

If you were to ask the most stable person you know to live my life, I guarantee that their mood would be unstable as hell. How can you expect anybody to go through the kinds of ups and downs that I go through, without accompanying high and low mood? My mood is a sane reaction to an insane world.

I don't think I have bipolar disorder. I think I'm a product of my environment.

Tags: #bipolar #career #computing #banking

This is a story about malingering...

The Conservative Government makes policy based on the assumption that anybody who doesn't work is lazy and that we - the British public - should spy on each other, bully and coerce each other into bullshit dead-end underpaid McJobs in the interests of further enriching the obscenely wealthy capitalists. To talk about the 'free' West is a joke. You're free to be homeless. You're free to be hungry. But you are not a free man or woman at all.

I've suffered many periods of depression in the past, but the present one sets a new record for its length and severity. Further exacerbating my depression has been a dire financial situation. It's true... if somebody hungry enough they can drag themselves out of bed. If somebody's in enough pain they can drag themselves out of bed. If somebody's afraid enough they can drag themselves out of bed. That doesn't mean that we should inflict fear and pain and hunger onto sick people, in order to bully and coerce them into working bullshit McJobs simply so the rich can get richer.

I spent the last 24 hours without any of the medications I've been dependent on for a whole year. It's been 24 hours of hell on earth. "Have you tried breathing exercises?" etc. etc. Bullshit. I was sick. I was really really really sick. I still am.

I've limped along for so long. It's true that I can force myself to get up and appear half functional because I absolutely have to, but it's unsustainable. In fact, it's counter-productive for me to force myself into horrible stress and anxiety-inducing situations, having what little energy I have left drained from me by some bullshit job. It's been incredibly costly to my mental health to have been forced back into the workplace when I'm still so unwell.

I'm bumping along the bottom. I barely get a whisker above the absolute lowest I can get and then I'm pummelled back into the floor. If only I had the time and the money to recover properly. If only I could get well before I'm forced back into work by economic necessity.

I'm kind of a poster boy for the Government's unethical and abhorrent abuse of the British public - I've been bent to their iron will; I've been bullied and coerced and forced at gunpoint to do shit that's fucking awful. I'm held up as an example that "depression's all in people's heads" and "people who are sick can work". I supposedly demonstrate that if things are desperate enough, mental health problems can be overcome and somebody can go to an office and do a job... except I can't.

My life is a continuous crisis. Suicidal thoughts plague every waking moment. My anxiety and stress levels are through the roof. I'm very much not at all functioning - this bullshit life is killing me.

You might think I'm being hyperbolic. You might think that I'm making a fuss. You might think I'm complaining too much, because you can't quite get over the fact that every day I put on a smart suit and I go to work in an office. You believe that the fact I'm going to work is all the evidence that you need to declare that you were right all along - depression is just a made-up illness and people who say that they can't work because of mental health problems are lazy liars; leeches on society.

The daily agony that I'm put through is enough to cause me to end my own life. Life is too unbearable. It's not like I was supported back into the workplace by a loving, caring Government and now I'm finding that it's really good for my self-esteem and I'm really glad I'm back at work. Bullshit! I call complete and utter bullshit on such infantile fantasies as the idea that some people are just lazy and they need to be punished.

It's possible that I might be able to find some cocktail of medications that would allow me to be more functional, but it's not me that's the problem, is it? It's no measure of good heath to be well-adjusted to a sick society. I refuse to take loads of pills with horrible side-effects, just so that I can conform to your bullying and coercion. I refuse to be called 'sick' when really it's the spying and hatefulness between citizens that's sick - who gets to decide that somebody else is "lazy"? It's bullshit.

The smug and arrogant guardian class have been co-opted into the coercive and bullying world of Conservative Government. Safe and well paid government jobs are given to ordinary citizens, who then become brutal and tyrannical arseholes, casting their judgement on their fellow men and women. It's not right to give people God-like powers over their fellow citizens, allowing them to approve or deny them the things they need to survive. It's too much power and it's creating a class of absolute c***s who think they can sit in judgement over those who they believe are beneath them.

I've seen people who have sworn an oath to do no harm, be turned into harm-inflicters. I've heard utterances from those who have supposedly dedicated themselves to saving lives and improving public health, become corrupted by an ideology that believes we should all be enslaved to the capitalists - anybody who's not working is a "scrounger" or a "benefit cheat" or otherwise somebody beneath contempt.

It angers and upsets me that those who are supposed to help and support and care, have been turned into beady-eyed prying spies, bullies - part of the apparatus that is oppressing and tyranising tens of millions, turning their lives into abject misery.

Where's the compassion?

Tags: #politics #economics

This is a story about the brain drain...

I should keep photos of myself wearing my ordinary work clothes off my blog. I should take more care to separate my professional identity from my blogging identity. I should ensure that Nick "Manic" Grant and the name that's written on my CV can never be connected.

To even write my proper name - as it appears on my passport and birth certificate - onto this website would risk appearing at the top of Google searches that prospective employers might do. I've been careful to separate my LinkedIn and never mention my consultancy company name. I rarely mention client names, and certainly not the names of clients who I wish to continue working for.

However, I'm starting to slip. I'm starting to not care so much. I'm starting to prefer my real identity to the fake one that's necessary to get a well paid job. I was finding it cumbersome to try to pretend like everything was A-OK in my world, and attempt to stop rumours spreading about me in the companies I used to work for. It was exhausting, trying to cover up my indiscretions. It's been exhausting, leading a double life.

One of the biggest double life issues I have is that I have nothing but contempt for capitalism and banking, and I completely fail to see the utility of computers and apps and software and data. Yes, in our super tech-heavy world, it seems inconceivable to say such a thing, but I definitely think humanity's headed in the wrong direction. The mechanisation of farming and the industrialisation of food production are two examples of tech's potential to feed the world's hungry, but we're not using tech to do that, are we? Instead, we're using tech to create artificially inflated asset bubbles and an ever greater rich:poor divide. It eats me up inside that I'm involved, but I'm also shackled with golden handcuffs to the cash cow that provides a hefty income. What am I supposed to do?

Many people think it's churlish that I bite the hand that feeds me. Many people seem to think it's not possible for me to have ethical concerns about what I'm involved in as a day job. Why don't I quit and do something else? It certainly seems to upset me and cause me a lot of angst and anguish.

As I've written before at length, I'm economically incentivised to get the most bang for my buck. I'm economically incentivised to sell my labour to the highest bidder. I need a place to live and food to eat, don't I? So of course I'm going to plump for an employer who's going to give me enough money to live, rather than one who would leave me starving, homeless and impoverished.

I should be rich & retired by now. Here's how my strategy to become rich went:

2005

Me: I'm going to invest all my money in gold

Her: no

Result: gold plus exchange rate of US dollar would have delivered 500% return on investment

2008

Me: I'm going to quit my job and write iPhone apps

Her: no

Result: we broke up. I made enough money from my iPhone apps so I didn't have to work... until I got back together with her

2011

Me: I'm going to be CEO of a tech startup worth millions of pounds

Her: no

Result: my company continued to trade profitably and win big customers... without me

2012

Me: I'm going to invest all my money in Bitcoin

Her: no

Result: each Bitcoin is now worth $15,000. I would have paid about $5 for each Bitcoin. A $5,000 investment would now be worth $15 million

2013

Me: I'm going to invest all my money in Bitcoin

Her: no

Result: we separated and divorced. I've hardly had to work since then.

In the absence of any good ideas to get rich quick, I always fall back on IT consultancy. I was getting £40 an hour when I was 19 years old, and then £470/day when I was 20. I was on-track to retire at 40, if I stuck with the consultancy gig, even though it was soul destroying.

Now, it galls me that I've been so close to serious wealth so many times. It galls me that my ex-wife was such a toxic person that she's fucked up a whole bunch of very decent ways I could've made a fortune. It galls me that I'm back doing the soul destroying day job, because my ex-wife held me back and sabotaged some very smart and shrewd plans I had. It galls me that I'm doing a job that I mastered a long time ago. It fucking sucks to only earn six figures and have to work like, maybe 35 whole hours or whatever, doing a really easy job.

Of course, I'm deliberately writing in such a way that might cause offence. Many people dream of earning decent money, or having a shot at getting rich. Well, here's the solution: do a job you really hate.

I hate my job so very very much. I can't believe just how flipping easy it is. I also can't believe just how awful it is to be part of the capitalist machinery that's wrecking the planet and the wellbeing of humanity. I'm involved in legal loan-sharking. I'm an accessory to murder. I'm guilty by association.

I started out my career in defence - the military - so I'm no stranger to the ethical dilemma of working for a weapons manufacturer. I had to wonder to myself how I'd feel when lives were inevitably lost as a result of my software. It seemed wrong to think that I'd succeeded as an engineer, if I successfully brought about the death of the so-called 'enemy'. My software was very definitely going to be used to kill people; nothing defensive about it at all.

What should I be doing? Working for a charity? Working for an NGO or some other kind of humanitarian cause? What, like your chum Hugo from private school, who went off and built a school in Africa... he put that on his CV and now he works for a fucking bank because he's not fucking stupid. Hugo tells all his chums that he's done important work in the developing world, because he's an insufferable tosspot; he's a smug spoiled little shit, who's never known anything other than wealth and privilege.

You might hear my posh accent, or see the big name multinational companies I've worked for on my CV, and you might be mistaken for thinking I'm posh and spoiled and entitled and all the other things you don't like very much. In fact, I've had to spend my whole career with ethical conflict in my heart. I'm a bleeding-heart liberal who puts on a sharp suit and pretends to be a banker. I have to think about the part I played in the 2007/8 financial crisis. I have to think about my part I played in the whole stinking shitpit that is capitalism. I could hide behind the defence: "I'm just an engineer" but I can't.

"I make the rockets go up. Where they land is not my department"

I don't think it's a valid defence for an engineer to say that they're apolitical; amoral. I write software that's unopinionated, but I know what it's going to be used for. I know that I'm donating my brainpower and brawn to an evil cause. I know that ultimately, I'm helping the rich get richer.

I spend my days somewhat outraged that my time's being wasted on trivial bullshit, that contributes nothing to society except for improving the apparatus that oppresses the planet's poor people - tools to better extort money out of the 98%. I spend my days frustrated - I want to be doing something worthy, but I can't.

Of course I'm not going to jack in my job and go work for a charity. Charities pay shit money. Of course I'm not going to work for charity. Charities have failed to deliver any meaningful change. Impoverishing myself is the world's most stupid first step towards any meaningful change.

I'm frustrated and upset, because my ingenuity was thwarted so many times by my ex-wife that I'm now exhausted. I'm not a young man anymore. I was lucky enough to have a couple of moments of glory that proved my point - I can build valuable stuff that works - but now I don't have the energy or the financial security to make another foray into something more worthwhile than the bullshit that passes for my day job.

I'm trapped by debt that I ran up when I got sick. I'm trapped by the capitalist trap of high living costs. I'm trapped by the need to speculate to accumulate, but I've got nothing to speculate with. I'm hoisted by my own petard. The irony is not lost on me, of course.

It's torturous agony, working a job that I mastered 21 years ago. It's torturous agony, solving the same problems that I already solved a million times over, knowing full well that everything is doomed to the same fate. Of course the global financial markets are going to collapse again, imminently. Of course, the whole bullshit system can't be propped up anymore. Of course, the bubble has to burst. Bubbles always burst eventually. It's physically painful in a way that's hard to describe, knowing that the whole ridiculous house of cards is going to come crashing down again at any moment. I know it's just anxiety and stress and depression, but it's not made any better working for an investment bank, doing the same bullshit job that I was doing - I was so close to ground zero when the whole fucking financial crisis happened. I was feeling ethically challenged 10 or 11 years ago. I was feeling ethically challenged 21 years ago. Fuck my life, that I'm back doing the thing that I hate most, because it's an economic necessity.

Who's to blame? Me presumably.

Fine, pin it on me. I'll take the rap.

Imma kill myself.

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

This is a story about escaping...

I just realised that I couldn't tell you anything about how these wines tasted. I drank them without savouring the smell and the flavour. I drank all these bottles of wine on my own and I can't remember a thing about them. If I had to choose which one I enjoyed the most, I wouldn't be able to - I didn't drink them for enjoyment. I drank them to get drunk.

When I took a sip from my glass last night, I still had a very bad hangover from the night before. The wine tasted sour and unpleasant. I had been in two minds about drinking anyway, but something prompted me to drink - I think it was anxiety about fast approaching Monday morning and returning to the office; another agonising week doing a job I hate. There was anxiety about my financial situation too. I had run out of money and spent my final £10 on wine and a cheeseburger. I was skint.

Alcohol has become liquid diazepam for me. Alcohol is a very poor substitute for benzodiazepines though. At least with benzos you don't have dreadful hangovers. At least with benzos, you don't get a fat tummy from all the excess calories. At least with benzos, it's possible to be very precise with a dose. Benzos slotted pretty easily into my everyday life, in a way that alcohol doesn't. I would take a benzo to go to sleep, and another to be able to get up and go to work. I was functional on benzos. Alcohol is unhealthy. Alcohol is not going to lead anywhere except becoming unfit, overweight and suffering from various alcoholism-related illnesses. Taking my tranquillisers in pill form is far more preferable to having to guzzle gallons of booze.

Why would I be getting so intoxicated anyway? Surely my life is wonderful?

There's a little bit of loneliness and boredom. I'm working away from home and living in a hotel. There's nothing much to do except drink. I was running out of money, so it's not like I could go out and do things. Also, did I mention I was running out of money? When you know that you're running out of money, it's really stressful. Stress means that you can't relax and you can't sleep. Constant anxiety is a terrible thing. When you're running out of money, anxiety is constant. When you're not sleeping, anxiety is with you all night long, tormenting you. There are no easy solutions to my problems, but money's a good start. If you don't have any money, you might as well just get drunk.

"How do you afford to get so drunk if you've got no money?"

Well, it's about priorities. The six bottles of wine pictured above probably cost me about £42. How much would I spend on gym membership? How much would I spend on a night out seeing friends? How much would I spend wooing a girl? It's not possible to simply not exist, and still earn money. Earning money requires existence - nobody pays you unless you're in the right place at the right time. The only way to get me into a shitty situation that I hate - living out of a suitcase and working a job that makes me sick - is to oil me up with a load of booze or tip a packet of pills down my throat. It's completely necessary to have booze when I'm doing something that's otherwise incompatible with my mental health.

Thus, we arrive at my central theme: drinking myself sober. The route to sobriety does not just include abstinence. The route to sobriety also needs to include things that are compatible with life. Modern life requires money. The way to get money is to do a job that you hate. The more you hate your job, the more you'll get paid. I REALLY HATE my job, so they pay me LOADS AND LOADS of money.

I finally got paid today.

Now I have money but I also have a big booze habit. I was pissed out of my mind the whole of Christmas and New Year, because I really didn't want to go back. I'm quite an articulate fellow but I really struggle to quite convey just how unhappy my particular line of work makes me.

"Retrain! Be a famous pop singer! Drive Formula One cars! Be an astronaut! Be a professional footballer!" I hear you shout.

Yes, but there are economic fundamentals at play in the capitalist bullshit society we all live in. It makes far more sense for me to be paid absolutely bucketloads of cash, and suffer a very great deal, than to be paid absolute peanuts and suffer loads anyway for different reasons.

I got paid today.

An alcohol habit, I can deal with, I think. When I had a massive problem with sleeping pills and tranquillisers and painkillers, life was a different story. There was no way that I was going to be able to quickly and easily cut down my addiction to prescription medications. I was actually physically dependent on benzos to the point where I would have seizures and possibly die if I stopped taking them abruptly. I was trapped. Now I'm not trapped. I have a booze habit - I drink more than I want to - but it's manageable. I don't drink spirits. I don't drink every day. I don't drink in the morning. I don't get pissed at work. It's a much better situation than when I had such a bad benzo addiction that I was on diazepam around-the-clock.

Sleep is one of the reasons why I've historically had a problem with booze and benzos. Zopiclone is called a nonbenzodiazepine, but it's still a benzo. Zopiclone is addictive. I used to have a few glasses of red wine to help me sleep. When I discovered zopiclone it became my drug of choice for helping me to sleep. I took it for most of 2017.

Now, I'm doing all the right things for sleep. I practice good sleep hygiene. Lowering the lights, avoiding strong blue light, having breakfast, completely avoiding caffeine, having 5-HTP (a precursor to melatonin) and magnesium supplements. All of these things make a difference. I get a little exercise too.

But, on the flip side, when you stop taking diazepam, alprazolam, zopiclone, zolpidem, pregabalin, mirtazepine, lamotrogine and a whole heap of other sedative/hypnotic/tranquilising/sleeping-pill type drugs, you get a horrible amount of rebound anxiety and insomnia. Words can barely express how horrible it is to live with a constant gnawing sense of dread, doom and dismay. I'm not talking about a few nerves that can be waved away with bloody breathing exercises or yoga. I'm talking about living for 24 hours a day with the unshakable sensation that you're about to die. It's not something that's going to be fixed by your quack snake-oil cures, because it has a biochemical origin. What goes up must come down. If you take heaps of pills, they're really really hard to stop taking and you'll feel awful when you do stop taking the medication.

So, I've been self-medicating for the combined anxiety of running out of money, having to start a new job, doing work that I absolutely loathe and that makes me sick, having to live away from friends and family in a lonely isolating environment and not having any bloody money to spend to make it bearable, while withdrawing from bucketloads of addictive medications. I think £42 for six bottles of wine is a bloody bargain, when you consider that this unhealthy coping mechanism has actually helped me to cope. I've done it. I've bloody done it. I worked and I got paid - that wouldn't have been possible without chemical crutches to prop me up.

Hurrah for alcohol. Better the devil you know. It should be straightforward to now reduce my alcohol intake to healthier levels. Some moderate alcohol consumption is actually desirable. I can't imagine living on this shitty overcrowded rainy island, without wine and beer to drink. I can't imagine anything worse than living life completely sober.

Of course, there's a risk that I swing the other way, and my drinking worsens. There's a risk that I'll reach for the harder stuff - which I've never touched a drop of in my life. There's a risk that I'll lose control.

At the moment, I'm really chuffed with where I'm at with my addiction to substances. To have quit all those dangerously addictive drugs, and now be left with a very negligible habit is quite impressive. What does a couple of glasses of wine matter?

The next challenge is to try to stay off the zopiclone and taper off the tiny amount of pregabalin that I've been relying on. It's taken longer and it's been much harder than I thought it would be. I'm amazed just how terrible I still feel, as I reduce my dose of all the pills I was addicted to to almost zero. It's amazing just how much of a strong hold on my mind those pills had. I'd reach for those pills to go to sleep, and I'd reach for those pills just to cope with hideously horrible stressful shit, that made my life unbearably filled with anxiety. Now, I occasionally have some red wine. That's not bad is it?

I really can't decide which way to go at the moment. I'm not going to drink tonight, but I've had to take 50mg of pregabalin to be able to cope with anxiety. I shouldn't be stressed - I finally got paid - but it's going to take a little while for me to re-adjust to the new circumstances. I've been living with the threat of bankruptcy hanging over me for so long, I can't quite believe I dodged that bullet.

I'm not sure if anybody who's followed my turbulent ups and downs can detect any improvement or change from where I was at when I was under the influence of enough medications to tranquillise an elephant. It's really hard to gauge in myself whether I'm any different at all. Am I able to better perceive reality? Am I communicating with more clarity? Am I getting better? It's impossible for me to judge.

One thing that should be noted is that my decision to reduce and quit a whole host of highly addictive medications, alcohol and other substances, was my own. I also don't think I could have quit everything if I was forced to go cold turkey and quit abruptly. In fact, it would quite literally have killed me to do so - you can't just stop when you're physically dependent on substances. Alcohol, for all its faults, is at least available as a ubiquitous form of self-medication. If I'd had to rely on doctors to give me what I needed, I'd never have been able to get through such a torturous period of re-adjustment. It's inhumane to not offer any kind of substitute prescribing or realistic tapering of doses, to help people escape from the trap of addiction.

Yes, I laughed at the amount of effort that junkies will go to in order to get a tiny bit more methadone or subutex, but that's the point - you do you. You know what you can take and you go at the pace that means you succeed. You know what you need and you should damn well get it. Anything other than this is going to be doomed to failure, and cause undue suffering.

I've suffered and it's been hard. It's still hard. But, I got through something really tough and I still have the comfort of knowing there's a bottle of wine waiting for me in the off licence down the road if everything gets thoroughly unbearable. Hurrah for red wine.

Tags: #addiction #alcohol

This is a story about social coercion...

You might not feel like working and that's fine - it's a personal choice - but how do other people feel about your idleness? Although most jobs are utter bullshit and produce nothing of any value to humanity, there is immense social pressure to work anyway. Try not working for a bit and see how people react. You'll see quite a nasty, aggressive, bullying side to people's character, if you tell them that you're not going to work because you can't be bothered. It incenses people that you might make the smart decision not to bother with your bullshit job. It enrages people that you'd be smart enough not to just go along with the madness of pointless makework.

Thus, we see people continuing to 'work' when it's patently obvious that there isn't really a job at all - the tasks that are being performed are entirely superfluous to anybody's needs. Do we really need any more spreadsheets and powerpoint presentations and emails and meetings about meetings?

"Everybody's got to work"

No they don't.

"But how else are we going to get money?"

We don't need money.

"Yes we do"

No we don't.

You don't need to get a job as a baker, so that you can get paid a salary so that you have money to buy a slice of the bread you just baked. Capitalism's argument that money is more efficient as a means of exchanging value, is demonstrably absurd. Yes, it seems obvious that barter is inefficient, but so is a system where we spend our lives on packed commuter trains and in offices, having our children raised by strangers while we shuffle papers around our desk, trying to look busy. There's so much busywork. It's all bullshit.

"But if we said that nobody has to work, then nobody would work"

Yes. Nobody works anyway. Did you build your house? Did you grow the food you ate? No. You work in the service industries. You sit in front of a computer, pretty much doing nothing. Only a tiny fraction of society are actually producing goods and providing services that are essential to humanity. Most people are busy doing stuff that's of no use to anybody.

To choose not to work is a smart choice. To choose not to work is to deprive society of nothing at all. To choose not to work is a protest at the insanity of being shackled to a system that provides nothing but anxiety, depression and misery. Work really isn't working. Wouldn't you much prefer to stay at home playing with the kids, or smoking cannabis and playing computer games? Wouldn't you much prefer to make music, write poetry or paint pictures? Well, why don't you? They're certainly not paying you enough for all those boring boring hours of so-called 'work'.

If we all stop putting up with boring bullshit jobs that don't pay very well, then we force society to be restructured in a way that gives us back our lives. We shouldn't be spending hours every day commuting. We shouldn't be so bored all the time. We shouldn't be wasting our precious time doing pointless made-up bullshit jobs.

Imagine what life would be life if we stopped calling each other "lazy". Imagine what life would be like if we stopped bullying and abusing each other into doing the most ridiculously menial, degrading and laughable tasks and calling it "work". Imagine what life would be like if we stopped feeling so smug and self-satisfied that we'd been busy doing the pointless bullshit that passes for a so-called job. It's madness. There's no pride in your work if your job is utter bullshit. There's no such thing as a work ethic, if your work is unethical and profoundly stupid and pointless.

Yes, there are jobs to be done, but guess what? Those jobs will get done. Don't worry about it. The fact that there are some jobs to be done doesn't mean that we all have to have pointless bullshit jobs. If you want to work, you should be a farmer or a builder. If you don't want to work, then don't. Don't go to an office and call it a job though. It's not a job. It's bullshit.

Most so-called 'work' is just new and elaborate ways of counting beans. Counting the beans doesn't make any more beans. It's far better to have a surplus of beans and not bother counting them, than to have vast numbers of useless people, idly counting beans instead of doing something more productive.

Yes, to toil in the heat of the midday sun, or in the wind and the rain, on a muddy building site or in a muddy field... it's not most people's idea of a good job. Well guess what? Good news! Hardly any of us actually have to do those jobs. We're able to use high-yield farming techniques to feed vast numbers of people with very few workers. You only have to build your house once, and then you can live in it for the rest of your life. There really isn't very much work to do.

When we remove the need to commute to our bullshit 'jobs' every day, we find that vast amounts of infrastructure isn't needed. Who needs all those offices, when office work is demonstrably bullshit? Who needs all those roads and railways? Who needs all those desks and office chairs and fluorescent lights? Who, in fact, needs to take up all that space - office space during the day and home space at night? Who needs to waste so much energy travelling between the office and home? It all becomes superfluous to requirements.

Imagine a world where you get to see your kids grow up. Imagine a world where you're not stressing yourself out of your mind, trying to get to the office on time. There's no need for any of that. Almost the entire world of work is complete and utter bullshit.

If you really think that money and capitalism are a good thing, why don't you demand a salary that would allow you to have the lifestyle you've always dreamed of? In fact, aren't you saving up for retirement? Isn't the ultimate goal to get enough money together so that you don't have to work any more? If your aim is to stop working, why don't you just stop working? Surely capitalism and money can't be working that well for you, if you're having to work when your ultimate aim is to stop working. Surely you're not being very smart, are you?

Your reaction is to bristle with annoyance at the very suggestion that you might be able to just stop working. It seems patently absurd to you, to live in a world without work and money. "Where will the things come from?" you ask. "How will anybody pay for anything without money?". It seems so obviously unworkable, to not have to work any more.

But, think about it. There's a pensions crisis and a housing crisis. Wages are shrinking in real terms. Household budgets are feeling the squeeze. Things are getting worse, not better. Your dreams of retirement are sailing over the horizon. How can we even afford all the old people who want to be idle anyway? There simply isn't enough money to pay for all the pensioners. There are too many old people and we don't pay our young people enough to allow tax receipts to exceed the bill for all those old people who don't want to work. The only solution; the only fair solution is to allow us all to stop working. Right now. Today.

Figuring out how to divide the tiny amount of labour that is actually essential, is a trivial detail. The biggest challenge facing civilisation at the moment is that the division of labour is currently so unfair, and this is creating social unrest and human misery. The biggest crime of the century is the theft of all those precious hours of our time, doing and producing nothing except anxiety, stress and depression.

Unless you think to yourself "I'm staggeringly well paid for what I do - I have everything I want and need - and I really love my job" every single day, then what the hell are you doing, you imbecile? If you think "I'm staggeringly well paid" and you want for nothing, but you hate your job, you're at least a little rational about things, but you're still an imbecile. If you're underpaid and your job is mostly pointless boring bullshit, what the hell are you doing? Quit! Do nothing!

We didn't ask to be born, and unless there's something worth living for, then what's the point of working? If there's no chance of owning a home and having some security and prosperity, then work isn't working. That 'money' that you think's so important, is actually just a mug's game. Money is supposed to represent value, but it's worthless if it can't buy the things you need.

I implore you. Be a famous pop singer. Be an actor. Kick a ball. Do those things that children do, because they're fun, and call that your job. Don't do the made-up boring bullshit. Vote with your feet. Deprive the system of your precious time - they're not paying you enough.

Only by striking, can the workers ever escape the crushing oppression of bullshit jobs.

Tags: #politics #economics

This is a story about a lack of insight...

I didn't invent the English language. I didn't invent consciousness and feelings. I didn't invent thought. So, how can I ever have an original thought or idea? How can I ever write something original? Everything I ever think and write is going to have been thought about and written about somewhere else, by somebody else.

In fact, the idea of originality is a dumb one, borne out of pretentiousness. Anybody who thinks they're being original is horribly egotistical, and also wrong.

I cringe a little when I see aspects of myself reflected writing that's smugly taking the piss out of angst-filled teenagers. It's quite easy to mock and belittle. It's quite easy to hide behind a comforting wall of sneering cynicism and criticism. I cringe, but I'm glad that I write - I'm glad that I expose myself and my flaws. I'm glad that I set myself up as a somebody who can be easily attacked. I give you the ammunition, and you use it.

My intention of writing so much is to exhaust my enemies. I've written so much that nobody can ever catch up with me now. I've written so much that anybody who's determined to tarnish my name will never be able to do it with their words, because mine outnumber theirs by an order of magnitude. Bullies are quite lazy and cowardly, and they will pick on easy targets - they will bully the vulnerable.

In the process of making myself incredibly vulnerable - admitting to every vanity and flaw in my character; every freakish fetish and grotesque quirk - I'm actually protected from anybody who wants to prey on my weaknesses. It's impossible to shame and embarrass me. If there's anything compromising that you wanted to know about me, it's all here, documented in unflinching detail. If you wanted to try and blackmail me or otherwise coerce me, you wouldn't be able to because everything bad about me is written down and on public display.

Ok, not everything.

I'm going as fast as I can. I feel like my life is in imminent danger, so I must get as much of myself down on paper as possible. I have to write everything, because my writing will be all that's left when I'm dead. I don't fear death... I fear being misunderstood.

Of course, it's terribly teenage angsty to write such a thing, isn't it? Surely I should cringe and self-censor when I write those words: "I fear being misunderstood". Surely I know it's not cool to admit to such things. Surely I know that being a grown up is all about pretending to not be affected by fear, anxiety, insecurity and all the other ailments of the mind; the existential questions around identity and morality and mortality. Surely I should pretend to be more cool, and pretend to be more adult.

When my writing is discovered, I'm sure I will become very famous.

Can you see the dry humour? Can you detect the self-deprecation? Can you see that the irony is not lost on me? Can you see that I'm aware how pretentious I am? Can you see that I write things that are like little traps, designed to elicit an emotional response from you? Can you see that I'm deliberately provocative? Can you see that your first reaction is the one I intended you to have, but it doesn't mean that you immediately understand who I am and how I think?

I feel all the emotions that you do; the things that hold you back from writing with honesty and authenticity. I feel those things, but I write anyway. I don't care that I'm making a fool out of myself. In fact, I'm deliberately making a fool out of myself. Having been bullied and abused for most of my life, I'm punching myself in the face so that at least I'm the one who's in control. If I'm going to get punched in the face anyway, it might as well be me doing it, rather than my tormenters.

I insult myself and declare my flaws so that it's not interesting for you to attack me. If I've already done the thing that you wanted to do - to shame me; to abuse me - then there's no sport in it anymore.

I try to head off every criticism at the pass. I try to anticipate every potential way that I'm going to be attacked, and make sure that I'm first past the winning post. If you try to attack me, I'll simply refer you to something I already wrote. Eventually, you'll see that it's you who is unoriginal, not me.

"I've heard that one before" I often think, rolling my eyes. It's all here... the proof. I have documented proof that your idea is unoriginal. If you're going to come at me, make sure you've done your damn homework. Except you won't, because you're too lazy. Thus, I'm protected. Instead of getting upset when I'm attacked, I have the comfort of knowing that I already exhaustively addressed the topic. I'm almost immune from attempts to shame, embarrass and otherwise abuse me.

As I write, I don't excuse my actions, behaviours and thoughts that are not morally as I would wish them to be. I don't write to justify myself. I only write to be transparent; open and honest; candid. Through transparency, I remove the power that those who know my secrets have over me. I have no secrets. I'm an open book, and therefore it's not possible to shame me by sharing details of my most compromising material. I already shared it. It's already written down.

I'm flawed. I'm a flawed individual. I've done things that make me groan aloud and cup my face in my hands. There's a seemingly endless list of embarrassing things I've said and done. However, I'm making a bloody good attempt to write it all down, so it no longer has any power over me.

What do you see, at the end of the day? Do you see evil? Do you think I'm a bad person? The more you get to know me - and you can know as much as you like - the more you start to have doubts about my character... maybe I'm not such a nice guy after all. What should we do with me? Lock me up? Kill me?

Having been bullied and abused for so much of my life, I have pretty strong views on how we should treat vulnerable people. I think I'm able to quickly detect injustice. I think of myself as perceptive, when it comes to psychological abuse - I can see the subtleties in human interactions, and detect the power struggles and detestable misbehaviour.

Really, I should be coerced into silence. I should be shamed into a dark corner, never to be seen or heard from again. Why the hell am I so damn noisy?

I'm so damn easy to hate.

Tags: #writing

This is a story about going insane...

What does this even mean? Who on earth can follow what I'm going on about?

When you take a very large dose of a stimulant drug, often you can be compelled to take things to pieces to see how they work. Famously, many stimulant abusers have dismantled their televisions and radios. I once spent the best part of a couple of days - without sleep - wondering how to design a more efficient electric motor.

If you're not going to come up with a new and novel invention, you can amuse yourself by reverse-engineering other people's. Something that holds much fascination for me are the secure hashing algorithms designed by the United States' National Security Agency. I love one of those algorithms so f**king much that I went to the trouble of writing my own software simulation of a central processing unit (CPU) just so I could study how each individual binary bit flowed through the processor and memory.

What's most compelling about my little venture into the world of pulling that puzzle apart, is that I feel transported into that room where a bunch of computer scientists and mathematicians sat down and tried to design what's called a one-way algorithm - a piece of computer code that produces an unpredictable result; unique to every piece of starting data. In theory, it should be impossible to predict the result of a seemingly trivial change, because of cascading complexity. What's the relationship between "AA", "AB" and "AC"? It should be easily predictable. Computers are very predictable. But, is it possible to obfuscate the relationship between those trivial changes and the end result?

You know all that boring maths stuff that you didn't really get at school? Well, guess what... I didn't really get it either. There just didn't seem to be any purpose to it, you know?

Well, guess what? Whoever solves the problem of solving the secure hashing algorithm known as SHA-256 gets to win a quarter of a trillion dollars. By solve I mean to come up with an algebraic equation and a number of coefficients that allow a person to compute - in a single calculation - the answer for a given number.

At the moment, a computer processor has to iterate 111 times to produce an unexpected result. Each iteration has 18 instructions. That's more or less 2,000 computer instructions to find an answer that should be as simple as doing a sum. Whoever solves the riddle will be the richest man (or woman) in the world.

An idea occurs to me: perhaps this little puzzle has been set deliberately. Whoever solves it may inadvertently be destroying the privacy we take for granted in the modern world. Our governments are very keen to break encryption so they can snoop on us. Governments are so keen, in fact, that they could have invented something like Bitcoin, to economically incentivise the very finest minds to attempt to crack the uncrackable.

It hurts my brain and it makes me feel physically sick. Of course, I'm well aware that I can make myself unwell by thinking about such problems. Perhaps it's even a sign that I'm becoming unwell, that I'm thinking about this particular head-scratcher again. I can almost hear the voice of a very trusted friend in my head, saying "banana" which is my 'safe' word, warning me that I'm getting hypomanic again.

Of course I'm getting hypomanic. I've been living with a gun to my head for so damn long. I have to spend all weekend waiting to see if I get paid on Monday. If I get paid, all my financial woes are over. If I dont, I can't even afford to get to work. F**k my life.

Tags: #cryptocurrencies #computing #career

This is a story about arms races...

Being the only honest player in a game where everybody else is cheating is a fate worse than death. Where do you draw the line for cheating though?

When playing pool, it's a well known phenomenon that there's an optimal level of intoxication to be a better player. Alcohol relaxes you, which means your muscles are less tense and the action of your arm should be smoother, delivering a straighter strike to the cue ball. Is it cheating to have a cheeky couple of pints when you're playing pool down at the pub?

Computer programmers are machines that turn coffee into software. Stimulants like caffeine and the other amphetamines - caffeine being indistinguishable from amphetamines when given intravenously - are well known for improving concentration. If most programmers are gulping strong coffee all day long, how's anyone who's caffeine-free going to compete with the rest?

The combination of caffeine and glucose is proven to improve athletic performance by a remarkable amount. Given that energy drinks are not banned and can even be sold to children, how is anybody supposed to compete at sports unless they're guzzling Red Bull?

There's a great deal of pressure on me to perform at the moment. My entire future rides on me doing a good job at work. If I fail, I go bankrupt and I become a leper: unable to gain well paid employment or even have a mobile phone or broadband contract, let alone rent an apartment.

Therefore there's a temptation to use substances to help me perform at the top of my game. With a strong coffee in the morning, I'll be able to concentrate on writing code all day. With a few glasses of wine or a sleeping pill, I'll be able to unwind and relax after a day of hacking away at complex computer systems. Uppers and downers. Round and round. Highs and lows. This is the life that we should all lead, isn't it?

I'm staggeringly well paid for what I do. Why would I want a lower paid job? Why would I want to be on average Joe wages when I could earn five times as much doing the same job? Why would anybody deliberately impoverish themselves? However, my high-risk, high-reward strategy demands that I perform to the best of my abilities. Without substances, would I have been able to get my foot in the door and hang on to a highly sought-after job?

Thus, caffeine, alcohol, sleeping pills and tranquillisers circle like vultures. I need the effects of substances, in order to cope with the life that I'm built for - I've been in this career for over 20 years. How am I supposed to cope without the unhealthy coping tools that I used successfully... until I had a breakdown; a burnout.

What goes up must come down. The candle that burns twice as bright burns half as long.

It's better to burn out than fade away.

Even music has become performance enhancing. I listen to high-tempo dance music - blasting away at 130 beats per minute - in order to focus my mind and put myself into a trancelike state where I can concentrate on software code for hours and hours. What must the effect be, to be in such an unnatural state for so long?

What must it be like to have a job that brings you into the unpredictable chaotic world of people and human interactions? What must it be like to have a job that's full of intrigue and unexpected surprises? What must it be like to never have to fight your constant existential crises and suppress all invasive musings about the absurdity of existence, because you're just a rat waiting for the next food pellet: when's the next order going to arrive; the next email; the next patient; the next customer?

As I do battle with boolean algebra every single day, there is no comforting wiggle-room of the humanities - computer says yes or computer says no; true or false. There are no shades of grey in my world - there's a right answer and a wrong answer. I sit in front of three screens and I try to figure out the right answer. I can go for weeks without speaking to another person. It fills me with terror sometimes, thinking that the ultimate arbiter of whether I've succeeded or failed is a cold, rational and unthinking machine. It's like playing chess against myself.

Some would say I'm a success story. Isn't the whole reason for paying attention at school and trying hard during your exams so that you can land a good job and get promoted into a position of seniority? Aren't we all trying to climb the greasy pole and get a big fat wage packet at the end of the working week? Aren't we all trying to compete and win? I won... didn't I?

I wouldn't be so churlish as to say "it's tough at the top" and of course, I'm laughably far from the top, but I'm sure there would be a plenty long queue of people who'd swap their salary for mine, so let's not be too hasty. It's worth considering just how destabilising my career choices have been to my mental health: feast & famine, boom & bust and the ever-present pressure to perform. Alcohol and caffeine are ubiquitous - as they are everywhere - but you haven't seen alcoholism in the workplace to quite the extent I have, unless you've also worked in the City of London in investment banking.

They say that banking greases the wheels of capitalism. Alcohol greases the wheels of banking.

The most successful strategy that I could play right now would be to have have two or three strong cappuccinos every day at work, and at least a bottle of wine every night. I'm sure my career and my bank balance would benefit handsomely from such a strategy.

I do worry about my mental health, but in this capitalist society, who has the time & money to stop and think about such a trifling thing? I'm reminded of this time last year, when I had to discharge myself from hospital against medical advice, to go chasing a banking IT contract. Money, money, money. Find an edge. Do whatever it takes!

You understand, it's not greed that drives me. This is the world we live in. We all need a competitive edge. I have no idea how to function in a world where I'm not compelled to use uppers and downers to help me perform. What do people even do without their morning coffee and their evening wine?

I earned well over a thousand pounds for two days sitting in front of a computer screen thinking "what the f**k am I doing?". I'm winning aren't I? This is what winning looks like, isn't it?

I'm winning... aren't I?

Before I know it, I've had more than the magic two pints and I can't hit a ball to save my life. I've gone beyond the sweet spot. I've had too much to drink and I'm just drunk. There's a fine line between performance enhancing, and substance abusing. I wake up one morning and all I've got is a habit. A stimulant habit. An alcohol habit.

We can all reach for substances to give us an edge, but you're playing a high-stakes game. The bigger you are the harder you fall.

It's almost impossible to change the habits of a lifetime. Of course I'm going to reach for substances when I'm struggling. Of course I'm going to return to the same boom and bust lifestyle that's served me so well, and also threatened to destroy me.

Roll the dice.

Tags: #career #banking #computing #alcohol #caffeine

This is a story about unsolicited photos...

As I browsed through my photo library looking for a suitable image to accompany a boring blog post about economics, instead I noticed that I had a lot of photos that girls had sent me showing me what their preferred method of contraception was. I'm not a psychologist, so I don't really know the significance of them sending me pictures of their contraceptive method.

I really must re-iterate that these pics were sent to me without solicitation. I may have to create a folder to keep all the pictures in, in case I'm browsing through my photos and somebody was to see them.

If anybody's an expert on female psychology, they might want to drop me a line and tell me what it means when a girl sends a guy a picture of her contraceptive pill and/or the plaster when she's had a contraceptive injection/implant.

It's all rather mystifying.

Tags: #sex #relationships