This is a story about being homeless...

This first map shows everywhere I lived, as I was dragged around all over the place by my fucking parents. The stupid cunts then decided to move back to the village where I briefly first went to school. I went to 8 different schools. What a shower of shits. I cried and cried that we were leaving the sweet little village in the Cotswolds where my parents now live again. What a pointless waste of time & money, as well as being totally destructive of a stable and happy childhood.

This second map shows the 25+ places that I have attempted to make my home. From number 5 to number 25, this was all a consequence of my parents reneging on an insistent demand that they should be involved in 'helping' me, only to find that they then didn't honour their promise at all when I was in a vulnerable and precarious position. A stitch in time saves nine, as they say. Cunts.

I now live on the Isle of Dogs and my home is very nice. I'm reasonably settled and stable, but I am quite far away from any friends, and there isn't really much on the 'island'. I would much rather live in North London, where most of my friends are, and there is more going on that I'd be interested in getting involved in.

However, having had such a horrific time the past few years, I'm happy to just have some stability in where I'm living. Can you imagine how exhausting it is, moving between all those different places with all your worldly possessions? It's only because I had good training with the Dorset Expeditionary Society that I have been able to just about cope. I'd call it an adventure, but it's been more like a nightmare.

Anyway, perhaps this snapshot gives you some appreciation for the shit that people are going through in their private lives. We are quick to condemn people as not making smart life choices, or being deserving of the consequences of some decision they supposedly took with free will. The reality is that one small thing can create absolute chaos in somebody's life, and destroy them.

Much like the butterfly that flapped its wings in Japan, causing a hurricane in America, seemingly small insignificant things can have a big impact on the stability of a person's life. That's why it's important to keep your promises and honour your commitments. That's why it's important to act with integrity. That's why it's important to treat your kids with decency and respect, and not just be a drug addict drunkard waste of fucking space, fucking up their life in pursuit of your high.

As you can tell, I'm thoroughly exhausted by all the stress, and fucked off by the suggestion that it was in any way my free will that took my on this torturous path through life. Survival and stability is all I ask for.

Tags: #homeless #parents #childhood #london

This is a story about how to fuck up a kid...

I love the symbolism of this image. What it means to me is this: we have to jump through hoops, like some kind of trained circus animal.

What made you decide that you could give your kids a brilliant life? What made you decide that creating new life on an overcrowded planet was a great idea?

Was it the fact that climate change is an undisputed problem, and your children will inherit a drowning world?

Was it the fact that neoliberal capitalism has given us a cruel ruling elite who have enslaved most of humanity in menial jobs, and left the rest to starve?

Was it that a small handful of oligarchs, monarchs and plutocrats control all the world's wealth, and the chances of being elevated from poverty are the same as being hit by an asteroid, twice, on the way to collect your lottery winnings?

Was it that the social structure of the tribe, the clan and the extended family has now all-but ended, as we are forced to roam the entire planet in search of a golden opportunity that does not exist, and we are forced to content ourselves with social media, text message and video-chat interactions, that are in place of actual face-to-face human relationships with our nearest and dearest?

It won't be long before our babies are whisked away from us at birth, and we can do nothing but follow their progress on a Twitter page, as they forge their way through an educational system designed to produce compliant drones, who have no hope but to join the enslaved masses in some soul-crushingly dreadful job. And the reason why we never get to see our children? So we can continue to pursue our unfulfilling jobs for as many hours as we can possibly work before collapsing with exhaustion.

I have this little fantasy about being a dad. In my fantasy, me and some imagined partner are woken up early in the morning by our two children. One child is a toddler, and the other is slightly older but still a preschooler. The kids clamber into bed and we all spend the morning watching cartoons together. Then we all get up and dressed and eat pancakes together around the kitchen table.

Then, I also have this imagined version of reality.

I wake up before the kids, get showered and dressed although I'm desperately tired. I then have a stressful commute through traffic and endless crowds of people. I arrive at a job that I hate, because it's boring and stressful, underpaid and my bosses have nothing but contempt for me and the capitalist scum who run all the corporations have no gratitude or respect for the workers who toil to line their pockets. I get to look at a photograph of my children on my desk, but this is merely a form of emotional bribery. Without the picture of my kids on my desk, I would question what the hell I was even doing, and just quit the awful job.

In my imagined version of reality, I work extra late to try and impress the bosses and get a precious promotion that may allow the basic essentials of life to be bought without constant financial struggle to make ends meet. Every time the car breaks down or some home improvements are needed, it always costs more than any savings that have been put away as contingency for these eventualities. A debt spiral has been happening because of having to use short-term borrowing to simply meet the cost of living. Then more debt was incurred servicing the first debt. This wasn't money that was spent on frivolities, but on such things as fixing broken plumbing and essential child-rearing equipment like cribs and pushchairs.

My imagination tells me that, in reality, I would then struggle home late through yet another stressful commute, only to find that the kids are already in bed. My partner is exhausted from the demands of working a part time job that brings in marginally more money than the cost of the childcare that we must pay for so that she can have her very badly paid job. Juggling work and childcare arrangements, she must travel twice as far as a normal commute, in order to pick up and drop off the kids at their daycare facilities. The household budget is super tight, and extremely diligent use of discount coupons, shopper loyalty schemes and knowing the cheapest supermarket to obtain our groceries for each product, is the only way that a few extra pounds can be found to balance the books.

Exhausted and stressed - in this imaginary reality - we collapse into bed. The pressure that me and my imaginary partner are under means that we are arguing all the time, so we aren't having sex or any kind of physical intimacy anymore. We are just two exhausted scared and anxious people, trying to survive and hide the desperation of the situation from the children.

The children - I imagine - are browbeaten into believing that they have one shot at getting good school grades and not fucking up their lives. Me and my imaginary partner tell our kids how important it is that they study hard and try their best, so that they can go to university and get a great job. We repeatedly tell our kids that life is a struggle, and the world is a mean place, and that they should stop laughing and playing, and knuckle down and do some damn homework.

Grow up! Concentrate! This is important! Pay attention! You have no idea what the real world's like! We rebuke our little kids. We are desperately anxious that our children should not suffer the same fate that we endure. Endless arguments over schoolwork and bad grades. Endless stress about whether or not our kids are thriving in the rigid educational system. Every bit of spare time we have goes into educational activities. We can't just make a fort out of cushions... we have to turn it into a history lesson, or a lesson about the physics of why buildings don't fall down. Everything is twisted into an opportunity to try and cram a bit more knowledge into our little kids' craniums.

Your kid drives themselves nuts with the pressure and expectation placed upon them. Kids are sensitive to their parents anxiety. Kids are like sponges, and they're getting the message loud & clear about how important it is that they apply themselves and try their hardest. Some kids will respond, and will allow themselves to have their personality dissected, sifted and sorted. Some kids will quietly allow themselves to be judged and graded by complete strangers who couldn't give two fucks about who they are as an individual.

Then, finally, it's time for the big wide world that we've promised our children is the whole reason why they can't have a childhood. The whole reason why we didn't let our kids play in the dirt, or spend time with their friends, was so that they could have their noses in books, writing essays or taking mock examinations. Now, it's time for your kids to spread their wings and be whatever they want to be.

Use your imagination! Follow your dreams! Find your passion! We tell our precious children.

What we really mean is: go get a sensible job for a reputable corporation, shovelling shit for the capitalists.

Childhood was jettisoned in favour of academic achievements. We told our kids they couldn't be friends with some of the other children, because they were too stupid and a bad influence. We told our kids they couldn't laugh, play and have the simple joys of their childhood, because there was too much at stake. Our kids' precious future was on the line. It was life or death.

And now, your kids have the same shitty job that doesn't pay the bills and is inadequate to support a family. Your kids busted their balls to get their grades, go to university, follow their dreams. Guess what? There aren't any jobs for historians or philosophers. There aren't any jobs where you need to speak dead languages like Latin or Ancient Greek. There aren't any jobs for artists.

Your kids are going to have to get a job keeping score for the capitalists, while they wait for the planet to become totally uninhabitable. It's a football game with 21 referees and 2 goalkeepers. It's a rowing race with 20 coxswains and 2 rowers. Over 80% of the 'economy' is made up by service sector bullshit.

This is it? This is what you you wanted to give your kids? This is the life that you thought your children would be so happy to live? Did you think about this stuff? You did think about this stuff, didn't you? No? Why didn't you think about this stuff?

"Everything will be alright in the end"

No. It probably won't be.

Things probably won't be alright in the end, because everybody has that attitude. Through collective wilful stupidity, and a desire to ignore the evidence in front of our eyes, we spawn yet more children in the hope that one of the little fuckers is smart enough to solve the world's problems. It's like setting alight to the basement of your house, in the hope that it will put out a fire in the roof.

Don't get me wrong; I love kids. I think kids are cute and I love the way that they make me feel happy when I look after them. I definitely feel very fulfilled as an animal, when I'm playing make-believe daddy, and imagining that I might have kids of my own. There's definitely something biologically right about reproducing one's genes. However, ethically it would seem to be the wrong thing to do.

You know, you made your choice, and I like you and your kids. But collectively it's fucking insane.

I would say that the only way to redeem yourself now would be to pull your kids out of school. Go and live near your parents, uncles and aunties. Form a little village of your relatives. Let your kids play and be children. Teach your kids about the grave responsibility that faces them, but don't fucking bullshit them. Stop selling this lie that hard work and a lost childhood will somehow pave the way for a happy adulthood.

Just look at the goddam stats. Soaring rates of mental illness and suicide. Almost everybody hates their fucking job and doesn't get to spend enough time with their families. Almost everybody is stressed as fuck about money, job insecurity and the uncertainty over whether they will be able to provide housing, food, clothing and everything else they need for them and their children. It's fucking awful.

But, you know what? There are more of us than the goddam capitalists who want to maintain the status quo. Sure there are police and the army, who are there to make sure that the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor. However, the system only continues to function while we all collectively help to prop it up. Are you happy? Is this what you want for your children? Is this it?

Is this it?

Tags: #capitalism #childhood

This is a story about ethics...

Let us suppose for a moment that the great scientists who gave us our quantum mechanical world, were also animal lovers. Instead of putting cats into boxes with radioactively decaying elements which trigger poison gas to be released, killing the poor innocent creatures, how's about if we dress them up in clothes instead?

In this alternative quantum experiment, instead of Erwin Schroëdinger's original design, we shall instead be putting socks on the poor cat that faced a 50% probability of death before.

In our new experiment, we shall be putting different coloured socks on the cat. The socks can be whatever colour we like, but they're always different colours from each other.

As the cat walks into the room, we can see that the cat is wearing a pink sock. We can't see the cat's other foot yet, but we know that the other sock is not going to be pink.

It's not like the second sock decided to choose its colour when we looked at the first. It's not like the second sock needed to know the colour of the first, and have the information transmitted to it as soon as we made our first observation.

John Stewart Bell penned a tongue-in-cheek scientific paper explaining the simplicity of hidden variables, which seem to offer a much more objective reality than the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics. For sure, the likes of Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg had elegantly described the subatomic world with mathematical precision, but the need to abandon a tangible objective reality seems unnecessary if we say that there are hidden variables.

However, from this simple thought experiment comes a theory that is very real and very testable. Bell's theorem says that the experimental results will differ significantly in a quantum world versus one that behaves classically. Quantum mechanics makes predictions that no classical theory could. Therefore, if you want to know whether probabilistic behaviour indicates a failure to truly imagine what's going on in the subatomic world, you just have to do the experiments.

If Bell's theorem were proven correct, this could suggest that experimental observations are "known" in advance, and in fact we are living in the 'clockwork' universe as predicted, for example, by Newtonian mechanics. Were you to know the precise starting conditions of everything, you would be able to predict everything that would ever happen: no surprises!

In short, Bell's theorem was tested, and the result was surprising: we may be living in a superdeterministic reality, where there is no free will and all outcomes are fixed in advance.

Tags: #physics

This is a story about being a whiny little rich kid...

"Daddy didn't love me enough" I cry, on the psychotherapist's couch. "I blew all the money my parents gave me on an unsuccessful business idea, and now I'm going to have to ask for some more" I wail. "Life is so unfair" I say, with a sour face.

In actual fact, I have never dared to dream. I've been offered a bunch of university places unconditionally, but I've never thought that it would be practical or realistic to spend time studying when it doesn't pay the bills. Of course, I would have loved to stay with my peer group, make new friends, fall in love, party & get drunk, have the joys of freshers week and also complain for the rest of my life about how stressful my finals were and how I stayed awake all night to finish my dissertation.

There are several career paths that are much more suited to my interests and my values than my chosen profession. However, how could I possibly pursue my dreams when life is sheer stressful misery without money? Where am I going to get money? Is it going to be gifted to me by my family? No way. Not a chance.

"Do what you love and money will follow" rich beautiful children are told by their doting parents. For the rest of us, it's just some pipe dream that will end up with us returning to the rat race somewhat humbled and with our life savings having disappeared into somebody else's pockets.

A fool and his money are soon parted, and there are so many people coughing up loads of cash to a lifestyle industry that promises to deliver the job of their dreams... for a price. Loads of people are spunking their hard-earned money from the rat race, on the dream of starting a little business where they can be their own boss and have a flexible lifestyle. Bullshit.

For those who are seriously rich, through their wealthy family and pure dumb luck, they are able to have multiple attempts at finding their dream job or founding a business that's self-sustaining enough to be able to pay a meagre wage. So many 'self-made' successful entrepreneurs do not bear close scrutiny. Upon detailed examination, it appears that most of the 'success stories' started with large interest free loans from their family. Success requires your risk to be underwritten. How can you take the risk of setting yourself up in business if failure is going to leave you destitute?

There's a joke in the startup community about the first round of investment being for "friends, family and fools". However, I'm not some rich kid dreamer. Every company that I've founded (I'm on number 4 now) has been profitable. I've never had a bankruptcy. For some spoiled little rich kids, having a bankruptcy is seen as a rite of passage. I think bankruptcy just shows a complete lack of entrepreneurial ability and a reckless attitude towards business that is detestable.

Of course I'd love it if I came from a wealthy family, and I felt that my risk was underwritten so that I could keep trying multiple business ideas until I found one that worked really well. My businesses are always grounded in the realm of profitability. I've built businesses that have needed very little investment. My businesses have always been cashflow positive. I don't have money behind me and failure has meant destitution.

I'm a bit pissed off that my parents got handouts to buy a house, start a business, and generally had their risk underwritten. Not only did they get a free university eduction, but they also fucked about doing whatever the fuck they wanted, and being reckless idiots, taking drugs and generally doing very little to take some fucking responsibility.

The thing that really pisses me off, is that they were then hypocritical enough to tell me to not dream. They told me that university was unaffordable because they'd spent all the family's money on cigarettes, booze and drugs. They told me that I would have to get the first job I could find, because they had no interest in supporting me and my sister in achieving our fullest possible potential. My parents' objective in life was to bumble along drunk and drugged up, working dead-end jobs that neither paid the bills nor provided them with a pension for the future. Dickheads.

So, if I paint this picture of myself as a rich playboy, it's all a bit of an act. Obviously, when things went wrong for me, I ended up homeless and destitute. Nobody was there for me. Nobody underwrote my risk. No assistance was forthcoming.

Everything I've built, and everything I've done, has come through my own resourcefulness and hard work. I've suffered in the bullshit jobs of the rat race in order to raise enough cash to pursue my dreams. When things haven't worked out, it's been me who's paid the price. Each time I try to escape the rat race, I do so in full knowledge that failure means homelessness and destitution again.

I live with stress and fear, and it's quite real. Nobody's going to take pity on me. Nobody has given me a hand out.

"Where is everybody? Where are the people who claim to care about you?" my flatmate asked once, when I had been into hospital and a couple of social workers were trying to help me out, because I am obviously so very alone. My flatmate was surprised that anybody who seems to be popular enough amongst their friends and successful at work, could find themselves so utterly alone. I guess that's what happens when your parents' priority in life is the getting and taking of drugs.

I was not surprised. I've spent weeks in hospital, with the only visitors being a handful of London friends. My family are as good as dead to me.

In fact, my family have been a hinderance not a help. Drunken and abusive phonecalls in the middle of the night, and being expected to travel hundreds of miles, spending hundreds of pounds on petrol and gifts... and for what? To be abused? To be left to die on my own in a hospital that's only a 45 minute train ride away. What a joke.

And so, I'm neither one of the beautiful people, nor am I blessed with family wealth. Don't believe the hype. All those 'self made' entrepreneurs are backed by loving families who are at least reasonably wealthy.

So, am I upset with my lot in life? Do I think that I deserve the advantages enjoyed by those serial entrepreneurs who go back to their families again and again to get more money to keep their business ambitions alive? Do I think that I should be able to pursue the arts, because my wealthy family are all duty-bound to become patrons? No.

I just want to escape the rat race, because I wasn't born to just pay bills and die. I'm fed up of being a wage slave to the wealthy elite. I'm fed up with the rigged game that means you can never get ahead. There's no escape. There's no peace. There's no real opportunity.

We're told the world is stuffed full of opportunity and the streets are paved with gold. Take another look. Look really hard this time. Yes? You see now? You need money to make money. You need a wealthy family behind you to underwrite your risk. Behind every artist who is loving what they do, is a wealthy patron. Behind every person pursuing their dreams is a whole heap of money.

Don't pursue your dreams. If you pursue your dreams, you are just impoverishing yourself, and making yourself an easy target for those who wish to keep you in economic slavery. Without those precious life savings, you can't escape and you'll have to go back to the rat race with your begging bowl.

That's what's happened to me, and that's why I'm so unhappy about it. Not because I'm a spoiled little rich kid.

Tags: #career #startup #parents #capitalism

This is a story about shutting down conversations...

Why don't we complain more? When things are going badly and luck is not in our favour, why don't we speak up about how unfair life can be? Why are we not allowed to discuss how hopeless we feel? Why aren't we allowed to say that we feel overwhelmed and that we can't cope?

There are numerous ways of shutting a person down, and ending any conversation before it even gets started:

• "Life is hard"
• "Life is unfair"
• "Deal with it"
• "Get over it"
• "Other people have it so much harder than you"
• "Look on the bright side"
• "You'll find a way to cope"
• "You'll get there in the end"
• "Look how far you've come"
• "You're a strong person"
• "God wouldn't give you anything you couldn't handle"
• "This will pass"
• "It gets easier"
• "Keep going"
• "Don't give up"

All of these phrases have the same objective: to shut the person up who is in distress. We seem to believe that talking about our distress is somehow wallowing in self-pity. We seem to think that the best way to deal with problems is just to pretend like they're not there and that they'll go away on their own. It's akin to saying "LA LA LA! NOT LISTENING!!".

This cultural programming is so engrained that we repeat the useless mantras to ourselves. When stress, anxiety and hopelessness are overwhelming us, we say the very same things to ourselves. It's like we're trying to bully and abuse ourselves into happiness. "Get happy or fuck off and die" is the unequivocal message that is being sent.

Talking about depression is now permitted, but the message is very much the same: go to your doctor, get a therapist, take some medication, take MORE medication. I can't believe how many people would say "have you taken your pills today?" or "maybe you need to increase your dose" when you're having a bad day. This is part of the reason why I don't tell my work colleagues that I have struggled with mental illness, and it's part of the reason why I don't take medication. It's too much of a cop-out to medicalise a situation which might be brought about by circumstances, rather than pathological brain chemistry.

There was an experiment where mice had to run across an electrified floor in order to get to their food. The mice were obviously pretty stressed about this, and would exhibit all kinds of symptoms of anxiety when they were getting hungry. The mice knew that the only way that they were going to get fed would be to have painful electric shocks jolting through their feet as they crossed to the other side of their cage, where the food was.

The mice would get more and more stressed, until finally they were so hungry that they had to dash across the electrified floor as fast as they possibly could, getting zapped the whole time. Pretty stressful circumstances, right?

When the anti-anxiety drug diazepam was discovered, they were testing it on these mice. The mice who were injected with diazepam would exhibit none of the symptoms of stress and anxiety, and would wander across the electrified floor in an unhurried manner. The mice who were under the influence of diazepam still felt the pain, and their faces winced with each painful electric shock that was delivered to their feet. The mice just didn't give a fuck anymore.

Pain exists to condition our behaviour. You don't stick your hand in a fire more than once. You're careful with a knife because of that one time you cut yourself. Pain tells us about our environment. Pain gives us our list of dos and don'ts, without them having to be extensively listed in some kind of compendium of things that fuck you up.

Anxiety exists to tell us to avoid pain, when we can see it coming. Without anxiety, we would stand in the middle of the road, watching a truck hurtling towards us and think "oh, this is going to hurt" but not actually be bothered about getting out of the way.

We now have a society where pain and anxiety seem to be accepted as facts of life. We can see the onrushing disaster of climate change, but yet we just stand there in the middle of the road waiting for it to smash into us and obliterate most life on Earth. We know that our jobs are utter boring bullshit and are destroying our physical and mental health, but we still continue to work them until we're too old and infirm to continue any more.

In the oft-quoted example: a frog is put in a pan of cool water, and then the water has been slowly brought to the boil. Nobody has sensed just how deadly the situation has got. Nobody is jumping out of the pan to save ourselves. We're all just sitting in a pan of boiling water saying "this is fine" like the cartoon dog in the house that's on fire.

Image credit: K C Green

If things get too hard to handle, and the danger that you sense - which is very real, tangible and rational - can no longer be quieted by telling yourself "everything's going to be fine" then you can trot off to your doctor and get yourself some happy pills to mask your symptoms.

How much depression is due to demoralisation, demotivation, boredom, stressful bullshit jobs with never-ending makework? How much anxiety is due to job insecurity, financial uncertainty, hand-to-mouth existence, well founded fears about terrorism, violence, rape, murder and paedophilia?

For sure the media rams the world's problems down our throat 24x7 from all corners of the globe, but fundamentally, even in our little local communities shitty stuff is happening. Even on the streets of wealthy London, there are awful things being perpetrated against innocent people.

Saying that life is a fight for survival, and that we are doomed to some kind of Malthusian catastrophe is disingenuous. Blaming people for their own misfortune is just an excuse for inaction. What we're basically saying is "at least I don't live in Africa" even though our lives are hardly peachy.

I would imagine that this put up & shut up ethos is trickled down from our ruling elite. While wealth is not trickling down at all, we are told that we should be grateful for a few crumbs from the table of the fat cat plutocrats. Bullying and drugging us into submission, our whole culture is one where we criticise anybody who dares to voice their discomfort and dissatisfaction with their lot in life, even though we ourselves are living with nearly unbearable stress.

It's as if we are all eating handfuls of ground up glass and razor blades, and somebody whose mouth is dripping with blood suddenly says "what are we doing? why are we doing this? we should stop!" and then everybody else rounds on them and says "we're all getting on with it without complaining, so you should too" and "take some painkillers if the pain is too much". It's as if the peer pressure to keep suffering the pain and eating the sharp glass and blades is so great that we continue to act irrationally and kill ourselves.

Food for thought, anyway.

Tags: #depression #anxiety #mentalhealth #suicide

This is a story about being on the run...

When you're no fixed abode, the systems can't really cope. It's hard to even rent a VHS video cassette without two forms of identity that prove your address, let alone get a job or in any way re-enter civilised society.

Nowadays, when you come to rent a house or a flat, you will need to do a credit check. How are you going to pass a credit check if you don't have two recent utility bills? How are you going to pass a credit check if you're not on the electoral roll anywhere? Often times, even jobs require a credit check.

Can't get a job and a place to live without a home, and can't get a home and an income without an address: Catch 22. Game over.

I'm now on the electoral roll again. I'm now the bill payer for council tax, electric, gas, water, sewerage, telephone and every other service that leeches away your hard-earned cash every month, along with your rent or mortgage. Interestingly, you can't even get electric & gas without a credit check sometimes. Sometimes you have to buy electric & gas on a key meter, so that you don't rack up big bills that you're in no position to pay.

When I went off grid, I disappeared out of the system.

Without the system knowing that I was paying utility bills somewhere, the system assumed I was a no-good worthless piece of shit. I would have been unable to rent my apartment, except for the fact that I'm a blagger and a hustler, and I kicked off a big stink with the letting agent about being a non-dom and wanting to keep my financial affairs private. They seemed to buy it and let me get away without doing a credit check.

Interestingly, I just about managed to sneak onto the HSBC contract I did last year, because the system hadn't quite caught up with the fact that I'd disappeared off the grid. HSBC is not in the habit of employing homeless junkies and giving them the opportunity to improve their lives and get ahead. Thankfully they are also truly appalling at due diligence, which was the project I was there to work on, ironically.

This year, I'm now security cleared to a level that would allow me to get onto nuclear sites, most probably. That's not unusual for me. I signed the Official Secrets Act when I was 17, and I've been on several nuclear submarines, as well as working on some highly classified projects. God only knows how the vetting works, but they didn't seem to pick up that I have 3 criminal cautions from the police, or the fact that I've spent the best part of the last 3 years hustling like hell to try and save my own life.

The system has very much worked against me, to try and keep me trapped into poverty and homelessness, but the tide has turned.

Today I received a letter. On the back it was marked "ProSearch". I thought "oh no! what horrible thing from my past is now rearing its ugly head to come and bite me on my arse?".

Upon opening the letter, it appears like ARM Holdings Plc - which is a company I invested in back in the 1990s - has been trying to track me down to give me some money. The last address they have on file is from 10 years ago. They spent some money trying to find me, so they can give me some money. That's quite cool.

People don't generally track me down to give me money. In fact, a lot of the people who owe me money tend to go out of their way to avoid me. Not because I would ask them for the money back, but because they probably don't have any intention of paying me back, and perhaps they feel bad about their debt. I expect a few people who owe me money would pay me back if they could, but they're never likely to escape the grinding poverty that they're in. I'd rather write the money off anyway. I can always earn some more money, but making new friends is hard.

Anyway, this is quite a nice change. Instead of bloody bean counting idiots chasing their pathetic paltry sums of money that apparently I owe because somebody sold me into slavery before I was born, I'm now having people trying to find me to give me money.

I don't feel owed this, you understand? I don't feel entitled. But it's good when the tide turns and it feels like hard work is actually getting somewhere.

I wasn't born to just pay bills and then die.

Tags: #capitalism

This is a story about getting promoted at work...

I can wear pretty much whatever I want to work. Some of us techies wear jeans and t-shirts. Some people wear fashionable trousers and tops. I wear a white collar. It sends a message: I'm an idle manager, and I'm not going to roll up my sleeves and get myself dirty.

How do you get a promotion once you have become skilled at your trade? Once you have mastered your chosen profession, how do you keep growing in your career?

A handful of software engineers, programmers, web designers, hackers and people who are generally skilled in the dark arts of making computers do magical things, will have the good fortune of being promoted into management positions. It is not a logical progression.

One of my friends who is a startup founder talked about how "lucky" his engineers were to receive a good salary for their job. He talked about the wages that he pays as if it were an act of charity, and his employees were fortunate to be able to write code and get paid.

I can only imagine that people who shuffle paper around their desks and sit in tedious meetings all day long, are jealous of the people who actually get to make stuff. I can certainly vouch for my frustrations at being away from the coal face. I'm so bored, with nothing to do but 'manage' a team. Management is horrible.

I'm in an interesting position to be able to compare myself with my peers. On my current project, there are 8 teams who are working together to deliver the final end product. This means that I have 7 other managers, all of whom started work at a similar time to me, to directly compare myself with.

Myself and the other 7 managers deliver our work in 2 week chunks, with a demonstration to the customer at the end of it. We demonstrate the work that we have completed in the preceding fortnight. The customer then either accepts that the work is up to the expected standard, or rejects anything that they are unhappy with. Also, it's quite possible that not as much work as was expected was delivered. Failing to meet your delivery commitment, and missing the deadline, is something that is very common on IT projects.

I've worked on the project for about 14 weeks: 7 two-week chunks. The team that I manage has delivered on their commitments for 7 fortnights in a row, and the customer is very happy with everything we've done.

The other 7 teams have consistently missed their deadlines and have a number of things that they have demonstrated that have not met the customer's expectations.

So, what's the magic trick? What's the secret behind good management? I must be managing the hell out of the members of my team, right?

Wrong.

I've been developing software for the best part of 20 years, and my biggest problem is with micromanagers. Managers are so keen to be seen as adding some value, that they can't help themselves from getting involved with things that they're absolutely clueless about.

IT projects used to be run by project managers. A project manager is a jerk with a clipboard who's attended a week-long training course in PRINCE2 (Projects in Controlled Environments) and has then gone tear-assing around town, botching every project they've ever laid their hands on. Project managers are a pointless waste of space.

So, along came a practice called Agile software development. From Agile came the idea of a Scrum Master. A Scrum Master is supposed to be one of the developers, who knows the Agile methodology and can help to organise the team. Scrum Master is not as job... it's a role that one of your existing development team has.

Unfortunately, that left a load of useless project managers on the scrapheap.

All the project managers then paid to go on a week-long training course to become Certified Scrum Masters. They then returned to the same companies where they had been screwing up the IT projects before, and demanded that the projects hire them as "Scrum Managers" to do full-time "Scrum Management". They then went about doing everything they'd always done, just the way they did it before, and making a balls up of every IT project.

I'm a bit different. I crossed out the words "Development Manager", "Architect" and "Software Developer" from my CV and resubmitted it to an employment agency with the words "Scrum Master" substituted. I then had the shortest, easiest interview of my life, and was immediately hired to be a 'Scrum Manager'.

Since then, I cancelled every meeting that my team were expected to attend, banned anybody from approaching my team members directly, and then left them alone. I left my team all alone for 14 weeks. I don't hassle them. I don't try to 'add value'. I don't try to get involved. I just let them get on with things.

So, am I slacking? Well, if my team escalate an issue to me, I work to try and get it resolved, but otherwise I leave them alone. If my team need something they don't have, I try to find it for them. I try to think about what they're going to need in future, and make sure it's ready before they need it. Other than that, yes, I suppose I AM slacking.

If somebody said to me "Nick, I need you to justify your job. Show me what work you've done" then I would find it very difficult to actually point to something more tangible than saying management-speak bullshit like "I've facilitated the productivity of my team".

Results speak loudest though, and I know I'm never going to get a grilling from my bosses, because my team are happy, productive, and they keep hitting their deadlines with high quality software that the customer is prepared to pay for.

It's incredibly boring and incredibly frustrating, sitting on my hands. My team show me stuff, and my natural instinct is to try and think of something that could be improved. My natural instinct is to understand precisely what each team member is doing, and why. My natural instinct is to try and tell people what they should be doing, how and why. I have to fight all these instincts.

Sometimes, my team will come to me because they want a decision. My natural instinct is to have a discussion. My natural instinct is to understand all the pros and cons and debate them. I don't do this. I just make a decision and then everybody gets on with it. I might make the wrong decision, but as long as I'm right more than I'm wrong, then we're winning.

And we're most definitely winning.

The other 7 teams are unhappy places to be. There is a huge problem with staff turnover in the other 7 teams. Lots and lots of people are taking time off sick in all the other teams, except ours. My little team seems to be a happy oasis of calm in a sea of stress and accusations of blame.

Just about the only thing I do with my day is to spend 10 minutes complimenting each team member on the work that they've done and thanking them for their contribution. I spend a bit of time apologising for any frustrations there might be for things not going perfectly, and a bit more time reassuring everybody that I am listening and trying to improve things. Other than that, I leave everybody alone.

Every two weeks, the team get to show off what they've done, and every two weeks they have a big push and manage to get everything done to a high standard and give an impressive demonstration of their work to our customer. My only job is to be there to shut the customer down if they start asking why this or that hasn't been done, when we never said it would be.

We don't underpromise and overdeliver. We make a realistic commitment for the work we're going to undertake, in agreement with both the customer and the team, and then we get on and build it. Then we demonstrate that we did what we said we were going to do. Nothing more. Nothing less.

What's the role of management in all this? I haven't really figured it out. I feel terrible. I feel like a fraud. I feel like I'm getting paid money for doing nothing.

But doing nothing seems to get software built.

Nobody likes to be micromanaged. Nobody likes having somebody breathing down their neck. Nobody likes to feel they're not respected enough to be allowed to get on with their job. No professional is going to thank you for trying to interfere with their field of expertise. Nobody wants to have to explain their shit to a goddam manager.

Software should be like a delightful magic trick.

It's a recipe for success that's working brilliantly well with my team, as proven by the numbers and the direct comparison with my peers: the other 7 teams, who are under-performing and unhappy.

However... I'm not happy. I'm bored.

Tags: #career #computing #agile

This is a story about setting a good example...

Drug induced paranoia can cause you to see threats and conspiracies where they don't exist. Drug taking can cause poor judgement. Being intoxicated and high on drugs impairs your perception, so you do not see reality as it truly is.

I have extensive experience of witnessing drug paranoia, poor judgement and impaired perception. I was raised by a couple of alcoholic drug addicts.

According to my dad, he was a model father. I'm sure he was, in his head. I'm sure as he sat on that sofa, high on drugs, he was being the greatest dad who ever lived. The drugs addled his brain, so he was unable to distinguish fantasy from reality.

According to my dad, I was a terrible child. I'm sure I was, in his head. I'm sure that as he sat there on that sofa, high on drugs, his brain was telling him what an evil little shit I was, and how I was out to get him. My dad used to talk about the Masons and the Illuminati. There was a conspiracy. The world was out to get him. In particular, his own son was out to get him. I was sent to ruin his drug binge. I was sent to ruin his life.

According to my dad, he knew best. I'm sure he did know best, in his head. I'm sure that as he sat there on that sofa, high on drugs, he thought he knew everything. Drugs tell you that you're really smart and that you've figured out the meaning of life, the universe and everything. When you're high on drugs, you think you've got all the answers. Sadly, those of us who dwell in reality find that the drug addict's answers don't really add up.

In the pursuit of drugs and booze, I was always a secondary consideration. My parents like to joke about putting my moses basket or carrycot on top of the jukebox, while they spent all their time in the pub. Ha! Ha! Ha! GOOD ONE MUM AND DAD THAT'S HILARIOUS.

My mum always seemed to get romantically involved with fucking drug addict losers. My surname - Grant - comes from some heroin addict guy who my mum finally decided was a waste of space. She swapped Mr Grant for my dad, who is also a drug addict waste of space.

My dad spends a great deal of time telling my mum what an evil son they have. Get my mum on her own, and she's OK. Mums know best. Mums know their own children. Presumably, away from the drug intoxication, reality and rational thought prevail, and it's possible to understand that children are not born evil. If you're not high on drugs, you can see what's really going on, and you can see that your son is not part of some conspiracy. If you have a normal brain free from mind-numbing chemicals, you can see that it's a crazy idea, that your son is out to get you.

My dad has always assumed the very worst about me. Instead of having a "birds & bees" conversation with me, I remember my dad telling me that it's not OK to rape women. What the fuck goes on in HIS head, if he thinks that people need telling not to go raping anybody?

I would have thought that most parents want the best for their children. I would have thought that most parents want to give their children as many opportunities as they can.

In his drug-induced paranoia, my dad was convinced that I would take any opportunity I could to perpetrate crimes against the family. My dad seemed convinced that his job was to simply protect the world against me. My dad was never pleased with my achievements, but instead was just waiting to uncover the 'evidence' of my wrongdoing and evil intent.

My childhood was about arguing that I hadn't done anything wrong, or defending myself against complete fantasy allegations that I would commit some act of wrongdoing given half a chance.

You just can't treat your kids like that. You just can't treat your kids like they're your enemy.

Why did I make my dad feel so threatened? Why did my dad think I was so evil? Why did my dad think I could do no right, and I was pre-programmed to perpetrate evil acts at every opportunity? Why did my dad find nothing to praise in my achievements, believing that they were only some elaborate ruse to cover up my true nature? Why did my dad go to such great lengths to accuse me of everything he could think of, and attempt to find evidence of my mistakes, failings and immorality?

Because I'm a forgiving and open-minded person, who believes that no person is born evil, I am minded to think that it was all the drugs that my dad used to take, and the fact that he was acutely aware of his own shortcomings and immorality. It feels like my dad projected his own failings onto me, so I grew up feeling guilty about stuff that wasn't even true about me.

I find it particularly telling that my dad and my ex-wife got along very well. They both had a delusional belief that they were whiter than white, while trying to make me feel responsible for their fucked up blame avoidance and over-inflated egos.

In the end, I thought "fuck it".

If you gaslight somebody, telling them they're a bad person the whole time, eventually they'll prove you right.

But I'm not a bad person, so I couldn't even bring myself to actually commit an act of evil.

I briefly had a very confusing period, where I was eventually so bullied and abused that I began to believe that I was a bad person, but everybody who knows me and everybody who is independent and nonjudgemental was telling me that it wasn't true. Despite the condemnation and criticism I had suffered at the hands of my dad and my ex, it turns out that nobody else agreed with them.

When I cut my dad and my ex out of my life, everything improved, and I was suddenly no longer an evil person, out to rob, lie, cheat and swindle the world. Coincidence?

Tags: #parents #divorce #drugs #addiction #gaslighting

This is a story about fear of death...

I had 3 major admissions to the Royal Free Hospital on the hills of Hampstead, overlooking central London. I snapped this shot after waking up with canulas in both my arms, 10 cables attaching me to an ECG machine, a motorised drip pump shoving fluid into me as fast as it could go. I was a pincushion from all the blood samples that had been taken.

Doing a quick body scan, my right leg was horrifically swollen. My right knee was damaged. The operation to reunite the two halves of my calf muscle, repair 4 severed tendons and reconnect 2 nerves, was still healing. I had a big burn on my lower abdomen. There was throbbing dull pain just under my ribcage at the front, and either side of my back, where my liver was torn and my kidneys were failing. There was fluid on my lungs. My chest was tight and constricted.

Was I scared? Did I call out for a loved one? Did it bother me that my prognosis was pretty grim? Do you think it even crossed my mind that I might die alone, except for one or two strangers in the mostly empty ward?

The photo captures the sun low in the sky, not long after dawn.

As long as I die in London, I know I tried my best to find my way back to the land of the living. I have no fear of death in London. Nobody dies of shame in London. If you can't find your will to live in London, you can slip away peacefully. You're never truly alone in London.

I had a 4 hour operation under general anaesthetic to fix the injury inflicted upon me by my parents. I travelled home on the bus on my own after a few days recovering in hospital. My leg was in plaster cast, held in severe dorsiflexion and was not weight bearing. I was as weak as a kitten. I let myself back into my friend's house, hopped up the stairs to the guest bedroom and collapsed in bed.

I had already spent several days in Oxford John Radcliffe Hospital in their high-dependency care unit, while they tried to stabilise my muscle damage and save me from kidney failure. I'd made my way back to London with a blood sodden bandage that was little better than the field dressing that I had improvised with sanitary towels and a dressing gown cord, before paramedics arrived. I had assumed that despite the wound being down to the bone, it was nothing that a couple of stitches at a minor injury clinic couldn't fix. It wasn't me who called 999. I was just trying to get back to London.

Back in London and finding myself with a spare evening before my operation, I had gone to a adventure sports film festival, hobbling along with my lame leg. The severed tendons meant that I was not even able to raise my foot any more, and it dragged and caught on kerbs and steps, causing great pain.

Having never experienced a general anaesthetic, I felt the same trepidation that I felt before my first skydive or another extreme leap into the unknown. However, there was never any doubt that it was something I couldn't face on my own. Just go along with it. Trust to fate, skilled professionals and technical equipment. Blind faith.

You should see the way I ride my bike. One slip and you're a goner, when you thread your way in-between the massive heavy goods vehicles, transporting steel beams for the construction of Crossrail. The double-decker bus drivers are amazingly skilled and seem to manage to not squash too many cyclists. However, when you mix together the debutanté Über drivers in their Toyota Priuses, hard-up black cab drivers, various small delivery vehicles, plus the unpredictable mix of abilities of people driving around central London, it's no wonder that paramedics call bike riders "organ donors".

When I hear that yet another of my fellow commuters has hurled themselves under a tube train, I burst into tears. It's too much to bear, thinking that some of my fellow Londoners have reached the end of their rope too. Perhaps those less personally affected by suicidal thoughts are the ones who tut about how selfish it is that a huge underground station has to be evacuated so that the human remains can be bagged and carted off to the coroner. The disruption to the capital's transportation network seem huge, but there are so many other veins and arteries in the heart of the nation, that people find alternative routes quite easily, with minor delays.

I'm not emotional when it comes to my own death.

I have fantasised about going on a scouting mission to a nearby tower block that has an open-air balcony with a 40 floor drop. My only concern would be landing on some poor unfortunate on the pavement below - hence the need to check the drop zone in advance.

I would never throw myself in front of a train. It would be too traumatic for the driver and the people on the platform. Even people on the train would feel a bump and judder as the wheels crushed bone and flesh. I know they would. People have described to me exactly what it's like for a tube train to run over a passenger, and I've had to run out of the office crying. Strangely, I don't cry for myself.

Jumping off a bridge in London would be pointless. None of the bridges are high enough, unless you were able to scale Tower Bridge.

Killing yourself in a public place is a bit selfish though. It's bound to leave a big mess to clean up and cause distress for an unpredictable number of people.

I didn't want to commit suicide while I was staying with friends. I felt that it might have been seen as some negative reflection on their hospitality, and would leave bad memories in the guest bedroom where I had been staying, which would tarnish their home.

I'm mindful that whoever I'm living with is burdened already with the uncertainty over whether my resolve to keep myself alive and well is not slipping.

When I am seized by the sudden urge to take myself and a sharp knife to the bathroom and open my radial arteries into the bath, I worry if I would cry out in pain as I dug into the joint on the inside of the joint of my arm, searching for the blood vessels with the sharp point of the blade. Then I worry whether I would be able to contain the mess within the bath, as my heart pumped my circulatory system dry.

Before I have gone any further with these thoughts, I realise that it would be grossly unfair to leave the discovery of my body and handling the police to a friend who doesn't deserve such a responsibility.

I think about setting myself aflame with petrol, in political protest at capitalism, inequality and social injustice, right in the centre of Canada Square. I think about how desperately agonising it would be to be burnt alive. I think about how suffocation would be as deadly as the heat, as the flames consumed all the available oxygen. Gasping for breath, and in unimaginable agony, death would be neither swift nor immediately assured. Dying of the burns over the course of the coming days would not be a great way to contemplate any last regrets.

It's the halfway situation that's the problem. A failed drug overdose so often results in organ failure and a much slower and more painful death than originally intended. Being knocked off your bike while wearing a helmet could mean paralysis rather than death. I know what it's like to score my arms with a razor blade. I know what it's like to wonder what the scars are going to look like when they heal. I know what it's like to experiment to see how deep you have to cut to reach the veins. However, so many cuts will stem the bleeding enough to preserve life, despite leaking profusely at first.

If you spend any time in psychiatric instituions, you meet suicide survivors. Most have had their stomachs pumped or filled with activated charcoal. Many will have their wrists bandaged. Scars from previous half-hearted failed attempts and self-harm, indicate a certain revolving doors nature to our treatment approach. Some of my fellow patients confide in me that they are saving up the very pills that were prescribed to them to prevent their suicide, so that they can have another go. One guy saved his tablets for 8 months and had things well planned except for an unexpected visitor. He was in intensive care for several weeks. He now faces a life of dialysis because his kidneys failed due to the toxic load. He was planning on attempting suicide again at his earliest opportunity.

I met a beautiful young Australian paramedic in hospital. You would have thought that she would value life higher than anybody, but the lesions to her neck indicate that she'd used her medical training to attack her jugular veins.

I read that media coverage of suicide can trigger a spate of copycat suicides. Newspapers are discouraged from reporting on the suicide method used. It's said that jails are like universities for criminals to swap tips and make connections. Could it be that mental health institutions are the same for the suicidally depressed, with more people being likely to end their lives using ideas gleaned while in hospital?

Frankly, there isn't much stopping a resourceful person from finding a way to kill themself. I've considered everything from inert gas to the application of an electrical current across my chest to send me into ventricular fibrillation. The one that is most appealing is drifting off to sleep and not waking up.

There's a famous quote by one of the few people who survived jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge, where they said they regretted it as soon as they had let go.

When I once took a drug overdose, there was a momentary twinge of regret that could have lasted about as long as it would have taken me to fall and hit the water, having jumped off a high bridge. There was a period where I would have been able to eject the toxins from my body, if I was suddenly determined enough to save myself. Instead, I then found myself accepting my fate, and a strange calm came over me before the chemicals hit my bloodstream. I was resigned and relaxed about whatever happened next. Death or organ failure. I didn't care.

It was only after a couple of days when my paralysis temporarily lifted and it was clear that the only way I was going to die was very slowly through the accumulated damage to my body, malnutrition and dehydration. I was pissing copious amounts of blood, and I knew I had to make a choice: an agonising slow death where I could be discovered, but it would definitely be the end of my kidneys, or a trip to the hospital and re-evaluate the situation.

I tidied my room. Took a shower. Packed my bags. Called a taxi. Sat in Accident and Emergency for hours.

When I was examined I was immediately admitted and I spent nearly 3 weeks in hospital.

It wasn't the right time to die. This was before I had worked my contracts at Barclays, HSBC and my current client. This was before I had somewhere nice to call a home of my own again. This was before I put together a 370,000 word document that explained who I was and how I arrived at the decision to take my own life.

I lay on the floor, semi-paralysed, and I thought about what kind of message I could scrawl in my incapacitated state, that would make it clear that I knew what I was doing. The circumstances leading up to that moment were a mess. It was too ambiguous. Even a suicide note would be seen in the context of great misfortune and stressful events in my life leading up to that point.

I had planned on starving myself to death or in some way doing myself in on the 1st of January, as some kind of protest at the way that we surmise a suicide with a neat soundbite that's supposed to explain all the reasons why somebody took their own life:

• "depression"
• "financial worries"
• "drug problems"
• "broken heart"
• "loss of status"

Take your fucking pick.

Without a conversation, we desecrate the memory of a dead person, by trying to oversimplify the complex problem of what could drive a person to arrive at the decision to kill themself.

In Japan, suicide is an honourable thing. The act of seppuku might be a protest over a decision or a preferable fate to torture. Preparation for the act includes writing a death poem.

Do you really want to be that crazy old homeless guy, yelling "I used to be somebody" as the world pays no attention and the streets finally swallow you into anonymity?

All glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.

Tags: #hospital #nhs #suicide #injury

This is a story about fact vs. fiction...

It's hard to defend yourself when you're sick. It's easy for people to take advantage of a soft target, and invent their own version of events. It's easy to discredit somebody, when you've left them dead and buried. The dead can no longer speak up for themselves.

I needed to break up with my abusive ex-wife and rebuild my life in London. London is where all the good IT contracts and jobs are. London is where I have a good chance of reconnecting with significant numbers of friends and business contacts. London is where good stuff happens.

I had an excellent credit rating. I was going to arrange for a bridging loan to cover the expenditure of relocating back to London from Bournemouth. The loan was risk free, because I had such a large amount of equity in my house. The credit risk was underwritten by the fact that as soon as the house was sold, the loan could be repaid.

I was going to arrange credit with a commercial lender, so that I had the security of knowing that I had the funds to cover me until I got a new job back in London. However, my parents insisted that I could count on them. My parents told me that I didn't need the extra stress and hassle of arranging credit, and worrying about money and administrative affairs, when I had the extremely upsetting task of leaving my home and setting up life again in London.

However, when I then said that I needed to borrow the money - secured against the large lump sum of equity tied up in my house that was being sold - they then reneged on their promise. They left me high and dry. They dumped me in the shit. With no excuse, they fucked me over. Unacceptable.

Don't make promises you have no intention of keeping.

Don't offer to support vulnerable people, and then screw them over.

It's not a fucking joke.

It's not fucking funny.

It has consequences.

Far reaching consequences.

I never got an apology or an explanation from my parents for fucking me over like that. I can only assume that they liked the idea of sounding like real parents, but actually they don't have a single shred of decency. They don't have an ounce of honesty. They are untrustworthy. They are liars. They are utter c**ts.

It wasn't like I'd asked them for support. I was putting my own commercial borrowing arrangements in place to cover my relocation. My parents insisted that I could count on them to bridge the gap. It made sense... there was no risk, because the debt was underwritten with the equity in my house, which was vacant and being sold. It made sense that they should profit instead of a commercial lender. I was doing them a favour, because they would earn a better rate of interest off me than they would from any savings interest.

But.

Let's assume that they decided I was going to blow all the money on drugs.

My drug of choice - the one I got mixed up with by accident during the agonising destruction of my relationship and my business - is something that I've jokingly nicknamed "supercrack". As the name suggests, it's highly addictive. It used to be legal, not so long ago.

A strong dose of supercrack is 15mg. That's 0.015 grams.

The length of time that a dose of supercrack will last is about 18 hours. It's an incredibly potent stimulant.

On the dark web, you used to be able to buy 5 grams of supercrack for $150, including postage. That's enough to last 333 days, assuming you sleep 6 hours a night.

If you take supercrack around-the-clock you will not sleep, and therefore your immune system will get very low and you will soon die. The longest I ever took supercrack in a round-the-clock binge was 10 days. That's 10 days without sleep or food. I don't think you could go much longer without dying.

When I moved back to London, I was no longer using supercrack.

If I was using supercrack, from the day I moved back to London to today, I would have spent the princely sum of $450.

In fact, to use supercrack for 50 more years - long past my natural life expectancy - would only require 274 grams of the dangerous drug, which would easily cost me less than $10,000. In fact, I could probably have bought 1kg in bulk for $5,000, which would have been enough for 200 years of drug abuse.

So what did happen to all my money?

Well, I made it to my first Christmas back in London by buying Bitcoins on my credit cards and with my overdraft, which then increased 1,200% in value. I hadn't been able to work, because the stress of not having any money, and having your parents and ex-wife completely dicking you over, while also having to move the contents of a 3 bedroom house into storage and rebuild your life again, was rather too much to ask.

My parents expected me to go to their house for a jolly fucking family Christmas, when they had royally fucked me over. What a joke.

December was all too much, and by the 27th I was in full-blown relapse (which only cost a few dollars in drugs).

However, rehab doesn't come cheap... and guess who was going to pay? ME!

I've paid around £30,000 for private treatment. Guess what? It doesn't work.

Unless you have a supportive environment, treatment doesn't work. Don't bother going into rehab, unless you're going to get rid of toxic people, toxic places and toxic jobs from your life.

My first stay in rehab (The Priory) was long enough for me to see that I was being abused by my ex-wife and we needed to break up. My next stay in rehab was long enough for me to get over being dicked over by my parents. My last stay in rehab gave me just about enough strength to make a plan to cut my toxic parents out of my life altogether.

Since then, I now know the knack of quitting drugs.

Amino acids such as 5-HTP, L-Tyrosine and Phenylalanine replace the depleted neurotransmitters in your brain. Bupropion and amphetamines (like dexedrine) can cushion the cravings and depression, lack of energy and cognitive impairment.

Benzos and Z-drugs are a great way to amplify an addiction. Sleeping off the comedown by taking 'downers' to take the vicious edge off the 'uppers' means that you start to believe you are able to get all the upsides without any of the downsides. However, all you're doing is storing up the mother of all comedowns for a later day.

Coming off benzodiazepines is the single most awful thing you are likely to ever experience in your life. I'm not sure if you've ever had a panic attack or insomnia. Certainly, you must have experienced stress and anxiety. Imagine having a round-the-clock sense of horrible unease, fear, dread. If benzos calm you down, the payback is in rebound anxiety. What goes up must come down, and living with anxiety is terrible.

Something like diazepam is very long acting, so you find it's in your bloodstream for ages even after you stop taking it. The withdrawal from it lasts weeks: insomnia & anxiety.

Coming off stimulants isn't that bad. You're exhausted, suicidally depressed, physically weak, uncoordinated, slow witted, and cognitively impaired. You might be in terrible physical shape from lack of food, lack of sleep and over-exertion. It's nothing that a month in bed can't fix.

Obviously, coming off all drugs at the same time is a clusterfuck, because you'll have anxiety and insomnia, keeping you awake through your exhausted suicidal depression. But, this is the payback for polydrug abuse. What goes up must come down.

In September 2013 I escaped addiction by swapping from supercrack to dexedrine and then tapering my dose down. I further cushioned the blow by using zopiclone to get my sleep back on track. It was relatively easy and painless, especially as I also completely changed my whole environment by moving to London and reconnecting with old friends. I got a new girlfriend and started helping my homeless friend, Frank.

Drug addiction is a teeny tiny bit about the brain chemistry, and it's a whole lot more about toxic environments. Believe me, the more stress, disruption, isolation and mistreatment is perpetrated against me, the more I'm itching to pull the "fuck it" trigger.

Drug addiction is both an easy and a difficult existence. If you haven't got the guts to actually end your life quickly and cleanly, it will get you to your grave faster than you think. I think every addict knows where they're headed, but they don't give a fuck because everybody else is pushing them down that road too.

You would have thought that addicts would be our most cared for and nurtured members of society, because they're pretty much walking around with a noose around their neck, advertising their intention to kill themself. However, my experience was that my own parents and ex-wife couldn't wait to see me dead and buried.

When I eventually accepted that experimentation had become addiction and I needed professional help, I said to my ex-wife that I needed a 28-day detox. She said she would rather that I died. She actually categorically said that she would rather be a widow. These were her words. This was not a general comment. This was her saying that she would prefer it if I didn't have 28 days treatment and get better. This was her saying that what she wanted was for me to die, not get better.

When I got clean and moved back to London, my parents essentially made the same choice. Rather than honour their unsolicited offer to profit from my need for a bridging loan, they saw the opportunity to pull the rug out from under my feet and plunge me back into chaos, stress and destruction.

When things are going wrong now, I assume that I'm totally alone, and that everybody is totally hostile. I assume that doors are going to be kicked in by an abusive and violent ex or parent. I assume that treatment is going to be withheld. I assume that people would rather that I was dead.

Abuse leaves psychological scars. Calling somebody a liar, and treating them disrespectfully denies them any self esteem. Pulling away a person's means of supporting themself, and generally attacking their opportunities to escape and recover is not proof that the person is a failure and vindication of your decision to fuck them over. Let's take a look at cause and effect.

Drug addiction is a place that a person turns to when their life is unliveable. The more you mistreat a person and deny them any opportunity to recover, the more they're going to say "fuck it" and go back to killing themself slowly.

Recovery can be quick and painless if action is swift, decisive and early intervention is taken. Addiction is like a house on fire. The sooner you put out the fire, the more of the house you save. There's no point sitting around to see if the fire goes out, and then putting out half the fire. "The fire is mostly out" or "we'll just put a bit of water on the fire and see if things improve" is just utter bullshit. You're looking for an excuse to fail that person if you act like that.

I'm angry.

I don't know if this is coming across. I'm really fucking angry.

I'm spinning everything like I'm a victim. Well, that's because I'm sick of victim blaming. I know that taking the position of the victim is not a good place to start, but it's maddening because the facts are clear: the strong have exploited the weak, and tried to kick a vulnerable person into an early grave. Secrets die with a person, and it's a lot easier if a victim is dead.

I made plans for my business and my future based on the idea that I had a loving, supportive partner. I made plans based on a "for richer, for poorer" and "in sickness and in health" marriage vow that we made to each other. I made divorce and recovery plans based on an unsolicited offer of support from my parents. Parents are supposed to support their children. People are supposed to honour their word. Plans are based on agreements.

How can you make any plans or do anything if nobody keeps their word? How can anything function without people acting with a shred of integrity.

I paid for nonjudgemental reliable support, at great personal expense. The rest I did on my fucking own. Who the fuck got me out of the park and into a hostel? Who the fuck got me out of the hostel into a contract and a hotel? Who the fuck got me out of the hotel and into a flat? Who the fuck got me more contracts when the previous ones didn't work out for long enough for me to get ahead?

Recovering from depression, bipolar disorder, the destruction of your business, ruining of your career reputation, divorce, the selling off of your home and the giveaway of many of your precious possessions, having to relocate across the country, having to re-establish your life again. You think that comes easily? You think that comes cheaply? You think that can be done all on your own? You think that can be done while people jeer and take the piss from the sidelines, calling you horrible names and creating additional obstacles for you?

Now, sprinkle in substance abuse.

Drug addiction is the easy part. I should be getting a fucking ticker-tape parade for what I've been through. I should get a fucking gold medal. I should get my picture in the motherfucking paper, with lots of quotes from all my adoring fans.

Some drug addicts are driven to lie, cheat and steal. We are told that addicts leave dirty needles in children's playgrounds and try to sell drugs to your kids to get them hooked.

What exactly could anybody's problem be with me? I've paid for all my own treatment. I've never stolen any money to buy drugs. I never even bought drugs from anybody who could conceivably be accused of putting money into crime and terrorism. All I've ever wanted to do is get back to London, and restabilise myself.

What does stability look like?

Like this:

• Place to live
• Income to pay for food & accommodation
• Social contact
• Free from debt and financial stress

And I've come to realise it also means:

• No more toxic people in my life: especially my parents
• No more klingons: I can't carry any dead wood
• No more arbitrary measures: being teetotal is unnecessary. I'm going to do whatever works.
• No more shame: I've got nothing to be ashamed of

The compromises, sacrifices and things that I put up with to keep hope alive are not inconsiderable. My adherence to integrity and personal standards means that I am taking on additional challenges that I could easily circumvent by simply declaring bankruptcy and depositing myself in the care of the welfare state.

I've paid an absolute fucktonne of tax in my life, so I should feel entitled to a handout, but I don't. I don't want a life that's dependent on the state giving me a small amount of the money back that I've paid into the national purse. I'm proud and I've worked hard all my life. I've worked hard to dig myself out of a very deep hole, and I deserve a fucking break.

I'm writing this now, completely free from any drugs. My mind is my own. I have let my brain recover, and now I have nothing but pure rational thought.

Where's my money gone? It's been spent on surviving. It's been spent on keeping the possibility of recovery alive.

Recovery from drugs?

No.

Recovery from the shit that drove me into the arms of addiction.

Will I be able to recreate the past, and get back the things I lost? No, never. Of course not!

So, am I bitter and full of regret?

Actually, I'm working my bollocks off just as hard as I've always done throughout my life FOR THE FUTURE. In 4 or 5 months I could be back in the same financial position that I was in before everything imploded, except I will be in pole position to continue at a much accelerated pace. I have a much greater chance of building a happy new life, now that I am rid of the toxic people who sabotaged everything I had worked so hard to build.

Every day in the rat race is an unpleasant reminder of the fact that I got screwed over, and this is the source of my bitter rants. I am tired. It has been exhausting to rescue things.

But, it's in my nature to build and repair. It's in my nature to look to the future, not look to the past. The only reason I do look to the past, is that I'm saddled with the consequences of being dumped in the shit by people who let me down and broke their promises.

In the world of startups we talk about a pivot. Take your lessons learned from going in one direction, and take them in another to find your sustainable competitive advantage.

Through this fucked up world of pain that I've been through, I've found several important stories that need to be told.

There is the story of the people who are disadvantaged. Those who are discriminated against because they have mental health problems or who have struggled with addiction. There are society's undesirable members. There is the issue of homelessness, and the harsh and uncaring world that waits for single people who fall on hard times. There is the arms race in the war on drugs, with legal highs and the cat and mouse game between chemists and governments. There is the battle that rages inside our heads: mania and depression. There are the differences in perception: who is mad and who is sane.

A rich white middle class investment bank employee, IT consultant, software engineer, homeowner, husband and neatly presented boy with good manners, well educated and well behaved. Young, fit and active. Adventurous, outgoing and gregarious.

If it can happen to me, it can happen to anybody.

The stories have got to be told.

Tags: #addiction #drugs #divorce #parents #legalhighs #mentalhealth #homeless