Nick Grant

This is a story about radio silence...

On June 20 of this year I attempted to write my life story from 2011 onwards, covering the happiest, most successful period of my life and the pinnacle of my career - doing a tech startup accelerator program in Cambridge with a cohort of incredible people - and the subsequent reasons why I stepped down as CEO, separated from my wife, sold my house and settled my acrimonious divorce.

I wrote 10,000 words in a non-stop brain dump. Once I started I couldn't hold back - the words flooded out onto the page.

It was supposed to be succinct. It was supposed to be a simple set of bullet points.

It turned out to be a lot harder than I thought, to write down even the first part.

Part two has a lot to cover:

• Homelessness
• Hospitals
• Police
• Drug addiction
• Psych wards
• Suicide attempts
• More banking jobs
• More IT projects
• Moving to Manchester
• Moving to Wales
• Several relationships and breakups; love and loss
• Psychosis
• Self medication
• Alcohol
• Depression
• Anxiety
• Boredom
• Financial problems
• Near-bankruptcy
• Salvation

I'm not going to write part two in the same way that I wrote part one.

That was 6 months ago. This is now.

A lot can happen in 6 months.

As a quick recap, here are the problems I've been trying to tackle this year:

• £54,000 of debt
• Homeless
• No job
• No car
• Single
• Addicted to prescription drugs: sleeping pills, tranquillisers and painkillers
• Alcohol abuse
• Depression, anxiety and bipolar disorder

As if those problems weren't enough, in June I had relapsed onto supercrack. I'd been working but I'd lost my job - through no fault of my own - and I was in no hurry to get another one, because my addiction had returned with a vengeance. I was in a place with no family and only a handful of friends, none of whom were equipped to deal with my clusterfuck of issues. I was more-or-less alone, except for the people who I try to connect with on a daily basis through my blog, Twitter, Facebook and other digital means.

I came up with the title "No News is Bad News" because it's usually true. I came up with that title, because a period of silence on my blog is usually cause for concern. It's usually time to start phoning round the hospitals to see if I've been admitted. It's usually time to start worrying if I'm dead or dying.

Back in June - 6 months ago - the title was very apt, because I hadn't been online for a while. Losing my job had completely destroyed my hopes of dealing with the mountain of issues I was facing. Losing my job had wrecked my plans for recovery.

Today, my world looks very different.

I can't tell you too much - because it's private - but I'm writing from the comfort of my girlfriend's bed. Her bedroom is very pink and girly. She just brought me a plate with a generously buttered thick slice of toast and a glass of orange juice, which I am eating in bed. I'm getting crumbs in the bed and greasy finger-marks on my laptop.

I'm no longer living out of a suitcase in a hotel and eating in the same gastropub every night, sat at a table for one. I'm unofficially co-habiting. We only met a few weeks ago. The relationship is going fast. Too fast some might say.

I kiss my sweetheart good morning and wish her a good day as I depart for work. My journey takes no more than 15 minutes when the traffic is kind to me. I'm finding it easy to get up in the morning. I don't dread lonely evenings in a bland hotel room. I don't dread the unsustainable interminable monotony of miserable days in the office, and miserable evenings spent alone.

I'm going too fast though.

I'm working too hard.

It takes vast quantities of alcohol, sleeping pills and tranquillisers to prevent me from working 12 to 14 hour days. It requires a huge amount of effort to stop myself from working at the weekend. I'm desperate to achieve results as quickly as possible, because the finishing line is within sight.

It could be months before I'm well-and-truly out of the danger zone and enjoying some long-overdue financial security. It's definitely going to be a long time before I get truly settled at home and at work. I need to decide where I'm going to live and what I'm going to do for a job, on a more long-term basis. At some point, my good luck is going to run out and I'll be forced back into living out of a suitcase, maintaining a long-distance relationship, and having to face the anxiety and stress of proving myself in a new organisation, with a new set of work colleagues.

Mania has arrived. There's no doubt about that.

My manic energy has been ploughed into my day job, instead of my new novel. I worry that my work colleagues have noticed that I've completely obsessed by my project. I worry that the undesirable accompanying behaviours - irritability, rapid and pressured speech, arrogance and delusions of grandeur - will become so hard to hide in the office that I might be forced to disclose my bipolar disorder to my colleagues, in the hope that they'll be sympathetic.

My blog has been neglected, along with my friends.

I work too hard. I'm moving 'too fast' in my new relationship - the "L" word has been used and she has given me a key to her place. We're going on holiday together. All my original problems are still there, to some extent. I need to decide where to live, pay off my outstanding debts, drink less, quit the sleeping pills and tranquillisers, get my mania under control.

What else can I tell you?

I can't try to tell you too much all at once, even though I desperately want to. I want to sit down and write 10,000 words without taking a single break. I want to pour my heart out onto the page and tell you everything, but I'm trying to pump the brakes a little bit. I'm trying to be a little bit sensible, even though I'm clearly going too fast.

It feels like the week-long hiatus from blogging was not bad news. Perhaps it's good news? No. It's not good news. I'm not looking after myself. I'm not managing my bipolar very well. I'm allowing myself to become manic, for the purposes of achieving 'great' things at work. It's exciting to be manic after so many months of depression and misery.

It would be a good idea for me to resolve to resume my daily writing, but I'm wary of making unrealistic promises. Today, I'm coming to terms with the fact that my 3rd novel remains unfinished, when I had hoped to have completed it yesterday.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is my present situation in a nutshell.

Tags: #bipolar #relationships #debt #homeless #addiction #medication #alcohol #writing

This is a story about body dysmorphia...

It's strange to look at a photo of myself with an old friend from not-too-many-Christmasses ago - at least according to my faulty memory - and not really recognise the face looking back at me as my own. It's not that I'm younger. It's that I can clearly see in many features of my face that I'd failed to escape from an abusive relationship and an acrimonious divorce unscathed. My life reboot had been sabotaged and it seems as plain as day to me that I was very sick.

My eyes appear at first glance to be bright and alert, but in a stimulant-induced way, so I wear a glassy stare into the distance, not looking at anything in particular. On closer examination, there are tell-tale signs around my eyes that I've been sleeping both too much and too little.

It surprises me how easily I can see from my face that I have hardly any body fat. In 2013 I had my body fat very precisely measured at circa 2%.

The body I'm in today feels very alien to me.

But the face in the picture above is also a different person, I feel.

Every couple of weeks I start skipping breakfast, having light lunches and smaller, healthier evening meals. Every couple of weeks I take a break from drinking alcohol. It doesn't make any difference.

For more years than I care to remember, I've woken up and I've dreaded going to work, and I've felt oppressively burdened by debt. My life is very simple, and in many ways very enviable, but it's also thoroughly awful. Theoretically the awfulness is only a temporary situation, but somehow it's turned out to be a nonstop nightmare lasting half a fucking decade.

The nightmare could be lazily attributed to drug addiction, but you might be surprised to learn that the truth is far less conveniently simple.

Having spent more than two decades trapped in the rat race, being a very stoic, quiet, boring, obedient and subservient tiny cog in a massive machine, and suffering the incredible boredom of going to bland beige offices, attending endless interminable meetings about nothing, shuffling paper around a desk and pretending to look busy, it was fucking exciting to go insane and embark upon a drug-fuelled rampage.

You might think that police, paddy wagons, Accident & Emergency, high-dependency wards, psychiatric hospitals, police cells, intensive care, sleeping rough and hostel dorms would be the worst thing imaginable - and those things probably were terrible at the time - but you need to understand the psychology of a person who wants to jump out of a perfectly good airplane and plummet towards the ground at terminal velocity. If you think that only stupid people get addicted to drugs, it's you who is stupid, because you haven't appreciated the value in calculated risks.

I would thoroughly advise every person on the planet to avoid supercrack like the plague, but it would be remiss of me to not acknowledge some attributes of my experiences of the last 5 years, which might be considered surprisingly beneficial.

Weight. Loss.

We'd all like to be a bit skinnier, wouldn't we? We'd all like to lose a bit of that hard-to-shift belly-fat.

I look in the mirror at the slight gut which has appeared in the ten months which I've been working, without the interruption of a drug-fuelled rampage, and I think "where the fuck did that gut come from?"

It depresses me that I've put on weight.

It depresses me that my appearance has changed.

I'm not fat. I'm not overweight. I'm just kinda 'normal' for a 39-year-old bloke, but that fucking sucks, because I took for granted the fact that I was as skinny as a racing snake on a diet. There's something attractive about an 'athletic' body, and that's not the body I have anymore... or rather, that's not the body I have at the moment.

One of the reasons I kept ending up in hospital, is because my body ran out of fat to break down to keep itself alive, so it started breaking down my muscle. When my muscle was broken down to provide energy to keep my cells fuelled and save my life, there were a lot of toxins released too, which totally fucked my kidneys. Basically, I was starving to death but dying of kidney failure faster than I was dying from lack of glucose, because I was so unnaturally lacking in body fat. My body made a very tough decision at a certain do-or-die moment, to destroy muscle allowing my heart to keep pumping for a little while longer, at the expense of my kidneys.

I eat.

I eat a lot.

I drink.

I drink a lot.

I eat and drink whatever the fuck I want and however much I want. I have juicy fatty steaks with butter sauce, washed down with lashings of red wine, every single night of the week.

I'm a disgusting old man.

I've been so depressed and oppressed by my awful circumstances, that I've barely been outside all summer. My skin is pale. One of my arms is covered with ribbons of self-harm and suicide attempt scars. One of my wrists has a big lump where a bone was broken by police who were kindly assisting me in getting to hospital. I've got this gut. This fucking gut. Where the fuck did it come from?

Have you heard of DNP?

It's a fat burner.

I'm highly tempted to take a week or two off work and just burn off the fat using this drug which increases your metabolic rate. Of course, a side-effect is malignant hyperthermia, but that's nothing I haven't already experienced a great deal of, as a supercrack addict. Also, insomnia, anxiety, panic attacks, tachycardia, organ damage and death... all risks I'm prepared to accept in order to be skinny and gorgeous again.

Although I'm crippled by mountainous debts, I drive a wreck of a car which is worth less than my phone, I live in rented accommodation and my body is covered with scars from drug-fuelled insanity, self-harm and suicide attempts, the most damaging thing to my self-esteem is what I've done to myself during this period of so-called health and wealth. While I've been earning megabucks for massive organisations and being mostly abstinent from supercrack, my life has materially improved massively - I've earned an absolute fortune - but psychologically it's been awful, and my body has suffered far more than even the very worst days of my supercrack addiction insanity.

I don't think supercrack is a solution, although the weight-loss is arguably a very desirable side-effect, in much the same way as a bout of explosive diarrhoea or a tapeworm infestation might be. Unfortunately, society worships the skinny, just as much as it worships the bipolar, even though those people might not be very healthy people at all.

As a single man - and rapidly approaching 40 years old - of course I want to feel sexually attractive. While girlfriends have always said "I like a bit of meat on your bones" fnarr fnarr, they have had a vested interest in my health and robustness as opposed to my raw attractiveness, in terms of a skinny athletic body.

The temptation to restore my athletic figure with a week or two of unpleasant suffering, taking a fat-burning drug and feeling like shit, seems like a small price to pay for the prize of being more sexually attractive. With the insecurity of feeling like I'm a washed-up has-been loser, dirty old man filthy pervert, useless debt-riddled, asset-less waste-of-space, with nothing to offer womankind, it's sorely tempting to take some short cuts. What happened to my house, sports-car, yacht, speedboat, cash pile and other desirable material things, which would be highly coveted? What value is there in a 39-year-old who's pale and average build? I'm ten a penny.

This is the calculated gamble. Presently, my gamble is to get rich quick, or more precisely, to pay off my debts incredibly quickly at the expense of my health, social life and mental wellbeing. The price I pay is my appearance: I eat and drink too much; don't exercise.

Of course, I have no plans to resume my supercrack-fuelled insanity, but to not acknowledge the rewards and unexpectedly positive benefits of better living through chemistry would be disingenuous.

Tags: #supercrack #fat #diet #food #sex #dating #addiction #homeless #police #hospital

This is a story about three consecutive weeks away from home...

Despite some pretty serious drug and alcohol issues, having reduced my supercrack addiction to just a couple of relapses in the last 16 months, my life is going considerably better. Before, things were too chaotic and messed-up to manage basic adulting, let alone making complex plans and following through with them.

Poly-substance abuse makes life particularly unmanageable. Stimulants produce excessively, obsessively focussed attention on tiny details, to the point of dismantling a television to see how it works, but forgetting why and not thinking about the consequences, such as not being able to put it back together again. Tranquillisers paper over the cracks temporarily, forestalling the inevitable crash and inducing amnesia, such that the brain doesn't have its natural corrective reaction: "fuck! I should never do that again! that was dumb!".

In the grips of drug-induced mania, I've made a lot of plans, contacted a lot of people, done a lot of hard work and generally laid some of the groundwork for grand schemes, only to let everything rot and wither on the vine because eventually I crash. My ideas are never dumb per se but as we say in the startup world: ideas are worthless; execution is everything.

This weekend I need to wash and pack 3 weeks worth of clothes; 3 wardrobes - work, UK autumn and holiday sun. I need to buy flip flops and sunscreen. I need to get a haircut.

I need to load up my car on Monday morning with everything I need for 3 weeks.

It sounds like an adventure, right?

I've had enough adventures to last me a thousand lifetimes.

My left arm is covered in scars where I've slit my wrists and cut my veins lengthways. My left shin has a humongous scar from when I was trying to escape from my sister's bedroom, where my dad had cornered me, and I picked up a mirror to defend myself - like a shield - which got smashed and a massive piece of glass dropped like a guillotine blade. My right thigh has a huge scar from when I fell through a glass roof, running away from voices in my head; admittedly more obviously a consequence of my so-called bad choices but easily understood in terms of the fucking abuse I had suffered at the hands of my ex-wife and my parents beforehand.

My life is remarkably improved since mostly quitting drugs, legal highs and black-market medications, but I'm loathe to become one of those "drugs ruined my life" idiots, because clearly there was a reason why I was driven to seek something in substances: I was denied a conventional happy contented life. This isn't a "poor me... poor me... pour me... another drink" whingefest. This is simply a statement of fact.

My needs are the same as anybody else's: food, shelter, companionship, intimacy, safety, security.

I'm a pretty basic guy.

Garbage in, garbage out.

If it sounds to you like I'm absenting myself from personal responsibility - distancing myself from my bad choices - then I've got a few questions for you. Where were you when I was lying on the floor dying of a suicide attempt overdose a couple of times? Where were you when I was in hospital all those many, many times? Where were you when I was sleeping rough? Where were you when I was arrested, locked in a cell and then released without charge? Where were you when I was voluntarily admitted to a psych ward, or sectioned? I've faced so much adversity alone. It's true that in the last couple of years I've had the assistance of my guardian angel, but that person is clearly the reason why I've recovered, obviously. I was floundering on my own, but at no point did I ever fully abandon the notion that I was personally responsible for influencing the outcome of my life, or death.

So you think life's complicated doing the school run? Wiping bums, making packed lunches, playgroup, after-school activities, grazed knees, tears, tantrums, sleepless nights, sore nipples and general procreation-related bullshit is a reason why your life is hard? I've got 7.6 billion living breathing walking talking reasons why you're a fucking idiot. I've got over a hundred billion skeletal remains of your failed attempts to clone yourself into immortality you fucking moron. You're at the top of the bell-curve you rutting simpleton.

Life's not a competition but I'm winning.

This is not what I intended to write tonight at all, but I've abandoned all attempts to avoid repetition and any misguided belief that I'm able to project an idealised image of myself, as opposed to baring my ugly soul for anybody who unfortunately happens to be looking in this direction at the time.

You might think that my life is an enviable adventure, but it's actually a fucking nightmare, without kisses, cuddles, hugs, spooning and the comfort of knowing that I'm safely embedded within the crowd; safety in numbers, like a school of fish.

I'm an outlier and it sucks.

Tags: #depression #suicide #homeless #single #addiction #supercrack #recovery

This is a story about fucking up your life...

I am cooking pulled pork. The recipe called for the pork to be put in an ovenproof glass dish. By chance, I bought an ovenproof glass dish two days ago. I bought it because it was perfect for chopping lines of supercrack and not losing any of the precious powder when in a messed-up state.

Sometime before dawn on Friday I was thinking about ending my life. I had bought razor blades at the same time as I bought the ovenproof glass dish. I bought the razor blades so I could chop lines of supercrack. I did not buy the razor blades so I could sever veins and the radial arteries in my arms. I did not buy the razor blades so I could sever my carotid arteries and jugular veins in my neck. However, I was motivated to do so.

I've papered over my bedroom windows to stop perverts from peeping in. I couldn't tell how light it was outside, although I knew dawn had broken. My perception of time was completely warped, but it was so quiet that I assumed that it was earlier than 9am, because otherwise I'd have heard lots of noise of people getting ready for work and school.

I checked the time. It was 1:24pm.

I was supposed to be on a video conference at 9:45am.

Fuck.

I messaged a guy in my team and told him I was so sick that I hadn't been able to contact him until then, which was technically true. What I didn't tell him was that I'd been fucked up on supercrack and I was convinced that my life was ruined and I might as well kill myself.

I was convinced that my life was so ruined that I'd never be able to fix everything.

I was convinced that I'd messed up my job and I was going to lose it.

I was convinced that I'd messed up my accommodation and I was going to be made homeless.

I was convinced that all my hopes of becoming debt free, and eventually wealthy, were destroyed.

Strangely, I'd spent most of the 18 hours up to this point thinking about how to make the software at work more efficient, as well as designing in my head a system to improve internet security which could be adopted as a new standard. You'd have thought that these things were just useless insanity, utter nonsense and gibberish.

I took a shower.

I suddenly felt a lot better.

I opened up my laptop and I rewrote 5,000 lines of code, reducing the system to just 500 lines. I ran the tests. My code did exactly the same job as the old code, except it was 1,000% more efficient. I couldn't quite believe that I'd managed to do my job, and do my job really well, when I was supposed to be sick.

It was 5 o'clock and time to stop work for the day, although I'd only worked half the day.

Then, I started developing my idea for improving internet security. I was fairly convinced that I was going to discover that I'd completely overlooked an important loophole when I actually applied formal computer science to the problem. I was certain that sooner or later, I'd spot an obvious mistake in the messed-up thinking I'd had at 3am, while high on supercrack.

At 11pm the academic paper I'd written - which specified the system protocol and addressed any security concerns - was finished. I'd checked and double-checked it. It was watertight. I listed every assumption. I attacked it from every angle. Every niggling doubt was comprehensively addressed. I knew my theory's strengths as well as its weaknesses. It was, without being too big-headed, a brilliant piece of work.

Instead of feeling like I've had a relapse and everything is ruined, so I might as well let myself descend back into the depths of hell, I feel like I learned something. All of the anticipated reward from drug taking turned out to be a big disappointment. All of the anticipated paranoia and feeling like I'm about to die and life is shit - i.e. all of the negative feelings - were present, reminding me that drug addiction is hell, and the so-called 'high' isn't worth the side effects and comedown.

My life is shit in many ways. I'm socially isolated, financially distressed and trapped in the rat race, lest I end up destitute. I'm forced to do things I don't want to do, go places I don't want to go to; my time and my freedom are owned by somebody else. I can't do what I want. My life is miserable. However, the stuff I fucked up with my relapse, such as making a mess of my bedroom, destabilising my mental health, risking my job, neglecting relationships, exhausting myself and generally playing with fire, is something which will clearly only get worse and worse if I were to continue taking drugs. I was reminded of my first novel, where I wrote about a character who took the pursuit of drug addiction to its ultimate conclusion. I was reminded of the drug-addict fantasy which inspired my first novel: to have an unlimited supply of drugs and to escape the tyranny of wage slavery, rent, bills and bullshit McJobs. I was reminded where it leads, which I already explored at length in my first novel. I explored that course of action in fiction so that I never had to reach rock bottom myself. My novel saved my life.

So, I'm currently cooking pulled pork in my apartment. The rent and bills are paid. There's money in the bank. I still have my job.

I'm cooking pulled pork in the dish which I bought to take drugs with.

I had the opportunity to order more supercrack on Friday morning, which would have been delivered today. If I had ordered more I wouldn't be writing this. Instead, I would be fucking myself up and fucking up more of the things around me. I already fucked up my MacBook Pro for the 3rd time, but thankfully it's not too badly fucked up, and the part that's fucked up is covered by warranty anyway. I have another MacBook Pro, which I'm trying to coax back into life, but it's fucked up from the last time I didn't stop my supercrack binge before things got fucked up. The sum total I've spent on MacBooks which I've fucked up on supercrack is about £6,000. I took an ice bath with my Apple Watch then dropped my iPhone in the bath, because I was trying to deal with malignant hyperthermia as a result of supercrack overdose, which cost me another £900. The total amount I've spent on supercrack in my lifetime is about £500 and most of that got flushed down the toilet. I bought 10 grams of supercrack last year for £150, which was enough to get high every day for 1 year and 10 months, although I'd obviously die before I got chance to use it all.

My priorities are the same as any ordinary person. I want a job, a home, friends, a partner, a pet. I want to earn more than my modest monthly expenditure, excluding the £10 a month I spend on supercrack, on average. If I have surplus cash I don't spend it on supercrack. I buy supercrack because all the things I need are so far out of reach. For example: I have time off work booked for 3 weeks time, but I don't have anybody to go on holiday with, and I need to plan, book and pay for a holiday, which is difficult when I'm very deep in debt.

The so-called 'choice' to relapse into addiction is not a choice at all. The only choice is the choice to kill myself. I could kill myself quickly with poison or overdose, electrocution, hanging or ligature, blood loss, falling from a great height, suffocation, asphyxiation or self-immolation. The hope that addiction holds is of hedonistic pleasure, before heart failure or respiratory arrest. Every heroin addict has a little bit of hope that they'll 'go over' and die every time they depress the plunger of the syringe. Every coke or meth addict hopes that their heart will explode at the very moment they orgasm in the ecstatic throes of drug-fuelled sex.

Every addiction is held firmly in place, not by the power of the chemicals involved, but because there are no realistic better options. What heroin addict is going to suffer the agony of withdrawal, the misery of losing the only thing in their life which brings them any pleasure, to work a minimum-wage zero-hours contract McJob and be stripped of their dignity and cursed to spend all their hard-earned cash on a dirty, mouldy, flea and bed-bug infested shithole, 2 hours bus ride away from work, leaving them so little money that they have to go begging to a food bank just to be able to eat.

Theoretically I can earn a gross income of £151,200, which is why I'm alive and in reasonably good health. I've been through years of addiction, alcoholism, mental health problems, hospitalisations for major medical emergencies, homelessness and of no fixed abode, divorce, psych wards and being sectioned, losing hundreds of thousands of pounds, losing friends, having to give my cat to my parents for safe keeping, becoming estranged from my family, moving house many times, moving around the country, sleeping rough, detox, rehab, the shame of former work colleagues finding out my secrets and gossiping about me, reputational damage, suicide attempts, having to sell my house, having to quit as CEO of my own company, the guilt of not giving my investors a good return on their investment, the unpaid debt I owe to my guardian angel, being arrested X times and locked up X times, being cautioned by the police X times, being on bail pending investigation, being interviewed by the police, being assessed by innumberable psychiatrists and prescribed myriad psychiatric medications, and ultimately having taken heaps of dangerous drugs and medications at dangerous dosages and in dangerous combinations. How many people could go through those experiences and not lose their mind entirely, finding themselves institutionalised and permanently excluded from society?

The reason why I'm alive and functional is because theoretically I can earn a gross income of £151,200. In practice it means that if I manage to work for 5 or 6 weeks a year, I'm a hell of a lot better off than 99.999% of the people who struggle with mental health problems, substance abuse problems and debt.

"Money doesn't make you happy" is a lie. Money sure as shit helps you deal with a multitude of problems.

Just like an investment bank, when shit goes wrong I double down. If a bet goes against me, I make the exactly same bet again, but I double the stake. Just like an investment bank, I'm able to borrow as much as I want so I can beat the players who aren't able to continue to play when the stakes become too high. I use my wealth to bully life into giving me what I want, instead of allowing myself to be bullied out of the poker game by the high-rollers.

The only game in life I can't win at is drugs. It doesn't matter how rich you are, if it's you against the drugs you're always going to lose. There's no winning in addiction. Not losing is the best you can hope for with addiction. To not lose in the game of addiction is a rare success, which requires extreme wealth. Even the very wealthy - like Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse - found that their idea of nirvana (sic.) was not all it was cracked (sic.) up to be. Kurt Cobain said once in a private video that he wanted to get rich so he didn't have to work and could get high on smack every day. He got so rich he could have retired and gotten high for the rest of his life, so why did he kill himself? Writing a novel allowed me to live that life - in a fictional world - to find out what would've happened to me. I wrote that book so I didn't have to experience what happened to my fictional central protagonist in real life. What happened to my fictional character could very easily have been me. I know where I was headed.

Presently, I'm very frustrated that I must spend my time creating software - or fixing other people's software - but it's churlish to complain when I'm fortunate enough to have a skill which means that even a homeless junkie alcoholic with mental health problems who's known to the police, is highly sought-after by organisations, who gladly pay relatively obscene amounts of money for the work that I can do, even when utterly fucked-up by drink and drugs. While Sports Direct employees are sacked for taking toilet breaks, I've literally gone AWOL on a week-long drug binges, been taken to hospital by the police and later been welcomed back to work, despite being a gibbering wreck on a massive comedown. This is not arrogance I promise you. I don't expect to receive special treatment. I don't expect my so-called 'misbehaviour' to be excused. I don't feel entitled to be able to treat my good fortune with such apparent contempt.

The day I start taking things for granted will be the day my world falls apart and my good fortune disappears. People's compassion, forgiveness and the benefit of the doubt will no longer be given to me if I expect to get away with taking the piss. If I anticipate escaping the consequences of my actions forever, then they'll lock me up and throw away the key.

I'm very angry and bitter about my ruined childhood, the abuse perpetrated against me by my ex-wife and being taken advantage of by a handful of greedy and immoral people, all of whol completely lack a conscience. However, I am able to remind myself that there's no value in analysing the chain of responsibility, tracing it back to those who are ultimately to blame: the horrible people of bad character who feel no guilt for the misery and suffering they cause, who feel no obligation to pay compensation for the damage they've done; feel no remorse for the pain of their victims. Even with the full force of the law behind me, those slippery vermin will always weasel out of paying the fair price for their antisocial, criminal, abusive, negligent, selfish and downright cuntish behaviour. My personal life strategy is to be so good at what I do and work so hard, that those scummy rats are left scurrying around in the slurry-filled sewers, enviously fuming about my privileged and fortunate life. When at long last they're on their deathbed, their guilty conscience will torment them and they'll be filled with regret for the misery and suffering they caused. Their dying days will be filled with fear and distress, which they deserve every single second of. Cunts.

My life is not fucked up. I did take a chance and nearly fucked up my life. I was lucky that I haven't suffered any worst-case consequences. I can't take my good fortune for granted. I am feeling grateful that things haven't ended as badly as they could have done and I am reminding myself that I was lucky not smart. I am reminding myself that there are substantial negative consequences, which far outweigh the euphoria I was seeking. Ironically, of course, I didn't even get any euphoria I was looking for. I just got paranoia, sleep deprivation, damage to my work reputation, destabilised mental health, a broken laptop and a messed up bedroom... all of which I predicted in advance.

I do have an oven-proof dish though. The pulled pork was delicious.

Tags: #addiction #drugs #recovery #relapse #supercrack

This is a story about secret identities and alter egos...

I'm Nick Grant and these are my glasses, which are my cunning and infallible disguise to protect my real identity. It would be a disaster if anybody found out my real name - Nick Grant - because this blog is pretty unflinchingly honest and contains a lot of very unflattering things about me. I'm pretty damn exposed, hence why I wear my disguise.

Today I'm celebrating 3 years of blogging. I've been writing every day for 3 whole years, with only a few gaps due to sickness and near-catastrophic events in my personal life, which have threatened to see me bankrupt, evicted, homeless, penniless and destitute. To have kept writing regularly throughout all the ups and downs of the past 3 years is a huge achievement.

To date, I've written and published 1,013,091 words in that 3-year period.

The last 36 months could be summarised thus:

• September 2015: working for HSBC, living in a hotel, dating a BBC journalist. Rent an apartment on the River Thames.
• October 2015: working for HSBC. Suicidally depressed. Hospitalised. Fly to San Francisco.
• November 2015: fly back to the UK and deliberately get sacked from HSBC. Dating a PA to one of the directors of a major investment bank. Meet my guardian angel.
• December 2015: protesting against bombing Syria. Sober for 100 consecutive days. Relapse back into abuse of legal stimulants and benzodiazepines.
• January 2016: self harm and drug abuse. Start drinking again. Destroy my bed.
• February 2016: abuse of sleeping pills and tranquillisers
• March 2016: poly-drug abuse, combining legal highs and medications
• April 2016: holiday to Southend with my guardian angel. Start dating again
• May 2016: working for undisclosed major multinational organisation, with 660,000 employees worldwide. Replace destroyed bed.
• June 2016: working. Suicidal. Bored.
• July 2016: holiday to Fuerteventura for my birthday with my guardian angel.
• August 2016: working. Suicidal. Bored.
• September 2016: project cancelled. Meet love of my life. Minor relapse. Lies. Antidepressants and tranquillisers.
• October 2016: in love. Mini-break to the New Forest. Weaning myself off tranquillisers.
• November 2016: in love. Drinking a lot. Writing my first novel.
• December 2016. in love. Christmas with her family. Eating and drinking a lot.
• January 2017: DVT and kidney failure. Hospital and dialysis. Working for Lloyds Banking Group. Neuropathic pain from nerve damage. Taking tramadol, codeine, dihydrocodeine and pregabalin for the pain. Abusing large amounts of Valium and Xanax. Lose contract
• February 2017: fully-blown supercrack relapse. Completely addicted to prescription opiates.
• March 2017: supercrack. Abusing sleeping pills and tranquillisers. Quitting prescription opiate painkillers. Drinking. Still in love.
• April 2017: supercrack. Still in love.
• May 2017: attempting to quit supercrack by staying at girlfriend's and taking dextroamphetamine. Not succeeding
• June 2017: drug and insomnia-induced mania, paranoia and general insanity. Break up with love of my life. Regret
• July 2017: run out of money. Get a job in Manchester. Put all my stuff into storage. Leave London. Fling with girl from work.
• August 2017: working for a startup in Manchester. Dating a different girl. Still physically addicted to painkillers, tranquillisers and sleeping pills.
• September 2017: breakup. Suicide attempt. Hospitalised. Sectioned. Locked up on psych ward.
• October 2017: move to Wales.
• November 2017: writing my second novel.
• December 2017: working for undisclosed bank in Warsaw and London.
• January 2018: working for same undisclosed bank in London. Dating a Welsh girl
• February 2018: bank. London. Girl.
• March 2018: working for undisclosed government organisation. Rent an apartment in Wales.
• April 2018: successfully quit all drugs and medications. Job, girlfriend and apartment all in Wales and very close.
• May 2018: relapse. Breakup.
• June 2018: government project finished. Mini-break to Faro, Portugal to see old friend.
• July 2018: working for another undisclosed government organisation. Living in a hotel.
• August 2018: government. Hotel. Single. Depressed.
• September 2018: still working for same government organisation. Dating again.

By my calculations, 27 out of 36 months have been relatively OK, but 9 months in the past 3 years I've been a complete and utter train-wreck. The damage that's been done in that quarter of the year where I've been struggling with addiction, has been enough to completely screw up my life the rest of the time, but not quite bad enough to lead to me becoming unemployable, bankrupt and homeless - I always find a way to bounce back.

Somehow I've managed to fit 5 serious girlfriends and 5 major IT projects into the madness of my day-to-day existence, as well as 3 hospitalisations for major medical emergencies, being sectioned, two psych wards, an arrest, two evictions, moving 5 times, 6 cities, 5 countries, 13 powerful prescription medications, 5 street drugs, 121 consecutive days sober, 56 consecutive days sober, 799 blog posts, 1 million words, 14 thousand Twitter followers and a couple of hundred thousand pounds... and all I've got to show for it is this poxy blog.

The story of Nick Grant and his ups and downs might be a bit repetitive, but I'm sure it's not boring. I would argue that it's pretty remarkable that I'm still alive and kicking, and able to string a sentence together. It's remarkable that I'm reasonably mentally stable and I'm working full time on quite an important project. It's remarkable that my colleagues don't suspect a thing. It's remarkable that I haven't made myself unemployable or otherwise ended up excluded from mainstream society. It's remarkable that I'm unmedicated and yet quite functional and productive.

Along the way, I managed to lose my original pair of glasses, but I had a new identical pair delivered today, which I'm wearing now. I had no idea when my replacement glasses would be delivered, because they were being hand made to order, so I find it deliciously wonderful that they were delivered on the day I'm celebrating the 3-year anniversary of starting this blog.

When I think back to my very first blog post 3 years ago - Platform 9.75 - it's amazing to reflect on the journey I've been on and marvel at how effectively my daily writing habit has functioned as a stabilising influence. I very much doubt I'd have been able to recover and continue my journey without the huge amount of help and support it's brought me. I feel really proud of what I've achieved, which gives me some all-important self-esteem in the times when I need it most. I'm sure I'd have killed myself long ago if it wasn't for the people who've engaged with me and what I write, and encouraged me to keep going. I feel loved and cared for even during some very dark and dismal days.

Obviously what I've written is not particularly palatable or compatible with dating and my professional life, but they'll never be able to find me - Nick Grant - because I've been so careful to disguise my identity and make sure that nobody could just Google me and find out all my closely guarded secrets. Nobody will ever be able to make the connection.

My next objective is to get through September 9th - the anniversary of my most serious suicide attempt - without incident. I plan on phoning a couple of the people who managed to get the emergency services to rescue me in the nick of time, to thank them for saving my life.

Tags: #writing #secrecy #privacy #nickgrant #socialmedia #blogging #career #addiction #bipolar #hospital #homeless #alcohol #drugs #sex #relationships #london #startup

This is a story about the food of the gods...

It was a spate of sensationalistic tabloid newspaper articles which first alerted me to the fact that you can buy super-strong high purity narcotics on the internet. It seems fairly obvious that the internet would sell drugs, given that pornography and escorts are readily available to anybody who looks online. It's a simple case of supply and demand.

Your average middle-class person normally has excellent life prospects - they're likely to be able to get a rewarding secure job, buy a house and afford to raise a family. Having a nice life is an excellent protective factor against the temptations of drink and drugs, although there are plenty of wealthy people who become alcoholics and junkies. Most middle-class people are afraid of drugs, because their insulated life never exposes them to the reality of recreational drug use and they wouldn't know where to find a drug dealer even if they wanted to.

Making drugs easily available on the internet lowers the barrier to entry. Being able to conduct a frictionless e-commerce transaction and have extremely potent drugs hitting your doormat the very next day, places a whole group of people who'd never normally be able to dabble - because they're insulated - in the position where there's a mountain of choice available at the click of a button.

Addictions don't generally take hold unless there are other social and psychological risk factors present. Being stressed, depressed, unemployed, having no hope, having relationship difficulties, family difficulties, money worries and a whole host of similarly unpleasant things, predisposes a person towards drug addiction - unhappy people are much more at risk of developing a habit, because their lives are shitty.

The first wave of legal highs were not very good - the stimulant drug BZP is a an anthelmintic... i.e. it's a worming treatment given to animals.

The second wave of legal highs was a huge improvement. Meow meow - methcathinone, mephedrone or M-CAT - swept the nation at a time when the average purity of street cocaine was less than 20%. Street drugs were terrible quality because of prohibition and the pressure on dealers to maximise profits, because of the risk to their life and liberty. Legal highs were the obvious solution in a capitalist society driven by supply and demand.

Methylone - βk-MDMA or beta-keto-MDMA - was the legal version of ecstasy, and for people who used to go clubbing in Ibiza when they were younger, it proved to be very tempting for former ravers, including myself. Being able to legally obtain an ecstasy-like drug via the internet, enabled me to resume safe recreational occasional weekend drug-taking, which had no negative effect on me or those around me. This was legal, victimless drug-taking in a capitalist society, where the drug was simply a product being produced in a factory and sold by a vendor to the customer - me - in exactly the same way as people buy Nike trainers.

Then, the government banned meow meow and methylone, along with a whole host of other chemical analogues.

For a while, I didn't care.

I went back to my drug-free existence.

I wasn't addicted.

But.

18 months later, I was incredibly stressed and I was having horrible relationship problems. I was depressed and suicidal. I was at risk of addiction.

I went onto a legal high website that I'd used 18 months previously and I looked for a product that was similar to methylone; similar to ecstasy. I wanted to feel better. I wanted something to lift my mood. I didn't know it, but I was very vulnerable to addiction getting its hooks into me.

I bought the number one bestseller on that website.

It was called "NRG-3".

I had no idea what it was.

I'm not stupid, so I did my research. I was away from home a lot because I was trying to raise investment for my startup. I researched this "NRG-3" stuff and it sounded horribly dangerous, so I decided to throw it in the dustbin as soon as I got home - it was sitting on my dining room table in the padded envelope it had been delivered in.

I went to a wedding.

I had an almighty row with my partner.

I decided I was going to kill myself.

I drove home from the wedding in the middle of the night, trying to build up the nerve to drive my car into a concrete bridge pillar at 100mph+. I had turned off the airbag in my car. I wasn't wearing my seatbelt. I figured I'd die instantly if I crashed at that speed into an immovable object.

I got home. I wasn't dead, but I was still suicidal.

There was the envelope.

...

The rest as they say, is history.

...

But what is "NRG-3"?

In America they call it bath salts. Sometimes it's sold as Ivory Wave. Now it seems to be called monkey dust, in the UK. There are also nicknames like flakka, gravel and zombie drug. It's all the same stuff. I call it supercrack.

The reason why I call "NRG-3" supercrack is because I don't really want to write anything online that makes the connection. I've written at length about how potent supercrack is, with a dose of 15mg lasting circa 18 hours, which means that 1 gram of supercrack is 67 doses. This drug is so ridiculously strong and so incredibly cheap that it seemed irresponsible of me to inform anybody of what exactly it is. This drug messed me up so badly that I didn't want anybody else getting curious and falling into the trap that I did.

The active ingredient in monkey dust is alleged to be a chemical called MDPV, but this seems very unlikely given how effectively the Chinese and UK customs have cracked down on the laboratories and supply chain, such that MDPV does not exist in the wild anymore. When the newspapers report that monkey dust is MDPV, they're just plain wrong.

Another chemical called a-PVP - α-PVP or alpha-PVP - is so similar to MDPV it's almost indistinguishable. When the Chinese shut down all the labs producing MDPV, they simply switched to producing a-PVP. Now, a-PVP has gone the same way as MDPV and it doesn't exist in the wild anymore.

There are zillions of analogues of MDPV and a-PVP, so monkey dust could be anything, but it's certainly related to MDPV and a-PVP. Monkey dust is not MDPV, as misreported by the newspapers, but it certainly has all the same effects, such as inducing stimulant psychosis - users hear voices and hallucinate. The psychosis is so powerful that people climb buildings and run through traffic to get away from the monsters in their head. The psychosis has lead to a number of grizzly deaths, hence why the tabloid newspapers have decided to run sensationalistic stories about the crazy escapades of monkey dust users.

The trend towards ever more powerful and ever cheaper drugs is a natural consequence of capitalism and drug prohibition. I'm definitely not pro-legalisation given that it does increase the risk that vulnerable people will become addicts if they have easy access to any drugs they want, but we have created a situation where those with crack, heroin and crystal meth addictions are beginning to realise that there are cheap alternatives, and the new drugs from the Chinese labs are incredibly pure.

Carfentanil can be bought via the Dark Web, which is a synthetic opioid so powerful that an amount the size of a pin head is enough to cause respiratory failure and death. Carfentanil is so powerful that it's considered to be a potential weapon of mass destruction, were it turned into an aerosol and sprayed in a crowded area. The Russians famously pumped carfentanil into a theatre full of Chechen rebels and hostages, killing at least 170 people.

The combination of Bitcoin, the Dark Web, Chinese factories, late-capitalism, austerity, prohibition and drug policies based on vote-winning and public opinion, instead of risk and good science, is creating a perfect storm where increasingly powerful drugs are becoming ubiquitously accessible at an increasingly cheap price. The situation is so bad that the US President has seen fit to declare a state of emergency. Emergency workers in the UK have declared the use of monkey dust as "an epidemic"

The synthetic cannabinoids - sold as Mamba and Spice in the UK - have ruined countless millions of lives and are used by almost the majority of homeless people and prisoners. The ubiquity of these psychosis-inducing cannabis replacements seems unaffected by the New Psychoactive Substances Act, which makes possession in a prison illegal, as well as criminalising the supply of the drugs. In such a depressed economic climate and with the dismantling of the welfare state, of course there will be countless millions who will become addicted to something which has proven far more addictive and destructive than the cannabis it was invented to legally replace.

All the trends point towards an ever-increasing proportion of society struggling with drug addiction, alcoholism, mental health problems, suicide, money worries, insecure jobs and insecure housing. Homelessness rates are soaring, living standards are declining, death rates are climbing and life expectancies are falling. It's a scandal. It's a disaster. It's a tragedy.

I struggle with addiction problems, although I've been 'clean' for a couple of months. Knowing that drugs are always readily available at the click of a button, but a secure job and a place to live are not, it seems obvious that the odds are stacked against people like me who are struggling. What's the best a person can hope for in such a dreadful economic climate? If you're suicidally depressed, of course drugs are going to seem more attractive than the life that's pushed you to the point of killing yourself. Drugs are simply a more protracted and drawn-out form of suicide, and most addicts know exactly what they're doing; they're choosing to kill themselves with drugs, because there's no better life on offer.

I read in the tabloid rags that a small bag of monkey dust can be bought for £2. I used to pay £27 for 2 grams of "NRG-3" which would last me anywhere between 2 and 3 months, so I imagine that a £2 bag of monkey dust lasts for 4 or 5 days, which - in an addict's mind - is incredibly good value for money, even if it's causing them to suffer powerful stimulant psychosis.

I've got a huge scar on my right leg where I fell through a glass roof in a classic monkey-dust story. I hid 80 feet up a tree with a massive shard of glass protruding from my leg, before descending and hiding in a bush in very unsanitary conditions. It's a miracle that I didn't bleed to death or subsequently die of septicaemia, shock or infection. It was exactly as the newspapers describe: superhuman strength, feeling no pain, hearing voices, hallucinating and being wide awake for days and days, with accompanying paranoia and strange delusional thoughts.

That I've been able to recover is only due to the fact that I've been able to somehow continue to work doing very highly paid jobs and the money I've earned has conferred considerable advantages. I've been very lucky to have had a guardian angel looking after me, helping to smooth over the enormous and virtually insurmountable difficulties associated with breaking the habit, detoxing and getting rehabilitated. Unleashing a powerful drug like monkey dust onto impoverished people is consigning them to an incredibly awful fate with little or no hope of escape. It's no wonder our emergency services, social services, police and mental health services are over-stretched, dealing with an avalanche of people who're using drugs like Spice, Mamba and monkey dust, because their lives are so shit, depressing and hopeless.

The social decay that we see and the conspicuous addiction and mental health problems that are putting such a strain on our first-line services, is a direct result of the collapse of our living standards and demise of any opportunity to work hard for a better life. The prospect of becoming crushed by spiralling debts, working zero-hours contract McJobs and not being able to afford rent and bills, is not something I'd wish upon my worst enemy. Of course people are going to become dysfunctional addicts when they're treated so appallingly, and there's so little hope of them ever owning a house and being able to afford to raise a family; there's so little hope of ever having the dignity of earning enough money to feel happy and secure.

Monkey dust is a hell of a drug, but there's no point in me warning people not to use it, because it's toxic circumstances that corral people towards addiction, not bad life choices or bad character.

Tags: #addiction #supercrack #monkeydust #nrg3 #drugs #mentalhealth #homeless

This is a story about civilised society...

What is rock bottom? My life doesn't seem to obey the rules - the first time I was forced to sleep rough because of my drug addiction and chaotic lifestyle, I had about £50,000 in the bank. Of course I could have stayed in a very fine hotel, but the culture clash between me in my dishevelled state, the hotel staff and the other guests was going to create a lot of friction. The first time I ran out of money I owned my own home. The first time I had depression so bad that I wanted to kill myself, I seeming had it all: friends, girlfriend, good job, money in the bank, nice house, boat, cars etc. etc.

Rock bottom seemed to begin shortly after I landed a lucrative contract with Lloyds Banking Group, when I sat on my leg which caused circulation problems, resulting in a blood clot and deep-vein thrombosis (DVT) which then caused kidney failure and landed me in hospital on dialysis. It wouldn't have been so bad, but the DVT caused nerve damage and the pain was excruciating, so I was taking the maximum dose of tramadol, which is an opiate painkiller.

I started to get closer to rock bottom moments when I desperately sought relief from the pain - I obtained codeine and dihydrocodeine tablets on the Dark Web, as well as some extra tramadol. I was in too much pain and discomfort to work. The ludicrous amount of opiate painkillers I was taking left me a dribbling mess at the office. When I lost the job which I had fought so hard to keep, it destroyed me. I started swallowing a chemical cocktail which I'm very surprised didn't kill me.

The problem with opiate painkillers is that they cause very unpleasant physical symptoms. When you take opiate painkillers they make you sleepy and constipated, and when you withdraw you get diarrhoea, aching, sweating and a whole host of other flu-like symptoms. It's thoroughly unpleasant and withdrawal brings back the original pain twice as bad.

I had started taking a neuropathic painkiller called pregabalin - marketed as Lyrica - which isn't an opiate. I was also taking sleeping pills: zolpidem - marketed as Ambien - and zopiclone.. These are what you might call downers as they all have a sedating, tranquillising and soporific effect. The list of downers doesn't end there. I had started to use increasing amounts of diazepam - Valium - and alprazolam - Xanax - which have similar effects to the pregabalin, zolpidem and zopiclone.

So, to recap, I was taking on a daily basis: tramadol, codeine, dihydrocodeine, pregabalin, zolpidem, zopiclone, alprazolam and diazepam... and that's just the pills.

You can't function if you're as doped up to the eyeballs as I was, so I was also drinking strong coffee, Red Bull energy drinks, taking dexedrine and occasionally dabbling with crystal meth in an attempt to bring myself out of my stupefied state of drugged intoxication.

Somehow, I managed to get off the opiate painkillers. I went cold turkey and it was unpleasant, but after a week or so things started to improve. Life on opiates is a horrible merry-go-round of repeatedly having to take a dose every two or three hours to stave off the nasty withdrawal symptoms. I feel very glad that I was able to kick them to the kerb without too much difficulty.

Getting off all the other pills proved much more difficult. You can't just stop taking benzodiazepines - like Valium and Xanax - because you'll have a seizure if you've been taking them for a long time at high doses. Benzos are far more physically addictive than opiates - you can die if you suddenly go cold turkey.

During this extended period of unpleasantness, I broke up with the love of my life in a moment of spectacular stupidity and drug-induced insanity. To my ever-lasting shame, I continued my non-stop blogging and oversharing on Twitter and Facebook, broadcasting my idiocy to all my friends as well as on the public internet. That was - in retrospect - definitely rock bottom, but I was too messed up to see it at the time.

My super-expensive London apartment was burning through my cash and available credit at very high speed, and it became apparent that I was going to get into rent arrears if I didn't take drastic action. All my worldly possessions had to be boxed up and put into storage, and I didn't have enough money left to be able to afford to rent anywhere cheaper in London. I was forced to leave my home and my home city, in search of the first financially viable opportunity, which arose in Manchester.

You'd think that being effectively bankrupt and homeless would be rock bottom, but no, I still think that my rock bottom had been spread over an extended period when my life truly started falling apart. It started with the blood clot and the DVT in my leg/ankle and reached its peak when I broke up with my wonderful lovely amazing ex. It's very hard to pinpoint a single moment of rock-bottomness, because there was a chain-reaction of events which unfolded like a slow-motion car crash. Unlike a car crash, however, I was dimly aware of the disasterous decisions that I was making and should have been more in control.

I'm not an idiot, so of course I knew that I shouldn't risk becoming addicted to opiate painkillers. I'm no fool, so of course I knew that all the sleeping tablets, tranquillisers and sedatives were addictive and I was becoming dependent on them. When I relapsed back into fully-blown supercrack addiction the consequences were obvious: the sleep deprivation and the stimulant psychosis is enough to send anybody insane.

There was never a moment that was so utterly awful that I would call it rock bottom. In fact, the moment when I decided that I need to take evasive action and attempt to avert total disaster, was not a moment at all. I had known for a long while that the money I had managed to accumulate would only allow me to survive for a finite amount of time, and that my expensive London lifestyle was burning through cash at an astonishing rate. I knew exactly how long I could remain as a jobless junkie, before I became bankrupt, destitute and homeless. The only surprise to me is how lucky I am that total disaster was averted at all.

When I left London for Manchester I carried a horrible addiction with me. Benzodiazepines are insidious as they creep their way into your life, literally lulling you into a state of tranquility. Quitting benzodiazepines is not only extremely dangerous, but almost indescribably unpleasant as well - peaceful, tranquil and anxiety-free existence is replaced by incredible anxiousness, stress, worry, nervous tension, insomnia, restlessness and a general sense of all-pervasive and inescapable unease.

I ended up in a shitty apartment, being paid less than half what I'm worth, with an incredibly stressful and demanding job, in a city where I have no friends or family. I had a couple of "rebound" flings with girls, which had seemed promising at first but then ended miserably. Perhaps this was my rock bottom, because this was when I made my most premeditated and calculated attempt to kill myself.

I don't think I tried to kill myself because I was at rock bottom. There have been times in my life when I've been in much worse situations. I could see that there was no way I was going to be able to quit all the addictive benzodiazepines and make new friends and woo a new girlfriend and deliver my project at work and get back on my feet financially. I had a fleeting moment where I lost hope and I was so heavily doped up that it was a lot easier to kill myself. I was so full of medication that I quite calmly poured myself several pints of white wine, which I used to wash down about 400 tablets and capsules, most of which were very powerful and deadly opiate painkillers.

I should have died. I certainly didn't have better than 50/50 odds.

After they told me in hospital that I was going to survive, soon followed the moment which would seem most like rock bottom to a casual observer. I quickly had even more problems than when I had attempted suicide. I lost my job and my apartment and found myself not only homeless, jobless and virtually penniless, but also sectioned and locked up on a psych ward in a part of the country miles away from any friends or family. However, I'd suffered days of seizures while in hospital and had been through an incredibly rapid benzo detox. I was at least free from the shackles of my benzodiazepine addiction at last. It would have been impossible for me to detox on my own and without intensive medical assistance.

Having to sell my house due to my divorce was incredibly traumatic and destabilising, but I was glad to be rid of my horrible ex-wife. Becoming homeless in London and getting in trouble with the police was traumatic and I thought I'd never be able to recover from the shame of being arrested and locked up in a cell, but the police are kind and they helped me - they didn't want to ruin my life [or me to ruin it myself]. Sleeping rough and living in a hostel was an adventure and I made lots of new friends. Becoming a poly-drug abuser - addicted to a whole heap of medications - going insane and breaking up with the love of my life was incredibly tragic and I feel very guilty about what I put her through, as well as being heartbroken myself... however, I needed to escape the high cost of living in London and reduce the enormous financial pressure I was under. For every downside I see an upside. For every moment that was thoroughly awful at the time, I can look back and see that none of those moments were bad enough to be called rock bottom.

My life today could be characterised conventionally as 'desirable' by most ordinary people's standards. I have a large amount of so-called disposable income - although I use every spare penny to rapidly repay my debts - and I'm quickly returning to a position of financial stability. I have a lovely apartment with sea views, which is far more spacious than I need. I have a very well paid respectable job and I work with smart people. My commute is not too far. I enjoy a great deal of comfort and luxury, which belies my troubled past. I've never had to compromise on my lifestyle - although I've come within a whisker of bankruptcy on very many occasions, I've never had to economise or alter my habits of consumption.

On the flip side, I've lost contact with many friends and I have no local support network to speak of. I live a very solitary reclusive existence, where I spend 99% of my leisure time alone, reading, writing, watching documentaries and films. I'm unfit and I drink too much. I'm bored and unchallenged most of the time at work, and I'm depressed and anxious a lot. The tiniest things can inflict an incredible amount of stress, causing sudden and breathtakingly powerful suicide and self-harm impulses.

By anybody's measure I'm rehabilitated. In the last year I've worked for 4 different organisations and delivered 4 big projects successfully. I've earned a lot of money. I've got my own home. I've got money in the bank. I've got a car. I'm getting up and going to work and my colleagues have absolutely no idea what I've been through, and they would never suspect a thing. I'm quite a convincingly 'normal' productive member of civilised society. I've even managed to sail through background checks and security clearance, and found myself in positions of responsibility, which one would not normally imagine being given to an ex-homeless, ex-junkie, near-bankrupt person with mental health problems, who's known to the police.

If you believe that people can be rehabilitated - that deep down there's always some good in a person no matter how many bad things there are in their past - then I think that I could be a poster-boy for that idealistic belief. I hope that my story indicates that it's worth giving people a second chance; allowing them to pick up the pieces of their broken lives and to be rehabilitated without prejudice and stigma.

Of course, I still have the potential to f**k up spectacularly, but on the whole my net contribution to society must surely be a positive one. I am trying my very hardest to see if I can at least break-even.

Am I rehabilitated? Inside I feel very broken and that happiness and contentment are still an extremely long way away, but to all outside observers and by all objective measures I represent a great success: the proof that a person can re-enter civilised society and make a valuable contribution, provided they are given the chance.

Am I rehabilitated? I leave it to the reader, who is far better informed than most, to decide.

Tags: #homeless #addiction #drugs #medication #accident #suicide #hospital #bankrupt #debt #rehab #recovery

This is a story about carelessness...

I'm a regular at my local corner shop. During the month when I wasn't working, I think I visited the shop every single day to buy a bottle of red wine. The weekend before last I was buying some unhealthy snacks and my usual bottle of red, when I decided at the last minute to grab a bottle of white from the fridge, which was near the counter. My usual bottle of red was balanced precariously on top of the snacks I was buying, which then plummeted towards the shop floor where mercifully it bounced off the linoleum; the glass didn't break. Last Friday I grabbed both a bottle of white and a bottle of red. As I walked up the steep hill back to my apartment, I wasn't paying attention to my footing and I tripped over. I grazed my knuckles as I attempted to save my precious cargo of wine from being smashed on the tarmac.

I've definitely become a functional alcoholic.

I woke up on Saturday morning and I had a slight tremor. I don't get hangovers because I think my alcohol tolerance is so high. I can drink two bottles of wine and I feel fine. Obviously I'm not fine.

I've started to skip meals because I'm getting enough calories from all the wine. I could drink 5 bottles of wine over the course of a weekend, and the only 'food' that I would eat would be some salty snacks - crisps and suchlike.

I examine my eyes for any sign of yellowing. I prod and probe my abdomen for tenderness, firmness or any subcutaneous fluid. Surely my liver is taking a battering from a month and a half of extreme alcohol abuse?

Over the weekends I show no restraint at all. I'm making no attempt whatsoever to be the slightest bit healthy. The crap I'm putting into my body - unhealthy snacks and copious quantities of alcohol - combined with my sedentary lifestyle must be lethal. I'm either sat down or lying down. According to my step counter I've dropped from a peak of 15,000 steps per day to a paltry 2,000.

I need to figure out which broken part of the vicious cycle to fix. Stress leads to feelings of tiredness; depression leads to demotivation; anxiety paralyses me - I could start with fixing my mental health. Self-medicating with vast quantities of alcohol seems like the solution to anxiety, stress, boredom, loneliness and isolation, but it's pretty clear that alcohol is affecting my physical health and probably my mental health too. Exercise seems like a ridiculous suggestion, given how badly I'm coping with the basic demands of everyday life. I can't figure out if I'm too tired and stressed to exercise, or if exercise will bring a net benefit once I get fitter - which I know it will - but it seems unthinkable to get fitter when I'm so dependent on alcohol as a crutch.

I'm changing far too many things at once. I've only just started my 3rd week in a new job and I'm still finding my feet in the new organisation and ingratiating myself with my new colleagues. My memory is shot to pieces. I can't even remember how long I was taking sleeping pills for before I ran out. I had some leftover painkillers, which helped to reduce my anxiety enough to be able to sleep, but then I switched back to sleeping pills last week. All I know is that the second half of May was a big mess, June was a near-disaster and I only started getting myself sorted out a week before starting the new job in the middle of July.

The surprising thing is that I keep moving forward. I didn't lose my job despite a few really shaky weeks when I was really sick. I've managed to start this job and things are going OK. Well, when I say that "things are going OK" of course I don't include my mental health, mood stability, brain chemistry or any of those other things which I pretend are OK during office hours. It's a miracle that I've been able to cover up a major relapse, alcohol abuse, abuse of prescription medications and of course my rather worrisome mental health problems.

How long did my writing go erratic for? I know that I had to delete a lot of blog posts in the period between my relapse and the day I finally regained enough of my rational mind to see that I was picking fights which couldn't be won and saying things which shouldn't be said. I don't usually delete blog posts, but I'd lost my mind and I was meandering up dead-ends; I was unhealthily obsessing over things and acting carelessly.

My carelessness has manifested itself at weekends recently. I get super drunk and I write with a lack of care for coherence and storytelling. I've written at weekends in the knowledge that I have fewer readers on Saturdays and Sundays, which has made me feel like I can just ramble, complain, moan and write complete and utter crap. I've considered deleting or rewriting my daily blog posts which I've published at weekends, because I've wondered what the hell am I going on about? I've written and written and when the word count goes over 1,000 words then I decide that I'd better not write any more, but I haven't considered whether what I've written is any good.

Of couse, the end is in sight. I'm so close to a million words now. In fact, if we included the word count of all the deleted blog posts, then I'm well over a million words. The current total word count that's actually published on the public internet on this website is now in excess of 950,000. I'm repeating myself, but only because it's important in the context of my alcoholism. The last few months have been a blur. In my mind, the relapse, the breakup and the period of insanity that followed was over in the blink of an eye. In reality, I've been an intoxicated mess; I've either been doped up on pills or drunk.

Sometimes I hear myself speak and my voice buzzes in my ears and the sound vibrates my head. It feels like somebody else is speaking and they're using a megaphone directed at my head, which is so loud that the sound hurts and I can feel the vibrations. It's a dreamlike state. It's akin to an out-of-body experience. I feel like this when I think I'm completely sober but I think it's actually due to the fact that there isn't much blood in my alcohol-stream. God knows what other crap is still circulating in my body. I've abused a mixture of diazepam, clonazepam, alprazolam, pregabalin and zopiclone during the last couple of months, as I attempted to wrestle back control of my life before my supercrack addiction destroys everything I've worked so hard to rebuild.

Yes, that's right. The dreaded supercrack was back. I had relapsed.

To put things in context, I've worked a full-time job for 9 months out of the last 12. I've moved house 4 times. I've been hospitalised twice. I've been sectioned. I spent the best part of a month locked up on a psych ward. The main headline that most people would pay attention to is that I've earned a lot of money and done a lot of work. To all intents and purposes I've been a thoroughly productive worker and a valued member of the teams and projects I've been part of. This does not reconcile.

In my head, I'm brushing off serious problems with mental health, addiction and alcoholism like they're nothing. In my head, I'm as invincible as I ever was. In my head, I'm immortal and the evidence very much backs up that ludicrous idea.

I really don't want to have a reality check one day, where I find out that I've done irreparable damage to my physical health. I really don't want to keep testing my mortality to breaking point.

Yes, the numbers look incredibly good. Despite the insanity of my life during the last 12 months, I still managed to work 9 months out of 12 and my gross income has probably been well in excess of 3 times the national average. Somehow, I've managed to write more-or-less every day and churn out over 300,000 words since this time last year. How the hell did I manage to earn so much and how did I manage to write so much? How do the numbers look so good when my life has been a complete shambolic mess?

The numbers don't tell the complete story.

Yes, without good numbers my story wouldn't be very interesting. The world's full of junkies who went bankrupt. The world's full of alcoholics who drank all their profits. The world's full of people who have fascinating stories but they never write them down. I'm gunning for the convergence point where one million words meets one million pounds. I'm aiming to be an outlier: the guy who beat drug addiction, alcoholism, mental health problems, homelessness and - most importantly - bankruptcy. I've got the archives; I've collected the data. Plenty of people lost their house, their car, their wife, their cash and everything else, but how did they get it back? The game; the sport, if you like, is to have kept this narrative going through a 3-year period which accurately captures the false starts, the setbacks and the struggles... and at no point did I wipe the slate clean; at no point did I run away; at no point did I switch to a different tack.

Why would I change my approach? The numbers look good.

I'm going to reach a million words on my blog because I'm in control of my destiny and I can work as hard as I want; I can write as much as I want. I can choose when my project is complete, because I know the word count I need to achieve every day to make sure I hit the target.

Whether or not I clear all my debts and reach a thoroughly impressive gross income for the 3-year period covered by my blog, I'm not so sure. There's no way that hard work will bring the finish line any closer - it's simply a waiting game. All I have to do is sit and look pretty and the money flows in. I just need to be patient. It's an agonising wait, but it's profitable.

Being drunk all the time seemed like a solution to the waiting game; to make the time pass quicker. However, I need to be clean and sober when I reach the finish line otherwise it was all a waste of time.

I'm going to see if I can resist the temptation to get drunk. I'm going to sober up for a few days, to try to clear my head and get some perspective. I've been intoxicated for far too long.

Tags: #alcohol #addiction #drugs #supercrack #relapse #sobriety #mentalhealth #bipolar #depression #suicide #homeless #career #debt #writing

This is a story about a calorie controlled diet...

If there's one thing I like to do other than drink alcohol, it's to eat unhealthy food. In fact, I find the combination of both to be most agreeable.

Here's what I've eaten (and some of what I've drunk) in the last week:

Sunday

1. Tin of Heinz beans & sausages

Monday

1. Vegetable samosa
2. Chicken, bacon & mayonaise pre-prepared sandwich
3. Large bag of Skips crisps
4. Large bag of beef flavour crisps
5. 3 cheese strings
6. 1 bottle of white wine
7. 1 bottle of red wine
8. Peanut butter eaten straight from the tub

Tuesday

1. Nothing

Wednesday

1. Nothing

Thursday

1. 4x slices of toast with marmite on

Friday

1. 3x chicken drumsticks
2. 2x smoked mackerel fillets
3. 4x cheese strings
4. Tiny amount of Ben & Jerry's Karamel Sutra ice cream
5. 1 bottle of red wine
6. 1 bottle of white wine

Saturday

1. Nothing

In terms of drinking that I omitted, because it's been a bit more chaotic/unpredictable, and it's also fairly boring information, I have drunk a lot of apple & black-current, orange and lime flavour squash. It's 24 degrees celcius in my apartment and staying cool is a problem. I pre-mix the squash, speed chill it in the freezer and then transfer it to the fridge. In theory, there's always a cold drink I can grab, provided I'm not cornered in some part of my apartment.

Monday is representative of what I ate and drank most days while I was working full-time, although I'd try to keep to one bottle of wine only.

Friday I managed to stock my cupboards from a proper big supermarket on Friday. Not well communicated by this food diary, is the fact that my cupboards and fridge are now brimming with easy-to-make meals, which are far healthier than big bags of crisps, samosas, more crisps and other crap you can buy from a corner shop, along with 2 bottles of wine for just over a tenner.

I have a cornucopia of delicious foods to choose from right now, yet my life is still chaotic.

The vicious cycle goes like this: I start to feel stressed and anxious, which triggers an alcohol craving. I then buy 2 bottles of wine, 'planning' on only drinking one. I drink both bottles and wake up feeling awful, of course. The hangover triggers a stimulant craving, which can be temporarily alleviated with Red Bull, but that then causes me to feel anxious and jittery and crave alcohol. Allegedly, somebody identical to me but not me, tried taking Concerta (an ADHD medication) for a couple of weeks: it's often sold as Concerta, but that's because the previous brand - Ritalin - has negative connotations in patient's minds, like Prozac (tell the patient it's fluoxetine and they'll be much more likely to take it).

I think my health would benefit from:

• Not drinking 1 or 2 bottles of wine every day
• Not binging on unhealthy snacks while getting drunk
• Going to a proper supermarket once a week, so I have food that I want to eat in stock, as opposed to going to the corner shop every day because I'm "hungry" but really it's to buy 1 or 2 bottles of wine too.
• Not relapsing back into being a regular caffeine user
• Finding some kind of Concerta/Adderall slow-release formula type medication that can help me face the next 27+ years of soul destroying office job bullshit, which only keeps me busy & concentrating for 5% of the time and the rest is like torture
• Finding some kind of tolerable antidepressant, to help me through what I anticipate will be at least a year of feeling lifeless, joyless, demotivated and deriving almost no pleasure from the things I used to enjoy.
• Maybe if that pile of pills is making me a bit too enthusiastic and excitable, bordering on the manic, I might have to consider a light mood stabiliser too - perhaps a low dose of Olanzapine, although I'm loathe to suffer the weight gain.

Specifically my mental health would benefit from:

• Detoxing again from the sleeping pills, tranquillisers, sedatives and stimulants, which I've only used sporadically over the last 6 weeks - I have no benzodiazepine dependency, thankfully - but I need to 100% cease that ruinous vicious circle.
• Getting a hair cut and washing my favourite clothes; maybe even buying a couple of new things I like... I seriously only buy new clothes every 3 years
• Getting my apartment in a state where I'm not paranoid that the landlord might see a couple of bits of damaged decoration and freak out.
• Securing a new contract, but with enough time to physically rest & recuperate before starting
• Spending some time with my friends in Ireland, or going to a hostel where I can be around people, and socialise a bit, as well as sleeping lots, getting fresh air and generally having a long-overdue restorative holiday.
• Being realistic about where I'm really going to thrive, or where I'm going to be isolated and lonely. Swindon is a big no, I think. Newport, I have one friend, but he's super busy with his kids. So, it's got to be London really.
• Friends first - get a regular meetup sorted... a guaranteed one day of the week (minimum) where I'll see friend(s). The more friends the better. Concentrate on friends.
• Being more aware of how easily I fall in love and become relaxed and comfortable in domestic life. I'm quite content deciding on dinner, cooking, eating, watching TV or a film, kissing and cuddling, sex, spooning, then a kiss goodbye in the morning with a nice hug... and repeat, and repeat, and repeat. I've been so isolated and lonely for so long that FOMO and jealousy of my partner's social life isn't a problem, and I just spend the time on my own... drinking. It doesn't leave me in a very secure place though, if I don't have my own friends and events.
• Exercise. I put this on just because it's such an obvious suggestion, and one that I get all the time. It's not a bad suggestion. It's an impossible suggestion when all the other stuff listed above is broken. "You won't feel like doing it, but afterwards you'll feel more energised; it'll give you energy" - OK, what you're talking about are chemicals released to ease your muscle pain, which are actually opioids, so you get a literal 'high' after exercise, AND the fact that you're getting fitter. Energy cannot be created or destroyed, so to use energy does not give you energy. You're right, I don't feel like doing it, and I would benefit from being fitter, but as the Millennials are wont to say: "I literally can't even".
• Speaking to friends on the phone or Facetime etc - I live my life in text, through a browser or an app. I'm in contact with sometimes hundreds of people a day (19.5k Twitter followers presently, for example) and some friends are good enough to regularly message me, but it's not the same as a live conversation where you can hear somebody's voice.

Well, and just because I'm making lists, here's the practical stuff I've got to sort urgently:

• Car MOT on Monday morning
• Answer phone/emails from agents RE: contracts
• The world's biggest pile of stinky washing
• Making sure my back bedrooms are at least passable and not likely to cause alarm to uninvited visitors

Less urgent is the redecorating, just because it's going to be a pain to organise.

nAlso, I did an epic job of cleaning the bathroom(s) spotlessly and mopping the floors and otherwise making my apartment pretty presentable, A lot of my TODO list has been tamed.

So, a bit more than just my food diary, but it hints at why for 5 out of 7 days I ate virtually nothing. It also hints at the three ways things could go: 1) no more food diary cos I'm dead, 2) food diary of junk which is making me fat, and alcohol which is making me unwell, 3) food diary that might be a bit more interesting (although it'll probably start with sandwiches and soups and pre-cooked meats).

Also, related content if it's going to be the "no more food diary": The Supercrack Diet

NOTE: I think the muscle damage/breakdown causes weight loss (at the expense of your kidneys) and sweating and dehydration cause further weight loss, but your body goes into shock and you just end up weak and more or less the same weight once you've rehydrated... although my tummy is half the size of what it was 6 weeks ago. Any sport scientist will tell you not to run out of glucose or water when exercising, or else you'll lose muscle mass, while any doctor will tell you that artificially raising your metabolic rate and putting strain on your heart (such as using fat-burners like DNP) is quite likely to kill you or permanently f**k you up.

You can lose weight by 'fasting' but it's for people with sedentary jobs, and also there's no point if you're going to undo your good work by binging on junk and alcohol on the 'normal' days.

Anyway, there's a little glimpse into my unhealthy lifestyle.

Tags: #food #diet #fat #slimming #mentalhealth #depression #adhd #exercise #friends

This is a story about taking things too literally...

Very poetic, but I think the original author meant an obsession with a  beautiful woman, rich food, riding a motorbike too quickly or numerous other things where people would say "he died doing what he loved doing".

When it comes to drink, drugs and cigarettes (although "love" is a bit of a strong word for disgusting fags) people are like "no no no no. I didn't mean that literally".

Personally, I'd rather drink myself to death and let my addiction rampage out of control, than have a long life of mediocrity - endless hours spent watching light entertainment TV shows, riding the commuter train, bumbling along at work just because it's a job.

I've been ridiculously lucky, in that I have so many highly paid jobs I could apply for and probably get.

My dad taught me from an early age that there's no God and no afterlife so I have create to meaning.,

Currently I live for supercrack, with my writing a close second.

The infrequency of my blogging, most of the last 14 nights have been alcohol free and mostly without food, tells you everything you need to know about how much I love suercrack.

Let's get this straight: supercrack is killing me. It's wrecking my kidneys and heart, let alone the brain damage and other damage that's caused by stumbling around drunk from sleep deprivation, in the pitch black because you're too paranoid about anybody seeing your druggie face.

Let's also get this straight: I do not love supercrack. I spent whole nights holding my bedroom door shut with my feet, convinced that somebody's in my apartment and intent on seeing me at my lowest ebb; my most undignified, I spent until about 4am last night waiting up for the people to who wanted to harm me (stone thrown at window and back door kinda aggressively rattled. I decided to hide in the bathroom, which has a lockable door. Then, there were the sounds of drilling and work-boots and what I assumed were the landlord's minions who had taken it upon themselves to sort out my pit of misery and shame.

It is my understanding that, in the UK, you may not enter an owned or rented home without at least 24 hours prior notice, unless there's an "emergency" the landlord has to fix (e.g. a leak), the police have reasonable cause to believe that your life may be in danger... or a warrant. I don't know anything about warrants. I imagine they're not the easiest things to get for 'minor' crime, such as making a noise in your bathroom at 6am.

I was flabbergasted when I checked the time, having emerged from the bathroom - my doorbell had just rung - looking for a police offer to save me from the intruders who never once responded to my shouts of "who are you?" and "what are you doing in my apartment?" and "what authority do you have to be here?" and "you'd better be police officers with a warrant otherwise there's going to be hell to pay".

For every 15 enjoyable minutes of supercrack, it will give you 36 hours of paranoia, sweating, obsessive thinking, tachycardia, brachycardia, bruxism, dread, fear, anhedonia, loss of self-esteem, insomnia, lack of energy.

Today, I nearly died of dehydration, malignant hyperthermia, rhabdoyalosis and excess exertion placed on my heart. This is how the supercrack minset goes: "this is brilliant.... I should take more".... enter stimulant psychosis.

Tomorrow I have to deal with some of the consequences of going bat-shit insane from stimulant psychosis. Most of it revolves around barricading doors. I took the precaution of papering my windows shut, because drug addiction is not a spectator's sport - you're a sick fuck if you want to see people at their most vulnerable. However, the papered shut windows - in my mind at least - have attracted the attention of would be voyeurs, who would love nothing more than to see me taking drugs and masturbating to porn.

Fine, let it kill you, but your dignity will die first. I genuinely believed I was going to be carted off today, having not showered for 3 days and been pretty much constantly sweating. Oh the smell. The smell.

Then, what else are you prepared to lose? Your girlfriend? Your home? Your job? Your money (although admittedly supercrack is super cheap - it's fixing me and the other stuff that's expensive).

My loss of earnings from being too unwell - comedowns after stimulant psychosis - to work is over £4,000. People with coke habits put thousands up their noses. If you think my money goes on drugs, you're wrong. I've probably spent several thousands on beds in the last few years... I just decide they need 'remodelling' when I' off my rocker. Don't ask me why.

I need to stop this, before it costs me my job, my clean criminal record, my apartment, more money than I can afford, and my sanity (already in bad shape). It really pisses me off how it can have me physically shaking and vomiting, with the strength of the craving, after a year of being a good boy.

I thought to myself today: "it'd be a shame if I died, because I haven't reached a million words yet or achieved anything much to be proud of". I was giving a lecture on how to be a good Java programmer to nobody in particular, in the dark of my bathroom earlier.

I'm still managing to work - albeit from home - but it won't be long before my relapse becomes obvious to all involved. I've got a bloody yacht I can use now, but I haven't left the house since May 14, when we broke up. I dumped her - of course. I probably already knew in my subconscious mind that I was going to relapse.

Tags: #relapse #drugs #addiction