This is a story about ups & downs...

I used to quite enjoy my hypomanic episodes. I haven't had one for over 8 months though, and I'm beginning to miss the energy, focus, enthusiasm, fast-paced thinking, creativity and passion for something, anything.

When I average out the amount of time that I would spend hypomanic versus the amount of time I would spend depressed, you'd think that it's something you wouldn't want, because my episodes of depression were always far longer than my episodes of hypomania. However, I never wanted to give up those hypomanic highs, even though my episodes of depression have been brutal and I've nearly taken my own life.

Some people ask me "aren't you just experiencing what every human experiences? Joy and sadness?". Here is a graph that kinda explains the difference between Bipolar and 'normal':

Do you see much difference?

The first thing I should draw your attention to is the range. The red line never reaches the dotted line that signifies hypomania and depression. In any given moment, you might be happy that your sports team just won a game, or you might be sad because somebody ate all the cakes, but this is a normal range of moods. In normal life, you're not spending every cent in your bank balance, taking crazy risks and undertaking insane projects at breakneck speed. In normal life, you're not unable to work or socialise, and on the brink of suicide.

The second thing that I should draw your attention to is the irregularity of it. It's unpredictable, because it's dictated by external events. Who knows when a friend is unexpectedly going to drop by and say "Hi!" which will lift your mood. Who knows when your boss is going to say something's wrong with your work, which will make you upset. These events are unpredictable, because they come from the world at large, which is also unpredictable. This is normal life. Normal life is unpredictable and exciting.

With my Bipolar II, I know that every episode of hypomania is going to be followed by a crash. I know that my hypomania is going to last a few weeks, maybe a month and a bit. I know that my depression is going to last anywhere between 6 weeks and 6 months. These episodes are monotonous. Sure, good stuff and bad stuff happens during those episodes, but it does little to affect my prevailing mood.

This year I seem to have had the longest depression of my life. It's given me somewhat of an appreciation for what it must be like for people with Unipolar Depression. Here is a graph of what my life looks like at the moment:

Looks pretty bleak, doesn't it? Unrelenting depression, and only very brief moments where I feel OK. Look how sharp those spikes are. Surely my life can't be that bad?

Well, look at it in these terms: we are now in July. That means that in 2016, I have had 7 months of this shitty feeling. January to April, it was understandable that I was depressed, right, because it was shitty winter, I was unemployed and I was stressed about running out of money and being evicted out of my apartment onto the streets. You can surely empathise with that situation, and agree that it would be pretty depressing?

So what about May, June and July? Well, I've been working a job that I took out of desperation. My mental health really does not permit me to be working a shit job full time, because I'm exhausted and demotivated, due to the aforementioned depression. But what about all that cash I'm earning? Shouldn't I be happy - glad - to have a job again?

Well, I'm working to replenish my savings. I'm working to pay off debts that I ran up when I was unable to work. I'm working to literally stand still.

But what about fun time?

Well, look at it this way. There are 120 hours in the working week. Let's look at my lunch hour: that's about 4% of the time. So, 96% of the working week is not lunch hour. Another way of looking at it is Saturdays. Saturday is the only day of the week where I'm not working or anxious about going back to work. That means that only 1/7th of the week is somewhat free of anxiety. What about holidays? Well, 7 months have elapsed this year without a holiday. Let's say that I take a 1-week holiday. Leaving aside the fact that for the whole week I'll be dreading going back to work, we are only talking about 1 week in 30. That's right... I'm only on holiday 1/30th of the time.

Things will improve when I have money in the bank and I can afford to take more time off (I don't get paid holiday and I also have loss of earnings while I'm away) but predominantly, my life this year has been monotonous depression.

I'm dying for my mood to swing to the other 'pole' and to enter a hypomanic episode. Depression is literally killing me.

Tags: #mentalhealth #depression #suicide #bipolar

This is a story about obvious solutions...

Hallelujah! Praise the Lord! The solution has been found. Blessed is this wonderful day, for now the ailment that has blighted so many lives - depression - has finally met its match with one simple trick, that nobody ever thought to try before.

In the history of humanity, nobody ever thought to say these magic curative words to a depressed person:

"Other people have it so much harder than you"

Upon hearing these words, the depression sufferer is reminded that there are children starving in Africa, that there are political prisoners in China, that there are people who live in low-lying countries like Bangladesh, where there is a constant threat of natural disaster from floodwaters, that there are massive slums in Mexico and Brazil and that 2.8 billion people in the world live on less than $2 a day. The depression sufferer had simply forgotten!

You would have thought that the poverty and injustice of the world could almost be considered an additional cause of the sadness and depression that the person was feeling, but no, they were simply wallowing in self-pity.

It had previously been thought that depressed people were sensitive and aware of global issues, and empathised very much with the plight of those living in poverty, warzones and struggling to survive. It had previously been thought that the depressed people were having a sane response to an insane world, but no, they just needed reminding to count their blessings.

It had been previously thought that depressed people were well aware of all the things that they could be glad about, grateful for. I mean, they're not dead with red hot pokers shoved up their bum and all their skin peeled off and raw flesh dipped in salt and lemon juice, while their finger and toe nails are pulled out one by one, are they? I mean, for fucks sake, unless that is happening to you right fucking now your life is just one big fucking rainbow cotton candy parade of fucking joy, right?

In fact, there'd probably be somebody who's not only having the poker, lemon juice and nail pulling, but is also being burnt alive while watching their entire family get chopped up and fed to wild animals, so even people who are undergoing the aforementioned torture should be whistling a little jolly fucking tune and thinking about how lucky they are to not be undergoing the additional torments.

Some rather convincing sounding fools had put across compelling arguments that depression is absolute not relative. It seemed logical when it was explained that somebody who is suicidal either follows through with it, in which case they're dead, or else they hit some limit where they cannot be any more depressed without actually dying. It also did not seem unreasonable that somebody could be depressed for a number of reasons, even including those not directly related to hot pokers and other tortures.

However, as soon as the cure was revealed to the public, it turned out that people had just been making up this depression stuff all along.

The UK's most popular suicide spot - Beachy Head - quickly erected a large sign saying "other people have got it so much worse than you" and immediately all self-murder at the famous cliffs dropped to zero.

The popular daytime television program Jeremy Kyle was watched by millions of people who were previously unable to work due to depression. The program aired a special 30-second segment, where pictures of starving African children were shown to viewers, with subtitles that read "just be glad your situation isn't as bad as this". A modern miracle was declared, when people cast aside their antidepressants and returned to their minimum wage zero hours contracts with a beaming smile from ear to ear and a spring in their step.

There are factories where most people in the UK work. At the factories, pigs' anuses, insects and slugs are boiled for 72 hours to make children's sweets. People work 23.8 hour shifts stirring giant vats of bubbling filth that has an unspeakably foul smell that no amount of soap can remove. The stench and the heat is almost overpowering, but break times are forbidden, and any hesitation in stirring the revolting brew for even a second is punished by being locked in stocks and pelted with rotten vegetables.

People used to say that the job was pretty rubbish, but now that they realise that there's a factory in India where the workers have a 23.9 hour shift, and they're pelted with frozen vegetables, all the workers are now overjoyed to have such a wonderful job and cannot shower their employers with enough praise.

Praise be to the bringers of joy to the world, who so kindly pointed out the motherfucking obvious: there's always some poor cunt whose life is worse than yours.

Tags: #depression #suicide #mentalhealth #capitalism

This is a story about perspectives...

Relativity. The difference between different observers, for a given frame of reference. Who can say that the reality that I experience is more 'real' than that which you experience?

As if by chance, a friend of mine who I used to be homeless with - sleeping rough - in the London parks, visited me this evening. Now, instead of living destitute in a bush, I was able to entertain him in a luxury Thameside apartment.

Do you think that this disparity, this clear 'upswing' in my social status and prospects, makes me think "ooh! how terribly fortunate I am!"?

In actual fact, when the Government had ignored my doctor and psychiatrist's imploring letters to support me during a particularly vulnerable period in my life, and I had been denied welfare and housing, I felt liberated. I lived within a stone's throw of a Royal Palace and was relinquished of the responsibilities of attending demeaning ATOS assessments, completing form upon form of personal information, and digging through vast archives of paperwork to find bullshit documents to satisfy some blank-faced bureaucratic drone.

Do you think I'm glad not to be homeless? Don't be so ridiculous. Everything comes with a cost.

I'm really in no position to be working at the moment. I feel like I'm going through one of the most prolonged periods of depression that I have ever experienced, and the stress and anxiety of my situation is so unbearable that I am closer to taking my own life than I have ever been before.

The fact that I am working is very different from being able to work. The cost to me is virtually immeasurable. If this brief period of stuffing cash in a mattress appears to be a success for those who believe that work will set us free at bayonet point, they are probably ignoring the historical precedent and likely long-term outcomes.

I note that those who criticise me for being ungrateful for my position may be doing so whilst on holiday in Barcelona, or perhaps on a yacht in La Rochelle. This seems to be the ultimate in ignorant hypocrisy, when these people have probably never known the hardships of homelessness and destitution.

If you imagine that a homeless person should be grateful when they are finally off the streets and into a stable housing situation, you are a buffoon. Housing, food, hygiene and an opportunity to put your skills to productive use, are the bare minimum for human dignity. These are human rights.

Instead, I feel like a prostitute. I have sold my mind to the highest bidder. My analogy is probably insulting to those who are genuinely compelled to sell sex, but in this way, you might understand the lack of empathy that my wealthy friends have shown towards my own situation.

Get rich or die trying. It's not even that simple. There are so few ways to dig yourself out of a desperate situation. Prostitution of the body or prostitution of the mind. If somebody wishes to shoot me down for such a melodramatic analogy, go right ahead, I probably deserve it and I'm an easy target, but this is how I feel.

I have made a bitter choice: work for three times as long, and have a somewhat easier time of it, but know the whole time that I'm being underpaid for my skills. Or, to be highly paid but accept the very worst work. The most soul-destroying and de-skilling work that is wholly unsatisfying and only the hardest, meanest, most desperate mercenaries would tolerate in the interests of getting rich quick.

My days are a completely calculated gamble. I put my mental health on the chopping block, hoping that I can struggle by for long enough to put a few dollars in the bank before I explode with stress, frustration, depression and having been completely exploited by a ruthless industry intent on burning people out in pursuit of pure profit.

It's hard to express how hard it is to do something that you mastered nearly 20 years ago, and has now become excruciating mental agony, but also an extremely well paid profession. I'm paid to be professionally bored, stressed, anxious and unfulfilled. I'm paid to put up with stuff that would have most sane people running out of the office saying "fuck this shit".

Yes, the majority of people hate their jobs. Yes, the majority of us would not work given the choice. This is different. I can compare and contrast. I can tell you what the difference is being an electrician from being the manager of an IT project. I can tell you which one destroys your soul and your mind more.

You know the best job I've ever had? Delivering newspapers on Monday to Saturday for £10 a week.

Tags: #homeless #depression #suicide #mentalhealth #career

This is a story about brainwashing...

How do you think that somebody who has worked for the best part of 20 years in the investment banking technology sector, mostly as an IT consultant, would re-adjust to being under lock and key in a psychiatric hospital? The answer is: very easily.

Hospitals and the NHS are a home from home for anybody who's worked for an organisation with hundreds of thousands of employees. The ways that large organisations function are largely the same. The way that systems and processes are supposed to control large numbers of people, are nearly identical.

Being in the loony bin was welcome relief from the bullshit day job, but it's not like I had absented myself from all responsibilities. I still had to have my wits about me to avoid being medicated against my will and put under a 'section' - involuntary commitment to a secure facility, by rule of law - which could have seen my 2 week voluntary stay extended anywhere from 28 days to 6 months.

How did I manage it so easily? Perhaps it's because I knew I could leave any time I wanted to, but perhaps it could be because nearly 20 years of going to a shit office to do a shit job, has kinda prepared me for the monotony, rhythm and routine of spending weeks on end trapped somewhere I don't want to be.

There was a danger that just the very act of asking to leave could have triggered the doctors to decide to force me to stay longer. I knew that I had to remain calm, and give the medical team  enough of a peek at my psyche to be able to make a judgement that I was safe to release back into the wilderness.

The psychiatrist who took me under his care was in two minds, after 6 days, whether he was going to insist on 'committing' me, so that he'd get 28 or so days to poke around inside my head. Naturally, most people would freak out, if they found out that their liberty was about to be taken away from them. It's a game of brinksmanship: who's going to blink first.

Obviously, we don't 'commit' people any more to asylums. Instead we detain them under a section of the Mental Health Act, and put them in secure psychiatric facilities. You're no longer a loony in the loony bin. You're a "service user" in a "care facility". Of course, I'm not saying that the function is not useful or should not be trusted. I'm just pointing out that the names of things have been changed.

Bizarrely, if you say "I'm going to kill myself, I need to be locked up" you are very unlikely to be locked up. If you walk up to the hospital reception desk and use their phone to contact the switchboard, ask to be connected to the bleep holder for Psychiatric Liaison, and explain frankly your situation, you will have an amusing conversation with the poor Psychiatrist who has to follow official channels, but you're not going to get anywhere. The times that I have been admitted as an inpatient to a psychiatric facility, it has just taken time & patience. Only the truly desperate will sit in Accident & Emergency for 13 hours just patiently waiting for help.

Conversely, if you say "I'm not mad, I'm fine" once you're in the system, or in any way try to rush the process along, you're going to end up held down on the floor with somebody injecting Risperidone and Haloperidol in you, and you might wake up 40 years later, shuffling around the corridors of some institution, with the marked side effects of powerful psychiatric drugs causing you to make involuntary facial movements.

You can't fight the system. You can't fight the frustrating fact that you'll never get ahead in life and must instead sit at a desk keeping a seat warm, just so that your boss can appoint somebody from outside the company to come in and be incompetent at the job you were hoping to be promoted into, even though you were experienced and qualified to do it. You can't fight the frustrating fact that your miserable boring existence, helping the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, is making you pretty depressed, and you really want to fuck everything off and watch everything burn down.

Who is mad and who is sane? That doctor who just declared you to be mentally ill probably talks to their imaginary friend called Dob or Gob or Dog or Dod (or is it God?) who really knows? There's no proof that their imaginary friend exists, just like the doctor has no proof that the voices you hear aren't real and you aren't actually the Son of Dob, resurrected on Earth.

The invisible line between sane and insane is very blurry, when billions of people genuinely believe in magic, invisible entities that don't exist, and have absolute faith that some children's fairy tales are actually instructions that should be devoutly and literally followed to the letter as some kind of prescription for life.

It seems highly irreverent to say it, but people need to speak up, because the loonies are actually in charge of the asylum, when we elect and hand over power to people who believe in their invisible friends, fairy tales and magic.

By the way, for the record, I don't hear voices and I don't think I'm Jesus. But then, saying that kinda makes me sound a bit mad, doesn't it?

Tags: #mentalhealth #nhs #hospital #suicide #depression #religion #politics

This is a story about having too much of a good thing...

Pills, pills, pills. A pill for every ill. We have so much faith in modern medicine at the moment, that we have medicalised boredom, depression, stress, when clearly these are as much a product of our environment, as they are a sign of anything pathological.

The very process of going to your doctor and getting sent away with some unnecessary pills, is well known to have a placebo effect. With the Internet and the possibility of self-diagnosis, we have turned into a society of hypochondriacs, who attribute every tiny discomfort to symptoms that require medical attention.

We have now overprescribed to the point that we have super-resistant strains of bacteria that can't be killed even with our last-line-of-defence antibiotics. Going running to your doctor because you've got a cough or a cold, and being fobbed off with magic beans that you believe can cure your viral infection, is just downright stupid, and now it's biting our arse.

It's the same thing with antidepressants. Because over 60% of us hate our boring stupid stressful crap jobs, we've been dishing our psychiatric medications like they're sweets. Over 60 million antidepressant prescriptions got written last year in the UK. That's enough for every man, woman and child in the whole country.

The number of people taking antidepressant medication for their clinical depression has doubled in a decade. There is a mental health epidemic that is driving so many other antisocial trends: alcoholism, drug abuse, isolation and loneliness, insecurity and anxiety, loss of productivity, loss of motivation, loss of drive to exercise and socialise.

What are you going to do if you work some dreadful zero hours contract for rock bottom wages and can barely make ends meet? What are you going to do if there's no hope of you getting on the housing ladder, or escaping from the financial situation you find yourself trapped in?

Of course people are going to turn to drink & drugs, to try to numb themselves from the painful monotony of working as hard as you can but never getting ahead. There is no light at the end of the tunnel for so many people. You just work, and then you die. None of your dreams will ever come to fruition. None of your hopes will ever be realised.

There's a disrespect for addicts and alcoholics, like they're taking the easy way out. Because there is supposed to be instant gratification in a pill, powder or liquid that contains psychoactive substances - uppers & downers - then it doesn't seem as worthy as those who physically toil for their fix of endorphins. However, how many 'legitimate' routes to happiness are there in the world, really?

There used to be a formula: get married, buy a house, have some kids, die. The first 3 you can't really do anymore, without cash handouts from the bank of Mum & Dad and/or the state. Who can really afford the lavish wedding that society expects us to have? Who can afford the deposit on some crappy tiny little flat, and afford the mortgage repayments, when you earn barely enough to survive? Who can afford childcare and all the other associated costs of childrearing, when you already don't have any disposable income?

All the hard work, industriousness, austerity, careful financial planning, saving, budgeting and diligent application of yourself to furthering your career, is likely to result in what? Maybe a few percentage points of a pay rise, if you're really lucky. Are you going to get promoted? Are you fuck. They're going to promote somebody incompetent and lazy, because they're older and they've been with the company for longer. Merit and hard work will get you nowhere.

So, pretty soon, you're going to get tired & depressed about it all. You tried hard at school. You turned up for your exams and gave it your best shot. You stressed yourself out and went to those interviews and got that job, and you worked your hardest, day after day, even though you could sense it was all utter bullshit by now. And for what? Where are you? What have you achieved? What are you ever going to achieve?

The enormity of it all hits you: you were sold a lie. You can't be anything you want to be. You're not special. You're not unique. You're not different. We're all just so much meat in the mincer. Turn the handle and out comes yet another drone just like you; prepared to do the shittest, most mind-numbingly boring and pointless work imaginable, for a salary that doesn't even buy you the basic essentials in life.

Why wouldn't you go running to the doctor, and ask them to dope you up to the eyeballs, so you don't have to live with the crushing realisation of the pointlessness of it all anymore? Why wouldn't you need happy pills, when you realise that the only way you're ever going to get the things that you were promised that hard work would bring, is by being given a council house or a cash lump sum from your parents. The only way you're going to ever be self sufficient is if Mum & Dad or the state top up your income... like you're some sort of fucking charity case... going around with your begging bowl.

How undignified. What an affront to human dignity it all is. Our parents and grandparents proudly tell us that they're "self made". They make loud proclamations that "nobody ever gave me a handout. I worked hard and I earned my keep". How shameful it is that we're twice as smart and work twice as hard, but we have nothing to show for it, except for a sneering generation telling us that exams are getting easier and that we're lazy and stupid.

Crippling debt and the crippling shame of not being able to live independently, not being able to be self sufficient and feel like we too are earning our money and contributing to the growth and wealth of the nation. It's all so crippling, so debilitating. Of course we need to turn to medications, drink and drugs.

You think it's about having a good time? Happy pills, and lashings of beer & wine? You think people wouldn't rather be happy by natural means, because they're fulfilled by normal things in their life: walking the dog, kissing their kids goodnight and paying the mortgage on their own home?

Antidepressants are a sticking plaster over a gaping wound. We have attempted to cover up the steady decline in the standard of living of young people, and mask the problem using happy pills, but the soaring suicide rates are just the tip of the iceberg.

Unless we face up to the reality that those who are suffering from many mental illnesses are the canary in the coal mine, we will reach a crisis point where most of the population are unable or unwilling to continue to maintain the status quo.

The mental health epidemic is the true breaking point, not immigration.

Tags: #mentalhealth #suicide #depression #politics #capitalism

This is a story about writing stuff that people want to read...

Firstly, let's start with an apology. What I wrote yesterday evening was total rushed junk. I shouldn't bother writing if I only have a tiny bit of time sandwiched in-between other commitments, or if I've got somebody peering over my shoulder. I really dislike what I write when I'm pressured.

I was tired and cranky yesterday. I had planned to spend the day on the sofa watching the Wimbledon men's tennis final and the Euro 2016 final, while getting drunk. Instead I was at a restaurant where you had to stand and queue to order your food and watch it be cooked in front of you. There was limited novelty, when I would really rather have been sat down with a waitress bringing drinks to me.

Anyway, I've got a bunch of topics that I want to write properly about. I want to write directly about my experiences, rather than these long ranty opinion pieces that would bore almost anybody to tears.

Upcoming topics include:

• The Dark Web
• The paradox: hard work vs. high wages
• My ongoing experiments with abstinence from caffeine and alcohol
• The trials & tribulations of being unmedicated for Type II Bipolar Disorder
• Will this damn depression ever lift?
• Am I going to go hypomanic again?

Writing serves the purpose of giving my life meaning in an uncaring world and while working a day job that consists of endless pointless IT projects. Writing is my means of having some kind of insurance policy, in case I decide to suddenly end my own life. Writing is my mechanism for trying to articulate my distress and invite people to engage with me once again. Writing means that I'm an open book, and you can dip in or tune out, as you please.

My purpose has been very confused. Am I writing to shame and embarrass my parents, in retaliation for everything they inflicted on me? Am I writing because I'm lonely, depressed, suicidal and I've run out of ideas for how to connect with the world? Am I writing to have a soapbox, in order to broadcast my opinions? Or, am I writing in order to share my colourful life experiences, in the hope that others who are going through tough times might benefit. Hopefully, it's the latter.

So, as I now start to think about the final couple of months of daily writing, to round off a complete year, I'm starting to figure out when is a good time of day to write, to fit with my work schedule and other commitments. I'm starting to figure out things that I'd like to write about, not because I've got an ulterior motive, but because I've got some interesting experiences to share.

I might have totally turned off a bunch of people whose opinion I value very highly, and made this piece of writing into an impenetrable rat's nest of deeply troubling psychological issues, but perhaps I can start to shape and hone things.

I've prematurely declared that I'm going to turn over a new leaf and bury the hatchet too many times, so I'm not going to make any more proclamations of that nature. However, I don't regret going on this extremely eccentric journey, and the incredibly personal things I have revealed about my twisted psyche.

This could all be summed up as writing therapy that has been done in the public domain. But isn't it so much more interesting and a little exciting, to let it all hang out in the breeze? How more publicly could I wear my heart on my sleeve?

"For God's sake, don't encourage him" I imagine people saying. This makes me chuckle, and spurs me on to dredge the depths of my deeply repressed painful memories. Where will it lead? I have no idea.

Tags: #writing

This is a story about a feeling at the pit of my stomach...

How often do we think "I want to help, but I've got so many of my own worries"? How often are we held back by the bystander effect... assuming that somebody else is going to step in first, so that we don't have to?

You'd hope that nobody would have to be in hospital alone, uncared for, while they're in pain and discomfort. You would think that even somebody who has been infected with Ebola, has loved ones who have come to wave through the protective plastic bubble.

Leaving aside my own obnoxious family, doesn't it set alarm bells ringing for you, the fact that we have a society that can so easily turn its back on undesirable members?

Whether it's the benefits cheat, disability scrounger, mental health basket case, junkie, alkie, hobo... whatever. There are plenty of people who have been demonised by the media. We have even descended to the depths of attacking our economy-boosting immigrant population, with terrorism as the brush with which we tar an entire Muslim community, for example.

This whole "look after number one" isolationism, along with "take our country back" and "look after our own" misguided silliness, is rather telling of a wider trend: everybody is just being selfish as fuck.

You might think it's in your family's best interests to hide behind your locked front door, and assume that the world is filled with rapists, paedophiles and murderers, but actually the whole of civilisation is coming to an end, because of the fear and mistrust, and reluctance to help one another.

That's a big statement, isn't it? "Civilisation is coming to an end".

Well, let's examine that a little more carefully. What even is civilisation? Surely, civilisation is not leaving anybody to die of starvation or exposure to the elements? Surely, civilisation is caring and sharing with one another? Surely, civilisation is working together, not acting like a bunch of individual animals, fighting with each other?

So, when I think about going back to work tomorrow after an excellent weekend of looking after number one, I can't help but have a heavy heart, thinking that my job is simply to make the rich richer. I might have a big paycheque but I certainly don't think that means I'm delivering good value to humanity. On the contrary: I know that I'm propping up a very broken system, and I hate it.

Yes, it makes sense for me to take the money, and to stuff my mattress full of filthy ill-gotten lucre, but it's painful. It actually makes me unwell, to know that I'm part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Once you get some skin in the game I guess it becomes a little bit easier to justify the unjustifiable. Little Hugo needs his ballet shoes, after all, so you'd better go off to work for the capitalists who are intent on destroying the world. How could you possibly help the homeless, when you need that money to get bright special little Alice into that slightly better primary school? Perfectly understandable.

Maybe our children will catch poverty. Maybe children will catch mental illness. Let's not take any refugees, and let's allow people to starve and go homeless, because surely we're living in a jungle where only the fittest will survive. Isn't that what life's about? Have as many children as possible and fuck everybody else?

Doesn't it seem a little primitive to you, this way of acting that is tribal, nationalistic, isolated, don't trust your neighbour, fuck the refugees, fuck the poor, fuck the sick, fuck everybody who isn't me?

I know that I could easily do a "fun run" or a sponsored "do something enjoyable that I was going to do anyway" in order to salve my conscience. Maybe I can get a partial lobotomy, so that I can forget that charity has completely failed to do anything about poverty and inequality, and it never will.

It's people's attitudes that suck. It's this whole "it must be somebody else's problem. It's certainly not my problem" thought pattern that sucks.

The point is: it's everybody's problem.

Tags: #politics #capitalism #career #depression

This is a story about helping each other...

How does one go about putting Humpty Dumpty back together again? The idea of some patriarchal figure - e.g. a king - has largely failed. Instead, we see that complex psycho-social problems are better solved by a community that is filled with mutual support and respect.

In order to get me to the point I am at today, it's taken a social worker. But not a social worker who was employed to help me, but instead a loveable Kiwi who was sleeping on my couch, who took it upon himself to think about my welfare.

It's taken a psychologist. Not a psychologist who I pay to sit on the couch of, while I pour my little heart out, but actually my beloved flatmate, who listened to me while I brain dumped in the small hours of the morning, or coaxed me out of whichever corner I was backed into, suffering almost PTSD-like symptoms.

It's taken a bunch of fellow people with mental-health problems, who "get it". They know that a "positive mental attitude" is just utter bullshit, and you can't just snap out of a severe depression or whatever ails you, when you already know that what you think and feel is irrational, and you would really rather not be feeling the way that you do, if it was a simple choice.

It's taken a bunch of addicts. Not necessarily needle-wielding junkies in the throes of active addiction, but people who aren't so holier-than-thou that they don't admit to their own fallibilities and judge you, lest they acknowledge the demons within themselves. Non-judgemental support is essential, for any way forward.

It's taken all my friends, from all corners of the globe. You might not think that a simple 'like' on social media would mean much, but the implied support has been my lifeblood. To say that I've been attention seeking is plain wrong. Everybody needs to feel that they have people that like them, support them, wish them well.

It would be massively premature to declare things a done deal. I need to make it through a winter somehow, without incident. Current thinking is simply to take off for the Southern Hemisphere for a while... follow the sun.

The plan has always been the same, since I decided to cut and run from my ex wife and Bournemouth: get back into IT contracting for the banks, go kitesurfing. Obviously, you also need a place to live and be on top of your finances. Obviously, you still need the occasional bit of midweek socialising to get you through to the weekend.

Am I some Goldilocks type character, who demands that everything is "just right"? No. I don't think that's true at all.

I accept that there is going to be loneliness, boredom, stress. I accept that things are going to take time. I accept that things are going to go wrong. I accept that it's highly improbable that everything will be going OK all at the same time. However, my basic life formula is pretty simple: work & play.

I tried to take direct action in somebody's life - Frank - when I returned to London. That was a relatively short burst of time & effort, and I can't tell you precisely how things worked out there, although I did see Frank about 18 months later and he was doing really well.

To round off my own story in a satisfactory way, I need to show that things are sustainable, I need to show that I'm not just mooching off people in order to continue on a reckless and irresponsible path through life. I need to close things out neatly: with integrity.

I know people are rooting for me, and it's nice to say that presently, I have a great place to live, a well paid job, and I'm getting back into the hobby I'm passionate about. I'm also increasingly getting back in contact with long-lost friends, as well as hopefully improving the tone of my communication: from bitter and negative, to philosophical, positive & hopeful.

My friend who drove me to the coast today, and has consistently been a pillar of support for me this year, always reminds me that recovery is nonlinear. I know that bad days and setbacks will follow an amazing day at the beach. Monday morning will be miserable, and life has a fully stocked arsenal of slings & arrows... but things seem a little bit better when your skin is salty from the sea and glowing from the sun and the wind.

It's oh-so clichéd, but that Beatles lyric seems apt:

I get by with a little help from my friends 

If it doesn't seem like I've acknowledged your help & support here, I apologise. Every little message, text, email, comment... it all adds up. I do appreciate it. I do appreciate, respect and love every one of my peers. Thank you.

Tags: #friends #kitesurfing #frank #mentalhealth

This is a story about counterintuitive results...

Conventional wisdom tells us that sobriety is the route to salvation. If you're being treated for substance dependency, most approaches are abstinence-based. But what if these approaches are totally wrong?

I had 'too much' to drink last night, but yet this morning I was on time to work for the first time in ages. I was also on top form during a 2 hour meeting that was highly pressured and intense. Clearly my work performance, my productivity, was improved by alcohol, rather than hindered.

Alcohol works for me as a substance that I can titrate the dose of to control my mood fluctuations. When I quit drinking last year, my anxiety levels became unbearable after 30 days sober, and I had to go into hospital and be on suicide watch. I then went hypomanic and quit a well paid job, and did a bunch of other mad shit, before finally relapsing onto hard drugs and slashing my forearms with a razor blade, after 101 days sober. Hardly an encouraging result.

The fact of the matter is: my job is boring and shit. My life is empty, unfulfilling and stressful. Of course I need something to help me cope with an intolerable daily existence. How the hell am I supposed to get through the crap I'm going through without a chemical crutch.

Just about everybody you know has some kind of substance that they depend upon to cope with modern life. Maybe it's antidepressants, sleeping pills, tranquillisers, opiates. Maybe it's cigarettes, tea, coffee, coca-cola, Red Bull, beer, wine, spirits. Maybe it's cannabis, cocaine, amphetamines, heroin, MDMA, GHB, M-CAT or any one of the myriad other legal and illegal drugs. Humans love drugs.

Clearly, I know what my 'drug of choice' is, and I know that there's no way that I can use it in moderation. Thankfully, alcohol is not something that I've struggled to live without, except where life choices that are forced upon me - such as having to work a shitty job - demand that I find some kind of coping mechanism.

I don't have any kids or pets, so I get no natural endorphins. I don't have any time or money to pursue sports or go to the gym, so I get no natural endorphins and adrenalin boosts. My job is dull as ditch water, so I don't even get any kind of thrill from my work.

But, good news! I've found a formula that worked for me for years & years & years & years: self-medication with alcohol.

Yes! Hurrah for alcohol. It kept the lid on my hypomanic episodes for years.

Basically, the reality that we must all face up to, is that modern life is so fucking shit that we've all got to be drugged up and drunk to get through it.

I could get my cat back from my parents, and get some plants to water and care for. I can soon get a car and some new kites, and go and get my adrenalin and endorphin fix at the beach. However, without those things, I'm forced into puting chemicals into my body, to allow me to keep my shitty job and keep functioning in this crazy society that values corporate profits more than mental health.

My life really sucks, but I'd rather drink a few bottles of wine and keep my highly lucrative contract, so I can escape the rat race at some point, rather than have another repeat of last year's failed experiment.

Tags: #alcohol #addiction #drugs #mentalhealth #bipolar #depression #suicide #hospital

This is a story about quantity not quality...

I just drank two bottles of wine and I can still hammer out 50 words a minute in typing tests, but when I connect my brain directly to a keyboard I'm probably getting a lot closer to 70 or 80 WPM. Of course, most of it is garbage.

It shocks me that columnists and professional writers can command huge sums of money, for what is essentially an imperative for me. I have to write, otherwise I would go mad with all this crap rattling around inside my head.

I have spammed friends that I admire for their literary and intellectual credentials, in the hope that they will validate that my contribution has some merit. However, I've yet to hit pay-dirt.

It's quite possible that I've caused myself a considerable brain injury, by abusing powerful narcotics for a substantial period of time, during a rather nasty and acrimonious divorce. I now have the displeasure of working a shit day job in order to replenish my finances, and otherwise I fill my days with copious amounts of alcohol and blindly firing out these missives into the uncaring void.

So, I now face a crisis of confidence. I achieved my writing target of producing 300,000 words in less than a year. My other objective was to write for a whole year, but I feel massively discouraged, given how I feel like I've lost my way this year with any coherent thread that would draw readers into my narrative.

I have little interest in the cult of quotes that sweeps the Internet with its retweetable content and endless motivational images, superimposed with trite platitudes.

Whenever I achieve a goal that I have set for myself, I always suffer a depression, knowing that I'm once again purposeless. It might be 8 years ago, but I remember getting a couple of iPhone Apps to number one in the charts. I just thought "well, that was easy" and then I was completely lost as to what to do next.

I'm wondering if a million words might be a cool target next. A million words is 25 novels. Why the hell not? If I wrote twice as much as I did in the last 10 months, I could be done in a year's time.

Imagine that. Imagine being the author of a million words. Imagine being the author of 25 novels. Would you feel proud? Would you feel like you achieved something? Would you feel like you made an impact, a contribution?

Do you think that gifted amateurs are welcome in the creative world, or are they just drowning out talented and dedicated artists? Do you think that the mommy blogger should STFU? Do you think that to write, to paint, to play an instrument or sing... these things are the preserve of those who have been on creative writing courses, taken fine arts degrees, attended stage school?

Is there a monopoly on creativity? Am I just another dribbling idiot, churning out low-quality crap in a sea of white noise, barely able to string a sentence together?

Now that I'm writing simply for my own sanity and enjoyment, the pressure is off. I easily achieved the quantity goal I set for myself. Perhaps I can be a little more creative and playful, now that I don't have a certain word count to aim for.

I'm presently unsure whether my purpose is served on this planet, and it's now time to kill myself. In a way, I want to see what happens when I hit the one year mark, but I'm also rather underwhelmed by the prospect of prolonging the agony of daily existence, if I'm just another pointless twat churning crap out into the ether.

I look at lemmings, and I think there's nobility in ending your life, when the world is clearly overpopulated by special little snowflakes.

Tags: #writing #socialmedia #suicide