This is a story about going round in circles...

The mistakes of the past, the pitfalls, the traps, and the warning signs and the other things that can be learnt by experience, are not hidden from me. The 'right' way to live your life is not alien to me. There was a period of many years where I worked regular hours, paid my mortgage, bills and went about my daily routine with familiar normality.

Now, it's easy to point at many aspects of my life and say "that's not right" and "you need to fix that". I'm not blind and I'm not stupid. I can see what needs to be done. I know where I need to get to. However, there is no short-cut to moving from dysfunctional to productive regularity. There are no fast fixes for the myriad little things that break down and need attention.

The accumulation of this backlog of little broken things and time spent trapped into a dysfunctional existence, leaves very steep sides to a very deep trench that you get stuck in. There are limited opportunities to make your escape.

Please don't think this is a case of poor me, poor me, pour me another drink. I'll either get out of rut I'm stuck in, or else I know quite precisely where I'm going to end up.

It's true that at a certain point, it becomes attractive to just give up, to capitulate, to self-sabotage. When the task ahead just looks so daunting and you have none of the resources you need to complete it, why not use what little remaining life force you have in reserve, in a hedonistic exit from your miserable existence?

I'm certainly not in that position at the moment. I have a couple of excellent lifelines, and to throw in the towel now would be churlish. When I scratch the surface, things are so much worse than I could even imagine, but at the same time, I have some assistance and opportunities that I'm ridiculously lucky to have.

For those who have to imagine the many parts of the picture that remain obscured to anybody except the mind-reader, you will struggle to see much difference between your own functional life, and my dysfunctional one. It doesn't look like it would take much to restore normality.

However, it has been a long time since I was 'in the saddle' as it were, cycling along with good balance and steady pedalling rhythm. 3 meals a day, a hard day's work and a good night's sleep. Week after week, month after month, year after year. My life simply has 'episodes' now, where I switch between different modes.

I'm stuck in an episode of low mood, low energy, high anxiety, high stress, low productivity. Things that aren't exactly peachy for getting your life back on track. It's hard to imagine why I'm not up at first light, fixing everything up and pushing hard to get back into the swing of things. Hard to imagine if you've never hit a brick wall of depression or anxiety.

It's a bit of a waiting game. Moods fluctuate. The body and brain dictate the terms, and to artificially alter them with chemicals is partially how I ended up stuck in this rut, so it's not like I just need a few happy pills from the Doctor. Or that's certainly a route I'd like to avoid anyway, having already seen several iterations of that particular approach, with the same results every time.

It seems there's no cheating the system.

Doping in sport can lead to enlarged hearts that can suddenly stop beating, blood that's so thick that you can't fall asleep and have a drop in blood pressure, muscles that are swollen into vein covered monstrosities from steroid use, arthritic joints and inflamed tendons. Don't you think we're just pushing the human limits too far some times?

Using vast amounts of strong coffee to concentrate on work, and vast amounts of alcohol to switch off and de-stress after work, is perhaps the office worker's equivalent of being in the Tour de France, surrounded by other people who are using the performance enhancing substances, who are your peers and you need to keep pace with.

My body is screaming "where are the stimulants?" as I deny it caffeine. I could start drinking coffee and cola again, but I have no idea how far away from my true self I really am, I've been so out of touch with my chemically unaltered moods for so long.

I've started drinking alcohol again, and it's alarming how insidious it is, rushing back into my life, to tranquillise my jangling nerves and put me to sleep. There is some moderation, self-control there, but not much. There is sanctuary to be found at the bottom of a bottle. Intoxication is sweet relief from otherwise never-ending relentless exhausting stress and anxiety.

Without alcohol or some tranquillising medication, or even an herbal sleep remedy, I will just spend a night awake with my fears, my negative thoughts, my anxiety about the sheer volume of things that need to be fixed up, repaired, my stress about the workload ahead.

Things are getting worse before they get better.

Ok, so we have London, and we have bicycles. Some elements look consistent. However, we still have the seasons, and the dark and the rain and the cold are all fairly debilitating unless I'm in a well-established routine, or I can get away somewhere hot and sunny for a couple of weeks respite.

I know that Spring has sprung, and that we are on British Summer Time (BST) now, giving a whole extra hour of evening light. However, my body's not fooled, because I don't have a routine that is particularly dictated by clocks and calendars. I have moods that are dictated by sunlight and warmth.

Over the years I learnt what my body and brain needed, and when. It was important to establish an annual routine, as well as the daily workweek routine. How else could I lay down periods of up to 4 years in the same job, for the same company?

All that's been washed away in recent years. I've shown I know how to survive and get by, but not how to thrive and make things have any longevity anymore it seems.

I would say though, that I haven't forgotten the vast majority of what I learned in 20 years attempting full-time employment. It's only been since 2010 that everything went very much out of kilter. I guess it's like spinning helicopter blades. It only takes a little bit of damage to one of the blades, and the machine will shake itself to pieces.

Just popped round to see Liz and Phil for a spot of tea

Tags: #bipolar #depression #mentalhealth #london #career

This is a story about comebacks...

I have very little memory of the last couple of weeks, or maybe even the last couple of months. I've basically been backed into a corner, shaking with the stress and feeling of being totally overwhelmed by the task of having to deal with all the things that couldn't be put off any longer.

The 'pinnacle' or culmination of this breakdown period, was when bailiffs entered my flat in order to cut off my gas & electricity, for non-payment of bills. The bills, naturally, had remained in a pile of unopened post, with me none the wiser as to the growing threat of this debt collection. Of course, I knew that the bills had to be dealt with sooner or later, but the crisis point happened to be reached just as I was sleeping off the 'hangover' of the last three months silliness.

I've basically been asleep for about 2 weeks, because I started taking Mirtazepine, which is an atypical antidepressant which was prescribed to me years ago, and I thought was OK at the time, but addiction issues kinda derailed me from taking it on a proper regular basis. This time around, I found that it helped me to get to sleep, and then carry on sleeping as a stress avoidance tactic, for much of the following day, until there were only a few hours of evening to fill before I could take my next dose.

This medication was not prescribed to me for depression. It wasn't prescribed to me at all in fact. I prescribed it to myself to treat drug withdrawal symptoms, after a hefty period of abusing legal benzodiazepines and Supercrack. I'm not exactly sure when this crazy new UK law comes into place, pretty much banning anything that's psychoactive, but I don't want to be trapped into being dependent on something that's illegal.

As it stands at the moment, it has been over a year since I have accessed the Dark Web and I'd like it to stay that way. The Dark Web can end up being unhealthy window-shopping for a former junkie, and then eventually, in a moment of weakness, disguised envelopes containing all manner of disruptive troublemaking can be wending their merry way to you through the postal system. That's a situation I definitely want to avoid.

Withdrawing from Mirtazepine was extremely unpleasant. I was overwhelmed with anxiety and insomnia. I'm hoping tonight will be better, but today, at least I didn't have the daytime sleepiness and lethargy that allowed me to spend the best part of 2 weeks in bed. I even made the bailiffs come and collect a credit card from my grubby mitts, while I lay in my pit of despair.

You see that slight upswing at the end of March? Hopefully that delimits the end of months of depression and drug abuse, and the beginning of a period of productivity. I've tackled some of the most pressing stuff that had to be done today, and if I can steer clear of the medications/research-chemicals that seem to make all your troubles go away, then things can continue, provided I don't become totally overwhelmed by stress and anxiety.

It feels like the Government is testing us, risking our lives, to discover what happens when they pull the rug out from under our feet. The shoddy, hole-filled 'safety net' has finally been so undermined, that nobody could possibly consider it an option, no matter how dire their circumstances. Get better or die, is the Government's unspoken mantra.

Personally, it is long overdue, me pushing myself to find more contract work or even something permanent, provided it isn't going to grate and gnaw at my soul so intolerably, that there's little point as the outcome would be entirely predictable.

I say "long overdue" but that's a little unfair on myself. The winter, plus the timing of losing my contract were particularly hard on me, coupled with the fact I was completely exhausted from efforts expended on the doomed HSBC Customer Due Diligence project anyway. I did need some time to rest and recuperate. There were chances to get straight back on the horse, and I would have done if fortune had favoured those opportunities, but the optimism of November of last year quickly turned into resignation about the wasted 6 or so weeks of Xmas build up and early New Year 'dead spot' in the recruitment calendar.

I actually feel reasonably awake and alert, and not totally overwhelmed when my thoughts turn to my todo list. I know that my suit and shirts are dry cleaned and shoes are shone, ready for action, and even that doesn't worry me now that the clocks have sprung forward and the weather can surely only improve from this point (famous last words!).

I know that I'd dearly like to see my Sister & Mum, now that I'm a bit more well. Too many broken promises and wasted good intentions in the last few months, so I'm not going to rush at anything, especially as my sister was really cross at me recently, using my parents words. It's easy to discredit and undermine a person's character when they're keeping themselves a safe distance away from yourself.

I know my blog has been my refuge and something solid to grab onto during some pretty wild storms, and it upsets my sister that I have seemingly had so much time to blog, but I hope you'll be seeing a return to consistency and continuity that went awry during the turbulent first months of 2016. Let's see where it takes me next, and I hope it's informative and entertaining for those following at home.

So deep think. Much complicated. Very story to tell. Wow!

Tags: #recovery #depression #stress #anxiety #drugs #addiction

This is a story about living with a mood disorder...

Type II Bipolar Disorder took a long time to diagnose, despite a fairly obvious pattern of moods that can be easily traced back to adolescence. Of course, we all have mood fluctuations, but it's the extremity of those moods that qualifies something as a disorder.

I would say that hypomania was the more obvious one of of my pathological moods. Being able to concentrate and work with great intensity, with little sleep & food and a refusal to be diverted from my task, an irritability for distractions, hypersexuality, spending loads of money, risk-taking. Talking seems too slow to express your thoughts... the speed that you're thinking is too fast to explain to anybody else, to put into words. You're just a blur of activity.

It felt like driving with the hand-brake engaged for a lot of my life. I was always waiting for the next slim window of opportunity to work on something that I loved. Whether that was the Design & Technology at school, where there was never enough time to finish what I was working on before the end-of-class bell, or the lego model I was making, before it was mealtime and playtime was over.

Of course, we all have to work within a timetable, and we all have to eat & sleep, but these things always made me feel like I had to rush at everything I did as fast as I possibly could, in the hope that one day, I would complete one of my projects. I also grew incredibly frustrated with the limitations of timetables, mealtimes, bedtimes.

Switching to the world of work, there wasn't actually very much to do. Most people did very little. I ended up searching around for extra things to do.

The computer network at my first full time job ran like an absolute dog. That was because AppleTalk traffic from the office Macs and their printers was polluting the Ethernet traffic from the Sun SparcStations. I managed to talk my friend Lucas into helping me to rewire all the cables one evening.

I wish I could show you the actual images, but we weren't even supposed to be in the server room. This was a Ministry of Defence prime defence contractor with a high level of security clearance. The two junior programmers aren't supposed to go and fix all the networking problems in the office without any authorisation.

The next morning, everybody was commenting how amazingly well the network was running. Lucas & I obviously couldn't claim any credit, because we had acted without authority, but nobody was going to do a witch-hunt when everybody was so pleased that the most major problem affecting everybody in the office had been solved overnight.

That's pretty much how a person with Bipolar Disorder hides out in a corporation. You bumble along, bored, depressed, coming in late, demotivated... and then you suddenly pull something out of the bag that nobody else would risk their career to do, let alone the lack of sleep and unsociable hours.

Bosses seemed to just accept my erratic working patterns, knowing that when there was something that needed doing with an impossible deadline, that's normally around the time I'd wake up and start hacking something together.

It all kind of hung together until I started at a new company in 2008 and the project they were asking me to do was so huge, I didn't know where to begin. I was just entering a depression, which was bad timing. There was also a cultural problem, where their in-house IT staff built everything using Microsoft Excel, and any 'proper' software was built by Oracle consultants or bought off the shelf... but nobody liked those big expensive systems.

My depression got so bad I couldn't even get out of bed or stop crying randomly. I knew I wasn't going to bounce back quickly from that one. After a couple of months I quit that job and started making iPhone games in my back garden. 18 hours a day, 7 days a week. I couldn't go fast enough.

And so began a completely unstructured phase of my life. I would take on a project or interest, completely immerse myself in it for as many hours as I could stay awake, and stay obsessed with that single task until I burnt out. Then I would be depressed, and with no reason to even drag myself out of bed and go and be miserable at work, I would just be depressed all day in bed. I stopped answering my phone. I stopped answering the door. I never opened the curtains.

Being self-employed after 11 or so years of 9 to 5, Monday to Friday structure and routine, is kind of a red rag to a bull, if you have a tendency towards mood instability.

I relished those periods of hypomania. I wrote a series of iPhone games. I built a wooden summer house. I read a huge pile of books on Theoretical Physics and had lengthy email conversations with professors around the world, I wrote a mobile eLearning system and launched it at Learning Technologies conference, I decided that I wanted to be a startup founder and applied for TechStars, I learnt all about Bitcoin, bought Bitcoin miners and started mining in my summer house, I traded Bitcoin for profit, I wrote my own virtual CPU so I could attack algorithms like SHA-256, I started investigating security loopholes in things like internationalised domain names and the Google and Facebook developer platforms.

It's not long before you stray into legal grey areas though, so a lot of my projects have been shelved and I've had to go on raiding missions back to the corporate world, to stay afloat financially. These are normally timed with my hypomania, so a company gets 3 months of incredible productivity, and then a month or two of me being depressed, and then we normally go our separate ways.

My depressions have gotten worse and worse. They seem to last longer, and I've actually started to harm myself more & more. It's strange, when you emerge from a depression and enter a period of hypomania though... you can't remember just how dark those previous days were. There's no rational voice that says "hey! slow down, or else you're going to crash again!". Instead, the voice says "better go as quick as you can, because we know a crash is coming again soon".

So how do we know that depression is the pathological mood at the other pole from my hypomania? Well, I sleep. A lot. Sometimes 16 hours a day. When I'm awake I have very low energy, low motivation. I have no interest in things I'd normally find enjoyable. I don't want to see or speak to anybody. I generally think that everything is pointless, broken, useless, hopeless. Lots of negative memories keep coming into my head, and make me think "I can't believe I said/did that" with extreme regret, embarrassment, shame. I think the world would be better off without me. I start to do pros & cons of living lists, either in my head or written down. I start to think of ways to kill myself, and what affairs I would need to set in order before I committed suicide. This goes on for weeks, months.

I've written before about trying mood stabilisers and antidepressants. The side effects just aren't compatible with good quality of life. You might think that risk to life outweighs quality of life, but it doesn't, especially when you have the waves of hypomania to surf, before crashing onto the rocks of depression.

My body and my mind seems to have decided to adapt itself to this world, to this society, to this environment. We applaud the kid who busts their balls to study for their exams, and can then collapse in a heap during the school holidays. We applaud the employee who pulls the all-nighters and comes in at weekends when work is behind schedule. We applaud the 'overnight success' stories, when an impressive project is unveiled, seemingly created out of thin air, as if by magic. There is no magic. It's just an unsustainable burst of energy, focus, determination, single-mindedness and a touch of madness.

I'd like to go back to the routine I once had, pre-2009. Only I don't seem to be able to retrace my steps, yet. I know the formula that used to work, and a very dear and trusted friend urges me to take a permanent job, and he's probably right to some extent. However, if it all goes horribly wrong again, I would have earned a fraction of what I would have done in a contract.

I'm hoping I can find my little niché. Somewhere I can deliver more value than keeping a seat warm from Monday to Friday. Somewhere where the bosses are more interested in results than headcount in their empire. Pretentious? Moi?

I don't really care whether you think I should cheer the fuck up or calm the fuck down... my moods seem pretty intent on doing whatever they want to do. I've been fully aware of the calamitous consequences of not keeping my mouth shut at the right time, or not getting out of bed and doing some urgent crap. It doesn't really feel like I'm choosing even if it does look like a choice to you, as an outside observer.

This looks like a load of angst-filled teenaged immature self-centred selfish drivel. It probably is. I call it my life.

I'm probably more self-aware than you give me credit for. If you're thinking "oh my God, can you even hear what you're saying? Can you even hear yourself?" the answer is yes, yes I can. I spend a lot of time cringing and wishing things weren't so, and indeed wondering why I'm like a moth to a flame so often. I can see the train wrecks before they happen. I've plotted my mood and activity data, and the patterns are as clear as day. So what?

I'm sure there are days when you'd really like to be a bird, just soaring on the air currents above the ground, looking down on people & buildings. It doesn't matter how badly you want to be a bird. It doesn't matter how rational it seems, to become a bird and just fly right over that traffic jam that's getting in your way, it's not actually possible. That's a bit like those days when I would really like to feel normal. I can want it, but it's not actually possible. Anybody who tells you that you can stop worrying or be happy just by choosing is full of shit. You have my permission to punch them in their smug mouth.

So, I'd say my experiment with abstinence was a failed one. We need a little alcohol to calm our nerves. We need a little caffeine to perk us up. We know when we need it, and most of us know our limits. We're pretty adept creatures at tweaking our own moods. We probably need a pet for a bit of soothing oxytocin. We probably need a girl/boyfriend for a bit of serotonin and a squirt of dopamine. Other than that, we just need something to keep our minds occupied as a distraction from the inevitability of death and decay. Not God though. God is for crazy people.

Anyway, that's my two cents, on my two poles: Type II Bi-polar Disorder.

Tags: #bipolar #mentalhealth #depression #suicide #nhs

This is a story about being tired & depressed all the time...

As things start to get out of control with uppers and downers, you're going to come across legal highs and the black market sooner or later. Let me describe my life to you, after it was ravaged by depression: I never left my bed except to go to the toilet. I never answered my phone. I never answered the door. What does a depressed person want? They want a life.

For the summary of what I'd tried myself to date, you can read:

https://www.manicgrant.com/2015/self-medication-part-one

and:

https://www.manicgrant.com/2015/self-medication-part-two

I was completely disillusioned with medications. The common antidepressants take 6 weeks before they kick in, and they're a nightmare to stop taking: the withdrawal effects are horrible.

I went on a legal highs website, and I systematically worked though every chemical they had on offer:

• 5-IAI
• 6-APB
• MDAI
• Benzylpiperzine
• Ephenidine
• Ethylphendiate
• 3-Fluromethamphetamine
• 3-Flurophenmetrazine
• Methedrone
• Methiopropamine
• Methoxphenedine
• Methylenedioxypyrovalerone
• Mephedrone
• Methylone
• Pentedrone
• 4-MePPP

Those are just the ones I can remember. I have a spreadsheet somewhere that documents everything I bought, and all the dosages I took. I used a high accuracy measuring scale (down to 0.001 of a gram) which I calibrated before every use, and I was careful to do an 'allergy test' before taking anything approaching a psychoactive dose.

The short version of the story is... all these designer drugs were a pile of pants. Complete rubbish. Waste of time & money.

With one exception: Methylone. The chemical name of Ecstasy (MDMA) is 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine. The chemical name of Methylone is 3,4-methylenedioxy-N-methylcathinone. Basically, the clever chemists swapped out the crystal meth and replaced it with Meow Meow. The novel compound is known as βk-MDMA, instead of just regular MDMA.

If you were to try and take Ecstasy every day, you probably wouldn't get much sleep, and people would think you were really weird. Your face would be gurning all over the place, and you'd keep telling strangers you loved them.

Methylone is not like that. It was as if I'd just gotten over a really bad sickness and I was back to my old self. I had energy and motivation. I could feel joy again. I was getting stuff done. I was functional.

I used to measure out my exact same dose every morning, and then I could feel the storm clouds part about 30 minutes later, and I could get on with a normal day, just like a normal person. I did my work. I did my chores. I socialised... I had re-entered the world.

This went on for the best part of 6 months, and then the government decided to make it illegal. I stockpiled as much as I could afford (about 2 months supply) but when that ran out I was screwed.

Prolintane and Pyrovalerone (sold as Jolly Green Granules) propped me up for a while, but I had pretty much lost my antidepressant. There was no more gas in the tank. The engine was spluttering to a stop. All the other stims I tried were just that: stimulants. They made me awake, alert and they stopped me sleeping. The best part of all about Methylone had been that I could sleep normally at the end of the day.

Out of a suicidal death-wish, I tried NRG-3, which sounded from anecdotal experience very much like MDPV (Supercrack). I was so terrified by this chemical that I diluted an entire gram in a litre of water so that I could measure a very precise 3ml (3mg) as a test dose, using an oral syringe. Turns out that water completely screws up the compound.

 Anyway, after the car-crash that was my ex's brother's wedding, I decided "fuck it" and measured out 15 milligrams of the powder on my scale.

"Binge" was not a term that I had first-hand experience with. Not until that point.

When 3 or 4 days go by, you haven't eaten, you haven't slept, you're just shovelling white powder up your nose... yeah I guess I had my baptism of fire.

When you wonder what day it is. When you wonder when the last time you checked the time or the date, or did any kind of reality check at all... you're pretty deep into a binge.

It's weird, how somebody who was always so self-disciplined, so self-controlled, even with coke and speed and pills... one day they find their drug of choice and they're like an instant junkie. I did kinda panic a bit when I'd had 800mg of a 1000mg bag, because I'd read about somebody who suffered heart damage after 800mg of this potent stimulant, but you find yourself saying "ok, well I'll make this the last one".... until it's all gone... and all you can think about is when can you get some more.

The reason it was so addictive, is because it broke my dependence on my girlfriend. We needed to break up, but I couldn't see an alternative. I couldn't imagine going backwards to go forwards. This stuff was powdered girlfriend. She no longer had any power over me anymore. I wasn't afraid of us breaking up.

She didn't like that very much.

Tags: #drugs #addiction #depression

This is a story about modern life...

I missed 5 blog posts. 3 people were worried on Facebook, plus my flatmate. My sofa-surfing Kiwi has gone back to NZ.

2 of those people, I met at a hackathon, back in October. When I had to go into hospital a few weeks later, one of these new friends brought me a backpack that contained a set of hand-picked items from around my room, each thoughtfully chosen as something that I would probably need during a week or two in hospital. It felt like Christmas.

When I got really sick over the Xmas/New Year period, my other new friend came and sat on my bed and gave me a hug. He also did loads of my washing, cooked for me, and generally nursed me back to health. The most important thing he did though, was to just be thoroughly lovely. It makes a difference, somebody asking how you are and giving you a hug.

I was in a pretty bad way with muscle wastage and weight loss, having stopped eating for about 2 and a half weeks. Obviously I couldn't impose on my poor friend, with additional burdens, such as extra shopping to carry home, when he was already doing so much that was well above and beyond what any flatmate and friend would do.

Another new friend had become concerned by my lack of blog posts, and had actually come over to my flat on her own initiative. She's a very active person, with a busy life, but it so happened that she was off work... although I doubt that she pictured herself nipping to the Tesco Local for protein shakes, isotonic fluids and anything that had high calorie content. It was so kind and helpful of her that she did.

So, I just received an email from my sister. Apparently she's been getting shit from my parents, because they've read my blog and being the horribly abusive people that they are, they are taking it out their frustration with semi-illiteracy and their almost total exclusion from my life, on my poor sister.

Let's recap what wonderful parents they are, because apparently I've forgotten all the great stuff they did for me:

• Born to a couple of junkies. My mum was a student and my dad was failing to make enough money to support a family by buying and selling junk.
• Grandparents took pity on 3-year-old grandchild and bought them a house. Dad still doesn't have a proper job... too busy taking drugs.
• I spend all my time when I'm not at school in the pub, because my parents still can't afford to support a family, a drug addiction and alcoholism. Alcohol comes first.
• My Dad decides to scale up the junk buying/selling that didn't work before, so I have to leave all my playgroup and primary school friends to move to Oxford
• Between eye patches that I don't need and a yet another girl's bike with a fucking basket on it, I pretty much become the most bullied kid at school. I remember picking gravel out of my back whenever I was 'clotheslined' on the hard play area.
• My mum did take me to London a bunch of times, which was nice. We went to the Science Museum, which got me interested in science.
• Move to a school with a uniform. Turnups and the school blazer (optional) plus carry-over from previous school means the bullying continues. My mum sympathises with the bullies.
• I get a goldfish. He's called Fred. You can't stroke a goldfish. It's a shit pet, but I cry when he dies and make a little gravestone for him.
• Finally get a home computer. Not the Apple Mac like Julian and Joe have, or the PC like Barnaby, Ben, Marcus etc. etc. No... this is the last of the ZX Spectrums ever made
• Have to move school again. Great school. Bullying not quite so bad as there is an unpopular Russian boy and I'm in all the top sets and a good form group... so my parents decide we should move to France
• Some accountant friend of the family takes pity on me and gives me the oldest PC you've ever seen in your life. No software works on it, but that doesn't matter because the monitor is black and white anyway. This is my parents main gift to me: giving me something that's so unbelievably unfit for purpose that I try and try in desperation to make things work.
• Learn to speak French in France. Also didn't make any friends in the UK, and was away from all my other friends. Given the choice, I'd rather have friends than be able to speak French.
• Another new school. Bullying atrocious. Teachers are nice though. One of them takes me sailing after school... like a dad.
• Rather than leave me in a town where I can cycle everywhere and remain with my friends during puberty, we move to the middle of fucking nowhere. I write letters to my friends on floppy disks and post them to them. One friend comes to visit. One. That's it. One.
• Sailing club is good... thanks again to that teacher
• Another start at a new school ruined by the only bike that was capable of tackling the steep hills being a proper mountain bike. One that my dad stole. It was a girls bike. I had to ride past over 1,000 children all congregating on a big long pavement, before going up the steps to the school. My few sailing club friends disowned me.
• I was supposed to be saving up for another new computer, but £10 a week from a paper round doesn't leave a lot of spare money to buy replacement parts for my mountain bike, which gets used at least twice a day on very steep hills
• With a small contribution from me in cash, but absolutely huge in terms of the number of miles I cycled every day on my paper round, my Dad got me my new computer, well after its processor became obsolete. It doesn't have a co-processor or enough memory, but I figure I can upgrade those parts when I get a better job than a paper round.
• My dad bought the shittest, most rotten, neglected boat that looked totally not water-worthy. I restored it, then sold it for a big profit. Can't remember if I paid him back.
• I had a small financial contribution when I bought my 4th and 7th cars. The 7th car was brilliant, but I could have paid for it myself. I think I was only short a few hundred quid, and I was IT contracting so I was raking it in. I can't believe how my parents still say they "bought" me that car. I shall have to dig out the bank statements.
• That's it!

Oh, here are a few things that my parents like to misremember:

• They gave me one of their cars. My mum had crashed it and it had been repaired by a blind man. The thing is, it wasn't a gift. My granny had been saving money since I was really little so that I could get a car and insurance, and I would have easily been able to buy a small engined petrol car, in a low insurance group, with cheap parts... like everybody else my age. Instead, ALL the money had to go on insurance, and the shitty car broke down all the time, and because it was a complicated diesel with expensive parts, it was the world's shittest car for a broke 17 year old.
• Holidays: well, actually these were conferences for my mum, or the shitty dilapidated house in France where I was away from all my friends in the UK. My parents were always pulling me out of school, and sure it was an education and experience, but it was just what my parents wanted to do, with me along in tow. If you were going to do it anyway, it doesn't count as something you did for your kid. The fact we drove past Alton Towers so many times but never went illustrates their mindset perfectly.
• I've cost them a lot of money. Horseshit. I read books from the library or was playing round at friend's houses or somewhere I shouldn't have been. My parents never bought me the correct shoes to not get beaten up. Once I saved up the money from my granny and bought a pair of Nikes. I remember everybody commenting at school for days. I remember wanting to fall asleep just looking at them.
• They lent me money when I was in London. Nope. What they did was not lend me money when I was in London. I needed it in October 2013. Two years late is too late.

Ok, so there are myriad little things, mainly to do with cooking with my mum. My mum is really great. She did try her very best to give me a nice life. She worked hard, paid the mortgage and bankrolled my dad.

I'm trying to think of a nice memory with my dad, but it's all so practical. I was always watching him do DIY or cook but the only thing I think we learned together was when he taught me to read & write. Later, we would change the oil on a car and suchandsuch, but we never did something together, although I was allowed to come along to car boot sales, for example.

My only memory of him really taking an interest in something in my life was when I wanted to do a sponsored mountain bike ride, and I hadn't been doing the big hills for long enough to really travel all the way to the town where the event was being held, and then have much remaining energy to race.

It wasn't much more than a completely lumpy field, with a savagely steep climb, long traverse, descent and then back on the flat to the bottom of the climb again. I had no bottle cage on my bike and I was dressed in jeans, and it was a pretty hot day. People were laughing at this kid in jeans with a touring helmet, no other safety gear, on a girls bike.

When the race started, I left everybody who had "all the gear but no idea" behind. The traverse was quite tricky, especially without toeclips. The descent was suicidal on a fully rigid bike, but I started to lap quite fast.

The more the laps went by, the more of the skilled but unfit riders fell away. The ascent really was a killer in that heat. Anyway, I decided I'd better stop after quite a few laps, because I was feeling really badly dehydrated, and I was sick of getting flies in my eyes.

My dad was gobsmacked. I can't remember where I finished, but from his point of view, I was just lapping everybody over and over and over again. He took me to the bike shop in the nearby town and bought me a pair of clear cycling glasses for the flies, mud and stones, plus a bottle cage and bottle so I could carry a drink with me.

Perhaps if I racked my brains I could think of something else, but getting complemented on my riding, and then him making a further investment - unprompted - to allow me to take my hobby further, was a special moment.

So, my sister's pretty pissed off with me, but I can't understand why. My dad conspired with my wife and my GP to drag me away from my home, my life was dismantled, and the one time in my adult life when I did actually need and want their help - and it had been offered - they reneged on their promise in October 2013, and bang went my best chance to put my life back together in London, thanks to their lies.

I've not really altered the formula, and it's really quite simple:

• Place to live (not a hostel, tent, or shop doorway)
• Job (I'm an IT contractor. Thanks for your offer of [insert low wage job] but it would be uneconomical of me to not focus my search on highly paid contracts)
• Enough money for any cashflow shortfall until the 60+ days it takes before I get paid are done, plus I've absorbed the hit of the 6 weeks deposit, 1 month rent & agent fees
• I'm afraid that I'm so profligate that I replace my suit every 5 years, and my overcoat every 12 yeas. Shoes, I'm afraid I throw away when the shoe repair man laughs in my face. Shirts, I replace when the collar is worn through and it's horribly yellow under the arms.

There are certain things that people in London don't do either:

• They don't walk for 2 or 3 hours. They get the tube. That costs over £5 a day
• They don't bring a thermos flask of coffee into the office. Coffee is a £6 a day habit, but a necessary social visit
• They don't bring a picnic basket, get the blanket out, lay it down on the office floor, sit down and start getting foil-wrapped cucumber sandwiches out. Lunch is a £5 a day habit
• They don't drink much water. Sometimes they drink fizzy drinks. Sometimes they drink a kale, ginger and apple smoothie. Drinks are a £3 a day habit
• They don't have home-brew kegs hidden under their desks. When a Londoner goes for an after work drink, which is pretty much a social necessity, they will spend £5 a pint or more
• They don't work the longest hours in Europe and travel on a packed tube train to then get home, travel back in time, and start making fresh pasta and picking basil leaves in the garden they don't have. Your economy Londoners will buy fresh pasta and pesto, and will even push the boat out for a bit of parmesan: cost £7. Some days, you're at work so late that you might even get a luxury stonebaked pizza sent to the office, or failing that, you'll probably pick up a takeaway on the way home, because you're just going to fall asleep as soon as you've eaten: cost £15.
• They don't live in Zone 99. The zones go 1-2-middle-of-fucking-nowhere-99-100. Yes, it's true that you can save 50p a year on rent by living in Zone 99, but it will cost you over a million pounds for a travel card that goes out that far. It would also be quicker to just get a jet or a helicopter to City Airport if you're that far out.
• They don't all take loads of coke. Yes, it's true that there is some drug taking in the capital, but I bet there are good statistics to show that a far greater percentage of people are on drugs in the provinces, because it's so fucking dull out there.
• They don't fret about saving 7 pence on a loaf of mouldy bread, or consider it profligate to buy popcorn at the cinema, because wages are so much higher and you'll be working too hard to do all the stuff that you have to do to entertain yourself in the provinces on your meagre wage

So, anyway, I've shown my magic formula works. I know what I need to get back into work, routine, friendships and get on an even keel financially, so that I never ever have to explain to a dimwitted out-of-towner why the cost of living initially looks quite high.

However, my sister has a shit job, got pregnant with kid they couldn't afford, went through a divorce, lives in midlands suburbia and generally acts with incredulity that I could maybe have found it a bit stressful trying to re-enter London life on a credit card, living in a hostel.

I had said that my sister & niece were the only thing keeping me alive when I was in hospital. My life is fucked, the cashflow doesn't work, I'm not very well, I still haven't got a contract and there are now further delays. I know what'll happen... I'll get a nice big money contract, but after a month I'll be bankrupt, and my money will still be 30 days away at least. If I take it all out as soon as I can, then it means I'm not maximising my dividends, and it means I have to live on 33% of my income, instead of 100%. That means the stress carries on, month after month after month. But, apparently everybody's an expert in accountancy and cashflow forecasting now.

Apparently one of my sister's friends has it so much harder than me or something. Anyway, they're dead now. I'm just being a martyr or something. According to my sister and parents it's really easy to blag your way into a mental hospital, and slicing lengthways down my forearms with a razor blade was some kind of emotional blackmail, or maybe it was melodramatic... I don't give a shit anymore.

I literally think that you are a grade-A douchecanoe if you have no idea just how hard it has been to survive in London with no parental or state support, when I was completely fucked.

A big part of me says "fuck it". I was a homeless bankrupt drug addict in a park one day, and then you expect it to be all fixed in 5 months because I managed to get a flat, and a job. Then you only choose to help me when I'm hospitalised, suicidal. And then after it's already too late you say it's blackmail.

Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you.

Can't be bothered.

Why bother?

You have absolutely no idea how hard it's been to work my way back from the brink and just how carefully I've had to budget, and how cleverly I've done my accounting.

I really didn't want to write another thing about my parents. They're dead to me. But to hear my sister echoing their lies is heartbreaking, and to receive a lengthy message telling me things that are just total bullshit, and saying "I'm sorry, but I don't want to be anywhere near you".

That's just fucking awful. OK, so I've poured out my anger at my parents for forcefully removing me from my own home so my ex could cheat on me, generally backing her up, and then totally fucking me over when they had their chance to make good on something helpful. It's something I have been trying forgive and forget but they're never going to re-enter my life. They have no interest in it anyway. My dad didn't even want to come in my London house and meet my London friends, despite being parked right outside.

My sister says I should ask if I need help. My parents don't do anything until it's too late: I'll either be dead or in hospital.

That's not emotional blackmail. That's getting rid of some worthless cunts from your life.

I'm absolutely heartbroken that my sister has been taken in by their bullshit. We had been talking about her visiting London and her getting a matching semicolon tattoo.

Fuck life

Tags: #parents #childhood #sister #career #london #suicide #depression

This is a story about blowing off steam...

While the world gets on with its life, I seem to have one foot in the grave, or to be stuck in the past. Apologies for the self-absorption. I'm trying to move forwards, but it turns out there's quite a lot of stuff I needed to work through.

Many people might view me as a 'keyboard warrior'. Somebody who is far more aggressive and outspoken when protected behind a computer screen. I think you'll find that I don't really tone things down face to face, but when people read what I write they certainly interpret it as being quite angry.

It's hard to infer emotion from writing. I tend to use a mix of humour and sarcasm, as well as writing down explicitly what emotions I'm feeling, if they're strong enough to warrant recording in the text, as I write. Perhaps I'm just impervious to my emotions a lot of the time though. I'm mostly very calm when I'm writing.

I'm acutely aware just how self-absorbed I have become, and I certainly need a bit of a reality check. The fact of the matter is that I'm pretty exhausted, depressed, stressed and anxious. Writing doesn't seem to have brought any relief yet, but when suicide and drug abuse are places that your mind can wander to, it's good to have a distraction.

I reviewed what I wrote so far, and it's interesting to see a pronounced dip in quality, as I started to self-destruct over the Christmas and New Year period. I can really see my writing get sloppy and thoughts get jumbled. The writing up to that period was quite repetitive though, quite laboured.

It must be fairly obvious to any independent observer, that whatever I turn my hand to, I will get excessively involved with. If I start going to the gym, I will train far too hard and push my body too far. If I get into a new sport or hobby, I will obsessively learn everything about it and just pursue that one thing, to the exclusion of everything else in my life. If I get a new job, I will be so passionate about it that it will become very personal. I will be super dedicated to whatever I do.

Is the explanation for this behaviour simply that I am transferring my addict's habits into different kinds of activity? The repetition, the obsessiveness, the single-minded pursuit of one goal... it all smacks of addiction.

So, am I addicted to writing? Am I addicted to telling my story? Am I addicted to sensationalism and attention seeking? Am I addicted to the little dopamine hit I get for every Facebook like, Twitter retweet and Reddit upvote? Yeah. Probably.

But, at the same time, writing is immensely useful for recovery. I'm not sure I could have gone from the end of October to the end of January with no job and only one lapse, without the continuity of this blog. It's also served one its original purposes of keeping people informed, letting people know whether I'm afloat or whether I'm sinking. Even a simple "signs of life" as one caring friend put it.

I write for me, but it is meaningful who takes the time to respond. When somebody I haven't really been in contact with for a long time indicates that they've read something I've written, there is initially a gut-wrenching realisation that they've probably had their eyes opened to a side of my character that they never knew, then there is a pleasing sense that there is still an ongoing connection between us, as friends whose contact has dwindled over the difficult years.

It's interesting the responses that my writing has prompted from friends and strangers alike. People have shared some things with me, that I will keep completely confidential, but have really helped me to realise that we're all putting a brave face on things a lot of the time. Everybody has an untold tale behind their stoic exterior. The happiest, smiliest, 'life is perfect' type people have connected with something in my writing and shared some quite shocking truths about their own wayward journey through life.

Don't read a book by it's cover. Does a blog really have a cover? I suppose "manic" is quite a provocative title. It's interesting that you could dip in at any moment in time and dependent on the phase of writing, you could assume that I'm a junkie, sex addict, suicidally depressed, pissed off with my job, happy with my job, pissed off with my parents, had an unhappy childhood, had an interesting childhood, was a domestic abuse perpetrator, was a domestic abuse victim, had a shitty divorce and am completely bat shit insane, with long unintelligible monologues about some half-baked ideas in theoretical physics that don't really add up to a hill of beans.

Is it so different from the sumtotal of my Facebook status updates? I generally get the impression that the world has kids, babies, cats, dogs, cars, holidays and dubious politics, from what I can see on the Facebook walls of my friends. Who knew?

There are a lot of social commentators saying that this eruption of social media sharing of our innermost thoughts and feelings is leading to an addiction to Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat etc. etc. and that we're headed for some kind of armeggedon because of it.

Having been somebody who has written on forums under my own name for the best part of 14 years, I have only ever felt the benefit of human connection, even if it has been computer-assisted. With the kitesurfing/kiteboarding forums, we used to meet up every Tuesday and every weekend. I've made some of my very best friends through forums and the social ties that the forums enabled.

When you have to get through a long working week, your job isn't particularly challenging, you're a bit jaded and cynical and sick of the 9 to 5 drudgery, there's nothing quite like a forum to while away your 37.5 hours a week. I made it a personal mission to read every forum post, and respond whenever I could.

A life lived online is a bit strange, but I've been all over the world with people who I met online. Electronic communication is creating social cohesion where otherwise there would only be urban solitude. Unless you live in some 1950's throwback community, where you know your neighbours and you leave your doors unlocked and let your kids play with the dodgy looking guy in the raincoat, then you probably live most of your life in social isolation, beyond the members of your household, and a small group of people who you go out of your way to stay in regular contact with.

Most of us probably have a certain day or a time that we speak to our mums. Most of us probably have people that we regularly speak to online or a regular social get together. Most of us probably have a group of friends that we regularly meet up with at weekends, and see in the pattern of our daily lives: the school run, the kids birthday parties, the meals out with a network of friends, celebrating some event or other. Plus there are the people at work. You know how many kids they have, and some vague things about what's happening in each of their lives. You have an established social routine with your work colleagues.

If you're a bit of an oddball like me, you don't really fit in. For a long time, I was a lot more senior than people my age. When I started my career, I was the young kid with poor social skills and a bad dress sense. Later, I was the golden boy who was trying to do the same thing as his peers - have a nice settled little life with a family and a lovely home - but was roughly the same age as the group who were partying and generally having fun.

This disjoint has meant that as my boring old person life fell to bits, it was just about at the same time as my younger friends were all getting big houses and having babies. My older friends now have kids who are going to big school. My younger friends are up to their elbows in nappies.

I guess it happens to everybody. There are waves of engagements, marriages, house purchases, babies and then come the divorces. Thankfully, not too many of my friends have started dropping dead yet.

Everybody is so darn busy, and working so darn hard. Apparently, life is supposed to be taxing on parents with two kids. Life is optimised to bleed the parents dry, of their time, energy and money of course. If you're not flat broke, exhausted and don't have a minute to yourself to sit down and read a newspaper, you're not trying hard enough.

Sorry if that sounds condescending or anything... I have no idea what it must be like having copulated for 30 seconds and now having a screaming, shitting, vomiting thing that can't look after itself and you'll be chucked in jail if you hide it in the oven.

My views are probably quite obnoxious to many people. Certainly a recurrent theme is parenting. I'm very hard on my parents, and sure there are a lot of people who say "I'm sure they did the best they knew how to do" and I'm not going to re-iterate the fact that sitting around on your arse taking drugs is a bit stupid, when you're supposed to be childrearing. I certainly see a lot of smiles on the kids faces that get posted onto Facebook, and I know that my sister is doing a great job with my niece, so I certainly don't think that my friends and sister are doing a bad job.

It must seem very annoying and pathetic that I'm complaining about my lot in life, and being so self-absorbed and selfish, sitting around writing crap about "woe is me!" and so oh-so difficult life is for me, me, me. Sorry about that. I must be doubly difficult when you're struggling to make ends meet financially, and you're stressed about little Oliver's violin recital, and whether Hermione's going to get into that grammar school. I'm sure you hate your job too. I'm sure you'd love to have a breakdown and be in bed for 14 hours a day exhausted, shaking like a wreck.

Yes, I do claim that I don't feel entitled, but I'm certainly able to some extent, to spend some time thinking about the past and wallowing in self-pity. I have no dependents. I didn't spawn any gene cloning machines that I'm trying to protect from the wolves in the forest. I'm not being smug. I'm actually jealous. I can see that it's pretty exhausting and terrifying, having 'skin in the game' but I can also see those chests swelling with pride and those eyes lighting up with delight at your beautiful children. I don't get any cuddle time with my offspring that I don't have.

So, life looks a lot simpler for the single guy with no kids, but in a way, my life is less dictated by the demands of feeding, clothing and schooling of any infants, which means I kind of have to find a reason for living, every day.

I hope you don't hate me for saying I have to decide what I'm going to do every day. I'm sure you have a long list of things you'd love to do, if you had the time. My life is not exactly like that... I don't wake up and think "shall I learn to waterski today, or should I go to Mexico?". However, I don't wake up and think "I have to get the kids dressed and make them breakfast" just like every morning for the next 18 years.

I can't decide whether having made a rational decision to defer parenthood was a mistake. It would be interesting to compare some kind of objective quality-of-life scores with my peers who made different choices, but I suspect that things would be comparable, as I know that many of my friends have suffered with depression and anxiety just as much as me, despite being mummies and daddies. I know that many of my friends are just as cheesed off with the work they do, and it's making them unwell.

Anyway, we're all slowly inching our way to the grave, like it or not. One thing's for certain with life: death will follow hot on its heels.

Yeah that's lava going in the sea. Salt water cleanses everything, especially tears

Tags: #depression #parents

This is a story about the willing suspension of disbelief...

People think that beating drug and alcohol abuse is about abstinence, sobriety. It's not.

Are you familiar with experiments where rats were given bottles of water laced with drugs, as well as bottles of clean water and food? In cages that had a placebo, the rats obviously ate, drank, slept and lived until they died of old age. In the cages with heroin in the water, the rats would drink some heroin, fall asleep, wake up, eat, clean themselves, drink some more heroin, sleep some more... until they too died of old age. In the cages with cocaine in the water, the rats would drink and drink and drink from the cocaine laced water, until they died prematurely.

These were barren cages, with nothing to do but drink from a bottle, eat some plain food pellets, or sleep. No other rats to socialise with. Nothing to explore. Nothing to play with. No stimulation. Not really much of a life, even for a rat. What do you think you'd do, behind bars with nothing to do except drink from a bottle?

Did you know that they ran those experiments again, except this time they created Rat Park, which was packed with everything a rat could want from life. There were other rats to socialise with, and have sex with of course. There were tubes and slides and places to hide, and nice bedding and toys. The food was varied and tasty. Of course, there were still two water bottles, one of which was laced with drugs or a placebo.

Do you know what happened? The rats weren't interested in drugs. They were happy in their little ratty lives, and drugs had no place in those happy fulfilled rodenty days.

So what does that tell us about addiction? What do you think would happen if you took away somebody's self-esteem and pushed them out of society? What do you think would happen if you labelled somebody a junkie, a druggie an alkie, and demonised them? What do you think would happen if you mistreated your fellow human, your family member, your partner, your friend? Do you think that would cure them of their addiction?

Rehab is for quitters. Ha ha ha! No, not really. Rehab is a bit of a joke to be honest. The relapse rates are appalling. It's really not working. Do you know why it's not working? Because rehab is the place we send the black sheep of the family to beat themselves up, and to make us clean-living superior people feel better about ourselves.

What's the difference between an addict and a normal person? One puff on a cigarrette, one gulp of tea or coffee, or one sip of liquor.

Yes, it's true that addicts and alcoholics are on a death-spiral downwards that they can't stop on their own. The destruction of their life has begun, and they're going to ride that helter-skelter all the way to rock bottom, unless there is intervention.

Intervention means locking them away from their poison of choice, right? Wrong. Everything in that person's life that caused them to become addicted to drink or drugs is still there. Their environment, their social group, the pressures, the stresses, the broken life that they have... all those things are still there.

Finding the key that unlocks your addictive potential is not easy, luckily, but finding the key that unlocks you from the trap of addiction, that's easy: you just need a life that's better than living on the street in complete destitution, begging and stealing enough money for your next fix, while the whole of society thinks you're a piece of s**t and wouldn't p**s on you if you were on fire.

But that can't be right, can it? Lots of rich people get addicted and die young, and their lives are amazing. Well, let's examine that claim a little more carefully.

Having been down-and-out on the streets of Camden Town, London, it seems apt to talk about Amy Winehouse.

They tried to make me go to rehab but I said, 'No, no, no.'

Yes, I've been black but when I come back you'll know, know, know

I ain't got the time and if my daddy thinks I'm fine

He's tried to make me go to rehab but I won't go, go, go

Everybody wanted her to sing that song. Over and over and over again. Can you imagine that? Being a human jukebox, a human CD player, just performing the same song, over and over and over again.

Imagine being an amazingly talented creative artist, but nobody wants to hear any of your new material, they just want you to stand on stage and repeat the same old s**t, again and again and again.

Dancing bears get driven insane, and will dance and dance, even when they're not performing. How do you think the human psyche is affected by similarly being whipped and cajoled into performing the same act, repeated and repeated and repeated again.

But Amy Winehouse was rich. Tina Turner was rich. I've been relatively rich. How can these rich people complain or get messed up, when they're so rich? Rich people's lives must be amazing. Well, actually, the rich cry too. Rich people need the same emotional sustenance as anybody else. Rich people need to feel fulfilled too, and just being rich doesn't make you feel fulfilled.

It's less of a "how can they be sad" and more of a "how dare they be sad". People are incensed by the fact that they think they want the life of a wealthy person, but they haven't considered the sacrifices that that person has had to make in order to become wealthy. You haven't heard about how hard Michael Jackson and the Williams sisters fathers drove them, for them to attain success, for example? It's well documented.

This could very easily turn into a Monty Python sketch, where I implore you not to donate any money to help save the rich, so I had better re-ground things. The point is, we're all human. Wealth doesn't really touch the soul. Wealth is just a silly made up game that's external to all of us. Sure it seems to control much in our lives, but the really important thing is human connection, and money can't buy you love.

Sure, it's true that money is a major stress factor in most of our lives. I have got less than two months before I'm financially screwed, but it takes 60 days before I get paid on a contract and I don't currently have a contract anyway. Does not compute. Doesn't add up. I'm going to be out on the street whether I work or not.

Surely that's down to self-sabotage? Surely that's down to a lack of planning, of cashflow forecasting? Well, there's only so much you can do. I worked my arse off, got paid a lot of overtime, but it made me very unwell. It's a Catch 22. I can 'sing that popular song' over and over and over again in order to plump up the bank balance, but it makes me sick... literally.

Yes, mental illness is invisible and poorly understood, but you feel it just the same. You feel it in your dark thoughts, you feel it in the pit of your stomach, you feel it when you deliberately hurt yourself to try and let the pain out. Isn't suicide the ultimate in self sabotage?

My days currently consist of lying awake anxiously all night, then sleeping until I force myself to get up and have something to eat, then I try and distract myself from the anxiety until it's time to pretend to go to sleep, but just lie there anxiously all over again. Lovely life, huh?

I started to fantasise last night, not about taking drugs, but about doing a backflip off the 48th floor of a nearby building. I thought about the slow rotation of my body, head over feet, as I accelerated through the air towards the ground. I thought about the collision with the pavement below, and how it would bring instant relief. No more stress. No more anxiety. No more depression. No more isolation. No more demonisation. No more pain.

I then started to think about BASE jumping from up there, and you know what? I started to get stressed. I started to think about getting caught by security. I started to think about having line twists or colliding with a streetlamp or some hard object. I started to think about how much it would hurt, to survive. I got sweaty palms and my pulse started to race, my body became restless. The thought of staying alive, with all this stress and pain and anxiety is not a pleasant one.

That's how people get pushed into addiction. When their life becomes stress and anxiety and depression, and all of their human connection collapses. You're driven inwards by stress and anxiety when nobody is there to help you. When people who care about you start to label you, demonise you and refuse to assist you, you retreat into yourself, you have to be self-reliant and you no longer trust people around you.

I know that all I need to stay alive is the food from soup kitchens and the Hare Krishna, plus my good sleeping bag and my bivouac. Yes, there's a certain amount of pride that stops me from crawling over broken glass back to my parents. I'd rather be homeless and destitute than live with their abuse. Without any self-esteem or identity I might as well just slit my wrists now.

I knew things were going to get tight if I didn't find work right away in November, but I didn't care. I couldn't work. I was exhausted and depressed, and my mood was sinking lower and lower. With retrospect, there was no way that I was ready for another contract. I wouldn't have lasted more than a week.

Now I'm looking down the barrel of financial armageddon, but I can't care. There's literally nothing I can do about it. I'm swamped with stress, anxiety and the feeling that I might as well give up. Where do you think those feelings lead?

What do you think happens when you swamp somebody with anxiety, stress? What do you think happens when somebody has no opportunities? What do you think happens to cornered rats?

The motherf**king cycle continues.

There's my old bike at Silicon Roundabout. I could tap up Tech City for some work, but it's the last bridge left unburnt and I'm definitely not having my finest hour

Tags: #drugs #alcohol #addiction #suicide #depression #career #london

This is a story about dying while doing something you love...

Please forgive the gallows humour. I find death quite darkly comic, having lived in its shadow for far too long.

I found myself in possession of a year's supply of Supercrack once. It cost me less than $150 including shipping. A whole year of drug abuse, in one little baggie. Addiction never leaves your side. You can go anywhere you want, but you can't escape yourself.

Having a year's supply of your drug of choice should be an addict's wet dream, right? Well, it depends on the nature of your addiction. If you're still managing to eat and sleep, then perhaps you will make it to the end of the year. If you're not eating or sleeping, then you're simply committing suicide, slowly.

When I was trapped in an abusive relationship and kept away from London, I had given up on life. I was dying. I used to occasionally get scared of death, and clean up my act for a few weeks, but then I would always relapse, because of the same old abusive relationship and isolation from the city I call home.

I finally made it back to London, but there was pointless crap dragging me back into things that were far less important than saving my life.

That's a letter I received, in my mother's handwriting, hassling me about some divorce paperwork that could have waited until I had completed the treatment that I was undergoing to save my life. I had explicitly stated that I didn't want my wife or parents to be in any form of contact with me, while I was trying to get better. During this second attempt, I explicitly forbade my wife and parents from having any contact with me or the professionals who were paid to take care of me.

It was time to get better, get away from the s**ts who nearly hounded me to my grave. It was time to move on. It was time to recover.

Eventually, the vultures f**ked off and thankfully I had enough money left to pay the deposit on a flat and the first couple of months rent and bills, so I could get myself settled, get into a new job etc. etc.

I rented a room in a shared house near some friends in Kentish Town. My time up to this point had been wasted on pointless divorce crap that could have been deferred. I had been relentlessly harassed. Also, having my leg in plaster cast and being on crutches didn't help. My treatment was ruined by people not respecting my wishes. I was in a worse state than ever.

I hobbled into my new room and collapsed. I spent a week crying myself to sleep, I was so exhausted by the trauma of everything that had gone before. I had just about enough money left to make a go of things, but not quite. Everything had to go perfectly.

I had resolved not to commit suicide in my friends' house, where I was a guest, as it would have been a very unpleasant legacy to leave behind in somebody's home. They seemed committed to making that house their forever home, so there was no way I could do that to them.

After moving out and having a week where I felt that I didn't have the reserves of strength and money to continue, I decided to shut up shop. I decided to commit suicide.

The final straw was when my Dad tried to poison my friend's opinion of me, with his warped version of events. People were talking behind my back, and my confidentiality and consent to share information were completely breached. The place where I had spent the best part of £8k on treatment became some kind of counsellor and general centre for misinformation for my parents, despite explicit instructions that they weren't allowed contact.

I took a massive overdose and collapsed on the floor. The three metal prongs of a plug were sticking painfully into my thigh, but I couldn't move. The hot transformer for my laptop was burning my abdomen, scorching the skin, but I couldn't move. My arms were in the most uncomfortable position, but I couldn't move. The weight of my head rested uncomfortably on my chin, with my neck extended very awkwardly, but I couldn't move.

When you have taken an overdose, and you realise that it's overwhelming you, you start to panic. Can you make yourself throw up, if you've swallowed your poison? You know that it's too late... the chemicals are already entering your bloodstream and vomiting will make no difference. There was a moment's regret, and then resignation.

My body spasmed and twitched for quite a long time. There were a lot of auditory disturbances (I heard weird things). My mind kinda went blank for ages, or was caught up with weird confused thoughts. Then it dawned on me that I was alive but still on collision course with death. Day turned to night, and night turned to day, and so on. About 4 days went by with me paralysed like that... just breathing, and my body spasming.

I then started to think about death. I started to consider the possibility that I was going to discover if there was an afterlife or not. I started to think how embarrassed I would be to meet some deity who I never believed in. I didn't start believing in any god, but I considered how sheepish I would be if I met my maker.

Next, I started to think about the waste of it, the waste of life. Not that I was wasting my life, but that there was nothing positive that was going to come from my death. I started to consider how I could leave a message that would somehow prove useful to those who survived me. I started to consider how frustrating it would be to discover something in death, but have no way to pass on that discovery to the living world.

I started to imagine a weird experiment, where two suicidal people would risk their lives to discover if it's possible to communicate from beyond the grave. They would be in two isolated chambers, each with a keyboard. There would be a randomly timed event that would kill them, but they would get about a minute's warning before they were about to be killed. They would then type messages, and only in the event that the messages were co-incidentally the same, would the time be extended.

Eventually, one of the experimenters can type no more and rushes out of the experiment exit to safety. The other experimenter is killed. When the messages are later examined, we can see that the co-incidence of the messages being the same is immensely unlikely, but yet there were a sequence of messages that were identical, despite death being inevitable at that point.

Don't worry, I didn't decide to start a cult with a suicide pact. I did however decide that dying alone, leaving no note or anything was rather silly. I summoned the strength to claw myself off the floor and onto my bed, where I lay in agony for some time.

I urinated into a pint glass - I was virtually immobile - and saw that my urine was cloudy and the colour of orange juice with a lot of blood in it. My organs had started to shut down. My thigh was a painful mess from the plug that had dug into it, and my abdomen was burnt from the laptop transformer. My kidneys hurt and my tummy was tender and painful. My muscles were weak as hell. I had a lot of fluid on my lungs and my chest was tight. Breathing was difficult.

I decided to try and make death a bit quicker by severing my jugular vein, but my blood pressure was so low and it was actually really hard for me to even find a pulse. I kept blacking out with orthostatic hypotension.

Later, my ex-girlfriend discovered me in this dreadful state, and got me to the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead, where the hard-working lovely people of the NHS saved my life.

Here's the view I woke up to, from my hospital bed. I was quite surprised to wake up (May 2014)

Tags: #addiction #suicide #divorce #depression #london #nhs #injury

This is a story about gushing all over the Internet...

What happens when you lay your soul bare for public examination? Well, don't worry about it, because everybody is pouring their private lives out into the public domain on social media and via email, text message and other electronic communication mediums.

I have overcome my fear of dying alone. My frustration with life now outweighs my fear of death. Now my only fear is of being survived by anybody who knew me. The way that people misremember you will be your legacy.

We all write and create so much content these days. Digital cameras are ubiquitous. We create thousands of photographs and videos. We write hundreds of thousands of words in emails, text messages and social media posts. Our digital footprint is huge.

You would have thought that there would be shame, embarrassment, regret in sharing my most private secrets, but the more I do it, the more I am liberated from the desire to prove myself worthy. I like admitting I am fallible, that I have made mistakes, that I have gone astray. It's exhausting fighting the rumour mill and trying to maintain a spotless image.

I'm actually struggling to return to the 'real world'. Spending every day with nothing more important to do than write is nice (who knew?). I'm sure that those of you with jobs and kids must hate my guts for the fact that I reject responsibility and instead, my time and energy is ploughed into pontificating like a student, like a child, like a spoiled teenager.

Presumably you see that sitting an exam with known 'correct' answers is pointless? Allowing yourself to be measured, to be sifted, to be sorted... subjecting yourself to the degradation of allowing somebody to sit in judgement over your intellectual value. Surely you can see that being channelled through such a system is brainwashing you? You might as well get "KNOW YOUR PLACE" tattooed to the inside of your eyelids.

Writers, photographers, musicians and other artists must struggle to be heard over the cacophony of "me too" voices. Any douche with an iPhone is a photographer or a film-maker these days. Any douche who can play three chords on a guitar is a musician. Any douche who's not completely tone deaf is a singer. Any douche who can string a coherent sentence together is a writer or a poet.

When was the last time that you stepped back from what you were doing, and questioned your place in the big picture? When was the last time you examined your reason, your motives, for doing everything you do?

An experiment was conducted on public transport, where a person would ask somebody who was sitting down "can I sit there?" indicating that they would like the person sitting down to give up their seat. There was no obvious reason to give up the seat, such as being pregnant, old or having an injury. We just want to sit down. Perhaps an unreasonable request, when at least second in line for that seat.

The result from the expriment was that, a large proportion of the time, people would give up their seat and allow the other person to sit down. Sometimes the person would ask "why?" and the reply "because I want to sit down" would be given. An unreasonable reply, perhaps, but that was enough of a reason for some people to give up their seat after initially questioning the justification.

We are all very familiar with the 'teacher' experiments that show that many people would administer lethal electric shocks to a 'pupil' if we were told to do it by an authority figure. People are very compliant with social norms. We very rarely question things, especially if there is obvious rank and status in play.

How dare I publish my photographs, unless I have done some kind of photography course. Maybe I need to be a fellow of some kind of academy or society of the arts? Maybe I need a piece of paper to wave, as well as the end of my camera lens.

How dare I read academic papers and do my own research, consider my own hypotheses, publish my own thoughts and ideas. Maybe I need to be a graduate from some esteemed academic institution? Maybe I need to have a qualification that says that I was measured by somebody in authority, and found to meet a certain standard? Maybe I need to be gagged and blinded.

How dare I write, unless I have received an advance from a publisher, or have other works published. Maybe I need to have a number of press clippings and a bibliography to prove my words have the necessary importance. Words without quotation, without citation... they're worthless noise.

Have you ever heard of original thinkers? People who don't give a shit who you are, and how important you think you are. People who don't give a shit about rote-learning the same crap as everybody else. People who aren't afraid to question the status quo, or to keep asking "why?" until the limit of understanding is reached, and the shaky foundations of knowledge are revealed.

Sure, a great debate rages about the contribution of laymen and women. Sure, everybody thinks that their contribution is valid, and there isn't enough time to lay bare the fundamental error in every half-baked crackpot idea.

Publish or perish, though, publish or perish. Everything is indexed for search these days. It really doesn't hurt anybody, having these 143,000 words out there in the public domain. It actually helps me, because I have a non-monetary life-insurance policy. It serves to capture a little piece of me, alive. I'm living through my words, because I don't feel like my fingernails are going to grip onto life for very much longer.

Yes, it would be easy to say that this sounds alarmist, attention seeking. However, I know how close I am to death, because I've captured the data and I've done the calculations.

I can see the cyclical nature of myself. I can see the downward slide of things

Tags: #privacy #suicide #depression

This is a story about repetition ad nauseam...

I have been stuck in a trance, obsessed with the past wrongdoing of a couple of people. I need to draw a line under things and move forward. I know they will be relieved to hear that, and feel that they got away with things and they're off the hook. However, my writing has gotten very repetitive and boring, because I keep labouring the same points. Time to change.

I know it must come across that I'm very stubborn, determined, single-minded. I don't quit, I don't relent, I'm a dog with a bone that I won't let go of. This has taken me fairly far in life, because I've solved problems that other people couldn't. I've achieved things that other people wouldn't, because it just requires too much sacrifice and dedication.

Mucking about with computers is not healthy or normal, and it's certainly not a choice, it's more of an alternative when other routes are barred. Yes, I would love to be part of the gang, part of the crowd sometimes, but I'm clearly odd-one-out. Piggy-in-the middle is fun to tease. Excluding a minority gives you somebody to pick on, to point and laugh at, to make you feel better about yourself. "At least I'm not them, ha ha ha!"

I've retreated inwards as a response to stress and depression. It might seem mad to cut yourself off, but when your general life experience is of loss and people turning on you, then your survival instincts tell you to be self-reliant in dark times. A life lived on Facebook is no life at all, but the virtual world seems more friendly to me than the one where I have lost so many friends.

It takes two to tango, and I know that I've not been a very good friend. I know that I've let friendships go cold, not replied to messages for long periods, not picked up the phone. I can't remember the last time I made or received a phonecall. It must have been over a month ago.

Communication is a strange thing. I remember being able to text message at lightening speed on an old Nokia phone where you had to press the number keys multiple times to get the letter you want. Why didn't I just phone? It would have been quicker.

In a world that has been largely offensive and unpleasant to you, bullying, the protection of a screen is hard to deny. I can compose my thoughts. I can review what I'm about to say. I can edit before I send. I also like the fact that there is a written history of what has been transmitted and received. I find that a lot of people have very poor memory of what has been said, when later quizzed about things.

I find it very frustrating dealing with people who are not honest, straightforward, rational and have a good memory. I'm not sure whether it's drug and alcohol abuse, or simply genetic flaws, but there are definitely people who I find it very frustrating to deal with because of their selective recall of events, and irrational bias that they place on their interpretation of reality.

Everything in the world is fairly clear-cut to me. I try and avoid black & white thinking, but sometimes the blindingly obvious is clearly a polar thing. There is such a thing as right and wrong. All the interpretation and alternative opinion in the world doesn't make a difference when you apply a rational objective analysis of events over the top of things.

You normally get quite a few warnings from me before common sense eventually has to prevail, with me leading the charge. My friend Laurence was driving too fast down country lanes. There was a friend and me as passengers in my hire car. He was jeopardising three lives, plus whoever he was going to have a head on collision with, plus my hire car that he wasn't insured on. I warned him multiple times that I was unhappy, afraid, and that he needed to slow down.

I pulled the handbrake on as hard as I could when we reached a straight piece of road. This seemed very sudden and dangerous to Laurence, but it was quite a calculated act after a good 5+ minutes of me warning him to slow down, and the lanes were getting narrower and narrower, with more and more blind bends. Potentially there wasn't going to be another wide stretch of straight road, before we collided head-on with another vehicle. It was then or never.

Keeping a sliding car on a straight road is not hard. Momentum will carry the car on a straight line. Even if you spin, you're unlikely to do much more than bump off the hedge. More likely, the car will just continue on the original trajectory, because there is so much forward momentum. The back of the car started to slide out, but it really didn't make much of a difference whether Laurence corrected it or not.

Laurence was upset, but his interpretation of events was incorrect. He was speeding down narrow country lanes, round blind bends, uninsured in a car, with two other people he was responsible for, ignoring all reasonable pleas to slow down from the person who was legally in charge of the vehicle. Clear cut. Case closed. No other interpretation necessary.

When I act, it might look sudden and brutal, but a lot of thought has gone into things. My actions are far more premeditated than they look. When I take risks, they're calculated.

Sometimes I can override my own calculations. My friend JP was hanging off a broom handle tied to the roof rafters, suspended several feet above the ground, in order to practice some kiteboarding moves. I said that it looked very dangerous and I thought it was going to snap and drop him onto the hard ground. After he had been successfully doing it for some time, I decided that perhaps I was wrong and I would risk having a go. Of course, it snapped, and I landed on my shoulder, possibly breaking a bone. I now have a lump on my shoulder on that side. I literally have a chip on my shoulder.

However, I'm a balanced person, because I went snowboarding on an indoor slope, tried to do a flip and landed on my shoulder the other side, doing a very similar injury. I now have chips on both shoulders, balancing me out.

You will find me fair and reasonable.

Oh man I miss boardsports. I would love to be kiteboarding or snowboarding right now

Tags: #divorce #parents #friends #childhood #computing #socialmedia