This is a story about clinging on for dear life...

When you are hounded to the edge of the abyss, you will fall to your death if you allow yourself to be pushed one single step more. You shouldn't push people that hard. You shouldn't be so harsh, critical, judgemental, presumptuous. You don't know how close somebody is to the edge, until they're gone.

I don't want to go on about this, but I'm dealing with suicidal thoughts on a daily basis. If you think that's because I'm mentally ill, you're wrong. My brain has correctly judged the circumstances, and it's telling me that I have very few options. My brain is correctly informing me that I'm on the edge of a precipice, and the other side is a jeering snarling crowd who don't care whether I live or die.

People accuse suicidal people of being attention seeking, or selfish. It's actually neither. You have all the time in the world to hurl those accusations at a gravestone when they're gone. They won't be receiving any attention or anything for themself when they're gone. They won't even be stealing a single precious breath of your oxygen anymore, so how can it be selfish?

I've got a life insurance policy that covers suicide. My family are literally better off if I'm dead. That's cold hard cash in their pockets, rather than the rather draining task of repeatedly telling me I'm not good enough and I'm selfish. Yes, it's hard work to have to keep telling somebody to keep taking steps towards their demise, to keep hounding them until they're dead.

In Oxford, I'm pretty sure I came up with the term pushy parents. It kind of stuck with my friends, and their parents, and the phrase entered the popular vernacular. There were a lot of high-achieving kids at my schools in Oxford, and living nearby. My parents had big plans for their only son. They were going to make me achieve everything that they had failed to ever achieve, by force.

We all want our kids to do well, to get ahead, to achieve their greatest potential, but you have got to realise that they're still children. If you push them hard their whole childhood they won't thank you for it, if you push them beyond their limits and make them sick. You will struggle to judge how hard they can work, and how much stress and pressure they can handle, because you are a mature adult, and they are a developing child.

A child's attention span is different from yours. A child's knowledge and experience is different from yours. A child's ability to express distress and protect themself is different from yours. A child's capacity to experience daily stress and pressure and bullying and coercion is different from yours.

You might think that you are bringing up baby Einstein, but in fact you might be twisting that child's personality into somebody who's very bitter and resentful about being kept in from seeing their friends in order to study more. You might not be aware just how deeply etched childhood experiences are in that child's memory. You have no idea what is important to that individual child, especially if you don't listen.

Why am I bitching and whining about this stuff? Well, let me remind you: I'm living with the desire to commit suicide. I can only act on this once, and then I have no further opportunity to tell you who I really am, to tell you what makes me tick. This is a time capsule. It tells you everything you didn't want to know about me when I was alive.

This is the inconvenient truth. This is the smoking gun. This is the postmortem analysis.

I read a few books that were posthumously published after the author's death. The anguish, the distress, the emotion of the authors, thinly concealed behind passive agression and satire, oozes out from those works of literature. The words are soaked with emotion. Every sentence packs a punch, swung wildly at an unseen enemy.

I was systematically re-programmed to believe that my life was worthless, which is why I take huge risks. It's not selfishness if the self has no value. The more that you tell a person that they're shit and they're a burden and they're not good enough, the less risk-averse they become. They will go to great lengths to prove themself or to feel some connection to life.

I don't care what anybody says. Extreme sports are not stupid... they're brave. I can barely express to you just how cold, hard & rational you have to be to step into an extreme environment. You are literally weighing life & death with your every action. You are making decisions that can barely be comprehended by somebody who hasn't willingly laid their life on the line.

My Dad's a real coward. He's abusive to me and my Mum, and he won't admit he's in the wrong. He's such a coward that he hid behind his front door and got the police to deal with me when I went to confront him. He won't even face his own son, on the level, like an adult. He's never done anything brave in his life. He's a real disappointment to me.

I'm actually very calm and rational. I realise my Dad's an old man, and he's good to my sister and my niece, so I wasn't going to risk his life by pulverising him. I just wanted him to stand and face his own son, and confront the issue of him abusing me and my mum. I wanted him to admit he was wrong, to my face. I didn't demand it, but I felt that only a coward would shy away from an honest face to face conversation about his wrongdoing. I was right. He's a coward.

My Mum gave me life, and actually helped save my life and give me hope when I had my back against the wall, but my Dad is poisonous. He actually talks my Mum out of helping me. He probably thinks he's being a protector, a hero, but he's wrong. He's protecting nobody. My Mum will be hurt when I'm dead, and his son will be dead. My sister won't have a brother, and my niece won't have an uncle, and he won't accept any responsibility.

Yes, responsibility. Let's talk about responsibility.

On a daily basis, I'm responsible for my own life. I need to eat, sleep and not throw myself off a tall building. Yup, that's pretty much my entire existence at the moment. I'm trapped at the edge, and the route back to safety is blocked by my Dad, the 'protector' so I'm desperately trying to find another route back to safety, while my Dad is busily telling everybody not to help me.

I have no idea why somebody would step in and tell a caring person not to help a desperate person. I have no idea why a Dad would tell a Mum not to help their child. It's really upsetting. It's upsetting for me, and it's upsetting for my Mum, to have my Dad driving wedges in-between family members. Why can't we all just get along?

I'm not a defective toy, and you can't just return me to the store. I'm not broken, you just have to accept that I'm a human and I have my own identity, and I have identical needs to any other human. I need glucose, water, oxygen, salt, protein, fat, fibre and emotional sustenance. Cutting me off from my own mother by trying to poison her opinion of her own son, to compensate for your own shortcomings, that's patently disgusting.

I can have a lovely conversation with my Mum. Then, the next time we speak, her views will have been completely tainted by my Dad. I have no idea what his big problem is, but I suppose I should try harder to get to the bottom of it. It's no longer the case that I should assume that his 30+ years more on the planet means that he should be the more mature one.

Yes, I've always wanted to look up to my Dad. I've always wanted him to be a role model for me. I've always wanted him to lead by example.

My Dad doesn't really follow through though. He's a quitter. He's never had a career like I have. He's never achieved anything academically like I have. He's never been able to provide enough for his family. He's a real failure. A drunk and a drug addict, he's a bit of a loser, and I guess he feels pretty bad about himself.

Yes, he took his parents money and squandered it. His parents were wealthy and sent their kids to private school, and he messed up his chances of achieving anything of note. He mucked about with drugs and decided that was his priority in life... to take drugs. Even after the arrival of his son, he decided that the pursuit of drugs was still the most important thing in his life.

One of my best friends was a drug addict. When his son arrived, he cleaned up his act. He got himself a mortgage and a steady job. He quit drugs and smoking and keeps himself fit and healthy for his son. He's my role model. I look up to him. I admire what he's done. He's the gold standard that I aspire to emulate.

Men need father figures in their lives. They need masculine identity, which is about strength, leadership, trust, providing for loved ones, consistency, resourcefulness, reliability, dependability. You can't depend on a drug addict. The only thing they love is drugs.

My Dad actually destroyed his health with drugs, and had to go to hospital for a series of operations at around the time that my niece was born. I'm not sure whether fear of death or the arrival of a grandchild was the reason why he cleaned up his act, but he did finally quit drugs, in his sixties.

Nobody preaches louder than a convert, and I imagine that my Dad is very pious now that he's no longer abusing drugs. I don't drink or take drugs, but my Dad is pretty insufferable about many aspects of my lifestyle. He assumes that because I live in London I'm high on cocaine all the time. He assumes that because I have high earning potential, I spend it all on drugs. He's completely wrong.

Because he's a fuckup, he assumes I'm a fuckup too, but he's wrong. Because he's made mistakes in his life, he assumes I've made the same mistakes. Because he let people down, he assumes I'm going to let people down too. He applies his own guilt to me. He makes me carry the guilt for his wrongdoing.

I've got a brilliant title for a blog post lined up for December 26th, so I can't tell too much of my story at the moment without spoiling the surprise. There aren't actually any surprises. Everything is here, somewhere, but I'm going to spell things out for the world. It's extremely frustrating that I have to pace myself, to tell things little by little, but patience is a virtue.

I'm currently writing 2,000 words a day, and it's already swamping people. Hardly anybody is still engaged with my writing. It's gotten a bit unbalanced, and there are themes that are beginning to be a bit like a broken record. I'm actually dragging things out a little now, because I picked some milestones, and I'm making sure I don't give away enough to allow people to think that they can extrapolate and guess how the story ends.

I'll tell you how and when the story currently ends, according to my plan: I kill myself on New Year's Day, having told my tale but without the energy, support or resources to be able to continue living. It's exhausting being beaten for your 'sins' which are actually a result of taking abuse for somebody else's guilty conscience.

I'm going to tell you how somebody gets driven to extremism. Extreme risk taking. Extreme behaviour. Extreme moods. Death, which is at the other extremity from birth.

When a child is born, you write their future, based on the opportunities that you offer them. Choice is an illusion. Free will is an illusion. We can only play the cards that we are dealt.

Tags: #childhood #suicide #parents #depression

This is a story about being down and out on the streets of Camden Town...

Performing your greatest hits over and over again drives you insane. However, the public and society expect you to keep repeating what you do best, again and again and again, like a dancing bear or a dog trained to do tricks.

Whoever pays the piper calls the tune, but I'm not a CD player. If you want to listen to the same song over and over again, just press the repeat button on your iPod. Making an artist compromise on their creativity, in order to simply be a human machine, a robot, can destroy them.

The anxiety associated with knowing you have to do something that you've done so much that it's a complete paint by numbers, starts to become an unbearable burden on your ability to be able to function. Pretty much the only way to remain functioning is to drink yourself into such oblivion that you just don't care anymore.

Alcohol is a GABA agonist. What that means is that it suppresses a certain amount of your brain activity. It's effectively making you chilled out and dumb. Yes, if you're chilled out and dumb, you don't mind doing the same stupid shit over and over and over again. If you're intelligent and creative it destroys your soul, your desire to continue living.

Is it arrogant to say "fuck this" and stop doing what your talent and experience qualifies you to do, because it's destroying you? Should I just shut the hell up and "get a job" as I've been told to do by some ignorant twats? Well, it would literally kill me.

There are 2 ways I could die right at the moment. I could kill myself or I could drink myself to death. These are both sane responses to an insane world. I'm not a robot. Sorry about that.

My whole job is to automate human tasks. My whole job is to get mechanical robots, machines, to perform repetitive tasks instead of having human slaves or human robots doing them. We have reached a point with the development of technology, computing, software, where we don't need to do stupid repetitive shit anymore. Even creating software doesn't have to mean re-inventing the wheel anymore.

So, if you ask me to do something that's just plain wrong, I won't do it anymore. If you ask me to write code that's just going to go into the dustbin, I won't do it. I've stopped writing bugs. I've stopped supporting failures and idiots who don't have a software background. If you don't know your arse from your elbow, I won't show you the respect that you don't deserve.

If you want to know how to build software that can process $1.16 quadrillion ($1,160,000,000,000,000) per year, you can pay me for my professional opinion and I'll show you how it's done. That's the most money that's ever been processed by a banking software system, so that means I know what I'm talking about. If you don't want to listen, we can part company and I'll wish you the very best of luck.

1% of 1 quadrillion is 10 trillion. 1% of 10 trillion is 100 billion. 1% of 100 billion is 1 billion. 1% of 1 billion is 10 million. Any questions?

Ignore what people tell you. Money really does grow on trees, for those who can be bothered to climb. Yes, geese that lay golden eggs really do exist. You just have to climb the beanstalk and risk the wrath of an angry giant.

Magic beans are not a waste of money. They can help you to climb the beanstalk. They won't help you climb back down again though. What goes up must come down, but you might take a tumble. More on this in a future post entitled: Self Medication (Part Two).

You've heard about doping in sport. Why would you think that the athletes of the corporate world would be any different from those who compete in the Olympic Games? The pressure to perform at the very top of your game is just the same, if not greater. The competition is fierce, and anything that gives you a competitive edge is needed unless you want to be trampled underfoot by the thundering herd.

Did you ever wonder why London drinks so much coffee? Did you ever wonder why people are prepared to pay the best part of £3 or £4 for some bitter black sludge? Well, it's because of a plant alkali called Caffeine. Yes, that's a performance enhancing drug. It helps you to concentrate, and allows you to work with more energy, stamina, than would ordinarily be permitted by your body & mind. It increases your output potential.

Limitless? No, not limitless. There is a cost involved, and that cost is insomnia and anxiety. But don't worry about that, because there's always alcohol to take the edge off the anxiety and put you into an alcohol-induced coma that is a substitute for sleep.

You are never more than a few tens of metres from an outlet for caffeine or alcohol in London. They even have bars at bus stops. Well, they don't really, but me and my friends made one. It was very popular. It was the ultimate London pop-up.

What can I get you, sir? Would you like uppers or would you like downers? Uppers in the morning, and throughout the day. Downers after work and throughout the whole weekend. Uppers again on Monday morning to get you going again. Heaps of downers on a Friday to try and calm down from the working week, to 'rest' and recuperate. Oh yes, London is a very high performance place.

So if it's not limitless, what happens when you reach the limits? What happens when you're working on the number one projects for the number one companies, dealing with the biggest amounts of money that have ever been processed in the history of humanity? What happens when you have completely saturated yourself with alcohol and caffeine?

Well, you need crutches. You need a wheelchair. You need something to keep you rolling. You become somewhat disabled, but you need to keep moving, so you get wheeled around or you have to hobble along. Why do you think your office chair has wheels on it? It's because you're probably so f**ked that you can barely stand.

Yes, globalisation and corporate culture will f**k you up. You're only playing by the rules. You're only trying to compete and stay up with the herd, but it's f**king everybody up. Setting everybody up to compete with one another is causing people to be trampled to death.

Adversarial culture is wrecking lives. Us vs. Them and the zero sum game is in the spirit of competition, not co-operation. For somebody to win, somebody else has to lose. The system is designed to have losers as well as winners, and because there can only be one winner, that means everybody else is a loser.

Ultimately, somebody is going to win. Yes, that's right. One person is going to have it all, and everybody else will be dead and buried. An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind, apart from the one-eyed man, who is king of the world. Everybody else just starves to death. Great system!

But we're all in this together, right? There's safety in numbers, surely? Well, you shouldn't put the Lions in charge of the herd of Zebra. That's pure madness. The conflict of interest between the Lions and the Zebra means that the Lions are not best placed to be in charge of the herd, even if they are at the top of the food chain.

Being an apex predator does not mean that you are best qualified to judge what the greater good is. It means that you're incentivised to be selfish. You don't want to tumble from your position at the top of the pyramid. Being one of the struggling masses is shit beyond belief.

Counter-culture does not mean sitting around smoking dope. That's just totally dumb. You might as well just hurl yourself into the Lion's mouth. Making yourself slow and stupid is just about the dumbest possible thing you could do. It's playing into the hands of the oppressive ruling class.

You think this is a bit paranoid and conspiracy-theory-esque? Well, do you feel lucky, punk? 2.7 billion people live on less than $2 a day. Would you and your family like to join them? Would you like to get to the back of the queue? Would you like to swap your decadent western life for the life of somebody in the developing world? No, I didn't think so. You'd much rather prop up the adversarial system where you're lucky enough to be near the top of tottering tree.

Yes, luck is the decisive factor here, not skill or hard work. You don't think people in Asia and Africa work hard? You don't think people in the developing world are smart and resourceful? You're wrong. You're arrogant. You're deluded.

So, why do I reject the system that I profit from? Why do I prefer to live on the street in a cardboard box? Well, it actually pains me to know that I'm part of a system that's causing so much human misery. It's actually physically and mentally damaging to me to help to perpetrate deeds that cause death and destruction. I can't bury my head in the sand like you can.

I know you'll say or do anything to defend your family. More fool you though for not keeping your cock in your trousers. There are plenty of orphans who need parents. Why the f**k didn't you adopt? Are you literally the most selfish c**t in the whole wide world? Yes, the evidence would suggest that you are. You prop up the adversarial system and you create more mouths to feed in the decadent west and do nothing to give a hand up to the already starving mouths in the developing world.

There's no pride in having made a screaming, shitting, vomiting midget. Your body is evolved to do that. You had sex because you enjoyed having sex. You had a baby because your body is programmed to make babies. You did what snakes and scorpions do. You did what sharks and wasps do. You did what spiders and mosquitos do.

If I could give you one bit of advice, it would be to have a lobotomy. Ignorance is bliss. Being stupid is brilliant. Having higher brain functions is a curse. Being conscious and able to absorb information from the world and process it using rational thoughts is a f**king nightmare.

If you're wondering why I liked living with homeless people, it's because our footprint was much smaller. We lived small. We only consumed what we needed, and nothing more. We weren't making more arrogant ignorant greedy clones of ourselves to fill the void in our meaningless lives. We were just surviving and self-medicating for the agony of the f**ked up world.

We were very cheap, in terms of our economic, social and environmental impact. When a white middle class rich person goes haywire, they normally hurt the world a great deal. That's why it's such a great shame that the west is run by such criminal psychopaths. They'll drop bombs and starve people in order to remain quaffing champagne in their palaces. I include relatively modest homes when I say 'palaces'. Yes take a look around at your home and remember that $2 a day to keep a person alive for a year is probably the price of one of your many flat screen TVs.

So am I a hypocrite? Well, calling me one from your palatial surroundings makes you a hypocrite. You can't hypocritically accuse somebody of hypocrisy. That's ridiculous. Have you been homeless? Have you lived on less than $2 a day? No, I didn't think so. Shut the hell up and go and buy your kids an iPad.

So, what's going to happen to me? Well, my current thinking is that I'm going to finish my story and then take the final exit. I can't really see any more point in existing beyond telling this story, this cautionary tale. I'm literally wasting oxygen.

I loved being homeless in Camden Town. At least it was an honest existence. At least it was true to my values (September 2014)

Tags: #homeless #suicide #frank #capitalism #drugs #depression #alcohol #london #career #banking

This is a story about my cyclical nature...

When my tale is finally told, I hope you will understand why people enter a mood disorder cycle. It's not about broken brains. It's about abused children.

Does abuse have to mean being kiddy fiddled by your uncle? Does abuse have to mean being touched in private places? Does abuse have to mean sexual abuse? Well, everything links back to sex in some way, but the web of life is incomprehensibly complex, so I suggest you just listen for now.

I went to playgroup from the age of 3, went to school at the age of 4, and stayed in school until the age of 17. It was horrific. Every single year, my Dad did something to f**k up my chances of having any self esteem and avoiding relentless daily bullying.

Yes, I'm singling out my Dad, because he's a total cunt. My mum is loving, and has tried very hard to make her children feel loved, but she's got the shittest taste in men imaginable. My surname - Grant - comes from her ex-husband, who was a heroin addict. That's lovely. Instead of being Nick Newton - perhaps a descendent of a famous physicist - I'm Nick Grant, named after a heroin addict. Brilliant.

Keith - as I very clearly remember him telling me - does not want to be called "Dad"... "who's Dad?" he would say to me, when I was only about 3 years old and learning to talk. "I'm not Dad, I'm Keith" that's a lovely thing to say to the little boy you're looking after isn't it? That's definitely going to make them feel loved and secure. What a cunt.

I think the main problem is that my parents were never outnumbered, until my sister gave birth to my niece. The penny hadn't dropped until then, that my parents lives and disgusting lifestyle needed to change, because children had arrived. Keith was so lazy, that he sat around in a house that my Mum's Mum bought for them, drinking and smoking, and sending my Mum out to work full time in order to pay for his lifestyle. What a cunt.

Yes, my mum was the breadwinner, while my Dad was at home, telling me how resentful he was at having to rear a child. He thought he had solved the riddle of life the universe and everything, and got to take drugs, get drunk and have sex with my mum. Sadly, sex leads to children. Denying that you're a Dad isn't going to get you anywhere, except making little children very sad.

My Mum and my Granny were lovely, and I do have lots of happy memories of time spent with them. Sadly, if you're a full time working mother to pay for your lazy drug addict partner, you don't spend as much time with your child as they'd really like, especially if the main childcare is hungover or on a comedown, and saying "who's Dad?".

I wasn't really prepared for social interaction with other children. I didn't used to go on playdates or have friends over. My parents had their friends over instead. And they sat around taking Cocaine and doing jigsaws. Yes, drug taking and getting drunk were my parents passtimes, not doing things with their kid. By their own admission, they used to stick my carrycot on top of the jukebox when they were down at the pub. They definitely weren't going to let a little accident like a child get in the way of their big ambitions to be drunks and drug addicts.

What happens next is you go to school, and you don't have a frigging clue how to relate to other children. All you know is how to interact with adults who tell you to fuck off because they don't want you to interfere with their high, or they're cranky because they're hung over or on a comedown. You know how to speak relatively articulately, because you've been trying to make yourself heard and understood in an adult way - because all you know is fucked up adults - but you don't know the rules of the jungle.

If you're going to be a drunk and a drug addict, at least have a bunch of kids, so that they can play with each other when you're getting high and drunk. Being outnumbered might also make the penny drop a little earlier, that your life is now fucked, and you're going to have to make some lifestyle adjustments unless you want to fuck up innocent lives too. Is that too much to ask?

Playing on your own is no fun, and you're not learning how to socially interact with your peers. It's not normal, for the development of a child, to have no other children of similar age. Humans are social creatures. We weren't evolved to sit around getting drunk and taking drugs, which is why people's lives are destroyed by those things. We were evolved to be part of a clan or a tribe that was socially cohesive. Drugs and alcohol don't glue things together, they make things fall apart.

So when I went to playgroup and school, I really wasn't properly prepared for social interaction with other children. I remember whichever toy I picked up, somebody would indicate they wanted to play with it, and I would hand it over of course, because I could understand English and adult interactions very well. After a while it became very confusing. I didn't understand that the other children enjoyed taking toys away from me more than they enjoyed playing with them. They wanted to fight with me, to test boundaries, but I was used to the adult world of co-operation. I lost, they won, and I didn't understand why.

Yes, I 'played nice' from the very outset. I just couldn't understand why other children didn't. I expected them to be little adults like me. They'd call me names, and I'd say "why are you calling me that?" and get upset rather than calling them names back. I took things right in the feels, because I never learnt tit for tat. I never learnt retaliation. I was raised to be a liberal adult pacifist hippy, by spending all my time in the company of adults.

My Dad very much discouraged friendships. I wasn't allowed to be friends with Andrew, because he was a picky eater. I wasn't allowed to be friends with the little boy a couple of houses down the road, because he was too immature. Too immature? Are you totally fucked in the head? HE WAS A FUCKING CHILD, OF COURSE HE WAS IMMATURE.

Throughout my childhood, I was reprimanded for anything approaching childish behaviour. Yes, it's good to teach your kids good manners, but they really don't understand the subtle nuances of adult society, and things get very confusing indeed for them when you're abusing drugs and alcohol, because those things are forbidden to the child and you have surrounded these revered substances with mystery and lies.

Children are naturally inquisitive, and ask questions. When I asked my parents questions about their drugs, they lied to me, and they told me to lie to teachers and other children about their drug taking. Being the keeper of your parents secrets is very confusing as a child. It's not a responsibility that you should put on a child.

You think that photo's cool? Grow the fuck up. Drug dealers go to prison, and my Dad already had a criminal record for drug possession, so the courts were not going to go easy on him. The children of criminals often go into foster care. Being such a drug addict that you're prepared to go to prison and have your children taken into care is fucked up.

Am I building up a clear enough picture of what my parents life priorities were? Am I spelling it out in plain enough English for you to understand what the consequences of fucking with your child's life are? Am I laying out my case for where a big chunk of responsibility lies, where the proverbial buck stops?

Yes, I'm shaming my parents, but why the fuck shouldn't I. I had to guard their secrets and lies throughout my miserable childhood. Why so miserable? Well, you try being bullied every day for 12 or 13 years and see how you like it. You try having your friendships destroyed and self esteem taken away, by a total cunt of a Dad. You try dealing with selfish self-centred drunks and drug addicts instead of sisters, brothers and friends of a similar age.

I changed schools 6 times. That's 5 times more than is supposed to happen. You just can't disrupt a child's life that much without fucking up their life. Especially if you do extra stuff to fuck them up too.

Lots of kids have to wear glasses, but do all their own fathers bully them about it? How many Dads out there think it's a good idea to call your kid "4-eyes" and "brains" and take the piss and laugh at your son? Let's have a show of hands. Hands up if you think it's a good idea to bully your own children, in the same childish way that they're going to get bullied at school. Nope, wrong answer, Dad. Get to the back of the class, in the corner, wearing the dunce hat. See the headmaster after school. Very disappointed with your behaviour.

All kids get bullied to some extent, or at some time or other. When it's relentless, at home and at school, around the clock... yes, life is fucking shit. I can't express to you just how shit life is when you're being bullied. I used to look forward to getting sick. I used to be overjoyed when I was throwing up such vast quantities of projectile vomit that it was pretty clear that I wouldn't be able to be in school without getting chunks of half-digested carrot all over the classroom.

I used to cry and cry and cry, when I got well. I remember breaking down crying on my way to school, after a day or two off. I was so upset that my parents actually decided to let me have another day off, which I clearly remember with crystal clarity as one of the moments of my childhood where I felt pure relief flood my entire body. I felt a 100 tonne weight of anxiety be lifted from my entire body.

One thing that my Dad used to do, was to price everything in terms of bags of drugs, rather than pound notes or the abstract measure of child happiness. Yes, child happiness is hard to measure, especially using bags of drugs. Let me give you an example. At primary school, it was close enough to cycle there as a little boy. My Dad is very clever, and he figured out that girls bikes are cheaper than boys bikes, because lots of Dads want their little girls to be like little boys, and they buy them bikes that they never ride. This oversupply of girls bikes creates a great opportunity to save the price of a bag of drugs, for merely the immeasurable cost of childhood happiness.

Yes, my Dad has done that a few times. Don't give your kids enough pocket money to be able to buy a bike, because pocket money is the same money as should be used to buy bags of drugs. Instead, you can save the money and buy more bags of drugs by simply buying the cheaper girls bike, or stealing bikes. Yes, stealing bikes is the cheapest way to get a bike of all, and it leaves the most money for bags of drugs. Drugs come first. Childhood happiness can't even be measured on the all-important drug bag scale.

Do you know what happens when you send your kid to school riding a stolen girls bike? One of them even had a FUCKING BASKET ON IT FOR FUCK'S SAKE. What a cheapskate drug addict cunt. It's a reasonable presumption that mature adults might think it a little eccentric, or even consider it to be a conversation starter. For children IT'S THE END OF YOUR FUCKING LIFE. Do you think kids forget that kind of shit? The bullies at school certainly didn't FOR THE ENTIRE FUCKING TIME I WAS AT SCHOOL YOU CUNT.

If a trick's worth pulling, it's worth pulling a couple of times. Yes, my Dad managed to pull this stunt a few times and RUIN MY ENTIRE FUCKING CHILDHOOD.

It's a Catch 22. Without a bike you can't go and see your friends and get to school independently. But then the FUCKING CUNT hasn't even thought about how you need to get to school anyway. Did I tell you that the FUCKING CUNT bought a house at the top of a massive hill nowhere near any fucking busses, in the middle of fucking nowhere?

But it's OK, because I'm not upset about having had to go through living hell. It's not affected me at all. On the surface, everything seems absolutely cunting fine. I look, to the untrained eye, like I'm well adjusted, successful, happy and content in life. Cunt.

Hmmmm. Could edit this. Not going to.

There's the smug prick. I would only piss on him if he was on fire because he seems to be an OK granddad to my niece. What a piece of shit. He only finally sorted his fucking life out once and for all when my niece was born (photo circa 1995)

Tags: #parents #bullying #childhood #bipolar #depression #mentalhealth

This is a story about life support...

I was in a metaphorical coma for 4 years. I was virtually on life support for the first 2 years, and then I woke up to find my wife and parents trying to turn off the 'machines' that were keeping me alive. Shame on them. I gave up on life and spent the next 2 years at death's door, in and out of hospital.

The first 2 years, there was nothing anybody could do. Having suffered 6 years at the hands of somebody so unfaithful, cruel and abusive, my body & mind finally gave out on me. I cracked, collapsed, capitulated. The crash was inevitable. You just can't abuse somebody for so long and expect them to just suck it up.

Two years might sound like a long amount of time to 'care' for somebody, but if all you're doing is going on dating websites and taking holidays using my money then it's not all bad. I don't even care about the money. I'm open hearted. I pay it forwards. If you take and you don't give back, then I know that you pay a debt of guilt. I know that if you have a moral bone in your body, you know what the true balance of karma is.

Actually, not a lot of caring went on. During my first hospital admission, my ex-wife didn't even ask about visiting hours, the phone number to contact me or bother making any plans to come visit. The moment I was admitted to hospital, she jumped right on those websites and started arranging to meet people. What a c**t.

Oh, sorry... I'm not supposed to be bitter about stuff. Yes, I'm supposed to be the punchbag. I'm not supposed to have feelings. I'm supposed to be a pincushion. If you prick me, I'm not supposed to bleed. I'm supposed to be inhuman. But insofar as I can tell, I'm very much human. Sorry about that.

I suppose she's human too, although it's hard to imagine when she treated me so inhumanely. I suppose she was probably a sex addict or something. Definitely some psychological problems, but who am I to judge? I'm just the guy who was nearly killed by her narcissism and selfishness.

I wonder how you can move on like that. Destroying somebody, putting them in hospital, and then just immediately thinking about the next victim. I wonder what kind of callousness, lack of empathy, psychopathy, allows you to expend a human life and move on as if it was nothing.

I suppose if you've decided that you want another boyfriend or husband because you don't like the one you've got, the best thing to do is probably abuse them until they kill themself. It's a lot quicker and easier than just breaking up with them. I guess she had moved on, which is why she thought it was OK to go on dating websites while I was fighting for my life.

What difference does having a supportive partner make anyway? What difference does having supportive parents make? It can't be very much. The parents should just support the partner who's going to be bereaved and help to finish off the sick and weakened person. Yup the sick person is a lost cause, so it's a good idea to hurry death along a bit.

My parents initially refused to help at all. They refused to help either of us. Then they started abusing me too, but I can see that it was probably an ill-advised attempt at 'tough love'. Well guess what? I'd had my fill of tough love having my face smashed in by my partner.

Then my parents did what she wanted, which was to get me out of the way so she could go on dating websites as if she was single and had managed to buy a house on her pathetic salary. Yes, she quite liked the house that I paid for. She did let me have the deposit back when we divorced, but only because my solicitor fought for it. I just wanted my life. I told her to take as much as she wanted, and horrifyingly she wanted it all, including my life!

Perhaps this horrible treatment had something to do with prolonging the first terrible 2 years. I was a bit like a car running on 3 cylinders, spluttering and coughing, kangarooing down the road. There were opportunities for recovery. There were periods of improvement. However, the toxic atmosphere still persisted. You just can't recover when your partner wants you dead and your parents are co-operating with them.

I'm pretty canny. I know how to choose my battles wisely. I knew that it would drive me insane if I tried to battle the abusive shits head-on. You just can't win a battle where you're outnumbered and weakened. If you want to live, you need to curl up in a ball and protect your vital organs, and wait for the blows to stop being rained down on your head. You need to play dead.

So my ex-wife took her loot and ran for the hills, leaving me bruised and bloody in the gutter. I don't begrudge her taking her share. She paid into our joint finances, and took far more than that, but it's not her fault that she's so sick that she can't do the basic maths. She felt entitled, to damages perhaps? But it was me who was damaged. It was me who was left fighting for my life. It was me who was nearly dead.

I just wanted her out of my life after she said she'd rather I was dead and marked my suicide note in red pen, with loads of abuse all over it (she's a teacher, you see... so that's OK, right?). She was homocidal. I'm not saying she's a murderer (that I know about) but it's pretty worrying behaviour. Certainly a breach of the "in sickness and in health" marriage vows we made to each other. What a c**t.

Oh sorry, almost a bit of bitterness there. Except it's passing now. Now that I know that I'm free, and I'm alive, and I'm somewhat recovered from where I was 2 years ago, when we finally separated. It was a very close call. Apparently probate is a lot easier than divorce. That was her preference anyway, to be widowed rather than divorced. That's what she said to me. What a c... oh, hang on, I'm now starting to feel pity for her, rather than bitterness.

Yes, I'm wondering what could drive a person to have such careless disregard for a human life. It's rather worrying. She must have had some pretty horrible stuff happen to her as a kid. Yes, I really pity her. What a sad messed up person. What a shame. She is very smart and I found her very attractive, although a lot of people wouldn't fancy her. I was totally in love with her, even though she was very hard to love.

I really hope she learnt some stuff from our relationship. I know that I did. When a recent ex-girlfriend started throwing abuse and plates and knives at my head, I dumped her immediately. She was a feisty Italian lovable little thing, but there's no future for me with somebody who thinks that kind of abuse is acceptable. When another girlfriend started using abusive language towards me, I told her I didn't like it and asked her politely to stop, and she did. That seems more normal to me, more healthy.

I think alcohol and drugs can be dangerously disinhibiting. I don't think my Italian ex was drunk at the time but she was probably high on drugs or on a comedown. I have no idea. It's just an excuse anyway. Those things are not changing your character, they are just revealing what lurks beneath the surface. They are showing you what that person is really like, under the surface.

When you get drunk or you get high, you are testing yourself to the limits. You are effectively putting yourself into an extreme situation that would never occur in normal life, except during exceptional circumstances. You are switching the mode in your brain to a state that it would normally only enter because of a response to something very unusual.

By taking drink or drugs, you are going to trigger fight or flight responses in yourself. When I got very upset with my ex-wife, I used to get in a taxi, or drive to an airport. I'm a lover not a fighter, so it's the flight response, not the fight response, that gets triggered in me. I left our joint birthday party in 2006 because she was having a tantrum and saying she was having a horrible time.

I called the cab for both of us, but she was having such a horrible time that she wanted to stay, so that everybody could see how horrible it was for her, having a massive party. What was horrible for me was seeing the girl I loved very upset. I was trying to take her away from a situation that she was telling me was horrible for her.

Another time, she was having such a horrible time, sitting on a sofa with my friends, with me excluded for some reason. It was so horrible for her, having all these friends around her, caring about her. It must be so horrible to be loved by somebody who cares and wants to make you happy and protect you from horrible things. That must be horrible. I drove to Gatwick Airport, because I didn't know what to do. The flight response.

Yes, I fly, I don't fight. I can fight, but I won't. I will take flight. Fighting doesn't achieve anything. Flying gets you out of the situation of conflict and stops anybody from getting injured. It's the more evolved response to a stressful situation.

I flew us around the world many times. That was my solution. I paid for tens of thousands of pounds worth of flights, to keep her happy, to keep us happy. She was very hard work, and had very expensive tastes, but she was worth it and I don't regret it. I loved her to bits.

It kind of works, having 5 star holidays all over the globe. I remember her having an absolute meltdown every time something would go wrong with our travel arrangements, and I would just have to quietly move her a safe distance away, and then go and use a charm offensive to repair the damage caused by her sour face and tantrum, before negotiating what she wanted.

Holidays were very stressful. She wanted a camper van when we went to Hawaii. The poor people who ran the camper van company just wanted to have a relaxed Christmas break, and when their camper van broke down, there wasn't a mechanic on the island of Oahu who fancied fixing it during the holiday season. I had to bust my balls, and theirs, just to keep her from throwing her toys out of the pram. It was hard work.

That's just one example. Every holiday, she was very demanding, and I was her personal tourguide, smoothing things over with the locals. Yes, she was very organised, officious, but that's not the way the world works. Things go wrong, and things don't run like clockwork. I remember getting wound up when taxi drivers would stop in the middle of the road and talk to each other in remote windswept locations that hardly any Europeans ever visit, but then I realised that it's important to embrace local culture. It's important to go with the flow. I learnt some patience, some humility.

Yes, you can go to a place and splurge your cash and expect to be chauffeur driven around by a man-servant. However, when I asked her, she said she wanted the authentic experience. As her personal tour guide, I delivered what my client asked for, always. I think she really liked the local bus we caught in Egypt, packed full of farmyard animals and cargo, with the passengers who just wanted to discuss English Premier League football with us.

Travelling is hard work, and it's stressful, when you're the one who has to figure stuff out on the ground and actually deal with the language and cultural barriers. Getting stroppy and telling people that you're disappointed and "it's not good enough" really doesn't get you anywhere. Tact and diplomacy are the order of the day.

I hope my exes enjoyed their holidays. I really poured my heart & soul into making sure they had a lovely lovely time.

13,796ft high, at the summit of Mauna Kea. Trip of a lifetime. Was she grateful? The fact she wanted me dead would suggest not (December 2012)

Tags: #divorce #suicide #depression #mentalhealth #bipolar #frankie

This is a story about three amigos...

You need some fire in your belly if you're going to achieve great things. The three handsome gentlemen above have all bucked the trend and excelled at what they do, in their own unique ways.

It's not my place to share other people's stories, but we all had events in our lives that have had an influence on the passions we have pursued. You never know what somebody else has been through, so it's always the best policy to be non-judgemental.

I'm not saying that we had it harder than anybody else. It's not a pissing contest. It's not a competition. And this isn't going to be a tear-jerking tale of woe is me. In fact, I'm not even going to tell you anything more than what I have already stated: behind every driven ambitious person, there is usually an unseen reason.

So, have we got chips on our shoulders? No, we have each others arms on our shoulders. We stand in solidarity, brotherhood. We are positive can-do people who act with energy and enthusiasm, not negativity and bitterness. If we have a reason to put more effort into things, to try harder than Average Joe, then it's because we are channelling our feelings in positive ways.

My friends aren't always immune from gossip, rumour and prejudice. However, they have been good enough to reserve judgement of my character. Yes, I have been pleasantly surprised that my friends have been good enough to listen to my story, now that I'm becoming well enough to tell it.

Writing somebody off, writing off a life, declaring somebody a 'lost cause' is never good. It's a death sentence. You never know just how close somebody is to the edge of the abyss.

Something happened yesterday that really struck a chord. Somebody was pushed in front of a tube train, at Kentish Town station, where I used to live, until very recently. I would travel every day from that very station platform. That's what is happening in our society. People don't jump, they're pushed.

Nobody chooses to jump off a building or in front of a train. Nobody chooses to slash their wrists or eat poison. Nobody chooses to suffocate themself or slit their own throat. Nobody chooses to blow their brains out or electrocute themself. Nobody chooses to hang themself or overdose.

Yes, it's more obvious when you can physically see somebody else pushing the person to their death, but it also happens in unseen ways too.

Every ignorant comment, every bit of gossip you pass on, every time you pass judgement and assume that you even have the faintest idea of what's going on beneath the surface of a person's life, you are slowly killing that person. You are driving them inwards, you are isolating them, you are killing them.

Yes, talking about somebody behind their back might feel like helping. Wringing your hands and saying to each other "what can we do?" while you exchange your guesswork, your ignorant speculation... it's not getting to the heart of the problem. It might be making things worse, by making that person feel alone and not understood.

It's hard, I know, trying to help somebody who has stopped communicating, clammed up. But I have no words that can possibly express the difficulty of trying to communicate with a far greater number of people who are talking to each other about you. The numbers just don't stack up. There's only one of me, so there's no way I can keep everybody informed, especially when I'm very sick.

Please don't think this is a criticism of my friends. The fact that they have reserved some judgement and they're slowly coming back into my life is spurring me on in recovery. You have to have hope and optimism to fight back from the brink of suicide, and you need friends. You need to feel like there's some chance of escaping depressed isolation, which is a death-spiral downwards.

People might think I'm pedantic. I am, but only on things that matter. If I correct you on the difference between mania and hypomania, it's because it's an important distinction that allows me to maintain hope of having some kind of quality of life. If I point out the research that shows better long term outcomes for unmedicated patients, in my situation, then it's important to know that I've had many discussions with many doctors and you telling me to follow doctors orders is not helpful, because you have no idea which doctor you're talking about.

Oh snap it sounds like I'm ticking people off. I'm really not. I just want friends in my life, not amateur psychologists, amateur psychiatrists, amateur doctors. It's really sweet of you if you've done any reading about Unipolar Depression, Type II Bipolar and other issues affecting my life, but it's really not necessary. I've done all the reading and the best possible thing would be to just judge my character and trust me... I'm working on the illness thing.

The thing that I'd like to reassure people about is, insofar as me and the docs can tell, the illness is acute not chronic. That means there's a chance I can get better if I'm given a window of opportunity.

Looking backwards to move forwards is 'wrong' apparently, but I tend to ignore the advice of anybody who hasn't been to hell and back. I've tried doing things the way that ignorant people have suggested, and I can tell you first hand that your oversimplified version of reality doesn't work.

There are no short cuts and you have to use stepping stones. Sometimes the path might double back on itself, but as long as it's the right path, you have to keep following it. I went up a cul-de-sac and I could have raged and stormed and sulked and generally allowed myself to be trapped in a dead end - indeed many people wanted to trap me in the dead end - but in the end I had to just ignore all the haters, travel back down the one-way street from the dead end and find the correct path.

Everybody boos and jeers you when you have taken a wrong turn. Nobody congratulates you on having figured out you have made a mistake, and pats you on the back for being strong enough to retrace your steps, rather than just kill yourself. Nobody says, hey, you've had to travel twice as far as everybody else, let me give you a hand. Nope, people will expect you to work three times as hard, because you made a mistake. You already have to work twice as hard, but that's not good enough for people. They want to put the boot in and make you work three times as hard, because having to work twice as hard is not enough punishment as it is.

Yes, it's easy to end up hating the world, because the world is looking to scapegoat you. The world is looking for easy answers. The world is looking for convenient members of society to isolate and blame. Adults are not really very grown up. Adults have never really left the playground, where they liked to pick on children who were different. Bullying is rife in society.

When somebody gets weak, they're such an easy target. And the best part of all is that they get weaker and weaker until they die. Yup, it's great fun being an adult bully, because you get to kill people and then deny all knowledge, because you're smart now. You can cover your arse with plausible deniability. You can point the finger at all kinds of things that were symptoms of that victim's distress.

If it looks like I'm stuck in the past, it's because I've waited 10 years for the opportunity to be able to move on from a fateful mistake. It's a messy story, and it's not like I can point to a single error, but there was a significant life priority change in 2005 that threw my world into chaos.

I left London to live by the beach, but that wasn't a mistake necessarily. However, it put me in a precarious position. New town, new friends. I was rebuilding my life fairly quickly, but things were still fragile. Plus my circle of friends were all starting to leave London anyway. Lots of people came to visit. It could have worked.

I played for the title. I took a shot at the top. I tried to have it all. I thought I had found the girl of my dreams and I had it all. Turns out, I wasn't as mature as I thought I was. I made the mistake that nearly every adult must surely make at least once or twice. I picked the wrong girl.

Because I was in a fragile place, I had one or two attempts at correcting my mistake. I tried to break up with her, when I could see that my quality of life was being destroyed. It was my mistake. It was my lack of strength. It was my neediness and insecurity, being relatively young and inexperienced and in a strange new town and in a new job... I couldn't just walk away so easily. I don't blame her for not letting me go. It was my fault for getting trapped.

If you love them, let them go. I loved her. She didn't love me. You live, you learn. My parents taught me to never give up on a relationship, so I didn't. I kept going. I don't give up on things. It's not in my nature to give up on things. I'm the guy who fixes things. I'm the guy who makes things work.

Yes, I've read Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus and I know that women aren't after a Mr Fix-it, but it's more romantic than that. I'm a soppy loved-up kind caring sort of guy who just wants to make things work, patch things up, move forward together. I'm a diplomat, I'm a pacifist, I'm a lover not a fighter.

Did I deserve to have my face beaten to a pulp for the way I felt? Did I deserve to be driven to the brink of suicide? There has to be some shared responsibility somewhere, but I'm over it now. I know that I'll never get an apology. I know that she'll always think she was justified for battering both sides of my face when I turned the other cheek. I didn't lift a finger in self defence or retaliation, because I'm an open hearted person.

Three strikes though. Three strikes and you're out. Nobody has hit me in my adult life except for my ex-wife. Probably because they can see that there is anger just waiting to be unleashed if you mistreat me. Yes, it's really not advisable to hit me. You can try, and you might get away with it a couple of times, but I really wouldn't advise you to test the three strike rule. You might get a knuckle sandwich.

Why would you hit somebody who is kind and caring and open hearted anyway? What's it going to achieve? I'm a lover not a fighter. Just be nice and kind and caring and then we'll get along just fine. If you abuse me, my response is going to be predictable. Yes, abuse has predictable results. Bullying has predictable results.

My Dad raised me as a pacifist. I was raised to ignore bullying. I was raised to not rat people out. I was raised not to complain about abuse. I'm very good at calming myself down. I'm very good at absorbing blow after blow that is rained down on my head. I'm like a giant abuse sponge. I soak up all that abuse.

However, there is a saturation point. When the abuse sponge has become completely soaked with your rage and agression that you have taken out on me, you'd better be a little worried. When the punching bag can't take any more, you'd better not take another cheap shot.

I can tell you a lot about de-escalating situations. I can tell you a lot about anger management. I can tell you a lot about dissipating negative feelings. I can tell you a lot about de-fusing a ticking time bomb. Blaming me - the abuse victim - is not a successful strategy for helping somebody to get over their mistreatment.

Am I hamming myself up too much as this big victim? Am I too self pitying? Poor me, poor me, pour me another drink? Well, people have to find a way to cope somehow. Presently, that's this blog for me.

Yes, you can follow my progress right here, as I work through a bunch of stuff, in public. I'm not holding back. I'm staying true to my values of honesty and openness. I'm baring my soul as I'm working through this stuff. It's weird that I'm still carrying this stuff around, right? But where's it supposed to have gone? How do you get rid of all the crap you've taken, all the abuse you've absorbed? How do you dump it?

People have got a zillion and one techniques, suggestions. I've got a suggestion for you. Fuck off unless you want to be my friend. I need friends not therapists, carers.

I want friends. I need friends. I miss friends.

Before everything went to hell in a hand-cart (April 2005)

Tags: #friends #divorce #mentalhealth #bipolar #suicide #depression

This is a story about home...

I always wanted to live at the water's edge. Now I do. If you're not living on the edge, you're taking up too much room.

Getting myself off the streets and into a flat was kind of the straw that broke the camel's back though. It wasn't even my idea. Working 12 to 14 hours a day 7 days a week was not really possible while homeless, but equally I don't need such a great place to live. I have been living to work, so all I really need is a bed, somewhere I can prepare food and a shower.

When an aeroplane cabin loses pressure, oxygen masks will automatically be deployed. If you have ever listened to the safety briefing that the cabin crew give, you will know that you should put on your own mask before helping others. I haven't really applied that advice in day to day living.

I did a Hack-a-John where I spent a couple of weeks training a friend who is an idle gambling addict, to be able to get a job. I then got him an interview at the biggest bank in Europe, for a position on the #1 project. He messed it up. The reputational damage that I personally sustained kinda sealed my fate on that particular contract. I was a marked man for doing something so audacious. John, however, doesn't seem to see things in the wider context, and has gone back to sitting on a couch, gambling. That's ingratitude for you. I can lead a horse to water but I can't make it drink.

I then went to a Hackathon to try and help with the refugee crisis. There I met an extremely capable and lovely guy called Klaus. I wanted to get involved helping refugees. I ended up helping Klaus - the tidy Kiwi - who urgently needed a place to stay. He now sleeps on my couch, enjoying the above views.

Life in London is pretty hard. You might think that I sit around swilling champagne and eating in expensive restaurants, taking taxis and wringing my hands as I read The Guardian but in actual fact I'm far too busy trying not to die.

My life is minimal beyond belief. All the clothes that I own in the world are in my floordrobe (the pink and grey boxes on the floor) plus I have a single suit, single overcoat and a single pair of dress shoes. I do also own 10 smart work shirts - 5 at the dry cleaners and 5 ready to be worn for the working week... which doesn't quite work when you are in the office 7 days a week.

For years, I've been trying to tell my friend Posh Will that investment banking hours are unsustainable and not productive. However, I had to do yet another horrible banking project in order to try and save my own life. I needed the overtime to get myself off the streets and into a home.

Bizarrely, I kind of regret it. I was surviving quite well as a homeless person. I think I was given about a 30% chance of surviving one particularly bad hospital admission, but I pulled through. Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Life is much easier when you're just concentrating on staying alive, rather than worrying about any dependents.

I'm not really sure how I ended up with dependents. Why did my friend John end up relying on me - the suicidal homeless guy with mental health issues - to get him a job? Why does my friend Klaus get to go to the gym, and yoga and spend all his time talking to his friends & family, when I'm the one paying for the roof over his head?

Yes, I really need to learn to look after #1... and I don't mean the #1 project in the biggest bank in Europe. I need to learn that it's important to put on the oxygen mask before helping others.

So I'm really at the end of my tether. I'm at my wits end. I've got nothing left to give. However, if I'm going to be a better leader, there's no sense in getting angry with the people who I have carried - they were just smarter about being selfish, looking after themselves at the expense of others. That's the way to win the rat race.

London and our adversarial culture really does encourage us to trample on each other. I think absolutely nothing of clattering into some thoughtless person who would rather that I stepped into the road, into the path of a bus or a truck, in order to get out of their way. I really don't bother with good manners if somebody is standing on the left hand side of the escalator, or decides to stop and have a chat with their companions in a really inconsiderate location.

We have run out of patience and we don't have time for asshats in London. This sprawling metropolis is already creaking and groaning at the seams, and Londoners really don't have time for gawping tourists who left their own sense of good manners at home. Perhaps I should come to where you live and just stand in the road causing a traffic jam because I want to admire something interesting without having to think whether it's appropriate in the wider context.

I would say that London is not dehumanising, as many people believe. It's actually the complete opposite. It's overwhelmingly humanising. You see all of humanity's very worst traits in evidence. You see people starving on the street while people pay £6 for a coffee and croissant, barely a few metres away. You see people shouting and fighting, but you pretend that you didn't, and you just scurry down a dark hole, underground, to go and be forced to invade each other's personal space in the interests of getting home a little quicker.

The calm serenity of living by the Thames is really unsettling for me. It feels like I have left London. I can feel my body, my soul, mourning the loss of humanity. It's really fake here in Canary Wharf. There are no beggars, no homeless people. This rich enclave has excluded the undesirable members of society from the private estate.

It might look enviable, and perhaps you are even enraged that I have become depressed in my current situation, but I'm not going to lie to you. I was happier living with homeless people and at the moment I feel like I'd rather go back to living on the streets. I just can't handle the pressure of those who think I'm a hypocrite, and those who want to ride my back.

I don't feel very true to myself at the moment, true to my values. I always believed that when you have surplus, you should give it away, but it's never enough for some people. I'd rather just be responsible for myself again. My life felt much less in danger when I wasn't carrying any ungrateful fools and dealing with jealousy and accusations of hypocrisy.

If I'm going to continue my journey with authenticity, and without hypocrisy, I may have to give up the material distractions that other people struggle to see beyond. People probably see my home as a status symbol, rather than simply a place that I can eat, sleep and wash.

"Been there, done that" is what many travellers do, when they're racking up pins on the globe or any other kind of stamp collecting. People can be very boastful about the experiences they have racked up. They have cultivated an entire personality, their whole self-esteem system around their travel tales and photographs. Perhaps I'm the same, but it's literally life and death for me, rather than simply a means of impressing dinner party guests.

I love cooking and I love hosting friends. I used to throw huge garden parties for loads of people. I used to thrive on it. Has it really helped me today? No, not really. Everybody else just moved on with their lives, and a single guy who's still living like a bachelor I don't really fit into the rhythm of my old friends lives now they have wives and kids. Lots of my friends left London to get sprogged up.

Work is the curse of the drinking classes, and London seems to be so much about drinking. Drink all your wages, and spend whatever you have left on meals out and foreign holidays. I don't really do that. I haven't been drinking for 62 days and I haven't had a holiday since October last year. Even my meals out have a business purpose. What you see is not what you get with me... my brain is always in work mode. Even my flat is basically a co-working space.

The line is being blurred between work & life to the point where I literally never stop working, even to the point that my dreams are filled with work stuff. I'm a total workaholic, but what else am I supposed to be living for? You tell me if I can afford to take my foot of the accelerator. I don't think I can... the world is too highly leveraged. We haven't made allowances for people who need to stop and catch their breath.

So I desperately need to go to Ireland again. I desperately need to decompress. I desperately need to get away from the relentless pressure to provide for everybody, to prop them up and help them keep their dreams alive. I need some time out for me.

Not sure if I'm going to get that time, because I need to make hay while the sun shines. There is work available, and my bank balance could sure do with a boost to make sure that Klaus has a couch to sleep on while he's doing his gym and yoga and stuff.

One day I'd like to do yoga. Maybe when I'm dead.

That is all.

I need to go back to Ireland and be a culchie for a little bit, as I'm not getting to be much of a culture vulture in London (February 2015)

Tags: #london #career #ireland #homeless #mentalhealth #depression #suicide #friends

This is a story about my best friend...

The first 10 years of my life were pretty lonely. Then along came my best friend in the whole world.

Naturally, my parents were harshly critical of me for not being some male nanny, perfect parent type figure. I was, strangely, more of a brother to my sister. That was a disappointment to them. They thought that having more children meant more free time to get drunk and take drugs.

Anyway, let's ignore my parents. They were very much of the Victorian mindset that children should be not seen and not heard. Maybe it would have been better if children were not born, but I'm very glad that my sister was. Having a sister is the reason why I'm clinging onto life with my fingernails.

Having a 10 year age gap is a bit strange, but I think it's kinda got advantages. My parents can't be bothered to imagine how hard it is being a young person today, and they get a particularly warped view because I was always very independent and a high-earner from the age of 17. Sadly, the opportunities for the majority of young people are rather bleak.

Yes, the challenges faced by me and my sister in day to day life are really chalk and cheese. While I battle with my mental health, in order to be able to work, my sister also has to battle a highly competitive job market and low pay. While I have to ensure that I earn enough during my hypomania in order to survive during my depression, my sister has to stretch her budget beyond any feasible limit.

Yes, our parents generation really screwed things up, and life is very hard for my sister. I went through a horrible divorce that nearly killed me, but that was due to a single vicious and mean person who had not a care in the world for human life, and couldn't act with a single shred of decency. My sister not only has to deal with a horrible divorce, but her rent & bills as a proportion of her income are totally unmanageable. That's not her fault. She works 6 days a week.

So, tomorrow, during the Chancellor's Autumn Statement, tax credits and other benefits are going to be cut. People like my sister are going to be horribly affected, and there's no way she could possibly work any harder to fix her own finances. She rents a very modest property for her & my niece, she works 6 days a week, she's very dedicated to her job, there are no better paid jobs... she is being shafted by politicians and society.

As a working mum, who did nothing wrong and is doing everything right, why should she have even more financial woe and stress heaped on top of her? She's working her arse off but she is being destroyed through exhaustion and stress, by a government that just doesn't care about the wellbeing of its citizens.

The net result is pretty much what the Tories want. My parents will have to work for longer and have less money in retirement, in order to support their daughter and granddaughter, despite the fact that they've worked hard all their life and their daughter is already working 6 days a week. That's bullshit.

Our family has not racked up huge debts buying crap. Our family has saved money and bought property and done all the things we were supposed to do. We've played by the rules of society, and my parents and sister have ended up diddled by the system. They paid in, with their income tax and their national insurance and their council tax... they're not acting like they're entitled.

My parents just want to have their pension. My sister just wants to work. My niece just wants to be a toddler. It's outrageous that my parents' pension goes to pay my sister's bills. My sister's 6-day-a-week job is not enough to pay for her bills. My niece hardly gets to see my sister because she's working so hard. Is that the kind of society you want, Tories?

Throughout Britain we see examples of how people are being asked to fend for themselves. While the richest members of society contribute a pittance of their net wealth, so many are having to dip into their life savings, their pensions, just to survive. I actually phoned JPMorgan's pension scheme administrator to ask if I could have any money released for hospital treatment I desperately needed, when Camden council bungled my case yet again.

I've managed to limp through and get myself to the point where I have survived an ordeal that would have killed most people. However, I had to borrow money to do that. Why am I borrowing money to pay for lifesaving treatment, when I have paid staggering sums in tax and National Insurance? It's all been pissed away on tax breaks for the wealthy.

Why should the National Health Service be facing a funding crisis, because we wanted to line the pockets of the super-rich? Why should state schools suffer? Why should our brightest children be cutting short their eduction and looking for crap jobs because we wanted to make the rich richer?

We are asking each generation to work a lot harder than the last. Our grandparents lived through a war, so they knew about austerity. They knew about make do & mend. Unfortunately, too few of those people are in positions of authority now. Their kids - my parents generation - think that life is easy, because they lived through the post-war boom. They are wrong. Life is hard.

So, take a note of the date and remember that today was the day that the government went too far. They cut too deep and they hurt people who were already hurting. They scapegoated the wrong people.

Anger will rise up. It will start with the young people who have been frozen out of the job market, who are marginalised and demonised by the media. It will spread to the hard working mums who are struggling to balance the books already, struggling to stretch their budgets. Then it will hit the grannies who are providing free childcare and cash handouts from their pensions in order to keep their kids and grandkids afloat.

There will be a groundswell of public opinion against being told how to live our lives with more frugality from some vintage wine swilling toffs who like nothing more than to admire each other's art collections, and ponce around the country telling the great unwashed masses to stop complaining. Let them eat cake, right?

Things are a lot worse than you can see from within the echo-chamber. Get your head out of the statistics. Get your arse out of your Tory party circle of friends. You're out of touch with reality and it will come and bite your ass.

The problems in society are being masked and things will come crashing down quicker than you can say "Poll Tax Riots".

That is all.

Tags: #politics #childhood #parents #civildisobedience

This is a story about chronic fatigue...

Smart bosses have figured out that happy employees are more productive. If you don't have the right culture in your organisation, you will make people very sick. You will be burning people out in order to achieve your unrealistic targets.

Forward thinking organisations are letting people have dogs at work. They are promoting more flexible working arrangements. They are seeing their employees as people and not just numbers in a spreadsheet.

I wrote an IT Roadmap for a company which had just been spun off by its parent company, and sold. I took one look around the little company, and I knew immediately that they had got the culture spot on. I wrote my roadmap with this culture as the guiding principle.

I urged the new CEO of the spin-off company to preserve the culture, in order to maintain the high productivity and excellent morale of the staff. I tried my best to pursuade him of the benefits of investing in technology that would support the staff, that would preserve the brilliant working environment. He ignored my advice.

I quit that job, because my opinion wasn't valued. You can't pay me enough to rubberstamp the wrong decisions. If you're looking for a "yes" man, a sycophant, then you've got the wrong guy.

So, after I left, the culture was destroyed, money was burnt on stupid vanity projects, all the good people left. The profits dropped 90% and naturally, the CEO was fired. I take no pride, only sadness, in saying "I told you so".

But one cool thing happened. At a conference a little over a year later, the CEO of the parent company presented my ideas. They had implemented them. Ideas are worthless, and the implementation must have been very hard - although I had done a proof of concept with my team - so I can take no credit. But it was so nice to be vindicated that I had to pinch myself to see if I was dreaming.

I've been bumping along like this for quite a few years now. The problem is, that I'm exhausted. I've got enough energy to do the job, but not enough energy to endure the idiots. I tend to get the important stuff done, and then I have to bow out and allow the sacking of the egotistical dead wood to happen.

Fundamentally, I burnt out in 2008, working on JPMorgan's #1 project. Instead of going off work sick, I decided that I needed to change jobs and as soon as I did the wall of exhaustion that I had been holding back hit me like a steamroller.

I was so flattened by it, that my doctors thought I might have AIDS. We tried every test under the sun, but fundamentally, I now believe that I was simply overworked. I had worked hard and played hard for far too long. My body & brain just couldn't cope anymore.

I was a bit of 'swan'... looked very serene and calm on the surface, but my legs were going like crazy beneath the surface of the water. During some 'time out' I remember playing golf, trying to putt with my phone jammed to my ear while I attempted to resolve some issue a team member was having.

I am so passionate about my work that I tend to dream about it. I even have 'eureka' moments sometimes and wake up and start writing code or an email. There is no switching off when I'm in the 'on' position.

My commute to the office (September 2007)

It's not very healthy, but my parents, school, partners, lazy friends, bosses, society and the surrounding culture has driven me to this unsustainable level. People say 'take it easy, slow down' but as soon as I do back off the gas, they soon start complaining. People get used to a certain level of contribution. They start taking you for granted.

What am I living for, if it's not for work? Nothing is ever good enough for my parents. I haven't had a nice caring kind girlfriend for far too long. I haven't got any kids. What's the point of life if it's not to make some kind of epic contribution?

It's not about heroics, and I really don't expect anybody to get the violins out and say "ooh, poor you". It's literally that work fills an otherwise empty void in my existence. Without work to dedicate myself to, do I really exist? My day to experiences would suggest not.

Yes, I know that work is a dangerous addiction that is damaging my health, but it's the only place that I ever hear "well done" or "thank you". My parents and ex-girlfriend/ex-wife would never sink so low as to actually show me any respect. It's expensive, apparently, to show somebody some appreciation.

During seemingly interminable periods of fatigue, depression, you can obviously reflect and see that you are repeating the same vicious cycle. It doesn't mean that you can beat it though. Nobody stops the world so that you can get off the rollercoaster.

So, everybody will be very relieved when I'm 'recovered' from a crash, but the fact of the matter is that recovery actually only starts when the exhaustion and depression have passed. All that time in bed is not recovery... it's staying alive. It's surviving, not thriving.

Yes, I'm surviving, but I'm not thriving. Nobody will let me get that far. When I have an opportunity to thrive, everybody says "Oh, you're fine now. We don't need to help you, we can go back to taking from you" not that I really receive help anyway.

My friend Klaus brought me a bag of stuff in hospital. That was one of the kindest things that anybody has ever done for me in a couple of years. Does that mean I owe him a favour? Well, he was already living rent free on my couch so I guess we can call it quits!

I do keep a very careful eye on my karma balance. I have paid it forward big time, and I always want to run a net karma surplus. If you do your accounting with some surpluses, with contingency, then you don't have to sweat the small stuff.

There are some people who feel hard done by at my hands. My friend John who thought it was OK to use me for free rent, spending money and as a personal life coach to help him over his gambling addiction and general idleness, for example. When life became unmanageable, I chucked him off my back to save myself. Am I supposed to be sorry about that? Why was I carrying him in the first place?

I don't really understand why I attract klingons. I guess it's because I'm a kind and generous person who gives off an aura of success and I make what I do look quite easy, so other people think there's not much effort required to achieve the same things. That's the thing about being good at what you do. You make it look easy.

I certainly have suffered from the "I could do your job" mistake. When CxOs and managers have been fired because they didn't listen to my expert advice, I certainly wouldn't want to take their place. I'm not trying to steal anybody's job. When I was younger, for sure I thought I could do my manager's job, and do it better. The fact that I have proved it, does not actually mean anything... I hated doing those managerial jobs!

Yes, management really is not for me. Somebody else can have the pressure and stress and responsibility. I think it's a vocation, not a job title. I think it's a demotion not a promotion. Those who can, do. Those who can't, must depend on others to do for them, and must be more organised themselves to compensate for the fact that they can't both be both organised and productive.

So, I'm exhausted by having to design, build, lead, argue with idiots who don't know what they're talking about and make dead wood losers look good.

I'm laid low with depression, fatigue.

Sorry about that, klingons.

That is all.

Frankie loves being tucked up warm in bed. We all do during winter. Fatigue and depression are much more serious. I'm suicidal and I can barely get out of bed (November 2007)

Tags: #career #banking #depression #suicide #mentalhealth #frankie

This is a story about determination to succeed...

When I finish this blog post, I will have written 50,000 words in two months. My aim is to write 300,000 words this year. I'm on target, but just hitting 100,000 words will be hard... that's the length of a novel.

So, I'm re-centring myself for the next push ahead. I know that I have rambled and lost my way, and confused myself about why I even started writing this. However, I have continued putting one foot in front of the other, in the hope that I will reach some unseen summit at some point in future.

Why do people climb mountains? "Because they're there" is the usual response you will get from a mountaineer. For me, I like the view and I like knowing that at the very moment I reach the top of the peak, I'm amongst a group of people who are similarly blessed or cursed with the desire to put themselves through great hardship and work very hard to achieve some abstract goal. Very few people in the world will be enjoying such great views at that moment in time, as a reward for their efforts.

Sometimes work is its own reward, and I certainly feel a bit of premature pride, knowing that I have produced half a novel already. Ok, so it wouldn't be a very good novel, but if I can write 3, then with some aggressive editing, there might be something readable there.

Even if I throw away everything I've written and start again, after a year, at least I will know that I have the stamina and discipline to sit and write every day. I will have some ideas about what kinds of things I'd like to write about, some themes. I can then structure and guide my writing, to produce something that is more coherent.

Ok, so writing about oneself is conceited, and nobody cares who I am because I'm not some Z-list celebrity who's famous for being an idiot on a reality TV show or whatever it is. I don't actually care who reads this now. In a lot of ways this is an insurance policy.

I wrote before about how I had written my own obituary. When I read it back, it was barely a few bullet points. I often think of that Nina Simone song that goes:

Well I'm just a soul whose intentions are good; Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood

I'm actually crying as I write those words, because it feels as if I have now re-centred on why I am writing all this stuff. I'm not afraid of death, but I'm very upset about the idea of being buried as some kind of black sheep. A convenient dumping ground for other people's guilty conscience.

I've been fighting to be heard and understood my whole life and unfortunately, when you are sick and tired and exhausted, the bullies and the abusers find it very easy to drown you out. Yes, the weaker you get, the easier you are to quietly brush under the carpet.

The problem with character assassination, is that if the person still lives and breathes, they can still call you out on your preferred version of history. They can still raise their voice and say "Hey! I'm not dead yet! You didn't finish me off, despite your best efforts to bury me!". That's inconvenient, embarrassing.

I want to do something called hedging. I'm not sure if I'm going to live or die young, so I want to have some kind of life insurance policy that is more than monetary. I want to make sure that I leave some kind of useful legacy beyond cold hard cash.

So, I want to speak out on the topic of bullying, and the abuse of men. I want to speak out on the topic of depression and suicide. I want to end the stigma of being a little boy who cries at sad films. I want to end the acceptance of bullying as a "fact of life" and instead get the world to recognise it as abuse, plain and simple. I want to raise awareness of depression as a sane response to an insane world, and deal with the root causes of it: loneliness, isolation, stress, pressure, abuse, bullying, war and every other kind of human suffering.

Does this all sound ridiculous? Yes, it's rather silly, eh? Of course I'm not going to make a blind bit of difference to the world. It's set in its ways and there are problems everywhere we look. One wide-eyed, naïve, over-optimistic, non-celebrity, non-rich, non-famous 36 year old man who came from nowhere and is going nowhere... what could he do?... nothing!

I don't actually give a damn. I know how to do a few things reasonably well, so I'm just going to do them to the very best of my ability. I'm going to use all my wits and cunning and hustling abilities, combined with my lack of fear, and my strong feelings of empathy towards humanity, and just put myself out into the world and push hard.

I'm going to do what I do when I climb any mountain. I'm just going to keep putting one foot in front of the other, and not think about the summit. I'm just going to keep grinding and grinding the trail. I'm just going to keep gaining altitude little by little, knowing that if I keep going up and up, I will eventually reach the summit.

I've always been a natural climber. I can't help climbing. I just want to get high, naturally or unnaturally. Actually, just being alive is unnatural. Well, highly improbable anyway.

The universe doesn't like tall buildings, peaks. It doesn't like things to fight the forces of nature. The highest mountains in the world - The Himalayas - are also some of the youngest. The Universe has a property called entropy which can describe the tendency of things that are structured and ordered to decay and be ruined.

Entropy is busily trying to tear down Mount Everest. Meanwhile, mountaineers are taking on the entire Universe and sticking two fingers up at it, by climbing 8,848m, while it still remains so high... in millions of years time it will be nothing more than a pile of broken limestone fragments.

If you think I overestimate my position in the Universe, you're wrong. I've considered everything in context, from our best estimates of when "time" began, to just how "large" the known universe is (those things are in quotes, because space and time are actually much more complicated than we experience in our day to day life on Earth).

I'm well versed enough in General and Special Relativity to know that most questions about our place in the Universe are more unfathomable than any mind could possibly comprehend. Time and space are such elastic and supermassive things, that it's just laughable to even talk about one tiny speck of an organism being less or more important than another one.

If anybody says that I should shut up because I'm not very important or interesting, they should perhaps consider that in the context of the estimated 13.82 billion years that the Universe has had a concept of time. Assuming that person has an above average lifespan of 100 years, that'd be 100 years in 13,820,000,000, which makes their lifespan equal to 0.0000007% of that time... they're hardly important enough to make such a pronouncement, surely?

Yes, you really are a drop in the ocean:

The oceans of the world are estimated to weigh 1,300,000,000,000,000,000,000kg. You perhaps weigh 100kg... that means you are not even as much of a "big deal" as a raindrop in a swimming pool.

So, when you start talking about which human life is more or less valuable than another, you should get a grip of yourself. You need to have a reality check. Not reality TV. You need to get your textbooks out and actually look at your significance in the Universe. Then you might start realising just how arrogant and stupid you are, if you think you are a superior being.

Things start with good science, and from base principles, not with egos and guesswork. Certainly not with a cult of celebrity and hero-worship. Remember that Einstein was a patent clerk who was not very good at maths. All men are created equal.

Think big.

Halfway up Mont Blanc on my 18th birthday, enjoying a snack above the clouds (August 1998)

Tags: #climbing #suicide #bullying #depression #physics

This is a story about psychoactive substances...

Here's an example of the kind of run-of the-mill parties I used to throw for all my friends. I once spent £700 on sparkling wine during one particularly lavish garden party. I think I was a bit of a 'lush'.

Drinking culture is sometimes celebrated. Certainly throughout the City, we thought it pretty normal to be slightly sloshed at our desks after lunch quite often. After work was carnage. A copious amount of alcohol was consumed by all involved.

I worked for HSBC for a little over 4 years, and JPMorgan for a further 3 and a bit, before my body really needed a break. At my leaving do I was downing shots at 4am with an alcoholic who later needed a liver transplant. The consumption was unchecked and rampaged out of control.

So, I've not been drinking for 52 days and I don't go to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, so I can't be an alcoholic, can I? The definition of somebody who is an addict or an alcoholic is somebody who can't stop taking a substance, despite the detrimental effects on their life. Seeing as I don't drink or take drugs, I can't be an alcoholic or an addict. Quod erat demonstrandum.

In fact, I'm not somebody you normally meet. I don't drink tea, coffee or other caffeinated beverages, such as Coca-Cola and Red Bull. I don't smoke. I don't drink. I don't take any medication. I don't take any legal or illegal drugs. That makes me a real oddity.

People like to say "I can quit anytime I want" and are particularly adept at avoiding their most obvious addiction... caffeine. I've written about it before, but it's worth reminding people... you're probably addicted to caffeine but in denial. You need to give it up for over 3 days to really experience withdrawal, because you have reached steady blood-plasma concentration which means that it will take that long before you start feeling the withdrawal and cravings.

So, basically, don't lecture me on addiction until you reach the level of clean living that I have achieved. I'm not lecturing you. I'm just giving you the facts and telling you why I won't listen to a hypocritical word you say until you prove your 'willpower' to me.

On the topic of mood stability: I self-medicated successfully for years using caffeine to fight depression & somnolence, especially during winter. I used alcohol to calm my anxiety and racing thoughts, and treat my insomnia. I had a high-powered job and successful career throughout, so it's hardly like anybody can argue that I was not extremely adept at self-medicating.

Except that one day, my body decided it had enough. I was struck with extreme fatigue and depression that was completely debilitating. If you say "oh just get out of bed and stop complaining" after somebody has worked as many hours as I have done, don't be surprised if you get punched in the face.

It's not a competition. Except that it is. There's an arms race in the City. Who can stay later than their boss to try and impress and get that big bonus. And then when everyone has stayed later than the boss, the game is to stay later than each other. How late can you send an email to the boss, basically saying "just leaving the office now [you should know that I won the prize of working hardest]".

Sadly, that's pretty much how the bonuses and promotions get decided... who's worked the longest hours and raised awareness of just how hard they've been working, louder than anybody else. If you want to get to the top of the pyramid scheme you have to clamber over the other clawing bodies in the pit with you.

Getting ahead in your career is also dependent on how well you handle your ale. Yes, there is a lot of machismo in drinking culture. Going home and not going out drinking can damage your career. You need to be seen to be seen. You have to wait until everybody is so drunk that nobody remembers you leaving, before you slope off home.

So, between strong coffee and lots of beer & wine, that pretty much fuelled the first 11 years of my career. It certainly worked, in terms of pay & promotions, but it cost me a lot in terms of health. Not obvious health, like having to have a liver transplant luckily, but more subtle than that. My body & brain are just not very good at managing without stimulants and depressants to manage my mood... I've been drinking heavily with workmates since the age of 17.

So, if you think I'm less of a person for struggling with my moods and you are looking for an obvious thing to point the finger at, you are going to be disappointed if you want to point at drink & drugs, because I'm abstinent from both.

You might also want to consider your own relationship with alcohol and caffeine before you brand any labels on anybody. You would be surprised to learn about your own 'addictive personality'.

There's actually no such thing as an addictive personality. We are all programmed to like food, sex, gambling. Our brains are all affected by plant alkalis and alcohol and other substances that will cross the blood-brain barrier. You're no different from me.

That is all.

Cheers! (July 2009)

Tags: #addiction #drugs #mentalhealth #career