This is a story about slavery...

Do you have to run just to stand still? Does it seem like no matter how hard you try, you just can't get ahead? Why is it that the only time you're going to get to enjoy any leisure time, is when you're sick and old?

Even if I owned my own home outright, I would still need to pay council tax, gas, water, electric and sewerage. Even if I grew all the vegetables I needed and never left my plot of land, I would still need to raise a significant sum of money every single month.

Let's assume that I had solar panels, wind turbines and I heated my own water using firewood from my own trees. Let's assume I got water from my own well, and I operated my own miniature sewerage plant, so I could release my processed effluent back into the water table, without breaking environmental protection laws. I would still have to pay council tax.

I don't object to council tax. Council tax pays for the police, who will protect my self-sustaining home from being burgled. Council tax pays for the fire service, who will come and douse my house with water, in the event that it should catch alight.

If I never leave the house, I grow everything I eat and compost everything I waste, then I have no use for dustbin collection, and I have no use for street lighting or roads. I have no use for car parks. I have no use for regular parks and recreation grounds.

Furthermore, I have no use for schools or libraries. I certainly have no use for councillors, council officers and other civil servants.

Let's assume I surround my land with a 15-foot electrified fence, topped with razor wire. Let's assume that I install a sprinkler system, and have my own high-pressure hoses and firefighting training. I would still have no exemption from paying council tax. Paying council tax is my civic duty, because of the air that I breathe in a particular county.

This isn't a rant about how "taxation is theft". I'm just pointing out that there's no such thing as a free man in the United Kingdom. Somebody will always want something from you, even if you're minding your own business, being totally self-sufficient and working in harmony with nature and the land.

Very few people would be able to buy a sufficiently large plot of land to be able to grow enough trees to give them a lifetime's supply of firewood. Also, you're going to need somewhere to grow all those vegetables you're going to eat. You're probably going to need greenhouses and polytunnels to grow more frost-sensitive fruit & veg.

There's capital expenditure necessary to buy a wind turbine and a lifetime of spares for any repairs. Solar panels don't come cheap, and they have a finite lifespan. You're going to need a shittonne of batteries, so that you can store energy for when it's not windy or sunny.

You're going to need a well insulated house with a wood-fired boiler to heat hot water as well as to keep you warm in winter. Your home is going to have to be super energy efficient, because you don't have much electricity, so you'll use LED lighting and cook on a wood-fired stove. You won't be able to use a washing machine, dishwasher, tumble dryer, electric oven, microwave, electric hob, hairdryer, electric heater or other electricity consuming units.

Then, to keep your smallholding running, you're going to need tons of tools and machinery. Doing it all on your own means you'll want a petrol-powered rotivator, strimmer, lawnmower and a bunch of chainsaws to chop up all that firewood. You'll need lots of gardening equipment to make sure you're growing enough food to keep yourself nourished the whole time. You'll need lots of building equipment, to make sure you keep your house repaired and maintained.

If you don't have a well on your plot of land, you're going to have to dig a borehole and install a pump. Building a sewerage processing plant is no small investment of time, labour and materials, and probably not something you would do yourself, although you would be responsible for ongoing maintenance: a lovely job.

Remember, you're also going to need a lifetime's supply of petrol, engine oil and other consumables such as soap, toothpaste, spare lightbulbs etc.

So, after all this, your miniature self-sustaining estate has probably set you back the best part of £1 million, and you still have to work full-time to tend to your fruit and vegetables, and maintain all the equipment that generates power, pumps water, pumps sewage etc. etc.

Worst of all, you're going to have to sell some of the fruit & veg that you produce to pay your council tax, so really, you're not very free at all.

You may end up busting your balls in all weather, just so some council bureaucrat can take paid sick days and generally not work very hard at all.

Through economies of scale, farmers can harvest the crop in huge fields in a single day, when previously it would have taken men and women all summer to do it with sickles and scythes. Something as basic as a masonry nail is incredibly hard for a blacksmith to make, but in factories, vast quantities of goods like nails can be produced much more cheaply, in terms of labour effort.

"The good life" and nostalgia for a time of peasantry is nothing more than stupidity. Only a tiny handful of people blessed with inherited wealth can be idle in the countryside, doing the occasional spot of gardening, and otherwise spending their trust fund income in Waitrose and charging around the countryside in a gas-guzzling Range Rover.

Thus, I don't believe in communism, with its emblem of the sickle and hammer. Growing your own vegetables, or making ornate ironwork is a nice hobby, but we don't want to return to the era of blacksmithing and working in the fields. The combine harvester is a thing of great progress, as is the ability to mass-produce metal goods in factories.

The communes that sprang up in California in the 1960s and 1970s all failed, because they were set up by lazy bums who just wanted to sit around smoking dope. When they ran out of money, they found that they had been subsidising their stupid middle-class fantasies all along. Eventually power struggles tore the little hippy communities apart, but they were doomed to failure from the start.

In climates where the need for heating is less pronounced and the crop yields can be much higher, there are already population problems. For sure, you can go and buy a plantation in the developing world relatively cheaply, but aren't you then headed down the colonial path? When you employ local labour to till the fields, because it's too hot to do it yourself, you've then economically enslaved your workforce.

The division of labour is a hard problem to solve, but there is also dignity in labour, if you're doing something that you feel is productive and useful. Perhaps the high sickness rates in local government are due to the fact that their staff know that all they're doing is pushing paper around their desks and looking busy. It doesn't feel morally right, to tithe the estates of the hard-working men and women who are working the land, only to spend it on fancy offices, coffee machines and watercoolers.

Eventually, I decide that we must move to a model of state-owned enterprise for everything that's in the public interest: transport, education, healthcare. But where do you stop? What about housing, food and clothing?

Clearly the technocrats of the Soviet Union completely failed in their attempts at central planning, but can we be sure that there's less wasteful use of resources in private enterprise? My experiences certainly don't bear this out. Every company I've ever worked for has been full of idle incompetent fucktards. That's not supposed to happen in capitalism. Capitalism is supposed to lead to efficiency.

If we look at the vast amounts of food and energy that are wasted by the United States and Britain, we can be certain that capitalism is a failed model for the efficient use of labour and scarce resources, and the fair distribution of wealth. Capitalism has failed every single test, including its ability to weed out the 'bad apples'. One only has to look at the 2008 financial crisis to see that the idea of market efficiency has been replaced by monstrous monopolies: enterprises that are too big to fail, but are bleeding our economy dry.

The banks need to be nationalised. The railways need to be re-nationalised. No more council houses can be sold off. Any private parts of the National Health Service need to be re-nationalised, and a huge cull of middle-management dead wood needs to happen. Executive pay needs to be capped, and those who wish to work in public services should be proud to be performing their civic duty for their fellow citizens.

Of course, wealth will flee offshore. Investors will panic. Let them.

The assets are here. The workforce is here. We don't need the paper money created by the plutocrats. We can rebase our currency back to a sensible gold standard, forgive all loans and start over. Clean slate.

One only has to study the German economic miracle to see that these reforms can work, do work, and will transform a country into one of happiness and productivity.

The strategy of trying to print money to get out of economic trouble, and enforce bad policy with a police state and martial law, is always doomed to failure. We are at the tipping point. Things could boil over at any moment.

So, the Western world finds itself at a crossroads: to continue with the folly, down a path that has always led to ruin for past civilisations, or to learn from the lessons of history, and take the alternative route.

Tags: #politics #economics #capitalism

This is a story about warfare...

What you're looking at is a 3D printed gun. The gun can only be fired once, but it only takes one bullet to kill another human being. I could decide that my life is more important than yours, and murder you.

We often forget that decisive weapons are the reason we sit in idle luxury, while another half of the world don't have enough to eat or clean drinking water. We have essentially already built the walls that protect the wealth that we have plundered. The world has been divided into 'haves' and 'have-nots'. Lucky you for being born into the group of 'haves'.

Try to remember that: what you have is down to pure blind luck, not divine right, not the glory of your ancestors, not hard work and not personal sacrifice.

Anybody who glorifies war is an idiot.

Wars are not won.

There are no winners in war. There is no such thing as 'victory'. The only thing that comes close to a 'victory' of sorts, is when both sides willingly lay down their weapons and stop fighting. The only heroes are those who bravely disobey orders, and those who resist the urge to kill, maim, torture, rape, pillage and otherwise exercise dominion over their fellow humans.

There are painfully obvious psychological tricks that are being used by power-hungry megalomaniacs, who are intoxicated - drunk - with a kind of nostalgia for national glory, victory on the battlefield, defeat of an 'evil invader'.

As an animal, I wish for people who share little of my genetic material, to perish so that more of my genes will be propagated. My 'selfish' genes quite literally code for murderous intent towards people who don't look like me.

Race is an obvious way to divide into tribes of genetic similarity. White Europeans, and all those black-skinned Africans. White Europeans, and all those bearded Arabs. White Europeans and those dusky-toned Indians. White Europeans, and all those slanty-eyed Asians. White Europeans and those plains-dwelling Red Indians. White Europeans and those rainforest-dwelling tribespeople.

Now, because we're living in a post-slavery, post-apartheid, post-colonial, post-imperial age - supposedly - we are now indoctrinated into the belief that we have a national identity. We salute flags. We stand for national anthems. We dress up in uniform. Our heads of state are rammed down our throat around the clock: their faces are on every coin, every banknote, every postage stamp. Our schools teach no history except "victory" against some imagined enemy. Our media tell no story, except how badly the human rights are violated in countries that do not follow the doctrine of 'democracy' and capitalism.

"I'm not a racist, but Britain is full" say the racists. "We're just a small island and our infrastructure can't cope" say the racists. "I'm not a racist. I just want to protect the British way of life" say the racists.

What do you think would happen if a migrant ate fish & chips or a roast dinner? Do you think a migrant couldn't be kept warm and dry in a thatched cottage? Do you think that a migrant couldn't enjoy a game of cricket? Do you think migrants can't drink cups of tea, or eat a scone with cream and jam on it?

All the things that you think of as British are actually just things that can be enjoyed by any human being. We all have the same needs. Just how British are you, anyway?

I don't even know who my biological grandparents on my mum's side were. For all I know, I might be genetically descended from immigrants. In fact, the Brits are a mongrel race anyway: Romans, Vikings, Normans, Saxons, Celts.

So, borders, flags, passports, nationalities... these are just bullshit made-up things.

"Defence" is a synonym for "guarding the wealth that we have plundered". If you are guarding your wealth, you are refusing to share. As Ghandi said:

"The world has enough for everyone's need, but not enough for anyone's greed"

The panic over the migrant crisis is easy to explain: the ruling elites didn't share enough of their wealth domestically. Even though a "poor" person in the UK is not poor by global standards, they still feel very poor indeed. Asking the poor to share, when they're already hard-pressed and feeling insecure, is not fair and it doesn't seem possible. We already have a housing crisis, a pensions crisis, a financial crisis. We already have problems with underemployment, unemployment and feel like our wages barely stretch to meet our cost of living.

Ostensibly though, there is a racism problem.

Having well-educated French, German, Italian and Spanish people coming to the UK to make your coffee and wait your tables, was not a problem for you, because it was white faces with cute accents.

However, seeing groups of young Arab men does trigger a whole host of fears that have been created by jingoistic faux-nostalgic nationalistic scaremongers, who want you to buy their right-wing newspapers, or vote for their right-wing political party.

The whole "war on terror" has done a remarkably efficient job of convincing people that their 'way of life' is under attack. People who are fleeing persecution, or migrating for economic reasons, are seen as a comparable enemy to Nazi Germany, with the same kind of "we will fight them on the beaches" kind of nationalistic bullshit being peddled.

In actual fact, what is happening is that the inequality is simply too great, in a world that's hyperconnected by the Internet. I mean, damn, if you lived in a mud hut with a straw roof, and you saw an episode of MTV's Cribs, wouldn't you be convinced that every man in the West lives like a prince in a palace?

Whose way of life are you actually defending, anyway?

Do you live in a palace? Do you have a basement full of gold bullion and vintage wine? Do you have priceless artworks hanging on your walls? Do you have supercars? Do you have superyachts? Do you have private jets?

No, of course you don't.

You're being used you fucking dumbasses. You're being told that your way of life is under threat, but really you're just being used as a human shield to allow the plutocrats to defend the vast wealth that they could never even spend in a million lifetimes.

There's a choice: you can arm yourself to the teeth, and try to hold onto the vast riches that are far more than you need, or you can move to a model of equality; sharing. If we have a culture of sharing and equality, then there isn't going to be a horde of migrants at the gates clamouring for a few bones from the dinner table, a few crumbs from the cake.

The UK's highest paid CEO is paid 2,500 times more than the average salary.

It's a pyramid scheme, and the ordinary people of the UK are upset about having to share the crumbs, because the crumbs are all we get at the bottom of the pyramid. What we're saying, when we say "Britain is full" is that we can't share any of our crumbs from the cake, because all we have to eat are a few crumbs anyway.

It's easy to point at how wealthy Britain appears to be in global terms, but an average salary is not the same as a typical salary. In a normal distribution, most people would earn the average salary. However, most people earn less than the average salary. The average is skewed by the high earners. The reality is that even an average salary can't afford to pay for an average price house, but a typical salary can't buy a house and barely meets the cost of living.

Looking at the typical example is a lot more important than looking at the average.

It's because the typical person is experiencing very real hardship, that we have arrived at the point of multiple crises hitting all at once: the day has finally come where the plutocrats will have to convince us to fight to defend their wealth, because the world's poor are becoming more informed via the Internet, and are quite rightly demanding that they have a more fair share of the common wealth, that we are all equally entitled to.

So, don't get all sentimental and caught up in the propaganda: the flag-waving and the talk of 'heroes' and attempts to stoke up nostalgia for wartime. War is awful. War is unnecessary.

The fight we need to have is with the plutocrats, to smash open their bank vaults and share out their wealth.

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Period.

Tags: #politics #capitalism

This is a story about conformity...

Why would you ever consent to being graded? Isn't that extremely degrading to have somebody sit in judgement over you and decide where you fit in the pecking order?

We don't have an education system. We are not educating our children.

Instead, we have a system that's designed to give us the best grades we can possibly afford, so that we will have better employment opportunities. Schools are businesses, and they need pupils to get funding, so they can pay all those lovely salaries. Teachers are judged on their students' exam results. Schools are chosen based on their exam results. Universities will offer places to those students with the best exam grades, but universities are money making machines, taking at least £27,000 for an undergraduate degree, from every student. Finally, employers will select prospective employees who have the best grades.

Imagine you gave up your childhood and a few of the prime years of your young adulthood, in order to get "A" grades and a first class degree from a top university. You worked your little socks off from the age of 5 to the age of 21. That's 16 years of hard labour. It wasn't an education. It was an exercise in grading. Your teachers didn't teach you. Instead, you were trained how to pass exams. The whole balance of incentives is such that only the grades matter. You just want the piece of paper at the end of it, so you don't have to take a shitty minimum wage zero hours contract McJob.

So, what happens when you graduate, take a graduate job, and then find what you're doing is utterly pointless bullshit?

What happens when those 16 lost years of your life mean that you're saddled with debt and working some drastically underpaid job that won't even buy you a house anyway?

In the US, every man woman and child has a debt of $60,000, even if they don't even have a bank account and never personally borrowed any money. In the UK the figure is circa £30,000. This is money the government borrowed on your behalf. Even if you're financially prudent, and you don't spend money until you've earned it, that's certainly not what your government is doing.

In order to stand a chance of getting a half decent job, you reckon you need to go to college/university. In the US the average student loan debt is $35,000. In the UK you have to spend £27,000 on tuition alone, for a 3 year degree course. Of course, the UK figure doesn't include the money you need to live on. You can borrow a further £32,000 in order to pay your rent, food, transport and other costs of living at university. Basically, you're going to spunk the best part of £60,000 getting your degree.

So, you've spent 16 years of your life, having no life - your nose has been stuck in those books and you've been doing all your homework - and you're £90,000 in debt. Imagine you met the love of your life at university, you both graduated and you'd like to have a couple of kids. That means your household is going to be £240,000 in debt, before you even take out a mortgage. That's £60,000 of government debt for your two kids, £60,000 of government debt for you and your other half, and £120,000 for your two university degrees. God damn! You'd better get a job and start paying that debt off, because you haven't worked a day in your life at this point, even though you're now 22 years old.

Because you worked so damn hard to pass your 11+ exam, your grammar school entrance exam, or private school entrance exam, your GCSEs, your A-levels, your university entrance exam, your final year exams, your dissertation... you're pretty heavily invested now, aren't you? You gave up playing outside in the sunshine with your friends so you could do extra Latin and calculus. You gave up swigging cider in the park and shagging in a bush, so that you could be at home poring over your books. You gave up being debt free, so you could now have a £60,000 student loan like a millstone around your neck.

Guess what? Even having a good degree from a good university isn't enough. You probably need to become a lawyer or an accountant to set yourself apart from the McJob fodder. Lawyers in the US run up student debts in excess of $100,000. Here in the UK, you're going to have to pay an extra 2 years of tuition and living expenses, before you can even get a job in a law firm. You're going to pay the the law school £21,000 in tuition fees, plus you'll need another £20,000 for rent and living expenses, while you study. So, your student debt is now £100,000 before you even enter one of the professions.

Even a graduate with first-class honours from Oxford or Cambridge is not a professional. Having read classics does not seem immediately useful, given the lack of living people who speak Latin or Ancient Greek. While you have clearly marked yourself out as 'clever' in a rather abstract sense, you're not obviously employable because of your education. It is merely your grades that make you attractive to prospective employers.

Is it even very clever, to spend so much of your parents money on a private or public school education, squander your childhood on homework and piano recitals, saddle yourself with the best part of £100k of student debt, and then have the prospect of doing legal or accountancy work to help billionaires avoid paying tax.

The more you invest the more exposed you are. You're not going to take some lowly entry-level job, because you've got a goddam degree dontcha know? You're not going to question how absolutely dreadful the work is that you're doing, and how appalling the salary is, because it's a graduate job apparently. The job spec said "must have 2:1 degree from respected institution" so therefore it must be a good job, right?

Yeah, at least you're not flipping burgers for a living.

But, can you buy a house?

Nope.

You were conned. You studied hard for 16 long years. You stressed yourself to bits over every exam. Writing your dissertation was pure agony. You were so worried that you were going to fail. You could have failed at any moment. You could have failed to get into a good secondary school. You could have screwed up your GCSEs. You could have screwed up your A-levels. You could have screwed up your finals. You could have screwed up your dissertation.

You were so damn relieved on graduation day. Sure, it felt good to have your picture taken holding a scroll of parchment tied up with a red ribbon, wearing a black gown and a mortar board. Your mum has that picture of you up on the wall in the downstairs toilet. Every houseguest sees that photo of you, a fresh-faced 21 year old graduate, proudly clutching the bit of paper you worked hard for 16 years to get. They imagine that you must be terribly clever but little do they know that you're now working some dreadful office job, copying and pasting numbers in spreadsheets, like some kind of factory worker.

Maybe you were a bit smarter and you realised that everybody's got a damn degree these days. Perhaps you did a masters, a PGCE, went to law school, studied accountancy. Now you have a profession. You're a teacher, a lawyer, an accountant.

You studied the extra years. You did the training. You took the shitty entry-level salary. Now you're a qualified professional. You're a member of The Law Society, you're a chartered accountant, you've got Qualified Teacher Status (QTS). Guess what? You still can't buy a fucking house.

My suggestion is this: if your parents have money, don't fucking work your bollocks off and study hard. Get your parents to buy you a house and give you some money. You don't need to work. The world does not need any more corporate lawyers.

If you don't come from a wealthy family, for God's sake don't waste the prime years of your life following the same path as all the other drones. There's no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. School, university, graduate jobs... it's all just a miserable path that leads to debt and misplaced gratitude for a 'better' quality job, which is actually nothing of the sort.

I'm financially incentivised to stay doing what I'm doing, because I can buy a house and afford to have my family live in considerable comfort. My earning potential is a function of how able I am to say "fuck your shit" and go and get a better contract elsewhere, because I'm not driven by fear: fear that I have invested 16+ years of my life in a pointless piece of paper; fear that I have £60k to £100k of student debt that needs to be paid back; fear that I've been measured, graded, and that I know my place.

I don't know my place, because I never allowed myself to be graded. If somebody is turning me into a commodity, then I change my role. I'm very hard to pigeon hole. I'm very hard to label. I'll brand myself up as whatever I need to be in order to get the job, instead of harking back to my most recent academic or professional qualification. I have no qualms at saying "this bullshit job just ain't worth the pittance you pay" because I don't have this fetish for "graduate" or "professional" work.

In some narrow niche, you'll find that there's somebody who wants it worse than you. You'll find that somebody is prepared to study harder, longer, put more effort in. If you enter into the arms race, you'll find yourself competing in a completely unnecessary battle for something that's been created with artificial scarcity. Grades are not a precious rare metal dug out of the ground. There's a finite amount of gold on the planet, but there is no shortage of "A" grades or bullshit jobs.

The professional bodies are there to limit the numbers of people becoming lawyers, accountants, doctors, teachers and a whole host of other jobs that are better paid than flipping burgers. The only reason why those professions pay more than minimum wage is because artificial scarcity is created, by limiting the number of people who can qualify and practice those trades.

I never let my schooling interfere with my education. I taught myself how to program a computer, with the help of a couple of schoolfriends. I don't advise becoming a programmer today, because it's a crowded market, but there'll be something better that your kids can be doing instead of their damn homework. There's something you can be doing better than saving up money to help get your kids through university: buy them a damn car and a house, because they're never going to be able to afford things on their own, with the way things are going.

The education system was there to break our will and our sense of individuality, and prepare us for the workhouses. The education system is used for societal control. Your government wants obedient debt-laden citizens, who are grateful for a shitty made-up job. The plutocrats who rule your life want cheap labour, even though you think you've got a prestigious well-paid job. In actual fact, you know your place, and you have no social mobility at all.

We're moving beyond the era of the CV with your exam grades and other qualifications on there. The idea of sifting and sorting everybody, like grains of sand, ending up with the very finest particles graded right up to the grittier stuff... this is a flawed model.

Take your average super indebted grad today. Could they rewire a house? Could they fix the plumbing? Can they cook a fine meal? Could they organise an event? Can they lead people? Can they mend a car? Can they dress a wound? What are they like on a mountain? What are they like out at sea? What are they like in a crisis?

We're churning out people who are only good for one thing: regurgitating established facts and ideas. Parroting answers they've learned but don't understand. Passing exams.

Our kids these days don't pass exams because they've reasoned the answers from their knowledge and experience. Our kids these days don't make theoretical deductions. We have an exam passing machine that teaches our children how to pass tests, as opposed to educating them.

Everything's going to hell in a handcart because original ideas and critical thinking have no place in our education system or the world of bullshit jobs. We spend at least 16 years brainwashing our 'best and brightest' to be exam passers, box tickers, compliant little drones who all think and act the same way. The homogeny of bland corporate wage-slaves, churned out by the cookie-cutter 'education' system is frightening.

When sufficient numbers of people realise that they've been conned into giving away their youth, in return for a soul-destroying desk job that's mind-numbingly boring, but yet they can't buy a house, there's going to be rioting that far exceeds the disruption we saw in 2011, when it was the disadvantaged youths who took to the streets to protest their lack of opportunities and general contempt that is held for the underclass.

Debt will not prop things up forever. Without a wirtschaftswunder - debt forgiveness - the capitalists will destroy everything by demanding their pound of flesh. Empires always fall when debts are not forgiven and the proletariat are crushed by the weight of the idle elites who live in decadent luxury, while ordinary people struggle.

Teach your kids practical things. Let them play. Don't make them do their homework. Don't force them to practice an instrument "because it will look good on their university application". A new world is coming, and moulding kids in the shape of every other underpaid, underemployed corporate drone is not going to do them any favours.

Tags: #childhood #education #capitalism #politics

This is a story about escape velocity...

A happy healthy life is a fairly simple prescription. It's not hard to look for slightly happier people and imitate their magic formula.

In essence, what I have distilled things down to is this:

• Home - so you can be warm and dry and your stuff isn't stolen
• Job - so you can pay your rent/mortgage, bills and buy food & clothes (yes, clothes wear out)
• Family - not blood relatives, but anybody who loves and cares about you
• Friends - social media doesn't count; you have to see friends face to face
• Disposible income - get deeper and deeper into debt and you'll lose your home
• Goal or passion - this can be work, this can be your kids, this can be a hobby; you need something.
• Girlfriend/boyfriend - everybody's gotta get laid, and it's important to have intimacy and companionship

At the moment I have 3 out of 7. Assuming that you need 50% or more to be OK, it's no wonder that I'm depressed as hell and have a lot of suicidal thoughts.

Yes, I have friends who I see less than once a week, so I do have friends. Yes, my sister and I do occasionally exchange text messages, even though we haven't seen each other for the best part of a year. Yes, my goal has been to get myself into a position of financial security, and I've been making great progress, but it's not really my goal... it's just a necessity because of needing to not be homeless and destitute.

So, all I really have is a home, a job, and I'm making more money than I'm spending, which is digging me out of debt.

I love my friends dearly, and it does help that people are in contact via social media, email, text message. I have the offer of speaking to a few friends on the telephone, which I'm grateful for. I also make the effort to travel as much as I feel able to, in order to see people face to face, and I'm glad when I do it, even though it's expensive, exhausting and time consuming to zoom all over the country, if not the world.

I just don't have a group of buddies you know? People to go to the pub with. People to go out for a meal with. People to play frisbee with in the park. I'm lacking a social group.

I'm also lacking that significant other. Somebody to just hang out with. Have sex with. Make food with. Watch movies with. Play games with. Go sightseeing with.

I've stitched together a patchwork quilt of whatever I can get, in order to just about cling to life with my fingernails, but it's inadequate. That's not to say I'm not ungrateful for those occasional invites to hang out and do stuff. It's just not enough. I thrive on face to face social contact, and I'm not getting enough.

To further compound problems, the team I've been managing at work are all in the Far East, so I don't even get proper face-to-face social contact at work. I sit at my desk, lonely and bored. I've helped to create a great culture in my team, but I don't really benefit from it, because they are quite literally 6,666 miles away (I just looked that up - I love that fact!).

In desperation, I made compromises that are just not acceptable, sustainable. I took a job that pays well and is very easy, but doesn't provide anything other than the money that I need. I made other choices because of the desperate need for something rather than nothing. There's an opportunity cost. If I'm in a job that I hate and drains my energy, then I don't have the time and the motivation to get something better.

In a way, it's good that a couple of things are coming to an end, because it's prompting me to go after the things I want rather than the things that I took through desperation. Of course, I'm grateful to have the money, and the support that I've received, but you make different choices when you're in deep shit.

So, on Thursday 22nd September, 2016, I will have completed a year of blogging, 6 months 'clean' and my 6 month employment contract will be over.

On Thursday 22nd September, 2016, I will have 1 out of 7 of the things that I need, with the threat that I will quickly lose even that one single thing.

Without a job, I'll have more expenditure than income. I need to pay rent, bills, service debts. I need to replace worn out clothes and things that break. I need to buy food and toiletries. Life is not sustainable in Western society without income.

I don't have savings, but I do have creditworthiness. Yet again, I will have to borrow money in order to keep my head above water. I have no financial safety net. What I have instead are commercial lenders who are prepared to extract their pound of flesh so that I can avoid homelessness and destitution.

If you think I could have saved more money than I have done these past months, you are mistaken. Without a short holiday, I would never have lasted the extra months. Without alcohol, I would never have coped with the stress and anxiety. I could have penny pinched on my accommodation, but can you imagine how awful it is living in a hostel when you're working full time? I worked, slept and ate. How far has it got me? Well. Probably about 50% of the way towards financial security.

I need to take a break, because my nerves are frazzled and I'm exhausted.

I doubt any contract could be as bad as the job I'm about to finish on Wednesday. For my next contract, I'm going to look for something where I'll be working with a team in London. I need a much more interesting workload. Being bored to death is no way to die.

With money comes the opportunity to travel, socialise, make the investment in a new hobby. With a more tolerable day job comes energy and enthusiasm for each day. With a more liveable life comes the freedom from drink, drugs and medication, in order to simply get through the day.

It's a fucking nutty strategy, to go for the big win. What you just don't understand is just how close to irreparably broken my life is. You just don't understand what it's like to not have so many of the elements that prop up your life. Look again at the bullet pointed list above, and score yourself. How many of the things you need do you have?

Look back at the last 4 weeks of your life and ask yourself this:

• How many nights were you homeless? - zero, I presume
• How many days did you work? - I'm guessing somewhere around 12, on average
• How many times were you in contact with your family? - I'm guessing at least 4
• How many days did you see friends face to face? - I'm guessing at least 8
• Did you make more money than you spent? - I'm guessing at least breakeven
• How many times did you do something 'fun'? - I'm guessing at least 4
• How many times did you have sex or snuggles? - I'm guessing at least 8

Those would seem like adequate answers to me. If you're hitting those numbers, your life is probably just about OK. Less than that in one area, maybe you can make up for it in another. For example, you might have been out of work and losing money, but at least you were surrounded by your loving family a lot more of the time, because maybe you were staying at home looking after the kids.

I'm certainly not saying it's easy being a stay at home mom or a househusband, but suicidal depression can come about through death by a thousand cuts. All the little things that are wrong in your life add up to an unbearably horrible situation.

In some ways I'm relishing next Thursday, because I can sleep and recharge my batteries. With spare time that's completely free from artificial structure, such as having to be in a certain office at certain times of the day, then I can start to relax and decide what I want to do next.

The obvious thing to do is to get another lucrative contract, and work for at least another 4 months, so that I can get a cushion of savings to support me in pursuing a passion. Without being able to underwrite my own risk, I have zero faith in my family or government to support me if I fall on hard times. I have a friend who's offered me some financial support, but I think it's unethical to accept it because then I'm borrowing from their safety net.

In this individualistic society, nobody parachuted in to rescue me when I was homeless, destitute. Nobody came to rescue me. Nobody came to my aid. Help was not forthcoming. Even when I had letters from my doctor, my psychiatrist, my social worker... all begging for the government to support me as a vulnerable person with mental health problems, the people I dealt with were unhelpful, obstructive and ultimately just wasted my time and effort even asking for the support that I was entitled to, because of their legal and moral obligations. Those public servants' salaries are paid for with my goddamn taxes. I've paid a lot in, and when I needed it, I could get nothing out.  It's down to me to support myself. I might as well be living in some developing world country, where at least the cost of surviving is lower.

People who warn me to stay within easy reach of the National Health Service for mental health reasons, are just naïve. I've been round and round the system many times since becoming clinically depressed in 2008. The system is bullshit. There is no safety net if you're a single man.

And so, I must play russian roulette with my life in order to support myself. The upside is OK: I might become wealthy and comfortable again, in a relatively short timescale of just a few years. The downside is horrible though. Can you imagine how much time I've spent thinking about how I'm going to kill myself? Can you imagine what it's like to spend a significant proportion of your waking hours feeling so awful that you pretty much want to die?

I swear if one more person tells me to go to my doctor and get some magic beans I'm going to scream. STOP MEDICALISING NON-MEDICAL PROBLEMS. The problem is clearly outlined above. I don't have broken brain chemistry. My brain has correctly identified the problems in my life. There are no short cuts. There's no way to cheat the sytem.

Of course, there is a short cut.

Drugs will tell your brain you feel loved. Drugs will make you feel relaxed. Drugs will make you feel happy. Drugs will make you feel contented. Drugs will tell you that you don't need friends. Drugs will tell you that you don't even need to eat or drink. Drugs will tell you that everything is fine.

Everything is not fine, so I don't want drugs - and by that I mean medication too - to tell me that things are fine. Things are not fine. I almost need these awful feelings to prompt me to get a better job, find some new friends, get a girlfriend, get a hobby. It's just that financial circumstances have constrained me more than you can possibly imagine.

Imagine if I'd declared bankruptcy at the start of the year. That would have been a stupendously dumb decision, in hindsight, wouldn't it? I'm presently not bankrupt. Presently, I have enough money to clear my credit cards, my overdraft.

Of course, my position can't last. You have to run just to stand still. I'm losing my job, and that means I will quickly go into debt again.

"Get another job then"

Guess what, Einstein... that's what I'm going to do. Even though I'm suicidally depressed, overcome with anxiety, I'm going to go and get another motherfucking job you c**t. Even though I'm technically entitled to disability benefits and a council house because my mental health is so debilitating, I am able to do these crazy raiding missions to go and gather nuts before my brain explodes and it all comes crashing down again. I'm locked into this boom & bust cycle. No wonder my bipolar disorder is so exacerbated.

And so, round and round I go. Up & down. Boom & bust. Highs & lows. It's not a medical problem. Its the motherfucking dance I'm forced to do by this farcical society. This is what you get when you don't support people. This is what you get when you isolate people. This is what you get when you only look out for number one.

"The pills will help you stabilise"

No, they won't. Have you looked at the long term studies? Have you studied the data, the clinical outcomes? Have you done the research? No. Of course you haven't. You just have this bullshit belief in the power of medical science. If I had an infection, I'd go to my doctor for antibiotics to treat it. I don't have a fucking infection. I have an allergy to shitty unbearable unliveable life.

I've tried all the meds under the sun. I know what life on medication is like. I've had tons of doctors and psychiatrists. I've tried tons of therapies. It's all a crock of shit. The fundamental problem is the fucking shitty world. Look around you; do you like what you see?

I'm not going to change the world begging on the street with a cardboard sign. I'm not going to change the world by impoverishing myself. I'm not going to change the world by trying the same things that people have tried for hundreds of years, without success. Only an idiot tries the same things expecting different results.

So, I'm on this crazy journey. I'm hoping that by next Wednesday I might have managed to write 365 blog posts, and probably around 450,000 words. That might not make a difference to you, but it's surely making a difference to me. It's probably making a difference to somebody, somewhere. I have visitors from around the world, reading what I write. Even if it's absolute garbage, it's better than just being a helpless spectator. Even if you think I'm an irrelevant bleeding heart lefty liberal who doesn't amount to a hill of beans, at least I'm composing my thoughts. At least I have a belief system. At least I have values and things that I passionately believe in.

It's very hard for me to come up with a reason why I'm struggling along at the moment. Why am I putting myself through this awful shit? Why don't I just kill myself, and then the pain will be over? Why don't I just give up, and relapse back into drug addiction?

Actually the second one is fairly easy to answer: somebody who dies of drug addiction is easy to discredit as a 'dirty' junkie. Somebody who's 'clean' and has just completed an important project for a major corporation, in a valuable role, and has set their financial affairs in good order, is a rather more inconvenient and difficult problem to find a soundbite to toss them into the gutter.

I want to be a thorn in the side of every selfish c**t out there who wishes their fellow humans dead. I want to shame people into action, from their comfortable existence where they don't even lose sleep over every homeless, hungry struggling person in pain and suffering out there.

Where the fuck are people when those around them are in distress? Who the fuck do you think is going to sort problems out, if it's not you?

Even though I could have put my tax money to far better use supporting myself, rather than paying the salaries of people who tell me they're not going to help me, I'm still glad to give away a substantial proportion of my income. However, I'm not buying a clean conscience. It's not like I pay my taxes so I can watch my friends become homeless and mentally ill, and assume that the council and some doctors are going to wave their magic wands and make it all better.

What the fuck happened to the empathy? I think I would offer to let somebody sleep on my couch, lend somebody money or go and visit somebody in distress, before I even experienced horrible things first hand myself. I had quite a comfortable existence up to the age of 32 or thereabouts, but I didn't think it was big OR clever to sit on my fucking arse not doing anything when people were suffering.

Those who have been kindest are those who have suffered the most, which makes me detest the comfortably off for their lack of empathy, their lack of humanity.

If humanity is destined for a situation where we let even our own family members and friends flail and drown, then I'm pleased that climate change is going to wipe you miserable c**ts out of existence. You don't deserve to survive, if your "I'm alright Jack" attitude is the prevailing one. I hope you and your kids and grandkids die slowly and painfully if you spawned more mouths to feed with not a single concern for anybody else.

Believe me, I do observe how happy and fulfilled my friends who are parents are, even if they complain how hard it is being a parent. Did you forget that we live in the age of birth control and abortion? You chose to have kids, and no matter what you say, you do get immeasurable benefit from having them. You have happiness and security, knowing you procreated. You have a flood of oxytocin when your cute kids throw their arms gleefully around you.

Believe me, I do observe how happy my friends are to own a dog, even if they complain about having to pick up the poop and hoover up the hair and other mess. You chose to have another carnivore on the planet, eating meat that meant that food for livestock was grown, rather than having more food for those who are starving, and depriving the planet of those extra trees that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Having a pet dog is selfish as fuck, but I do see how nice it is to have your dog playfully jumping with joy to see you, and throwing sticks in the park for them to fetch.

I can see that there are choices that benefit me as an individual hugely, but I choose not to take them, because I'm responsible for more than just myself. I don't believe that collective responsibility is something that naturally follows from individual responsibility. In fact, I see that the two things are naturally opposing.

Can't you see the fucking trends? Of course you do, but you just don't want to believe it.

You don't want to give up eating meat. You don't want to adopt instead of having your own biological children. You don't want to stop driving your precious little darlings around in a gas-guzzling 4x4 "because it's safer for our family". You don't want to plant trees instead of having a pet dog. You don't want to do anything different at all, in fact, even though you're fucking everything up for your kids and your grandkids.

That's why I'm depressed. That's why I'm suicidal. That's why I'm stuck in a hole I can't get out of. That's why I'm desperate and driven crazy by all this bullshit. That's why I'm doing things that are atypical... because the typical is what got us into this fucked up mess in the first place.

I don't care whether you're religious or not, but imagine some future judgement day, when it's obvious that the planet and the future survival of the human race is clearly doomed: will you say that you went along with things, supported the status quo, or did you try and change things? Did you at least act differently? Did you at least try and help in a way that's less pathetic than recycling your bottles? Did you help anybody other than the fucking clones you spawned to replace yourself?

Note: I'm not anti-parents. I don't hate my friends. I'm not some "wake up sheeple" fucktard. Dismiss me if you like using some convenient label that you were taught to use by those who wish to perpetuate the status quo.

If you're not acting with your conscience, or at least kept awake at night worrying about this shit, that's unconscionable.

You probably should worry about me. No doctor in a white fucking coat is going to make everything OK. It's not a medical problem. It's not a government problem. It's everybody's problem, including mine, but it's more than I can handle on my own.

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

This is a story about coping strategies...

The jury is out: do I have a medical problem, or don't I? It's so hard to control the variables in somebody's life, that it's almost impossible to know how circumstances are affecting your mental health.

One thing's for certain: psychoactive medications are extremely hard to stop taking once you've been taking them for a few months or years.

There's a simplistic view of addiction that says that the easiest way to not become a drug addict is to not take drugs in the first place. The simplistic view of addiction says that the easiest way to quit drugs is to simply stop taking them.

By extension, the same is true of psychiatric medication. The easiest way to not become dependent on medication for your sense of wellbeing is to not start taking the medication in the first place. The easiest way to live a happy drug-free life is to stop taking all drugs, including psychoactive medication.

This simplistic view ignores three things:

1. How shitty was your life before you were driven to drugs or medication?
2. When you stop taking drugs or medication, how shitty is withdrawal?
3. How shitty will your life be when you're no longer taking drugs and medication?

If the answer to 1 & 3 is the same, then it's your life that's shit and nothing has changed. If your life is shit you're a dumbass for thinking about things as a medical problem. However, how many of us really has the opportunity to improve their life.

Many of us will feel duty-bound to stay near family members, because we are responsible for caregiving. It makes sense to stay near friends and in an area you're familiar with. Moving somewhere new, making new friends, being far away from family - these things are hard.

Huge numbers of people can barely miss more than one or two paycheques before they're in financial trouble. The need to work whatever shitty job we can get is the thing that dominates our shitty lives.

The welfare state is a myth. It can take months or even years before government support is forthcoming, and it's a one-way street. Once you're finally in the benefits system, it's hard to leave. If you work more than 16 hours a week, you can end up putting your home at risk, therefore there's no opportunity to work your way out of poverty.

Point 2 is extremely important.

Quitting benzodiazepines or alcohol can mean weeks of anxiety, insomnia, restlessness, indescribably horrible dread. However, it's doable, and I've done it. It's not easy, but it's not impossible.

Quitting opiates will leave you feeling sick and in pain. I've not had to go through junk sickness, but plenty of people do it 'cold turkey'. It's not life threatening at least, unlike benzos and alcohol.

Quitting stimulants will leave you tired, cloudy-minded, depressed, suicidal even. Quitting stimulants is hard because of the cravings, which some people might mistakenly mis-label 'psychological'. Is hunger psychological? If you reckon you could starve yourself for a month, and overcome those hunger pangs, by all means go ahead and belittle stimulant withdrawal as purely psychological.

From what I can tell, withdrawal from antidepressants and anxiety drugs is worst of all. Have you heard of "brain zaps"? Almost all antidepressant users who've been taking those medications for months or years will complain of absolutely intolerable withdrawal symptoms when they try to reduce their dose or stop taking the drugs altogether. Brain zaps are described as "imbalance, tremors, vertigo, dizziness, and electric-shock-like experiences" in what is being called antidepressant discontinuation syndrome.

You know what? I don't really like the sound of that. Antidepressant discontinuation syndrome sounds a lot worse than any drug withdrawal that I've ever been through, and you know what else? The easiest way to avoid withdrawal is to not take the drugs in the first place.

Sure, it's appealing the idea of taking drugs. "Take this... it'll make you feel good" is what the drug dealers and the doctors say. I desperately want to feel OK. Depression is a shitbag. Being suicidal is dangerous. However, I'm not prepared to have some medically sanctioned addiction to some drugs that are really hard to quit.

And so, I'm limping by on as little alcohol as I can get away with, but I'm still drinking too much and it's making me fat.

Alcohol is undoubtedly a terrible drug. I can see how much my health is suffering, just by the belly fat that's suddenly appeared in the last 4 months. I'm drinking myself to death.

However, I needed to put some money in the bank.

I work, I eat, I sleep, I drink, I moan about it on this blog. It's a financially successful formula. Even if I spent £20 a day on alcohol, just to struggle through, I'm going to finish this contract in a remarkably better financial position than when I started.

I've started to wean myself off the booze using a little diazepam. Tapering off the diazepam will be hard, but in less than a week my horrible contract will be over and I can allow my moods to self-regulate again. I'm imagining that I'm going to sleep for 12 to 14 hours a day. I'm imagining that I'm going to close the curtains and just hide under the duvet for a week or two... maybe even three.

If you think I'm over-sharing. If you think I'm whining about my job, my situation, too much... look at it this way: it's a healthy coping strategy, a cry for help and also a suicide note.

Anybody who says "get a therapist" or "go see your doctor" is just naïve. There aren't magic healers out there who can cure the fundamental problem: bullshit jobs.

In 2008 I quit one bullshit job, tried another, found it was exactly the same, so I became a technology entrepreneur. From 2008 through 2011, my depression was 'cured'. If I felt shitty, I just stayed in bed. Yes, my mood was up and down, but at least my life was liveable and I was healthy and happy overall. 2012 & 2013 were wrecked by divorce. 2014 & 2015 I was trapped back into the rat race. It wasn't even that bad at Barclays and HSBC, but they didn't let me reach escape velocity.

This year, I've suffered in silence, in the interests of maximising my earning potential and hopefully gaining freedom again, but I've damn well got a right to complain about it because it's killing me.

Therapy is a joke. What the hell is one hour a week going to achieve? Been there, done that.

Our antidepressant culture is fucked up. What? I'm supposed to dope myself up so that I can be an uncomplaining rodent in the rat race? Fuck that. I'm not depressed. I'm allergic to capitalism.

Yes, there are huge financial and societal pressures for me to medicate myself into blissed-out stupidity, so I can sit at my desk grinning. I'm not going to do that. It's morally outrageous that the only way to live in this society that we've built, is by drugging our workforce.

If I end up martyred in protest at the madness of the situation, it will have been worth it.

Tags: #depression #suicide #drugs #addiction #career #mentalhealth

This is a story about trying to stay ahead of the game...

The Olympics and the Tour de France have been full of sportsmen and women using a variety of drugs to enhance their performance. Doping in sport became so widespread that it was virtually impossible to compete without performance enhancing drugs.

We think that competition is linked to sport and that athletes are naturally competitive, but in fact competition is present in every aspect of our daily lives.

You want an attractive girlfriend or boyfriend, right? The more universally appealing a person is, the more potential suitors are vying to try their luck. The 'hotter' somebody is, the more people are trying to hop into bed with them. Attractiveness means few genetic defects: looking flawless, perfect. The pre-programmed urge to reproduce with the healthiest person who'll have you, is the reason why you're alive today.

We all know that alcohol is a social lubricant. "Dutch courage" means that after a few drinks we are disinhibited, and we can overcome the social awkwardness of talking to the objects of our affection. When we're drunk we take that chance of rejection, leaning in and kissing somebody for the first time.

It's pretty clear that those who are intoxicated will be braver and less anxious about rejection and humiliation, than those sober singles who are nervously hoping to be asked to dance, and trying to muster the courage to chat somebody up. Therefore, there's a pressure to get drunk, and get your date tipsy, if you're hoping to couple off and copulate.

Cocaine gives artificial confidence. Cocaine makes people talkative, gregarious and removes their self-conscious awkwardness, shyness. We tend to be very attracted to confident and outgoing people. The pack alphas are naturally the most confident, and we want to mate with the alphas, not the betas. Royal families are inbred as hell, but every girl wants to marry a prince. Cocaine can help you to talk and act confidently, which makes you more attractive, and cocaine is very likely to bring the affections of potential mates.

So, it's pretty clear that in order to compete with other blokes eyeing up the skimpily clad girls on a night out, being tanked up on alcohol and having snorted a couple of lines of cocaine is going to give you the competitive edge. There's a high incentive to be intoxicated with alcohol and cocaine.

At work, many of us are mandated to work longer hours than we are able to do with our normal sleep/wake cycle. 54% of adult Americans drink coffee every day. Anecdotally, so many people say "I can't function without my morning coffee". It's quite commonplace for people to joke on social media about homicidal tendencies before they've had their fix of caffeine. Many a true word is spoken in jest.

Because so many office workers drink coffee, the working hours take this into consideration. Without coffee, the 9am start time would have to be 10:30am. Without coffee, those late nights in the office would be pointless, because nobody would be able to concentrate and stay awake.

Caffeine is a wakefulness promoting agent, and it's a concentration aid. Caffeine is great for concentrating on laborious boring repetitive tasks for long periods.

However, when nearly everybody is drinking coffee, it becomes a necessity for coworkers to drink it too, in order to match the office hours and concentration span of their colleagues. If your workmates spot your eyelids getting heavy, somebody is bound to suggest to you "can I get you a coffee?". Nobody is likely to say "maybe we should all go home early, not work such long hours and stop drinking so much damn coffee".

There is a huge incentive to drink tea, coffee and energy drinks at work, in order to compete for the pay rises and promotions, and not be seen as a weak member of the team.

We live in a culture that fuels depression and anxiety. The news bombards us with all of the world's problems in full gory high-definition detail. The economy is tanking and we have to live with job insecurity, skyrocketing housing costs and little hope of ever being able to collect a good pension, let alone have our kids able to expect a good education and be able to live on a planet that hasn't been destroyed by climate change. It's depressing as hell. It's stressful as hell.

Instead of trying to change the world around us and improve things, instead we have medicated ourselves in vast numbers. 61 million antidepressant prescriptions were written for 65 million people in the UK, in 2015. Most people will take powerful psychiatric medication at some point in their lives, whether that's sleeping pills, tranquillisers or antidepressants. The very sickest will have to take antipsychotics and mood stabilisers.

Our jobs are stressful, and we're fearful of losing our jobs. If we lose our jobs we'll lose our houses. If we lose our houses, we'll be homeless. The number of homeless people has soared by 80% in a single year in some parts of the country. There is plenty of reason to live in fear of destitution.

Doctors hardly have any time to speak to their patients, and they hardly have any budget to prescribe talk therapy, so people who are stressed out get sent away with tranquillisers. People who can't sleep get sent away with sleeping pills. People who are miserable, exhausted and can't cope get sent away with antidepressants. There's a pill for every ill, but it could be a sane reaction to an insane world, in a great many cases.

When so many people who you work with are insulated from the stressful and depressing nature of the work, and the way that capitalism is raping the natural world and enslaving the poor, it's easy to see how they are able to keep working, because they're drugged up to the eyeballs.

If your job, your house, your family and everything depends on you keeping your job, of course you're going to drug yourself up with happy pills so you can keep trudging along on the treadmill. Who can afford to have a nervous breakdown? Who can afford the risk of losing their job, to take time out to rest and recuperate? Who wants to let their bosses know that they can't cope with the stress, when everybody else seems to be doing OK?

There is peer pressure to put up with shit at work and not complain. Put up and shut up. Fit in or fuck off.

Because of the hyper-competitive work arena, of course we need to mask our mental health symptoms with pills, even if the underlying issue is a deep unease with the bullshit jobs and the negative effects on the world.

"Everybody's got to work"... but what if you're a debt collector? What if you're price gouging your customers who need their gas & electricity, so that you can make more money for your bosses? What if you're manufacturing weapons? Honestly, have a think about what you do for a job, and ask yourself if it's improving the human condition, or not.

Collectively, we should stop and say "this is madness". We can't sit here in the UK where the economy is 80% service industries, and say that what we're doing is productive and useful. It's impossible that we should need so many lawyers and accountants. It's impossible that we should need so many bankers. It's impossible that we should need so much software. It's impossible that we should sit here idly counting beans, while some poor person is out in the beating sun growing our food, earning $1.50 a day.

For sure you don't want to end up in the field picking fruit and vegetables for a pittance of a wage, but that doesn't mean you have to prop up the status quo.

Acting with your conscience and with ethics as an individual is likely to hurt nobody but you, but it's also harmful to you to load yourself up with performance enhancing drugs, simply so you can compete.

It's only in the spirit of non-competition that we can end the rat race and smash the tables of the money lenders and other idle social parasites. The parasite class need to be cast out from society. The parasite class are antisocial. The parasite class are making billions of people's lives miserable.

There's no way to win a rigged game. The only thing you can do is not lose, by not taking part.

Tags: #addiction #drugs #mentalhealth #capitalism #politics #alcohol #caffeine

This is a story about bang for your buck...

The churches have their tithes. The government have their taxes. The world has charities. It's pretty clear that these systems of wealth distribution and assistance for impoverished and vulnerable people, have spectacularly failed.

Tonight, I'm going to eat my dinner. Eating my dinner is something I want to do. Eating my dinner is something I enjoy. I get a kick out of eating my dinner.

So, why don't I start a Just Giving charity fundraising page, so that people can sponsor me to eat my dinner? You can sponsor me to go to work. You can sponsor me to go for a little jog around the park, having a lovely time waving at everybody. You can sponsor me to jump out of an aeroplane. You can sponsor me to abseil down a cliff. Even though you'll be donating to whichever charity I've chosen, it won't make any difference to the world.

You want to make a difference, right?

You buy Fairtrade coffee, bananas and chocolate. You recycle your bottles, plastic containers and cardboard. You give £10 a month via direct debit to the Red Cross. You throw your loose change into a collection bucket, when somebody jangles one in front of your face. You went to a pop concert one time, that was supposed to end poverty once and for all.

Maybe you work for a charity. Maybe you do volunteering. Maybe you organise bring & buy jumble sales. Maybe you bake cakes and sell them to raise money. Maybe it's you who is chugging the collection tins and getting people to reach for their wallets.

However, have you considered whether what you're doing is effective?

Clearly, whatever you're doing, it's not effective. Poverty is not history. In fact, wealth inequality is growing to unprecedented levels.

There are a number of ways we justify our inaction:

• "I do my bit"
• "I already give what money I can afford"
• "I already give what time I can spare"
• "I can't help everybody"
• "It won't make any difference. The world is a cruel place. Life is hard"
• "The world is overpopulated. Africans should stop having babies"
• "That's just the way things are"
• "We've got to look after our own"
• "Charity begins at home"

On closer examination, these beliefs are delusional, and only serve to prop up the status quo. All the reasons for inaction boil down to the same thing: "I'm not going to do any more until other people do too".

We are in a rat race. We are desperately trying to not lag behind the other rats in the race. We are desperately trying to keep up.

The mega wealthy race ahead, while our incomes stagnate. Since the 1980's the average wage increase has been just 40%, but for the wealthiest, their income has increased nearly 300%. As a proportion of their income, the wealthiest share less than ever. The wealthiest guard their income from taxation. The wealthiest spend a very small proportion of their income, meaning that it never enters the economy.

All humans need clothes. A poor person buys a £30 pair of jeans. 20% of the ticket price of those jeans is VAT, so the poor person paid £5 in tax. Let's say that the poor person earned £100 on the day that they bought the jeans. That means their effective tax rate was 5%, on clothes that they needed to buy. If a rich person bought the same pair of jeans, and they earn £1,000 a day, then their effective tax rate is 0.5% for the clothes that they need. A much smaller proportion of the rich people's income goes on essential items like food and clothing. As a proportion of their income, the amount of tax that the rich pay is tiny.

We can't afford the rich.

The rich are responsible for an expensive army and police force, in order to maintain the status quo and protect their wealth. The rich are responsible for deciding to bomb brown people to bits, in order to maintain conflict, to sell them weapons and stop them from ever reaching prosperity. If we let the brown people ever become prosperous, they might be unhappy about growing our food and manufacturing our goods, while we sit around idly doing nothing.

We spend more on 'defence' than on education.

If we were to spend more on education, then people would realise that our struggle is for nothing. Our labour contributes to nothing more than our own enslavement.

Capital growth, through effortless income from interest, dividends and increased asset prices, far outstrips our ability to earn money through work.

Our whole society is topsy-turvy. The old people who are dying are the ones who own all the dividend earning shares, through the pension funds. The old people who are dying earn all the property. The old people who are dying do not work, and they demand to earn money for no effort. The institutional investment managers who look after huge pension funds also do no work. Pension funds simply own huge portfolios of stocks & shares, interest bearing financial instruments and property. Instead of society being run to benefit our children, our workers, and protect the vulnerable, instead we toil so that an ever-growing number of retiring baby boomers can be idle.

I don't begrudge people some time off if they've earned it, but baby boomers are responsible for the proliferation of nuclear weapons, climate change, pollution, deforestation, war, famine, economic ruin, the end of free university education, no jobs, unaffordable housing and keeping politicians in power who are intent on destroying all life on earth. Instead of protesting at the planet being raped, these insufferable hippies sat around taking drugs and passed on all the problems to their grandchildren.

For me to teach a starving African to write computer code is ridiculous. The world doesn't need any more websites or apps. We've had programmable electronic computers for 60 years, and the world has become a more unequal place, still full of suffering and pain.

For me to volunteer at a soup kitchen is ridiculous. We are manufacturing homeless vulnerable people faster than we can feed them. The Salvation Army was founded in 1865, and there are still shamefully large numbers of people who are homeless and hungry.

For me to work for a charity is ridiculous. The charity model of fundraise & spend has completely failed. The church model of a tithe on our income has completely failed. The government model of taxation has completely failed.

We live in a pyramid scheme, and those at the top of the pyramid want to be idle and earn money effortlessly. There is no dignity in labour. Through work we only impoverish ourselves, because the wealthy get more wealthy while not doing any work. We expend our energy and the finite years of our life, but our wealth is eroded faster than we can earn money.

We shape ourselves in the image of those we are trying to keep up with. We imitate those who we aspire to be. We aspire to be wealthy, and in so doing, we protect our wealth from taxation and tithe. We believe we are being virtuous by being thrifty. We believe we are being smart by saving our money instead of spending it.

In actual fact, the financial system has broken down and fails to serve 99% of the people who are trapped within its confines.

The most effective thing that we can do to fight poverty, income inequality, injustice and the enslavement of the 99% is to campaign to flip the iceberg upside down. We can't afford the rich, and the plutocracy has to end. Our political system is overrun with public schoolboys who earn their money from trust funds and offshore investments, meaning that they pay nothing in tax. We can no longer be governed by people who don't play by the same rules as the rest of us.

The House of Commons was supposed to be a democratic instrument. The House of Commons was supposed to be representative of ordinary working people with a conscience, not Bullingdon Club Tory toffs who've only known a life of wealth and privilege.

I'm not waiting for my neighbour to be more generous before I decide to contribute more to the greater good. I'm looking for my opportunity to topple the cruel elites who have their snouts in the trough, greedily stuffing their ugly faces.

The most effective thing you can do with your time and your money? Campaign for political reform. Campaign for economic reform. Campaign for societal reform.

It makes no sense that the whole of the planet and 99% of humanity is there so that the baby boomers can have an idle retirement. If it was up to me, I'd ban the over 65s from voting until the climate and the economy start improving. You can't leave this kind of bullshit fuckup as a legacy, and expect to reap any rewards or have any say in a future that you ruined.

Here's my golden rule: leave things better than you find them, or else you are antisocial and you should be excluded from society.

Tags: #charity #politics #climate #capitalism

This is a story about earning money...

In the agricultural revolution, the scythe, the plough and the mill brought about greater productivity in our fields, and put more bread in our bellies. In the industrial revolution, the steam engine, the foundry and great big machines brought about greater productivity in our factories, and put shoes on our feet. In the information revolution, the spreadsheet, email and meetings have brought about greater productivity in our offices, and put zeroes on the end of the bank balances of the mega wealthy.

The average return on capital is exceeding the growth rate. This means that no matter how hard you work, the rich will get richer and poor will get poorer. If you are already wealthy, you will grow more wealthy, but for the rest of us our wages are falling in real terms.

"The triumph of human capital over financial capital and real estate, capable managers over fat cat stockholders, and skill over nepotism is largely illusory.” -- Thomas Piketty

It's a depressing situation, but sadly it's true. We are now living in the era of the supermanager. The remuneration for those at the top of the pyramid is completely unhinged and insane. There is absolutely no way that the eye-watering salaries demanded by top executives, in any way reflects their productivity. In fact, quite the opposite.

The National Health Service (NHS) has spent billions on re-organisation. The NHS is drowning under a sea of managers, while front-line services are cut back.

The reason why economic growth is stagnant, is because productivity is an illusion. When nearly everybody is a manager, hardly anybody is actually doing any work.

Managers only do three things:

1. Any good news from their team, they just forward to their boss
2. Any pressure / demands / requests / questions from their boss, they just forward to their team
3. They think up ways to justify their jobs

A manager has a lot of time to dream up creative ways of wasting everyone's time, because they don't actually do any work. A manager needs to look busy, so they come up with all kinds of time-wasting scams and schemes in order to justify their pointless existence.

Microsoft have actually cottoned on to the fact that there is a giant army of middle managers, who do nothing but forward emails up and down the chain of command. In the email program Microsoft Outlook, there are actually buttons that make it even easier to just forward good news to your boss, and to forward other requests and things to your team. I literally just need two buttons to do my job. I don't even have to do any typing.

People don't like doing the typing.

Everything's a copy & paste job. Being a manager has become a job of forwarding emails and sitting in meetings because you're bored. If you feel really pointless, you can do a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation to bore the shit out of everybody. Nobody writes concise emails that everybody can dutifully ignore because they're pointless noise.

There are a few idealistic young employees - unpaid interns - who do all the work, which is then re-hashed as it works its way up through the ranks of middle management. Every layer of management is careful to remove any reference that would give credit to the person who actually did the work. Managers pass things off as their own effort, although secretly they know that they don't actually do anything.

This is so much worse than Imposter Syndrome. Most managers are actually imposters. They're there for the comfy seat, free coffee, warm office and hefty pay packet at the end of the month.

It's no wonder that lean startups are actually able to deliver great things: they're unencumbered by the valueless people who try to add value when actually they do nothing of the sort.

Trying to get a decision out of the chain of command is like trying to nail jelly to the wall. Managers know that the only way they're going to get fired is if they make a decision that turns out to be wrong. The easiest way to be secure in your job is to avoid taking decisions. The very managers who were hired to be executives - high-powered decision makers - are actually avoiding ever making a decision, in case it ends up reflecting badly on them. No manager has the guts to actually make a decision and face the potential consequences. Middle managers are experts in avoiding all responsibility.

We now have an office culture, completely dominated by a kind of 'pass the parcel' children's game. Everybody knows that things are going badly because nobody is doing any work and nobody is making any decisions or showing any kind of leadership. Instead, the buck gets passed round and round, as everybody tries to blame everybody else, and avoid any responsibility themselves. Often, it's the very people who are too busy doing the actual work who get blamed, because they didn't have the time to play the silly game and cover their arses.

You can be assured that when things go wrong, the blame will trickle down, until some poor sod on the front line is criticised for not staying on top of a totally unreasonable workload. Some poor scapegoat will be blamed, because they made a minor error, through exhaustion and stress.

What's remarkable is how few 'executives' actually face the chop themselves, when everything screws up. You would have thought that the whole point about receiving a big salary would be because you were the one taking responsibility, and therefore you would be to blame when things go wrong. However, there is absolutely no corporate accountability. It is the workers who are held accountable by their managers, because the workers are too busy to spend time justifying their existence and covering their arses.

The most profitable thing of all is to sit idle, on a pile of money. You can never make a mistake if you simply earn interest on your capital. There's nothing ventured at all, when your wealth is growing simply because you own the casino. House always wins.

If you have wealth, if you have success, if you have an audience and fame, then you can leverage it to become even more wealthy. What - pray tell - is the innovative business idea behind Keeping Up With the Kardiashians? Presumably, some family who are completely lacking in wealth and fame would also like to be highly paid to be featured on reality TV? However, it is only those who already have wealth who are given the opportunity to make more wealth.

This era of low growth and wealth worship is absolutely destroying society. The economy is run for a tiny elite with unimaginable wealth, while the vast majority struggle in dead-end careers that are stressful and boring.

Middle management is just a position in the lower order of the entourage of the oligarchs, royalty and fat cat plutocrats. Middle managers have bought into the belief that they are going to succeed in the capitalist's pyramid scheme. Organisation charts give the belief that you are 'only' a certain number of layers of management from being the CEO, but it's a con, because each layer of middle management expands the base of the pyramid by a factor of 10.

Organisations have now started to throw around job titles like "Vice President" and "Managing Director", and there are even CEOs who are not actually CEOs. An organisation like HSBC might have hundreds of "CEO"s amongst their 230,000 staff. It's just a bullshit job title given away to make somebody think they're getting ahead in the game.

The fact of the matter is that while we toil in the hope of a promotion and a pay rise, we are wasting our time because we are becoming de-skilled and institutionalised. Our grandfathers could build houses and fix mechanical things. Our office-based service industry economy has left most people unable to even change a lightbulb.

Come the revolution, when there are power cuts and the Internet stops working, how much use are your skills in forwarding emails?

The middle managers might be able to justify their jobs today, and are attempting to stuff as much money in the mattress as possible, but it won't be enough. Even property deeds, policing and the rule of law won't matter when the masses rise up in anger at having been oppressed for too long. Even soldiers are feeling the economic squeeze, and will be unwilling to turn their guns on their own people, in order to protect the plutocrats.

The unwillingness to address income inequality and share the wealth can only lead to popular uprisings.

Tags: #capitalism #career #banking #politics

This is a story about the decision to end your life...

No matter what stupid inspirational quote memes say, we don't get to "choose" to be happy. We are ruled by our moods, not vice-versa. Perception is an illusion. The glass half empty person is just as correct as the glass half full person, and neither gets to choose their perspective on the world.

There's an enormous amount of pressure to look on the bright side, be happy & upbeat, to keep problems bottled up inside and to be uncomplaining. Anybody who speaks up is criticised for being a whiney crybaby, negative and a killjoy.

I spent the best part of 8 years with a partner who used to throw a tantrum whenever things didn't go her way. My argument in this essay is that logical despair is different.

If you've spent much time with me, you'll know that I'm pretty calm and pragmatic even in stressful situations. If you've been with me when things have been going wrong or getting stressful, you'll hopefully know that I am that positive upbeat person, who tries to find the silver lining in every cloud.

It's interesting to me that I'm writing - right now - in a position where I am feeling more positive than I have done all week. This is temporary, because I don't have to go to work tomorrow.

"Why don't you just quit your job if it's so boring, and it's making you so miserable and depressed?" I hear you ask.

Well, guess what? You've got to pay to play. Even for me to live in a hostel bed or take a cheap lodging in a house, is going to cost me circa £500 per month. What about travel? What about food? You have to run just to stand still.

So maybe I could get myself some government benefits that would help with my housing costs and give me a little money with which to survive? I'm certainly eligible. Even though I have worked for a few months here and there, my mental health is so wrecked by the stress and the rat race, that the ensuing depression destroys any chance of stability. My life yo-yos up and down like crazy. I swing from earning money and appearing to have my shit together, to then being barely able to leave the house, the bedroom, the bed.

I can't imagine anything much worse than having a government handout that's inadequate to live on, and slipping deeper and deeper into problems. Welfare looks like an agonisingly slow death, with no hope of escape. The Conservative government has found that cutting welfare benefits has been very popular with their ignorant smug arrogant wealthy voters, and have plunged a great many vulnerable people into a position of unbearable stress and financial insecurity.

"What about getting your dream job?" I hear you ask.

Well, let's explore a couple of examples.

There's an IT position at a mental health charity currently on offer here in London. I would be both experienced and qualified to work that job, and it's also doing important work that is in line with my values. The salary is £28,000 per annum. That's a take-home pay of £1,850.

In London, it generally costs around £700 a month to rent an absolutely terrible room in an absolutely terrible apartment. £700 a month will mean that you don't have a lounge. £700 a month will mean that you'll spend your whole time in your bedroom. I guess that'd only be 38% of my income... so not so bad?

What do you dream of for the future? Would you like to get married, have kids, own your own home? Well... that's not going to happen on £28,000 per annum. Assuming that you could save up a 5% deposit, that would be £25,000 for an average price London home of £494,000. Normally, you can only borrow a multiple of 3.5 times your salary, which is less than £100,000. The sums just don't add up.

So, the answer is to leave London, right? Well, London is my home. London is where I live. London is also where the jobs are. If there's a job for £28,000 in London, just think how little that job would pay outside of London. The 'dream' jobs probably only exist in London. Most head offices are in London.

Perhaps I could be a writer, surviving off Patreon donations? J. L. Westover produces these great comics, but doesn't even make $500 a month. You can't live on $500 a month.

Although I'm very much fixating on the financial and work aspects of life, really, why wouldn't I concentrate on those? I'm going to hand over the remaining best years of my life to somebody else, in return for money that I then just put straight into the hands of those who own the land and the means of production. It would be OK if life was somehow liveable, but it's not.

I can't go part-time, because it's simply not permitted for a single man to do it. There are hardly any women doing the job I do anyway. It would just blow the minds of my employers if I said they needed to let me work part-time. It would not compute. They would not know how to cope. The message is simple in the jobs that I do: fit in or fuck off.

So, the kind of 'part-time' that I do, is to work for as long as I can, and then have a breakdown.

I'm exhausted. I'm so very exhausted from repeated cycles of destruction and salvation. It's exhausting getting to the limit of your credit facilities, and then having to drag yourself through yet another health-destroying stint of bullshit. It's exhausting having your bank balance emptied, just staying alive, and your morale and sense of happiness emptied, just to keep paying rent and bills.

Why do I do it? Who am I helping? What am I improving?

The wealth that I generate certainly doesn't disappear. I genuinely do work very hard indeed. Why do I never see the fruits of my labour?

Well, the system is a con. The free market will ensure that prices are always set at a level where most people have to keep slaving away in dead end jobs. We are consumption machines. Sure, you can stop buying pointless material goods, but are you going to go homeless and starve? Even homelessness is being criminalised. It's a crime to be alive and not work some bullshit job. It's a crime to be using up oxygen and looking at the view, without helping the rich get richer. There's a tax on life.

I'm so ground down by it all.

It's not just a chemical imbalance in my brain that's causing me to feel depressed and hopeless. Genuinely, what's the best that I can hope for? That I retire rich, but I'm old and my health is destroyed? That I quit the rat race, but I'm spat upon by people in the street and told "get a job you lazy bum"? That I claim welfare benefits from government drones who hate my guts and call me a worthless scrounger behind my back. That I put myself at the mercy of a Conservative government who would rather see me kill myself because it's cheaper?

Office work is as deadly as smoking, according to a paper published in The Lancet. Perhaps I just need to join a gym? Yep... that costs money. If I'm earning £28,000 in my dream job, that gym membership will delay me in saving up the £394,000 I need in order to be able to buy a house. It should only take me about 40 years, assuming that house price inflation drops to 0%.

People are literally being bored to death. Being bored at work has been proven to lead to an early death. People are even starting to sue their employers for a 'bore out' where they are left virtually brain dead, depressed and unable to work because of the soul-crushing agony of working a ridiculously boring bullshit job.

For sure, I can suffer in wage slavery for as long as I can bear it, and then take time away from the rat race. However, that sprint and coast behaviour is exactly the kind of thing that exacerbates my mood disorder. What could be more bipolar than having to do some depressing mental health and wellbeing destroying months and years of boring bullshit, and then being released to enjoy some temporary freedom.

There's a mad panic when I'm suddenly released from the anchor chains that have been weighing me down. I rush around at breakneck pace, trying to pack as much into the time as possible, before the dreaded day comes around again that I have to go back to my bullshit day job.

That dread is the thing that rules my life at the moment.

I reach Friday, and I should be relieved and happy that it's the weekend, but instead I drink myself into oblivion because it's taken every ounce of resolve just to limp through the working week. On Saturday - today - I have a strange feeling of calm. Momentarily, I forget about how fucking awful my life is. I almost feel positive and upbeat. On Sunday, the existential dread starts to grow. What am I doing? Why am I trapped in this motherfucking cycle? Why can't I escape? On Monday, I want to run away and become a homeless person, hunted by Shylocks looking for their pound of flesh, or else just kill myself to end the horrible cycle and endless pain.

You're probably thinking this:

"Everybody hates their job"

Yeah? Well, why don't you get your dream job then? Why don't you follow your dreams and your passions? Also, how destructive has the cycle of bullshit been in your life? Have you been hospitalised due to suicidal thoughts and suicide attempts? Have you been homeless and destitute?

Sleeping on your mate's couch does not count as homeless.

For sure, I'm a reasonably smart and resourceful person. I've come up with loads of scams and schemes to make money over the years. But what you've got to understand is that it's exhausting, stressful and risky to undertake some new venture.

Somebody has to pay the rent and the bills every month. Presently, I seem to have subsidised at least 3 people to work on their dreams at my own personal expense. People live in my apartment, use my electric, gas, water and internet, not paying rent, going after their own little slice of happiness, and I'm the one who picks up the bill at the end of every month. I'm the fucking sensible one. I'm the one who makes sure there's enough money in the bank that we don't all end up living on the streets. I've lived on the streets. It's hard to come back from that one.

I'm not doing the whole working for the biggest bank in Europe on the number one project while homeless thing again. It was exhausting and stressful.

I'm fed up of being promised shit and let down.

I'm fed up of being taken for a ride.

I'm fed up of fuckups telling me how to live my fucking life while they benefit from my charity.

Yes, a friend once took me in when I was down on my luck and going through my divorce. I offered to pay rent and he declined. I paid bills when I was there. I also helped my friend to make some profitable investments, which netted him a couple of sizeable cash lump sums.

I'm not a fucking mug. I can't go through life buying lottery tickets.

I've done a rational analysis of the economic framework that I'm trapped within, and it's incompatible with my mental health. Society doesn't want my kind of crazy to be alive. There's no place for me in the world.

I could limp along in the gig economy, living some kind of hand-to-mouth existence. I could move to some cheap part of the country, or the world. I could try and eke out an existence, in some damp cave or perhaps die of an infected wound in some remote wilderness.

Of course my ideas are naïve and romanticised and unrealistic and incredibly black & white, all or nothing.

The problem is that I'm not wrong. I'm smart enough to have done the analysis. I've gathered the data. I've got the experience.

Do what you love and get dicked over, be financially insecure and never be able to follow your dreams, because you're already following your dreams, right? I mean, why should a nurse get to look after patients and buy a house and not live with crippling debt, right?

Do what pays the bills, and you'll be old and nearly dead by the time you get to enjoy it, if you don't die of stress related illness and the health damage from your sedentary office bullshit job before you even get to the point where you can quit the rat race.

In a way, this crisis has come about because I already ticked everything on my bucket list. I decided that life was lived backwards, and it made no sense to be doing adventure sports when you're old and your bones break easily and take a long time to heal.

It's no tragedy, to end my life because I'm exhausted and sick of the bullshit. All I have ahead of me is health problems and death. In the long run, we're all dead anyway.

Prolonging the agony only serves to make the rich even richer. I have deep-seated moral objections to being part of the problem when I can't be part of the solution. I find it indefensible to say that I was just doing what everybody else was doing, following orders, sticking with the crowd and being part of the herd.

The more I stick around on the planet, the more chance there is that I will accidentally spawn some infants who will inherit a dying world, and a broken system that enslaves people into bullshit jobs that bore them to death. Life is not a gift I want to share. Life is a curse I want to break.

It's strange writing these words when I'm not even in the very worst depths of despair. It's nice to feel that I'm being a little more logical, and less pulled by the emotional torment of the working week.

Yes, at the small scale, it looks ridiculous. What does a few more months or years matter? Stick with it. Things can change.

But the reality is that I've been around the block a bunch of times. Been there, done that. I've actually experienced a whole heap of jobs in a whole heap of industry sectors. I've experienced all kinds of cultures. I've tried to forge my way through life all kinds of different ways. Fundamentally, there is an incompatibility between what I find acceptable and sustainable, and the way the river is flowing. I can't swim upstream forever. I can't fight the onrushing floods.

It seems only logical to give up at some point.

Tags: #suicide #depression #career #mentalhealth #capitalism

This is a story about brain hijack...

Who's in charge around here? Do you believe in free will? Do you believe that your choices are completely unbiased? Do you believe that every decision that you make is based on rational thought? Do you believe in willpower?

Addiction is a terrifying thing. Most of us have a fear of needles. When we hear the word "addiction" we wince with anticipated pain, as if somebody had stuck something sharp into our sensitive flesh. We squirm with the idea of the pain, which is associated with memories of every time we cut ourselves, hurt ourselves on thorny plants and visited the doctor's surgery for inoculations.

There's a widely held belief that if you so much as look at a syringe filled with heroin, you will immediately be compelled to murder your grandmother and steal her valuables. Just being in the same room as some cocaine will compel you to steal a car or rob a bank. It's an automatic reaction. The drugs will take over your mind, and turn you from whoever you are today into some kind of monster, the moment that poisoned chalice touches your lips.

In reality, you are probably completely unaware that some of your friends are popping one too many opiate-based painkillers. You are completely unaware that a bunch of your respected work colleagues are out partying at the weekend, high as a kite. You are completely unaware that a huge proportion of everyone you know, has used marijuana on a regular basis, at one time or another, and somehow managed to resist moving onto crack cocaine.

We need to be careful, because drugs impair our judgement. Just because most of us don't die when we try weed, cocaine and ecstasy, we can then be convinced that we're in no way exhibiting addictive behaviour. Some of us will be emboldened to try 'hard' drugs.

People are finding out that drugs are not actually instantly addictive, and those who experiment with drugs don't immediately jettison their morality and go out on a crime spree. This creates complacency. This creates a culture where we mistrust the warning messages, because they are full of lies and over-exaggerations.

However, drugs do dull your wits. You probably think that you're super smart and you're saying some really profound stuff. You're probably think you're taking a walk on the beach with your girlfriend, watching the sunset, until the drugs wear off and you realise you're dragging a mannequin around a car park.

Children are particularly receptive to subtle changes in their parents' behaviour and mood. You might think that getting stoned in front of your kids makes you a cool parent. "Yeah! I'm a hippy!" and "Yeah! I'm fighting the power! Counter-culture revolution! Yeah!". In actual fact, you're just turning yourself into a dribbling wreck, emotionally distant from the subtle cues that tell you to hug your kids and otherwise pay attention to what's going on. There's a reason why a nursing mother's senses are heightened after the birth of a child, and it's not so you can find those crumbs of crack that are hidden in the carpet.

Even smoking is super selfish. The health risks of passive smoking are well known and understood, but consider the weight difference between you and your baby. Let's say your kid weighs 7kg (15lbs) and you weigh 70kg (154lbs). That means that you weigh 10 times as much as your child. If you're inhaling 2mg of nicotine from your cigarette smoke, your child is inhaling 20mg. If you smoke in your car with your kid, you're making them smoke the equivalent of packs and packs of cigarettes. You are addicting them to nicotine and making them quit smoking, over and over and over again.

We were always driving places, when I was growing up. Small car. Both parents smoking. They call it 'hot boxing' now, when stoners are keeping all their dope smoke in a confined space, so that everybody gets really intoxicated on the chemicals. That's what selfish smokers are doing to children. I'm super glad that there are now laws in place to protect children from their selfish parents' addictions.

And so, I arrived in adulthood with a brain that was no stranger to addiction and withdrawal. I have far stronger willpower than either of my parents, because I have been able to resist the urge to smoke, and I have quit many addictive drugs cold turkey. I've got more will power than my parents could even dream of: they would not even give up smoking for the health of my sister and I, despite the obvious damage that it was doing and the financial consequences.

This is the power of addiction: even though you are destroying the health of your children and putting them through a horrible experience, you tell yourself that it's somehow OK to do that, despite an unambiguous message from doctors and other healthcare professionals. The only reason not to comply with the necessity of doing the best by your children, would be pure bloody-minded selfish stupidity... which is the addiction part.

I find it very hard to respect somebody lecturing me on addiction, when they're puffing on cigarettes and drinking tea, coffee & alcoholic drinks.

You may be surprised to learn that rich addicts do not become homeless junkies, destitute and forced into a life of crime. You may be surprised to learn that, given the opportunity to quit drugs on their own terms, most people's addictions will just fizzle out.

The brain is a homeostatic organ, and whatever chemicals you put into your body to get a buzz or a high will soon lose their potency. Pretty soon, the pursuit of drugs gets boring. Addictions are naturally self-limiting.

Rats who live in sterile cages with no stimulation, socialisation, sex or interesting food, will kill themselves with drugs. Rats who live in a pleasant environment will shun drugs, because they're getting everything they need in their happy ratty little lives. It's shitty lives that create the conditions where addiction can exist.

I work my arse off in a shitty boring unstimulating job, with no disposable income to be spent on fun and socialising. I go to work, I come home, I write because it doesn't cost any money. I don't spend any money on extravagances. I just buy basic food. I eat, sleep and work. And where's it getting me?

Of course thoughts of addiction are present. The thought process goes like this: my life is shit; I want to die. Then I think I could just run away and become a hobo. Then I realise that will soon lead to the stress of being cold and hungry and dirty; with people thinking that I'm worthless scum. This is how a person arrives at the idea that addiction takes care of both the short term need to feel better, and the long term view that you're going to die anyway. So much easier to have a brief period of happiness and then kill yourself, than to have a long period where you slowly starve to death and suffer the health consequences of living on the street. It's better to burn out than fade away.

Abstinence is easy. Living a shitty hopeless life is hard.

Because I've mastered abstinence so easily, I can get a little complacent about the appeal of simply relapsing and quickly reaching death's door. If this year has taught me anything, it's that the struggle isn't really worth it. All my hard work has yielded so little improvement in my mood. I'm so depressed all the time, and things really aren't improving. To go to the doctor, chasing happy pills, is just on the same addictive continuum. When the happy pills wear off, I'll have to go back for stronger and stronger drugs, until I end up in exactly the same place. Skip to the end. Cut out the pointless bit in the middle.

I had thought that because I obviously can't be going through any kind of drug withdrawal or comedown, and abstinence is a simple and easy thing, that I had gotten on top of addictive thoughts, but actually they just went into my subconcious.

Last night I had a nightmare where I had obtained some drugs, and nobody would leave me alone. I was just being chased and harassed. I never actually got to use the drugs, which is maybe what made it such a stressful nightmare, but it's interesting how badly I did want to use those drugs in my dream. I expect the whole thing was triggered by the fact I'd been looking at a website selling drugs, the night before.

In actual fact, I'd rather just kill myself. It's been long enough to show that addiction, abstinence and willpower are just utter bullshit. I'm completely "clean and sober" as fucktards like to say. Addiction has nothing to do with drugs and everything to do with unbearable lives. I'd rather kill myself in protest at an unliveable life, due to unreasonable demands to work a bullshit job with no hope of ever doing anything fulfilling or purposeful.

The coroner can take samples of my hair and blood, and see not a single trace of any drugs in my system.

Only a fool does the same things expecting different results. Why would the conditions that created an addiction, not also keep somebody in an addiction, if they were still the same?

It seems logical that I should kill myself, as a protest about how unbearable a meaningless life of wage slavery is.

It doesn't seem selfish to want to commit suicide. It doesn't seem like depression is telling me lies. It seems like a brave thing to do, to stand up to an oppressive and miserable life and take a stand against exploitation by the ruling class. It seems like a brave thing to do, to refuse to be told I'm weak, broken, faulty. It seems to be a brave thing to do, to show that I'm not OK with turning my back on the suffering of humanity.

Lots of people impoverish themselves in their attempt to help other people. Lots of people will make mistakes, despite being dedicated to trying to improve the lives of others. It seems better to simply reach a point that is beyond reproach, and then kill yourself.

What's the difference between a saint and a sinner? Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.

It's not a case of "once an addict, always an addict". It's simply the case that anybody can fall from grace at any time. Anybody can make a mistake at any moment.

If you have money, kids, a lovely home and a loving family, you are probably safer than most because you have some security, purpose, happiness. However, one slip and you're fucked.

Tags: #addiction #drugs #suicide #depression #capitalism #parents