This is a story about the origins of [my] bipolar disorder...

Here are a couple of select conversations from the last year that might help you to understand the circumstances that influence my mood instability.

Me: "I'd like to discharge myself from hospital, please"

Doctors: "No. You are on a high dependency ward. You will die"

Me: "It can't be that bad. I want to discharge myself, please"

Doctors: "Your kidneys aren't working. You need dialysis. Your blood has dangerously high levels of potassium in it and you could go into cardiac arrest at any moment"

Me: "But I need to go to work otherwise I will lose my job"

Doctors: "You can't work if you're dead"

Me: "I'm going to have to risk it"

Why would I do such a staggeringly stupid thing? Why would I risk my life like that? It seems patently absurd, doesn't it?

For my whole career, bosses and shareholders have demanded only one thing: do more, faster.

I decided that I was being exploited. I'm the one who makes the software. Without my software, there's no product; there's no business and there's no profit. Without software that I've built, no amount of lawyers and salespeople and middle managers and jumped-up idiots with important sounding job titles, would have anything to do other than burn what little money the company had left. If the software is the product, then you've got nothing if you've got no software. If the software is what allows you to do thousands of times more volume than you'd be able to do without it, then you haven't got a business if you haven't got the software - your business model would collapse. Your business is software.

I'm not saying that software is important. Software can't build a house. Software can't plant carrots. Software can't dispose of your sewerage. Software is bullshit. However, most of the economy is bullshit - at least 85% bullshit here in the UK anyway.

So, anyway, some jumped-up little twat with his daddy's money comes up to me saying "I'm an entrepreneur and I've got a genius idea... I just need a geek to make the software". On closer inspection the software is where the genius lies. When the business idea is examined with close scrutiny, it turns out that none of the important details have been figured out. Turning an idea into a working business - the execution - is something that gets figured out by the lawyers and software engineers. The "entrepreneur" just provides his daddy's money, while he walks around with his chest puffed out pretending like he's a serious businessman.

The next thing that happens is that I say "how much money have you got to spend and when do you need to have a working product?". The answer is always the same: "I haven't got any money and I need it yesterday".

Where did the budget go for the software? It seems to have all been spent on employing a bunch of old schoolchums to do "brand consultancy" or "business development". Basically, the directors fly all around the world attending conferences and "networking", which is very costly because they're running up huge expenses. Meanwhile, the geek is expected to churn out the software - "I don't know what it is, but is it finished yet?" - as fast as they possibly can. It's quite common now for very capable young computer programmers to work unpaid, or on slave wages, because they're desperate to gain commercial experience. Some idiots even think that I'd enjoy working on a software project for free, like it's a motherf**king hobby or something.

So, I arrived at the situation where I would always work at top speed. I've pleased my bosses and shareholders, not because I give them what they want, but because I've generally been much faster and much cheaper than anybody they've used before. In short: I deliver.

I was working so damn hard all the time and not seeing much of a reward for the dedication I put into my job, so I started to work for myself. I made software and I sold it. I made some iPhone apps and I sold them. One of my apps took me half a day to code and it was downloaded thousands of times. This made sense to me - the whole reason I work with computers is because they can do things while I sleep; a computer can perform many thousandfold tasks than I ever could. It makes sense that I would use a computer to leverage my talents and efforts.

I didn't quite understand that the whole reason why I came to be writing iPhone apps was because I'd been burnt out by my employer. I'd landed a hell of a project. The world's biggest project, in fact - "Nick, would you mind creating us a system that can process a quadrillion dollars worth of credit default swaps, please? Have it done as soon as you can, please, there's a good chap... we've got a global economy that needs wrecking".

I didn't quite understand that I burnt myself out again writing iPhone apps. I coded as fast as I could. I catnapped and skipped meals. I worked 7 days a week. I knew that every moment that I wasn't coding was another moment that my competitors were potentially going to release a similar app. I had to be first to market with my ideas. I had to be the first person in the Apple App Store with an app that did something that nobody else had thought of yet.

I decided to start a proper business. I decided that I'd create a piece of software with a recurring license cost. I decided to create a piece of Software as a Service (SaaS) and then I'd be able to earn money while I slept, once I'd completed the system. I didn't have any of my daddy's money to spend though. I didn't raise any money from friends and family. I just had me and my idea, my software engineering skills and 24 hours in every single day.

I didn't quite understand that I burnt myself out doing my startup. I didn't understand that writing the software - the hard bit - was only the beginning of what I had to do. I had to raise investment to be able to market my product. I had to sell the product. I had to support the product. I had to do all the business administration. I had to raise investment to be able to afford to hire people, so that I didn't collapse under the weight of all those competing demands. I didn't go fast enough though, so I did collapse.

With every burst of intense focus and effort, there would be a windfall. Particularly in investment banking, if you do a good job then you get a big fat juicy bonus. If you make an app that goes to #1 in the App Store charts then you get a windfall. Even if you do a startup, you can sometimes get a reward - my startup was at least profitable; investable.

The pattern of behaviour was established. It made sense to me to work as hard and as fast as I could, because the rewards seemed to be there.

When I run a software project - a team of people who work for me - then I put developer welfare as the top priority. I set realistic deadlines. I allow time for people to catch their breath. If the pressure starts to increase, then I move the deadline rather than asking people to work longer hours. Bosses should hate me, but I underpromise and overdeliver, and I run happy motivated high-performing teams. I get great feedback from the people who work for me.

When I'm coding, I seem to forget about my own mental health. When I've got a tough deadline and a tough deliverable, I'll work as hard as I can. I get scared. I think I've forgotten how to code. I feel like my skills are rusty and outdated. I feel old and useless. So, because of this fear, I go as fast as I possibly can.

It hasn't helped that I've never quite managed to gain a comfortable financial cushion that would allow me to feel like I can consider my health and general mental wellbeing, as well as just delivering the software. I always put work as my first priority.

Me: "I'm going to go to London to do some IT consultancy for an investment bank"

Psychiatrist: "But that's what you always do, and you know it makes you unwell"

Me: "But I need the money"

Psychiatrist: "You need to look after your mental health"

Me: "My mental health can wait. I'm nearly bankrupt"

Psychiatrist: "Well go bankrupt then. Allow yourself time to recover"

Me: "But then I'll never be able to work in investment banking again"

Psychiatrist: "That might be a good thing. It makes you unwell"

Me: "Yes, but it also makes me rich"

In the interests of completing the picture: I am not rich. The amount that I earn would make me rich if I could stay well for long enough to keep working, but the stress and the pressure also mean that I almost always get sick. It's a horrible catch 22.

So, I've completed another software system and it's live - it's up and running and people like it. My boss is pleased. Am I burnt out? Yes, I am a little. I had to bunk off work yesterday. In fact, I've bunked 3 out of the last 9 days. Is this the beginning of me starting to take a little more care of myself?

The cycle is very much not over. I need at least another one or two decent length contracts before I have that all-important financial cushion. It's going to take me until the end of the year to get back to financial security. It's going to be months and months before the ever-present threat of running out of money goes away, even if some money is slowly starting to trickle into my bank account.

It's quite ludicrous that I was on collision course with certain bankruptcy, and now I'm solvent and I've delivered another project on time and on budget. Last year was the year where I gave up. Everything was just too damn hard. I had a great contract, then my kidneys packed up. I had an OK contract but the boss didn't seem to realise he'd hired a bit of rock star at a bargain basement price. I got a contract, but I only just had enough money to be able to afford to go to work... I was running on petrol fumes.

If you were to ask the most stable person you know to live my life, I guarantee that their mood would be unstable as hell. How can you expect anybody to go through the kinds of ups and downs that I go through, without accompanying high and low mood? My mood is a sane reaction to an insane world.

I don't think I have bipolar disorder. I think I'm a product of my environment.

Tags: #bipolar #career #computing #banking

This is a story about escaping...

I just realised that I couldn't tell you anything about how these wines tasted. I drank them without savouring the smell and the flavour. I drank all these bottles of wine on my own and I can't remember a thing about them. If I had to choose which one I enjoyed the most, I wouldn't be able to - I didn't drink them for enjoyment. I drank them to get drunk.

When I took a sip from my glass last night, I still had a very bad hangover from the night before. The wine tasted sour and unpleasant. I had been in two minds about drinking anyway, but something prompted me to drink - I think it was anxiety about fast approaching Monday morning and returning to the office; another agonising week doing a job I hate. There was anxiety about my financial situation too. I had run out of money and spent my final £10 on wine and a cheeseburger. I was skint.

Alcohol has become liquid diazepam for me. Alcohol is a very poor substitute for benzodiazepines though. At least with benzos you don't have dreadful hangovers. At least with benzos, you don't get a fat tummy from all the excess calories. At least with benzos, it's possible to be very precise with a dose. Benzos slotted pretty easily into my everyday life, in a way that alcohol doesn't. I would take a benzo to go to sleep, and another to be able to get up and go to work. I was functional on benzos. Alcohol is unhealthy. Alcohol is not going to lead anywhere except becoming unfit, overweight and suffering from various alcoholism-related illnesses. Taking my tranquillisers in pill form is far more preferable to having to guzzle gallons of booze.

Why would I be getting so intoxicated anyway? Surely my life is wonderful?

There's a little bit of loneliness and boredom. I'm working away from home and living in a hotel. There's nothing much to do except drink. I was running out of money, so it's not like I could go out and do things. Also, did I mention I was running out of money? When you know that you're running out of money, it's really stressful. Stress means that you can't relax and you can't sleep. Constant anxiety is a terrible thing. When you're running out of money, anxiety is constant. When you're not sleeping, anxiety is with you all night long, tormenting you. There are no easy solutions to my problems, but money's a good start. If you don't have any money, you might as well just get drunk.

"How do you afford to get so drunk if you've got no money?"

Well, it's about priorities. The six bottles of wine pictured above probably cost me about £42. How much would I spend on gym membership? How much would I spend on a night out seeing friends? How much would I spend wooing a girl? It's not possible to simply not exist, and still earn money. Earning money requires existence - nobody pays you unless you're in the right place at the right time. The only way to get me into a shitty situation that I hate - living out of a suitcase and working a job that makes me sick - is to oil me up with a load of booze or tip a packet of pills down my throat. It's completely necessary to have booze when I'm doing something that's otherwise incompatible with my mental health.

Thus, we arrive at my central theme: drinking myself sober. The route to sobriety does not just include abstinence. The route to sobriety also needs to include things that are compatible with life. Modern life requires money. The way to get money is to do a job that you hate. The more you hate your job, the more you'll get paid. I REALLY HATE my job, so they pay me LOADS AND LOADS of money.

I finally got paid today.

Now I have money but I also have a big booze habit. I was pissed out of my mind the whole of Christmas and New Year, because I really didn't want to go back. I'm quite an articulate fellow but I really struggle to quite convey just how unhappy my particular line of work makes me.

"Retrain! Be a famous pop singer! Drive Formula One cars! Be an astronaut! Be a professional footballer!" I hear you shout.

Yes, but there are economic fundamentals at play in the capitalist bullshit society we all live in. It makes far more sense for me to be paid absolutely bucketloads of cash, and suffer a very great deal, than to be paid absolute peanuts and suffer loads anyway for different reasons.

I got paid today.

An alcohol habit, I can deal with, I think. When I had a massive problem with sleeping pills and tranquillisers and painkillers, life was a different story. There was no way that I was going to be able to quickly and easily cut down my addiction to prescription medications. I was actually physically dependent on benzos to the point where I would have seizures and possibly die if I stopped taking them abruptly. I was trapped. Now I'm not trapped. I have a booze habit - I drink more than I want to - but it's manageable. I don't drink spirits. I don't drink every day. I don't drink in the morning. I don't get pissed at work. It's a much better situation than when I had such a bad benzo addiction that I was on diazepam around-the-clock.

Sleep is one of the reasons why I've historically had a problem with booze and benzos. Zopiclone is called a nonbenzodiazepine, but it's still a benzo. Zopiclone is addictive. I used to have a few glasses of red wine to help me sleep. When I discovered zopiclone it became my drug of choice for helping me to sleep. I took it for most of 2017.

Now, I'm doing all the right things for sleep. I practice good sleep hygiene. Lowering the lights, avoiding strong blue light, having breakfast, completely avoiding caffeine, having 5-HTP (a precursor to melatonin) and magnesium supplements. All of these things make a difference. I get a little exercise too.

But, on the flip side, when you stop taking diazepam, alprazolam, zopiclone, zolpidem, pregabalin, mirtazepine, lamotrogine and a whole heap of other sedative/hypnotic/tranquilising/sleeping-pill type drugs, you get a horrible amount of rebound anxiety and insomnia. Words can barely express how horrible it is to live with a constant gnawing sense of dread, doom and dismay. I'm not talking about a few nerves that can be waved away with bloody breathing exercises or yoga. I'm talking about living for 24 hours a day with the unshakable sensation that you're about to die. It's not something that's going to be fixed by your quack snake-oil cures, because it has a biochemical origin. What goes up must come down. If you take heaps of pills, they're really really hard to stop taking and you'll feel awful when you do stop taking the medication.

So, I've been self-medicating for the combined anxiety of running out of money, having to start a new job, doing work that I absolutely loathe and that makes me sick, having to live away from friends and family in a lonely isolating environment and not having any bloody money to spend to make it bearable, while withdrawing from bucketloads of addictive medications. I think £42 for six bottles of wine is a bloody bargain, when you consider that this unhealthy coping mechanism has actually helped me to cope. I've done it. I've bloody done it. I worked and I got paid - that wouldn't have been possible without chemical crutches to prop me up.

Hurrah for alcohol. Better the devil you know. It should be straightforward to now reduce my alcohol intake to healthier levels. Some moderate alcohol consumption is actually desirable. I can't imagine living on this shitty overcrowded rainy island, without wine and beer to drink. I can't imagine anything worse than living life completely sober.

Of course, there's a risk that I swing the other way, and my drinking worsens. There's a risk that I'll reach for the harder stuff - which I've never touched a drop of in my life. There's a risk that I'll lose control.

At the moment, I'm really chuffed with where I'm at with my addiction to substances. To have quit all those dangerously addictive drugs, and now be left with a very negligible habit is quite impressive. What does a couple of glasses of wine matter?

The next challenge is to try to stay off the zopiclone and taper off the tiny amount of pregabalin that I've been relying on. It's taken longer and it's been much harder than I thought it would be. I'm amazed just how terrible I still feel, as I reduce my dose of all the pills I was addicted to to almost zero. It's amazing just how much of a strong hold on my mind those pills had. I'd reach for those pills to go to sleep, and I'd reach for those pills just to cope with hideously horrible stressful shit, that made my life unbearably filled with anxiety. Now, I occasionally have some red wine. That's not bad is it?

I really can't decide which way to go at the moment. I'm not going to drink tonight, but I've had to take 50mg of pregabalin to be able to cope with anxiety. I shouldn't be stressed - I finally got paid - but it's going to take a little while for me to re-adjust to the new circumstances. I've been living with the threat of bankruptcy hanging over me for so long, I can't quite believe I dodged that bullet.

I'm not sure if anybody who's followed my turbulent ups and downs can detect any improvement or change from where I was at when I was under the influence of enough medications to tranquillise an elephant. It's really hard to gauge in myself whether I'm any different at all. Am I able to better perceive reality? Am I communicating with more clarity? Am I getting better? It's impossible for me to judge.

One thing that should be noted is that my decision to reduce and quit a whole host of highly addictive medications, alcohol and other substances, was my own. I also don't think I could have quit everything if I was forced to go cold turkey and quit abruptly. In fact, it would quite literally have killed me to do so - you can't just stop when you're physically dependent on substances. Alcohol, for all its faults, is at least available as a ubiquitous form of self-medication. If I'd had to rely on doctors to give me what I needed, I'd never have been able to get through such a torturous period of re-adjustment. It's inhumane to not offer any kind of substitute prescribing or realistic tapering of doses, to help people escape from the trap of addiction.

Yes, I laughed at the amount of effort that junkies will go to in order to get a tiny bit more methadone or subutex, but that's the point - you do you. You know what you can take and you go at the pace that means you succeed. You know what you need and you should damn well get it. Anything other than this is going to be doomed to failure, and cause undue suffering.

I've suffered and it's been hard. It's still hard. But, I got through something really tough and I still have the comfort of knowing there's a bottle of wine waiting for me in the off licence down the road if everything gets thoroughly unbearable. Hurrah for red wine.

Tags: #addiction #alcohol

This is a story about the past year...

As I searched for an image that aptly represented the last year, I realised that I would struggle to find one. Should I use a photo of fireworks over London taken from my balcony? Should I use one from one of my visits to hospital? Should I use a photo that represents something abstract: addiction, travel, work, recovery or something else? Should I use a photo that reminds me where I was a year ago versus where I am today?

I've selected this picture from a psych ward. The tree is supposed to be decorated with leaves which have a handwritten message from patients who have successfully recovered and left the ward. There aren't many leaves on the tree.

I'm regularly criticised for being deliberately glum. Perhaps my negativity is a choice. Perhaps I wouldn't be so stressed, anxious and depressed, if only I decided to be fit, healthy and happy instead. Perhaps I could also decide that I'm a millionaire too, while I'm at it.

I should be happy that I survived 2017. The odds certainly weren't in my favour. Whether it was kidney failure, addiction or suicide that claimed my life, there was sure to be something that was going to kill me. I should be happy to have made it through another year, shouldn't I?

What about prospects? I start 2018 with friends, living with a family, with a roof over my head, with a job. Looking at the hard numbers, things look rosy: I earn a lot and it'll take less than a year to replenish my finances. Most people would be chuffed to bits to have the opportunities that I have.

Tonight will be my 5th night without sleeping pills and my 3rd without painkillers, having partially relapsed because the pills were helping me with stress and anxiety. I enter the New Year relatively free from drugs, medications and other substance abuse problems. Of course, I will drink. I will probably drink for the whole of 2018. I have no intention of becoming teetotal, although I do need to reduce the amount I drink.

The list of New Year's resolutions that other people are begging to make for me is endless: join a gym, do some volunteering, eat more kale, do yoga, smile, pet a dog, kiss a baby, punch the sun etc. etc.

It might seem like I'm bloody minded - intent on being miserable - but really, I'm not. It might seem like I'm ungrateful, but again, I'm not.

2017 has been what it's been. It's been a hell of a ride. I'm content just to say that I've survived it and that I have no intention of a repeat, given the choice.

Tags: #addiction #hospital #depression

This is a story about sequels...

Two years ago, I was experimenting with my blog. I thought it would be profound to write a public suicide note, record a video and go jump off the Golden Gate Bridge. I thought I would get sacked from my job and illustrate how the stress would push me into acts of extremism. I decided to sleep rough close to the skyscraper I had been working in. I thought I was going to starve myself for 25 days and spend Christmas Day in a tent. I thought I was going to kill myself by going on hunger strike.

For 25 days I wrote an advent calendar type series of blog posts. The whole thing was leading up to the punchline: boxing day. Really, what I was doing was building up to the revelation of the truth: that I'd had problems with addiction. It was a big admission. It took a lot of courage to be honest.

Why did it take me so long to acknowledge my problems with addiction?

Generally, addicts don't get a very favourable hearing. Addicts are amongst the most stigmatised people on the planet. If you're looking for a sympathetic non-judgemental ear, it's probably best if you don't mention any addiction problems you've had until somebody's got to know you.

So, people had to get to know me.

My friends, family and work colleagues knew me. Those people who've gotten to know me have seen that I'm an OK person. I'm not a monster.

But am I a monster?

It's surprising how little it takes for us to question everything we ever knew about a person. Sometimes, there's a revelation about a person that can completely shake our perceptions of them. Suddenly, it's as if a person we knew well is a stranger to us, and not just any stranger: a horrible nasty stranger who's going to rob us and kill our children and eat them. Everybody knows that addicts leave a trail of HIV-infected needles lying around everywhere they go, especially in areas where children play. Everybody knows that addicts enjoy nothing more than random acts of killing. Also, if you discover that somebody's had problems with addiction, you can pretty much forget everything you ever knew about them.

Hang on a second though.

How quickly can you completely re-evaluate an entire person and decide that they're a completely worthless hopeless junkie, who'd rob you without a moment's hesitation in order to score their next fix? How long does it take to write somebody off completely and dismiss everything you ever knew about them? Why are junkies just so damn easy to hate and what happened to the person you used to know?

While there are some very unfortunate people whose morals will be corrupted by their addiction, that's not the case for most addicts. Not every addict is a liar, a cheat, a thief and somebody who would recklessly endanger the lives of your precious children. Not every addict is flakey, unreliable, untrustworthy, unscrupulous and immoral. Not every addict is worthless, hopeless and doomed to forever seek and take drugs. Not every addict is a menace to society, and should be treated like a leper: shunned from work, friends, family and all the other things that give us a functional life. Not every addict should be marginalised and demonised.

Of course, I write with a vested interest. I don't want to be mistreated. I don't want the stigma attached to me.

So, why don't I share my stories of addiction anonymously? Why don't I join Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous and Cocaine Anonymous and Crystal Meth Anonymous, and while I'm at it Gambling Addicts Anonymous and Sex Addicts Anonymous? Why don't I keep quiet and just pretend like I'm normal? I don't even take drugs.

Nobody thinks that gambling addicts inject packs of cards, so why is it that when you think of me - an addict - you immediately imagine dirty needles? Where did the OK Nick that you used to know go? Why did you eject the pleasant memories you had of me, and replace them with an imagined version of me, where I was mugging grannies for their life savings?

It's necessary for me to concentrate on the prequel to my story, in order to receive a fair hearing. I need to explain that adverse childhood experiences, an abusive relationship, stress, burnout and mental health problems, all created a fertile environment in which to grow a substance abuse problem. I need to explain that my mood instability - bipolar - predisposed me to reckless sensation seeking, such as substance abuse. I need to explain that my motivation was self-medication, not getting high. I sought relief from symptoms, not enjoyment. I was trapped and I needed a way out. I chose the wrong one. I made a mistake.

We might take a quick glance at a situation and utter the words "why don't they just...?". Why don't they just what? Leave their abusive partner? Stop moping around and get out of bed? Stop taking drugs? Move somewhere else? Sort themselves out?

When you're secure and happy, everything looks pretty easy. All people have gotta do is get a house, a job, a sexual partner, friends, hobbies and interests, a loving family, a supportive environment, a healthy lifestyle, coping mechanisms, substantial financial resources and favourable socioeconomic conditions. That's it. That's all. Just get on and do it!

For some, remaining addicted is not about the ongoing want for drugs, it's actually slow suicide.

That last point is worth re-iterating. One of the reasons why some people won't stop taking drugs, is because they don't want to live anymore. They literally don't care if they die. I would say that most addicts are very well aware that their addictions are going to kill them, but they carry on anyway - they're committing suicide, slowly.

Looking at teens and twentysomethings who smoke, we might see that there's a general belief that "it'll never happen to me". In our youth, we tend to believe we're pretty indestructible. By that same token, we might assume that a drug addict believes that they'll be one of the lucky ones, who addiction will spare. I don't think that's the case.

As an addict, it quickly becomes apparent that control has been lost and you're on collision course with health problems and early death. Repeatedly, the addict will have extremely aversive experiences which scream loud and clear that the path of addiction is going to lead to death and destruction. Do you think every lecture about what an addict is doing to themselves falls on deaf ears?

Equally, do you think that addicts just don't care? Do they want to die?

Committing suicide - including addiction - is not about wanting to die. Suicide is driven by hopelessness and inescapable awful feelings. If life only has pain and misery to offer, why wouldn't a person choose early death? If building any kind of liveable tolerable life is an insurmountable task, what hope is there? Who'd want to spend the rest of their life miserable, depressed, anxious and in pain?

It's easy to say "keep putting one foot in front of the other" or "take things one day at a time" because you don't have to live through that misery. It's easy to ask somebody else to tolerate the intolerable, because it's not you who has to suffer: it's them. Eventually, a person can conclude that there aren't going to be any good days, or that the few pleasant times don't outweigh the multitudinous bad times. On balance, one might conclude, life's not worth living.

When you've made that decision that life's not worth living, it's pretty hard to find any reason to not have that next hit of drugs, even when the drugs are killing you.

I write to you today clean, sober and with no intention of obtaining and taking drugs.

However, I think it's highly likely that I will take drugs again, both recreationally and abusively. The number of protective factors - friends, family, work, money - have increased, but my life is still very badly broken. There are innumerable things that predispose me to relapsing onto drugs, and on the flip side there is a huge list of things I've got to fix or get in my life in order to have enough on the other side of the scales to balance things out. I look to the year ahead: what do I have look forward to other than hard work, living out of a suitcase, paying off debts and otherwise scrimping and saving? I'm sorry, but I'm not exactly thrilled by the prospect of living off sandwiches that I've made in a hotel room, spreading the mustard with a shoehorn.

But, perhaps also there's a desperate desire to self-sabotage because life was simpler as an addict. Even the synthetic cannabinoids have enough of an attractive intoxication for addicts to jettison the stress and strain of paying rent and bills, and having to hold down a job, in favour of homelessness. The bureaucratic burden of civilised society is wearisome and ridiculous. The form-filling and pointless makework of bullshit jobs is absurd. It's not just about the drugs - it's also about dropping out.

You'd think that dropping out would be a terrible thing. You'd think that the shame of the loss of status would be unbearable, but it's liberating. You know that you have to work hard to keep up your mortgage or rent payments. You live in constant fear of losing your job, which would quickly lead to eviction. When you become homeless, it's a relief - a thing you feared the most has happened, and it's not as bad as you thought it would be; somehow you manage to cope.

I'm averse to the idea of a miserable dead-end McJob. I'm averse to the idea of spending any more time stressed out of my mind, helping my boss get richer; helping my landlord get richer. I'm averse to the idea that the peanuts that most people get paid, in any way compensates them for giving up the prime years of their lives. I don't see that society is working well for most people. I see that stress, anxiety, depression and other mental health problems are rife. I see that suicide is the biggest killer of the group of people who are our most productive members of society. That's not fair.

So, I need to find a middle way. I need to find a way that's not suicide, not drug addiction, but it's not a miserable dead-end job either. I refuse to get a bullshit job that pays peanuts. I'd rather die.

At the moment, I'm clean from drugs and I'm working a very well paid job. I'm learning stuff. It's stressful, but it's not boring. I'm increasing my value - my employability - as well as doing a good job. It feels fair.

I'm starting 2018 at a considerable disadvantage. I'm deeply in debt. I don't have a girlfriend. I don't rent or own a home. Why bother?

It's been 6 months since I had an addiction. I'm clean. Why would I even write about addiction? I've won, haven't I?

In fact, addiction is always there: a dependable companion. Very little effort is involved in resuming an addiction. Addiction will always be everything you expected it to be. Addiction never disappoints. Conversely, a happy functional life with all the components necessary to make it work, is very very far out of reach; almost unattainable. You might think that because I'm only 6 months away from putting a lot of the pieces in place, that it'd be easy. 6 months is no time at all, right? In fact, 6 months without all the things you take for granted, might as well be a billion years. It's never going to happen. Try getting in a bath filled with ice cubes. Try holding your hand over a naked flame. What you perceive as quick and easy is not quick and easy when you're in pain.

My present situation might look infinitely preferable to my life as an addict, but it's not. Addiction could last me forever - until the day I die - but what I have today is only temporary; it's fake. I can't stay where I am forever. My contract will come to an end and I'll have to find another job. I'll need to rent or buy a place to live. I need to keep moving around: 3 and a half hours on the train, one-way, and moving from hotel to hotel, AirBnB to AirBnB... always moving on. I'm tired, even though it looks like I should be well rested. I'm stressed, even if it looks like things are going in the right direction.

Addiction's there as a one-stop-shop. Addiction means that I can stop pedalling so damn fast. Addiction means relief. Addiction means there's an end in sight. I'd be a liar if I didn't admit that when I'm alone with my thoughts, I don't immediately think that addiction is infinitely preferable to the mountainous task ahead, to merely build a mediocre life of disappointment and depression; boredom and bullshit.

Going cold turkey doesn't prove anything.

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

This is a story about cyclical patterns...

In 2014 I was homeless and addicted to drugs. I got myself a job at a bank, got myself a place to live and paid off all my debts. Then, I lost my contract. I went to a shop in Soho and bought two packets of a legal high powder and proceeded to undo all my hard work. Within a matter of weeks, I was back on the supercrack.

In 2015 I was homeless and addicted to drugs. I got myself a job at a bank, got myself a place to live and paid off all my debts. Then, I lost my contract. I went online and bought two packets of legal high powder and two packets of legal benzodiazepine tablets. Within a month, I was back on the supercrack.

In 2016 I had a lovely apartment. I was clean all summer. I went on holiday. I met an amazing girl who I was totally in love with. I wrote my first novel. I had a brilliant Christmas with my girlfriend and her family. Then, I got myself a job at a bank. My left leg swelled up to twice the size of the right leg, both my kidneys failed, I was put on emergency dialysis and I had to be admitted to hospital for a couple of weeks, on a high dependency ward. Then, I lost my contract. Within a fortnight I was back on the supercrack.

In 2017 I had a lovely apartment. I took supercrack. I tried to quit the supercrack. I got depressed. I tricked my doctor into giving me California rocket fuel - a combination of venlafaxine and mirtazepine antidepressants. I went hypomanic and split up with my amazing girlfriend. I bought enough supercrack to last me two years. I went insane with stimulant psychosis and was thoroughly beastly towards my amazing girlfriend. I ran out of money. I moved to Manchester. I got another girlfriend. We broke up. I tried to kill myself. I spent a couple of days with a machine breathing for me in intensive care. I got sectioned and got locked up on a secure psych ward. I moved to Wales. I wrote 42,000 words of my second novel. I got myself a job at a bank. There isn't enough time left in 2017 to get back on the supercrack. I'm worried I'm going to relapse in January. I haven't lost my contract yet.

If we dip into each year a little bit more closely, 2014 was a really dreadful one. I was an inpatient for about 14 weeks. I lived in a bush in Kensington Palace Gardens and slept rough on Hampstead Heath. I was in two rehabs. I lived in a 14-bed hostel dorm, but that was actually one of the highlights. I abused a lot of benzodiazepines and amphetamines, as well as the supercrack. I got in trouble with the police. Twice.

2015 looks tame by comparison. Although I abused stimulants and 'downers', I had a couple of visits to a lovely family in Ireland, who looked after me. Strangely, it was working 12 hour days and working 7 days a week that exhausted me and tipped me into hypomania. I spent a week suicidal on a psych ward then suddenly decided to fly to San Francisco. I went straight to the Golden Gate Bridge, which I had contemplated jumping off. I was sober for 120 consecutive days. I deliberately got my contract terminated, because I had ethical objections to what the bank I was working for was doing. I started blogging.

2016 is unusual - perhaps there is no easy pattern we can spot - because I got myself clean and into work much earlier than I'd managed in previous years. I worked a whole contract - notably not for a bank - without going mad and getting sacked. I got a good reference and my team were really pleased with the way I ran the project. My life was quite stable. However, I was a sneaky bastard. I was using supercrack and benzos in secret, and lying to my amazing girlfriend to cover up my drug abuse.

2017 was off the charts. I've never been so sick. I've never been so close to death. For the first half of the year I had binge after binge after binge. I abused opiates, sleeping pills, tranquillisers, club drugs and stimulants. My drug abuse was definitely going to kill me. I had a physical dependency on benzodiazepines that looked impossible to cure - how was I going to escape from the death trap? I decided I couldn't escape, so I took a massive overdose. The hospital gave me a 50:50 chance of pulling through.

I'm worried that I'm repeating old patterns of behaviour. I always go back to the banks when I need money, because they pay so well and it's the quickest way of digging myself out of debt. I'm living out of a suitcase, moving from AirBnB to AirBnB. It's exhausting and stressful: factors that tipped me into hypomanic insanity back in 2015.

What is unusual is that I'm going into the New Year with a contract in place: I have my job and it's going well. I'm starting 2018 with money on the way, as opposed to the fear of bankruptcy and eviction. I'm going into next year with far fewer stresses than I've had for a very long time. Perhaps it's good that there aren't even any girls in the picture at the moment. Love and sex always have a bit of a destabilising effect on me.

Writing this summary of my hit-and-miss boom-and-bust crazy life, I wonder if I'm doomed to forever repeat the pattern.

One thing that's notably different this year is living with a family. I care about them. I imagine what it'd be like if the kids asked "where's Nick?" and the answer was that I was dead, or as good as dead because I'd relapsed onto supercrack.

This year, I quit supercrack, tramadol, codeine, dihydrocodeine, diazepam (Valium), alprazolam (Xanax), zolpidem (Ambien), zopiclone and pregabalin. I was prescribed venlafaxine, mirtazepine and lamotrogine, but I don't take any of them now. I had 30 consecutive sober days during October. In fact, I was sober from more or less the start of September to early November. My brain has been completely drug-addled at times, but I'm clean as a whistle at the moment - I'm unmedicated and I'm not taking any mind-altering substances. I don't drink caffeinated beverages.

I'd like to tell you that I feel wonderful, but I don't. I have a cold. It's winter. Winter is shit.

You might look at all the times I've tripped up and conclude that I'm bound to trip up again. However, you might look at all the things I've fixed and conclude that I'm pretty good at fixing up my life when it's fucked. All I've got to do is bring together all the different elements: friends and family, work and home, money and rest and relaxation, stability and exercise and hopes and dreams, love and romance and sex. Easy, right?

If you're wondering what my drug of choice is, and thinking that it's supercrack, you're wrong. Look more closely at the picture at the top of this blog post. What's that thing in-between my legs? It's not my male member, it's a wine glass.

With closer examination of my entire adult life, we can see that alcohol features heavily. In fact my latest job came about as a result of being friends with a lovely guy who's an alcoholic. We spent a week getting pissed, when I was supposed to be finding my feet with the new job. Somehow, I've managed to drink my way through a very successful career. Without booze I'm somewhat out of kilter. Without booze, how would I self-medicate for my mood fluctuations?

Yes, without booze, my bipolar disposition rages out of control. I work too hard. I take everything too seriously. I fly off the handle.

I'm not genuinely suggesting that booze is harmless or the cure of all ills, but it's been such a big component of my adult life that I don't really know how to cope without it. How would I have survived the recent stresses and strains of a 2,500 mile round-trip, to go and gather money from the latest bank I'm working for, without alcohol? How would I square away my deep unhappiness with the work I do, with the need to earn money, if it wasn't for drowning my sorrows? Alcohol might be a terrible solution, but it's the one I've got and I know it works.

Is it lunchtime yet? I'm not an alcoholic, because I don't drink in the morning. I just make sure I lie in bed until it's after midday.

Tags: #drugs #alcohol #addiction #mentalhealth #bipolar #career #banking

This is a story about living out of a suitcase...

This is my life now. Spreading mustard and mayonaise onto long-life bread with a shoehorn, placing sweaty pre-cut cheese squares in-between the slices and chowing down on a hotel-room made sandwich, while swigging from a can of strong European lager. This is the life of a business traveller who can't really afford the expenses - I'm faking it until I make it. I'd be sleeping in my car... if I had a car.

It'd be fairly easy to look back on the journey that started with near-certainty that I was going to get sued for non-payment of rent, whilst also being evicted... of course, I had no money. I still don't have any money. I have negative money. I have negative negative LOTS OF DEBT MONEY. When I get paid, things won't be so bad. When I've been paid for a few months, things will look positively rosy. "That wasn't so bad" you'll say. You're wrong. It was bad.

Things are often a lot easier said than done.

A lot of the experiences in my life have been awful at the time, but later on I've been able to laugh about the dire straits I was in. In fact, the only way I've been able to come to terms with some ridiculous stuff I've been through is to tell my hair-raising tales of near-death experiences and destruction to the world. You might think that I glorify events of the past, or wear bad stuff as a badge of honour. That's not true, but what am I supposed to do with all those negative experiences? Am I supposed to walk around with a glum face and tell everybody how terrible I am? Am I only alive to serve as a living reminder to people that they shouldn't make bad choices like I did?

Choices.

Yes. Do you really believe in free will? I imagine that you believe in Santa Claus too. There's no free will. Our choices are always heavily biased. We're cornered and coerced. Would I have gone back to IT consulting for an investment bank in London if I wasn't flat broke? Am I making free will choices, or am I just doing what I've got to do to survive?

Survival.

My version of survival probably looks pretty ridiculous to you. The kind of money that's going to be coming my way soon is pretty obscene - banks pay very well. So, does that mean that I'm not surviving? Am I actually completely fine and dandy? I'm just making a fuss about nothing, right? In fact, if you saw the numbers, you might be angered; you might conclude that I've been fine all along... nothing to worry about and never in any danger.

A friend often challenges me on why I would keep myself on the endangered species list. Why would I continue to advertise my distress? Surely I'm safe and secure now. Well, how long ago was it that I was made homeless, jobless, having some dealings with the police, locked up on a psych ward and facing certain bankruptcy with mountainous debts?

So, I got a job. I worked that job. I did a good job. Money is on the way now. Case closed?

Actually, can you imagine how stressful it was to have to hit the ground running and pretend like I've got my shit together all of a sudden? Just because I'm pretty damn good at acting like I'm a cool customer and I can handle anything that life throws at me, the reality is that my inner monologue goes pretty much like this: "shit! shit! shit! everything's on fire! everything's too hard! it'll never work! everything's ruined and it'll never be fixed! it's too hard! I can't do it!".

Of course, a lot of people find new countries, new cities, new jobs, new work colleagues, new offices, new challenges, new accommodation and the stress of the unfamiliarity of circumstances, to make them very anxious. I'm not the only one who feels stressed and anxious when taken out of my comfort zone. I'm not the first person ever to have butterflies in their tummy about a new job.

Ha ha.

If only it was just a new job. Try plucking homeless unemployed bankrupt drug addicts who are known to the police, up from locked psych wards, giving them a scrub down, putting them in a suit and plonking them at a desk in another country. See how many times that works out for you.

To top it all off, there is the ever-present danger - and there still is - that I'll run out of money before that first payment lands in my bank account. If you think it's just a case of budgeting you're an idiot. You can't budget if the numbers just don't add up - sometimes there just isn't enough money to pay for everything. Sometimes, you can't afford to go to work, because you can't afford to get there. Catch 22.

If you think that I'm not a representative example, you're right. Most people will fall at one of the many hurdles. Most people would find themselves marginalised and excluded and blacklisted and without a hope of ever recovering their poise; hope of ever returning to normal life. You're right. I'm not most people. I'm not special though. I'm not different.

I cashed in one of my "get out of jail free" cards. I don't have any aces left up my sleeve. I've called in pretty much every favour. I had help, of course. People don't survive without help.

Arguably I wasn't a very worthy cause to help. Arguably, I'm arrogant and ungrateful; I credit myself where no credit is due - surely the situation I find myself in today is entirely thanks to other people, and I'm just a passenger... I've been gifted everything I've got from generous people; I haven't worked a day in my life.

To a large extent, I agree that luck and other people's generosity are the main factors in my life. So what? Would you prefer me dead?

Of course, I question my utility; I question the value of my productive output. I'm not rescuing children from burning orphanages after all, am I? Isn't it about time that I built a school in Africa or distributed food and clean water in some war-torn area flooded with refugees? With all my software development expertise, why haven't I created an app that cures cancer, or programmed a supercomputer to find the solution to world hunger? Isn't it about time that I stopped being so pleased with myself and did something to help other people? Isn't it high time that I stopped being so selfish and self-centred?

Easier said than done.

Take a look around. OK so your friend Sharon did a fun run that raised a lot of money for spastics, but she went on and on about it A LOT, going on about how fucking amazing she is for having done that, didn't she? Those 30 minutes that she spent puffing and panting, running around the school sports field hasn't changed anything has it? Did that rock concert that you went to succeed in ending poverty? That's right... you were really philanthropic, by going to see those bands play. How wonderful of you.

So many of us say "I'd like to do more, but I'm struggling myself". It's true, people really are struggling to find the time and the money to get through ordinary life, let alone perform selfless self-sacrificing philanthropic amazing acts of charity. There isn't a culture of helping each other. We mainly eye each other up suspiciously: are our peers getting more money than us? Why does SHE have a bigger house than me? Why are THEY getting a new car this year?

It's pretty easy to take a superficial glance at a person and say "WHY ARE YOU JUST SITTING THERE? GET UP AND DO SOMETHING". We've got all the solutions to other people's problems, haven't we? Isn't it the easiest thing in the world, solving other people's problems? If only people would listen, right?

I am thinking about changing my alarmist "suicide note" blog title to simply read this: addict.

I want people to stigmatise me. I want people to jump to the wrong conclusions. I want everybody who thinks they've got an easy answer to come forward and 'save' me from myself. "Have you tried not taking drugs?" being one amazing suggestion that I'd never thought of before.

I've failed to wean myself off sleeping pills. I've failed to stay off the pregabalin - painkillers - that I worked so hard to quit. I started drinking again, and I've been drinking a whole bottle of wine every night. I'm an addict, even though you might take a lazy glance at my life and conclude that I'm perfectly fine.

As I journey back to Wales for a Christmas break, having completed a nervy few weeks back at work, you could be forgiven for thinking that my life's back on track. Talking to me, you'd think that I've overcome all those obstacles that would normally cause a person to stumble and trip - a mentally ill homeless junkie bankrupt known-to-the-police type person. You'd be forgiven for thinking I'm normal. You'd be forgiven for thinking I'm just like you.

I am normal.

I am an addict.

Surely this is cognitive dissonance. Addicts aren't normal, right? Well, how's about this one: I don't even abuse substances. Why on earth would I label myself as an addict? Surely I've won? Surely I've broken free from everything that threatened to destroy me? Why would I want to publicly wear the most awful label that we can give to a person?

I'm not going to write a world-changing app. If apps had the capacity to change the world for the better, they'd have done it. I'm not going to start a world-changing charity. If charity had the capacity to change the world for the better, it'd have succeeded.

So am I giving up?

Am I putting on my oxygen mask before helping others?

The answer is neither. I'm not doing either of those things. I neither accept that the world's fucked and there's nothing I can do about it, nor do I believe that I have to help myself before helping others. It's true that my situation was unbearable, and it will continue to be unbearable for some time. I'm going through some awful stuff, even if you think my life is blessed and I live a charmed existence.

There's a family in Wales who've helped me. They've seen me during periods when it appears to them like I'm not helping myself. They've torn their hair out with frustration that I've been stubborn at times, when there's been obvious solutions that have been right there, just waiting for me to reach out and grab them. The whole world's problems could be solved overnight if only people would listen, right? Simple. Things are really simple, right?

The asceticism of my life - making my own sandwiches in a hotel room - seems like an obvious solution to a problem to you. No knife to spread the mayonaise on the bread? No worries, here's another solution for you...

However, if you have to actually live with a person while they go through the millions of trials and tribulations in their life, then you start to get a sense that things are not as simple as they appear at first. The case of getting my passport back from a bank in Manchester being a particularly illustrative example.

I'm about to spend Christmas in the bosom of a loving family, living on a gorgeous farm in the Welsh countryside. Of course, things aren't all about me. Christmas is about family; it's about giving, not receiving. How must this family feel though?: they've succeeded. They've nursed me back to health. Money is on the way. I'm back in the saddle, aren't I?

January.

January is my nemesis. Of course, I'm not the only person on planet earth to feel down in January. Of course, we all have winter blues and credit card bills hitting the doormat in January. Great. Let's just see how things go, shall we? I'll be back to living out of a suitcase in January.

Tags: #family #addiction #mentalhealth

This is a story about value...

You think this is money, don't you? You think this paper with numbers written on it has some value, don't you? You want more of it. You think that you can earn it by working, don't you? You hoard it. You protect it. You think it's money.

This is not money.

It's a rounding error.

Did you hear about that programmer who worked for a bank, who took all the little bits of money that just disappeared and collected them all? When a bank pays 1% interest on your savings and you've got £1.50 in your account, what happens to the half a penny that you're owed? It just disappears, of course. It's a rounding error.

Banks deal with quadrillions of dollars every year. A quadrillion is a thousand trillion, which is a million billion, or a thousand million million. You can write a quadrillion like this: 1,000,000,000,000,000. It doesn't mean very much, but put it this way... a quadrillion dollars divided up between every man, woman and child on the planet, works out to be about $143,000. Do you have $143,000?

All of the cash in existence - the banknotes and coins - adds up to about $7 trillion. $7 trillion is 0.7% of a quadrillion dollars. Imagine that. While banks are dealing with quadrillions, all of the banknotes and coins in circulation in the whole world add up to less than 1% of all the 'money'. Can you see now how worthless and ridiculous those banknotes in your purse or wallet are?

I imagine you played some board games when you were a kid, and one of the ways that you could see who was 'winning' was to see who had the most fake banknotes. The board game Monopoly famously has brightly coloured banknotes of different denominations. Perhaps you played Monopoly as a child, and this introduced you to the idea that the better players of a game would accrue more banknotes, and therefore win the game. Life's a bit different.

Unlike Monopoly, when we start life, we all start with different amounts of money. Whether you start life in a desperately poor family, in a desperately poor part of the world, or whether you're born into a fabulously wealthy family in a super rich country, is not something which we can influence ourselves. However, we have a reasonable idea what kind of life any prospective offspring might be born into, before we choose to get pregnant and deliver any babies into the world.

"I haven't got any money but I really want to inflict misery on unborn infants" I hear you cry. Have you thought about just saying "fuck it" and having children anyway? Have you thought about pursuing your own selfish wants in the face of overwhelming evidence that you're a fucking idiot?

"But I want children because it'll make me feel good. It's mainly about me, you see. Fuck the fact the child's going to be miserable"

Yes, yes. You and slime mold both want to reproduce. Very good. Anyway, moving swiftly onwards.

"No. Wait. What about the fact that I could give birth to the next Einstein or Mozart?"

You really are a prize idiot, aren't you? Let's examine the Monopoly game again.

In Monopoly, all the players are given the same amount of money at the start of the game, and all the players are subject to the same rules throughout the game.

"Yes, so a player with more skill will beat a less skilful player. I'm going to give birth to a genius whose brilliance will conquer the day and they'll be elevated from poverty because they're so amazing"

Oh dear.

See what you've failed to understand is that life is not like Monopoly. The players in life sit down with different amounts of money, and those who have vast amounts of money use it to bribe and bully their way through the game. Speeding fine? No worries, just bribe somebody off. Sent to jail? No worries, just bribe your way out. Run out of money and can't afford to buy that property you just landed on? Never going to happen. In fact, some people have so much money that they can sit down at the playing table with weighted dice that roll sixes every time, and exemption from any rule that's not in their favour. Are the rich really playing the same game at all? Let's look at education, as an example.

We might imagine that with standardised testing, the rich and the poor are playing the same game, and the 'brightest' children are achieving their grades on merit. You'd be wrong.

If you think that preparatory schools, private tutoring and private schools are merely unlocking the hidden talent of a child, you're delusional. If exam grades are an intelligence quotient to measure the intellectual ability of a person, then why would vast sums of money be spent on education by the wealthy? Why is there a perfect correlation between the amount of money poured into a child's education, and their highest academic achievement? If you really believed you were having your kid because you thought they could be the next Einstein, you wouldn't have tried to queer the pitch, would you? You wouldn't have tried to rig the game.

The cash in your pocket bears as much relation to the hard work you've done, as your exam grades relate to your intellect. Those who are richer and have superior qualifications are simply better at cheating.

They tell us: don't have a childhood, because it's important to get good grades and don't have an adulthood, because it's important to work hard and save money. These are two of the most ridiculous follies of our modern times. The problem started when your parents selfishly decided to launch you into a life with no prospects.

"But my little darlings can be anything they want to be. They can follow their dreams"

No they fucking can't. Unless, of course, their dream is to work in a shitty office punching made-up numbers into a spreadsheet, in order to give all their wages to an unscrupulous landlord and sink deeper into debt, having already stressed themselves out to the point of nervous breakdown and run up huge amounts of debt just to obtain the worthless diploma that allowed your little darling to get their bullshit job in the first place. Unless your little darlings dream of having no financial or housing security, living on a polluted dying planet, contemplating their own mortality, the absurdity of existence and the immorality of perpetuating the cycle of misery, then no... no they can't follow their fucking dreams.

We might say that we could re-adjust our values so that money isn't important, but I'm pretty sure that most of us still want a roof over our heads and food in our bellies. You have to pay to play, and I'm afraid that art, poetry, music, acting and suchlike just won't allow for any following of dreams, while being able to pay rent and buy food.

The only ones amongst us who stand a chance of winning the game, are those who start with an unfair advantage. For anybody who cares to examine the mythology of the "man who started with nothing" and built themselves a business empire, or whatever trite bullshit you care to trot out as some kind of response to the bleak prospects, you'll find that those stories are utter horse-shit. Nobody gets anywhere without somebody underwriting their risk. Nobody gets anywhere without investment.

We only need to look at the lottery to understand that people's psychology is flawed. It might be you. It could be you. But, in all probability it's not going to be. Yes, people have won the lottery. What the fuck does that prove? Yes, somebody, somewhere at some time or other won the lottery. SO FUCKING WHAT? THAT'S NO FUCKING REASON TO HAVE KIDS. Just because a handful of people win the lottery every year, that doesn't mean that the system of wealth distribution isn't broken.

So, what about all this wealth distribution malarkey then?

Well, I imagine you think that hard work pays off, don't you? If you work hard, then you'll get money. No. No not at all.

If ever there was a case of inverse correlation, then it would be with wealth distribution versus hard work in a capitalist society. Those who already have wealth will accrue more, without a single day's work. Vastly more. Think about all the ways to earn money without labour: money lending, loan sharking, gambling, investment, interest, capital gain, rent, extortion, receipt of bribes, pimping, human trafficking, war, robbery, fraud and slavery. If you think you don't profit from those things, ask yourself what part you played in the building of your house and the growing of your food. Even if you built your house, the chances are that the slates on your roof were quarried in China. Where did the bricks come from? The cement? The plasterboard?

As you sit at home counting your money and thinking of yourself as virtuous for saving a few pennies here and there, one should be mindful that this is insanity. The money bears no relation to any supposed talent, intellect or hard work that you've put into life. Those banknotes are not a useful way of keeping 'score' to see if you're 'winning' because the game is rigged. How can you usefully use your pocket change as any kind of measure of wealth that's stored away, when it's quite meaningless. Is there any scarcity? No. The mint can simply print more money, and they do.

It might be easy to scoff at this essay, given your irrational attachment to received wisdom. There's also a certain smugness when you feel like you're winning the game, but you're not - get things in perspective. It might seem like I have little respect for money, and the difficulty with which people obtain and keep it, but in fact the opposite is true. I feel very sorry for those who toil and stress over money, when the very largest sums are obtained without effort for a tranche of society who have never known poverty. To criticise me for being disrespectful towards money is ridiculous, when wealth bears so little relation to anybody's efforts or the wisdom of their choices.

This is, perhaps, one of the most provocative topics that I could write upon, dealing both with the sad truth that wealth does not flow to those who deserve it, and the unpleasant but patently obvious fact that it's immoral to have children when unable to provide a good future for them; prospects. It's immoral to have children when we live on an overcrowded planet; it's immoral to have children when we can't look after the ones we've got. Are you no different from slime mold?

For the avoidance of any doubt, my tirade is directed at no one in particular. My attack is on existence and its absurdity, capitalism, banking and the unfairness of life. If you've felt something, then that might be your conscience, not a personal attack, I promise.

Tags: #parents #capitalism

This is a story about time...

It was Saturday the 9th. I was behind that door, dying. I assumed that nobody knew where I lived. I assumed nobody cared. I was wrong.

I'm still pretty unclear how exactly the emergency services got to me so quickly.

The thing about activated charcoal and gastric lavage is that they only work during the first hour or so of an overdose. I knew this, so I'd set a timer on my phone to stop myself from being tempted to send any "goodbye cruel world" type messages, which could have triggered efforts to save my life before I reached the point of no return.

Saturday nights are pretty hectic for the emergency services. I'm surprised they got to me so quickly. I'm surprised they got me to hospital so swiftly. If they hadn't I wouldn't be writing this.

Maybe social media is addictive, it "isn't real life" and it's causing the collapse of normal healthy face-to-face relationships, but I'm pretty sure I'd have sunk without a trace if it wasn't for my digital connection to the world. It was kinda inevitable that the author of "the world's longest suicide note" was going to do the deed at some point. My suicide attempt wasn't a cry for help; it wasn't attention-seeking. I don't believe that my suicide attempt was avoidable either - circumstances were too hostile to allow my mental health to improve.

Back on that Saturday the 9th - and today - I found myself in a strange city, far from friends and family. I was isolated and alone. Stress, anxiety and depression all conspired to make life feel totally unliveable.

Tonight, I'm in a hotel room near an airport 1,200 miles from home. Language and cultural differences make it additionally obvious that I'm out of place here. I'm doing a rewarding but stressful job. My mental health has been pretty bad. There are lots of similar features to that previous Saturday the 9th. However, there's unlikely to be a "straw that broke the camel's back" type trigger tonight.

I'm mindful that I wrote a blog post called The Closest I've Come to Suicide back on Saturday 9th September, merely hours before I actually tried to kill myself. Things can change. I'm a little superstitious and unwilling to tempt fate... I don't want to jinx anything.

I sometimes feel like I'm trolling my friends - giving them a lot of stress and worry about me. I sometimes feel like it's bad behaviour, to talk about my suicidal feelings. What's the alternative though? Should I just bottle it all up and leave everybody wondering what the fuck happened to me and wondering if there was anything they could have done to help, once I'm dead?

Having written this provocative blog for over two years, I hear from a lot of people who've lost loved ones to suicide. The impact on those who lose a relative or a friend is devastating. People are left wondering "what could I have done differently?" and beat themselves up about it.

There are quite a few well-worn platitudes that are trotted out whenever a suicidal person is brave enough to share how they're feeling. Generally, the suicidal person is guilt-tripped into thinking about the consequences of their suicide. I imagine this is the reason why more people don't speak up when they're feeling suicidal, because the presumption is that they're selfish, cowardly and don't care about the pain they're going to cause for other people. These accusations are unhelpful and untrue - suicidal people know that they're going to cause pain and suffering, but life is so horrible for them that it's not enough to keep them alive. Guilting people is not the way to keep them alive.

I sometimes wonder if there's a difference between me and those who've succeeded in killing themselves. I'm afraid that it's pure blind luck. Even with 20,000 Twitter followers, I'm still subject to the same human physiology as anybody else - the massive overdose I took should have been fatal. You can have all the fame and wealth in the world, but you're just as mortal as the next man or woman.

I talk about the inevitability of my suicide attempt, and the worry that I'm trolling my friends. In a way, I'm embarrassed to have survived, because it makes it look like it was some half-arsed botched attempt where I didn't really want to die anyway. I'm embarrassed that I put my friends through the horror of thinking I might've succeeded, but I also know that I told hospital staff not to resuscitate me - I refused treatment, because I wanted to die. I can say with my hand on my heart, that I wasn't trolling anybody. It wasn't a cry for help. It wasn't attention seeking or a publicity stunt. My suicide attempt was premeditated and my method was extensively researched in preparation.

So what about all those deaths from suicide? Suicide kills more men under the age of 45 than cancer and other diseases, road traffic accidents, drugs, alcohol and everything else. Suicide is the biggest killer of them all. What is it about suicide?

Well, there are a lot of greedy, selfish, horrible men in the world, who just want to get rich at any cost - they don't care who they trample on. I emerged from hospital to find out that the wannabe Labour MP who I was working for, was sacking me for not turning up at work for a couple of days - it should be noted that those two days I was in a coma on an intensive care ward, with a machine breathing for me. This wannabe politician was completely unconcerned with the fact that I'd nearly died. This guy professes to be a Labour politician, no less - in theory, his values are all about protecting workers from unscrupulous bosses. What a liar. What an awful, awful person.

The world is a desperately competitive place. People will commit suicide because of pressure to attain good exam grades, to get ahead in their careers and generally because life relentlessly batters us with horrible uncertainty about financial and housing security. Of course people are going to commit suicide when life's so stressful. I attempted suicide and immediately lost my job and my apartment - isn't that awful? If that's what a wannabe Labour MP is prepared to do to a fellow human being, the problems in society clearly come right from the top. If our politicians are arseholes who don't value human life, of course we're going to see vast numbers of people committing suicide.

What happened after my suicide attempt is that things got worse. Things got a lot worse.

Then things got a bit better.

Friends who I haven't spoken to in years got in contact.

I made new friends. I got a new place to live. I got a new job.

Writing this blog has caused me to lose my job and my home, and has made me an easy target for discrimination. Writing this blog leaves me exposed to cyber-stalkers who want to find out what my weaknesses are, and exploit me. Writing this blog leaves me open to criticism from those who say that my message about suicide, mental health and homelessness is contrived - that I somehow pre-planned everything that happened to me, and that my opinion is therefore invalid; that my story is unrepresentative.

If you prick me, do I not bleed? Do I not feel lonely like other people? Do I not find the burden of debt and financial worries to be unbearable? Do I not need a roof over my head?

My blog begins two years ago, with me living in a hotel and working for a bank. That's exactly the situation I find myself in today. Was it necessary to have been hospitalised three times? Was it necessary to have become homeless? Was it necessary to nearly be bankrupted? Was it necessary to lose my job? All of the hardship I've been through might look avoidable, to a casual observer. A BBC journalist even accused me of having planned the whole thing.

I genuinely believe that if I hadn't lived my life in the public eye, I wouldn't be alive to tell the tale. Of course, some concerned friends saw my final Tweets on that Saturday night - the 9th - and they raised the alarm along with a bunch of other followers. Somehow, the emergency services were swiftly delivered to my door. A friend told me that my phone had been traced, but that's improbable, given that I lived in a dense urban area - signal triangulation is highly unlikely to have been accurate enough. It's a bit of a mystery, who gave the emergency services my address in time for them to save me.

I've written about a lot of this before, so I'm aware that I'm repeating myself, but it seems apt because it's Saturday the 9th. So much has happened in the intervening time, including a 3-week stay on a psych ward and me emigrating from England to Wales. So much has happened, in terms of having space and time to digest the traumatic events and trying to figure out what I'm living for. So much has happened, in terms of friends who've been kind enough to get back in contact and even offer practical help. So much has happened, with new friends and a new home, and healthy human relationships.

I'm still stressed and single and broke. My job is 1,200 miles from home. There is still a whole load of shit to go through before I have everything I need for a liveable life. You might be screaming "OTHER PEOPLE HAVE IT SO MUCH HARDER THAN YOU" at the top of your lungs, but fuck you. As my guardian angel once said: there's only one person on the whole planet who has it harder than anybody else. Are they the only person in the whole wide entire world who's allowed to feel depressed, stressed and anxious? If the "think about the starving African children" platitude had any value, we could just blast that message through megaphones and all depression and suicide would be cured overnight.

If you think I'm self-centred, self-pitying, selfish, self-absorbed or any other criticism you want to level at me, then perhaps it's you who completely lacks any empathy. Do you not care that suicide is the biggest killer of men under 45? Do you not care about this very real problem, that's only getting worse and worse? Do you not care about the epidemic of mental health issues?

I will vociferously defend my decision to blog about my mental health problems and suicide attempt(s) because I believe that my social media presence has been a major reason why my life hasn't been claimed by suicide. For sure, there have been lots of high-profile suicides. Fame and notoriety are not protective factors. However, in the face of a mental health epidemic, it's clear that pressure, guilt, shame and stigma are not working in anybody's favour. It's only through an honest and candid examination of how we're really feeling, that we might be able to save those who are on the brink of killing themselves, in the nick of time.

I think that even my harshest critic would be hard-pressed to deny that my navel-gazing suicide note blog played a major part in saving my life. Without my blog, how would I have made a new friend who offered to let me live with her and her family? How would I have reconnected with an old friend who helped me get another job? How would I have coped, through homelessness, hospitalisation and without any money? My blog is the consistent thread throughout all the traumatic experiences of the last few years.

It might sound like I'm giving my blog credit, when really credit belongs to those who took practical steps to help me - those who phoned the emergency services, those who phoned me when I was in hospital, those who helped re-house me and those friends who have made a concerted effort to re-enter my life. Of course, I'm incredibly grateful to those who've gone to great lengths to assist me, to reassure me that I am loved and that my life does matter.

There's a lot of pressure now to sort myself out. I have a pretty good opportunity to get back on my feet. I have support. I often wonder if it's time to change the name of my blog from "the world's longest suicide note" to something else. However, it was back on Saturday the 9th that I wrote about how close I was to suicide, before then being tipped over the edge later that same day. If I'm reluctant to declare myself safe, then tough titties - I know how fragile things are, so it would be foolish to prematurely take myself off the endangered species list.

Perhaps you - dear reader - feel a little led-on by the whole thing. Perhaps you feel a little cheated that I didn't die. Who knows. All I know is that it doesn't feel like it was very long ago that I was dying on Saturday the 9th.

Tags: #suicide

This is a story about being gainfully employed...

Follow your dreams, as long as your dream is punching made-up numbers into a spreadsheet, trapped inside a depressing office with no natural light in the middle of an overcrowded polluted concrete jungle, with a horrible commute every morning and evening.

I started a new job this morning. I'm 1,200 miles from home. I had to take a train, a plane and an automobile to get here.

For a whole month, I wrote. That's a lie... I had some days off. I had to get my stuff from London, I had to get my passport from Manchester and I had some days when I just didn't feel up to writing, but I pretty much spent a month as a writer.

In order to indulge my artistic ambitions, I've had to give up a couple of months when I should really have been job hunting. My writing has also lost me lucrative contracts, when my Twitter/blog has been discovered by bosses. As a hobby, it's been incredibly expensive. As a job, it's been financially ruinous.

A friend of mine had two job options when he graduated: writer or computer programmer. He chose the latter, because the salary was five times as much and he wanted to be able to afford luxuries like food and rent. Another friend had the choice between an electric guitar and a computer. He chose the latter, knowing that it would pave the way for a lucrative career. I too have forgone opportunities to pursue academic interests, because of economic incentives.

In fact, we are strongly economically disincentivised from pursuing art. There can only be a handful of Damien Hirsts in the world, while there are millions of penniless artists.

They say that if you're good at something, you should never do it for free. However, how are you going to ever get good at something unless somebody's going to bankroll you while you're bad at it? Nobody is born with prodigious talent. There are also vast numbers of negative people who'll criticise, tell you that you're going to fail and tell you to give up and do something else. There are vast numbers of people who have a vested interest in seeing you fail - they don't want to see you succeed when they're too much of a gutless, spineless, miserable moaning, pathetic, uninspiring and otherwise wimpy excuse for a human being, to actually ever try to follow their dream or support somebody else in following theirs.

Given that it's rewarding to fuck about with paint or clay, stand in front of people singing or playing an instrument, act, play sports and otherwise pursue the performing and creative arts, one might argue that we're never going to be short of people who want to turn these hobbies into jobs. Wouldn't we all be artists if we could?

Here is the present paradigm: given an oversupply of people who'd like to do something more rewarding than the bullshit McJobs on offer, we have fierce competition for just a few slots. Only those who are prepared to go to extraordinary lengths, or those who are lucky enough to have been born into a family that already possesses wealth and fame, will be able to do a job that's fun rather than fucking awful.

Is capitalism working? Isn't capitalism supposed to reward those who work hard? Isn't the whole reason why capitalism's better than other systems of wealth distribution, because it incentivises hard work? What happens when that's no longer true?

The way I see it, we give up our childhoods to study hard, in the hope of getting better jobs. We give up our prime healthy years so that we can have a good retirement. What happens when the pension system is about to collapse and we can't hang on to the money that we've squirrelled away because our children can't afford houses? What happens when we bust a gut to get top exam grades and go to good universities, but there aren't any jobs and the ones there are wouldn't even allow us to afford the cost of living anyway?

Why are we working so hard? Why are we competing?

The competitive element of capitalism seems to have failed to deliver our most brilliant minds into productive endeavours. All those miserable hours of homework don't seem to be benefitting anybody. All those miserable hours spent in a traffic jam or otherwise in the rat race don't seem to be benefitting anybody. All I see is people chasing a dream that seems to slip ever further out of reach. What the hell are we doing, working so hard so that we might be able to one day stop and catch our breath, except we never can?

What happened to the age of leisure?

Of course, I see the irony and hypocrisy of writing this when I've been lucky enough to enjoy career breaks that have enabled me to write a couple of novels. "When do I get to write my book?" some might ask. Yes. I refer you to my previous question.

Something's gone horribly wrong and the prospect of a comfortable retirement is sailing over the horizon. Extrapolating, the prospect of any dreams being realised is an absolute one-in-a-million shot. As opposed to the buy-now-pay-later bogyman that we're all supposed to be afraid of, it seems to me as if we've sleepwalked into a kind of pay-now-never-get-the-benefit kind of dystopia. I really don't understand why people aren't chucking in the towel on their bullshit jobs and writing that fucking book. Why don't students say no to homework, and enjoy their youth? From what I can see, the stress and anxiety of modern life is ruining the vast majority of people's mental health.

I guess there are going to be growing pains, while we shift from a productivity-based capitalist global economy, back to a kind of life where we value human things like staying near our families, seeing our kids grow up and having what we want and need NOW not LATER. I mean, for fuck's sake we're not asking for much and we don't need much. Since agricultural mechanisation, we've been able to feed vast numbers with very little effort. Only about 1% of the UK's income comes from farming and fishing. WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?

So, as I beaver away in an office working Monday to Friday yet again, I wonder how close we are to that day when we all suddenly decide that enough is enough and we really don't need any more exotic and arcane ways of disguising the fact that what we do all day for 'work' is absolute total and utter horse-shit, for most of us. Why can't we all be artists?

Tags: #art #economics #capitalism

This is a story about intolerable stress levels...

On the 9th of September 2017, I was in possession of a wallet containing my driving license, two debit cards and two credit cards, as well as my keys and some cash. I had prescribed medication. I had my smartphone, a laptop and a digital camera. On the 13th of September 2017, I had none of these things, and nobody could tell me where they'd gone - to all intents and purposes, they had been lost or stolen. Don't ask me whether they'd been lost or stolen, because I didn't know, despite asking anybody and everyone I could.

Then, I was muscled out of my office.

I was in a city where I didn't know anybody, with no wallet, phone or internet capable device. My work colleagues were avoiding the office. You know those films where the person's identity has been erased, and men in black suits are hunting them... that's what happened to me: I was locked out from my life.

I'm not sure if you've ever tried to kill yourself, but you have to be in a pretty desperate situation, to decide to end your own life. Dying is a big deal: you only get to make that decision once. If you're successful, there's no coming back from a suicide. How do you think you'd feel if you survived?

I came to be wandering around an alien city, with no friends, family or work colleagues who'd help me or even speak to me; without cash or bank cards; without my phone or laptop; without my ID card - my driving license. What the actual fuck?

"Phone your parents".

Yeah. Right.

Which is it? Am I mad or am I bad? My parents have made up their mind: I've been successfully faking a diagnosed mental illness as an excuse for my behaviour, apparently. It's all in my head. It's all made up. The quote above is what my dad really thinks - he was interviewed.

So, did I or did I not try to kill myself? Did I or did I not get admitted to the Intensive Treatment Unit (ITU) in a critical condition? Did I or did I not find myself in an alien city, without bank cards, cash, phone, laptop or any means of contacting anybody? Did I or did I not get muscled out of my office? Did I or did I not get turfed onto the street, and was expected to just deal with this clusterfuck?

Luckily, I'm an evidence gatherer, so I have all kinds of documents and other things - like the plastic bag pictured above - which are helping me to piece together the picture of what exactly happened during a period where I went from having a girlfriend, friends, apartment, job and an identity, to suddenly being completely destitute - no fixed abode, no nothing. My world fell apart in the blink of an eye.

If it can happen to me, it can happen to anybody.

If you're looking for a trite oversimplification, here it is: I tried to kill myself.

I can't make this any easier for anybody to understand. The only thing that I did wrong was that I tried to end my life. When I survived, there was no life to go back to. My apartment was ransacked; my most valuable possessions were missing; my whole existence crumbled to nothingness.

If my guardian angel hadn't travelled up from London; if I hadn't managed to appoint a couple of solicitors... how on earth would I have coped? There was so much work to be done, to track down what the heck had happened to my life, since I'd been lying unconscious in a coma, with a machine breathing for me. Only an idiot would suggest that I could have sabotaged my life so spectacularly, when I was flat on my back with my eyes taped shut; tubes coming out of me. There is absolutely no doubt about my movements during the period when my world exploded, because it's all been thoroughly documented by those who had a duty of care to look after me - I was incapacitated; vulnerable.

Today, I find myself having to trawl through the jumble of papers and emails that have flown around, which essentially constitute a smoking gun. Circumstances conspired to cause me to become so stressed that I chose to attempt to end my life; I couldn't deal with the shitstorm around me; I couldn't cope. Having been discharged from hospital, things are not much better. I very much want to kill myself right now.

There's a reason why I haven't poked the hornet's nest: all this shit which was too much for me to handle when I was hospitalised. Why the fuck have I got to deal with it now? All of this bullshit is making me suicidal again.

I just want to live in peace and quiet. I didn't sign up for the shit I'm going through. It's unjust.

I'm being hounded to death.

Tags: #suicide