This is a story about milestones...

There are so many people who either "don't smoke" or call themselves "social smokers". People say "I only smoke when I drink". There are so many people who claim that they are free from drink and drugs, but they're actually popping Xanax, antidepressants, Oxycontin, Solpadeine, Co-codamol (codeine), Vicodin and tranquillisers. There are so many people who sneer at substance abusers, but they drink, smoke and consume lots of tea, coffee and energy drinks, without realising they're dependent on alcohol, nicotine and caffeine, just to cope with normal everyday life.

In 6 months, I got through those 59 tablets - a combination of diazepam and nitrazepam - in an attempt to avoid a nervous breakdown and to survive an extremely stressful situation, where my whole career, solvency, home and life as a respectable member of society, hung in the balance.

If you take benzodiazepines continuously for over 3 months, you have probably become physically addicted. What that means is that you might have a seizure and die, if you were to abruptly stop taking the medication.

I've run out of benzodiazepines today.

I'm not worried about this.

59 tablets, of 2mg to 5mg strength, spread over 180 days, is a piss in the ocean. There's no way that I'm going to have withdrawal symptoms from stopping taking benzodiazepines. I might be a little anxious; I might have a little insomnia; I might feel a bit panicky. However, I'm not going to die.

A couple of years ago I took myself off to rehab. For over 3 months I had been swallowing a little cocktail: 6x 10mg diazepam tablets, 4x 2mg Xanax, 2x 10mg Ambien, 2x 15mg Zopiclone. Maybe it wasn't quite that much. I have no idea. Benzodiazepines cause amnesia. All I can remember is that I used to fill up the palm of my hand with various pills, and swallow them all in one go. Lights out. Wake up 2 days later.

You're in a hell of a mess when you're mixing uppers and downers; stimulants and tranquillisers; but that's what we do every day, when we have our morning coffee and a glass of wine when we get home from work. If you have a strong coffee after a boozy dinner, you're basically having the middle-class equivalent of a speedball (cocaine & heroin, injected).

Obviously, I'm irreverently mocking your self-delusion, when you tell yourself that you're not "hooked" on anything.

I've used alcohol and the occasional tranquilliser tablet, in order to limp through the last 6 months. I haven't been having tea, coffee or other caffeinated drinks.

I've actually tapered off the alcohol and the benzos, to the point where I only drank 2 days in the last 14. I didn't take any benzos all weekend.

The thing is, if you're smart and you're disciplined, addiction is something you can master. It is possible to give up anytime you want. It is possible to become really good at quitting drugs and booze. I'm a fucking expert in abstinence.

Almost like an alarm clock going off, my subconscious revealed that I had simply been waiting for 6 months.

School was absolute shit for me. Getting through the long school days of bullying was awful. Getting through the long terms of bullying was unbearable. Getting through year after year after year of bullying was absolutely dreadful. All I was doing was waiting for the end of school bell, the school holidays, and the day that I could finally leave school and get the fuck away from the bullies.

Family life was absolutely shit for me. I couldn't wait to move out of home, and get away from my arsehole parents. I've loved paying my own rent and bills. I've loved being independent. I do have all the fucking answers. I went out into the world, got a place to live, got a job, and never looked back. Up until then, I'd just been waiting for the day I could finally leave home, and it couldn't come a moment too soon.

So, I spent 17 years, just waiting. I was biding my time. I know how to suffer patiently. I'm an expert in suffering patiently.

Then, I applied my expertise in deferred gratification to the working world. I took shitty entry-level jobs and worked my way up. I stuck with shitty projects, and shitty companies, so that my CV would look good. I stuck with shitty bosses and put up with glass ceilings. I stuck with idiots who couldn't see my potential, and I just suffered because I had a game plan.

I can patiently wait anything out. I've had to spend about 16 weeks with very limited liberty, being treated as an inpatient. That's not including the time I've spent in hospital receiving emergency treatment. In theory, I could have discharged myself, but there would have been consequences. I spent 7 weeks with somebody who'd been in prison twice, and he acknowledges that I have a mindset that suggests I know how to do time.

I mean, Christ, I spent the best part of 5 years working for one damn company, in one damn building, with the same damn people. Day after day, month after month, year after year. I've done 19 bloody years on the IT gravy train, solving the same damn problems again and again and again, and seeing the same damn mistakes time after time.

And so, I wondered to myself, why didn't I have a packet of drugs to tear open, in celebration of the fact that I have so easily completed a 6-month period of abstinence?

What you'll find with many addicts, is that they're liars. When they say that they're abstinent, they're actually lying to themselves and others. I've done "6 months clean" before, but that hasn't counted "the occasional weekend" and one or two "lapses" (note: a lapse is a 'small' relapse). In actual fact, you're still addicted, but you're limping yourself along by hiding your habit, from yourself and others. You start to believe your own lies.

I've arrived at 6 months "clean" and it really is clean. As clean as anybody in the history of anything, ever.

Most people who quit smoking will drink more, have more coffee, eat more. Most people who quit anything, will find some way of compensating. It might be exercise; it might be work. Basically, humans need shit. We're not fucking robots. Humans have always had intoxicating substances. Wine was being made 6,000 years before Jesus Christ was even born... that's over 8,000 years ago!

Anyway, I started looking at websites of awful toxic Chinese "legal" highs. Then I had a look at the Dark Web. The amount of drugs that are available to order over the Internet is just staggering. Prohibition has spectacularly failed. The designer drug industry is enjoying such a boom time, thanks to ridiculous laws that force chemists to get creative. Technology's answer to the eternally insatiable human demand for mind-altering substances has created a whole swathe of online marketplaces stocking every drug under the sun.

There's something for everybody in the cornucopia that has been created by the war on drugs.

My finger hovered over the "Buy Now" button, because I've damn well proven my point. Pick some arbitrary milestone, and I'll hit it, easily. But, what do I have? My life is miserable. All I have ahead of me is stress and loneliness; insecurity and pain; suicidal thoughts and a sense of abandonment. Fairly easy to justify a relapse, isn't it, when you work so hard and you're not getting anywhere.

Then, I thought, what could I do that's slightly more sensible?

With a bit more searching around on the Internet, I found that you can consult a doctor online and have a prescription despatched next day. In the space of 7 minutes, a doctor agreed to prescribe me a fast-acting antidepressant called Wellbutrin. I needed something because I felt certain that I was either going to commit suicide quickly by cutting an artery, or commit suicide slowly by relapsing back into drug abuse.

Wellbutrin is a wonderful medication, because it's fast acting, it doesn't make you drowsy, and it doesn't ruin your sex life. Have you experienced the boredom of patiently fucking somebody who takes an SSRI antidepressant, waiting an absolute age before they possibly cum, but probably won't be able to? Who wants a sex life like that? I don't want my emotions blunted. I don't want 'brain zaps' and uncontrollable crying when I try and stop the damn medication.

Yeah, who knows what the fuck happens next. Tomorrow, I have a 2-month supply of a fast-acting antidepressant that you can't get on the NHS being delivered. Maybe life will look a bit less hopeless when I'm drugged out of my mind, like virtually everybody else I know.

It feels like selling out, but it's nearly killed me having to fight tooth and nail just to have a roof over my head and a job, while also being nearly stone cold sober. I don't have kids to remind me why I get up and go to work. I don't have pets to look after. I literally have no reason for living, except to achieve some arbitrary goals.

I thought, as an added bonus, that I would also be celebrating one year of blogging today, but it turns out that happened a couple of weeks ago. Today is my last day at work, and I've had a couple of leaving dos, which is nice, but I do of course have to go though all the stress and hassle of applying for new jobs, interviewing, making a good first impression etc. etc. How ironic that things seem to have conspired to happen today.

As luck would have it, a colleague has recommended me for another job, which I might end up interviewing for tomorrow and could even be asked to start a new contract as early as Monday. If I do that, I'm damnwell going to need a few happy pills to carry me through, because I had been thinking that I was going to have a minor nervous breakdown.

Anyway, a milestone of sorts. Nice to leave work with a few slaps on the back and "well done"s. Nice to know that I didn't 'cheat' with my 6 months of abstinence from addictive stimulants. Where's my fucking reward? Surely I should feel better than I do, but I'm depressed and anxious. I'm overwhelmed by the task of having to hustle again, to keep the momentum going.

But really, is there momentum, or did I just wait for 6 months, in order to have a well-earned breakdown?

Is that what life is? Just waiting to die, miserable as fuck?

Tags: #depression #suicide #addiction #drugs

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 spoon feeding...

There are a number of writing guides that suggest cutting out unnecessary words, shortening sentences and generally dumbing down what you write to appeal to the lowest common denominator. I personally think that would be an insult to the intelligence of anybody who takes the time to read my writing.

The academic equivalent of willy-waving is to try and pepper your text with obscure vocabulary and other curios. At best, you're going to impress some sneering pretentious elites. At worst you're going to write impenetrable text that's virtually unreadable without a dictionary. Somewhere in-between the best and the worst, you're going to trip yourself up and have those who are highly educated chortling at your clumsy use of language, while everybody else just thinks you're a stuck-up twat.

I write in a conversational manner, very much in the voice of my internal monologue. You, as the reader, must hear the stream of my thoughts, as a facsimile in your head as you read my words.

With editing, I could produce more concise text. With some rewriting, I could represent ideas and concepts, experiences and stories, in a much more concise manner. I could write to convey things with much more simplicity. But then, wouldn't you just be reading yet another yawnfest of Internet banality?

To try to be original is impossible: we are all just a product of our experiences. Monkey see, monkey do. However, to be authentic merely takes bravery... or is it stupidity?

I'm not writing a Wikipedia article. I'm not writing a self-help guide. I'm not writing a scientific paper.

This is a secret diary that has been made public. This is my psyche, laid bare so that my distress, confusion, isolation and the hideous complexity of the circumstances that I find myself in, are not obscured from view. I'm genuinely concerned for my safety, and without my detailed account of who I am, I might die completely misunderstood.

Don't we all fear that we might die misunderstood? Well... it's more complex than that.

If you have kids, you fear that you're not going to get to see them grow up. The fact of the matter is that you're unlikely to outlive your kids, but you've set yourself some unspoken milestones:

• "As long as I get to watch them grow up to the age of 18, I'll be happy"
• "As long as I get to watch them graduate from university, I'll be happy"
• "As long as I get to watch them get married, I'll be happy"
• "As long as I get to meet my grandkids, I'll be happy"

Perhaps you're concerned about how elderly your parents are getting, and you want to be around to look after them. Perhaps you're loved by your brothers and sisters, and your nieces and nephews. You're aware that you'd leave a hole in your family's life if you were gone.

Things are a bit different for me.

This is what my mum said to me, when I asked her why she never travelled the 45 minutes on the train to come and see me when I was in hospital:

"The police will tell us when you're dead and we can come and identify your body at the morgue if we have to"

I think it's pretty clear that my parents have faulty genes that need to die off. I can understand that you might not want to spend £5,000 on an operation to save the life of your pet hamster. However, I would spend thousands if my cat or my dog got sick. I would spend every penny I had, to save my child. My parents didn't think I was worth the £20 for the train fare from Oxford to London, and the 45 minutes of their time.

If you want to understand how or why I arrived at the notion that my family would not only be better off without me, but they actually actively want me dead then you only have to study that one example.

Whether you like it or not, you are responsible for your children's lives. Your children didn't ask to be born. Your children are not supposed to be grateful to be alive. You're supposed to be grateful if you have healthy children.

It's a risky decision to have a child: they might be born with birth defects, they might be disabled. Your child might be suffering and in pain. Instead of adopting one of the many children who don't have a family, instead you decided to create an extra mouth to feed on the overcrowded planet, and take a chance that your shitty genes might leave them with terrible quality of life. Instead of considering what you could give the child, you thought about what you could take in terms of feeling satisfied that you have procreated.

Being brought up to feel apologetic that you even exist is an awful thing. Being told you're a bad kid because you didn't pop out of the womb ready to serve your parents like some subservient sycophantic butler is an awful thing.

"I taught you how to use a spoon"

Don't make me fucking laugh. If you don't feed your kid you're a negligent parent. What do you want, a fucking medal for taking the bare minimum responsibility for the life that you chose to bring into existence? If my parents didn't teach me to eat using a spoon, I would have eaten with my hands, or somebody with more of a nurturing instinct would have taught me to eat using cutlery, or I would have died earlier and suffered less.

Yes, I've reached the point now where I'm basically saying "what's the fucking point?".

What is the point, really? Surely, it's a fucking gift to rear a child and be pleased you actually took some fucking responsibility. There can only be shame in neglecting your responsibilities. There are no medals and ticker-tape parades for parents, because you wanted to fuck, you wanted to experience the miracle of life, you wanted it... your kids didn't. Remember that: nobody asked to be born.

If your kids are miserable and want to die, you have failed miserably as a parent. Victim blaming is no use to sidestep the responsibility. On the day of judgement, can you say hand on heart that you acted in your child's best interests, given your decision to create that child in the first place?

We are not fucking fish! We don't just spew out eggs and sperm into the ocean in the hope that some of our spawn reaches adulthood. What the fuck happened to your brain? What the fuck happened to your education? My parents both had the benefit of free university places. My parents both think they're oh-so smart. It's not like you can hide behind the defence of saying you're just a dumb animal.

I'm smarter than an animal. I'm smarter than my genes.

I know that my genes program me to want to procreate, but I can choose not to. In fact, on the evidence of the behaviour of my parents, passing on their genes would be the most irresponsible thing I could possibly do. Clearly this line of genes needs to die out, because I detest parents who don't take responsibility for their choices, their children.

My parents are too stupid to even read, as it turns out. I suckered them in with some honeyed words, to get them hooked reading this blog, and then I dialled up the honesty. They could not have cut & run any faster. Like Usain Bolt, they sprinted for the hills. The truth is hard to deal with when the only way you can look yourself in the mirror and sleep at night is by pretending your son is already dead.

It's a bit strange to write and write and write like this, labouring a point, but until they die from old age, smoking and drug/alcohol abuse related illness, I feel there needs to be this constant reinforcement of the consequences of their mistreatment of me.

Instead of thinking "my friends would miss me" I think "what if my parents attempt to corrupt the truth after I die". In a way, I'm staying alive to defend my memory, but when the truth is fully told I can finally collapse with exhaustion and rest in peace.

Sure, my parents spoon fed me. I wish they hadn't. If you're not going to go the distance, what's the fucking point? Why even start? It's fucking cruel, to bring someone into the world who didn't ask for it, and then to fuck them over. If I'm here just to pass on your genes, guess what? I'm not going to.

Why am I seething with such anger about something in the past? Well, it's in the context of how much of my life I felt secure, happy, loved (not much). It's in the context of how suicidal I feel (very). It's in the context of how things will look, when I'm gone.

The most loved I ever felt was when a lovely family in Ireland took me in. That just ain't right... what the fuck is wrong with my parents? Is it because they're drug addicts and alcoholics? I doubt it's the drugs or the alcohol because I'm very loving and nurturing, so I must conclude that there must be genes in me that haven't yet been expressed. I fear that I may be a terrible father, if I had kids, even if I was a loving caring husband, and I cared for my pets more than I even cared for myself.

Oh well, maybe it'll all be over soon and I can leave the final analysis to somebody else.

Tags: #parents #suicide

This is a story about the schizophrenic spectrum...

"Does my bum look big in this?" sounds like an innocent enough question. Do you not have an adequate grip on reality to objectively judge yourself whether you look fat? Is it possible that you're feeling paranoid about other people's perception of you?

When you think about it, paranoia is rife.

Why do you close your curtains? Who would want to peer in at you? What's so interesting about you that anybody would want to watch you?

Why do you confess your true feelings when you're inebriated? What's so shameful about your innermost thoughts and feelings that you can't reveal them when you're sober? Why are you worried what people will think?

In the workplace, we feel inadequate. We feel underqualified. We feel like we're an imposter. We feel like we're just blagging, bluffing. We feel that our ruse could be exposed at any moment. Why do you stay in that crappy job that you're hopelessly overqualified for and you've completely mastered... is it because it's comfortable and you don't like the feeling that you're not good enough to do something more challenging?

When you're purchasing stuff, is it because you like the things that you're buying, or is it because you're thinking about how other people are going to judge you? Imagine you are supermarket shopping with your young children. When you are loading all your food onto the conveyor belt to be scanned by the checkout clerk, don't you feel that they're judging every purchase you're making? If you're buying crisps, chips, ready meals, chocolate, ice cream, sweets... isn't that supermarket employee going to be thinking "jeez, this person's a really bad parent for feeding their kid all this junk"?

Every time you share something on social media, is it because you're Facebragging, or do the sum total of your posts represent an accurate picture of your real life? Why are you sharing anyway? Why do you worry what other people think of you?

When you're at home, you sit around with stained jogging pants and a grubby T-shirt, swigging a beer and watching trashy TV. When you're out in the park, you're immaculately dressed, reading a pretentious novel. Why is that?

You're doing all these things almost without thinking. They're all driven by paranoia. You're paranoid that you won't be liked, won't be respected, won't be sexually attractive, won't be loved. You're paranoid that you'll be seen as a fool, a bad person, a bad parent, a bad employee. You're paranoid that you might get caught looking at your own reflection. You're paranoid that you might be accused of being a pervert for masturbating. You're paranoid that you might be laughed at for wanting a girlfriend or a boyfriend, but finding yourself rejected. You're paranoid that you're a bigot, a racist, sexist, stupid, ignorant, narcissistic, self-absorbed, selfish.

In actual fact, we all share exactly the same flaws.

Any child will be confused the first time they see the dyed green mohawk hair of a punk. A child reared in an exclusively white or black community will be confused the first time they meet somebody of the opposite skin tone. Any child will be confused the first time they are told they have to use the 'correct' bathroom.

We're built to pair up sexually, and we're bombarded with images of the most attractive people on the planet. We can't avoid comparing ourselves with others. Of course we are going to feel inadequate in the face of glossy magazines, TV personalities and movie stars. Pornography amplifies things still further: people are worried about the attractiveness of every inch of their bodies.

We are sometimes mocked for thinking that people are talking about us.

It's true. People do gossip. People are talking about you behind your back, all the time, especially if you're unwell. It's a vicious circle. The more paranoid and erratic your behaviour becomes, the more people will whisper about it, and then go silent and 'act normal' when you're in earshot. It's not unfounded paranoia. People like to gossip about anybody whose life appears less than perfect.

We like to label people. Crazy uncle Fred had a nervous breakdown, painted his torso with blue paint, adopted 50 rescue dogs and wandered around butt naked. Even though that was years ago and now crazy uncle Fred is back running his accountancy practice, he's still "crazy" uncle Fred in his family. His family have loose lips, and everybody in Fred's town now calls him crazy Fred. Fred's friends have loose lips, and now his clients know that he's a bit "crazy" even though they would never mention it in his presence.

Your doctor may protect your confidentiality, but your friends and family certainly won't. Your friends and family will broadcast every slip-up. Your friends and family will attempt amateur psychoanalysis, with their foghorn voices.

People might not say to your face "I think you've gone mad and you should be locked up in an asylum" but they'll certainly say that to other people behind your back. It's sad but true. There's no sense in denying it. People just like to gossip and spread rumours, half-truths and conjecture.

The fact of the matter is that you are quite interesting. Most people are very private and most people hide their true selves.

We are relieved to discover that other people are just as flawed and fucked up as we are, when somebody's mask slips. We then take that relief a stage further, and spread the juicy gossip. Everybody loves to hear embarassing tales of misfortune.

The massive popularity of soap operas, fly-on-the-wall documentaries and reality TV proves that humans have an insatiable appetite for voyeurism, invasion of privacy, gossiping about people. Think about the millions of armchair psychologists, analysing the behaviour of the Big Brother contestants.

Also, your government is spying on you. Your government reads your emails. Your government listens to your phonecalls. This isn't a conspiracy theory. The revelations of Edward Snowden have proven beyond reasonable doubt that your government is snooping on every ordinary citizen.

For those who have a fragile grasp on sanity, there are plenty of things that will tip them into fully-blown paranoia. Paranoia can build and build, until you believe there are hidden cameras watching you. Some paranoid schizophrenics can believe that their thoughts are being read. Clearly, this is at the extreme end of the mental health spectrum, but right now I have 3 microphones and 3 cameras potentially recording me: my laptop, my smartphone and my smartwatch.

I was digging around in the data that Google had gathered on me without my knowledge, and I found that there was an accurate GPS record of my position for everywhere I've been, as well as hundreds of sound recordings. Of course, there is also my Internet search history and the vast digital paper trail that I have inadvertently created.

Although I expect all my friends and family know that I got sick, because of the aforementioned gossip, I want to make things crystal clear: I was briefly "crazy" uncle Nick. That moniker still follows me around even though I'm a highly paid and well respected IT consultant. I pay my rent, bills, taxes and generally conduct myself in a way that any outside observer would struggle to categorise as "crazy". By any measure or test that you could conduct, I'm just as sane as you are.

However, there was paranoia about who knows? How much do people know? What falsehoods had been perpetrated against me? It was driving me crazy. I decided to take action.

By documenting my inner monologue, my darkest moments, my most closely guarded secrets, I'm taking the power away from those who gossip and whisper behind my back. I'm getting rid of the grey area. If you want to know who I really am and what really happened, it's documented right here in exquisite unflinching uncensored detail.

I know that I'm being judged all the time anyway, so you might as well judge me on the truth, rather than on the bullshit that my persecutors would have you believe. I offer you all the facts, so that you can make an informed judgement. I would rather you reached your own conclusions, rather than the conclusions that those with an unpleasant agenda would prefer you to make.

It is a bit of a warzone. I spent my childhood with the pressure and expectation that I would lie about my parents' drug taking, alcoholism and unwillingness to act like mature adults, responsible parents, get jobs that would support the family. My parents' focus was on keeping up appearances, rather than acting with integrity, and I was expected to play along with their bullshit. They decided to throw me under the bus rather than admit any kind of wrongdoing. This blog documents the truth, rather than the false image that they present.

I doubt any of my friends or work colleagues have an unpleasant agenda. However, my ex-wife campaigned very actively to demonise me, compromise my confidentiality, undermine my good name, discredit me. This document tells the side of the story that never got told, because I acted with integrity and presumed that she would too. I was exhausted and sick - how could I defend myself? I doubt she's ever told anybody how she abused me, beat me. I know with absolute certainty that she's told friends and work colleagues that I've struggled with mental health problems and addiction.

Of course, I have plenty of stuff that I've done wrong. It's all documented here in gory detail. I've made mistakes, but people have broadcast them in order to hurt and damage me. I'm being brave enough to re-tell those mistakes that were already loudly trumpeted by my persecutors. It's true that I'm also telling the things that were wrongly perpetrated against me, in a way that appears to be tit-for-tat, but it's actually just presenting a full and accurate picture.

I'm well known for my honesty. To present some "whiter than white" image of myself, to try and offset this demonic image that my parents and ex-wife paint of me, would be yet another falsehood. It serves no purpose, to simply hit back and point out the awful things that my persecutors have perpetrated against me.

I'm moving from a bad place to a much better place, in that I'm now pleased that people know things about me that are correct, even if they don't paint me in a flattering light. I'm less horrified that people know things that mean my confidence has been horribly betrayed by people who are supposed to care about me.

By all means, go ahead and talk about me all you like now. It's immensely liberating living life as an open book. It's a fantastic feeling, to be judged on balanced facts, rather than half-truths, falsehoods and bullshit "holier than thou" images that my persecutors have painted of themselves.

If it sounds a little paranoid, you're wrong. True friends have told me what's been said behind my back, and my persecutors have even admitted betraying my confidence on particularly private and sensitive things, that they absolutely should have treated with confidentiality.

I'm quickly approaching a time when I will be satisfied that the tale is told. I've presented all the information. I stand by my sins. I'm ready for judgement.

It is a bit of an alarming situation. I'm preparing to die, because I'm exhausted by the bullying and the mistreatment at the hands of my family, my ex-wife.

If you've heard anything bad about me, consider this: don't be surprised if the dog that you beat turns around and bites you one day.

Tags: #mentalhealth #suicide

This is a story about prescriptions...

Are you underemployed? Are you unchallenged? Are you jaded? Are you disillusioned? Is your existence meaningless? Are you lacking purpose, goal? Are your ambitions, creativity, ingenuity and resourcefulness being thwarted? Are the prime years of your life draining away, washed into the gutter?

I want to write 3 times a day, at least.

I need to write 3 times a day.

I get to work, nearly an hour late. I have a quick 10-minute call with my team. Then, I have nothing to do until lunchtime. If anything is going wrong I try and fix it, but my whole job is to try and steer the ship strategically so we don't ever get into trouble. I'd love it if a big crisis kicked off, but I've managed things effectively, so everything runs itself with little drama. Sensible, but boring.

So, I need to write something in the morning to get me through to my mid-day break.

I take a 2-hour lunch. I get away from my desk and go and read a book somewhere. Sometimes I sit in the park. Sometimes I sit by the river. I'm only supposed to take an hour for lunch, but who's going to question it when my team are so far ahead of the project deadlines and the client is happy?

Then, I need to write something in the afternoon to get me through to home time.

I stay on top of any queries. I'm watching like a hawk in case there's anything I need to deal with. One strategy that I've employed in the past is to let things build up and build up until there's an artificial crisis that I've created, and then I deal with the backlog in a flurry of activity. Through this strategy of putting things off I made a depressing discovery: most 'work' is unnecessary and can be forgotten about. Nobody's going to die if the crap that I do doesn't get done.

When I get home, I have pent-up frustration that I haven't been productive. My energy and enthusiasm for completing tangible tasks with meaningful output, has been completely unmet during office hours.

Sometimes I draw. Sometimes I make music. Sometimes I make a video.

What I really want to be doing is writing. There's nothing nicer than relaxing on my sofa with my laptop, brain-dumping. I have so much to say, and there's so little time. Words come flooding out of me. There's no shortage of things I want to write about. Researching what I want to write about means that there is even more to write about. Research sets off a chain reaction. The number of topics that I'm passionately interested in grows exponentially.

When I get home, I take off my suit and hang it up. I put on my civilian clothes. I relax, but I'm still not quite in a relaxed mood. It's not like I want to go out for a run, or to go out drinking or dancing. I'm not quite able to shake off the shackles of the rat race, despite the fact that the last thing I would ever think about doing is flipping open my work laptop or giving my project a moment's further thought.

My thoughts revolve torturously around "how am I going to get up and do it all over again tomorrow?".

Drawing, music composition, video editing... these things require a considerable amount of effort. Writing is something I'm compelled to do. Freedom of expression is important, and I've allowed myself to be completely free to write, when time allows. I do not self-censor. The only people whose identity I'm careful to protect are my friends. The only people whose feelings I consider are those who care whether I live & breathe. It's remarkably liberating, not caring if some mean judgemental family member takes offence. It's terrifying thinking that every word I write could make me unemployable, but so exhilarating to thumb your nose at a job you have total contempt for.

A simplistic analysis might conclude that I have transferred my 'addictive personality' to writing, but doesn't our society applaud the workaholic? The serial entrepreneur who puts him or herself through enormous stress is lauded as a captain of industry, an engine for growth, a valued member of the economic community. Whatever I do, I'm unlikely to approach it half-heartedly. If I'm going to work a job and make money, I'm going to work as hard as I can, and make as much money as possible. If I write, I'm going to write until my fingers bleed and I have to be prised away from the keyboard.

Society applauds my bipolarity. Not so much the depression, but the fact that I can achieve 'overnight success' during my hypomania means that I have no shortage of achievements in my portfolio. My shrewd opportunism means that cash windfalls have always carried me through the inevitable crash in my mood.

In fact, the whole working world is structured to celebrate the person who does the heroic big push to meet the deadlines. The steady eddies who just quietly get on with their work, have nothing remarkable to help them to stand out from the crowd. Even the idea of working at the level of intensity that we do in academia and employment, is destabilising. Cramming for exams, dealing with unrealistic workloads, and then collapsing during the holidays, barely recovering before the next painful bout of work or study. Who cares if your nerves are frazzled, as long as you're getting the "A" grades, right?

The project I'm working on is being cancelled, because it's failing. My team is way ahead of the deadline and our part is the big success of the project, but the other 7 teams have failed. It's a big mess. An expensive white elephant. A big embarrassment for the consultancy and the end client.

My attitude has been completely different to the projects I have worked on in the past. Normally, I don't care what my official role & responsibilities are. Normally, I go and find the biggest fire and try to help put that out.

I decided to adopt the attitude of focussing only on my responsibilities. I decided that I would concentrate on the job that I'd been originally been asked to do. I didn't go looking for trouble. I didn't tread on anybody's toes.

The net result is that I have happy bosses who are overjoyed with my work and I'm getting a good reference, but the overall project is a failure. Whether or not I would have been able to make a contribution to the success of the wider project is debatable, but I do have a track record of helping to turn around late or failing projects. I've made a habit of running into the burning building when all others are fleeing for their lives.

It's so bizarre and surreal that I've spent 4 months keeping a low profile, writing, doing as little as possible, and I'm far more appreciated than when I was working 14 hours a day, 6 days a week.

I used to get rung up routinely every weekend, to run conference bridges and orchestrate things on the failing project I worked on before this one. When shit was hitting the fan, I was there rolling up my sleeves and at least trying to be a calm head, even though I obviously claim no credit for the hard work of my colleagues.

That previous project ended with me finding out my security pass and access to email had suddenly been revoked and I was persona non grata with the senior management team who had previously been begging me for my help.

This current project is finishing with the work that my team have produced being lauded as some kind of 'jewel in the crown'. I'm being hailed as some kind of amazing manager, when in truth all I've done is sit unobtrusively in the corner of the office and write my blog.

I'm certainly one of the highest paid writers that you're ever likely to meet, but yet I was hired to run a software project, not to write.

For all those people who say "art is just a hobby" you're wrong. I spend the bulk of my time and effort writing, and being an IT consultant running a software project has been a little side project for me.

People walk up to my desk to ask me a question, and I quickly minimise what I'm doing. I then give the first answer that pops into my head. My whole body language seems to suggest that I'm very busy and my time is precious, so there isn't really a culture of lengthy discussions and debate in my team. It might sound horribly autocratic, but it certainly seems to get the software built and my team report a high level of job satisfaction. There is actually a great level of teamwork and mutual support in my team. The language we use with each other is very positive and complementary. We spend time applauding each other's efforts and celebrating our achievements.

So, I'm torn. Clearly I'm doing something right. It just feels so wrong.

Imposter syndrome means doubting your skills and abilities. I feel like a double imposter, because not only do people tell me I'm doing a good job, but I know that I spend most of my time writing my blog.

Things are coming to a head even more in my final week. My team are pulling together pieces of work that I asked them to do as part of a strategic plan, and it's working. In the final analysis we will finish up with a piece of software that's amazing quality and yet neatly packaged up to be thrown in the garbage. My team will all go off to new projects, knowing how to follow industry best practices and having seen them successfully implemented.

So many things in software get hopelessly botched: Agile project management, test-driven development, code quality, technical debt, continuous integration, release management, production stability, automated regression testing and intuitive user interfaces. Even for me, it's felt like a dream to see that some of these things can be achieved in a corporate environment.

My usual attitude of agreeing with bosses - "yeah yeah yeah" - and then just doing things the way I was going to do them anyway is unchanged. The only difference this time is that I've used my spare capacity to work on a personal project - this blog - instead of trying to think about the wider project.

It's quite exhausting - faking it, looking busy, watching out for anybody who might look over my shoulder - while also attempting to alleviate the boredom and fight the uncomfortable feeling of knowing that you're being unproductive, wasting time.

On the face of it, it looks like a good prescription for stability, financial success. I've turned up to work every day. I got paid every week. What more could you want?

However, how sustainable is it really, to live such a lie?

Tags: #bipolar #career #agile #writing

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 quicksand...

After being discharged from psychiatric hospital, what do you think you'd do next? Well, imagine that for months you have been travelling but you haven't been moving.

Things are not stable for me, no matter what my senses tell me. I go to the same office, looking at the same computer screen, surrounded by the same people, for months if not years on end. According to my senses I'm not moving anywhere.

However, my bank balance would tell a very different story. Just sitting mute in a chair, keeping my head down and being a perfect corporate drone who never rocks the boat, means that I am very rapidly travelling... financially. My body and mind don't really agree though.

My moods tell a very different story again. I don't necessarily notice seasonal effects and depression taking hold. I'm not fully able to tell when I'm getting hyped up and excessively involved in work or other projects. I'm not great at judging when it's time to take a break, either because I'm too down or too up.

It is unhealthy and unnatural that I work in the same place, doing the same thing, and working a job that moves at snail's pace. I just don't have the social life and hobbies at the moment to get any balance, let alone the financial means to travel, socialise and pursue pastimes with the usual gusto that I apply to everything.

What happens is that I become like a champagne cork. The pressure builds and builds, and then I explode with frustration.

My journey began with a two week stay in a psychiatric hospital, because I was so beaten down by the task of getting myself off the streets, back from the brink of bankruptcy, beating addiction, working on a massively important high-pressure project, renting an apartment, moving house for the zillionth time, and then realising that I was in an unsustainable situation: I needed to get rid of a 'friend' who thought he'd live with me rent free and get pocket money: for what reason he thought he deserved that, I'm not even sure. I also needed to quit a horrible contract that just wasn't worth the sleepless nights.

Next thing I knew, I was sleeping in a Mongolian yurt in Devon.

Then, I was surfing and hitch-hiking in Cornwall. Hitch-hiking is surprisingly hard, it turns out. Hitch-hiking is a bad way to get around if you have to be in a certain place at a certain time. I'd hitch-hiked once before, earlier in the year, in Ireland, but it turns out the Irish are a lot more friendly, helpful and trusting than the British, based on my anecdotal evidence.

Back in London after my Westcountry adventure, I still felt overwhelmed by depression and the feeling that I was trapped by my job. I had a lovely trip, but it had been very short and coming home was very anti-climactic. I knew I needed to quit my job, but I didn't quite have the guts to terminate a very lucrative contract.

I had made a plan a couple of months prior, to shame HSBC by sleeping rough in Canary Wharf, right by their headquarters. I found it deliciously ironic that they had inadvertently helped one of their customers to avoid bankruptcy, escape homelessness and generally improve their financial situation. I had no doubt that if they'd done their due diligence on me, then I would never have been employed to work on their number one project. I was planning on getting my contract terminated for no reason other than I cared about my job and was trying to do the right thing: acting with ethics and integrity.

But, I still had the contract like a millstone around my neck. I was desperately trapped and depressed about it.

I decided to fly to San Francisco and go to the Golden Gate Bridge. I wanted to illustrate how the desperation of my situation had driven me to contemplate suicide. I also wanted to go because I had planned to go 3 years earlier, but my parents had reneged on a promise and generally conspired to pull the rug out from under my feet at a time when I was terribly vulnerable. What they did was an awful thing, and I wanted to take that trip that I never got to make, because of their horrible behaviour.

I booked a flight for approximately 4 hours' time, packed a bag and left immediately. It's the most impulsive thing I've ever done in my life.

In San Francisco, a friend kindly picked me up and I dumped my bags at her house. I then borrowed a bike and rode to the Golden Gate Bridge. Less than 24 hours had elapsed since deciding to travel 5,351 miles. I stood in a jetlagged and travel weary state, peering over the edge, looking at the perilous drop to the sea below.

Travel, novelty, adventure, excitement, old friends, social contact, good weather... all of these things are the perfect antidote to depression. Who knew that the prospect of being chained to the same damn desk, in the same damn office, doing the same damn work you've done for 19 years, could lead to a tiny twinge of "Fuck My Life".

Obviously, the whole dumping your bags at your friends' place and then going off and killing yourself thing would be poor social etiquette. Plus I'd arranged to see an old schoolfriend while I was in San Francisco. The potential for positive experiences was massive. In the office, I had found myself hoping for a fire drill just because it would be slightly novel.

I'm no dumbass. I know it's important to stop and smell the roses. But, there isn't the time, energy or motivation to do so when you're trapped in the rat race.

In San Francisco I took delight in the simplest of things, like taking a selfie of myself by a road sign that matches my surname. I didn't even do any specific sightseeing or look at a map. I took a trolleycar because I saw one passing. I found myself by landmark buildings, just because I stumbled on them. I walked miles and miles.

My AirBnB host invited me out to a Halloween party. I dressed up. We drove to some house near Mountain View, where there were fascinating Silicon Valley tech people to meet from Google and Apple. That kind of shit generally doesn't happen when you're depressed working your desk job.

I got a tattoo to piss my parents off. My sister has several tattoos and my parents are always giving her a hard time about them. I thought that getting a tattoo would be some gesture of solidarity with my sister, and my parents would have to give both of us a hard time for having one. It was also a kind of souvenir from the trip, and a bit of reminder that I was going to try and stay in the land of the living for a little longer.

I caught up with a schoolfriend who I hadn't seen for years and years. He was supposed to be a mentor on a startup accelerator that I did in 2011, but he'd had to move back to California. It was great to see him, in the Mission district of San Francisco, even if we only had the briefest of time to catch up. Precious moments.

Meeting my friends' second child, and hanging out at their house reading stories to their eldest. Going with the kids to the science museum and playing with the interactive exhibits. Still etched in my mind.

Getting a glimpse into family life, valley startup life, California life... special.

Hanging out with some of the people who I have so much respect and love for... priceless.

I tried to provoke HSBC into terminating my contract immediately, by sending truthful emails, saying things that needed to be said, but were blatantly above my pay grade. Sadly, the mark of a corporate drone is somebody who's completely gutless and two-faced. They emailed me to say they just wanted to have a "routine chat" with me when I got back. No matter how hard I pushed, they wouldn't admit that my contract was effectively terminated, which is what I wanted so I could stay in the USA longer.

I came home. I went into the office and exploited the fact that nobody would be straight with me. I kinda got my goodbyes from everybody, even though they were "great to see you back in the office" but only those who were nice genuine people seemed to be unaware that the long knives were drawn. I loved the look of shock on the faces of those whose incompetence I had exposed.

I shaved my stupid beard and kept my moustache, because it was now November. There's no greater pleasure than having your contract terminated from a 'straight' job, when you're wearing a stupid moustache and you have a tattoo. This was all part of the plan in preparation for the sleeping rough by HSBC headquarters anyway.

Then, I was deflated again.

It'd been a helluva journey. Psychiatric hospital, Devon, Cornwall, Mongolian yurts, surfing, hitch-hiking, sleeping on the floor of New York's JFK airport, cycling over the Golden Gate Bridge, sightseeing in Silicon Valley, old friends, nice work colleagues, miserable office drones, contract termination... relax!

Bonfire night - November 5th - I was still pretty hyped up. For some reason I decided that I wanted to whizz around London giving out brightly coloured cardboard stars. I think I spent 90 minutes from conceiving the idea, to then whizzing round London sticking stickers on stuff, giving out stars, losing my luggage and generally careering out of control somewhat. That was classic hypomania. What gets held down must go up. It was such a relief to be released from my soul-destroying contract that the nervous energy almost demanded to be released by doing something crazy.

I decided I needed to see some neglected UK friends. I zoomed down to Bournemouth and stayed in the Royal Bath Hotel by the pier. I met up with one of my most loyal friends, and met his son, caught up with him and his wife, saw their house. I caught up with another friend. Friends who had offered to take me kitesurfing didn't materialise, but it didn't matter... I'd already had a very action-packed trip.

Then, finally, the night of the sleep out came. Lots of things got conflated in my mind: "Hacking" humanity, Techfugees, homelessness, bankruptcy, HSBC's unethical behaviour, soul-destroying bullshit jobs and the unbelievably erratic, exhausting, stressful path I had taken to reach that point.

I always knew that keeping moving is the answer to staying alive, but there's so much financial incentive to be trapped into a chair, chained to a desk, not moving anywhere, not doing anything, not talking to anybody.

As I burnt through my money on rent and bills over the winter months, I knew the day would come when I'd have to go back into the rat race, and it depressed the hell out of me. By Christmas Day I was in a pretty shitty state. By New Year's Eve I was cutting my arms with a razor blade.

For the last 4 months, I've sat at my desk, not saying anything. For the last 4 months, I haven't rocked the boat, I haven't tried to improve anything, I haven't tried to do a good job. For the last 4 months, I've kept a low profile. My bosses couldn't be more pleased. My bank balance is much improved. In theory, my mental health should have done something but it doesn't feel like my mood's done anything but sink.

How am I supposed to reconcile the drudgery of the rat race with the excitement of the crazy tale that led me here? When I look back 6 months, 12 months, 18 months, things were very different. Are things better? It doesn't feel like it.

I'm still not moving, I'm not travelling. I still don't have my needs met.

If I want to survive, I need to be moving. It's not sustainable for me to stagnate. I wasn't built to just sit and rot at a desk.

If I stop moving, I sink into the quicksand.

Tags: #depression #suicide #bipolar #career #startup #computing #homeless #addiction

This is a story about bravery...

How do terrorists win? By spreading terror. There's a video going round on the Internet of a prankster in Arab head-dress throwing a black duffel bag at people and shouting "Allahu Akbar!". His unwitting victims run for their lives. For me, this is anecdotal evidence that the terrorists are winning.

I tend to be a little irreverent and it's easy to miss my satire or irony sometimes, but I'm disappointed when people act as thought police, and act with more offence than is strictly justified by their personal involvement with a tragedy. Taking up the position of moral outrage is simply thought policing, when no outrage is warranted.

When I write about terrorism on 9/11 or 7/7, I'm always mindful that family members, friends or work colleagues of people who lost somebody during those attacks, might be offended. However, there are billions of Netizens and the chance of somebody directly affected reading my stuff is negligible. It's in the greater public interest that I should discuss the terror that obviously affects so many, instead of self-censoring because of the tiny risk that anybody might take legitimate offence.

Having grown up in the UK, from 1979 to present, I lived through the IRA's bombing campaign. Far more people died in 1985 through 1995 than in recent years, including 2001. I used to work near the Baltic Exchange and I live and work in Canary Wharf. Both of these places were blown up by IRA bombs.

So am I Irelandophobic? Am I afraid that every Irishman I meet is a terrorist? Do I detest the Irish, because they all carry some collective responsibility for the actions of a small handful of their fellow countrymen? No. Of course not. Some of my best friends are Irish. The Irish have shown me nothing but love.

Being brave doesn't mean dropping bombs on people from 30,000ft, safe in the cockpit of your $350 million fighter jet. Being brave doesn't mean killing civilians in a drone strike, pushing buttons on your joystick, watching everything remotely on a TV screen. Being brave doesn't mean being racially abusive - "build a wall" and "send them home" - while you teach your kids to fear and reject people who look different, and are from a different culture.

Being brave certainly doesn't involve shutting down people who appear to be desecrating the memory of the dead.

If we're going to move forward as a race, we've got to get over this whole "your tribe killed somebody from my tribe" bullshit. A couple of days ago there was great offence taken at a stag party taking selfies at Ground Zero. Hey! Guess what? Nearly every inch of the globe has had human blood spilt on it at some point, at the hands of another human. Get over it.

We need to move beyond the "brown/black/Irish kills privileged white shocker!" type headline trolling. There are underprivileged people who get killed in gang shootings and knifings every day here in London, but it never makes the national news. If you're not white caucasian and you're poor, attacks that are not overtly religiously motivated just aren't news outside London. However, a bunch of whites appear to be mocking some other whites, and that's global news? What the fuck is that all about?

An estimated 675 people have been shot and killed by police in the USA this year so far. There were 990 last year. If we say that in the 15 years since 9/11, on average 700 people have been killed by police each year, then over 10,000 people have died at the hands of the police. America, you had fewer than 3,000 killed in 9/11, but you've killed more than 3 times as many since then, just with your cops.

Grief is a kind of hobby. "You just can't say this stuff today... people are grieving" I hear you say. Well, who's grieving for those 10,000 people who got gunned down by cops? When is the day that you grieve for them?

Lest we forget.

Well you did forget, didn't you? You forgot that being afraid of black and brown people means that terrorism is winning. Terrorism affects your life. Terrorism is something you're afraid of, so the terrorists have successfully created terror. The terrorists have won.

You forgot that the biggest threat to your life is not terrorism, but guns in the hands of your fellow Americans. Toddlers kill more Americans than terrorists do.

Maybe I have no right to contribute to this debate, because I'm not American. However, Donald Trump waded in on the side of Brexit, and the UK has suffered a huge upsurge in racially abusive attacks on our own people, as a result of the referendum result. In a little under two months, the presidential election could possibly elect a racist into office, and cause a further wave of abuse and attacks.

Europe is a more dangerous place when anti-Islamic sentiment is allowed to foment. Europe suffers the consequences for America's rhetoric. The UK becomes a proxy target for anti-American attacks, when the phoney war on Islam is perpetuated.

Terrorism is just a phoney distraction. So few people are dying in terrorist attacks that it shouldn't even get any media attention. It's not relevant. It's counterproductive to spread terror for the terrorists.

I'm expecting to get shot down in a big way, for any number of reasons, in writing this piece. I'm not trying to be deliberately offensive. I'm not being insensitive. If you lost your mom in 9/11, I'm sorry, but I really don't think you personally know anybody who lost their life on that day. 0.0001% of the population were killed.

There were 372 mass shootings in the US in 2015. I should be far more worried about an American with a gun than an Arab with a bomb.

If we use this day for anything, perhaps it should be to reflect on how well the British and the Irish generally get along today. If ever there's an example of putting terrorism behind us, it must surely follow this model. I love the Irish. I don't see us as different. We were all Europeans, until Donald bloody Trump wandered into our debate and we voted to leave the EU.

The brave thing to do is to act irreverently. Don't allow the terrorists and the thought police to disseminate fear and mistrust.

Tags: #terrorism

This is a story about tiny fractions...

Today is World Suicide Prevention Day. In theory, I'm 1/365th safer today than I am the rest of the year. By my calculations, 0.27% of the time, we are trying to prevent suicide. The other 99.73% of the time, we are not trying to prevent suicide.

There are various ways that we try and make suicidal people feel responsible, selfish and guilt tripped. "Nobody is responsible for your life except you" is something I often hear. This is plainly wrong.

Individualism has led to the collapse of local communities. Individualism has led to silent commuter trains, with everybody listening to their own music through their headphones. Individualism has led to unpleasant levels of competition, where we trample each other for the few jobs. We lie, cheat and steal, because we are all rodents in the rat race.

If we took collective responsibility for our suffering, then we could collectively bargain to improve our situation. With the power of the collective things can improve. As individuals, we are divided and ruled over by cruel elites who care nothing about the mental health epidemic and soaring suicide rates.

Suicide is everywhere.

Suicide is in our schools, where there is enormous pressure to achieve academically. Our exam grades will govern our future so we no longer have a childhood. Bullying is rampant, and it destroys the quality of life of children and drives them to self harm and suicide. Bullying is not getting better. Bullying is getting worse. Bullying was terrible when I was a kid, and unbearable. It must be unspeakably awful now. No wonder self harm, depression and anxiety affect so many children in school.

Suicide is in our workplace, where our jobs are insecure and hidden inflation means that our wages are shrinking in real terms. The steady increase in suicide rates, since the 2008 financial crisis, has now reached the point where it's the biggest killer of men under the age of 45 - 'breadwinners' in the prime of their life.

Suicide is in our homes, where thinking "at least I'm not a starving African" doesn't actually put food on the table and a roof over your head. Bills, debts, rent/mortgage and the many things that we need to live in Western society, are not going away with a few people saying "chin up" and "it can't be that bad... other people have it worse". We've been putting a brave face on everything for years, and some people reach breaking point.

To say that suicide is a selfish act is dumb. To say that suicide is running away from your responsibilities is dumb. To say that suicide is dumping a load of pain onto other people is dumb. In actual fact, a suicidal person has almost definitely been struggling with overwhelmingly awful and painfully intolerable feelings, for longer than you can even imagine. To ask them to continue to prop up the status quo any longer is selfish.

When a person reaches the point where they're attempting suicide, they've exhausted all avenues. When a person attempts suicide, they have taken responsibility for their own life. A person attempting suicide has tried everything that they have the means to change. They're out of ideas. They're out of energy. They've gone as far as they're able to go... on their own.

To make accusations that suicide is running away from problems, selfish, is why suicidal people feel so isolated and alone. Taking your own life is not something you do, surrounded by loving friends and family. Attempting suicide is done when you're all alone. Suicide is just you, and death.

You'd be surprised how people step back when you reach the point of considering the end of your own life. People don't want to be near you. People don't see you anymore. People shun you, like you're a leper, like you're a ticking time bomb.

You'd be surprised at how many days I've spent in hospital, all alone, no visitors. That hurts. That sends a message.

It's easy to put something on social media saying "you'd be missed if you died" but, seriously, how much does that really reconcile with that person's experiences? If you say you'd miss them, then when was the last time you actually took the time to see them? When was the last time you actually took advantage of the fact they're still alive?

It's a binary thing: people are either alive, or they're dead. There's no use saying "we didn't know what to do" when somebody's dead. There's a spectacular lack of discussion and action around improving the lives of people who are suicidal. Instead, there is an endless stream of trite platitudes, that you've heard over and over again.

Believe me, I've got plenty of perspective. All that "it isn't so bad" bullshit, and the "other people have it worse" bullying is the reason why we arrived at this state where suicide is the biggest killer of men under 45. Suicide kills 3 times as many men as it does women. Believe me when I say that I want to go to Africa and distribute food and clean water. Believe me when I say I want to pull Syrian children out of the rubble.

Aren't you all just being total dicks though, if you expect our most suicidally depressed people to be the ones acting charitably? Why should the mentally ill be doing good work, while everybody else just keeps making bombs to drop on Syria, and working jobs that economically enslave the developing world?

I've got plenty of perspective, and what I see is a selfish society. What I see is collective insanity, where we are working bullshit jobs. We're working jobs that actually destroy lives. What I see is a bunch of people whose mental health and will to live are being badly damaged, and a bunch more people who want things to stay the same or get even worse.

How bad does it have to get? Does it have to be your son or daughter who takes their own life before you get it?

Tags: #suicide