This is a story about a sick man...

I didn't drink last night or tonight. I've stopped taking sleeping pills. I've stopped taking anxiety medication. I've stopped taking tranquillisers. I've stopped taking sedatives. I don't take antidepressants. I feel very unwell.

I woke up and I thought about getting some rope and going to find a tree to hang myself from. I've not really thought about hanging much, but it's been on my mind. I think about a last minute change of heart, where I might try to take the weight off the noose, but it would be futile - I would try and I would fail. I think about the uncomfortable final couple of minutes, where I'd be panicking as the hypercapnic alarm response would make me thrash around, trying to get air into my lungs. Hanging would be a brutal way to die, because I imagine that I'd be conscious for quite a lot of it, then I'd lose control of my bowels and some poor sod would find me strung up with soiled underwear. Somebody would have to cut down my lifeless body. Anyway, that seemed like one of the options this morning.

This should be a happy period of my life. I'm not homeless, I have friends, a girlfriend, money and a car. I'm not a drug addict. I'm highly employable. I have my physical health, mostly. I've got a local job which is very well paid.

What's going on? Why am I so depressed?

I'm trapped. I can't go backwards. I can't stay still. I can't go forwards. I need to keep moving forwards, but I've run out of rope; I'm at my wits end.

I should have taken some time off in-between the last job and the new one, but that's not the way things worked out. Make hay while the sun shines, they say. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth, they say. Somebody opened a briefcase of money, tempting me with it, and it seemed like a good idea at the time. It is a good idea. It's a really good idea to have a really well paid job that's a short distance away from where you live. The problem is, I've got nothing left to give.

I can't fail. I can't falter. I have to succeed. I can't go back. I can't stand still.

I'm so desperate to feel better, but I know that the answer doesn't lie in pills. I know that to take antidepressants would send me manic. I know that pills aren't the answer. I'd love to feel a bit better though. My bank balance would love me to feel a bit better. It'd be nice if I didn't keep writing things that worry and upset my friends and girlfriend. Such is life. These are the cards I've been dealt.

What's important to me? It seems like it's all about work and money, but that's a good place to start. Without work and money there can be no future. Without a future there's nothing to hope for - I might as well just give up. This is the strange situation, where work is making me unwell, but without work I'll get unwell because I'll get into financial difficulties and I'll have nothing to look forward to except bankruptcy.

Just a little bit longer... if I can just work for a little bit longer...

How much money did I lose in January and February to ill health? Was it £10,000? What does it matter? I worked as hard as I could.

I've managed to buy a car. I've managed to get a local job. I've got a girlfriend. I've got some money in the bank. These are major milestones; major achievements. Things are looking up in my life.

I need to impress some new people; prove myself. I've got a new routine to get into. I've got a load of new stuff to learn, and not the fun kind of learning - this is stuff I'm expected to know already. I've got to give a good first impression - I can't turn up to work hours late every day; I can't let on that I'm not very well.

I'm sick but I can't afford to be. I'm sick but there's too much at stake. I'm sick but I don't want to lose the amazing opportunity that's fallen in my lap. I'm sick but my life looks perfect in a lot of ways - why am I sick?

I don't want to accept that I'm sick but the anxiety and depression are unbearable. It's enough to drive me to drink, drugs and/or suicide. I want to run away from the source of stress. I want to hide under the duvet for a couple of months. I need to recover but I can't - there's too much work to do. I need time off but I can't afford to lose everything.

I'm the epitome of functional. I'm getting up and doing the things I need to do, even though it's destroying me. Somehow I keep putting one foot in front of the other. Somehow the things that need to happen keep happening. I'm keeping the plates spinning even though I'm sick. At times, I'm quite happy and contented. At times I'm a picture of good health and carefree joy.

I've worked hard - even if you don't think I have - to give myself some easier times. I've put up with horrible situations because I knew they'd pay off in the end. There has to be some reward, otherwise it wouldn't have been worth the stress and aggravation at all. It would be a lie to say that my life is purely miserable. Misery kind of stalks me though - I know it lurks just around the corner at all times.

"Cheer up... it might never happen!" somebody might say, but I really wish it would happen, because I can't stand the constant anxiety. I can't stand the fact that it is happening, and I know exactly how long it's going to keep on happening for because it's not very difficult to work out such things. I know exactly what to expect. I know exactly the way things are going to go. I know exactly what has to be done. I know exactly how awful it's going to be.

My mood would be a lot better if I could abandon all responsibilities and follow my mood. I know that time passes incredibly slowly when I'm having to kill time and suffer horrible periods with nothing to do at work. I know that it's incredibly toxic to my mental health to be solving the same problems I've done a million times before, but with a load of constraints that artificially limit me from being able to work and occupy myself - to keep myself busy. I know that isolation - working alone - is really unbearable. The last place on earth I should be right now is twiddling my thumbs, bored but chained to a desk with nothing to do and nobody to talk to.

I'm going through a difficult transitionary period. I should have taken some time off. I'm emotionally exhausted. I'm trying to switch mindset, from the isolation of the last job to the possibilities of a new opportunity. I know that I need to give it a few days, or a couple of weeks, to get settled.

Everything's so stressful and unsettled. I've got a new commute to get used to. Somehow, I've got even less of a home than I did when I was living in AirBnBs. I can't get changed. I can't have a shower. I can't take a shit. I can't make myself something to eat. How did I end up like this, with a stressful job and no place to call my own... no bedroom; no privacy. It sounds ungrateful, but it's just a description of my current situation, at times. It could be worse, perhaps - I could be homeless; destitute. I could be additionally isolated and lonely, living alone. It could be worse... it could be worse... it could be worse. There is gratitude, but there is also a heap of stress and anxiety that's beyond what I can cope with. I am grateful, but I'm also struggling.

What do I want? Do I want everything to be perfect right now? Do I want easy solutions, like swallowing pills? Do I think somebody should gift me everything I need, all wrapped up with a bow? Do I expect somebody to just give me the keys to a place of my own and wave a magic wand to move all my stuff? What about friends? Should I just snap my fingers whenever I need them, and snap them again when I don't want them around?

I don't know about any of this stuff. All I know is that I woke up and I thought about finding some rope and a tree to hang myself. I thought about walking out of the perfect opportunity that's fallen in my lap. I thought about letting everything go to hell in a handcart, because I've reached the end of my tether. I don't know why I think this stuff. Maybe I'm a bad person. Maybe I'm an ungrateful little shit. Maybe I should just fuck off and die.

I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm going to have another alcohol and sleeping-pill free night and hope that these awful feelings subside. I'm going to hope for a better day tomorrow. I'm going to grab my black holdall and take the show on the road.

I'm sick, but do I have to be? I think I know where the problems are. I think I know the solutions. I know that nothing's going to be perfect. I know that life is full of compromises. All I can think to do is to keep trying to set things up so that the very least number of things are causing me distress. I keep reducing the number of things that are unpleasant and broken, in the hope that at some point things start becoming a bit easier, because at the moment there are too many times when life's unbearable.

Maybe I need to quit drinking. Maybe I need a drink. I don't know. Too much change and too much that's unsettling. I've lived out of a suitcase for far too long.

Yes, underlying mental health problems are the obvious thing to point to, but what's the solution? Of course the little bit of me that's got some survival instinct left thinks that being medicated up to the eyeballs, living in a council house, supported living or institution is preferable to death. Is being alive without dignity or hope preferable to this life that's a fate worse than death? Isn't it all the same anyway? If the rewards aren't there and the suffering is unbearable, why bother?

I managed half a day in my new local job, and I felt sick, sick, sick.

Maybe tomorrow will be better. If it's not, I don't know if I can carry on.

Tags: #suicide #career

This is a story about national security...

"I've decided to take my work back underground, to stop it falling into the wrong hands". I suppose any of our creations can take on a life of their own and have unintended consequences, and I'm certainly catching some flack as a result of my 3-year daily writing experiment at the moment, which is not entirely unjustified.

My daily writing habit is a useful exercise for me, so I'm sure I'll continue to write in some capacity, but I'm almost at the point where my blog has given me the therapeutic benefit of restoring me to stability, health, wealth and prosperity, and I have to tread carefully so that I don't undo any of the good work.

I started writing when I had my back to the wall. I started writing when I didn't feel like I had anything particularly to fall back on. I started writing when I didn't feel proud that I'd achieved anything - my life was incredibly fragile. Nobody could argue that this blog hasn't anchored me in the world, bringing me into contact with many lovely people and providing me with a creative outlet, a sense of accomplishment and some routine in my otherwise chaotic and stressful life.

I doubt very much that I'll be able to change my habits completely, but I do need to adapt to my present paradigm - I can't keep writing as if I've got nothing to lose, because it's not true at the moment.

Perhaps I'll have to start keeping a private journal, because I've been using writing as a mechanism to flush out all the bad and stressful thoughts that have threatened to overwhelm me, but a large part of my present worries revolve around imposter syndrome. I make no secret of anything, but I'd still prefer it if my colleagues and other important gatekeepers in my life didn't read what I write - with my defences down - and leap to the wrong conclusions. It's been hard enough to date girls when I'm so easily cyber-stalked.

Given the choice between a digital identity, or a healthy set of local relationships, I would have to choose the latter if I was forced, although having the former is very useful as a fallback option. Three times I've lost a lot of friends due to a break-up, with one of those times very nearly costing me my life, and the other two not exactly faring much better either. I've not been very successful at building robust local social networks in the last few years. I need a group of friends I see and speak to regularly, that wouldn't be affected by any breakups. I need that safety net. In the absence of the time, money, energy, transport and a number of other things, I've not progressed things very far yet, so I'm very grateful for my online social network and I always will be, but I do need healthy local face-to-face relationships too.

Getting a girlfriend can be a quick-fix when you're lonely, as it's so easy to be the +1 and tag along to all of her social events, and ingratiate yourself into her social circle, but it's a dangerous strategy. It's too much of a dependency on one person. It's a mistake. Thankfully, I have valuable and important local friendships that predate any of my dating shenanigans. I need to continue to make friends of my own, and establish a pattern of social engagements which are not couples-only events.

Work colleagues and a great team environment can make a huge difference, and sadly that's been lacking in my life recently. Hopefully that's going to be rectified really soon. There's a slight danger in mixing personal life with work too much, when you're in the position I'm in, where I'm trying to get myself back into the respectable world - some of the recent events in my turbulent life are not office-gossip friendly. I've not got anything to hide, particularly, but I'd rather not challenge anybody to be open minded, if it's at all avoidable.

I'm treading a fine line between trying to do what I have to for my own sanity and stability, balanced with the needs of those who I have relationships with and my responsibilities regarding confidentiality, secrecy, discretion, professional conduct, respect of privacy, not causing shock, alarm or distress. It's a fine line between keeping my support network informed of what's going on during a time when I'm very vulnerable, and saying things that're going to paradoxically make me more vulnerable. It's one thing to confide in friends behind closed doors, and quite another to write publicly on a website.

Me being me, I doubt I'll be able to make a sudden overnight change, and I don't want to lose this valuable therapeutic tool, but I do need to start changing my behaviour in light of my new circumstances.

I doubt I'm going to be writing about what I ate for breakfast and live-blogging about the fresh paint that's drying on the walls, but things might have to turn a little more pedestrian for a while... at least until things are more settled.

Presently stressed out of my mind with the transition from one life to another, but hopefully everything will work out and go smoothly.

Tags: #writing #socialmedia #career #friends #relationships

This is a story about helping people...

I'm a bit of a work-in-progress. I was on a psych ward in Manchester after a suicide attempt - homeless, jobless, single, friendless (in terms of local friends) and estranged from my family (except my sister). Then, I was plucked out of that dismal life and brought into my friends' family life on a farm in Wales. My friends are aware of my suicidal distress; my depression; my wretched situation. My friends are helping me to get back on my feet.

To leave the psych ward was an immediate improvement to my life. To have a quiet room of my own; a double bed - these were luxuries not afforded on the psych ward, where I was in a 4-bed dorm with only a curtain for privacy. I was unlikely to make new friends on the psych ward - my fellow patients were profoundly unwell and I had no plans to stay in Manchester. I didn't really have anybody to talk to. Now that I'm embedded in my friends' family life I can chat to them and the members of their immediate and extended family - I've been welcomed into the fold... instant social life.

It was my choice not to be sectioned or have the home treatment team - part of the community mental health team (CMHT) - involved in my care. It was my choice to not take lamotrigine, sertraline, lithium or sodium valproate. It was my choice to travel 1,200 miles away on business, and to go back to work in London for an investment bank. I have my reasons for making these choices, but they put my life in jeopardy - the choices are hard to understand. It seems reckless, arrogant and irresponsible to risk my life.

I'm earning money and I'm dating. In some areas, my life seems to be improving a huge amount. In other areas things are every bit as desperate as they were back in September/October of last year. At least when I was on the psych ward I was relatively safe. When I was on the psych ward I'd put myself in the hands of the state - they were responsible for feeding me, housing me and keeping me safe. I didn't feel bad about relying on the state to look after me, because I was so vulnerable. Now, my friends must feel very responsible.

At face value, my depression looks treatable. At face value, my problems look trivial. At face value, I appear to be very functional.

To treat my depression could trigger mania. To protect me from mania - with powerful medications - could leave me unable to work. Without work I will never regain my self-esteem and independence, which will lead to depression and suicidal thoughts. Without self-esteem I won't be able to find a partner. Without a partner I'll be lonely and depressed and suicidal. To meet somebody special and start a new relationship could trigger mania, or bring a whole heap of feelings of inadequacy that could trigger me to seek medications - I want to be full of energy and happiness with my new romantic interest. For example, there's a feeling of pressure to have a rock hard dick and be able to have sex multiple times a night. How do I even function without medications? Uppers and downers, antidepressants and mood-stabilisers, antipsychotics and tranquillisers, sedatives and sleeping pills, erectile dysfunction drugs and refractory period suppressants... things to help me feel good. I so desperately want to feel good.

There's another risk that I don't talk about so much: Relapse into drug addiction. This time last year I was pretty hopelessly addicted - in the clutches of supercrack. Foolishly, I was looking for some Bitcoins I hadn't spent and I found them... on the Dark Web waiting to be used to purchase narcotics. I resisted temptation, but I spent a few days thinking about self-sabotage. It's been 8 or 9 months since I was a drug addict, but that's not very much time at all - it was really recently that drug addiction was wrecking me and everything I held dear.

I've got a fairly simple strategy for avoiding relapsing into drug addiction: To kill myself. Addicts die as demons; despised; hated. Addicts are blamed for their bad choices - the architects of their own destruction. My solution is simple: Die while clean, sober and sane, so that nobody can demonise me. I just want to have some dignity. That's all I ask for really... some dignity.

So, my problems are not really mental health, but they're not really addiction either. I don't take drugs or medications, I'm not mad and I'm not bad. I'm just trying to live a normal life: to have a home, some friends, a girlfriend, a job, cat(s)... a few things. Not much; I don't ask for much.

My friends have helped me. I've met somebody who I really like, but it's early days... don't want to get carried away. I'm working and I've done a good job and the client wants to extend my contract. I've battled with my mental health and addiction demons, and to all intents and purposes I'm winning. I'm a bit of a success story, in a way - an example of what you'd hope would happen if you got involved in somebody's life, with the intention of helping them.

I have been helped. I am stubborn and I do things on my own terms, but not without good reason. I'm glad - for example - that I'm not doped up to the eyeballs on medications that would leave me emotionally blunted and anorgasmic. I'm enjoying the pleasure of a little oxytocin as I cuddle my sweetheart. I'm glad I'm feeling stuff.

There's been a suicide. I can relate to the victim. I also feel super bad that my friends are having to deal with the aftermath of that suicide when they know I'm a big suicide risk: it feels like they must be additionally worried about me, and I don't really know how to talk to them when they're dealing with that suicide. It's no secret that I'm having regular suicidal thoughts. It's surely too much for them. It's too much for me. My instinct is to withdraw; to remove myself from the situation.

I feel a bit ineligible for life. I shouldn't have friends; I shouldn't have a girlfriend; I shouldn't do anything, because I'll probably fuck it up. Whether I kill myself or relapse into addiction, either way I end up dead, so I'm not allowed to have nice things, like friends and a girlfriend; I'm not allowed to have self-esteem... I should just sit and rot on a psych ward.

I feel like running away. I feel like I should put every penny I've earned into extracting myself cleanly from the situation. Nice people don't deserve to get hurt and don't deserve to have to deal with the aftermath of unpleasant stuff.

That it would cause pain, whether it's suicide or relapse, is not something that's going to stop it happening. We can't beat people into submission. I need a reason to live - friends, a girlfriend, independence etc. I need my self-esteem and the natural endorphins that lift my mood, through healthy social contact, sex and other things like that. Nobody ever got better without those things. You can't 'get better' first and then build a healthy life.

My friends took a big risk trying to help me. Any girl who'd tangle with me is taking a big risk. The risk doesn't make me less likely to do myself harm. If anything, the risk I pose is something that adds a great deal of pressure, which is exhausting. What should I do? Should I exclude myself from society, just as most parts of society would very much like to exclude me? I'm a modern leper: The escaped mental asylum patient; the junkie; the tramp; the alkie; the washed-up loser.

I look back to September 9th, when I begged the staff at the Manchester Royal Infirmary not to treat me: No activated charcoal, no gastric lavage, no intubation, no resuscitation. When I lost consciousness, they helped me anyway, in the way that they're trained to help people. They saved my life, even though I made it explicitly clear that I didn't want to be helped - I wanted to die, in no uncertain terms. What if I go on to hurt my new friends? What harm would there have been in just letting me die? I'm going to die anyway, one day.

If I seem ungrateful for the help I've received, I'm sorry. This is the truth of the matter: I'm living a part of my life I didn't expect to have, but I'm not automatically grateful for it. It makes it harder, in a way - I didn't plan on being alive this long. I'm not sure who I'm alive for, because it's certainly not for me at the moment.

I'm one of the lucky ones. My situation is improving. It's quite hard for me to mess my life up any more than I've already messed it up. It's relatively easy to make improvements to my life. It seems as if I can fix things up quite quickly, depending on your definition of "quick".

I guess it seems short-sighted to kill myself when I don't know what tomorrow's going to bring. There's always a chance that tomorrow's going to be better than today. There's always a chance I'm going to wake up and feel glad that I didn't die on September 9th.

People kill themselves when they don't think their life is salvageable - there's too much damage: too many dashed hopes and dreams; too much shame and embarrassment; too much loss of status... too much disappointment. A person kills themself when they're a hard worker; a high achiever; they'd worked hard to get where they'd got to, but it seemed like it was all for nothing - they were potentially going to lose everything they'd ever dreamed of having. It can't be overstated, the devastating impact that it can have, re-adjusting our expectations when we're thwarted. You might say "it's only money" or "it's only a job" but you'll find that those things are pretty important in modern society. Try going anywhere without somebody asking you "what do you do?" and "where did you study?" and "do you own your own home?" and myriad other questions that will remind you that you've crashed and burned. Try doing anything when you're poor and you'll find it's really hard - money really helps, and you can get quite used to having it and not having to stress about it anymore. Who'd really want to go back to being poor, if you've experienced poverty and debt, and worked hard to get out of that pit of misery?

Every day I face the same thought that pushed me over the edge, causing me to attempt to commit suicide: I can't do it; it's too much work; it's too hard; I've reached my limit; I can never overcome this. Of course, we feel that all the time, but when there's an event that suddenly creates a huge problem to be solved, or something that's potentially going to be life-ruining, then it's too much to handle. We're all right at the limit. None of us has the spare capacity to deal with some mountainous pile of shit being dumped on us, when we're reached the maximum of what we can tolerate.

Of course, I'm a little fragile. It's only gonna take a few bumps in the road to cause me to push the "fuck it" button. I'm delicate; vulnerable. The only solution is to act positively - to go out there, work hard, keep trying, take risks and aim to regain the things I need and want, hoping that nothing super bad happens. It's luck. I just need a run of good luck. I have to hope my luck holds, because I don't have the spare capacity to withstand a whole lot of bad stuff happening.

It's Valentine's Day, and I'm aware that my sweetheart might read this. It's early days. She should run a mile. There's too much to handle here. I'm putting it out there anyway.

My friends are dealing with the aftermath of a suicide when they haven't even managed to 'fix' me yet. I am I going to remind them of the person who successfully committed suicide, every time I talk to them?

We can't 'fix' anything. All we can do is try to leave things better than when we found them. Should we help? It's hard to not do any harm when we try to help.

Tags: #suicide #addiction #relationships #sex

This is a story about copycat suicides...

I took this photo on the 10th of August 2017. I had three boxes just like this, each containing 112 capsules of tramadol. I had deliberately stockpiled these capsules over the course of a 3-month period. A month later I wrote a blog called The Closest I've Come to Suicide. Only a matter of hours later I very nearly did succeed in killing myself.

I'm repeating myself. Why?

I've kept the photos. I've kept the blog posts. Why?

Why am I thinking about this stuff? Aren't I deliberately triggering myself? Am I not tempting fate? Shouldn't I try to forget; pretend it never happened? Shouldn't I think positive thoughts, abandon my blog and decide that I'm going to be cured and happy? Am I not deliberately keeping myself depressed and suicidal, by continuing to have this link to the past?

People kill themselves all the time. Suicide kills a lot of men like me. In fact, suicide is the thing that's most likely to kill me. I'm not unique - if you're a man under the age of 45, suicide's the thing that's most likely to kill you too. Suicide's more likely to kill you than a car crash, cancer, a heart attack, a brain tumour, a drug overdose, a freak accident or anything else you can think of. You should be worried about suicide - it's the #1 risk to your health.

Technically, I'm not really allowed to write this. It's too soon - there's been a recent event. I can't talk about the event, but it happened. It's not about me. I shouldn't write about me. I shouldn't write about how it affects me. I'm not allowed to do those things - to write about it; to feel things. It's not me who's been affected. I'm impossible to affect.

My thoughts are with some other people who are more directly affected, but there's something else. I can't talk about it.

I'm safe, but if ever there was an example of a trigger, this would be it. I can't explain what the trigger is, which is part of what makes it so dangerously triggering - when people can't talk about stuff, that's when they're in danger. When people stop talking, that's when they're in danger.

Arguably, you might say that my blog didn't help me to stop following through with my plans to kill myself. However, it was also through my Twitter followers that the emergency services were able to get to me in time and save my life. My blog was never really supposed to be a cure - it's a suicide note. I started writing this because I didn't want to die misunderstood. I think it's had therapeutic benefit, but it's clearly not been curative, because I still tried to kill myself and very nearly succeeded.

The more I have to self-censor and worry about who's reading and how they're going to react, the harder it is for me to use my blog therapeutically. The best thing for me is to write without a filter, but that has consequences. There are things I want to write about, so that I'm fully publicly accountable and I've stayed true to my mission to document absolutely everything that's happening to me in unflinching detail, but I've got to balance that with the need to tell the story in the right sequence, otherwise people will leap to the wrong conclusions. I also jeopardise relationships and my job when I write so openly. I need to write with pure honesty, but human lives are complicated - there's no synopsis that allows anybody to effortlessly understand who I am.

My mood was dangerously unstable last week. This week I'm exhausted and stressed, but my mood is not so low. I was going to skip work today, but I didn't, and more importantly I didn't feel suicidally desperate about it. I felt like hiding under the duvet and never leaving the house, but that's completely different from feeling suicidal. There's a whole load of stuff that's hit me all at once at the start of the week - good and bad - but I'm feeling considerably better than I was this time last week, when I wrote Cry for Help.

I've had a week where there have been a number of 'triggering' things, most of which I'm not prepared to write about at the moment. I've had a week where there were at least 3 disastrous courses of action I could've embarked upon, but I got through it.

It feels horrible to be going through a period where I'm constrained in what I can write about. It feels dangerous to be living with things that are distressing, but are too difficult to tackle without compromising decisions I made about privacy and things that I don't want to share [yet].

I'm not a keeper of secrets. I don't want to be a man of mystery. I don't like having things that are off-limits to write about. I think it's dangerous - I don't want to have things that are bothering me, that I haven't alerted anybody about. I'm a lot happier - and safer - when I'm allowing pressure to escape from the safety release valve. I need to blow off steam; to vent.

Clearly, I'm being antagonised. Some of it is me, some of it is circumstances beyond anybody's control, some of it is other people. As a coping mechanism, I'm trying to write about it without making things personal; I'm trying to write about stuff that affects me personally, and also be some kind of superhuman who always thinks about how everyone else is feeling too, and attempts to put my own feelings into perspective.

I'm compromised. My blog serves a purpose. My blog is mine. I'm in a weird situation where I've got to watch what I say. How do I deal with something that's triggering, while also being mindful of other people at all times? This isn't supposed to be like a regular social situation, where I have to be mindful of other people's feelings. This is supposed to be my place where I come and deal with the thing that's most upsetting - triggering - to me.

Should I switch to a private journal, I wonder to myself. But, then I lose my all-important public scrutiny. If I write about my most desperate struggles in private, I won't be discovered until it's too late, if there was a repeat of what happened last time I tried to kill myself. I'm not planning on killing myself, but it's something to bear in mind - my social media friends are there for me when it's life-or-death. If nothing else, this blog has plucked me out of some very sorry situations. I can't really abandon it, just because I get too much earache from a handful of people who think they've read enough already.

I feel like I've got to write a caveat: that my thoughts are with somebody I really care about, arguably more affected than me by an event. It's not a competition, but I can't pretend like what's happened is not 'triggering' for me though, for reasons I can't go into. It's such a damn pain when I can't speak freely because I'm boxed in by a whole load of considerations about other people. It's stopping me from being raw and honest, which is stopping me from being able to cope in the usual way: to write without a filter; without self-censorship.

I'm sorry this is so repetitive and cryptic.

I don't know how to proceed. I think I'm going to have to continue my story. I'm going to have to be selfish and self-centred and get what I need out of writing. I'm going to have to be true to my mission, which is to be authentic and honest. I'm going to have to be brave and put everything out there, because the alternative will lead me to being isolated and alone with my terrible thoughts and feelings which could drive me to attempt suicide again.

Half tempted to scrub this and write about what's really going on, but I'm not going to. I'm going to see how I feel about things after I've had some more time to think.

Tags: #suicide

This is a story about invasion of privacy...

I've lived my life online since the nineties, writing using my real name on parts of the internet which are preserved for posterity. Many websites have ceased to be maintained and entire online communities have been lost, along with myriad digital identities and all the words that were written. However, there's always the chance that something shared publicly might become permanently recorded. Sometimes, the internet never forgets.

It kind of goes without saying that I write mindful of the fact that people I care about might not appreciate being splashed all over the pages of a website. A friend writes a blog where he refers to people by the first letter of their name, but I tend to prefer not to write about my face-to-face relationships at all. It's a strange kind of double-life, where bloggers follow the trials and tribulations of each others' lives, but I have a completely private part of my life which I don't write about. It might seem like I'm a completely open book, and I certainly don't keep any secrets per se, but I do respect the privacy of my friends.

I've written in the past using the personal pronoun "her" to refer to my [ex-]girlfriend, but I wasn't broadcasting intimate details of our relationship. At my lowest ebb, when I was extremely unwell, I did share some stuff on Facebook - restricted to just my friends - which I regret and I deleted when I got better and understood that it was a stupid mistake. I enjoy the public scrutiny of my life, but it's not my place to share the parts of the story which overlap with other people. When something's very important to me, and I'm not able to write openly about what's bugging me, I write cryptically and I hope it obfuscates precisely who and what I'm writing about.

Being an open book and living a life that is unflinchingly candid, honest and authentic, is very important to me. I think I'll always write this blog, because it's been the best thing I've ever done to help me with my mood stability and generally regain control of my life.

I worry that I'm becoming a bitter, twisted, poison pen writer sometimes. Anything that's upsetting me and otherwise causing me emotional distress, gets written about here. Writing is a great way to work out my frustrations, without being snappy, bitchy or sharp-tongued with anybody. Writing publicly means that I write more considerately than I would if I felt my words would only ever be read by my intended recipient.

Because often times, private correspondence is now being shared far and wide, there can be unintended consequences for shooting your mouth off when you think it's just between you and another person. The more public scrutiny I'm under, the more my behaviour moves in the direction I want it to. There are things I'm incredibly hurt and upset about, and there simply isn't any way I could communicate healthily in 'private' because my blood boils. Writing publicly is brilliant, because I'm forced to be fair and reasonable, keep things civil, and I know that my words don't fall on deaf ears - even if my intended recipient ignores me, other people are reading and that means that those who have upset me are held accountable, so I feel satisfied that my point has been made. I feel like I've finally managed to get my tormentors - the bullies, the abusers, the oppressors - into the dock and I'm having my day in court. It feels like justice.

The unintended consequence of having a large digital footprint - a social media identity - is that those who are in your life who do not live their lives in the same way, have to be treated separately. It would be unfair, for example, to share the gory details of how my dating is going, or the particulars of life embedded in my friends' family (see The White Wolf and the Black Sheep).

Perhaps it's a good omen, that an increasing proportion of my life is off-limits for my blog. I won't write the name of the client I'm working for at the moment, although it's pretty obvious that it's an investment bank. I won't write about how I spend my weekends. I'm not documenting the details of relationships that are beyond the realm of social media and the internet.

It does pose some difficulties, that some of the things I really want to write about have to bubble and boil away until I burst into an incoherent rant, which hopefully could never be connected to the real-life events that precipitated it.

So, I'm not being quite as open, honest, candid and authentic as I could be, but I do have a responsibility towards people who don't want lurid details splurged all over the internet, becoming an unwitting part of the Nick "Manic" Grant show, although I do occasionally receive extremely angry messages from people who felt that they very much should have featured.

In conclusion, I'm pretty happy with the balance I'm striking. One of my closest friendships was tested, but I think things are all better now. Generally, it's better to assume I'm not writing about you.

To save you a lot of digging, you might be interested in reading So Lonely if you want to see the kind of stuff I write about other people.

Tags: #relationships #writing

This is a story about going insane...

What does this even mean? Who on earth can follow what I'm going on about?

When you take a very large dose of a stimulant drug, often you can be compelled to take things to pieces to see how they work. Famously, many stimulant abusers have dismantled their televisions and radios. I once spent the best part of a couple of days - without sleep - wondering how to design a more efficient electric motor.

If you're not going to come up with a new and novel invention, you can amuse yourself by reverse-engineering other people's. Something that holds much fascination for me are the secure hashing algorithms designed by the United States' National Security Agency. I love one of those algorithms so f**king much that I went to the trouble of writing my own software simulation of a central processing unit (CPU) just so I could study how each individual binary bit flowed through the processor and memory.

What's most compelling about my little venture into the world of pulling that puzzle apart, is that I feel transported into that room where a bunch of computer scientists and mathematicians sat down and tried to design what's called a one-way algorithm - a piece of computer code that produces an unpredictable result; unique to every piece of starting data. In theory, it should be impossible to predict the result of a seemingly trivial change, because of cascading complexity. What's the relationship between "AA", "AB" and "AC"? It should be easily predictable. Computers are very predictable. But, is it possible to obfuscate the relationship between those trivial changes and the end result?

You know all that boring maths stuff that you didn't really get at school? Well, guess what... I didn't really get it either. There just didn't seem to be any purpose to it, you know?

Well, guess what? Whoever solves the problem of solving the secure hashing algorithm known as SHA-256 gets to win a quarter of a trillion dollars. By solve I mean to come up with an algebraic equation and a number of coefficients that allow a person to compute - in a single calculation - the answer for a given number.

At the moment, a computer processor has to iterate 111 times to produce an unexpected result. Each iteration has 18 instructions. That's more or less 2,000 computer instructions to find an answer that should be as simple as doing a sum. Whoever solves the riddle will be the richest man (or woman) in the world.

An idea occurs to me: perhaps this little puzzle has been set deliberately. Whoever solves it may inadvertently be destroying the privacy we take for granted in the modern world. Our governments are very keen to break encryption so they can snoop on us. Governments are so keen, in fact, that they could have invented something like Bitcoin, to economically incentivise the very finest minds to attempt to crack the uncrackable.

It hurts my brain and it makes me feel physically sick. Of course, I'm well aware that I can make myself unwell by thinking about such problems. Perhaps it's even a sign that I'm becoming unwell, that I'm thinking about this particular head-scratcher again. I can almost hear the voice of a very trusted friend in my head, saying "banana" which is my 'safe' word, warning me that I'm getting hypomanic again.

Of course I'm getting hypomanic. I've been living with a gun to my head for so damn long. I have to spend all weekend waiting to see if I get paid on Monday. If I get paid, all my financial woes are over. If I dont, I can't even afford to get to work. F**k my life.

Tags: #cryptocurrencies #computing #career

This is a story about being caught on camera...

There was a time before digital cameras and Facebook when it was thrilling to see photographs of yourself that other people had taken: this was the pre-selfie age. There was a time when creating a digital identity was hard - social media wasn't dominated by the big players, and maintaining a homebrew website required expert technical skills and a significant investment of time & effort.

Some enterprising tech boffins created free software that allowed bulletin boards to be created by relative novices - these were forums where internet users could discuss topics, under the banner of a certain hobby or interest. Originally, bulletin boards were telephone numbers you could dial up from your computer, to do the kinds of things we do on the internet today, except that these bulletin boards were isolated communities.

Facebook and Twitter have taken the bulletin board - where we build a community around a common interest - and allowed us to build a community around our personal identity, with the bait of seeing ourselves tagged in photos or mentioned in tweets. On forums, there was a thrill in seeing a thread of discussion getting many views and replies - to be the original author of a popular thread was something to take pride in. We covet 'likes' of our updated profile photographs and our pouting selfies, as we preen our digital identity.

With the ubiquity of smartphones that are capable of capturing and uploading photos and videos, making them instantly available on social media, we are amassing a huge library of images of ourselves, as well as projecting an identity that goes well beyond the people we see on a daily basis, face-to-face.

Our skill in presenting ourselves as we want to be seen - Facebragging - is something that we have had to recently learn, especially as we increasingly mix work colleagues with our close friends, online. Our digital identities can overspill unless we are careful to manage the audience with whom we share things.

A sinister and creepy cyberstalker made a horrifying boast to me:

"I know"

I'm sorry, what? What do you know?

"I've read your blog. I know"

What? What do you know? Have you really read my blog? There's the best part of three-quarters of a million words here - I seriously doubt you've read much, and I seriously doubt you know much.

Those words - "I know" - were said to me by somebody who was making a very important decision. Because of the sheer volume of noise on social media, I'm relatively hard to find. Thanks to my concerted efforts over a number of years I can laugh at anybody's attempt to "know" me - stalkers only scratch the surface. Yes, I am applauding myself for writing so much that even the most determined cyberstalker would be exhausted.

I live in fear of cyberstalking.

Don't we all live in fear of cyberstalking a little bit? There's probably a sex video of you and somebody else that's hidden somewhere on your computer or smartphone. What about all those sexts that you sent between you and your sweetheart? What about all those paedophiles who want to molest your children? What about all those rapists who are following your every move on social media? The world is out to get you.

My fear of cyberstalking is a little different.

I'm now convinced that almost everybody is far too wrapped up in their own self-centred little world, to give two fucks about much of what anybody else is doing. The cyberstalker who said "I know" in a very sinister and horrible way, was intent on harming me just as much as you'd expect of any stalker - zero fucks were given about my health and wellbeing, and a very great deal of harm was rendered to me.

Perhaps I should set my privacy settings to the maximum and erase everything that's personal and accessible to malicious attackers?

To protect myself from a determined cyberstalker would be nearly impossible. Our lives are lived online nowadays - to reject social media and not cultivate a digital identity, will leave me isolated and without access to online communities. To have to always consider how anything I share could be used against me is exhausting, and how am I supposed to ask for help or otherwise indicate to my friends that I'm in trouble? Pretending that my life is awesome and I'm totally OK is ridiculous, if I'm doing it just in case a cyberstalker goes digging.

I'm not suggesting we all post our mother's maiden name, social security number, credit card details and other data that would lay ourselves open to fraud... or maybe I am. In an open and trusting culture, the bad apples are easier to spot - nothing to hide, nothing to fear.

The fact that I've suffered significant financial loss due to a cyberstalker is akin to a kind of fraud that has been perpetrated against me. I'm no fraudster: who I am is plain for all to see. That somebody would steal my data and use it against me is criminal. Why should I be persecuted and discriminated against, because of what dirt you think you've dug on me? It's like a kind of blackmail to use my digital identity against me.

I wonder what kind of person would think that whatever I choose to write on my blog is more important than the facts, which have included things such as being in intensive care in hospital with a 50/50 chance of living or dying. Wouldn't you care about the person - i.e. me - and not about the digital identity? "Are you feeling OK because I was really worried you were going to die?" would seem like the more appropriate human response, rather than the extremely creepy and sinister "I know". I mean, what the actual fuck?

So, I've been cyberstalked, and the stalkers have caused significant harm to me. Just hearing "I know" from somebody who seems to be a respectable member of society, does show that there are some downright evil fuckers out there. However, I stand my decision to be brave and publicise who I am and what makes me tick.

In my experience, it's better to be brave and bold, even if it feels scary and nasty people try to fuck you up.

Tags: #writing #socialmedia #career

This is a story about justification...

What do you suppose this stack of laundry baskets and boxes full of clothes is? Perhaps this is a new modern art installation at the Saachi Gallery?

200 days ago - April Fools' Day - I was so paranoid that I believed that somebody was going to break into my ensuite bathroom on the 4th floor, and invade my bedroom. I was also so unwell that I believed I could secure my bedroom by tying my dirty laundry baskets to the door handle.

Paranoia does not generally trouble me during my day-to-day life: nothing to hide, nothing to fear.

I'm about to make a factual declaration that might shock and disgust you.

Men's libido will drive them to relieve themselves - through sex or masturbation - on a relatively frequent basis, depending on each individual. You might consider a man who masturbates every day to be a twisted pervert. You might consider a monk who has taken a vow of celibacy having undesired nocturnal emissions - he ejaculates in his sleep - to be the finest example of a man that is biologically possible, without castration.

Let's just re-iterate this for emphasis: biologically, the human race has evolved a reproductive imperative that is as strong as breathing, sleeping, shitting, pissing, drinking and eating. If you can stop doing all of the latter for a few years, then you're welcome to then argue the point with me.

If you consider the unpleasant combination of being so horny that you need to masturbate, with the belief that you're being watched at all times, then you might understand that it's an impossible situation, assuming that you value your dignity and your privacy. At present there are at least 3 webcams watching me and 2 microphones listening to me. Of course, I presume that no ransomware is recording me without my permission, but such software exists in the wild. How much do you trust the manufacturer of your phone and your laptop, to not co-operate with your government, giving them the ability to spy on you?

Nothing to hide, nothing to fear?

I'm guessing that you wouldn't want your family, friends and work colleagues, or even complete strangers, to see you tugging your todger; yanking your chain; bashing your bishop, or whatever your preferred euphemism is for masturbating to orgasm. I'm guessing that you'd find such voyeurism to be unacceptably compromising and distressing enough to destroy your mental wellbeing.

Do you note that I'm leaving aside any discussion of anything 'kinky' or not otherwise in accordance with plain vanilla biological imperatives?

Of course, we could all just have sex, and then we've got a partner in crime - we have safety in numbers; at least there's somebody else who's looking ridiculous with us, as we make the beast with two backs. However, this is not always practicable. Natural urges do not always align with the competing demands of the world around us. Sometimes, we are horny and single.

If you're thinking "eeeewww" or otherwise troubled by an undesirable mental image, you understand perfectly that the vast majority of us wish to maintain some privacy around this particular activity. I cannot relate to men who take a thrill from masturbating at somebody, flashing their genitals or sending unsolicited dick pics. I am not writing about the exceptional cases, where men act in an antisocial or illegal way - these matters are excluded from the discussion, because they are unusual and those men do not think and behave like I do.

In short, the only way that my behaviour seems at all unusual, is the exceptional lengths that I will occasionally go to in order to not be spied upon while masturbating. If we consider our desire for privacy, it doesn't seem odd. If we think about the fear of the indignity and shame of having explicit images and videos of us masturbating, shown to other people, that fear is not irrational - it would be extremely distressing, for almost everybody.

Just over 6 months ago my mind was shattered. Today I'm barely troubled by paranoia.

My paranoia doesn't come from nowhere - of course it needs a seed. The internal source of my paranoia is sleep deprivation, hunger, thirst and mind-altering substances: I have a choice over whether I disturb my mind with these things or not. The external source of my paranoia could be explained simply in this way: do you imagine that men in psychiatric hospitals no longer need to masturbate?

Ask yourself where it would be appropriate to masturbate, when you're being checked on regularly by nurses and support workers. Ask yourself whether you think you could quietly do the deed in a dormitory with other men. Presumably, you'd go to the toilet or the shower, wouldn't you? If you're masturbating in an institutional environment, with the noise of staff and patients all around you, does that make you a twisted pervert?

This topic is the most sensitive that I could write about. Nothing could shame me more than you knowing these deeply troubling things, which is why I write about them - I'm grasping the nettle.

If you care to read back through what I've written, you'll see that I stop short of painting an explicit picture - the images in your head are entirely from your own imagination. I'm not attempting to upset anybody, nor am I discussing matters that have no place outside of a basic human biology lesson.

I believe that honesty is the best policy, and I'm taking that to its extreme conclusion, despite the detrimental effect it seems to be having on me and my life. I started the questionable experiment, to publish my inner monologue, and I'm compelled to continue, even though it causes me a great deal of anxiety.

Why do I need to live in fear of people learning who I am and how I feel? Why would I need to wear a mask? Why do I need privacy, when so many are determined to sneak a peek behind the curtain anyway?

What happens when a person lays themselves bare, instead of letting paranoia destroy them?

Tags: #paranoia #writing

This is a story about how nothing really mattress...

This is the last double bed I slept in, 27 days ago. That's my brand new bedding with brand new pillows and a brand new duvet. I moved to Manchester with nothing more than my laptop and a bag of clothes. New life - clean slate. This is the apartment where I tried to kill myself. It was a miserable place and I'm glad I never slept there again.

I woke up on Saturday 9th September, and I was miserable. I wrote a blog post in this bed, about how miserable I was and how close I was to committing suicide. It was prescient.

The next bed I lay upon was owned by a guy who I had become friends with through my girlfriend. My girlfriend at the time was of no fixed abode - sofa surfing with a guy who she met on a dating website. I'd travelled to this friend's apartment to see my girlfriend. We lay kissing and cuddling on our friend's bed. Then, we broke up.

Coming home to my miserable apartment, I didn't get into bed - I took a massive overdose and lay on the bathroom floor in the dark, waiting to die. The next bed I laid upon was in the Accident & Emergency department of the nearest hospital.

I'm presuming - because I was unconscious - that I stayed on the same hospital bed, as I was transferred from A&E resus to the Intensive Treatment Unit (ITU) and then to a High Dependency ward. I was on life support. I was having seizures. I don't remember any of this.

I vaguely remember having to scramble across onto a different bed, to move me out of the High Dependency ward and onto a general ward. I remember this because there was a bag of my piss sloshing around that had to be moved too, and there was a tube coming out of my penis, which I had to be careful not to entangle with anything. The tube that was going up my dick yanked my male member around - it wasn't a comfortable experience.

From hospital I was thrown in a police cell. There was a 'bed' made of concrete painted with light blue paint - the same glossy paint that adorned the floor and walls of the cell. To slightly soften the hard concrete, there was a thin blue foam mat, which was wipe-clean. I did not sleep.

Driven home by the two police who had interviewed me - at 2am in the morning - I finally got back home at 3:30am. My sleep medication was nowhere to be found and I'd had a traumatic day - sleep was impossible. I lay awake on my bed, waiting until the earliest possible moment I could go to the office and try to find a work colleague - I was in a desperate situation and I needed help from somebody friendly and sympathetic to my plight: alone in a strange city with no friends or family; no smartphone, laptop, debit card, credit cards, cash or driving license.

After a second dreadful day I was pretty fucked up, as one might expect of somebody abandoned in such shitty circumstances. As sleep deprivation reached the 40+ hour mark, I ended up back at the same hospital's Accident & Emergency department that I had been in 5 days earlier.

Another day, another hospital bed. This one I came round face down on, with my wrists handcuffed behind my back, after having received an intramuscular injection of 4mg of lorazepam. It was approximately 3am in the morning - now 6 days after my original hospital admission.

Sectioned first under a 136 (up to 72 hours) and then upgraded to a section 2 (up to 28 days) I was then taken to a secure psychiatric facility with airlock-type doors, to stop anybody escaping. I was given a private room that was quite nicely appointed, with a writing desk and an ensuite wet-room.

Having blearily come round in the early hours of the Tuesday morning, it was now Thursday night. I finally had a single bed in a comparatively peaceful environment in which to collapse and sleep, mercifully with the assistance of some zopiclone to calm my jangled nerves and soothe me into my slumbers.

Gone were the bleeps and hisses of the machines that were keeping people alive, on the Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU), replaced with the sound of alarms, slamming doors, shouting and running in corridors, as my fellow patients were restrained by staff. I found it somewhat comforting, to know that my crisis was no longer at its peak.

After 8 days on the PICU, I was transferred to an acute psych ward. It was terrifying.

With me in hospital I had two Apple iPhones, two Apple Macbooks, a Nintendo Switch and £1,150 in £50 notes. It's not really recommended to have that amount of valuables on your person, in amongst some very poor and deprived people. The wealth disparity was vulgar.

My guardian angel facilitated the return of my surplus iPhone and Macbook - Apple were excellent and refunded me with no quibbles.

I begun life on the new ward in a private bedroom, but I didn't have an ensuite shower and the TV blasted right next door for 19 hours a day, at full volume. At first, I was too tired to care and I could sleep through the dawn chorus of utter bullshit television a million decibels, but then it started to keep me awake, leaving me less than 5 hours of shut-eye per night.

Then, the dreaded dormitory. Dorms are a mixed bag - very dependent on the luck of the draw, in terms of your fellow occupants. Security is a massive concern, as nothing more than a privacy curtain separated my personal possessions from anybody who'd care to have a look through my bags. Snoring can be a pain in the arse, with one person able to keep everybody else awake listening to their noisy slumbers. Thankfully, my dorm buddies weren't too bad.

This morning I woke up to "second; minute; hour; power; shower" repeated over and over, as a poetic dorm buddy wrote a new rap. That was 5:15am. It was still dark. He was pretty loud. He's sleeping now - snoring.

Today, I'm bustin' out of the psych ward. Watch out, general public of the United Kingdom - I'm going to be moving among you again as a free man.

This is my current bed. I'm lying on it as I type this. I don't know what the bed or the room I'm sleeping in tonight looks like - I've never set foot in the house I'm going to travel to this afternoon. It's a leap in the dark, as is my wont.

Some of my few remaining worldly possessions are here with me in Manchester and some are in London. I'm surprised that I haven't lost more of my valuables. I can't quite bring myself to do the maths, to figure how much money I've lost on this crazy jaunt to the North of England. What does it matter? I'm alive and about to be accepted into the fold of a kind family who are taking me in - the IT consultant who lost his mind in a city where he didn't have any friends or family. It's unlikely that I'd have ended up homeless, but I wasn't relishing the prospect of being chucked off the psych ward and into a dreadful bed & breakfast, in some shitty suburb.

The very definition of "my" home and "my" bed has been smashed to smithereens. Tonight will be the tenth bed I've lain upon in less than 28 days, including several hospital beds and the concrete slab that passes for a bed in a police cell.

Distress flares were fired off and a good samaritan is coming to rescue me from a fairly dire situation.

Tonight, I sleep in a normal house for the first time in what feels like a very long time.

Tags: #hospital #mentalhealth #nhs

This is a story about therapy...

Everybody's an expert on my mental health, it seems. I need to be exercising more, eating a balanced diet, abstaining from alcohol and mind-altering substances BUT not the ones the doctors want to give to me. But which doctors? Every doctor has a different idea of how I should be treated - which doctor should I listen to? Perhaps somebody else knows, because people have some very strong opinions on what I should be doing, considering that only a handful of individuals with whom I am still in contact, have known me for any length of time and have followed along. Only I know what I've tried before and what I haven't - what works and what doesn't.

Here, there's a student nurse whose dissertation investigated the benefits of exercise, in terms of potentiating - that is to say improving - the efficacy of medications. Not considered for a single second, was the control study which would have investigated the efficacy of exercise alone. This student nurse, who I find passionate and intelligent, was eager to suggest that I tried sodium valproate or lithium - both life-shortening medications prescribed to people who have regular episodes of mania where they believe they're Jesus reincarnated etc. Everybody thinks they've got a cure to a problem I might not even have - it was under a very dark cloud that I entered hospital, one must remember.

Externally, the perception of a psychiatric ward is that it must be a place of therapeutic activities and meetings with doctors to fine-tune my medications and cure me of my madness, making me safe to release back into the community again. Internally, my fellow patients perceive staff members as persecutors, jailers and masters of everything from food & drink, to bedtimes and bathtimes - a cross between a policeman, a teacher and a parent. Certainly, to have a blackboard on the wall is an incredibly dated nod to the classroom days of our youth. Note that the list of activities for the ward is completely blank, which I find quite accurate... not that I'm complaining.

The UK's stringent fire regulations for institutional buildings - hospitals, schools etc - mean that they look very similar. A company that manufactures and supplies the fixtures and fittings for a school will probably also supply those same items to a hospital. Everything needs to be built to last in this incredibly abrasive environment, where the footfall in the corridor would destroy even the most hard-wearing of floors, laid by a contractor who normally worked in regular houses. The finish is not just high standard, but the selection of the materials used has been honed over the years to create an interior that is easily mopped and wiped down, and very hard to damage.

As a patient, I find myself recalling my schooldays, as a dinner lady ladles goo onto plastic plates and I sip juice from containers that are identical to those that I had in my boyhood. Just like school, nothing much really happens except for crowd control. There is a little sifting and sorting, so the naughtiest boys end up in the shittest parts of the hospital, and the golden child will find themselves in the top class. However, it must be remembered that staffing a hospital is a job to quite a lot of people, and over the many years that they will work their job, any ill-founded notions of making a difference, will be thrashed out of them by the system. Nothing changes very much or very fast in massive organisations - you can't fight the system, or else you will drive yourself insane... that goes for both patients and staff.

It's very hard to not be driven mad by being hospitalised. It's a chicken and egg situation. For sure, nobody gets hospitalised without putting some effort into it. It's very hard to get a psych bed in the UK, unless somebody's gonna pay £5k/week for you to go into a private place. Of course, the patients here are here for a reason, but I have also experienced the terrifying moment where I realised that my liberty has been restricted. I just heard the jangling of a massive bunch of keys, carried by one of the staff members, as she passed my bedroom door. If I was to draw back my curtains, I would see bars on my window, to stop anybody climbing in or out. There are constant reminders that I'm here under lock & key, and to escape would require a little more social engineering (or climbing) than another secure ward that I was on in 2015, where I could have just walked out behind somebody who was leaving the ward, and then run away. To run away now, I would need to request an escort off hospital premises, and then I would simply get an Uber or perhaps I might have arranged a local cab company to have my getaway car waiting. I came into hospital with £1,150 in crisp £50 notes, so I have the financial means to grease whatever palms I need to.

Why would I want to escape though? Yes, you're right - to discharge myself prematurely would be a mistake. This isn't a very therapeutic environment, because staff spend so long spying - quite literally - on patients, which is absolutely dreadful for mental health: creating an us & them culture and exacerbating even the slightest hint of paranoia. If you value your dignity, privacy and liberty, psych hospital is not for you. There aren't any therapeutic activities. However, it is a safe place where my rent and bills are paid, I get 3 free hot meals a day, I get my own bedroom/office type thing which is quite generously proportioned and has an ensuite bathroom, and I don't need to cook, clean or otherwise worry about the responsibilities that burden nearly every other creature that was unfortunate enough to have been born.

Sounds nice, doesn't it? Perhaps you too would like a stay - mandated for up to 28 days on a section 2 - in the hotel "psych ward". Perhaps you imagine that it's a calm and restful place, where I get to sleep lots and read books. I think perhaps you're getting confused with that holiday you took to Tuscany last year. On a psych ward, you get woken up in the middle of the night by alarms going off, staff running in the corridors, yelling and screaming. On a psych ward, music blasts at top volume from patients' bedrooms, because headphones are not allowed lest we strangle ourselves with the cables. On a psych ward, one must evaluate the level that one's fellow patients are intoxicated by their cocktail of medications, and whether one has the energy to engage in their psychoses that are extremely repetitive - I've been here a week and I've learned a little of everybody's "thing"... their particular identity on the ward, which is characterised by an apparent madness, which is why we must remain here. I wonder what mine is? The staff tell me that I'm lazy - always just sitting with my laptop. Yes, that must be me right? Probably just watching mindless Netflix rubbish on it, right?

Ward rounds - when important decisions about "leave" are made - happen on Fridays and nothing else happens apart from waiting and hoping. Most patients here are hoping to get some leave. Some have not left the ward for nearly 6 months - considered too much at risk of running away, if they were allowed out of this super secure part of the hospital, accompanied by a staff member.

Gossip is rife, and everybody on the ward knows that I arrived with a wad of cash and was granted leave from the hospital almost immediately. I try to downplay these things, and now people have forgotten. When takeaways or shop orders are being placed, I feign not having any money, in the hope that I can alter my perception in the eyes of my fellow patients and the staff. I remember being called into the office, simply because some of the senior staff members wanted to have a look in my envelope, containing all those fifty pound notes. It's totally vulgar, and an accident of the illness that was stimulated into existence by the ridiculous sleep deprivation, stress and disruption to my medications and routine, over Tuesday / Wednesday / Thursday of last week, which followed my near-fatal suicide attempt... it should be expected that my behaviour would have gone a bit haywire, under the crushing pressures I faced.

Perhaps I will be "stepped down" to a less restrictive ward today. I had to pack my bags last night, because I thought I was being moved. I should have remembered that nothing happens very quickly in the National Health Service, but sometimes if you're quick, you can nip in before the system decides that actually you're getting ahead far too fast. I'm not really in a rush to go anywhere though - this ward is perfectly decent and I know the two spots where I can get 3G signal.

I'm here to recover, but I'm not here to feel completely isolated. Who do I know in the local area who can come visit me? Two months ago I'd never set foot in this city, and the company I've been working for has cut all contact and has been skulking around in a most unusual manner. I have nobody - it's a real ball-ache for any of my friends to travel, just for a 2 hour visiting slot. Even my fellow patients, who are locals, do not have visitors - the hospital environment is not exactly somewhere people would like to spend their free time.

Should I immerse myself in the daily rhythms and routines of the hospital? Should I hang around by the door to the kitchen, looking for food scraps to be tossed out? Should I hang around by the door to the yard, hoping to be let outside? I'm not a fucking dog. I find it immensely useful to maintain contact with those who are still in full possession of their marbles, while I'm in an environment where staff humour the patients - "is it Tuesday today?" one asks, and is told that yes it is, even though it isn't... is that useful, helpful, therapeutic?

I was very sick when I was brought in, without a doubt. Some incredibly stressful things still hang over me, like Damocles' sword. I have little power to influence the speed of my recovery, nor the speed with which those who have wronged me are forced to offer recompense. At least I'm in a safe place to pursue what is rightfully mine: to get money that is owed to me and recover my possessions. I'm in a safe place to make arrangements for housing and income, so that I don't fall flat on my face, as soon as I leave.

I'm glad I'm here, at the moment.

Tags: #mentalhealth #bipolar #suicide #depression #hospital