This is a story about being hounded to death...

One week ago, I was shovelling pills into my mouth, washed down with pints of white wine. The LD50 is the lethal dose that will kill 50% of the test subjects. Lethal doses are normally calculated in milligrams per kilogram of body weight. Tramadol is quite a reliable way to kill yourself, with plenty of examples of successful suicides in the literature, for anybody who wishes to trawl the medical journals.

Most opiates will cause respiratory arrest. Tramadol seems to kill more often through serotonin syndrome, according to what I read in advance of my suicide attempt. I can tell you exactly what it feels like, to reach your wits end, decide to end your life, and follow through with the necessary steps. I can tell you exactly what it feels like, during the periods of consciousness, as you die.

Once I had downed all the capsules and their gelatin shells had started to dissolve, I started to become quite intoxicated, thanks in no small part to the wine I used to wash my legally prescribed pain medication - tramadol - down my throat. Of course, I had stockpiled the capsules, which is not what my doctor had anticipated I would do, when they wrote the prescription, but I was getting a box each visit to the pharmacist, with each box containing plenty to end my life.

I decided to send out some final Tweets, when I believed I was beyond the point of no return. I have no idea whether I inadvertantly saved my own life or not, by alerting my social media contacts to the fact that I was on my way to meet my maker.

Discussion of what pushed me over the edge is not really warranted here, suffice to say that I simply had nothing in reserve when my fragile embryonic new life in this Northern city started to crumble. I had given 100% to my new job, my new girlfriend and my new friends. I had no safety net, when the slender threads that supported me, snapped suddenly.

Firstly, it should be noted that it takes quite a long time for your stomach and large intestine to process enough capsules for you to start to experience the onset of a fatal overdose. I had imagined that 40 minutes would be plenty for the first wave of powerful tramadol to hit me, and to make me unconscious or at least delerious and incoherent. I was wrong - I was able to send out several Tweets that actually seem to make sense now - one week later - as well as being gramatically OK and without spelling mistakes.

Secondly, it should be noted that the ideal scenario of falling asleep and not waking up, did not happen at all. I did get waves of soporific effect from both the alcohol and the tramadol, but I imagine that the adrenalin of knowing I was on my way to the grave kept me mostly conscious. My eyelids would get heavy and my head would drop, but my body fought to stay alive and I kept jerking awake.

Thirdly, I have horrible snatches of memory. I can remember exactly what it was like to fill my mouth with capsules, and gulp them down with wine from a pint glass. I remember how agonisingly long it took to empty out all the packets into the box, which I used as a kind of cup, from which to tip a load of tramadol into my mouth before swallowing it. I can remember the emergency services battering their way into the bathroom, where I had slumped in the dark, waiting to die. I can remember telling them where all the empty pill packets were.

I can remember telling somebody - was it somebody at the hospital? - who my doctor was and exactly what overdose I had taken. I can remember the very worst moment, when the hospital told me that death was likely to be slow and painful, not the unconscious affair I had imagined.

I can remember when I started to have seizures. I can remember begging the hospital not to treat me with activated charcoal; not to pump my stomach; not to resuscitate me if I went into cardiac arrest. I can remember coming round after 12+ hours under sedation, breathing with a ventilator. I had a tube coming out of my nose, one down my throat and one up my dick - I had been intubated, catheterised and had several canulas installed, including an arterial one that was measuring my blood pressure. It felt like I had snot running down my face, but it was just a tube that was being used to put stuff into my stomach to neutralise the deadly chemicals.

I can remember a nurse or a doctor came and asked me a question, and I tried to reply but I couldn't. Every time I tried to speak, my lungs pushed air against the ventilator, and I would be left momentairily be gasping for air until I allowed the machine to breathe for me again.

I can remember a different nurse or doctor reassured me that I would be able to speak once the tube had been pulled out of my throat, where it was impeding my vocal chords. I was so relieved, because it was deeply distressing to lose my ability to talk and have moments where I couldn't breathe.

I can remember being asked how I felt about the fact I had survived an overdose that should have been fatal. I felt terrible about telling the hard-working intensive-care nurse or doctor that nothing had changed... in fact things were worse than ever, as I imagined that the overdose would have caused horrific organ damage. I expressed in no uncertain terms that I still wanted to die.

I can remember drifting in and out of consciousness. From Saturday night to Tuesday morning, I had no idea whether I was in A&E resus, intensive care or the high dependency unit. I can vaguely recall being told, but the memories seem all out of sequence, and dreamlike - quite unreal.

I can remember being wheeled into a general hospital ward at some point on Tuesday, and then wheeled off to my own private room. I can remember slowly regaining some mental capacity. I can remember a visit from a psychiatrist, where I again expressed my distress with my situation and fear that I would not be able to guarantee my own safety - what had improved since I had tried to end my own life? Nothing. In fact, my situation had worstened: I had no idea what kind of state my apartment would be in when I got home - my wallet, keys, phone and other personal effects had gone missing. It seemed unthinkable that I would have to face potentially being locked out of my apartment, with no money or credit cards on me, and no means of contacting anybody.

When I did finally make it back home, things were worse than I had even imagined. My laptop and digital camera had been stolen. Every single prescribed medication had been stripped from my shelves and drawers and cupboards. There was one single solitary pregabalin capsule, almost left mockingly on my bedroom floor which lay in disgraceful mess. I need pregabalin for nerve damage in my left ankle/foot... as a non-opiod painkiller. I desperately needed some of the zopiclone that I had stockpiled, in order to sleep after such a horrific ordeal. These are not dangerous medications, ironically. I had moved myself off the tramadol, because it was not desirable to use it as a long-term painkiller. I had stockpiles of zopiclone, because it was useful for these very eventualities. The home treatment team had thrown bucketloads at me, because sleep is so important for good mental health. Where was all my prescription medication?

There was no sign of my mobile phone anywhere, and without my wallet and laptop, I was completely stuffed in terms of being able to get a message to anybody. From Saturday night until around 3 or 4am on Wednesday morning, I had been completely cut off from the world... mostly unconscious, and without access to telephone, email or social media.

Wednesday daytime, the way I was treated at the office - where I went to store the few valuables that had not been stolen - was extremely odd; if not downright rude and unpleasant. It was most unsettling indeed to be treated so oddly at my place of work, especially after surviving a suicide attempt and having suffered a burgulary. I was also fighting off panic attacks and pain, because my legally prescribed medications had been stolen too.

After a quite baffling experience at the office, where I was ushered out of the door as if I was an interloper, the CEO of the company I had been doing consultancy work for, spoke to me to say that he would be very happy to see me for a beer, but that I could spend the rest of the week sorting out everything that now dauntingly lay ahead of me: repairing the damage from the break-in and replacing the stolen items. Life is profoundly difficult without your credit and debit cards, mobile phone and laptop.

I managed to get an emergency prescription for 7 days of pregabalin and zopicline, so that I could restabilise my medication regimen. I managed to get enough cash out from the bank to replace my laptop, but not my smartphone or pay for repairs to my flat. I was starting to be overwhelmed with the enormity of the task that was expected of me: for a suicide survivor to carry on with their life as if nothing had happened. My home felt violated and insecure. There was something weird going on at work. It was deeply unsettling.

Gladly, I was re-admitted to hospital at Accident & Emergency, because I was driven into crisis by the horrendous near-death experience, only to then find that my two most valuable and prized possessions - my smartphone and laptop - had been stolen, and my flat had been ransacked; my front door and bathroom door were smashed up; the place had been turned upside down.

The fact that I was discharged from hospital and ended up back at my trashed apartment at 3 or 4am on Wednesday morning is something that should never have come to pass. What the fuck are you doing discharging a suicidal person in crisis, into a situation where they've got more on their plate than they can handle? How the fuck am I going to go back to life as normal, without my smartphone, laptop or a secure home to keep myself and my possessions in? How the fuck am I going to get through life without the pain medication for my nerve damage, and sleep medication for the horrendously stressful circumstances.

Being re-admitted to hospital - first the Accident & Emergency department, and then psychiatric hospital - was inevitable, and essential for my safety and wellbeing.

I could have bounced back, but the strange experience at the office and the amount of things I had to sort out due to theft or loss, was simply too much for somebody as sick as I was then.

I managed to get a replacement debit card for my business bank account, and make some cash withdrawals using my passport, but after replacing my mobile phone and laptop I had very little money left; I was exhausted stressed and in no mood to return to my home that not only felt violated, but also not a secure place to keep myself and my valuables.

My very worst fear was realised: that of finding myself completely alone in this Northern city with nobody to turn to for support. Without a smartphone, I felt completely cut off from social media. By some strange co-incidence, my work colleagues were both out of town. This was the perfect storm. This was exactly what I never wanted to ever happen - to be isolated and alone.

I thought about throwing myself off a high building, or under a bus. In the end, I finally made it back to where I should have been allowed to stay: the safety of hospital. Surviving a suicide attempt is a big deal, and then to have shit to deal with at work and home, was horrendous.

My memory about how I arrived back in hospital is just as fucked up as you'd expect of somebody who's been through a near-death experience and survived, but only barely. I'm not sure what's real and what's dream. I feel like I died all over again. I have these strange memories of trying to replace my mobile phone, laptop and get enough cash out of the bank to replace my iPhone too. I can remember waking up on a hospital trolley and re-orienting myself with reality... there were lots of things that I could vaguely remember, but they seemed to be from a different life. Had I died and had my heart restarted? Certainly, there was a period where I was sure I was dreaming. Perhaps I was still having seizures, because of the unbelievable disturbance to the stability of my life, including the regularity with which I was able to take my medications and soothe my jangled nerves with alcohol.

I write to you now, in stone cold sobriety. My alcohol consumption has been practically zero for a whole week... cut at a rate that would easily cause problems, especially considering that all the other medications that I have been prescribed have been very irregularly given to me too. Rebound insomnia from suddenly stopping zopiclone would be expected. Suddenly stopping pregabalin will have terrible consequences, as with any of the GABA agonists. I'm surprised I haven't had MORE seizures or perhaps even been killed by the sudden withdrawal of medications that I had become physically dependent on, as well as alcohol. You can't just suddenly stop drinking and taking the pills that I had been prescribed - you have to taper down gently.

In a way, I'm in a good situation now that I'm off all the alcohol and most of the meds that I had become dependent on. My sleep is terrible, I'm in a lot of pain, and I'm overwhelmed by anxiety and a general sense of unease, but it's good to not be drinking so much and having to take pills just to stay calm through some incredibly stressful events.

My housing, employment and general situation is dreadful. I'm being royally dicked over by everybody who has sensed that I'm in a vulnerable state. It's an abosoute disgrace, how people have tried to put the boot in and deal the final death blow to me, when I was already bruised and bloodied and at death's door.

I'm in psych hospital until Monday at least, which is a blessed relief. I have a room with a door that hasn't been kicked in and has a fairly sturdy lock, with which to protect my valuables. I get three hot meals a day and there's plenty of hot water. There are loads of mental health professionals on hand if I was feeling suicidal again.

Sadly, I am having to turn to the law to defend me from mental health discrimination, illegal eviction, and hopefully recover my valuables that were lost or stolen due to negligence. At least I am in a safe place from which to defend myself. Justice will prevail.

I think it's outrageous that I was ever declared fit and well enough to be let out of hospital, especially given the ransacked shithole I had to go back home to, and the mistreatment I received at work. However, I am also sympathetic towards the police, who have a difficult job to do, as well as to the fact that I have received a substantial amount of hospital care, to save my life.

There's a fairly simple ethical guiding principle here though: don't fuck with vulnerable people. I'm pretty mad that I'm the one with the stolen iPhone, MacBook, the battered and bruised body, the missing medications and having faced some terrible stress, on top of the situation that was already so horribly desperate that it drove me to try to end my own life. Nobody is coming to me and offering me compensation of any kind, despite my phone and laptop being supposedly covered under a company insurance policy.

I have a fully functioning conscience - a moral compass - and I am trying to set matters straight that I am responsible for. Even in the midst of what might have been the final hour or two that I walked upon this Earth, I still had concern for rectifying certain things, and I still do. I'm being treated like shit, but I don't feel that entitles me to treat others like shit. I'm in a horrible situation, but I'll do what I can from where I can... although I do expect to be treated fairly and in accordance with the contractual obligations, housing obligations and obligations to not be discriminated against because of my mental health crisis. The door swings both ways, and I take my ethical conduct very seriously.

Sadly, the law and solicitors of various flavours are being involved, which means I can do little until they're back at work again on Monday. I need to proceed through the official channels, seeing as I'm being beaten with a legal stick. I'm outraged that my housing and income is under threat, simply because the opportunistic shits that I've been doing some work for have sensed an opportunity to try and scam me.

I wish everybody would just do the right thing, or offer to rectify things when they have made a mistake.

Anyway, as you can tell, I'm feeling quite sorry for myself, given the shitshow of my life. My guardian angel has arrived in the nick of time to help me stay afloat, but I'm still battered, bruised, organ damaged, hospitalised, under threat of illegal eviction, my client is in breach of contract with unpaid invoices, my employment offer has been withdrawn due to mental health discrimination, and the dreadful ordeal on Tues/Weds with being released from hospital too early, has pretty much fucked any chance of recovering my delicate poise. Everything was so fucking fragile, and it burned down in the blink of an eye.

Fundamentally, where is my girlfriend, my friends - my support network - as well as my work colleagues, income, housing and all the other pieces of the puzzle that make a liveable life? All I can see are circling vultures, greedily eyeing me up as a piece of carrion.

At least we have a decent legal system here in the UK and justice will prevail eventually. Nobody can get away with acting unethically and abusing vulnerable people. I'm safe in hospital. I can defend myself from here.

Finally... I got my replacement laptop working and I'm back online.

Without the structure of being able to capture images and compose my thoughts on the pages of this blog, I've been rather cut adrift. Without my social media contacts, I've felt totally isolated and that nobody knows what I'm going through, although my guardian angel has bridged the gap very well, so I must give a great deal of thanks to her.

Nobody knows just how close to the edge you are until it's too late. What an absolute shitshow.

Tags: #mentalhealth #suicide

This is a story about irreversible decisions....

Nearly 400,000 people killed or injured themselves using a gun, in the United States in 2016. That's 1 one 1,000 Americans, who them will shoot themselves each year.

In the United Kingdom, the only way for me to get a gun is to buy one on the dark web. For me to possess a firearm without a license and keep such a weapon without a locked gun cabinet, contravenes many British laws. In short, deadly weapons are outlawed in the United Kingdom and to 'bear arms' could see me imprisoned.

For £8.40 I obtained 112 tramadol capsules, which are contained in the brightly coloured box pictured above. The aggregate weight of the deadly opiate within this box is 5.6 grams. An overdose of tramadol is considered to be anything above 0.4 grams. Therefore, this box contains 14 times the maximum 'safe' dose. Death would be a certainty, if I was to swallow little more than a couple of mouthfuls of this medication.

Perhaps, you are thinking, that I procured this deadly substance through the dark web. In fact, I had been prescribed this pain relief treatment by my doctor, and I had collected three of these boxes quite legally and within my rights as a British citizen.

For £25, I had stockpiled enough pills to end my own life several times over.

In a deal I struck with my psychiatrist, I surrendered two out of three of the boxes that I was entitled to possess. My general practitioner (GP) had authorised a pharmacist to dispense this controlled substance to me... little did they know that I had already weaned myself off these addictive opiates and had amassed a total of 336 capsules, which contained approximately 17 grams of tramadol in total.

For many citizens of the USA, they consider it an inalienable right to own guns. Equally, I reserve the right to end my own life peacefully, painlessly and without undue suffering.

In the UK, people throw themselves under trains or hang themselves. If you are kiled on the railway, the driver of that locomotive will have to live with the recollection of seeing you hurl yourself onto the tracks; somebody will have to collect your body parts, put them into a body bag and take them to a hospital morgue. If you hang yourself, somebody will find your lifeless body suspended by whatever cord you chose to make a noose out of... they will have to cut your lifeless corpse down, and there will be clear evidence that your final moments of life were not at all pleasant for your body: your bowels and bladder may well have been involuntarily emptied and the ligature to your neck will have caused significant trauma.

The smallest amount of blood, semen, faeces or urine, seems to spread out far more than any other substance. A person who has chosen to evacuate the contents of their veins and arteries will be as white as a sheet, and there will be a shocking contrast with the dark red life-giving substance - their blood - that has been deliberately emptied from their body. 

Does it not seem better that if one has to deal with a cadaver, that it should be less physically mutilated? Does it not seem humane that people should die with the most peaceful expression that's possible in the circumstances?

What should I say about the sudden darkness that descended on me yesterday? There's little point in offering fake reassurances that everything's OK. The truth of the matter is that I live life with daily precarity, and with only a few bare bones of a social skeleton around me - seemingly inconsequential events lead to a disproportionate response. "It's not the end end of the world" somebody might say, and they're right, but when you're already close to the tipping point, it doesn't take much for it to be the end of your life.

I've done a zillion things impulsively in my life. None of those rash decisions have led me up a dead-end alleyway, yet.

There's something tantalisingly alluring about swallowing a couple of handfuls of pills and then slipping peacefully into unconsciousness. Even if I was to have seizures before I finally gave up the ghost, I would be completely unaware of my body's struggle to keep itself alive. How wonderful, to have the option to end the suffering on a whim.

To think that I'm being flippant or making light of the final decision that I'd ever make is not true.

One of the reasons I quit drinking a couple of years ago - for 120 consecutive days - is that I was afraid of acting impulsively while intoxicated. It's one thing to wake up with a hangover, thinking "why the fuck did I say/do those things?" but it's quite something else to not wake up at all.

I live with a toxic combination of a high-stress job, financial pressures and limited social support. Beyond Facebook and Twitter. I've retreated into a world of technology. The few close friends that I have are hand-picked because they're loyal and sympathetic towards my circumstances, which - I assure you - are not a result of free-will choices or preplanning. To have a seemingly minor setback might cause irrational behaviour, but so fucking what? Please show me the contract that my brain has signed up to, saying that it will always think rational things.

This blog was supposed to be a short and sweet message of reassurance, after a 'cry for help' yesterday. It was not nice wandering around the city centre for a few hours, hoping that the awful imperative to hurt myself, would pass harmlessly.

Tags: #suicide

This is a story about mass consumption...

"I need to stop drinking so much" I think to myself ridiculously frequently. Alcoholic drinks are very fattening and I'm not doing enough exercise. A combination of a sedentary job, depression and a physical injury, have conspired to give me every possible excuse I need, to spend my spare time in a state of intoxication. Banks grease the wheels of commerce - so we are taught in economic theory - and alcohol is the oily lubricant for every kind of social situation imaginable: births, weddings, celebrations & commiserations. I doubt the United Kingdom would achieve a fraction of its productivity, without the motivation of knowing we can have a beer or a glass of wine, when the working day is done.

It should come as no surprise to you that having lived on the ragged edge my whole live - an adrenalin junkie and extreme sport enthusiast - I would turn every knob and dial up to "11", give it 110% and to take things TO THE MAX, yeah!

The UK's chief medical officer recommends that I drink no more than 140ml of alcohol per week, which is 20ml per day. A conservative estimate for my current alcohol consumption would be 100ml per day, which is 5 times the recommended healthy limit. Each week, instead of drinking 140ml, I am drinking 700ml at least.

I have 3 pints of 4.8% strength beer after work, with my colleagues. An imperial pint is 568ml, and 4.8% of 568ml is 27ml. My daily allowance is 20ml of alcohol, so a single pint of beer already exceeds my daily drinking allowance by 35%. By the time I've drunk all three pints, I've had 82ml out of my weekly allowance of 140ml - 59% gone in a single social outing, and just 41% left for the rest of the week.

I have a bottle of wine at the weekend - a two glasses on Saturday, and a glass with my Sunday lunch. Wine bottles contain 750ml, and wine is around 13% ABV, so therefore that adds up to 98ml more alcohol, on top of the the 82ml I already drank, making a total of 180ml for the week - an excess of 40ml versus my recommended weekly allowance, which is 29% more than I'm supposed to consume.

The reality is that I easily drink two pints of beer or ⅔ of a bottle of wine each day. 14 pints of beer contains 382ml of alcohol. 3.5 litres of wine contains 455ml of alcohol.

Does that make me an alcoholic, you must be wondering.

My psychiatrist accused me of being an alcoholic, to which I replied "pish and fibble; what flabbergasting nonsense". We can do some easy calculations, to work out if I am an alcoholic or not.

Let's take the worst-case scenario where I consume 100ml of alcohol per day. Ethanol is metabolised at a constant rate in the human body. That is to say, the quantity of blood in your alcohol-stream does not follow some kind of exponential decay calculation. Assuming I drink for 4 hours each evening, by around 6am in the morning, I'm completely sober. This means that I'm stone cold sober for 13 hours out of 24, which is 54% of the time. This simple mathematics shows that I'm not an alcoholic, quod erat demonstrandum.

My psychiatrist is clearly not capable of recalling her basic medical training, which would have taught her that alcohol is metabolised by the liver in a completely different way to more complex molecules. Very specific proteins and enzymes are required to chemically decompose inorganic (i.e. invented in a laboratory) medications. We can do a simple test, to again prove whether I'm an alcoholic or not.

Again, taking the worst-case scenario where I consume 100ml of alcohol per day, if I was to abruptly stop drinking alcoholic beverages, we should expect me to exhibit alcohol withdrawal syndrome within a few days of sobriety. Assuming that I suddenly ceased all alcohol consumption, I should - at the very bare minimum - get shaky hands and other physical symptoms that would prove that my body has become physically dependent on alcohol. The fact of the matter is that I can stop drinking for 2 or 3 days, and suffer no ill effects beyond a psychological craving for intoxicating liquor. This simple test, again shows that I'm not alcoholic, QED.

Despite the failings of my highly qualified physician - my psychiatrist - who has specialised in the alteration of brain function through the blunt instruments of psychoactive medications, she unarguably stumbled upon a truth in amidst her lazy and untrue accusations of alcoholism: I do drink too much.

Another definition of an alcoholic or an addict, is somebody whose life is adversely affected by drink or drugs, but who does not respond to the negative consequences in a rational manner. If you put your hand in a fire it hurts, right? So, why would you put your hand in the fire again? The perverse behavioural pattern of continuing to act in a way that is undeniably harmful, has also come to be recognised as another definition of alcoholism and addiction.

One only needs to consider the question "why do people smoke?" to see that there is grey between the lines. Smoking is expensive, makes you smell, stains your teeth and makes your mouth taste unpleasant to any non-smoker whom you kiss [with tongues and stuff] - these are the immediate consequences of smoking tobacco. In the medium term, smoking will give you a revolting phlegmy cough as well as literally burning enough cash to purchase a reasonable quality second-hand motor vehicle, or enjoy several foreign holidays. In the long-term, emphysema and lung cancer will bury smokers in an early grave.

It's oft-quoted that "the liver is the only organ in the human body that can repair itself" but this is patently untrue. Chronic cirrhosis - scarring of the liver - will not heal itself. Conversely, many drug addicts who have overdosed and been declared "brain dead" have gone on to make full recoveries, despite a consensus of medical opinion that life support should be withdrawn. The BBC commissioned Louis Theroux to make a series of documentaries about life in Los Angeles, and the episode entitled "Edge of Life" recorded the 'miraculous' recovery of a man whose brain was deprived of oxygen for at least 12 minutes, which is well beyond the limits of what we believe any human to be able to withstand.

Many of those who have been unfortunate enough to be a victim of a stroke, will go on to recover the ability to speak, walk and recover other functions that were lost as a result of brain injury - this is underpinned by the inherently plastic nature of the brain. Plasticity does not mean 'made of plastic' - it means adaptable to change, including the ability to recover from trauma.

An alcoholic may easily consume a litre of vodka per day - perhaps some 400ml of alcohol - which would equate to 2,800ml of alcohol per week. Given that the recommended weekly intake for a man or woman is just 140ml, alcoholics - of whom there are very many - consume at least 20 times as much alcohol as they should do, according to the UK's top doc.

It seems unsurprising that somebody who drinks to an incredible level of excess - where they are intoxicated from the moment they wake up to the moment they lay their head to rest - should sustain an injury to their liver, rendering the organ irreparably damaged.

This essay does not seek to argue that I would not benefit - in terms of my physical and mental health - by abstaining from alcohol consumption. However, one must be mindful that drinking is endemic in UK culture and to be a non-drinker would impose significant societal pressures and judgements upon me. I have, in the past, been falsely accused of being a "recovering alcoholic" merely for the reason that I chose to be teetotal for a period of over a hundred consecutive days. I decided to be alcohol abstinent for a competitive challenge - one of my best friends had completed a period of 100 days of sobriety. In the end, I beat his sober-streak by 20 days.

If you're concerned about your alcohol consumption, drug habit or the quantity of psychoactive medications that you guzzle into the cavernous hole in your face every day, then you should simply ask yourself this one question:

Are you shovelling more and more mind-altering substances into your body each day, or have you found a steady quantity that satiates your want and need for intoxication?

While you fret about eating a 'balanced' diet and being 'healthy' you forget that for 4,000,000,000 years, organisms - just like us - have had to cope with a world that's too hot, too cold, too acidic, too alkaline, too oxygen rich, too carbon-dioxide rich, too sulphurous, too contaminated with arsenic & other toxins, and generally fucking hostile to anything that we define as 'alive'. Humans inherit all of the many abilities to deal with everything from the icy wastes of the frozen poles to the dry & scorching sandy deserts.

The ubiquity of alcohol represents the antidote to the curse of becoming self-aware; the torment of perceiving our own mortality; the torture of realising that life is fucking bullshit, and we all die alone. If we don't go crazy we'll lose our minds.

I do not seek to dissuade alcoholics from seeking treatment, nor do I encourage anybody to recklessly endanger their health. I would hope that any reader who has been able to follow the thread of my thesis to this point, would be able to see that I'm mounting a robust attack on those who seek to perpetrate alarmist & sensationalistic nonsense, onto a populace who have been harmlessly intoxicating themselves since well before any form of any recorded history.

If you are teetotal, I applaud you and I advise you to maintain your alcohol-free existence, but you probably possesses some characteristics that predispose you towards abstinence, not shared by your brethren who imbibe intoxicating liquor. Please; do not smugly think of yourself as morally superior.

By happy accident, I never addicted myself to nicotine, so I look upon smokers with a detached sense of amazement that tiny quantities of a plant alkaloid - in the order of a grain of salt - can induce antisocial behaviours in those who are in the vice-like grip of nicotine: a chemical compound whose psychoactive properties are formidable. I apply a cool objective reasoning that I am able to enjoy, to other addictions that I do and do not partake in.

It's Friday, and in the time that it has taken me to compose this essay, I have consumed 35% of my weekly alcohol allowance.

Cheers!

Tags: #alcohol

This is a story about succession planning...

The British have always liked hot drinks.

Coffee shops were terribly trendy in the late 1600s, having been launched in Oxford before springing up across London, where ships that brought the crop of beans to English shores found many willing patrons for the roasted, ground and brewed end product.

Tea symbolises imperial Great Britain. The Indian town of Darjeeling - formerly part of the British Empire - is synonymous with the tender leaves that citizens of the United Kingdom douse with boiling water, infusing bitter plant alkaloids into the hot liquid. "Put the kettle on" are four words that will be said in millions of homes this evening, despite the stimulating effects of caffeine.

Cocoa beans have given rise to hot chocolate, also known as drinking chocolate. Even a small UK food & drink shop will offer all manner of flavourings for hot water. Nestled in amongst the other things that my fellow Brits would categorise as 'hot drinks' I found something that I think of as a powerfully concentrated and flavoured spread, ideally enjoyed on toasted slices of bread - a jar of Bovril beef extract.

The flavour of Bovril is closer to Marmite and Vegemite - or any other brand of yeast extract - than it is to beef, in my opinion. How exactly they "extract" Bovril from a cow is something that I don't really want to think about. I suppose it's a macroscopic version of what they do with microscopic yeast - microorganisms are just the same as cattle really... eating, shitting, reproducing and not doing much else.

In this Bovril-drinking Northern city, conspicuous by their absence are people with skin tones darker than my own and women wearing headscarves. I formerly lived in a region where the population is 46% Muslim. Surprisingly, the Bengali shopkeepers have no issue with selling pork and alcohol to those who are not forbidden - for religious reasons - from eating swine flesh and imbibing the intoxicating liquor created from fermented fruits and grains.

In this unfamiliar part of Northern England, there are innumerable drinking establishments in my local vicinity, as well a vast number of hot food outlets where a bacon or sausage "bap" can be procured as a traditional breakfast snack.

India - before she was partitioned in 1947 - was a nation where Muslims would respect the holiness of cows in the Hindu culture, and reciprocally the Hindus would respect the Muslim rejection of pigs as unclean animals, and alcohol as an addictive intoxicant that places a heavy burden on any society that permits its consumption.

Modern global society still holds strong religious views on the treatment of domesticated animals and the brewing and consumption of alcohol. When we examine the historical evidence using the scientific method, we can see that cows and pigs would not exist today as we know them, without human intervention spanning many more thousands of years than even the oldest religion. Furthermore, we can see that humanity has been intent on its own intoxication throughout the history of civilisation. The Mayans were chewing coca leaves at least 3,400 years before Islam had its golden age, and vastly predates Hinduism and Judaism. Ergo, we must conclude that excluding beef, pork, alcohol and other things from our diet and habits of consumption is a relatively recent 'fad'.

The Chinese are the biggest per capita consumers of pork, while America and the developed nations hoover up vast quantities of refined coca leaves in the form of white powder cocaine and rocks of freebase cocaine, known as crack. Opium, morphine and diamorphine (heroin) are endemic worldwide. Caffeinated beverages - hot or cold - are guzzled by the globe. Alcohol is cheaper than bottled mineral water from desirable brands like Evian or Perrier. Yet, only in the North of England - so far as I know - do people consume a hot drink made from Bovril.

I hate being spread thin. I'm adaptable and I can be sent all over the globe to work with people who observe different cultural traditions. I am relatively worldly-wise enough to not commit a faux-pas, such as eating food before sundown in front of those observing the Ramadan period of fasting. I can pretty much figure out whatever you want me to do, if you're paying me enough and you're not open to persuasion that your ideas are probably terrible in their original unmodified form.

Why have a dog and bark yourself?

Now I find myself juggling the essential task of finding a doctor who will keep me supplied with the medications that I have become physically dependent on, while also settling in a new home in an unfamiliar city. I must also meet the demands placed upon me in the pursuit of enough money to eat, service my debts and give myself more security and freedom of choice.

I'm withdrawing from Xanax (alprazolam), Valium (diazepam), Ambien (zolpidem), zopiclone and Lyrica (pregablin). All of these drugs work in a very similar way - mimicking the brain's own 'brakes' and calming neural activity. These medications cause a chemical called GABA to be released in the brain, block the brain from recycling any unused GABA, or imitate the 'signature' of GABA itself. The overall effect is tranquillising, stress relieving and aids sleep, but the withdrawal is quite the opposite. In fact, the abrupt withdrawal from any or all of the medications listed can cause life-threatening seizures.

I must juggle social drinking - alcohol is a mandatory social lubricant in most UK culture - with the need to use alcohol as a form of self-medication for the stress I'm under. I also use alcohol as a substitute for the powerful psychotropic medications that my body has become dependent on, like heroin addicts kick their habit using methadone. Alcoholics can break free from physical dependence using benzodiazepines such as Librium (chlordiazepoxide). I'm doing it the other way round, because I know I can stop drinking - I plan on doing so in October, when I will use the excuse that I'm going teetotal to raise money for charity (a.k.a. Stoptober) - as I have done successfully before.

How I ended up with so much on my plate is not really my intended subject of this lengthy diatribe, but in my dark and difficult moments, I am facing a clusterfuck of competing demands on my time and energy, while also dealing with panic attacks and a general feeling of uneasiness and discontent; a false perception of threat, danger and imminent disaster.

My perceptions are not completely warped. Earlier this year, both my kidneys completely failed. Very recently I narrowly escaped homelessness, bankruptcy, destitution and destruction. Unpleasant feelings are a harbinger of a genuine medical emergency - I am detoxing myself without the supervision of a doctor or nurse, while also working full time.

I've skippered yachts and kept my crew safe in stormy weather; I've led groups safely up and down dangerous mountains covered with snow and ice; I've become blasé about near-death experiences, because I've now had so many. I don't think I'm exaggerating or being hyperbolic when I say that I'm facing my life's toughest challenge so far.

The demands placed upon me in my day job seem unreasonable at the moment, but I was desperate for fast cash. I was drowning and I was thrown a lifeline - beggars can't be choosers.

Friends who have submitted themselves to the mercy of the state seem to have suffered greatly from the trials and tribulations of dealing with compassion fatigued bureaucrats. A great many nurses and doctors have told me that I'm 'entitled' to live at the expense of the government - i.e. my fellow citizens - because of the taxes I have paid in my life, and because my mental illness disqualifies me from being 'fit for work'. To put work as my priority, ahead of treatment is something that none of my doctors want, but equally there's a long queue of people who would prefer to sit at home smoking cannabis and playing on their Playstations, rather than flipping burgers or scrubbing toilets for the minimum wage.

Like concentrated beef extract, I'm intense; I'm focussed; I can achieve a lot very quickly. The terrifying truth is that the world applauds anybody who exhibits bipolar behaviours... what happened to all those 'overnight successes' and 'one-hit wonders'? They spent all their money on fast cars, beautiful women, drugs & alcohol, and the rest they just wasted, is the oft-repeated quote.

Once you've figured out a winning formula, all you can do is teach others to follow in your footsteps. If you can train an army of mini-mes to do the grunt work - the heavy lifting - then life becomes more sustainable. Only a fool repeats the same behaviour, expecting different results.

And so, I desperately need to find my successor - somebody to fill my shoes and shoulder some of the burden, allowing me to recover and stabilise, rather than being trapped in a cycle of just repeating things that I've done before a thousand times.

It's hard to find somebody who's willing to do a shitty job, and it's hard to find somebody who's able to navigate their way through the piles of shit and find the better way of doing things. I might be that diamond in the rough, but that doesn't mean it's a great idea to get me scrubbing toilets or flipping burgers, even though I will do if you ask me, pay me and I'm desperate enough.

Having a desperation-driven economy, with most of us spread thinly - stressed out and always on the brink of breakdown and ruin - is a terrible, terrible thing to do to people.

Hunger will drive ingenuity and industriousness, but it's not a sustainable strategy, no matter how much Bovril you have to eat and/or drink.

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

This is a story about home treatment...

This is what the Conservative government's 1990's Care in the Community policy looks like, in practice. An extremely low-paid NHS worker, who isn't trained as a mental health nurse, is dispatched on public transport to travel across the London borough of Tower Hamlets, to bring me a bag of medication. They're supposed to check that the old packets are empty, which 'proves' I've been taking my medication. They're supposed to escalate any problems to nurses and doctors, back at base. If they can't find me or get in contact, they're supposed to ring the police.

It's that final point that's the important one: the police got co-opted into this half-baked scheme. Of the people the police deal with - the front-line officers - most of them will have mental health issues. The police are picking up the pieces of the mental health epidemic. When somebody is truly having a mental health crisis, the police will be the ones who get that sick person to the place where they should have been in the first place: a psychiatric institution.

There are nurses, psychiatrists, social workers and the like, who are involved in assessing whether you need to be detained under the Mental Health Act - what's known colloquially as a 'section'. If you're seriously mentally ill and out in the community, it's down to the police to find you, catch you, detain you and get you to that assessment where you get 'sectioned'.

Also, the police are out there, picking up body parts off the train tracks and underground railway. The police are there when somebody has jumped off a bridge and landed in a river or on some mud flats, or maybe gone splat into something harder below - perhaps a road. The police are there when somebody looks like they're about to jump under a train or off a bridge - CCTV operators are trained to look out for agitated members of the public, who look like they're about to top themselves.

Around the time of Care in the Community, there was an explosion in prescribing of psychiatric medication by our ordinary general practitioners (GPs) - our regular family doctors - there were 9 million prescriptions for Prozac in the UK in 1991. This is the principle behind Care in the Community: put people in a chemical straightjacket, and they can be safely released back into the general population. Ten years later, there were 24 million prescriptions for Prozac and another ten or so years later again, and London alone gets through over 60 million prescriptions for Prozac. These are almost all issued by a GP, not a psychiatrist.

When it comes to "serious" mental illness - anxiety disorders, bipolar disorder (a.k.a. manic depression), schizophrenia, personality disorders - the NHS kicks you out of the bit where you get various therapy options (e.g. CBT) and instead you're referred to a psychiatrist, who will prescribe some fairly brutal medication. In the case of schizophrenia, you could have a risperidone implant, injected underneath your skin, which will keep you in a chemical straightjacket for up to 6 months.

The other people who got co-opted into this Care in the Community policy were the general public. An average member of the public is fairly fearful of a schizophrenic, believing them to have multiple personalities and a propensity for violence. Several murders that received significant media attention, focussed on the fact that they were committed by formerly institutionalised schizophrenics. Depression is now such a common feature of people's lives, that any stigma has gone, but most people would be fearful of living near, working with, or having their children around a schizophrenic, surveys have found. Lock your doors - there might be a madman lurking nearby.

If I was in hospital, I'd have somebody checking on me every 30 minutes to an hour - making sure I hadn't found some way to harm myself. With the Crisis Team (a.k.a. Home Treatment Team) who are tasked with keeping me safe at home, I see them every other day. I could take a fatal overdose 2 hours before they were due to arrive, and by the time an ambulance got to me, I would be well and truly dead as a dodo.

I had stockpiled 336 tramadol tablets (16.8 grams) which is enough for two people to commit suicide, easily. As part of their responsibility to help keep me safe, they asked me for the tramadol back. I gave them 112 tablets (one box) which was a tick in their box. In hospital, I would never be able to hide the remaining 224 tablets from the nurses. If I took an overdose, I'd be fed activated charcoal, have my stomach pumped, be put on a respirator and given various medications to counteract the deadly effects of a tramadol overdose, in plenty of time to save my life.

I can't tell you what the cause and effect is. I can't tell you whether Care in the Community is the reason for the mental health epidemic, or whether it's something else, such as the collapse in living standards and precarious lives we live now, with our income and housing under constant threat.

Most people don't like to lose their liberty. In fact, it's distressing to be locked up somewhere, and not allowed to leave. There are crisis houses, where you can come and go as you please during the day, but you have to be back by nightfall and sleep there or else the police will be sent out to find you. This seems like a compromise that would suit most people who are having a mental health crisis, who pose no danger to the general public.

With the false security of Care in the Community, the number of beds available for those having a mental health crisis, has been slashed dramatically. You can attempt suicide and be hospitalised - in intensive care - and then discharged out onto the streets, simply because there isn't a free bed on a psych ward or in a crisis house, where you could more safely transition back to normal life. You can be suicidal, and the best the NHS can offer you is to come check that you're still alive once a day.

As a man, I'm many times more likely to commit suicide than a woman, but far less likely to seek help. This means that I have had the good fortune of being looked after once in a crisis house and once under a voluntary 'section' on a psych ward. Not many people receive lifesaving treatment like that - the resources just aren't there anymore.

So, what's the solution? Pharmaceutical companies tell us their medications are better than ever. More and more of us are taking powerful psychiatric medication. But, yet, the percentage of the population suffering from mental health issues is ever-growing; suicide rates keep climbing - there is, undoubtably, a mental health epidemic. My personal opinion is that it's not a medical problem: it's a problem created by insecurity: jobs and housing; it's a problem created by declining living standards and soaring levels of stress.

No amount of pills are going to fix the mental health epidemic, even if you bring them to my door.

Tags: #mentalhealth #suicide #depression #bipolar

This is a story about pulling the wool over somebody's eyes...

Every day, between 6pm and 8pm, I get a visit from a different stranger. They all belong to Tower Hamlets' Community Mental Health Team, and specifically to the home treatment Crisis Team, but it must be a big team because I almost never see the same person more than once. Everybody's reaction is the same when I let them in: "wow! look at the view!".

The fact is, I have enough money to last me 2 more weeks, but then I'm not just skint... I'm actually insolvent. I have a lease that doesn't expire until September and I have to service various debts that I ran up, just trying to stay alive.

"Oh, you probably spent all your money on drugs" I hear you say.

Recently, I was on the dark web, looking for something for a friend - something to relieve pain that wasn't on offer on the NHS. Having located some vape oil, containing medical cannabis, I then couldn't resist the urge to continue window shopping. To my alarm, the worldwide supply of supercrack had dried up, due to the Chinese very effectively banning the production and sale of it.

There was one supplier - in the whole world - selling his remaining stock of supercrack. 10 grams. That amount of good quality cocaine might cost you £900. For 10 grams of supercrack, I paid the princely sum of $134.

How long do you think 10 grams of supercrack lasts? Well, we can work it out. A severe addiction might consume as much at 15 milligrams per day - that would be enough to not sleep for a whole day and night. So, easy maths then.... 10,000 divided by 15 = 667 days. One year and ten months, of daily drug abuse for $134. No. I did not spend my money on drugs.

So, back to the strangers in my home each evening. I sit them down on the sofa, next to the patio doors that lead onto the balcony.

Still somewhat wowed by the view, they can also see a number of expensive electronic trinkets lying around. The conclusion that is instantly drawn is that I'm not really in crisis, but in fact I'm wealthy, successful and totally in control of my life. They couldn't be more wrong.

I wrote about this the other day, but lurking behind the door into the kitchen, are a load of bottles for recycling. In theory, I've stopped drinking, but that's just a technicality. If you're in the grips of a mental health crisis or drug-induced behaviour, then you don't tend to have a glass of wine in front of the TV. Remarkably, I've had a bottle of white wine in the fridge, unopened, for over a week.

"Why don't you just have one glass and stop?" a psychiatrist asked me. I replied that oxygen would make the wine go off, so I needed to finish the bottle once it was open. She suggested a vacuum pump wine preserver, to which I replied that I bet I'd never be able to find one. The penny dropped, and she realised I was taking the piss. The reason why I don't stop is because I don't want to. Alcohol is an effective way of getting intoxicated, so you don't give a fuck about your problems... except I do seem to give a fuck in a strange way, because whenever I get ridiculously drunk, I punch my bathroom door so hard that it makes a hole in it. Then I wake up and think "why did I do that?" and I'm filled with regret.

Strangers who come in my house don't see my bedrooms. My main bedroom with the ensuite has got blood spots all over the floor from some accidental injury or something. There's lots of evidence that I imprisoned myself in that room, for some reason. In fact, there's lots of evidence outside the communal areas, that I've absolutely lost my mind at times.

Recently, being in possession of quite a good set of tools, as well as a box of screws, I set about attempting to screw a desk to the door of my spare bedroom, or something like that. The plan wasn't even clear to me. Once you lose more than about 3 nights of sleep, your priorities are quite corrupted. Instead of hydration, food and sleep, my focus switched to barricading the bedroom door. If you have a dark sense of humour, you may chuckle at the fact that as soon as I had completed my task, I then needed to undo my work because I needed to use the lavatory.

These are the kinds of things that are quite important if you want to understand just how sick I am, but the 'window dressing' which is my lounge, balcony and view, rather distracts from the piles and piles of dirty dishes, and overbrimming laundry baskets. The home visit team members walk away thinking "I must tell my colleagues about that awesome view", rather than "I must tell the doctor that the patient looked like he hadn't slept for days, or eaten much".

Can I fix things? I've pretty much given up hope. There just isn't time.

10 grams of supercrack certainly doesn't help, and I knew that a relapse would be one problem too many, on top of a giant shit sandwich. However, the things I've tried that are a sensible and realistic approach, have brought in way too little cash for way too much effort. I'd rather have my MacBook Air and iPad Pro, than a few pennies, even if they're surplus to requirements most of the time.

I could keep up appearances for friends and family, but I lived in fear of my work colleagues discovering that I suffered from mental illness for so long, that the exhaustion became unbearable. It was an open secret that I would be late to work during periods of depression, or not turn up at all. Everybody knew that I liked a drink, but I surrounded myself with other heavy drinkers. The problems worsened, and I had to run twice as fast to just to stand still. I came to London, knowing I could burn a bunch of bridges, and never exhaust all the options open to me, but it's bullshit, having to interview for jobs when you've got a 20 year career behind you and countless people who know you're good at what you do. Also, why shouldn't my friends know what's going on in my life. If they're true friends, they'll see that I'm still me, but I'm in crisis - they won't suddenly change their opinion of me, because of prejudice, although one close friend did and it broke my heart.

Don't lift up the rugs or look under anything: I've swept so many things under the carpet. Out of sight out of mind. I don't bear close scrutiny, but nobody looks very carefully anyway. First impressions count for everything.

After the insanity comes a further insanity - a paranoia that my flat is trashed and I'll never be able to bodge it up good enough to escape hefty bills for repairs that are completely over-inflated by the unscrupulous letting agents.

Where am I going to go? What am I going to do? The fact that you're asking those questions is the clue as to why I might wish to escape into alcoholic oblivion, or take supercrack. There are no easy answers. I know I keep going on about it, but the whole hospital/dialysis/job loss fiasco has left me questioning what the f**k I'm doing, working IT contracts in London, except for the staggering amount of money that it brings in. It doesn't compensate for the up-front stress, followed by the abject boredom and misery.

You'll probably find me sidling up to you in a bar in 20 years time - the known local drunk - and saying to you "I remember the time I lived by the River Thames and worked for the world's biggest companies" and you'll think that I'm some delusional twat.

I hope I just die before I suffer that indignity.

Tags: #mentalhealth #depression #alcohol #drugs #addiction

This is a story about home visits...

I went to my GP. I forget why I went, but one of the main reasons was because I'd been depressed for so long that I wanted to try antidepressants again, but a really powerful combination called "California rocket fuel". One of the provisos of me getting the prescription at that visit, was that I would see a psychiatrist to review my case.

The first time I saw this new psychiatrist, the rocket fuel wasn't having much of an effect, and I offered to swap my stockpiled tramadol, in order to remain on the same antidepressants. She was really pretty worried about me though, and I was supposed to see somebody once a week.

I got a surprise text message from the Mental Health Crisis Team home visitors. That wasn't what I had agreed with the psychiatrist, and I felt let down by mental health services, again, so I ignored their requests to come visit.

By the time I went back to the psychiatrist for a second time, about a week after the first, I had become unwell, broken up with my girlfriend quite spectacularly and I had abruptly stopped the rocket fuel.

I didn't feel suicidal. I felt confused. I knew that the breakup had been done hastily, and that I didn't have the love and support that I needed. I knew that without her, my future was pretty bleak. I really had very few ideas about what to do next. My psychiatrist's concern - from the beginning - was to stabilise my mood. I'm not taking a therapeutic dose of anything at the moment, because it takes so long to safely start my new medication.

In some ways, the breakup prompted me to act with urgency - trying to sell high-value items and asking contacts for work. My energy has been low for as long as I can remember, and I still can't face the open jobs market. I've stopped even taking the recycling out or doing any washing. I started out well enough, but a couple of minor setbacks and I was discouraged

I was safe at her place. Safe from reminders of all the places where I cut myself, or put a knife to my throat and tried to find my jugular vein with the point of the blade. I was safe at hers, from self-sabotage and making an already long list of jobs even longer.

Back at my place I sank like a stone.

The thing about the Home Teeatment Team, is that you never see the same person twice. They all get distracted by the view and they have no idea if I'm deteriorating or not, which I most definitey am. If they saw me more than once, they'd notice the untidy beard, the dirty clothes, the weight loss, the extreme exhaustion.

My alternatives to home treatment are a crisis house or hospital. I'll be forced to leave my home, if I stop seeing the home treatment team. Come to think of it, I'll probably be forced to leave my home anyway.

I slept on the sofa last night, because my two bedrooms are in such a mess.

Ironically, the home treatment team will see a much better-presented version of me, this evening, because I had a shave. What they don't understand is that the reason I shaved was to make myself presentable for going to the shops. I don't really want my neighbours or my concierge to know that "unwell" is an understatement. I eat one meal a day, if I'm lucky. The only reason I'm showering is because of keeping up appearances for the home treatment team. I either don't sleep, or I pass out for a few hours. I wish I could sleep right now, but sleeping suddenly became really hard.

Tower Hamlets is at least well funded versus Camden, so I've got far more options. However, having a home visit from somebody different every day, really doesn't tell them that I'm sinking, fast. The pile of recycling is jut one of many clues that I'm in a bad way, and the downward spiral is getting beyond critical.

Bloody disaster.

Tags: #mentalhealth

This is a story about infidelity...

Yo ho ho and a bottle of Xanax. We're off to take a sailing trip across the Atlantic to New York. I'm nervous, but she's with me - she's also an experienced sailor - so I'm excited and I'm sure that between us we can manage the voyage. At first we are heading towards Dover. Why are we travelling East when we need to be sailing West? Then, we are becalmed and a fog descends. The water is glassy and flat and the sails flap uselessly. A road sign appears and it becomes apparent that we are in London, on a road. We are towing the yacht on a trailer. I rack my brains, trying to think of the best marina with a hoist to lift our yacht into the sea. I can't think straight.

This is a dream, obviously.

Next, I'm approaching a nightclub, skipping the queue outside and heading straight for the entrance. I present my left hand to the bouncer, who shines a torch on it. I brush past him so confidently, and he's not really paying attention, so he doesn't notice that I don't have an ink stamp that says I'm allowed in. Nobody challenges me. I go past the dance-floor and into another room. I notice somebody sucking on a glass tube with what looks like shards of gold, or maybe honeycomb, being ignited with a lighter. Then, an old schoolfriend wants to show me something he's making. He's pouring chemicals into a large jam jar. He's making shake-and-bake methamphetamine. The crystals aren't perfect shards of ice, but instead they're a milky mess. I know the drug will be potent, but the solvents and other chemicals used are deadly. I'm afraid, but also drawn to it, like a moth to a flame. Somebody has prepared some lines of a white powder; it's being passed around. I wake up.

My doctor warned me that my new depression treatment - California rocket fuel - would lead to vivid dreams, but I've always had a lot of dreams.

In a way, my new dreams are better than the old ones. When I used to dream before, they were basically all the same: I have some supercrack and I'm trying to find a private place to take it, but every time I think I'm safe from intrusion, and I'm about to snort a line, somebody interrupts me. Then begins a stressful game of hide-and-seek where I'm trying to escape the voyeurs who wish to intrude on my private drug use. I never actually manage to get any drugs up my nose before I wake up.

Of course, drugs are still my mistress. I've got a virtually unlimited supply of opiates, in the form of tramadol and codeine. I've got stacks of benzodiazepines, in the form of diazepam and Xanax. I've got loads of Z-drugs in the form of zopiclone and zolpidem. I've got pregablin, venlafaxine and mirtazepine. I've got Viagra and Cialis. None of these chemicals seem to make the blindest bit of difference to my depression, and they're certainly not my drug of choice: supercrack.

I go to the chemist, and I have to give two signatures, because they're giving me medications that are controlled substances - they're illegal to possess without a prescription. I'm handed a carrier bag that's bulging with boxes packed full of blister strips containing capsules full of chemicals, or pills that have been pressed into certain shapes and sizes, with numbers and letters imprinted on them. Everything is so colourful. If I lose a pill on the floor by accident, I can identify exactly what it is.

I get confused at night, as I swallow 6 pregablin capsules (white with black lettering), 2 venlafaxine tablets (round and dark orange), 2 mirtazepine tablets (small lozenge shaped, light orange), 2 zolpidem tablets (tiny white lozenges) and a Xanax (an oblong with "XANAX" imprinted on one side). Sometimes I also take a zopiclone if I can't sleep (round white tablet). When my leg was in pain, I would also take 2 co-codamol with 30mg of codeine in each tablet (large white lozenges) and 2 tramadol capsules (green and yellow). Trying to remember if I took everything, and make sure I don't take anything twice, is quite difficult. I'm almost at the point where I should prepare all my tablets and check I've got everything before I greedily gulp them down. I can now swallow 6 tablets at once, easily.

My real mistress, and the beast that's out to kill me - supercrack - is tamed at the moment. I know that a lapse would be disastrous in my financially precarious situation, but I'm also so doped up that my libido and craving for supercrack is under control... for now. I'm not a superstitious person, but I feel like I'm tempting fate just writing these words.

I don't bother keeping a tally of how long I've been 'clean'. It's a ridiculous idea. If a person quits one thing, they start doing something else. A former gambling addict might become obsessed with fitness and go to the gym 7 days a week. A smoker who quits will probably start eating more, to compensate for the loss.

It might seem logical that the longer you're addicted to something, the harder it will be to quit and stay 'clean' but nobody seems to realise that the more times you quit and have periods of abstinence, the better you get at quitting and resisting temptation. Medically, the binge & quit cycle of drug taking is the most damaging, because the binges are so extreme: days and days without sleep or food, and huge doses of really harmful drugs, when your poor body has just about recovered and was starting to get back to normality.

Of course, the really harmful stuff is to relationships. She doesn't mention it very often, but she's worried about the next time I just disappear off the face of the Earth, and reappear skinny, sleep-deprived and suffering from all the nasty side effects of supercrack: paranoia, obsessive-compulsive behaviour and panic attacks; not to mention tachycardia, malignant hyperthermia and rhabdomyolysis. I'm no stranger to hospitals and psych wards.

If you meet me in person, I seem polite, well presented, somewhat smart and certainly confident and self-assured. I can make smalltalk and feign interest in other people's lives. I remember the tiny details that people tell me, which I can see are important to them, so that I can bring them up if ever there's a lull in conversation; an uncomfortable silence. There's no chance you'd peg me as a 'druggie' or a 'stoner' or a 'junkie'. I take perverse pleasure in contradicting and confounding the stereotypes.

Despite my ability to confidently bullshit my way through life, I do wonder if I'm as seriously sick as my doctors tell me I am. They can't make their mind up whether I have treatment-resistant major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder or some dual or triple diagnosis of all of them, plus the substance abuse, of course.

On top of the chemical cocktails, there's a bottle of wine every night, just like every other middle-class professional. Lots of people would say that alcohol is part of the problem, but the last time I quit I quickly went hypomanic and lost my contract. Seems to be the story of my life: losing my contracts through ill-health. All the evidence points to chronic illness that makes me unfit to work, but my confident and upbeat attitude - plus my employability - has got me stuck in a groundhog day loop, where I work enough to pay the bills for a year, but then implode spectacularly and find myself without gainful employment, yet again.

Undoubtedly, my affair with supercrack wreaks havoc across every area of my life, but what about the depression? What about the hypomania? What about the fact I see everything in black and white, and I either love you or hate you? Even when I'm 'well' and functioning, I've still gotta be right: intellectual pride and arrogance.

I've committed to a new regimen of antidepressants, for the first time in years, so maybe my mood will improve if I can keep taking the pills regularly for 4 to 6 weeks... then we'll see if these blunt instruments of brain manipulation actually fucking work for once.

Meanwhile, money pours out of my bank account and the end of the runway gets ever closer, but the wheels of the aeroplane are still on the tarmac. If I can't psych myself up to overcome the depression, stress and anxiety enough to hide my problems and tackle the arduous task of getting another contract, I'm fucked. The house of cards will collapse quicker than you can say "fuck my life".

It's remarkable how much time I spend thinking about setting my affairs in order: making sure my life insurance pays out to my sister, making sure I've left instructions so that friends who've helped me out get repaid, making sure I've thrown away everything that's of no value, making sure that I've listed the details of all my bank accounts and creditors, making sure I've left enough money in my company so that my accountant can wind up the business and he gets paid, and also making sure that at least a teeny bit of my legacy is preserved: I've written a novel and this blog has about 600,000 words, plus photos. I always said I wanted to leave a smoking gun, in case anybody wanted to investigate how stress - mainly financial worries - can destroy a person and drive them to suicide. My biggest fear is being written off with a simple throwaway label: "mentally ill" or "substance abuse" or whatever... things are never as simple as that.

While most people are planning summer holidays and extended weekend breaks over the bank holiday weekend, I'm paralysed by the ever-approaching end of the runway, combined with debilitating stress and depression. Things look straightforward, because I've made life look like a walk in the park so far, but in fact I'm just very good at hiding the deteriorating situation, when my back's against the wall. Just because I can rescue myself in the nick of time, doesn't mean I can always do it, forever. I feel physically sick at the thought of the effort involved in doing what I do, all over again, even though it's a well-practiced tried-and-trusted formula.

Time just gets frittered away, which is fine when you're getting your regular salary and you spend most of your time at your desk just counting down to the weekend or your next holiday, but when you're in my situation, in a way, I'm dying. How do you think you'd feel if you were left penniless, homeless and with a bunch of vultures trying to take the clothes off your back? How do you think you'd feel if you know you can make everything alright again, if only you were well enough to work, but you feel sick and the thought of going back to the office caused you severe stress, anxiety and paralysed you; unable to cope or deal with the situation?

Tick tock goes the clock, and it doesn't stop. You have to run just to stand still. This is why it's so attractive to run away with my mistress and pretend my problems don't exist: escapism.

I want to escape this invisible prison.

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

This is a story about a better world...

On the topic of how the human race should divide labour & treasure - the products we manufacture and the food we harvest - a friend and former boss challenged me to come up with "something new and truly revolutionary" because I'm "a smart chap". Challenge accepted.

To my friend, the "constant drone of the right and the left is incredibly boring". Ok, fine. Let's set aside all political parties, their ideologies and their manifestos.

Right now, in the UK, we are a rudderless ship. Parliament was dissolved. All those constantly droning politicians are out campaigning, rather than doing what we elected them to do, which was to make new laws which we thought would make our lives better.

So, what the hell is going on? Why isn't there rioting in the streets? Why do I still have power in my apartment and water coming out of the taps? Why haven't a revolutionary group stormed the gates of the Palace of Westminster, and forcibly taken up residence in the House of Commons, declaring themselves as our new rulers?

In our day-to-day lives, we're quite familiar with parts of our national heritage. You picked up the letters off the doormat, with The Queen's head on a stamp. The jolly postman drove off in his red Royal Mail van. The train you travelled on to get to work, ran on tracks that are maintained by Network Rail. The road you drove on to get the kids to school is maintained by the Highways Agency. If you crash, the police and ambulance service will get you to a National Health Service hospital. When you eat any food, DEFRA will make sure that it's fit for human consumption. The electricity that boils your kettle was transmitted through the National Grid. Your house was built to national building regulations, the electrical system conforms to the national wiring regulations, the gas supply conforms to national standards. The Met Office warned you of any bad weather and made sure that various flood gates were opened to protect residential areas. When you got home, you watched British Broadcasting Corporation television programmes. Let's not forget the Foreign and Commonwealth Office who will look after you if there's trouble abroad, and of course the Passport Office who issued you with valid travel documents in the first place. The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency will make sure that the nation's roads are free from unsafe drivers, and the Department for Transport will make sure that every vehicle is inspected and tested to meet national standards. Her Majesty's Land Registry makes sure that nobody steals your house and the police make sure nobody steals your possessions.

Then, there are parts of our national heritage which are quite unseen. As a maritime nation, Britain imports and exports a lot of goods. UK Export Finance will lend to private companies who are exporting British goods, so that cashflow isn't held up while the container ship makes way for whichever port it's destined for. The Ministry of Defence is busy dreaming up new ways to kill people in nasty ways, while also forming part of the United Nations permanent peacekeeping forces, which keep a lid on pockets of unrest in faraway lands, which hopefully maintains a degree of global stability, although this is a controversial point. The MoD also have at least one Vanguard class submarine at sea, hidden underwater from the prying eyes of satellites, containing 16 Trident thermonuclear missiles, which in theory stops anybody from nuking us. Although not really acknowledged as existing, MI6 is busy gathering intelligence - i.e. spying - to protect us from foreign threats, which at the moment is mainly radical Islamists and the IRA.

All of those droning politicians haven't done a single thing except drone, since parliament was dissolved, so why is the UK still continuing to function perfectly well?

One might argue, why do you really care whether your electricity came from a state-owned monopoly power station, or a privately owned and operated one? In terms of the benefit to us all, the question is always the same: where did the money go, and how was it distributed?

In an unrestrained system of free-market capitalism, a foreign company will build their power station here in the UK using foreign labour and foreign materials. They will then sell us the electricity. Obviously, the foreign power company now has some pounds that they don't really want, so they sell them for another currency. This drives down the value of the pound, as well as creating a net currency outflow: more pounds leaving the UK than coming in. This attracts asset strippers and other vultures, who buy up valuable assets at a price that seems cheap to them, but expensive to anybody who lives in the UK. Look at the soaring value of London property prices: most of the transactions have been foreign investors; many of whom won't even live in the houses and apartments they've bought.

Eventually, if privatisation is allowed to continue, everything we need in daily life - housing, energy, food, clothes, water - will profit a foreign investor and our pounds will be virtually worthless, so things will be really expensive. The idea of competition works well when you're buying something you don't really need off the Internet, but are you going to move house every time the landlord puts the rent up, because the place next door is more competitively priced? Efficient markets only work when there's liquidity. Have you ever tried changing your bank or your energy supplier? It's a massive ball-ache.

I like living in a country where buildings don't fall down, I don't get electrocuted, the roads are safe and if I am unfortunate enough to have an accident, then I'll be sewn back together by world-class surgeons and looked after in a super well-equipped hospital.

My utopian ideas revolve around self-sufficiency. My utopia is probably a steel-hulled self-righting sailboat, with wind and solar electricity generation, big batteries, water purification and desalination. For food, the main boat would tow a super-tough floating greenhouse containing some kind of gimballed field to stabilise it in the waves. I would grow genetically-engineered beefburgers and other high-yield crops, and tow my floating greenhouse along with me in calm weather. In an unexpected storm, I could cut away the greenhouse-boat, and then retrieve it later using radio transmitter tracking. Most of the time I'd be moored up in some cove that's sheltered from the prevailing winds. Line-caught fish and squid would be a large part of my diet, but underneath the field-boat would be lots and lots of ropes growing mussels. I think a family of 5 could live a fairly decent life until the next generation were old enough and experienced enough to take to the seas on their own vessel.

Obviously, utopia doesn't scale, so most political discussions unfortunately, revolve around questions of ownership and wealth inequality; plus there's the important point about people who steal from the UK, by not paying their taxes and moving their money offshore.

As for revolution; that's just foolish. We need political reform: proportional representation and preferential voting. We need to abolish wealthy donors buying peerages from political parties. In fact, I'm in favour of abolishing political parties altogether. We need very low caps on how much money you can spend on political campaigning.

I'm less of a Marxist/Stalinist/Leninist/Maoist/Trotskyist than you think (well, maybe the latter a little bit) and I'm most concerned with the staggering amount of wealth that's hidden in tax havens, and tax that's avoided using accounting scams like Vodafone and their ilk. I'm also concerned by CEOs and politicians who don't "eat their own dog food" - if you run a bank, you should keep all your money in a bank account with the bank you run (hint, hint, Stuart Gulliver) and if you're a Member of Parliament, you should send your kids to state school and have regular NHS healthcare: no private options for those who seek to govern.

There isn't really an -ist that describes me, nor can I be pigeon holed as left, right or centre. My views and opinions are influenced by some ideas, but to say that I think that there's some autocrat, political party or ideology that works perfectly, is quite wrong. The world is a messy place, and there are plenty of people who'd like to poop your party just to show you up, even if you ever conceived the perfect system for society to conform to.

Summing up what I want from our society: social justice, income spread of no more than 100% from the lowest paid to the best paid, state-owned monopolies on essentials like health, energy, transport, education and housing, investment in science and technology, investment in massive infrastructure projects that are a source of national pride, minimum income (as opposed to full employment), 100% inheritance tax and your house/apartment reverts to state ownership after death, beefed up Competition and Markets Authority with a mandate to attack any area that has become a significant part of ordinary people's monthly expenditure, halve spending on defence and spend that budget on the UK Space Agency, decriminalise all drugs, regulate and tax sales of Cannabis for medicinal use, drug law enforcement budget to be spent on addiction treatment and education instead, the creation of a state-owned national investment bank and laws to restrict the use of financial instruments, make charging interest illegal.

That's quite a lot, isn't it? Implementing it all would be a pigging pain without treading on a lot of toes; hence the boat idea.

Tags: #politics

This is a story about getting old and fat...

Are you getting a belly? Does your tummy wobble? What about bingo wings? Trousers feeling a bit tight? Can't get into that old outfit you used to wear? Try The Supercrack Diet!

If you are already in the pro-athlete body fat range of 1 to 3% body fat, do not try The Supercrack Diet, because your muscles will be used to keep you alive, and the myoglobin contained in the muscles will be released into your bloodstream and cause your kidneys to fail. You will stop urinating and your heart will fail because of elevated potassium that can't be flushed from your body. Basically, you'll die.

Do you enjoy drinking the best part of two bottles of wine a night, eating runny camembert and other high-fat soft cheeses, cooking everything in butter and goose fat, having chips and other deep-fried delicacies to accompany every meal and believe that any meal can be improved with lashings of cream? Do you have cupboards full of crisps and biscuits where you go to for regular snacks in-between meals? Do you have a second stomach, for dessert, and a third stomach, for cheese?

At the ripe old age of 37 and injured (foot/ankle and wrist) I've noticed that my eating and drinking habits combined with my complete lack of exercise, are now causing me to gain weight. Putting on the suit I wore for TechStars demo day in 2011, I noticed that I could barely do the button up. When I went to get a new suit - admittedly straight after Christmas - my waist had grown not one, but two sizes!

Obviously, I don't want to be a fattie, so I invented The Supercrack Diet.

The diet goes like this:

1. Obtain Supercrack

2. Take Supercrack

3. Repeat step 2 until desired weight loss has been achieved

4. Present yourself at your nearest hospital Accident & Emergency department if you are experiencing one of the many deadly side effects* of The Supercrack Diet

* Side effects requiring hospital treatment may include psychosis, heart damage or irregular rhythm, poor co-ordination, injuries resulting from poor co-ordination, injuries resulting from psychosis, tachycardia, panic attacks, hyperventilation, malignant hyperthermia, rhabdomyolysis, acute kidney failure.

You might notice the lack of any steps between 2 and 3. That's because you're not going to eat anything. You might drink a little, but often not. You're definitely not going to sleep. You may find yourself quite physically active, especially when psychosis sets in and 'they' are out to get you - this is the exercise that you should have been doing, except now you have the added motivation of people who are out to get you. You might find yourself climbing into attics without using a ladder, picking up heavy pieces of furniture and trying to balance them in improbable places and generally rearranging your environment - all of this burns a lot of calories.

Something that you should know about supercrack: it doesn't contain any calories so you can eat as much as you want!*

* If you eat more than half a gram, you may lose control of your motor cortex and be rendered immobile, or your heart may simply explode from a sudden blood pressure increase. Hospitalisation will be necessary. Do not eat more than half a gram at any one sitting. The recommended maximum daily dose is 0.005 grams. You will need laboratory grade scales.

So-called 'malignant' hyperthermia is where you are hot and sweating profusely, just like when you're at the gym. The Supercrack Diet will give you so-called 'malignant' hyperthermia, without you having to move a muscle, except your heart, which will be at 100% of your MHR (Maximum Heart Rate). Remember not to go to the gym while doing The Supercrack Diet, or your heart will be damaged irreparably. Don't worry about that 'malignant' thing... they'll explain that to you in hospital.

If you have high blood pressure, you might be surprised to learn that regularly doing The Supercrack Diet can cause your heart to enlarge (called athlete's heart) and arteries to grow. The net result is that your blood pressure and even your resting heart rate can be remarkably improved. My resting heart rate was 41 and I had "the lowest blood pressure I've ever seen in somebody who's conscious" according to a doctor who examined me. However, you could also damage your heart or die. Just concentrate on the upsides.

Other similar diets can cause teeth grinding and a tendency to pick at your own skin (called 'tweaking') but The Supercrack Diet does not have these undesirable side effects. Just the addiction. And the damage to your relationships, work and property. And all the time and money you'll lose while you're dieting.

Diets such as The Crack Diet, Diet Coke[aine] and The Meth Diet can be very expensive, costing £250 a day or more. You won't believe how cheap The Supercrack Diet is. 200 days of dieting can be purchased for less than £30. The price you pay is not for the supercrack though. The price you pay is in the damaging addiction. You may find that you want to diet more regularly than work, education, socialising and normal healthy activities permit.

Experienced dieters may find that vast quantities of tranquillisers are the only way to curtail a diet, several days after they had originally intended to stop. Also, a stock of isotonic fluids, amino acids, high protein and glucose drinks, is good to have on hand for the lengthy recovery period. Expect crying, severe depression and suicidal thoughts.

It's good to be thin though, right?

Tags: #drugs