alcohol – Page 4 – Nick Grant

Nick Grant

Tag: alcohol

  • Playing the Long Game

    This is a story about sustained effort…

    Mound of wires

    I like to concentrate on one thing at a time. I like to be hyper-focussed and blinkered, and to devote all my energy and attention towards achieving a single goal. I like to live my life in an artificially simplified way, by aggressively cutting away anything which seems superfluous; a distraction from my main task.

    Unfortunately, I have several concurrent tasks:

    • My work
    • My debts
    • My writing
    • My love-life

    There are more – such as friends, family, health & fitness, hobbies etc – but I’m not listing those, because I’ve deemed them temporarily nonessential.

    In fact, I had deemed dating to be nonessential, but my life had become too lonely and austere to be bearable. I was torn between investing in my [nonexistent] social life and looking for love. I chose the latter, because of how long it had been since I’d hugged or kissed anybody. Intimacy is important.

    My work is arguably a task which will never be completed, but my debts have almost been dealt with. The sum total of my savings is £30,000 and the sum total of my debts is £29,000, so I’m finally ‘in the black’ although it will be some time before I’m able to release the money and free myself from the bonds of usury. Then, the question is how much money do I really need to live a happy life? I have to decide about this thing people call “work-life-balance” which I always thought was a myth. Without the millstone of debt around my neck, suddenly I gain enormous freedom of choice.

    My writing has been the casualty, of late.

    Hypomania was rearing its ugly head, threatening to destroy all my hard work building a good reputation in the office. I got a cold and my brain was horrendously sluggish. I suffered alcohol abuse, bad diet, lack of exercise and general neglect of everything in my life, because I was so single-minded in my mission to pay back my debts. My mind was telling me how brilliant I am, that I’ve managed to rescue myself from a dire situation, successfully deliver some software projects, impress my colleagues, work hard and generally function in society pretty well. I’ve been getting up early and going to the office. I haven’t been taking time off sick. I haven’t had much time off on holiday. I’ve just worked and it’s paying off, but I’m so exhausted that I’m going a little crazy. It’s hard to deal with the reversal of fortunes; my boom and bust real life triggers psychological problems.

    During 3 years of writing my blog almost daily, I never start writing a blog post on one day and then finish it on another. My mind races so much and my feelings change so violently that the tone and content of what I’m writing can veer from one extreme to another, faster than I can pour out words onto the page. One reason for writing so much so quickly, is to capture the variety of my moods and give myself a fighting chance of being able to spot more general trends. In fact, I rely heavily on my regular readers to spot those trends – they’re a far better judge of whether I’m swinging into a high or low episode, than I am myself.

    To have skipped days of writing really upsets me. I feel really bad when I neglect my writing and my readers.

    I have no idea where my writing will take me, especially when I suffer major setbacks such as a sudden loss of thousands of Twitter followers. These things shouldn’t matter, but they’re psychologically damaging. My digital identity does serve as a substitute for a lot of the things which are presently missing in my life, such as a group of local friends, social engagements and a healthy relationship with my family.

    That my life is so damaged should come as no surprise when you consider the magnitude of the tasks which I’ve been set. Divorce, drugs, alcohol, homelessness, debt and all the accompanying loss of status, stigma and family estrangement – the sense of failure, disappointment and “letting everyone down” – can each be fatal on their own. In combination, those things are a toxic whirlpool; a quicksand which nobody could ever hope to escape from. I could be very upset and depressed about all the things which are broken in my life, but instead I struggle not to get carried away with the minor miracle which has happened: I’ve bounced back and re-entered civilised society, seemingly without any permanent damage.

    So many parts of our society are set up with the optimistic presumption that people are capable of turning their lives around and being rehabilitated, but it very rarely happens. While those who work with addicts, criminals and the debt-laden are very keen to see lives transformed for the better, the reality is that most of the stories do not have happy endings. Most of the stories have sad predictable endings, which are quite tragic.

    I’m terrified that I’m going to hit a glass ceiling soon. I will have a mental illness until the day I die. I will always suffer from social jet-lag and a personality which is incompatible with the rat race. I can’t change the past – the stigma of addiction and the paper trail which got left in my wake, during an unfortunate period of my life, will follow me around forever. There is no limit on what the organisation I’m presently involved with is able to see: they have access to a vast database of unflattering things, which can never be deleted. My mistakes can never be expunged from the archives.

    I could delete this blog, but then where is my reply to the opinions of me expressed upon records kept by organisations who I unfortunately came into contact with?

    I would be so much more vulnerable to stigma, prejudice and discrimination, if I allowed other people to lazily sum me up in a few short sentences. Human lives are so much more messy and complex than any amount of words on a page could ever possibly express. It seems like the most natural reaction to being pigeon-holed, to do something like this: to create a document so large that it doesn’t even fit in a goddam pigeon hole.

    It might seem obvious that I’d be quickly identified as a nut; a crackpot; a madman. That seems like an easy label to attach to me.

    However, my long and successful career, the vast sums of tax I’ve paid, the wealth I’ve generated for the economy, the tangible products of my labour and intellect – all of these things contradict any attempt to lazily dismiss me as a ranting madman, of no use to anybody, who should be quietly nudged towards the fringes of society until I’m completely marginalised.

    My writing is the only thing in my life I have complete control over. I can write as much as I want. I can publish as much as I want. Every act of writing and publishing is an act of rebellion – a protest at the excessive burdens of life – as well as an addition to a growing cache of proof of my productivity and usefulness. I write because it will frustrate and contradict any attempts to write me off.

    On paper, I was a write-off.

    Nobody would touch me with a barge pole.

    If you were presented with a list of all the unflattering things about me – my mistakes; my debts; my problems – as a bullet-pointed list, then you’d have dumped me straight onto the “no hope” pile.

    Technically, I don’t exist, because my existence is too improbable; my problems were too insurmountable. I should not be alive. I should not be debt-free. I should not be clean. I should not be working. I should not be housed. I should not have money. I should not be out there in the big wide world, walking around like I’m a regular normal member of mainstream society.

    I could place put my faith in those who have sworn to make decisions without prejudice or discrimination. I could entrust my whole future – my happiness and my livelihood – to people who’ve never met me, who will judge me based on a few bullet points. That seems pretty risky to me though.

    This is what I anticipated would happen. I knew that sooner or later, if I kept telling my story, I’d reach a point where the rags-to-riches-to-rags-to-riches-to-rags cycle would either conclude – in my suicide – or else I would finally get a chance to have a liveable life. This document contains a vast number of mistakes and unflattering things about me, but it also charts the course of a stupendously unlikely journey, which was almost certainly doomed to failure. If somebody in a position of power is going to thwart me, I want them to do so with a guilty conscience, because they were too lazy to consider all the available information. I’m so much more than a few bullet points on a page. I cannot be dissected with a 66-page form.

    Of course, it’s terribly teenage angsty to think of myself as a misunderstood character. It’s horribly conceited and arrogant to think I’m special and different. I try not to concern myself with such judgements and instead to concentrate on my continued efforts to produce tangible things: to create.

    Lots of people have written lots of novels, journals, diaries, blogs, newspaper columns, magazine articles and all the very many other works of printed words. There are quite a lot of prolific writers, who have churned out vast quantities of prose. Does that mean I shouldn’t bother? Does that mean I shouldn’t even try?

    I haven’t been very productive during the past couple of weeks, but it doesn’t matter because what I’ve produced is cumulative. Every little effort is slowly adding up to create some big achievements. It’s painfully slow, but the progress appears to create sudden overnight success. Nobody really notices all the hard work and nobody can see where it’s headed, until one day a huge milestone is reached and everything all makes sense.

    The relief of having more-or-less reached one of my most important goals, is highly destabilising and is triggering hypomania: it’s hard not to get carried away with the perceived magnitude of my achievement. It’s hard not believe my own bullshit – that I’m invincible and that I can overcome any obstacle. It’s tempting to act recklessly, believing that I’ll always be able to rescue myself from disastrous situations. It’s hard to keep reminding myself that my luck will run out eventually, if I keep tempting fate.

    I’ve missed this blog and I’ve missed writing. I’ve been destabilised, but I’m going to force myself to continue with my routine, because I think it’s very healthy and stabilising for me.

    Sorry for the gap in my regular writing.

     

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  • Can You Drink Yourself Sober?

    This is a story about giving people the answers they desperately seek…

    Wine bottles lined up

    Once you’re trapped by an addictive substance, escaping is not as easy as the unhelpful “just stop” advice seems to suggest. In fact if you have a really bad alcohol addiction, stopping could be the very worst piece of advice you’ll ever receive. Stopping could lead to seizures and death. Ignore those idiots who tell you to “just stop” drinking.

    I’m going to answer the question which brought you here, immediately. Rather than beating around the bush and making you read any more of my waffle, let me just answer your question:

    Can I drink myself sober?

    Here are your answers:

    • You can drink until you are sober
    • You can drink until you don’t want to drink anymore, and decide to sober up
    • You can drink so much that you make yourself too sick to drink anymore, although your sobriety will probably be forced upon you in those circumstances

    The first point is the one which is probably the most useful to you.

    If you keep drinking the same amount every day, you will have a short period where you are in effect, drinking yourself sober. Your brain adapts itself to the copious quantities of intoxicating liquor, building a tolerance to the GABA neurotransmitter released in response to the alcohol which crosses the blood-brain barrier. In short: if you’re an alcoholic, you’re already able to drink and remain quite functional. If you’re an alcoholic, the moment you start reducing your alcohol intake, you immediately start sobering up, because your brain has become accustomed to vast quantities of booze in your bloodstream.

    Most people’s bodies are highly efficient and metabolising alcohol. It should take your body no longer than 4 or 5 hours to eliminate all the alcohol in your bloodstream, the moment you stop drinking.

    But you don’t want to stop drinking, do you? Well, you do and you don’t. Your desperate want to be free from the grips of alcoholism is why you’re here reading this, but also you love drinking. You don’t want to be sober you want to be able to drink without consequences I guess? Did I guess right?

    I’m going to take another guess: drinking is causing you problems at work, at home, on the roads. Drinking is costing you a lot of money. You’re worried you’re going to lose your job, your partner, your kids and get cut off by your family. Am I guessing right about any of this?

    OK, one last guess: drinking is affecting your health. You’re fatter than you’d like to be, or you’re drinking nothing except strong spirits and you’re skinny, but your doctor has told you’re going to get pancreatitis and a scarred cirrhotic liver? Your doctor has told you to cut down on your drinking. Your doctor has told you that if you don’t stop drinking you’re going to die, and you’re going to die quickly.

    You want to stop drinking but you can’t. Alcohol is everywhere. Booze is at every after-work social event, every weekend party, every christening, wedding and funeral. You can buy alcohol almost anywhere you can buy food. You can have alcohol delivered to your door by Deliveroo.

    I was in two minds about putting a photo of wine bottles at the top of this blog post, but then I decided that it’s not triggering because there are already more triggers than you could ever possibly avoid in the world. Almost every movie you watch – especially Hollywood movies – seems to have alcoholic characters constantly pouring themsevels large glasses of scotch bourbon.

    If you have moved on from beer, cider and wine, to vodka, whiskey and other hard liquor, you are not going to be able to drink yourself sober, unless you set yourself a very strictly dosage-controlled taper schedule, and you’re not allowed to cheat. Do you want to be sober and abstinent, or do you just want to go back in time, to a period when your drinking didn’t seem to be causing any problems? I suspect either way, you and hard liquor – spirits – do not have a glittering future together. You’re highly unlikely to achieve anything anywhere near sobriety with a big bottle of vodka in your possession.

    If you drink spirits, I advise you switch to wine. If you drink wine, are you really asking me if you can drink yourself sober? You probably already know the answer to that: yes, you can drink wine all night long on a massive binge and find yourself suddenly quite sober, eventually.

    I should be clear here that I’m not advocating binge drinking, excessive drinking, nor am I saying that drinking is healthy. All I’m trying to do is respond to the question which I have a lot of evidence to show that tons and tons of people want to know the answer to.

    We know we have huge problems with alcoholism in society.

    I do not thing abstinence is the answer.

    Abstinence is not the answer because it leaves hundreds of millions of people trapped in alcoholism. The gulf between those who have smugly achieved their sobriety, and those who are trapped in alcohol’s vice-like grip, cannot be bridged by saying: “stop drinking”

    If you’re looking to loosen that grip around your throat and get a bit of your life back, because alcohol’s causing your world to fall apart, keep drinking! However, you should switch to something of lower alcoholic strength and you should buy it in smaller portions. It’s much easier to control your alcoholism if you know how many bottles or cans you’ve drunk. One bottle of vodka has the same amount of alcohol as four bottles of wine. If you drink the wine at the same speed you’d have drunk the vodka, plus the mixer, then you’ll be getting far less alcohol and you’ll be more sober than you’ve been for a long time, when drinking. It’s not ideal, but it’s headed in the right direction.

    It’s all about harm reduction.

    Drinking vodka every day is going to fuck you up very fast.

    Drinking wine every day is not great, but your health and the problems in your life will be vastly reduced.

    If you’re intent on – for example – stopping drinking a botte of vodka every day, buy 4 bottles of wine instead and see if it adequately substitutes for the vodka. If it does, then great, because you can say to yourself “I’m not allowed to buy any more than 4 bottles of wine today” just like you say to yourself “I’m only allowed to buy one bottle of vodka today”. Then, when you’re ready, you can say “Today I’m only going to buy three bottles and a little half-bottle for emergencies, which I’m going to try not to drink”.

    In this way you can drink yourself sober.

    In this way you can drink yourself to any point you need to get to.

    If you want to be completely sober, you can go from 4 bottles, to 3.5, to 3, 2.5, 2, 1.5, 1, 0.5… none!

    If you want to achieve total abstinence, you can do it with portion control and slow tapering down. Make sure you do it slowly though. Seriously. Do. It. Slowly. I’m talking months and months, not days or weeks. It’s going to take a long time for your body to get used to not having all that alcohol. Your brain will need time to re-adjust to not having all that soothing GABA sloshing around inside your skull.

    That’s my 2 cents on how to drink yourself sober. Good luck and feel free to ask me any questions.

     

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  • I Am Ridiculously Exposed

    This is a story about laying it all on the line…

    Glasses

    My livelihood, any realistic prospect of me being able to pay back my mountainous debts and the impossible dream of restoring myself to health and wealth – escaping the nightmare – hinges upon successfully blending in as a part of an organisation which is particularly noted for being intolerant of anybody with bad character.

    I’ve been required to fill in a 66 page form which legally obliges me to disclose criminal convictions, psychiatric problems, the abuse of drugs and alcohol, partners from the last 3 years, marriage, divorce, bankruptcies, loan defaults, debt repayment agreements, financial conduct and details about my parents. Most employers are only entitled to know about any unspent criminal convictions, under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974, but I work for an organisation that knows everything.

    Of course, I’m ahead of the game, because I’ve already publicly declared every single unflattering thing about myself.

    Luckily I’ve never been convicted of a crime, but there are still some things I’m legally bound to disclose which would portray me in a less-than-ideal light to the powers that be, who will judge me based on what they see on paper. My life and my future will be reduced to a few scribbles on a form.

    Many people have been through rough breakups and divorces and had breakdowns. Many people suffer from mental illness. Many people have had periods where they’ve drunk too much or dabbled with recreational drugs. Nobody is squeaky clean.

    I’m in the ludicrous situation where I’m more-or-less managing to plod along and keep my mouth shut, and demonstrate that I’m a competent and capable valuable team member at work, but I’ve continued to write and publish this blog using my real name. I’ve continued to write with unflinching honesty about some of the terrible stuff I’ve been through and the aftermath of problems I’m dealing with, as I desperately attempt to get back on my feet.

    I’m in the ludicrous situation where my hard work is beginning to pay off and my debts are getting rapidly repaid. I’m in the ludicrous situation where there’s an end in sight, provided nobody screws me over.

    It appears to be self-sabotaging that I would continue to write and publish stuff which makes me so exposed and vulnerable, but in fact my online presence has been one of the big factors in my recovery. Without being able to share my story and connect with kind supportive people, I couldn’t have gotten this far. Without having the sense of identity, pride in my achievement and the structure and routine that daily public writing gives me – the scrutiny – then I would have been destroyed by my problems and would have perished in obscurity long ago.

    Whaddya want to know about me?

    Trouble with the police? Sure. I got caught with legal highs a couple of times.

    Psychiatric problems? They don’t call me Nick “Manic” Grant for no reason. I make no secret of having bipolar disorder.

    Drug and alcohol abuse? Not the former anymore but the latter is a bit of a problem, although my drinking doesn’t seem to be any more abusive than that of most of my colleagues. Arguably I’m successfully self-medicating, because I’m functional and unmedicated.

    Partners from the last 3 years? I haven’t co-habited since separating from my wife.

    Marriage and divorce? Tied the knot in Hawaii. Divorced 18 months later.

    Bankruptcies and other debt problems? I pay my bills. I’ve never defaulted. I’m a good debtor.

    Financial conduct and credit score? I need to pay back half my credit card debt ASAP but that’s the only bad thing on my credit file.

    Parents? They’re not seditious traitors. They’re not Russian, Chinese or terrorist sympathisers. They’re not political agitators.

    What about my character in general? I’ve had a successful career spanning more than 2 decades, working for some very big organisations on important projects. If I was some kind of fraudster or con artist, my true character would surely have been unmasked by now.

    There’s a lot written down here which could easily be twisted and used against me by somebody intent on casting me in a bad light. I write a lot of things about myself which are very unflattering and wouldn’t usually be publicly declared by people. I spend a lot of time asking people to take the things I voluntarily tell them and to decide for themselves how they want to judge me.

    It’s a ridiculous thing to do.

    For one reason or another I’ve become easier and easier to find, for anybody who bothers to look. Because of a recent mistake I made I’ve become even easier to find than ever before. All the effort that I’ve put into projecting myself into public consciousness, because I’ve been on the verge of suicide for so long, is finally gaining traction and I’m becoming a victim of my decision to make myself exposed and vulnerable.

    Every time I write and publish I have to consider the consequences to my life. I have to make a decision between my ideological belief that we have a right to live with the freedom to be proud of our identities and to be open and honest, without fear. If we really live in a free country I should be free to be candid and not suffer persecution and tyranny. If we honestly believe in equal opportunities and our laws forbidding discrimination, then we need to take the brave and bold step of speaking without fear of repercussions.

    This vast repository of information that I’ve created is the polar opposite of a 66 page form, designed to distill me down to a few ticks in boxes. This 1.1 million word document is intended to frustrate the reader who is looking for a convenient pigeon hole to stuff me into.

    Do your worst. I’m not afraid.

     

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  • Vile Hateful Little Man

    This is a story about misanthropy…

    Lift selfie

    On this day 5 years ago, I tried to help a homeless alcoholic called Frank. I made a lot of notes. As my divorce disrputed my attempt to get my life back on track in London, dragging me back to Bournemouth to empty and sell my house, it destroyed my fragile new life and plunged me into the very world of homeless hell, which I had usefully compiled notes on. I did manage to help Frank, but ironically crosssed paths with him later on – as I was descending into hell, he was well on his way to recovery.

    On this day 4 years ago, I got myself off the streets, out of the 14-bed hostel dorm, and back into banking. I went to Barclays, which quickly dug me out of debt and restored some long overdue health, wealth and prosperity to my life.

    On this day 3 years ago, I went to HSBC and repeated the same magic trick of managing to get myself back off the streets, out of the hostel, into a lovely Thameside apartment, and out of debt. Feeling like my life was going well, I went to a hackathon to create technology solutions to the refugee crisis.

    On this day 2 years ago, I was lying to my girlfriend and my guardian angel, because the project I’d been working on had ended prematurely and I hadn’t bothered to get another contract. Instead, I had tried to treat my own depression with medication prescribed by an online pharmacy, destabilising my mental health – inducing hypomania – and causing a subsequent relapse.

    On this day last year, I woke up as a resident of Wales for the first time since being born here. The day before, I had been discharged from a psych ward in Manchester, England, following a suicide attempt which was very nearly successful.

    I’m pretty upset that divorce was such a destabilising distraction at a time when I desperately needed a clean break, and I’m struggling to forgive and forget my ex-wife and parents sabotaging all my hard work; destroying my chance to follow through with well thought out plans which were subsequenty proven to be correct and successful.

    I can blame the Barclays thing not working out on a couple of idiots who got fired for trying to screw me over, but in all truth, I wasn’t very stable. I was too outspoken. I didn’t keep my mouth shut. I made mistakes in my personal life. I had lapses.

    I can blame the HSBC thing not working out on the sheer pressure and workload of working on their number one project, while also dealing with homelessness and cripling debt. I can blame a friend who asked me to help him get a job. I can blame a few loafers who benefitted from my hard work. But, again, I was too outspoken. I wasn’t at all stable. I was so exhausted and stressed that I was very strung out and very manic.

    I can blame not wanting to immediately get another contract 2 years ago on the fact that the project had been so mind-numbingly spirit-crushingly boring, and I’d been so de-skilled, that I’d lost all self-confidence. I really couldn’t face any more of the same awfulness without taking a break. However, it was still my so-called ‘choice’ to relapse and I knew the consequences were likely to be dire, although I kinda “got away with it” that one time.

    I can blame attempting suicide and nearly dying on the fact that I knew instinctively that I was in deep trouble. The contract in Manchester didn’t pay enough to get me out of debt. I knew I was going to get shafted by a very unpleasant and immoral wannabe Labour MP, who embodies none of the values of socialism. I was working too hard for too little reward, but I also made bad so-called ‘choices’ such as getting mixed up with a social group who mostly bonded over recreational drug abuse. There was no way I was going to be able to quit physically addictive sleeping pills, tranqulisers and neuropathic painkillers, as well as working a very demanding job which didn’t even pay enough to make any kind of dent in my debts. Suicide was my choice, in the face of overwhelming odds stacked against me.

    So, here I am in Wales.

    What’s going to be different this year?

    I’m in approximately the same financial position that I’ve been in all those previous years. My mental health seems to be the same, swinging between suicidal depression and mania.

    Just gotta keep my mouth shut.

    Gotta make sure I don’t go on any crusades, trying to save anybody.

    Put on my own oxygen mask before helping others.

    This year is different because I’ve been working for 10 consecutive months without a major fuck-up. Of course, there have been fuck-ups, but they haven’t caused me to lose my contract or otherwise let my client down. I’ve delivered a couple of projects quite successfully, to the great satisfaction of my clients.

    This year is different because I’ve had an affordable place to live of my own since March, and I don’t have anybody mooching off me or otherwise trying to ride my coat tails. I don’t have anybody pressurising me to subsidise their laziness and inability to make good on their financial commitments. I don’t have anybody using my gas, electric, water, sewerage, council tax and broadband, and running up thousands of pounds worth of rent arrears.

    This year is different because I’ve had contract extensions and managed to have consecutive contracts, such that I’ve hardly stopped working at all.

    This year is different because I’ve been working on my skills and making myself more confident and employable. I’ve felt increasingly capable and good at my job, without getting too deep into the territory of delusions of grandeur.

    This year is different because the pressure is markedly reduced and the stress levels are more manageable, despite crushing mountainous debts. There have been really awful times – such as renting a place to live – but I seem to be well established in a good routine now, such that I just need to keep turning the pedals.

    I drink too much. I’m unfit.

    However, in the space of 11 months I’ll have managed to buy a car, rent an apartment, pay off £21,000 of debt, and save up enough money to pay a hefty tax bill. I don’t enjoy living out of a suitcase, but I’m not slumming it anymore. I’ve been able to take a weekend break to see old friends in Prague and I have a week-long holiday to Turkey booked, which will be my first proper holiday for over 2 years. I stay in a nice hotel midweek and I eat in a gastropub. This is the self-care aspect, which didn’t really get taken care of in previous years. There’s no point working as hard as I do unless it’s delivering some quality of life; I might as well just kill myself if life’s going to be an unrewarding slog.

    I sometimes can’t believe what comes out of my mouth, in terms of the fucking rage which is somewhat pent-up inside me. This is a summary of the many false starts I’ve had, and nearly-but-not-quite moments, where it looked like I was going to make a breakthrough and get properly back on my feet. It’s incredibly frustrating to repeatedly do the impossible – quitting addictive drugs, getting off the streets, out of the hostels and back into mainstream civilised society, while also dealing with a major mental health problem – and to see that there’s nothing wrong with my approach per se. On paper, everything should go perfectly and quickly restore me to health, wealth and prosperity, but it does require a run of good luck, and that luck is very much dependent on the co-operation of other people.

    Who do I want to blame? Capitalism? Banking? Bad bosses? Wimmin? Parents? Even friends?

    I spend a lot of time writing very aggressive angry stuff.

    I can’t believe what I write.

    Maybe this year won’t be any different, because I’m a spoiled overprivileged vile bitter old man, who doesn’t take any personal responsibility; I’m too quick to blame others.

    We shall see. The story continues.

     

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  • I’m Killing Myself

    This is a story about numbing the pain…

    Wine bottles in the cupboard

    I remember a time when I used to plan my weekends to make sure I was busy and socialising. I used to throw parties, take friends out on my boat, go out for dinner and otherwise ensure that I was engaged in the lives of the people around me. I put a great deal of thought and effort into bringing people together. When I had free time I’d scroll through my list of contacts and phone people who I hadn’t spoken to, to maintain the bond of friendship.

    I don’t do any of that anymore.

    My life became chaotic and collapsed, due to relationship breakdown, mental health problems and drug addiction. I was highly embarrassed that my picture-postcard perfect little life had become pockmarked and blemished. I was deeply ashamed that I was seemingly failing; fucking up. As addiction began to dominate my life I was no longer reliable. I bailed out on attending the stag do of one of my best friends, simply because I was too deep in addiction hell. I nearly bailed on my own stag do because I was struggling so much with addiction.

    That was a transformative period of my life, from around 2006 to 2012 or thereabouts.

    Friends travelled from all over the country for the combined birthday and engagement part of my [now] ex-wife and I. She threw a tantrum, because I had a huge number of great friends and perhaps she was feeling insecure, who knows? She said it was the worst night of her life, so I called a cab for us to go home. She wanted to stay. Why does anybody want to stay at the “worst night of [their] life”? It didn’t make any sense to me.

    My whole life no longer made any sense. Instead of being the guy who arranged for huge groups of people to come together and travel all over the world; instead of being a socialite who arranged gatherings and generally threw wild parties, I slowly allowed myself to be beaten – quite literally – into submission. I curtailed my gregarious and outgoing nature, in the face of the stroppy tyrant who I was trying to placate.

    Of course, I should have walked away.

    I was trying to change to please somebody. I was in love and I thought that it was the grown-up mature and sensible thing to work really hard to please the person you love. I thought that hard work would conquer the day. I was wrong.

    I tried so hard, sacrificing so much that was important about myself, and becoming more and more isolated and depressed, because she took such objection to the fact that I was generally liked by a lot of people and seemingly able to inspire get-togethers. She threw tantrums about all the things I loved doing: organising group holidays all over the world; arranging to meet up; arranging parties and generally being a social butterfly. She worked hard to socially isolate me and break my spirit, and I let her do it. It was my mistake. I messed up.

    I didn’t realise that you could just break up with awful people.

    I didn’t realise that you should just give up on horrid people.

    I didn’t realise that walking away was an option.

    I ignored my friends when they told me to dump the “poison dwarf”.

    Writing this now, I sound a little bitter and twisted about it. It happend. I can’t change it. It’s history and there’s no point dwelling in the past. I need to move forwards and get on with my life.

    There’s a whole clusterfuck of stuff to do with my loser druggie parents and their selfish fucked-up selfish shit that they perpetrated agains me, ruining my childhood, that I’m very bitter about. I’m never gonna get to re-live my childhood. It fucking CUTS ME UP that I speak to so many people who fondly remember their childhoods and generally reminisce about things from their childhood that were completely denied to me because my parents are a couple of selfish bullying druggie alcoholic fucktard losers, completely devoid of any sense of responsibility towards their children or otherwise able to act with a shred of human decency. That shit FUCKS ME UP. But, whatever… it was a long time ago. I need to move on. I’ll never forgive. I’ll never forget. But it’s no use clinging onto the bitterness and knowledge that my childhood was unnecessarily and brutally fucked up by that pair of selfish self-centred druggie cunts.

    Don’t talk to me about personal responsibility.

    I take personal responsibility to a level you couldn’t even comprehend.

    You have no idea how much I lay awake at night thinking about my place in the world and how to make things right and do the right thing. You have no idea how much I deny myself my bestial instincts to rut and reproduce, like the rest of you filthy fucks, not giving a shit about the consequences. You have no idea how hard it is to live a life with as little hypocrisy as you can muster, and the guilt for the hypocrisy that you’re fully aware of but is seemingly unavoidable.

    The only way to live a life free from the original sin of being born a white man in wealthy western middle-class society, is to kill myself. The guilt I feel because I’m not a starving African paraplegic lesbian, is enough to drive me insane. I genuinely feel empathy for anybody I come into contact with, and I want to make a difference in the world, but I’m also cursed with a rational mind and a kind of brutal pragmatic realism, which means I cynically see every attempt to improve the human condition will be quickly thwarted by the ubiquitous greed and selfishness… but that doesn’t mean I don’t try really hard, through the avenues which are available to me.

    Ultimately, I earn a lot of money which doesn’t feel like a fair reward for my contribution to humanity. I’m cursed with cynicism and a realist’s depression at the state of the world. I drink. I’ve drunk for as long as I can remember. My parents are alcoholics, so why the hell wouldn’t I drink?

    As I puffed and panted my way up the steep hill, walking home with a bag full of bottles of wine, I felt my chest tighten. I know that I’m killing myself.

    I drink and it’s killing me.

    I drink A LOT.

    My heart bleeds for the world. I’m a hand-wringing Guardian reader. I’m a lefty-libtard snowflake. I still believe that a better society is possible, and it upsets me that a tiny elite are stopping the will of the people from being realised.

    I’m attempting to deal with my mountainous personal responsibilities, while also reconciling my heartfelt values in a world which economically incentivises me to screw everybody else over. Why not sell deadly drugs? Why not work for a bank which helps launder the proceeds of crime? Why not generally sell your soul to the highest bidder?

    It. Fucks. Me. Up.

    I’ve tried to be kind and generous, and all that’s ended up doing is bankrolling some of the most selfish fucked-up awful people to perpetuate and perpetrate misery-making onto humanity.

    It’s a messed up situation.

    I drink because otherwise I’d kill myself. I drink because it’s a long drawn-out way of killing myself. I drink because maybe I don’t have the guts to do the ethical thing, and immolate myself in protest at the shit I see all around me.

    It seems foolish to injure myself in this way, by choosing to drink so much, but how else am I supposed to cope? How am I supposed to get through the day and suffer the bullshit which I’m all-too-able to perceive with a mind which has been developed into a hyper-rational thinking machine. I see the cognitive dissonances everywhere. The sickening stench of bullshit is overpoweringly strong.

    I’m sorely tempted to make a grand gesture instead of allowing myself to be written off as another “natural causes” death, when in fact the truth is that my physical health has suffered dreadfully because of the awfulness of the world I see around me. My mental health is dictated by the bullshit of meaningless jobs and unfair wealth distribution, and the senesless selfishness; lack of anybody who wants to change the world for the better. The suffering directly correlates with the urge to reach for the bottle – why the hell not?

    Why the hell not? I see no reason to be miserable, sober and fit. I’d rather be dead.

    I can’t imagine anything worse than having to face the bullshit of existence without intoxication, and without the hope that I might suddenly drop dead from a heart attack.

    I honestly think that I’ll feel relieved when I know I’m about to die. Finally some fucking peace.

     

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  • Paranoia: So Close But Yet So Far

    This is a story about being thwarted…

    Social Media Training

    If I was prone to paranoia, I could swear that I’ve had more than my fair share of bad luck while trying to get back on my feet. Things should have panned out for me several times, but I’ve so far been thwarted by some asshats.

    In September 2014 I was beginning to sort myself out after my divorce. I took a quick holiday before starting a new job. I was making good progress with the new project, but a couple of asshats took offence to me getting ahead and conspired to screw me over. Mercifully I took ’em down with me, although it was a hollow victory.

    In September 2015 I’d had an eventful summer but I’d achieved a lot and proven myself to be a valuable member of the team on the project I was working on. It was a friend who rather unreasonably expected me to help him get a job and get out of the dive he was living in, which pushed me beyond my limits and made me unwell. There was also excessive pressure on me at work, but I could have coped if I’d have had a more settled personal life, such as having a secure place to live and some financial assistance.

    In September 2016 I was starting to believe that I was finally going to get back on my feet, but the project I was working on was cancelled unexpectedly. With hindisight I suppose it was obvious that the project was going to get cancelled and that it was a dead-end job. It’s my own fault for taking my eye off the ball. It’s my own fault that I didn’t immediately attempt to get another job, but I’d been so bored and miserable, and I felt like I’d been de-skilled by all the time off work I’d had. I hadn’t learned anything, gained any new experience or developed at all on the project, so my self-confidence was at rock-bottom.

    In September 2017 I was sacked because I was in a coma on life support and the asshat I was working with thought that unconscious people are able to make telephone calls to phone in sick. He still owes me a lot of money. Obviously I had a lot of different problems that year, but successfully delivering software projects was not one of them – never has been and never will be.

    I’ve been working for 10 consecutive months without a holiday and I’ve delivered two software projects successfully into production. I got sick in May, but I was given the benefit of the doubt because I’d proven myself to be a valuable member of the team, like I always do. I was sick in January/February time and barely limping along, but because I’d already completed my project in record time nobody much cared. That’s the way I work – I’m blazing fast when I’m well, but I get sick too. You don’t get to have me only on my good days – you’ve gotta take the rough with the smooth – although I don’t charge my clients for the days I’m not productive.

    Even with all the gaps in-between projects and time off sick, I’ve still delivered a hell of a lot of software in the last 4 years and I’ve impressed a lot of clients and colleagues. I’ve achieved a huge amount, despite not being very well. What I’ve managed to do in the workplace is all the more remarkable when we consider that it’s set against a backdrop of homelessness, near-bankruptcy, drug addiction, mental health problems, hospitalisations, being sectioned and kept on locked psych wards, suicide attempts, moving all over the country, being estranged from family, social isolation and a whole host of other things which are toxic to a person’s chances of succeeding in life.

    I don’t want to pat myself on the back too much, but I deserve a break. It’s time I made a breakthrough. It’s time I’m allowed to make a breakthrough.

    Every time I get close to making a breakthrough, something goes wrong which is beyond my control.

    It’s making me paranoid.

    If I can get to the end of the month, I’ll have hopefully proven my worth sufficiently with my colleagues on my current project, such that I’ll be able to relax and take a holiday in October. It would be incredibly cruel and unlucky if something went wrong, such that I’m not able to go away on holiday and relax, knowing I’ve got a job to come back to. That’s what happened to me earlier this year, when I’d booked a holiday in June but then my project ended and I found myself looking for work again.

    It’s good that I’ve been able to work for 3 different organisations on 3 different projects this year, without any asshats screwing things up, yet. Not having huge gaps between projects has been crucial to my recovery. Also, it’s important to note that this year I haven’t – yet – been screwed over by anybody and I’ve been recognised for my talents and experience which I have to offer. It’s nice to feel confident in my own abilities and to feel like I have proven myself to be reliable and dependable, beyond any doubt.

    Obviously, I’m very exposed – my colleagues have seen the semicolon tattoo behind my ear and must have wondered if and when I’m going to get sick, but hopefully they’ve now started to see that I’m very capable and productive; hopefully they’re enjoying working with me and they value me as a team member. However, if I need to take any time off work sick, it will obviously raise doubts again about whether my mental illness makes me a useless loser who should never be allowed into civilised mainstream society or permitted the dignity of getting back on my feet.

    I’m probably pushing things too hard for too long. I should probably have a holiday sooner rather than later, before I have a breakdown; before I burn out. However, I also want to get to the end of the month, because it’s a significant milestone and it puts enough cash in the bank to leave me safe from any unexpected bumps in the road. I’m so desperate to get back to a position of security as quickly as possible, having been on this agonisingly drawn-out journey with so many dashed hopes.

    Everything is set up very well for me to be able to continue working and improving my life, but I’m paranoid that something’s going to go wrong and screw everything up.

    I spend a lot of time thinking about the consequences of a work colleague discovering my blog. I wonder if I might be the architect of my own destruction by writing this. There’s nothing here that’s unprofessional though. I’m not naming my client or divulging confidential details about the project I’m working on. I’m not guilty of misconduct of any kind.

    As you can see from the screenshot above, I’ve been trained to be paranoid. I’ve been trained to keep my mouth shut and pretend like I don’t have any problems. Despite the walls of the office being plastered with posters which proclaim “it’s OK to talk about mental health problems” they really don’t mean ME. I’m expected to be faultless. If and when my faults are ever revealed, it will be the end of me. The tiniest blemish is career-ending for those of us who work in the corporate world, where we must maintain a fake professional façade of perfection at all times.

    If I’m feeling optimistic I like to think that my valuable contributions would outweigh the stigma and shock of realising that my colleagues have been working with a homeless, junkie, alcoholic, bankrupt with mental health problems all along – I should never have been allowed to get past the gatekeepers and rub shoulders with those who inhabit the fit-in-or-fuck-off corporate world.

    When I’m feeling paranoid I feel like I’m only tolerated because I’m reasonably good at pretending to be a regular guy – any hint of who I really am and what I’ve really been through, and I’ll be swiftly ejected onto the street to suffer destitution and homelessness.

    It’s so frustrating right now, because I’ve almost but not quite got enough money to complete my transformation from homeless, junkie, alcoholic, bankrupt with mental health problems, back to somebody who’s indistinguishable from any other corporate drone. I’m so desperate to prove that it can be done – to get back on my feet from a terrible situation. It’ll crush me if I’m thwarted.

    Keep your fingers crossed for me. The next few weeks are crucial.

     

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  • Nick Grant

    This is a story about secret identities and alter egos…

    Nick Grant's glasses

    I’m Nick Grant and these are my glasses, which are my cunning and infallible disguise to protect my real identity. It would be a disaster if anybody found out my real name – Nick Grant – because this blog is pretty unflinchingly honest and contains a lot of very unflattering things about me. I’m pretty damn exposed, hence why I wear my disguise.

    Today I’m celebrating 3 years of blogging. I’ve been writing every day for 3 whole years, with only a few gaps due to sickness and near-catastrophic events in my personal life, which have threatened to see me bankrupt, evicted, homeless, penniless and destitute. To have kept writing regularly throughout all the ups and downs of the past 3 years is a huge achievement.

    To date, I’ve written and published 1,013,091 words in that 3-year period.

    The last 36 months could be summarised thus:

    • September 2015: working for HSBC, living in a hotel, dating a BBC journalist. Rent an apartment on the River Thames.
    • October 2015: working for HSBC. Suicidally depressed. Hospitalised. Fly to San Francisco.
    • November 2015: fly back to the UK and deliberately get sacked from HSBC. Dating a PA to one of the directors of a major investment bank. Meet my guardian angel.
    • December 2015: protesting against bombing Syria. Sober for 100 consecutive days. Relapse back into abuse of legal stimulants and benzodiazepines.
    • January 2016: self harm and drug abuse. Start drinking again. Destroy my bed.
    • February 2016: abuse of sleeping pills and tranquillisers
    • March 2016: poly-drug abuse, combining legal highs and medications
    • April 2016: holiday to Southend with my guardian angel. Start dating again
    • May 2016: working for undisclosed major multinational organisation, with 660,000 employees worldwide. Replace destroyed bed.
    • June 2016: working. Suicidal. Bored.
    • July 2016: holiday to Fuerteventura for my birthday with my guardian angel.
    • August 2016: working. Suicidal. Bored.
    • September 2016: project cancelled. Meet love of my life. Minor relapse. Lies. Antidepressants and tranquillisers.
    • October 2016: in love. Mini-break to the New Forest. Weaning myself off tranquillisers.
    • November 2016: in love. Drinking a lot. Writing my first novel.
    • December 2016. in love. Christmas with her family. Eating and drinking a lot.
    • January 2017: DVT and kidney failure. Hospital and dialysis. Working for Lloyds Banking Group. Neuropathic pain from nerve damage. Taking tramadol, codeine, dihydrocodeine and pregabalin for the pain. Abusing large amounts of Valium and Xanax. Lose contract
    • February 2017: fully-blown supercrack relapse. Completely addicted to prescription opiates.
    • March 2017: supercrack. Abusing sleeping pills and tranquillisers. Quitting prescription opiate painkillers. Drinking. Still in love.
    • April 2017: supercrack. Still in love.
    • May 2017: attempting to quit supercrack by staying at girlfriend’s and taking dextroamphetamine. Not succeeding
    • June 2017: drug and insomnia-induced mania, paranoia and general insanity. Break up with love of my life. Regret
    • July 2017: run out of money. Get a job in Manchester. Put all my stuff into storage. Leave London. Fling with girl from work.
    • August 2017: working for a startup in Manchester. Dating a different girl. Still physically addicted to painkillers, tranquillisers and sleeping pills.
    • September 2017: breakup. Suicide attempt. Hospitalised. Sectioned. Locked up on psych ward.
    • October 2017: move to Wales.
    • November 2017: writing my second novel.
    • December 2017: working for undisclosed bank in Warsaw and London.
    • January 2018: working for same undisclosed bank in London. Dating a Welsh girl
    • February 2018: bank. London. Girl.
    • March 2018: working for undisclosed government organisation. Rent an apartment in Wales.
    • April 2018: successfully quit all drugs and medications. Job, girlfriend and apartment all in Wales and very close.
    • May 2018: relapse. Breakup.
    • June 2018: government project finished. Mini-break to Faro, Portugal to see old friend.
    • July 2018: working for another undisclosed government organisation. Living in a hotel.
    • August 2018: government. Hotel. Single. Depressed.
    • September 2018: still working for same government organisation. Dating again.

    By my calculations, 27 out of 36 months have been relatively OK, but 9 months in the past 3 years I’ve been a complete and utter train-wreck. The damage that’s been done in that quarter of the year where I’ve been struggling with addiction, has been enough to completely screw up my life the rest of the time, but not quite bad enough to lead to me becoming unemployable, bankrupt and homeless – I always find a way to bounce back.

    Somehow I’ve managed to fit 5 serious girlfriends and 5 major IT projects into the madness of my day-to-day existence, as well as 3 hospitalisations for major medical emergencies, being sectioned, two psych wards, an arrest, two evictions, moving 5 times, 6 cities, 5 countries, 13 powerful prescription medications, 5 street drugs, 121 consecutive days sober, 56 consecutive days sober, 799 blog posts, 1 million words, 14 thousand Twitter followers and a couple of hundred thousand pounds… and all I’ve got to show for it is this poxy blog.

    The story of Nick Grant and his ups and downs might be a bit repetitive, but I’m sure it’s not boring. I would argue that it’s pretty remarkable that I’m still alive and kicking, and able to string a sentence together. It’s remarkable that I’m reasonably mentally stable and I’m working full time on quite an important project. It’s remarkable that my colleagues don’t suspect a thing. It’s remarkable that I haven’t made myself unemployable or otherwise ended up excluded from mainstream society. It’s remarkable that I’m unmedicated and yet quite functional and productive.

    Along the way, I managed to lose my original pair of glasses, but I had a new identical pair delivered today, which I’m wearing now. I had no idea when my replacement glasses would be delivered, because they were being hand made to order, so I find it deliciously wonderful that they were delivered on the day I’m celebrating the 3-year anniversary of starting this blog.

    When I think back to my very first blog post 3 years ago – Platform 9.75 – it’s amazing to reflect on the journey I’ve been on and marvel at how effectively my daily writing habit has functioned as a stabilising influence. I very much doubt I’d have been able to recover and continue my journey without the huge amount of help and support it’s brought me. I feel really proud of what I’ve achieved, which gives me some all-important self-esteem in the times when I need it most. I’m sure I’d have killed myself long ago if it wasn’t for the people who’ve engaged with me and what I write, and encouraged me to keep going. I feel loved and cared for even during some very dark and dismal days.

    Obviously what I’ve written is not particularly palatable or compatible with dating and my professional life, but they’ll never be able to find me – Nick Grant – because I’ve been so careful to disguise my identity and make sure that nobody could just Google me and find out all my closely guarded secrets. Nobody will ever be able to make the connection.

    My next objective is to get through September 9th – the anniversary of my most serious suicide attempt – without incident. I plan on phoning a couple of the people who managed to get the emergency services to rescue me in the nick of time, to thank them for saving my life.

     

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  • Thinking Clearly

    This is a story about delicate senses…

    Doggo nose

    My preference for sweet or salty, my thirst and my sense of smell are all altered by alcohol, but I’m not able to perceive those alterations to my senses in any given moment. It’s only when I carefully analyse my behaviour that I can see I drink more water and eat more sweet things when I’ve been sober for a few days, and I begin to see food as something worth spending time and effort on, instead of eating as a chore.

    If alcohol can alter those senses so profoundly, I wonder what other subtle effects it has on me. The sleep I get seems to be of much lower quality when I go to bed drunk, although I don’t perceive that at the time because I find it much easier to fall asleep when I’ve had lots to drink. When I have a break from drinking I notice that I have very vivid dreams, bordering on nightmares, which reveal a lot of things going on in my subconscious. Having used alcohol as a crutch for so long, it’s amazing how much trauma I’ve repressed and not dealt with.

    I made a prediction earlier in the week that I’d have increasingly better days, not because we’re getting closer to the weekend, but because I’m sobering up. It’s hard to quantify, but I found it much easier to get up this morning and although there were periods when I was bored and miserable at work, I found myself far less inclined to give up and walk out.

    There was a leaving do at work and my colleagues invited me out drinking tonight. There’s an open bottle of wine in my cupboard and I bought 4 more because there was an offer at the supermarket. The temptation to drink and the social pressure to get drunk is hard to escape. Alcohol is a social lubricant and can be especially welcome when making smalltalk and getting to know people. This week has felt long and difficult and it’s hard not to reach for the bottle as a reward for putting myself through the misery.

    Which came first? The misery or the alcohol?

    I find it easy enough to stop drinking when I want to, but I wonder if I’ve simply become habituated into experiencing and putting up with awful feelings. Alcoholics can begin to enjoy the sensation of neat liquor burning their throat as they glug it down, and junkies can get needle fixations and enjoy injecting themselves. I wonder if my brain has become confused by my cycle of highs and lows; boom and bust. I wonder if I’m simply unable to tell when I’m half-drunk, hungover, withdrawing, completely intoxicated or stone cold sober, because there’s nothing extreme enough to register on my scale. The highs and lows which I’ve experienced have ranged by such an exceptional amount that I’ve become used to never feeling very good at all. Earlier this year I didn’t even notice that I had a bad chest infection, except that my ribs were so tender I couldn’t sleep and it was agonising to sit up in bed in the morning, or to cough. Depression and anxiety are just things I live with, without medication.

    I know that my brain is a homeostatic organ which will attempt to return itself to equilibrium. If I put stimulants into my body, I will make myself more tired. If I put depressants into my body, I will bounce back the other way. Everything has an effect for a short while before my brain readjusts and it becomes normal. It shocks me how functional I can be when full of drink and drugs, or under an incredible amount of stress and in very bad circumstances.

    I’m attempting to control the variables. I’m attempting to clear my brain of drink and drugs. I’m creating a pharmacologically unpolluted state, where I’m free from nicotine, caffeine, uppers, downers, medications, hard drugs, soft drugs, legal highs and every other thing we normally use in our daily lives to tweak our moods hither and thither.

    I stay in an identical hotel room and eat in the same place every night, normally choosing one of only a handful of my favourite dishes. I’m doing the same work I’ve done my whole 21+ year full-time career for an organisation which is ostensibly similar to all the others I’ve worked for, solving exactly the same problems I’ve solved a million times before. It’s an almost perfect experiment. I can’t imagine that it would be possible for almost anybody else to experiment on themselves in the same way, because so few of us are capable of giving up things like tea and coffee, or of sticking with a job which makes us excruciatingly bored and thoroughly miserable.

    So far, my conclusion is that alcohol does not make the time pass any quicker, reduce anxiety or aid sleep. My conclusion is that alcohol makes it harder to concentrate and cope with the boredom. My conclusion is that alcohol is not very helpful, but I’ll tell you what is helpful: money. Despite being almost continuously drunk for the past 9 consecutive months, undoubtedly the biggest changing variable has been my ever-increasing wealth. I can’t say whether it would have been easier and more pleasant to reach today without alcohol, and whether I’d have been more inclined to improve areas of my life which are completely absent, such as a social life, but I can say that alcohol was ever-present. Is it possible that I might not have made it so far without alcohol? I really don’t think it’s likely that I would’ve made it through the roughest patches without alcohol as a relatively inexpensive coping mechanism, even if it’s a very poor medicine for reducing anxiety, fighting depression, stabilising my mood and helping me sleep.

    If we consider that a year ago I was suicidally depressed, manically high, abusing drugs, addicted to medications and generally in a dreadful state with little or no hope of escaping that situation, I don’t see how it would be possible to resolve everything without something to use to self-medicate.

    It’s impossibly unlikely that anybody’s going to gift you £100,000 and a year off work to get your life sorted out, which is what it would take to rescue somebody whose entire world has imploded spectacularly, leaving them crippled with mountainous debts, homeless, jobless, single, estranged from their family, mentally ill, alcoholic, addicted to drugs and dependent on medications.

    As my head clears, I realise I’ve pulled of an impossible feat. I’ve come back from a clusterfuck of issues which should have buried me a million times over.

    It’s hard to avoid the pitfall of marvelling at the miraculousness of my recovery, such that I start to believe I’m special, different and perhaps even immortal. It’s hard to see the evidence and to not draw the conclusion that the clearly exceptional achievement must mean I’m destined for greatness. At least I have a clear enough head to see that I’ve fallen foul of that before, and that it’s important to keep my brain intoxicated just the right amount to stop it from overheating. Going teetotal in 2015 caused me to swing into mania, so I’m not going to make that mistake again.

    I’m also aware that I’m no longer a young man and that the past few years have been very hard on my brain and body. Ultimately I can’t keep pushing myself as hard as I have been and taking extreme risks. Sooner or later my luck is going to run out, even though all the evidence seems to indicate that I’m immortal.

    As my thoughts start to wander towards topics which have always been a little too hot to handle – such as quantum mechanics – I now start to realise that there’s a lot to be said for being a bit of a drunk, at least until I’m filthy rich again.

    I’ve managed to avoid drinking again tonight. I’m going to see how I feel tomorrow, but I must be careful to preserve the good progress I’ve made this year, even if that means continuing to drink because it’s my tried-and-trusted means of keeping my mania at bay. Better the devil you know.

    Physically, I have a runny nose, a sore throat and a headache. I feel terrible, which I imagine is because I’m at the 3 or 4 day sober mark and my body is seriously protesting about the lack of alcohol. If I continue my sober streak I’ll feel physically better, but there’s always the risk that mania will rear its ugly head and I’ll screw up everything I’ve worked for 9 consecutive months without a holiday to rebuild.

    September is coming. September is my nemesis. If I can get through September smoothly, that will be a huge milestone.

     

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  • Self Doubt

    This is a story about the beer fear…

    Pub

    My mood and my perceptions swing wildly between a cautious sense of optimism and overwhelming defeatism. On a good day I can be thinking about how far I’ve travelled and how much improved my circumstances are; I can feel really hopeful about the future and I say to myself “not long to go until I’m quite financially comfortable”. On those good days I’m pleased with my achievements; proud. On a bad day I think I’ve made a huge mistake and I’ve wandered up a one-way street; I’m convinced that I’ve been wasting my time and I haven’t made any progress at all. On the bad days the uphill struggle seems impossible to sustain and it’s pointless to continue flogging a dead horse; I say to myself “there’s still so far to travel and I’ll never make it”.

    I was doing some Google searches yesterday and by accident I discovered that there was a problem with my site’s position in the rankings – searching “manic grant” wasn’t bringing my site back as the number one hit. I was distraught. For a moment I felt as if I’d been living in a fantasy world – hallucinating – and everything I’d worked so hard on for 3 years was just dribbling nonsense which had been identified as spam by Google. I started to doubt my ability to write. I started to think that perhaps I’m semi-brain-dead and nobody’s had the heart to tell me yet – everybody is just humouring me. Tiny mistakes became magnified in my mind. I misspelled the word “novelist” and I was crushed with embarrassment; cringing at my pseudo-intellectualism. I felt dumb.

    The first day of the working week back in the office was every bit as dreadful as I hoped it wouldn’t be, and perhaps even worse still. There were a lot of moments where I felt like walking out, because I couldn’t stand to be so bored with nothing to do; nothing to keep me busy and allow me to escape my own thoughts. I so desperately needed to escape my own thoughts, because all I can think about is how many more boring days I’ve got to endure when I’ve already reached the limit of what I can tolerate.

    I don’t think the problem is Mondays (or Tuesday in this case).

    I don’t think the problem is the job.

    I don’t think there’s a problem.

    What’s happening is that I keep having very boozy weekends with teetotal Sundays (or in this case bank holiday Monday) because I have to get up early and drive for the best part of an hour and a half to get to work. My brain keeps suffering repeated periods of alcohol withdrawal at the beginning of the week. While this might be tolerably OK for the majority of people – and indeed getting drunk at the weekend is the norm – my brain has been highly sensitised to GABA agonist type chemicals, because I spent most of 2017 highly medicated with neuropathic painkillers, sleeping pills and tranquillisers. As a result, I probably have a high alcohol tolerance and I feel the unpleasant withdrawal symptoms very acutely.

    A friend of mine describes a phenomenon he calls the “beer fear” as a gnawing anxiety, sense of hopelessness and generally unease; the sensation that the world’s about to end, even though you can’t put your finger on why. This very much tallies with how I’ve been feeling.

    When I take a break from drinking, after a few days of insomnia, anxiety and negative thoughts, the “beer fear” goes away and some energy, enthusiasm and positive thinking return. All the hopeless thoughts seem nonsensical and are forgotten – it’s a complete mindset change.

    Since December I said to myself I was allowed to eat as much junk food as I wanted, and to get as drunk as I wanted because I deserved to have those things as a reward for the stress and hard work of working away from home. For most of the past 9 months I’ve drunk at least a bottle of wine every day, plus I’ve had periods where I’ve used leftover prescriptions of painkillers, sleeping pills and tranquillisers, all in a desperate attempt to make the time pass more quickly and less painfully. I was desperately stressed at the start of the year but now my circumstances have improved remarkably, but I guess I’m still paying a bit of a price for those bad habits I got into.

    If I drink far less I know that it’ll be easier to get up in the mornings and the working day will pass more bearably. I know that I’ll lose weight, get fitter and have more energy and motivation to do things. I know that I’ll have fewer periods of feeling like everything’s hopeless, pointless, ruined and unbearably awful.

    The question is: how do I get through my working week, my lonely evenings and my lonely weekends without alcohol? I’ve become habituated into having a couple of bottles of red wine on a Friday night and spending most of Saturday wishing I hadn’t. It’s ludicrous, because my rational analysis quite clearly indicates that alcohol is causing more harm than good, but yet I can’t quite imagine not having it as my dependable reward for the miserable drudgery of the working week.

    Comfort eating and comfort boozing is not bringing me much happiness, ultimately. I want to be fit not fat, so things are going to have to change. I’m 99% certain that the origin of my existential crises and overwhelming self-doubt is driven by the violent mood swings and altered perceptions caused by alcohol withdrawal.

    I imagine that tomorrow I will feel a little better than today, and on Thursday I will feel much better… but then the drinking starts all over again. Need to break the cycle somehow.

     

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  • So Hungry

    This is a story about rushing…

    Pub grub

    My life doesn’t have a lot of highlights. I’m struggling to get up in the morning. I’m bored at work a lot of the time. I’m trying to eat fewer calories, so I’m skipping breakfast and having a very light lunch. My writing has become a bit of a marathon slog as I attempt to write the final few thousands words to reach my 1-million target. The only thing I’ve got to look forward to is my evening meal.

    Because I try to do my writing before I go to the gastropub to eat, I’m always in a bit of a rush. It’s a challenge to write ~2,000 words in between a full day at my desk in the office, and the ideal time to arrive at the pub in order to get a table and eat. I write doubly quickly, because I know that the sooner I’ve finished my daily blog post, the sooner I can go and choose my meal. With that incentive, I have no difficulty pounding out the words very rapidly on the keyboard, before rushing off to enjoy the highlight of my day – pub grub.

    You shouldn’t do your supermarket food shopping when you’re hungry, because you will strip the shelves of products and buy far more than you could ever hope to eat, before the expiry date of the perishable groceries which you’ve purchase. My eyes are always far bigger than my belly when I’ve been hungry for a while. I think that being hungry also affects the speed with which I do everything, and my attention to detail. I’m rushing everything and being sloppy, because I just want to get things done as quickly as possible.

    I need to earn money, lose some weight and cut down my drinking, but I expect instant results. My writing target is within spitting distance now, but I’d have never reached this point if I tried to do it too quickly – I’ve had to pace myself. My finances are improving but I’ll never get financial security if I don’t keep turning up at the office every day – even though it’s torturously boring – for many many more months. I’m really not enjoying my semi-sobriety, but I’m not going to feel the benefit unless I keep it up for a decent length of time.

    It’s been a month since I started my new job in a new and unfamiliar city. For a whole month I’ve been living in a hotel midweek and eating in the same pub every night. For a whole month I’ve been dividing my time between the city where I have my apartment and the city where the office is.

    In the last month I’ve managed to quit the sleeping pills and painkillers I was using to cope with stress and anxiety. In the last month, I’ve managed to cut down my drinking drastically. In the last month, I’ve stopped being so antisocial and wasting the whole summer indoors drinking wine. I’ve earned some more money, which is slowly making a dent in my debts. It’s reasonable progress.

    I don’t feel particularly good.

    My working day is a struggle. My living arrangements are a struggle. My life lacks an adequate amount of things to look forward to; moments of joy. I keep losing hope that I’ll be able to maintain the stability and keep up the routine, because there are so few moments when I’m happy and content. The struggle to get up in the morning is not just a phase – it’s going to be a struggle every morning for months, if not years. The struggle to get through the working day is not just a temporary struggle… it’ll be permanent while I remain trapped in a career which I outgrew very quickly when I was young.

    There’s no obvious reason why I shouldn’t be able to keep up the routine. What’s so bad about a well-rehearsed sequence of actions which starts with me washing and ironing my clothes for the week ahead, packing my bag, driving to the office, checking into the hotel, eating in the pub, driving home. What’s so hard about that? The problem is the lack of all the other ‘stuff’ which makes a liveable life. Where’s my social life? Where are the holidays? Where are the hobbies and interests? Where’s any of the ‘stuff’ which gives my life any meaning?

    Work is meaningless because it’s the same old crap that I’ve been doing full-time for 21+ years, which was easy and boring when I was in my late teens, let alone now. Work cannot be the thing which defines me and is all-consuming, because that’s unhealthy and I know I’m never going to find fulfilment as a member of a huge team in a gigantic organisation. I feel a lot better about the morality of what I’m doing since I quit investment banking and moved into the public sector, but the waste is pretty sickening. Of course the public sector was never going to be particularly dynamic and fast-paced, but it’s not that much slower than most of the big private sector organisations I’ve worked for. I know that startups are too demanding and too much risk though, and they’ll make me sick by using and abusing me.

    I need to get to the point where I’ve served my time and been thoroughly miserable for enough years that I have a substantial sum of money saved up, such that I can dare to dream. Perhaps things will be better when I’m financially secure enough to be able to spend my boring days in the office planning my next holiday. The misery of the unchallenging office job was much more tolerable when I spent my weekends kitesurfing, and I was jetting all over the globe looking for the best kitesurfing locations in all kinds of exotic locations. Perhaps my misery is largely due to the fact that all I do is work work work – I’m on a very tight budget.

    There’s no rushing my finances, unfortunately. There’s no way I could earn money any quicker than I am doing. Money floods in at a fairly obscene rate, but I was very very deep in the hole, so it also costs a lot of money just to stand still. I can’t believe how much money I’m earning, but yet it’s still taking agonisingly long to get ahead.

    Playing the waiting game is awful. I’m clock watching all the time. My alarm clock is the most dreadful intrusion on my day – the worst moment. Sometimes I’m not even tired, but knowing that I have to go and sit at a desk and be bored out of my mind is thoroughly depressing in a way which is soul-destroyingly exhausting. Mid-morning I panic about how slowly the day is dragging. Lunchtime is over in the blink of an eye, especially since I started having a super-light lunch which always leaves me still feeling hungry. The period from 2pm to 3:45pm is the very worst – at 2pm I can’t believe how much of the day there still is to go, with nothing to occupy or entertain me. I often think I’m going to have to walk out, because I can’t stand it. It doesn’t matter how much I’m earning – it’s not enough. Finally, it’s a respectable time to leave the office – even though I’m frequently late for work – but all I have to look forward to is another long wait until it’s a respectable time to eat my dinner. It’s 6:23pm right now, which is very early for an adult with no children to eat.

    My evenings were also unpleasant, and especially so since I’ve drastically reduced my alcohol intake. My cravings for booze were pretty incessant and it was hard to read or watch TV when all I could think about was how much I wanted to get a glass of wine. However, I’ve found some stuff that I’m enjoying watching and I’m starting to find it easier to relax and enjoy my solitary leisure time in my hotel room, without getting drunk.

    I had planned to get drunk every single night until I’d regained financial security. Getting drunk was going to be my reward for doing a job I hate in a place where I don’t want to be, all alone living in a hotel. I was prepared to put my entire life on hold so I could earn as much cash as possible as quickly as possible, and I’d have virtually unlimited quantities of alcohol to help me white-knuckle my way through to the end. The problem is that my health was being destroyed surprisingly rapidly – I was putting on weight and feeling very unfit and unwell. If I’d kept drinking as much as I was until the end of my contract in just over a year’s time, I wouldn’t be able to enjoy my hard-won wealth because I’d be fat and quite possibly have some very serious health issues to deal with as a consequence.

    Comfort-eating is my only pleasure at the moment, as I’m single, living away from home, trying not to drink, not socialising and generally in a temporary state of suspended animation. I can fulfil the very few demands of my day job with less than 1% of my brain and I’m just waiting for enough paydays to restore my financial security. I’ve stopped everything except for the few core things which keep the hamster-wheel turning.

    It’s not particularly as if it’s worthwhile making friends and getting a local girlfriend. It’s not particularly worth investing in life in a place where I have no intention of staying beyond the maximum I absolutely have to in order to achieve my purely financial objective.

    I pound out the words on the keyboard every evening after work, in groundhog day repetitive scenario. I pound out the words because it’s a fleeting distraction from the endless waiting. Waiting for the money. Waiting for the end. Wishing my life away.

    Some people would imagine that I’m impatient and impulsive, because of my mental health problems and my struggles with addiction. Stimulant abuse is particularly bad for damaging the pre-frontal cortex of the brain, which is responsible for executive decision-making, and importantly the ability to curtail stupid impulses. In fact, I spend my whole day suppressing the nearly-overpowering instinct to get up and walk out; to walk away from the torturous bullshit boring job. In fact, I’m one of the most patient people you know. Why do you think I get paid so much? If my job was pleasant and easy, everybody would be doing it.

    I spend all working day in front of the keyboard and screen, then I flip open my laptop lid and spend some more time in front of the same type of keyboard and the same type of screen. The clock is in exactly the same position in the top-right hand corner of the screen, which my eyes instinctively flick up to, constantly aware of the slow passage of time.

    Since I wrote what time it was, nearly 20 minutes have elapsed. I’m 20 minutes closer to my meal. I’m 20 minutes closer to the day when I’ve earned enough money to start to dare to dream. I’m 20 minutes closer to the moment I die, when I can finally enjoy some peace from this torture.

    I’m off to the pub. I’m tempted to have a drink.

     

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