This is a story about intolerable stress levels...

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

Then, I was muscled out of my office.

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

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

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

"Phone your parents".

Yeah. Right.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I'm being hounded to death.

Tags: #suicide

This is a story about life on the farm...

Yesterday, I was too depressed to get out of bed. Being awake was horrible - I tried to doze for as long as I could. I was irrationally afraid of having to get up for some reason; on edge that there might come a knock at the door. My friends make me feel incredibly welcome, and I would always have somebody to talk to if I was feeling lonely and desperate, but I also feel like I should demonstrate my willingness to help wherever I can.

Today, it's been sunny and mild; very good weather for the time of year. Hiding under the duvet doesn't feel so bad when it's grey skies and raining, but I feel guilty about wasting the day when it's nice outside. Nice weather can paradoxically make me feel even more depressed.

I'm naturally a restless, anxious and fidgety person. "Where am I going? What am I achieving?" I continuously ask myself when I'm not consumed by a task; fixated on a mission.

At the beginning of the week, I dragged myself out of bed to go to the seaside. It was a drizzly foggy day, so the picturesque beach wasn't going to yield any nice views, but still, it was an outing. Rain-drenched families trudged through puddles. "Why are all these children not in school?" I asked. Apparently, it's half-term school holiday time in England - not so in Wales.

This jarring disparity; this acute difference between what consumes my thoughts, and what most other people are concerned with, is being well highlighted in my current environ. I was cut off from the world in my London apartment. It was wonderful to have the space & time to think & write, but I was very far removed from the day-to-day reality that most of humanity experiences. In the past few weeks, I've been reminded about school-runs, commuting to work and long days in the office, car maintenance, housing, pets, children, cooking and cleaning, although I can claim absolutely zero personal involvement in the running of these affairs - I'm an idle observer; a tourist.

Of course I worry that I'm lazy; worry that I'm mooching; worry that I'm a leech; a parasite.

"Yes, we'd all like to be a thinker; a writer; an artist; an intellectual; a professional layabout" I imagine people saying. "Your art is just a hobby... get a job" is what I imagine people are thinking. I feel guilty for not producing anything more tangible than the words on this page.

I started to get a little stressed about November, when I plan to write my second novel. "How am I going to find the time to write?" I wondered to myself, which must sound a little ridiculous to you. Why am I even writing anyway, when I'm not overtly commercialising my creative output?

There's something more socially acceptable about saying "I'm sorry, I need to write my book" as opposed to just "I'm sorry, I need to lie in bed feeling incredibly anxious and depressed". I wonder if more people would have breakdowns and refuse to go to their stressful and boring jobs, if it wasn't so stigmatised. Wouldn't we all love to just spend all day with our children, and not get out of our pyjamas? Why can't we skip breakfast and have cereal instead of a cooked meal, and completely reject the demands of society?

I feel immense guilt for not having a proper job, spending hours of my life stuck in traffic, being bored to tears by a bullshit job. What's my contribution to society? Why am I allowed to pontificate, when I haven't done my 9 to 5 grind?

I'm not so naïve as to think that the good life doesn't have to be bought and paid for with human misery. For every beautiful countryside cottage set in manicured gardens, nestled in lush green countryside, there is also an immense amount of suffering that's gone into delivering that dream. The children who wait 5 minutes, staring at a single marshmallow on the table in front of them, will receive two marshmallows as a reward for their patience. Those same patient children will shed tears when they are packed off to boarding school, but it'll all be for a good reason one day.

Are we even supposed to be so patient; so tolerant of intolerable cruelty? Are we any happier for all that homework? Are we any happier when we get "A" grades and go on to get a fancy job, miles and miles away from our home and our family? Are two marshmallows sweeter than one?

I feel like the cuckoo in the nest: I'm no genetic relation of the lovely family who I'm living with. Why do I get to enjoy the comfort of a farmhouse straight from the pages of Country Living magazine? What's my contribution to the household? What's my contribution to humanity?

Extrapolating, I can easily imagine that I will have produced my second novel in a little over a month from now, but I will have very little else to show for my time, not to mention the food and energy that I will have consumed. To say that I have been working on restabilising my mental health and attempting to rediscover my reason(s) for living, feels a little untrue given the trajectory of my mood. To turn a blind eye to my very real concerns about the difficulty of obtaining paid employment during the Christmas & New Year period, seems short-sighted - November will be over in the blink of an eye.

Throwing a ball for the dog in the garden, sucking in lungfuls of clean fresh air that's blown inland straight from the Atlantic Ocean, my physical health is undoubtedly improving. I'm seeing an aspect of existence that I'd long forgotten, trapped in a polluted concrete jungle, and surrounded by the seething masses in densely overpopulated cities. This life is so much healthier and happier than the rat race, but I can't afford it - it feels as if I'm enjoying a retirement I haven't paid for.

Perhaps you imagine that my time is free for the pursuit of leisure. Perhaps it is. If so, why am I so damn stressed?

Tags: #family #depression #writing

This is a story about last regrets...

The first time I took an overdose it was half by accident. It was 2014 and I was living in Kentish Town, London, with 3 strangers in an apartment that I'd just moved into. One of my best friends revealed that he had been harbouring a bunch of stuff that he was really upset about, but he'd been keeping secret - he'd lied whenever I asked if everything was OK. He suddenly let rip as if he knew my whole story, when in fact he only had one side - from my dad. I'd never felt so alone in my whole life.

I didn't mean to take such a massive overdose. When I was in the process of committing my semi-accidental suicide, I realised I could either evacuate the poison from my body, or I could let it dissolve into my bloodstream and kill me. I remember taking the decision to relax and take no action. I remember deciding to die.

I took a piss and it was full of blood. My chest was 'wet' with fluid on my lungs; my breathing laboured. My sides and tummy hurt, where my kidneys and liver were badly damaged - I was suffering renal and hepatic injury: multiple organ failure.

I collapsed and I couldn't move. I thought "this is it - I'm going to die".

Then, I realised that my death might look accidental.

I was upset that somebody might think I died by accident. I was annoyed that a coroner might conclude that my death was "misadventure". It was frustrating to think that nobody would understand that I wanted to die.

I started to think "I need to leave a note".

When you're collapsed on the floor and you can't move, it's quite hard to leave a suicide note. I had collapsed onto a laptop power supply & cable that was really hot and burning my skin - it hurt a lot and I desperately wanted to move, but I couldn't. "Dammit this is frustrating" I thought.

As I became more convinced that I was going to die, I started to think about what I would tell somebody, if I could communicate a message from beyond the grave. I wanted my death to be useful to the advancement of human knowledge, as opposed to a senseless waste.

* * *

I went to my local doctor's surgery and told the receptionist that I wanted to kill myself. She made me an emergency appointment. I went back to my apartment, where I couldn't even talk to my sofa-surfer. I was going to talk to medical professionals, or I was going to kill myself: those were the choices.

The doctor wrote me a letter and I took it to the Royal London Hospital.

After 13 hours, I was admitted as an informal patient onto a psych ward at Mile End Hospital, London.

One week later, I suddenly decided to record a video called "Goodbye Cruel World" and flew to San Francisco.

Some people might think my behaviour is rash; impulsive. In fact, I had a whole trans-Atlantic flight, plus the flight from the East Coast of the United States to the West Coast, to contemplate what I was going to do. I'd booked flights leaving myself barely enough time to get to the airport. 12 hours later I was stood on the Golden Gate Bridge, peering over the edge, having borrowed a bike from my friend and cycled there.

My amazing friends in the Bay Area were so great that I decided to get a semicolon tattoo to commemorate my trip instead of jumping off the bridge to my death.

* * *

I swallowed enough tramadol, codeine and dihydocodeine to kill me several times over. I had plenty of time to make myself vomit up the pills and phone the emergency services. Instead, I patiently waited to die. If I was going to feel any regrets, I would have felt them in the hour or two before help arrived. I had assumed that none of my Twitter followers knew where I lived, and I would not be found in time to save my life.

"What did you think would happen?" a doctor asked me. "I thought I'd fall unconscious, start having seizures and never wake up" I replied. "You're going to die slowly and painfully" I was told. "Oh well, at least I'm going to die" I thought to myself.

"No activated charcoal!" I yelled. "Don't pump my stomach!" I shouted. "Don't resuscitate me if my heart stops!" I demanded. "I don't want to be treated!" I commanded.

When I was off life support and no longer in a critical condition, I felt no regret. I still wanted to die. My intention had been to die. I didn't feel like there was some higher power looking out for me. I never thought for a moment that there was some plan or purpose to my existence on the planet.

* * *

The response to my fully premeditated suicide attempt, with a proper suicide note - the world's longest - has been incredible, and now I'm filled with a mixture of shame, embarrassment and a feeling that I owe friends and strangers a great deal of gratitude, for the love and care that I've received.

I find myself being looked after by an amazing family - who read my story and contacted me out of the blue - in beautiful Welsh countryside.

Friends who I haven't spoken to in years have gotten back in contact, and there seems to be a glimmer of hope for the future.

I wonder if people think of me as attention seeking. I wonder if people think that this was all a cry for help.

There's no doubt that when I swallowed those pills I wanted to die. I should have died - there was little chance of surviving; I had done the calculations; I had done the research.

I'm hoping that my mood will improve and circumstances will continue to be kind to me. I need work - a job; I need money. I can't stand still. To sit back and do nothing will only plunge me deeper into a destructively stressful world of pain, which will scupper any slim hope I have of rebuilding my life.

I do regret the distress that I've caused to my sister, my friends and kind strangers who've followed my story. What now though? Do I attempt to go back to life as normal and pretend like nothing happened?

I've gone as far as it's possible to go to the edge of the abyss, without actually plunging to my death. I've learned everything there is to know about mental illness, hospitals, doctors, medications and psychiatry, without actually losing my mind and disappearing into an institution forever. I can tell you everything you never wanted to know about addiction and alcoholism. I can tell you about "hidden homeless" - hostels and sofa-surfing - as well as what it's like to lose everything and sleep on the streets. More importantly, I can tell you what it's like to fight back; to recover.

Fundamentally, this journey started when the odds seemed insurmountable.

The challenges ahead still look to be more than I can possibly tackle.

Tags: #suicide

This is a story about slipping through the safety net...

Exactly one month ago was World Suicide Prevention Day and exactly one month ago I was in a critical condition, on life support in intensive care. I was given a 50/50 chance of living or dying, following an overdose the night before. It seems sickeningly ironic that if the emergency services had reached me just a little bit later, I wouldn't be writing this. If I didn't live in the United Kingdom, where we have the best healthcare system in the world, I would probably not be writing this.

It was 9 years ago that I first sought help for my mental health. "Have you heard of fluoxetine?" asked my doctor, within 30 seconds of me explaining my symptoms: suicidal thoughts, low mood, low energy and an inability to get out of bed and go to work like normal. I was disappointed to be offered patent-expired generic medication, without a moment's hesitation. I walked away empty handed.

Clinical depression was where I started my mental health journey. Having the label "clinical" made a huge difference. To add that word - clinical - onto how I was feeling, was necessary to defend myself from anybody who might say "just snap out of it" or "pull yourself together". In my case, having a label was desirable - it wasn't an excuse; it was a diagnosis.

Every time I've gone to my doctor, I've been hoping to receive some counselling, but instead I got referred into psychiatric services as an outpatient in 2010. I was referred for Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy (CBT) treatment, but by the time I was assessed, my mood disorder had been diagnosed as type II bipolar disorder. The assessment concluded that my mood disorder was too severe to be treated with CBT. I was left with no psychological treatment. "What am I supposed to do?" I asked. "Go back to your doctor" came the reply. It was a devastating disappointment.

By 2011 I was so unwell that I was assessed under the Mental Health Act, to see if I needed to be detained in hospital - what is colloquially referred to as a "section". I begged to be hospitalised as I was suicidal. I repeatedly said the classic cliché that so many people will say when they are desperate for help: "I'm going to kill myself". Community Mental Health Teams (CMHTs), crisis teams and home treatment teams must hear those words so often.

With a shortage of psychiatric beds, there's a huge reluctance to "section" anybody. At the time of my first section assessment, my girlfriend and my dad were present, so the assessment concluded that I could be kept safe at home. In fact, I sawed a hole in the back of my shed, climbed over a neighbour's fence and ran away. The police were called to look for me because I was a danger to myself.

Soon after that, I was seen by a private psychiatrist, referred and admitted for 4 weeks of inpatient treatment at a private hospital. The cost was over £12,000.

There was some debate with my medical insurance company as to whether my bipolar disorder was acute or chronic. The insurance company said it was a chronic condition, and therefore not covered by the policy. The consultant whose care I was under, managed to argue - over the course of a couple of nail-biting weeks - that my presentation was acute.

Having to resort to the private sector; having disputes with an insurance company - none of this was conducive to getting better. In fact, having to find my own psychiatrist, get approval from the insurance company to even speak to the doctor and then having the stress of thinking that I might need to spend £12,000 of my dwindling savings, was an awful ordeal when I was clearly very unwell.

At the end of 2012 I got married and 8 months later I separated from my wife. She didn't care about the incredible stress that divorce and selling our house would put me under. I moved to London to live with supportive friends while my life was ripped to pieces. I lost my job.

By 2014, I completely slipped through the safety net. I took an overdose and lay dying of multiple organ failure on the floor. I managed to phone a friend who got me to hospital. After a week, the hospital discharged me to a hotel. I had two weeks to organise my own accommodation because no bed on a psychiatric ward could be found for me. My muscles were horribly damaged by the overdose and I was in agony. With a bundle of documents to prove that I was a priority case for emergency housing, I visited the local council housing department. The officer I saw promptly disappeared on holiday, abandoning my case. I became homeless.

After living in cheap backpackers' hostel, I reached my two week limit, which is a rule that most hostels have. I then started living in a bush in Kensington Palace Gardens. When it became apparent that living in a bush was not a long-term solution, I stumbled into nearby Paddington - St Mary's Hospital - and presented myself at Accident & Emergency. 12 hours later, I was given two weeks respite in a "crisis house". I tracked down the housing officer who I'd spoken to before. At the end of two weeks, I received a one-line email: I wasn't eligible for any help from the local council. Why? What now?

I was homeless on Hampstead Heath. It was very beautiful, but it was still summer. What was I supposed to do when the weather turned bad?

How had this situation come to be? I'd been a highly functional, productive and fine upstanding member of society: I'd had a successful career, paid taxes all my working life, bought a house, gotten married and done all the things we're supposed to do. What the heck was I doing homeless and abandoned by the state when I was obviously a vulnerable adult? My doctor had written a letter saying I was a vulnerable adult, and my psychiatrist had done the same. These letters had been presented to the local council housing officer, but yet it had made no difference. What have you got to do to get help in this country?

Eventually, I came to be living in the North of England, in an apartment which was a perk of a job I'd taken out of desperation. The apartment was miserable, dark and dingy, and I was terribly lonely. On the 9th of September 2017, I took a massive overdose, which I had researched on the internet to make sure it was likely to be fatal. I regained consciousness after having been in a coma, in hospital, on the 11th of September 2017 - I had completely missed World Suicide Prevention Day. A machine was breathing for me and I was put back to sleep. I didn't leave the intensive care and high dependency wards until the 12th of September 2017.

On the 13th of September 2017, I found myself discharged from hospital and left to flounder all on my own. I didn't want to go back to the apartment where I'd tried to kill myself. I've not been back there. I'll never go back there.

I was sectioned - a section 136 - after being taken to hospital by police. I had to make a massive public nuisance of myself in order to get help. The hospital upgraded me to a section 2, which meant I was going to be kept on a psychiatric ward for up to 28 days. Why now? I'd had two near-fatal overdoses, which had hospitalised me in a critically ill condition, but yet I hadn't been considered enough of a risk to myself to receive inpatient psychiatric treatment. Why did it take so long to finally get the treatment I'd been begging to get for 6 years?

The psychiatric ward discharged me from my section after 12 days, and another week later I was discharged from hospital - a good samaritan has taken me into their home. Again I wonder why no temporary housing was forthcoming, given the fact I am so vulnerable - I lost my job and my apartment due to mental health discrimination. I'm being victimised again & again.

I'm in a safe place now, but my food & accommodation comes from a charitable family who have taken pity on me, after reading my story on my blog - we clearly don't have a system that works for the whole of society. We can't all turn to Twitter every time we're having a mental health crisis.

My Twitter followers brought the emergency services to my door, saving my life. Through my blogging and social media presence, a stranger read about my desperate plight, and kindly offered to take me into the family home.

Today, I feel OK, but why have I been subjected to such a horrific ordeal? I very nearly succeeded in ending my own life, because no help was forthcoming when I really needed it - we're locking the stable door after the horse has bolted.

Using myself as a case study, the safeguards we have in place to prevent suicides are woefully inadequate. My first-hand experience of NHS mental health services, is that they're desperately underfunded and overstretched.

There will be so many tragic preventable deaths if we allow the current situation to persist.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tags: #hospital #mentalhealth #nhs

This is a story about subservience...

It's grim up North. I didn't think it would be but it is. Here's Coronation Street. Beautiful, isn't it? Presently, that discarded sofa would be where I'd sleep if I discharged myself from hospital.

Without the crutches of alcohol, benzodiazepines and sleeping pills, I feel overwhelmed by stress and anxiety, because of the precarity of my position. Without a home; without a job; without financial security - there's plenty of rational reasons to be distressed.

People implore me to sit back and relax, but they don't realise that I've got loan payments to make; credit card payments to make; overdraft interest to be paid. To have to spell this out multiple times is frustrating.

"Why don't you just go bankrupt?"

Yeah, nice one, Einstein. Did you know that I do a lot of consultancy for financial services organisations? It's imperative that I have a clean credit record - prospective employers will do credit checks on me. You might as well suggest that I go out and commit a crime and add a criminal record to my list of woes.

"It's too soon to be thinking about going back to work"

Well, unless I'm accepting that I'm abandoning all hope of ever repaying my creditors and suffering a life of poverty at the mercy of the state, then no, it's not too soon. There's a concept called runway that I talked about at length during the first half of this year. I was unwell, but during my convalescence I was running out of runway. What happens when a plane runs out of runway?

In short, I'm driven to seek income, to prop up my depleted finances and keep servicing my debts.

If you're really wanting to poke your nose into the darkest recesses of my life, then you should know that I can easily earn enough to replenish my savings and get onto an even keel, with just 5 or 6 months of contract work in London. That I ever left London seems like a mistake, but I had few options - what I did was the right thing in the circumstances.

Today, I'm detoxed from alcohol and benzodiazepines - the physical dependency has been treated - but it quite literally nearly killed me. In addition to the massive deliberate tramadol overdose, my hospitalisation meant I abruptly stopped drinking and taking benzos, which caused me to have loads of seizures - in short, you should never suddenly stop heavy drinking or taking large doses of benzos, because you could die.

So, one might argue that I'm in a better place than when I attempted suicide. Yeah, I guess the biggest threat to my life has gone - my physical dependency on medications and alcohol.

Now, the biggest threat to my life is me - the desire to be dead is an insistent nagging thought that won't go away. It makes so much sense to commit suicide: all I have ahead of me is stress.

The rebound anxiety - having ceased taking medications and drinking alcohol - is causing me to suffer an intolerable amount of unpleasant feelings. It feels like I'm going to feel awful forever, and who would want that?

Of course, my perceptions are probably warped - nothing lasts forever. However, should I really be living my life just hoping to die of natural causes?

I could be writing about how pleased and happy I am to have a second chance - I survived a very large overdose and other medical complications that really should have killed me: the team at the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) were very surprised that I survived. Shouldn't I embody every trite contrived platitude you've ever heard? Shouldn't I be carpe diem'ing? Shouldn't I be counting my blessings? Shouldn't I be thanking my lucky stars?

Without stopping to consider all the reasons I tried to kill myself, my problems are not going to go away on their own, are they?

If my suicide attempt was an impulsive thing that I had any regrets about, then perhaps surviving would give me some long-lost appreciation for life. However, I'm spine-chillingly cold and rational about the biggest decision that anybody can ever make: the decision to die. Having been stuck in a never-ending cycle of attempts to get my life back together again, I was exhausted and unable to face rebuilding everything again. I'm still exhausted.

There was a fleeting chance that my suicide attempt could have been a minor setback, but I was completely shafted by the company I was working for. The mistreatment I suffered was inhumane; monstrous. I'm almost speechless that I could have been treated so badly.

I'm stuck between three things:

1. To act positively, and go and earn some more money
2. To act negatively, and pursue my legal rights
3. To simply attempt to kill myself again

To follow the first option is to repeat the behaviours I mastered a very long time ago. It was 20 years ago I got my first full-time job; rented my first apartment. It was 20 years ago that I learned about office politics and how to get ahead in life - a life of corporate conformity.

Instinctively, I reject the bullshit that made me unwell. For 20 years I've observed the rats in the rat race, and for 20 years I've observed the world become a shitter place - an exploding population is on collision course with mass starvation; unrestrained fossil fuel burning has led to runaway climate change, which is causing parts of the world to become uninhabitable, killing and displacing billions of people; deregulated free-market capitalism has raped the globe's finite resources and created a culture of wealth-worship where nobody gives a fuck about anything.

To be a principled, ethical man, is a kind of disadvantage - my political philosophies about social justice and a more fair and equal world, are exploited. I find myself screwed over by people who are willing to trample on anybody and everybody, in a desperate and disgusting scramble up the slippery sides of a mountain of dead bodies.

I've proven that I can play by the rules, but the whole game is bullshit and most people are cheating. I don't have anything to prove to anybody anymore; I've shown that I can wear the corporate mask and fit in with the herd; I've shown that I can live a life of subservient conformity, but it drove me to point of taking my own life.

I don't wanna play anymore, and the only way I can see to call time on this bullshit is to kill myself.

I think to myself that I've suffered and that I must turn that suffering into a piece of art - a monument to the stupidity of humanity. It's grandiose and ridiculous to think that a piece of writing could have any useful effect on the world, but this is my only legacy. Do you deny me the facts? To think that I would no longer live & breathe was a shock to many who've stuck with me and followed my story.

Of course, I'm sick and I've got "insight" into my illness - that is to say that I can consider an objective point of view. It's natural that I'd be feeling terrible, only 24 days after I very nearly managed to kill myself. It's natural that I'd be feeling terrible, given the clusterfuck of issues I've got to sort out if I want to go on living. I can see that I may very well be feeling unnaturally anxious, because my brain is re-adjusting to life without booze and benzos to soothe the stresses that are ever-present in the world.

A doctor suggests that I avoid the news, political protests and other things that I might get worked up about. Is this akin to a lobotomy? I think I would very much like a lobotomy... that's how I arrived at the brain-numbing chemical lobotomy that I swallowed every single day. Unfortunately, my brain is very much intact.

Why am I still so painfully conscious?

Tags: #suicide

This is a story about being overwhelmed...

I sit sunning myself in the park. It all looks very idyllic, doesn't it? How enviable my life is - I have not a worry in the world. Wouldn't you too, love to be as footloose and fancy free as I am? Wouldn't it be great if you were unburdened from all your responsibilities and worries, and could just cavort around doing whatever the fuck you wanted, just like me?

A friend phones me. He tells me that all my problems are all my own fault. I can't disagree with him. He tells me that I'm self-centred. I can't disagree with him. He tells me some stories about some problems in his own life. I can't say that my woes are worse than anything he's been through. He tells me about how tough things are in the developing world. I can't disagree.

My head buzzes with thoughts. My thoughts aren't racing; they're quite rational, reasonable, structured and logical. My thoughts aren't warped by a broken ability to correctly perceive reality - I corroborate how I'm feeling with people who are considered to be sane, to validate that I'm not thinking what I'm thinking because I'm unwell.

I've been seriously unwell before. I sat in ice-cold bathwater for hours with a sharp knife at my throat, keeping my elbow on the bathroom door so that if it was opened it would drive the blade into my jugular vein and carotid artery - that was unwell.

I've been seriously unwell before. I've imagined people abseiling down the side of my apartment block who were going to smash in my windows and come into my bedroom. I've imagined that I'm being spied upon. I'll leave it to the reader to conclude what psychiatric label is usually attached to such thoughts.

I've been seriously unwell before. I spent 12 or even 18 hours at a time, trying to make something out of cardboard, string, plastic, rubber, metal, wicker, cloth or whatever else was lying around. I was once convinced I was building a house around myself, but when I had a moment of lucidity, I realised I had simply been moving the same cushion around in a small circle, in a trancelike state.

Of course, I'm not claiming to be well at the moment.

It's been suggested to me by a few people that I could be malingering - that I took an overdose that was very likely to kill me in circumstances where I was very unlikely to be saved, fully knowing that I would survive... somehow; that I managed to fake mental illness so well that I was brought to hospital under a section 136 by the police, and that I continued to fake mental illness so well with the team who assessed me, that I was detained in hospital under section 2 of the Mental Health Act. It's either the greatest ruse - a masterful piece of deception and death-defiance - or maybe it's really easy to abuse the few brain cells I still have left, for nefarious purposes.

Anyway, I'm not supposed to be writing about myself. Think about the starving African children.

Where do you think I live? How do you think I eat?

I'm dependent on charity.

Park bench.

Yeah, damn straight I'm glad I was born in Northern Europe, in a wealthy country where we have a welfare state. Damn straight I'm glad I don't live in some hot dusty shithole, where hunger and disease are rife.

"I want to go home"

My home is this park bench. It's true, I have received kind offers to live with a couple of very charitable people. It's a big deal, to invite a mentally ill, recovering alcoholic, recovering addict, into your home. I bet you wouldn't do it, would you? I probably eat newborn babies and stomp on kittens' heads, just for my own sick amusement.

"I want to go home"

I hear people asking to go home a lot. Every day I hear people shouting that they want to go home. I don't ask to go home. I wonder why?

I chat to somebody about living in a caravan and hiding from debt collectors. My heart leaps. I yearn to escape the relentless pressure I feel to get back to work and start turning the pedals again, but I'm conflicted - I'm a principled man and I want to service my debts; I want to play by society's rules.

Nobody plays by society's rules, except those at the bottom who are trapped into poverty - they have no choice. I've played by the rules for long enough, and it's made me so miserable that I tried to kill myself. People urge me to take a break from the rat race, but they don't understand that the house of cards is going to collapse - there's a lot of money riding on me being able to get back on my feet.

Like a sportsman who chokes at the critical moment, I feel immense pressure to perform and it affects me.

It sounds like I'm pointing the finger of blame everywhere other than myself. Is that your signature on a contract that says you would accept Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) on that loan? Why didn't you read the contract? Did you take out that endowment mortgage or didn't you? How come you didn't understand something that was completely straightforward? Why won't you take responsibility for your obligations?

My friend is right. My life is a problem of my own making.

This whole fucked up mess is a problem of our own making. We are joint and severally liable - do you understand what that fucking means? Do you own up to your part that you've played in all of this?

I'm trying to do my bit and it's making me unwell. So unwell in fact that I tried to kill myself. I mean proper kill myself - dead, forever, gone, finito, sayōnara, the end.

Either I'm the most devious bastard that ever disgraced the surface of the Earth, or circumstances are somewhat out of my control - I'm not fully responsible for the gigantic mess I'm in. Of course, I'm a very convenient scapegoat though.

Although it seems very disjointed and jumbled, this blog does not write itself effortlessly. This blog is not unimportant. This blog is important to me, so that's at least one reason why it's important - I don't need any more than that. Call me selfish and self-centred all you like but I've tried to remove myself from the picture, and I failed. Am I supposed to be sorry that I'm not dead, and I'm still wasting your precious oxygen? Am I supposed to apologise for writing something that you could choose not to read, if you wanted to?

Think about the starving African children. Wow I'm cured!

Tags: #mentalhealth #homeless #suicide #bipolar

This is a story about being observant...

Where do blue tablets actually come from? Well, presumably they are pooped out by blue fish, like the ones that can be seen swimming here on the pavement and road. Can you see them - the little blue fishies?

With our Sherlock Holmes deerstalker hat on, puffing from our pipe, we might deduce from the proximity of a large hospital and the lack of water, that these are not actually fish. What could they be?

An electroencephalogram (EEG) is a graph of what's going on in our head, quite literally. En kephalé means "in head" in Greek, and the gram bit means "written down". Electro should be relatively self-explanatory.

Were these fish involved in seeing what was going on inside somebody's head? No, I don't think so.

An electrocardiogram (ECG) is a graph of our heartbeat, as denoted by the cardio part.

In order to know what our heart's doing, we are all very familiar with the stethoscope, but there's a more accurate test that doesn't depend on human hearing. The muscles that pump the 4 chambers of the heart never stop unless you go into cardiac arrest or otherwise die. Muscles give off tiny electrical impulses, and these can be measured with highly sensitive equipment - an ECG machine.

So what about these fish? Well, it looks like they're the little sticky electrodes that are put on each of your ankles, arms and across your chest around your heart. When you are hooked up to an ECG machine, you've got a stack of cables attached to you.

One of my fellow patients at the hospital was in such a big hurry to get rid of these stickers, after having the health of their heart measured, that they tore them off and discarded them onto the floor, quite possibly in a fit of rage at having been cared for by one of the finest healthcare systems in the world. It's quite understandable that having received lifesaving treatment that's free at the point of use, this individual should have ripped these electrodes off their body and tossed them onto the road and pavement - that'll teach society a lesson, now that a street sweeper will have to come along and clean up this trash!

We might note that there are only 4 stickers, and we can presume that these are the ones from the person's wrists and ankles, which would have been most conspicuous. Perhaps it wasn't until the person explored their body later, that they found 4 more on their chest - one of which was lurking around on their left hand side and might not even have been discovered until a later date.

Debate rages in the United Kingdom, about whether we should have penalties to discourage people from treating the National Health Service disrespectfully. We could charge people for a no-show to a General Practice (GP) or outpatient appointment. We could charge people for any visit to Accident & Emergency for trivial matters that could have been treated at a minor injuries clinic, or perhaps did not require medical attention at all.

There is evidence that we are starting to allow a two-tier society to emerge where none is supposed to exist. Doctors' waiting rooms have plush leather seats for 'VIP' patients - who are paying for private consultations - while the NHS patients sit on hard wooden chairs. For an operation, paying to go private might mean skipping waiting times, even though it will be the same surgical team, in the same hospital, with the same equipment and in the same operating theatre. Although it's not supposed to happen, surely some of the waiting times are because private patients are queue-jumping?

Those at the bottom struggle with zero-hours contract minimum wage jobs, with the purchasing power of their pay packet decreasing every month, due to inflation. Things are not a lot better on the next rung of the ladder - an NHS Clinical Support Worker's salary tops out at around £15,000. That's £259 a week. Ouch. My rent in London was £480 a week. The wealth disparity is disgusting, isn't it?

While the cost of housing and the cost of energy - electricity and gas - is skyrocketing with double-digit percentage increases, wages barely increase at all. One only needs to look at the use of food banks, to see that the little people are struggling - people who clean your toilet, scrub your floor, wipe your bum, cook your food, stack your shelves and scatter rose petals along the privileged path that you walk. But, these spoiled brats still vote for a ruling elite who care nothing for the wails of distress that are now becoming a deafening scream of pain.

The bulk of the BBC was moved up to Manchester a few years ago, and it's been quite evident that it's had an effect on the mindset of the people who work for the broadcaster. In London, the homelessness problem is inconspicuous in wealthy districts, but in Manchester - where homelessness has soared 1,100% in just 7 years - the problem is inescapable. The BBC has shown a number of documentaries which accurately reflect exactly what I have seen and experienced: there are vast numbers of people in dire need of assistance.

Who wants a McJob that doesn't even pay enough to be able to rent a room in a shit apartment, and have any life at all? Does it surprise you that people are smoking strong synthetic cannabinoids which allow them to escape the stress and hopelessness of a hideous reality that nobody in Government seems to want to address.

There's a crisis that's going on all around us. Pull back the covers and human tragedy is unfolding underneath.

This is not a "wake up sheeple!" alarmist or sensationalistic think-piece, but in actual fact an unfliching and painfully truthful account - I bear testament to what I've seen - of the shocking disparity between London and the South-East, where our wealth is concentrated, and the rest of the United Kingdom where things are very grim indeed.

We talk about the 'Westminster Bubble' and I can attest first hand what it's like. At the beginning of this year I was at the grand headquarters building of Her Majesty's Revenue Collectors (HMRC) and it had been refurbished to an incredibly high standard. I was taken to an extremely grand room, which was capacious enough to hold at least 50, maybe even 100 people, but only had me and the two people interviewing me. Otherwise this space was left empty and unused, so far as I could see - perhaps a metaphor for all the empty homes that have been bought by foreign investors in London.

Meanwhile, it was barely two years ago that I was in social housing apartment (council flat) in London, which was in such a poor state of repair that there was literally 2 inches of water that one had to paddle through, in order to use the toilet or a terrible shower that barely worked. It's quite clear where our tax money is going - tax breaks for millionaires, not houses for nurses.

Bursaries for nursing have now been removed, so our nurses will emerge with the best part of £60,000 of debt when they qualify, which will further reduce their take-home pay. The interest on a student loan of that magnitude is more than 12% of our nurses' starting salary of £22,000, which means they will sink deeper and deeper into debt each year.

Who will mop up your sick, piss, vomit, blood, mucous, pooh, give you a sponge-bath in bed, say soothing things and give you painkillers when you cry out in agony, come running when you press the call button and generally make you as comfortable as possible when you're unwell?

As comrade Corbyn said: a millionaire in their mansion is going to need an ambulance if they have a heart attack, just like anybody else.

Tags: #nhs #hospital #politics

This is a story about seeing red...

My dad had a fairly simple moral code for me, when I was a little boy: boys shouldn't hit girls or boys wearing glasses. That's about it. I remember guns were bad and I got in trouble (age 3.5) for looking like I enjoyed myself playing with a friend, who had brought his plastic guns with him. I eat anything and everything today, but I also remember being terrorised into eating rice pudding - which was slimy and disgusting in texture to me, before the age of 4 - so much so that I started throwing up with stress and anxiety, before every mealtime and lost so much weight I had to be hospitalised.

Perhaps it's clear, in retrospect, why I would turn to a hospital to protect me from bullies.

But, perhaps it's me who's evil, and needs to be locked away from the general public? Certainly, now that I've got chance to stop and catch my breath, I'm finding I've finally got time to examine the morality of the way I've acted in the past.

If you hit your kids or generally terrorise them to the point that they need to be hospitalised, trust me, they're not having a brilliant home life. At playgroup and school, I took this pacifism thing that my dad had been very angry about - a.k.a. playing with a friend with a plastic gun - very seriously and I got the crap kicked out of me by other kids... it wasn't until many years later that my dad suggested fighting back, which seemed somewhat odd given that I'd received these hippy lectures about being nonviolent. Anyway, I went down the path of pacifism and that's where I stayed. I was not having a brilliant school life - I was picked on every single day, to the point where, again, it would leave me collapsing in uncontrollable sobbing fits, while on the way to primary school.

Boo hoo! Get the violins out!

My first experience of domestic violence was me crying and being punched in the face, giving me two black eyes and a broken nose. I didn't even defend myself, let alone strike back... why would I need to? I didn't understand why I was being victimised like this, by somebody who was supposed to love me. I had to go into work with a bullshit story about having collided with a buoy while kitesurfing, to explain my two black eyes. It was the male extreme sports equivalent of "I walked into a door". I had to lie to her parents, when we went to see them for a planned visit soon after my face had taken that pommelling.

I'm 6ft tall (183cm), 13 stone (82kg) and I still retain some of my muscle bulk from rock climbing, kitesurfing and wakeboarding, although I'm obviously not in peak physical shape. I've got the mindset of a terrorised 3-year-old, ganged up on by two fully grown adults, but I'm in a body that can do some damage and defend itself now.

The problem - if there is one - is that if I feel bullied and attacked, and you managed to corner me, I'll smash my way out of the situation. I don't hit people - I'm still nonviolent. I don't get into fights. However, very occasionally I will trash something - more often than not it will be my own property - because the insanely horrible emotions just have to come out.

"Do you think that was the right thing to do?" a stern-faced looking policeman asks me. "Do you think there might have been a better way to handle that situation?" comes a second question, as if the first one - which I haven't had chance to answer yet - was not clear enough for me. Of course, I would have loved to handle things differently. Of course, I feel guilt and regret when I snap; when I can't take the onslaught anymore, and I've done something that I wish I hadn't - some property has been damaged.

She's asked me to travel out to the suburbs from the city centre; it's a considerable car ride away, including some travel on a dual-carriageway - the main road South, which turns into the motorway and would safely take me back to London, if we stayed on it. I get the cab to stop at a shop so I can buy some things for a romantic evening. I'm greeted with a hug, we lie on the bed kissing and cuddling... this is all how I hoped things would be; I'm relaxing and enjoying a pleasant evening; this is very nice. Then, she's hurling abuse at me, telling me I'm a terrible person... I'm sitting down while she's standing up, verbally attacking me and generally bullying the shit out of me. She suddenly asks me to leave... alright, no problem. I jump up, grab a rolling pin from the kitchen where it lies idle on the worktop and I smash her laptop to pieces, then I leave immediately. I regret it instantly and text her that I want to replace it, as I make my way to the nearest cab rank, to get a taxi to retrace the journey that I took hardly any time ago. Why had I been summoned to the suburbs for this abuse? Certainly, my loss of temper at the injustice of it all is in no way a justification for destroying her laptop - it was a disproportionate response.

I don't think people really see what's going on underneath the surface, even though I tell them.

Two police officers are interviewing me. It's 2am in the morning. I was just discharged from hospital after a suicide attempt, and my kidneys are still not fully functioning. My body is bruised as hell from where the emergency services had to kick in the bathroom door to get to me, slumped in the dark, dying. My muscles ache from the damage that was done to them by the massive overdose of opiates - prescription painkillers I had stockpiled. I answer the police questions. I admit smashing up that laptop - of course I did it and I want to replace it. The last messages I ever sent while still alive were attempts to get her bank details, so I could transfer her enough money to get a brand new replacement... although of course the destruction of her laptop must have been a shocking over-reaction in her eyes and upsetting for her, and I can never fix that.

Don't people see me as vulnerable? I feel like a 3 year old, being beaten up by grown-ups. I feel vulnerable; scared. People must see me as an easy target, because they certainly don't hold back when they're ripping into me. I find myself back in my trashed apartment at 3:30am on Wednesday morning. How did this happen? Why do people think I'm perfectly fine - OK to chuck out from hospital as soon as my kidneys are working a little bit? Why do people think I'm physically and psychologically indestructible? Why would the massive overdose that I took be seen as unimportant, and that I'm perfectly able to pick myself up and carry on with life?

I feel like I get a double-whammy. I feel that people take advantage of my good nature: my trusting and happy-go-lucky approach to life, where I try to be generous and loving. I take the risks - I make the first moves - and I put myself out there in the hope of getting something back. If I get nothing back, that's fine - let's just leave it there and move on. Why did I have to get dragged all the way out of the city centre and far from my home, simply to receive cruel and unpleasant treatment and be told to get out? My reaction was out of proportion though, so I also get the guilt. I'm guilty of smashing up that laptop. I'm guilty of seeing red, losing my temper, retaliating at the injustice of the situation, in a totally unjustifiable way. Now, I still carry that guilt and I always will - it stopped her hurling abuse at me, but that doesn't make it right. In fact, I can never make things right - I'm always going to feel terrible about her stunned silence, and the fact that it must have seemed like a crazy over-reaction to a bit of 'light-hearted' bullying and abuse in the place she'd dragged me out to, to do it - in the middle of fucking nowhere. If it sounds like I'm conflicted, I am. Where's the sympathy for the fact that I was taken advantage of, abused and left feeling totally abandoned in a strange city? Where's the consideration of the fact that it's obvious that I was on the edge: I very nearly succeeded in killing myself, as the very next thing that I did.

This whole traumatic episode has forced me to dredge up every 'bad' thing I've ever done, and reconsider whether I could have handled things better. What the fuck am I supposed to do? Turn down friends and girlfriends when they cross my path? Am I supposed to be negative and untrusting? Am I supposed to shut myself away, isolated behind closed doors and be anti-social, because I always end up just feeling like a mug... financially taken advantage of and cleaning up after my 'guests'. Should I not give people a chance? Should I be closed and negative, assuming everybody's out to get me? Certainly, everybody's come and picked my fucking pocket, quite gleefully.

I'm no angel. This is certainly not a piece that argues things in black & white. If you want to talk about black & white, then you have it in black & white: I smashed up her laptop with a rolling pin in a sudden fit of rage. My regret and remorse is meaningless - I did it, so that's that. I'm guilty of being an "angry man" right?

I wonder what percentage of my life I've been angry for. Certainly, most people who've known me for any length of time would not think "angry" as one of the first words that sprang to mind. Perhaps I just hide it very well. It's not really for me to judge anyway, what my personality is in the context of this tale and the wider issue of whether I'm some kind of crazed nutter, intent on smashing up the entire world.

I guess you could consider the nature of a dog, as an analogy. How much can you abuse the dog, before it bites you? Are the best dogs the ones that just whimper and maybe even shit themselves? Does a dog - even though it has sharp teeth and powerful jaws - only qualify as a good dog if it never turns on somebody who's abusing it? If you can answer that question, you might have gone some way to answering the question that fills me with doubt at the moment: am I a bad person; am I evil?

Frankly, I think we're all capable of saying and doing regrettable things, in the heat of the moment. The question is, how do you feel about what you did? Do you do horrible things on a regular basis? What's your predominant personality - are you a victim, victimiser or something in-between?

I don't want to fall into the trap of feeling too sorry for myself; feeling too victimised. I've said and done things I wish I hadn't. Also, why can't I stick up for myself? Why can't I avoid the people who think it's OK to pick my pocket? Why can't I tell those who would take advantage of me, to fuck off, before they bleed me dry?

I've seized upon this word "vulnerable" which neatly sums up me and my situation. I trust when I shouldn't; give when I shouldn't; take a chance when I shouldn't and generally end up fucked. Surely nobody would argue with the facts: I'm the one who ended up isolated and alone, dying of an overdose, losing all my property, losing a lucrative consultancy contract and an employment offer. I'm an example of the person that lawmakers had in mind, when they created laws that protect me from mental health discrimination and prejudice based on confidential matters.

There's a line in a song I've probably never heard, but I know the lyrics because my guardian angel told them to me. The song talks about how bullying a kid every day created a monster.

Am I a monster? I certainly seem to fight with monsters. Perhaps I would be wise to remember the words of Nietzsche, and be careful that I do not turn into a monster myself, if I continue to fight monsters.

It's not my instinct to fight. It's my instinct to be nonviolent. I only fight^* when I've got nothing left.

Tags: #bullying #relationships #suicide

* - I don't mean fight her. She's got the money to replace her laptop now, I hope, and I really hope we can move on with our lives as best as we can, although I do appreciate that it was traumatic and seemingly an over-reaction from me. I feel very bad about what I did.

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