This is a story about sequels...

Two years ago, I was experimenting with my blog. I thought it would be profound to write a public suicide note, record a video and go jump off the Golden Gate Bridge. I thought I would get sacked from my job and illustrate how the stress would push me into acts of extremism. I decided to sleep rough close to the skyscraper I had been working in. I thought I was going to starve myself for 25 days and spend Christmas Day in a tent. I thought I was going to kill myself by going on hunger strike.

For 25 days I wrote an advent calendar type series of blog posts. The whole thing was leading up to the punchline: boxing day. Really, what I was doing was building up to the revelation of the truth: that I'd had problems with addiction. It was a big admission. It took a lot of courage to be honest.

Why did it take me so long to acknowledge my problems with addiction?

Generally, addicts don't get a very favourable hearing. Addicts are amongst the most stigmatised people on the planet. If you're looking for a sympathetic non-judgemental ear, it's probably best if you don't mention any addiction problems you've had until somebody's got to know you.

So, people had to get to know me.

My friends, family and work colleagues knew me. Those people who've gotten to know me have seen that I'm an OK person. I'm not a monster.

But am I a monster?

It's surprising how little it takes for us to question everything we ever knew about a person. Sometimes, there's a revelation about a person that can completely shake our perceptions of them. Suddenly, it's as if a person we knew well is a stranger to us, and not just any stranger: a horrible nasty stranger who's going to rob us and kill our children and eat them. Everybody knows that addicts leave a trail of HIV-infected needles lying around everywhere they go, especially in areas where children play. Everybody knows that addicts enjoy nothing more than random acts of killing. Also, if you discover that somebody's had problems with addiction, you can pretty much forget everything you ever knew about them.

Hang on a second though.

How quickly can you completely re-evaluate an entire person and decide that they're a completely worthless hopeless junkie, who'd rob you without a moment's hesitation in order to score their next fix? How long does it take to write somebody off completely and dismiss everything you ever knew about them? Why are junkies just so damn easy to hate and what happened to the person you used to know?

While there are some very unfortunate people whose morals will be corrupted by their addiction, that's not the case for most addicts. Not every addict is a liar, a cheat, a thief and somebody who would recklessly endanger the lives of your precious children. Not every addict is flakey, unreliable, untrustworthy, unscrupulous and immoral. Not every addict is worthless, hopeless and doomed to forever seek and take drugs. Not every addict is a menace to society, and should be treated like a leper: shunned from work, friends, family and all the other things that give us a functional life. Not every addict should be marginalised and demonised.

Of course, I write with a vested interest. I don't want to be mistreated. I don't want the stigma attached to me.

So, why don't I share my stories of addiction anonymously? Why don't I join Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous and Cocaine Anonymous and Crystal Meth Anonymous, and while I'm at it Gambling Addicts Anonymous and Sex Addicts Anonymous? Why don't I keep quiet and just pretend like I'm normal? I don't even take drugs.

Nobody thinks that gambling addicts inject packs of cards, so why is it that when you think of me - an addict - you immediately imagine dirty needles? Where did the OK Nick that you used to know go? Why did you eject the pleasant memories you had of me, and replace them with an imagined version of me, where I was mugging grannies for their life savings?

It's necessary for me to concentrate on the prequel to my story, in order to receive a fair hearing. I need to explain that adverse childhood experiences, an abusive relationship, stress, burnout and mental health problems, all created a fertile environment in which to grow a substance abuse problem. I need to explain that my mood instability - bipolar - predisposed me to reckless sensation seeking, such as substance abuse. I need to explain that my motivation was self-medication, not getting high. I sought relief from symptoms, not enjoyment. I was trapped and I needed a way out. I chose the wrong one. I made a mistake.

We might take a quick glance at a situation and utter the words "why don't they just...?". Why don't they just what? Leave their abusive partner? Stop moping around and get out of bed? Stop taking drugs? Move somewhere else? Sort themselves out?

When you're secure and happy, everything looks pretty easy. All people have gotta do is get a house, a job, a sexual partner, friends, hobbies and interests, a loving family, a supportive environment, a healthy lifestyle, coping mechanisms, substantial financial resources and favourable socioeconomic conditions. That's it. That's all. Just get on and do it!

For some, remaining addicted is not about the ongoing want for drugs, it's actually slow suicide.

That last point is worth re-iterating. One of the reasons why some people won't stop taking drugs, is because they don't want to live anymore. They literally don't care if they die. I would say that most addicts are very well aware that their addictions are going to kill them, but they carry on anyway - they're committing suicide, slowly.

Looking at teens and twentysomethings who smoke, we might see that there's a general belief that "it'll never happen to me". In our youth, we tend to believe we're pretty indestructible. By that same token, we might assume that a drug addict believes that they'll be one of the lucky ones, who addiction will spare. I don't think that's the case.

As an addict, it quickly becomes apparent that control has been lost and you're on collision course with health problems and early death. Repeatedly, the addict will have extremely aversive experiences which scream loud and clear that the path of addiction is going to lead to death and destruction. Do you think every lecture about what an addict is doing to themselves falls on deaf ears?

Equally, do you think that addicts just don't care? Do they want to die?

Committing suicide - including addiction - is not about wanting to die. Suicide is driven by hopelessness and inescapable awful feelings. If life only has pain and misery to offer, why wouldn't a person choose early death? If building any kind of liveable tolerable life is an insurmountable task, what hope is there? Who'd want to spend the rest of their life miserable, depressed, anxious and in pain?

It's easy to say "keep putting one foot in front of the other" or "take things one day at a time" because you don't have to live through that misery. It's easy to ask somebody else to tolerate the intolerable, because it's not you who has to suffer: it's them. Eventually, a person can conclude that there aren't going to be any good days, or that the few pleasant times don't outweigh the multitudinous bad times. On balance, one might conclude, life's not worth living.

When you've made that decision that life's not worth living, it's pretty hard to find any reason to not have that next hit of drugs, even when the drugs are killing you.

I write to you today clean, sober and with no intention of obtaining and taking drugs.

However, I think it's highly likely that I will take drugs again, both recreationally and abusively. The number of protective factors - friends, family, work, money - have increased, but my life is still very badly broken. There are innumerable things that predispose me to relapsing onto drugs, and on the flip side there is a huge list of things I've got to fix or get in my life in order to have enough on the other side of the scales to balance things out. I look to the year ahead: what do I have look forward to other than hard work, living out of a suitcase, paying off debts and otherwise scrimping and saving? I'm sorry, but I'm not exactly thrilled by the prospect of living off sandwiches that I've made in a hotel room, spreading the mustard with a shoehorn.

But, perhaps also there's a desperate desire to self-sabotage because life was simpler as an addict. Even the synthetic cannabinoids have enough of an attractive intoxication for addicts to jettison the stress and strain of paying rent and bills, and having to hold down a job, in favour of homelessness. The bureaucratic burden of civilised society is wearisome and ridiculous. The form-filling and pointless makework of bullshit jobs is absurd. It's not just about the drugs - it's also about dropping out.

You'd think that dropping out would be a terrible thing. You'd think that the shame of the loss of status would be unbearable, but it's liberating. You know that you have to work hard to keep up your mortgage or rent payments. You live in constant fear of losing your job, which would quickly lead to eviction. When you become homeless, it's a relief - a thing you feared the most has happened, and it's not as bad as you thought it would be; somehow you manage to cope.

I'm averse to the idea of a miserable dead-end McJob. I'm averse to the idea of spending any more time stressed out of my mind, helping my boss get richer; helping my landlord get richer. I'm averse to the idea that the peanuts that most people get paid, in any way compensates them for giving up the prime years of their lives. I don't see that society is working well for most people. I see that stress, anxiety, depression and other mental health problems are rife. I see that suicide is the biggest killer of the group of people who are our most productive members of society. That's not fair.

So, I need to find a middle way. I need to find a way that's not suicide, not drug addiction, but it's not a miserable dead-end job either. I refuse to get a bullshit job that pays peanuts. I'd rather die.

At the moment, I'm clean from drugs and I'm working a very well paid job. I'm learning stuff. It's stressful, but it's not boring. I'm increasing my value - my employability - as well as doing a good job. It feels fair.

I'm starting 2018 at a considerable disadvantage. I'm deeply in debt. I don't have a girlfriend. I don't rent or own a home. Why bother?

It's been 6 months since I had an addiction. I'm clean. Why would I even write about addiction? I've won, haven't I?

In fact, addiction is always there: a dependable companion. Very little effort is involved in resuming an addiction. Addiction will always be everything you expected it to be. Addiction never disappoints. Conversely, a happy functional life with all the components necessary to make it work, is very very far out of reach; almost unattainable. You might think that because I'm only 6 months away from putting a lot of the pieces in place, that it'd be easy. 6 months is no time at all, right? In fact, 6 months without all the things you take for granted, might as well be a billion years. It's never going to happen. Try getting in a bath filled with ice cubes. Try holding your hand over a naked flame. What you perceive as quick and easy is not quick and easy when you're in pain.

My present situation might look infinitely preferable to my life as an addict, but it's not. Addiction could last me forever - until the day I die - but what I have today is only temporary; it's fake. I can't stay where I am forever. My contract will come to an end and I'll have to find another job. I'll need to rent or buy a place to live. I need to keep moving around: 3 and a half hours on the train, one-way, and moving from hotel to hotel, AirBnB to AirBnB... always moving on. I'm tired, even though it looks like I should be well rested. I'm stressed, even if it looks like things are going in the right direction.

Addiction's there as a one-stop-shop. Addiction means that I can stop pedalling so damn fast. Addiction means relief. Addiction means there's an end in sight. I'd be a liar if I didn't admit that when I'm alone with my thoughts, I don't immediately think that addiction is infinitely preferable to the mountainous task ahead, to merely build a mediocre life of disappointment and depression; boredom and bullshit.

Going cold turkey doesn't prove anything.

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

This is a story about cyclical patterns...

In 2014 I was homeless and addicted to drugs. I got myself a job at a bank, got myself a place to live and paid off all my debts. Then, I lost my contract. I went to a shop in Soho and bought two packets of a legal high powder and proceeded to undo all my hard work. Within a matter of weeks, I was back on the supercrack.

In 2015 I was homeless and addicted to drugs. I got myself a job at a bank, got myself a place to live and paid off all my debts. Then, I lost my contract. I went online and bought two packets of legal high powder and two packets of legal benzodiazepine tablets. Within a month, I was back on the supercrack.

In 2016 I had a lovely apartment. I was clean all summer. I went on holiday. I met an amazing girl who I was totally in love with. I wrote my first novel. I had a brilliant Christmas with my girlfriend and her family. Then, I got myself a job at a bank. My left leg swelled up to twice the size of the right leg, both my kidneys failed, I was put on emergency dialysis and I had to be admitted to hospital for a couple of weeks, on a high dependency ward. Then, I lost my contract. Within a fortnight I was back on the supercrack.

In 2017 I had a lovely apartment. I took supercrack. I tried to quit the supercrack. I got depressed. I tricked my doctor into giving me California rocket fuel - a combination of venlafaxine and mirtazepine antidepressants. I went hypomanic and split up with my amazing girlfriend. I bought enough supercrack to last me two years. I went insane with stimulant psychosis and was thoroughly beastly towards my amazing girlfriend. I ran out of money. I moved to Manchester. I got another girlfriend. We broke up. I tried to kill myself. I spent a couple of days with a machine breathing for me in intensive care. I got sectioned and got locked up on a secure psych ward. I moved to Wales. I wrote 42,000 words of my second novel. I got myself a job at a bank. There isn't enough time left in 2017 to get back on the supercrack. I'm worried I'm going to relapse in January. I haven't lost my contract yet.

If we dip into each year a little bit more closely, 2014 was a really dreadful one. I was an inpatient for about 14 weeks. I lived in a bush in Kensington Palace Gardens and slept rough on Hampstead Heath. I was in two rehabs. I lived in a 14-bed hostel dorm, but that was actually one of the highlights. I abused a lot of benzodiazepines and amphetamines, as well as the supercrack. I got in trouble with the police. Twice.

2015 looks tame by comparison. Although I abused stimulants and 'downers', I had a couple of visits to a lovely family in Ireland, who looked after me. Strangely, it was working 12 hour days and working 7 days a week that exhausted me and tipped me into hypomania. I spent a week suicidal on a psych ward then suddenly decided to fly to San Francisco. I went straight to the Golden Gate Bridge, which I had contemplated jumping off. I was sober for 120 consecutive days. I deliberately got my contract terminated, because I had ethical objections to what the bank I was working for was doing. I started blogging.

2016 is unusual - perhaps there is no easy pattern we can spot - because I got myself clean and into work much earlier than I'd managed in previous years. I worked a whole contract - notably not for a bank - without going mad and getting sacked. I got a good reference and my team were really pleased with the way I ran the project. My life was quite stable. However, I was a sneaky bastard. I was using supercrack and benzos in secret, and lying to my amazing girlfriend to cover up my drug abuse.

2017 was off the charts. I've never been so sick. I've never been so close to death. For the first half of the year I had binge after binge after binge. I abused opiates, sleeping pills, tranquillisers, club drugs and stimulants. My drug abuse was definitely going to kill me. I had a physical dependency on benzodiazepines that looked impossible to cure - how was I going to escape from the death trap? I decided I couldn't escape, so I took a massive overdose. The hospital gave me a 50:50 chance of pulling through.

I'm worried that I'm repeating old patterns of behaviour. I always go back to the banks when I need money, because they pay so well and it's the quickest way of digging myself out of debt. I'm living out of a suitcase, moving from AirBnB to AirBnB. It's exhausting and stressful: factors that tipped me into hypomanic insanity back in 2015.

What is unusual is that I'm going into the New Year with a contract in place: I have my job and it's going well. I'm starting 2018 with money on the way, as opposed to the fear of bankruptcy and eviction. I'm going into next year with far fewer stresses than I've had for a very long time. Perhaps it's good that there aren't even any girls in the picture at the moment. Love and sex always have a bit of a destabilising effect on me.

Writing this summary of my hit-and-miss boom-and-bust crazy life, I wonder if I'm doomed to forever repeat the pattern.

One thing that's notably different this year is living with a family. I care about them. I imagine what it'd be like if the kids asked "where's Nick?" and the answer was that I was dead, or as good as dead because I'd relapsed onto supercrack.

This year, I quit supercrack, tramadol, codeine, dihydrocodeine, diazepam (Valium), alprazolam (Xanax), zolpidem (Ambien), zopiclone and pregabalin. I was prescribed venlafaxine, mirtazepine and lamotrogine, but I don't take any of them now. I had 30 consecutive sober days during October. In fact, I was sober from more or less the start of September to early November. My brain has been completely drug-addled at times, but I'm clean as a whistle at the moment - I'm unmedicated and I'm not taking any mind-altering substances. I don't drink caffeinated beverages.

I'd like to tell you that I feel wonderful, but I don't. I have a cold. It's winter. Winter is shit.

You might look at all the times I've tripped up and conclude that I'm bound to trip up again. However, you might look at all the things I've fixed and conclude that I'm pretty good at fixing up my life when it's fucked. All I've got to do is bring together all the different elements: friends and family, work and home, money and rest and relaxation, stability and exercise and hopes and dreams, love and romance and sex. Easy, right?

If you're wondering what my drug of choice is, and thinking that it's supercrack, you're wrong. Look more closely at the picture at the top of this blog post. What's that thing in-between my legs? It's not my male member, it's a wine glass.

With closer examination of my entire adult life, we can see that alcohol features heavily. In fact my latest job came about as a result of being friends with a lovely guy who's an alcoholic. We spent a week getting pissed, when I was supposed to be finding my feet with the new job. Somehow, I've managed to drink my way through a very successful career. Without booze I'm somewhat out of kilter. Without booze, how would I self-medicate for my mood fluctuations?

Yes, without booze, my bipolar disposition rages out of control. I work too hard. I take everything too seriously. I fly off the handle.

I'm not genuinely suggesting that booze is harmless or the cure of all ills, but it's been such a big component of my adult life that I don't really know how to cope without it. How would I have survived the recent stresses and strains of a 2,500 mile round-trip, to go and gather money from the latest bank I'm working for, without alcohol? How would I square away my deep unhappiness with the work I do, with the need to earn money, if it wasn't for drowning my sorrows? Alcohol might be a terrible solution, but it's the one I've got and I know it works.

Is it lunchtime yet? I'm not an alcoholic, because I don't drink in the morning. I just make sure I lie in bed until it's after midday.

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

This is a story about my 2,500 mile round-trip...

Two weeks ago, the local Community Mental Health Team (CMHT) was phoning me to see if they could potentially admit me to hospital. I had revealed to a psychiatrist that I was having suicidal thoughts, opting to be fully honest - as advised by my doctor friend who was accompanying me - as opposed to saying what I needed to in order get what I wanted. Perhaps it's good that I was honest, because therapy's not quick, and the only pills that work have a tendency to send me a little hypomanic.

So, I'm still unmedicated. It's been 6 months.

The danger was that I'd become so depressed that I'd commit suicide. My hunch was that my suicidal thoughts were being driven by the fact that my life was disintegrating and I had absolutely no control over it. Doctors can't act on hunches. I can though, and I was right - as soon as I started earning money and there was hope that I wasn't facing financial ruin, a lot of my suicidal thoughts disappeared.

Another danger is that I'll start getting delusions of grandeur. However, we should examine quite closely just how delusional I really am. Am I really delusional?

The phone rang. I answered it. A man told me he had a project. Could I do it? I replied that I could. How much money did I want? I told him. Could I start on Monday? I said I could. I didn't speak to him again, until I met him for the very first time, 1,200 miles from home.

If you think that my mental illness is about some kind of lifelong condition that I need to take tablets for, you're wrong. Every single thing in my life - my environment - predisposes me towards mood instability. If you think about the kind of feast and famine stressfest that my boom and bust financial situation has given me, then perhaps you can start to see that I harbour no delusions. My days were numbered. Only bankruptcy and a life of poverty lay ahead, quietly pill popping and watching daytime television, while collecting my meagre benefit cheques. Then, suddenly: an investment banking IT contract lands in my lap.

"Yes, but you're resting on your laurels; relying on your reputation" I hear you cry.

It's true that if it wasn't for friends who've vouched for my good character, I would have been screwed long ago. However it's a non sequitur to say that I'm able to hide my mental illness by burning bridges. How did I build my reputation in the first place, if I'm no use to anybody?

If you were to read through the two and a half years that I've been writing my story, you'll see that I have burnt some bridges. However, you'll also see that my actions are always quite deliberate. I often burn bridges to stop me going back to places. If you look at my whole working life in its entirety, you'll see that the big wads of cash that I get offered to do work that's utterly incompatible with my mental health, is always too much of a temptation. Even places where I've spectacularly burnt bridges, my name isn't total mud. It's been very hard to completely destroy my reputation and good standing, and make myself un[re]employable.

Are you getting the idea at all? Are you understanding the theme?

Perhaps my most astonishing rags-to-riches feat was when I went from homeless and bankrupt, to working on the number one project for the biggest bank in Europe. The exertion of it cost me my sanity. The exhaustion of living in a 14-bed dormitory and working 120-hour weeks; trying to keep my suit and shirts clean and crisply pressed hanging up on my bunk; trying to save up enough money to get myself a place to live... it was too much. I burnt out and plummeted into suicidal depression when I ran out of energy to keep up appearances. However, can you imagine how I felt, when I upgraded from a hostel bunk bed to my own 2-bedroom apartment on the banks of the River Thames, with glorious panoramic views over London. Do you think you'd be mentally 'well' enough to cope with that kind of life turnaround?

Stress and sleep deprivation will have fairly predictable effects on most people. To deprive a person of sleep and then declare that they are mentally unwell seems disingenuous. What about taking a person who believes they're a complete failure and parachuting them into a life of opulent wealth? Do you think that it would have an effect on somebody, if they miraculously avoided certain financial ruin, destitution and homelessness? What happens when the mentally ill junkie homeless bankrupt loser reinvents themself overnight?

Of course, we don't normally let people sort themselves out.

Criminals, the mentally ill, addicts and alcoholics are very keen to club together with their own kind. Like crabs in a bucket, any crab that tries to escape will be pulled back down by the others. I shan't be adding a link to this website on my CV anytime soon. Joining any kind of community where I'm encouraged to wallow in my shame and define myself by my shortcomings, seems like a terrible idea.

In defiance of those who tell me I have delusions of grandeur for expecting more than a pot to piss in, I continue to pursue a two-part strategy: I'm doing incredibly well remunerated work and I'm candidly sharing my story publicly.

"Who are you to tell your story? You're nobody. You're not famous" I hear you grumble.

"Who are you to earn so much? You've failed. You should earn peanuts" I hear you protest.

Don't you understand? The whole system is set up to make you feel inadequate; unworthy. Every exam you ever sat; every job interview you've ever attended - the whole sham was concocted to make you feel grateful for the pittance you receive. The fact that you feel like you're not allowed to write your autobiography or otherwise blow your own trumpet, is by design - you're supposed to feel like a nobody. You've been indoctrinated to feel worthless.

On my travels - and I don't mean geographically - I've encountered a lot of people who've been less fortunate than the investment banking types who I'd usually come into contact with. The only difference between me and my fellow hostel mates, is that they never believed they'd even get within 100 feet of the front doors of a massive investment bank, let alone land a job there. The difference is attitude: act like you're supposed to be there. Life's all a confidence trick.

Over the past couple of weeks, I've faced the horrendous realisation that I'm unexceptional. I mean, I'm on the right side of the bell curve, but I'm not an outlier. What special achievements set me apart? What proof have I got of my intellect? Of course, the answer is that I'm distinctly average; perhaps even a little below average in some areas, thanks to excessive consumption of drugs and alcohol. I should have been swinging towards hypomania, but instead I've been suffering from an almighty self-doubt crisis.

Imposter syndrome has driven me to try harder; to concentrate. Anxiety and the sheer terror that I'm incapable of doing the job I've been doing for 20 years, is being slowly replaced by the welcome return of some belief in my own abilities.

Of course, now comes the threat of overconfidence. Perhaps now I'll swing hypomanic? Perhaps soon I'll declare myself Jesus Christ re-incarnated? Perhaps those doctors were right all along, and only pills can prevent the inevitable mood swing upwards?

I don't think so.

I worked on a long project last year and I was stable. The role was incredibly boring, and it was very hard to stay motivated, but money got me out of bed in the morning and money kept me at my desk until the end of the working day. Last year was a triumph of money's ability to restore mental health, through wealth. It's no accident that the countries with the biggest rich-poor gap also have the worst depression and anxiety. Anybody who tells you that rich people get depressed too, or that poor Africans are really happy is just perpetuating anecdotal nonsense - being poor in a rich country is incredibly toxic to mental wellbeing.

It's true that I've sorted myself out financially a few times now, only to throw it all away, but that's dual-diagnosis not mental illness. Bipolar has allowed me to have a lovely life. I don't want to change from feast and famine; highs and lows. However, undoubtably I'll be tempted to take drugs again once my bank balance is replenished.

If you're wondering what's going to stop me from relapsing into addiction, once I've dug myself out of the hole, then I'm afraid you're going to have to wait. Recovery from an acute episode of dual-diagnosis - depression, hypomania and substance dependency - is well beyond what I'd planned to write in this single essay. I'm going to have to revisit this topic, because it's fascinating to me: my life depends on it.

My train from London to Wales fast approaches Swansea, completing my 2,500 mile roundtrip. Of course, it's been a much, much longer journey than that.

Tags: #bipolar #addiction #career

This is a story about missed connections...

Like many people, I have a large collection of digital photos. My library starts in 2005, when a group of friends and I pooled our holiday snaps from a trip to Venezuela. Travel photography is the main thing that featured until my life started getting erratic. I have an increasingly random muddle of photos and screenshots, like a breadcrumb trail leading back to saner and more stable times.

2008 was the beginning of a much more exciting life than I had led before. I quit my investment banking career, developed some iPhone apps, retrained as an electrician, called off my wedding and went back to IT consultancy work. Having lived under the dark storm-cloud of an abusive relationship for far too long, I finally decided I'd had enough and broke up with my fiancée. I made a new group of friends and rebooted my life - as a prescription for depression, that shock treatment worked perfectly.

Fast-forward to 2011 and I knew that my relationship - back together with the girl who my friends call "the poison dwarf" - was destroying my world and ruining my happiness. I spent 3 amazing months in Cambridge and I'd fallen in love with somebody else, but I was too loyal; too faithful; too committed to give up on a failing relationship and go for what I really wanted.

In 2012 I capitulated and tried to follow doctor's orders - I started taking medication - and went back to the life I hated. I returned to the investment bank I'd previously worked for and tried to pretend like I was OK with that. I even got married to "the poison dwarf". I tried my very hardest to put on the boring grey suit and pretend like I was able to work doing the 9 to 5 office routine that I'd done for years and years, but my heart was broken.

I guess I never really got over the fact that I hadn't followed my dreams; followed my heart.

2013 brought the inevitable divorce, which necessitated selling my house and figuring out what to do with all my worldly possessions. In short, I didn't want anything to do with my toxic old life: the place and the things and the pain of everything getting ripped to shreds was just too much to bear. I wanted the whole lot to burn to the ground so I could start over. I wanted a fresh start.

I tried to court that girl from Cambridge who I'd fallen in love with - she liked me too and things were going well. It looked like I was going to break free from the gravity that tried to pull me back into a black hole. Despite me telling "the poison dwarf" that she could take as much as she wanted, she tried to destroy me. She just needed to leave me alone to get on with my new life, but she made the process of divorce into an unbelievably horrible disaster. Despite my attempts to make things quick and painless and give her a big cash settlement, she sabotaged my every effort.

In the midst of the acrimonious divorce, I tried to get away from the worsening British weather and get some rest and relaxation before Christmas. I was going to go to Florida and do some skydiving, and then I was going to go to San Francisco to see my friends in the Bay Area. The house should have been sold; the cash should have been in the bank - it wasn't, because "the poison dwarf" had screwed up the easy house sale that I'd worked so hard to make happen.

I was too sick to take my flight to America.

I think of 2014 as my annus horribilis given that I spent about 11 weeks receiving inpatient treatment, essentially for the problems caused by getting screwed over as a vulnerable person, by my ex-wife. She'd demanded a quick divorce and I'd said "take whatever you want" but then she made it unspeakably awful. After a rotten birthday where I found myself well and truly homeless, I repeated my magic trick of 2008: I got myself back into IT consultancy and made a load of new friends; I flew off to Tenerife with my new girlfriend and went kitesurfing. From the depths of despair and near destruction, I rose up and rebuilt myself.

What happened in 2015, 2016 and 2017, combined a winning formula of highly paid IT consultancy work and my ability to make new friends and rebuild my life, with the sensation-seeking desire to maintain a novel lifestyle: if nothing else, my life has been very exciting for the past few years.

Whereas most people live in fear of tarnishing their professional reputation and losing everything they own and hold dear, I found those things became incredibly cumbersome when I was unwell. To maintain appearances and pretend like everything is just fine, is immensely energy-draining. It's almost driven me insane, worrying about what former work colleagues and bosses think about me; what people know about my chequered past. Far, far, far more than the abuse my body has suffered, and the mental health problems I've been through, the biggest problem in my life has been worrying about people finding out the very things that I've catalogued on the pages of this blog, quite publicly.

We are now approaching a third San Francisco flight that has been booked, but there is a great deal of uncertainty regarding whether I will be going or not. I dearly wish to see an old schoolfriend who was pivotal in raising the alarm on social media, to the fact that I was in the process of killing myself - in essence, he was the last person I spoke to while still alive, telling him that I was sorry I wouldn't be seeing him in November [because I'd be dead].

It fucking horrifies me that the managing director of the company who I was working for at the time - who booked my flights out to San Francisco - was in the process of attempting to terminate my employment while I was on life support in intensive care... because he'd read this on Twitter!

Given that I've stubbornly refused to die, I feel like taking the trip to San Francisco in defiance of the arsehole who didn't care whether I lived or died. That gobsmackingly awful human being deserves to have to see me alive and well, taking a trans-Atlantic flight to go and see an old friend who actually cared about my life.

I feel like I might be calling on you - my social media friends - to help me raise Hell to show that vulnerable people shouldn't get screwed over by unscrupulous arseholes.

So, this is my call to action: I'd like to speak to you and I'd like your support in turning up the heat on people who put personal profit ahead of human lives. I've been wondering what to do with myself, and this feels like an important point; this feels like something symbolic.

Whether it's my ex-wife who literally said "I'd rather be a widow than a divorcee" or my ex-boss who literally fired me for being dead, I want to stand up to these fucking arseholes.

Tags: #career

This is a story about being superfluous to requirements...

Three blank spaces have been deliberately left on this blister pack of pills, by the manufacturer. Instead of ten capsules per strip, there are seven. In a box which could contain 120 capsules, there are just 84.

As I sit or stand around like a spare prick at a wedding, eating food, taking up room and using energy, I'm mindful that it must look to some people like I'm having a jolly holiday. Wouldn't we all bunk off work if we could? Wouldn't we all like to sleep in late and not have to get up and out of bed for anything in particular?

It's quite excruciatingly painful, to not feel at all useful.

Tags: #career

This is a story about free will...

Having spent the best part of a month in hospital, I am now convalescing in the Welsh countryside. It's remote, rural, peaceful and therapeutic, which is exactly what I need. Why on earth wouldn't I stay here, when this is the very best place I could be for my health and wellbeing?

If you believe in free will, then I'm afraid you're quite deluded. Every decision we make is heavily biased by circumstantial factors.

Having experienced the stress of moving to new places, getting jobs, making friends and otherwise climbing the greasy pole, I've got nothing to prove - I know exactly what to do and exactly what to expect. I have very little motivation to repeat the same well-worn moves that I learned a long time ago - I'm sick of playing the same old game. Rebuilding my life holds no surprises; only stress and misery.

Thus, I arrived at the decision to die, some time ago.

When you've decided to die, there isn't any fear of failure, shame, embarrassment or any of the other things which would usually predispose your behaviour towards more risk-averse choices.

If you look at my life choices through the prism of depression and defeatism - I have no desire to play by fucked up rules - things make a lot more sense than any stupid over-simplifications. Perhaps you think I'm infantile, immature and irresponsible? In actual fact, I'm not inflicting this shit on children who didn't ask to be born. I'm terminating the cycle of pain: somebody's gotta stand up to the relay-race of human misery, where fathers fuck up their sons.

I'm not critical of parenthood per se, but it would be irresponsible of me to spawn offspring of my own when my kid(s) might ask me one day "if you had a miserable life, then why did you bring me into the world?". Given that my children might ask about my own unhappy childhood, it seems unconscionable to take the chance that I could perpetuate that misery.

In a world of war, famine, climate change and spiralling problems, we are clearly on collision course with disaster. I don't want to add to the world's woes. To be yet another sharp-elbowed parent, concerned with the propagation of my genes at the expense of everything else, does not seem like a good idea when there's another option: to not do that.

I can end the male lineage and bury the surname "Grant" which I inherited from a heroin addict. I can do my bit and act in accordance with a conscience that encompasses more than my animal instinct to rut like a beast and impregnate willy-nilly.

Fucked up ungrateful entitled rich spoiled know-it-all brat says my shattered brain. I think about the people who've tried to help me; who care about me. I feel guilty that I feel so bad; still feel suicidal. Countless opportunities seem to be open to me - am I rejecting them? Am I throwing the 'gifts' that I have received back in the faces of the bearers? If I am ungrateful, so what?

My charmed existence has led me to a situation that's quite wonderful, but also exquisitely painful because of it - this isn't real life I think to myself. I can't stay here. The need to earn money to pay for debt and taxes will force me back onto the treadmill. The misery of the rat race is inescapable, except through suicide.

Tags: #suicide #depression #career

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I know"

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

"I've read your blog. I know"

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

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

I live in fear of cyberstalking.

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

My fear of cyberstalking is a little different.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tags: #writing #socialmedia #career

This is a story about the comeback kid...

Here's quite an interesting document, to me anyway - it says that I was transferred to a Northern city hospital's intensive care unit (ITU) on Sunday 10th September and all I had were the clothes on my back. The date of my original admission to hospital - Saturday 9th September 2017 - is shown quite clearly in the top left, under my name.

The reason why this document is interesting to me, is that I started having seizures at some point after arriving in hospital. I was already well into a fatal tramadol and codeine overdose when the emergency services got to me. I'm pretty sure I remember the hospital telling me that they'd make me as comfortable as possible but I was probably going to die, or words to that effect.

I've been through all my paperwork and I can't find my hospital discharge summary. I suspect that it may have gone wayward during the insane events of the Wednesday & Thursday following my fatal overdose. I will be obtaining another copy as soon as I can. Any documents I can lay my hands on are useful for me, because seizures, coma and unconsciousness are not particularly conducive to remembering the events of my hospitalisation very well.

What must be self-evident is that I was very sick indeed, to have been in intensive care.

Anybody who's followed my story knows about my plans. One only needs to go back to a blog post on August 10th to see one of the actual boxes of legally prescribed medication that constituted part of my fatal overdose.

I use those words fatal overdose quite deliberately. I had calculated the dose that would be fatal, doubled it and then chucked in another shitload of prescription opiates for good measure. I wasn't messing around. This wasn't a cry for help. This wasn't some attention seeking bullshit. This was a very real, calculated, pre-planned and meticulously executed suicide - following the precise steps that I had outlined earlier in the day.

It might surprise you to learn that I set an alarm on my phone, so that I wouldn't tweet or otherwise let on that I was in the process of killing myself, before I was beyond the point of no return. Who does that? Certainly not somebody who has any intention of going on living, I would've thought. Would you be brave enough to take a fatal overdose and gamble that you might get saved by social media? Seems like a pretty dumb publicity stunt or way of getting attention - in all probability you'd just wind up dead.

I remember when I was in the Emergency Department of the hospital, trying desperately to get a drink of water - I was fully aware that having more fluids in me would allow more of the deadly medications to be absorbed into my bloodstream, accelerating my death. The hospital were wise to my suicidal intent and they knew that they could ignore my requests to not be treated, as soon as I fell unconscious or started having seizures. The anaesthetists must have stepped in at some point and put me into a medically induced coma.

Imagine waking up in a hospital gown, with a tube coming out of your piss hole, sellotaped to your leg. Imagine waking up and not being able to speak, because there's a tube down your throat. Imagine waking up and all you can see all around you are machines that are either pumping stuff into you or taking stuff out - loads of screens and loads of digital readouts. I had more input and output ports than a Personal Computer (PC) from the 1990s.

I've written about this before, but I need to write about it again, because I'm trying to process what happened to me with only the scant information that's available. Between the hospital and the police, they pretty much conspired to keep my friends, family and work colleagues completely in the dark about whether I'd lived or died and what the hell was going on. I wasn't really conscious until Tuesday 12th of September 2017 - that's quite a long time to be in limbo land. On the Tuesday, I was vaguely aware that my sister and my work colleagues wanted to speak to me, and I wanted to speak to them, but I wasn't allowed to. What utter bullshit.

The police have since phoned the company that I was working for, and told them in no uncertain terms that I was in hospital and not at all able to communicate with them to let them know I was going to be off work on the Monday & Tuesday. However, the company has severed all contact with me and has been avoiding the office since Wednesday 13th September 2017. What on earth could they be so afraid of, that they daren't answer the phone or go to the office? What on earth are they thinking? I have no idea, because they won't return my calls or reply to my emails.

Over that Wednesday & Thursday following my fatal overdose, everything collapsed around my ears. Without a phone, wallet, cash, laptop or any of the other things most of us take for granted every single day, I was lost in a city that was nearly completely alien to me, with not a single person to turn to. It was highly distressing. It was exhausting and stressful, to go from place to place, replacing whatever I could.

The Apple Store in the nearby shopping centre became the centre of my world, having been impolitely muscled out of my office with rather flimsy excuses. I dug my heels in, because something fishy was going on and I wanted people to come clean - what the fuck was going on? Why was I being treated so unprofessionally? It was a horrible experience, and not something I should have been put through, given my recent discharge from hospital.

I received a phonecall saying I had an email with some letters from a solicitor, from the company I was working for. How was I supposed to read this email, without my laptop or smartphone? Nobody from the company would speak to me properly. I did not receive even the bare minimum professional courtesy that should be extended to somebody who'd been a valued member of the team for some time.

Because the matter is now being handled by legal professionals, due to the complete refusal of the company to treat me with the common decency that any human being might expect - let alone adhere to contract and UK laws - I can't really go into any more detail. I'll be sure to share the details of any court proceedings so that this blasted company can't get away with their inexcusable misbehaviour.

Of course, the pages of this blog document my darkest secrets in unflinching detail, but this is therapy for me and I do not mix my professional and my social media identities in a way that might besmirch or sully the reputation of a company that is trading ethically and within the law. There are a lot of Nick Grants out there in the world, and I'm just one of many. In fact, this whole blog could have been created by somebody who maliciously intended to impersonate me, for nefarious purposes, couldn't it? Have you been careful to check who actually controls my Twitter, Facebook and blog? Is there anywhere that there is a direct reference to who and what I actually do for a day job, that could justify the mistreatment I've suffered?

One should remember that this blog has been the best thing I ever did, in terms of being able to stabilise my life and recover my poise after homelessness, addiction, alcoholism, financial problems and a whole world of pain, absolutely tore me to shreds. Should I hang my head in shame and hide in the shadows? Should I keep my mouth shut, and pretend that nothing bad ever happened to me?

There's absolutely no way you're gonna shut me up without killing me. I'm loud and I'm proud. It's more important that I write my story in unflinching detail, than cowering in fear and attempting to cover up what's happened to me. What have I got to be ashamed of? I've worked damn hard to get my shit together after it was blown to bits, so I'm damn well going to write about it.

Of course, culturally we only allow those who are already successful to share their stories of their life struggles, that challenge the status quo and our preconceptions. Paul Gascoigne and George Best have done a lot to bring the ethical debates surrounding alcohol abuse into the public consciousness, for example. Ronnie O'Sullivan and Stephen Fry have candidly shared their experiences of cocaine addiction, but yet we still revere them as great people... why is this? If you've been reading carefully, you'll know that I'm teetotal and I'm not on any drugs, except for pregabalin (for nerve damage) and zopiclone (because it's bloody hard to sleep on a noisy psychiatric ward of a hospital) which are both legally prescribed to me.

It seems I've taken a battering, because of foolish assumptions that have been made about me. Just about the only correct assumption that you could've made, is that I should probably be dead, after having ingested such a massive overdose and had plenty of time for it to take effect before the emergency services got me to hospital.

I really can't get myself into the mindset, where I would mistreat somebody who'd been hospitalised and was very sick. Please, somebody explain to me what have I done wrong, apart from what I've already very publicly admitted to? Is it right to crucify me; to punish me beyond the punishment that I've already suffered? Do you not think it was awful, what I've been through? Why would you put the boot in and kick me when I'm down? I don't understand why the shit continues to be rained down upon my head.

Does somebody want to explain to me how it's at all ethical, that I came to find myself homeless, unemployed and isolated in a city I'd never set foot in two months ago, after I took all the risks and put in so much effort to try and make a go of things?

Answers on a postcard to Nick Grant, Planet Earth.

Tags: #suicide #depression #mentalhealth #bipolar #career

This is a story about key performance indicators...

Most of us have salaried jobs and most of us have line managers. We sit down once or twice a year with our manager - the boss - and we agree some performance objectives for us to try and meet. When we have an appraisal of how well things have been going at work, we look at whether or not we managed to achieve what we were supposed to do.

I hate to have to break it to you, but what you're doing is complete and utter bollocks.

In hierarchical organisations, your pay rise and promotion prospects are decided by somebody who's been promoted into a position of total incompetence. Intrinsic to their very existence, organisations have a pyramid structure, where there are vast numbers of people trying to reach the next rung on the ladder; the next layer of middle-management.

You would hope that hard work and rhetoric about meritocratic culture would help you get ahead in life, but you've been playing the game by the wrong rules.

Work is a popularity contest. If you want to get the best pay rise and the best promotion, you have to be liked by people who are more senior than you are, and you have to make your boss look good: those are the only two rules.

If you are not liked by your boss and you didn't do any of the things that you were supposed to do, it doesn't matter at all, so long as you did things that make your boss look like he or she is 'managing' you effectively. If you are liked by multiple senior people, then your boss will not be able to block any ambitions you have for promotion, which is pretty much all your boss is trying to do - bosses are promoted until they can no longer be promoted, and then they block their subordinates from progressing in their careers.

Being liked by your peers and/or your subordinates is completely unimportant. Nobody gives a shit about the underlings' opinions. Nobody is ever going to ask your peer group what they think about you. Therefore, to be popular amongst people at the same level as you - or below - is only to waste precious time that you could spend impressing more senior people.

It is notable, that at no point have I mentioned doing any work. This is because doing work is a complete waste of time. Nobody ever got a pay rise or a promotion for doing actual work. If you're busy doing work, then how are you going to have any time to make yourself popular or do things that make your boss look good? If you do the things that you agreed with your boss, how can your boss take any credit for doing anything other than just doing their basic job?

Thus, organisations have disincentivised work and incentivised spending time kissing asses and yelling loudly about how great we are, while we attempt to get promoted into positions of incompetence.

Seriously, if you think you're good at your job, you're stuck at a dead-end - you're going nowhere.

Pictured above is a plastic crate full of empty wine bottles, beer bottles and beer cans. When the plastic crate is full, I can count the empty containers, read the ABV (Alcohol By Volume) off each one, and total up the aggregate amount of alcohol that I have consumed in a given time period. This gives me a data point, which I can record in a spreadsheet.

You might assume that there would be an inverse correlation between my alcohol consumption and my monthly take-home pay, but in fact, the very opposite is true - the more I drink, the more I earn.

I'm not going to argue with the data. The facts are the facts. My consumption of alcohol is the best predictor of my income. I can't tell you what the causality is, but I can tell you for certain that there is a correlation. However, I will tell you what my hypothesis is though.

Drinking is a social lubricant. I'm prone to saying and doing regrettable things while under the affluence of incahol, but the lunchtime 'sesh' or the after-work beers are not subject to any organisational hierarchies - we are all equals when inebriated. Being drinking buddies with the bosses never did any harm to anybody's career, provided you are not sick on anybody's shoes.

Being hungover compromises your ability to function, forcing you to find creative excuses for your lack of productivity. Hanging around the water-cooler or coffee machine - nursing a sore head - you often encounter your partners in crime from the previous night's drinking escapades, many of whom will be senior managers. When later questioned "what the f**k have you been doing all day?" you have a absolute watertight excuse that you have been talking to some highly respected member(s) of your organisation.

Over time, the objective of achieving tangible productive output is replaced by the skill of being drunk or hungover for most of the time that you're at work, while also looking busy and making influential friends.

If we consider a hypothetical scenario. Subject A works hard and drinks very little, but subject B works very little and drinks very hard. We then plot the salaries and alcohol consumption onto a comparative graph. When we do this, we can see that subject A is badly paid, whereas subject B's wages are significantly higher and climb steadily - well above the rate of inflation.

Furthermore, if we measure our hourly wage, based on the amount of sober and productive time that we give to our employers, we can see that the heavy drinkers - at least in my own case - are paid an astonishing amount of money for their work.

One caveat: drinking a bottle of vodka every night alone at home, is out of proportion with the amount of alcohol being consumed with members of your organisation. When social drinking metamorphosises into pure alcoholism, your hourly sober wage becomes infinite. You are swigging from a bottle hidden in your desk or your gym bag, in order to maintain your state of intoxication throughout the working day... you are not making your boss look good or increasing your popularity with senior managers. In short, your days are numbered.

Great companies are built on the foundations of alcohol & coffee. Some of the most amazing people I've ever met are 'functional alcoholics' but the pejorative term seems to be an oxymoron. It's impossible to decide whether alcohol gives us the 'Dutch courage' to tackle horribly stressful things, or whether people who shoulder great responsibility, are reaching for the bottle to salve their anxiety.

Of course, I am not encouraging you to drink intoxicating liquor, but it would be dishonest of me to deny the facts contained in the data and perpetuate the myth that sobriety and productivity are virtuous, in the amoral world of business.

One must question one's motives for continuing existence. Are you here to pass on your genes - to rear your progeny - and if so then why are you not having unprotected sex at every opportunity? Are you here to maximise the amount of time that you are drunk or high, and if so then why are you not drinking morning, noon and night?

Some of the more conceited individuals who walk amongst us - including myself - talk about leaving their "mark" on the world. I imagine leaving a fucking great big smoking crater, like the one from that huge asteroid that struck the Earth, wiping out the dinosaurs. That's not to say I want to commit mass murder, but simply that I'm on a trajectory travelling at high speed, and I have absolutely no idea what I'm going to smash into and what damage I'm going to cause.

To avoid the difficult questions and the certainty that you will die and leave a hole in people's lives, is folly.

Why is it that I gravitate towards brilliant individuals, who are never teetotal vegans who abstain from sex, masturbation and everything else that might be vaguely enjoyable? Why is it that when you scratch the surface of anything that glitters like gold, there's a strangely alluring stench of debauchery?

If I wanted to die in obscurity, written off as an addict and an alcoholic, would I not have just allowed society to label me and blame me for everything that's fucked up and has no other convenient scapegoat? How can we hold William S. Burroughs and Ernest Hemingway in such high regard, when they epitomise alcoholism, heroin addiction and suicide?

To say I'll die a meaningless death is apparently untrue ("you'd be missed") but to say that my death will have repercussions - like ripples in a pond - is conceited and a dreadful cliché... many suicides are motivated by the idea that it's the grandest of gestures.

We must all confront our own mortality, and every day that you spend 'doing your job' is just a waste of fucking time.

Tags: #alcohol #career #suicide

This is a story about depression and burnout...

If there's one thing I hate, it's a long drawn out journey to the grave. I really don't want to be on my deathbed, remembering the past, but unable to distinguish one day from any other. So many of us are in a routine of waking up, pressing the "snooze" button, having a shower, getting dressed, going to boring bullshit jobs, coming home, watching TV, preparing some food, loading the dishwasher, doing washing & ironing, and having joyless sex or masturbating to pornography - all purely to relieve the animal urges to copulate, eat, drink, piss, shit and sleep.

Life offers very few opportunities for memorable experiences, especially if you have made the ethical decision not to clone your genes through the impregnation of yourself or somebody else. This does not automatically mean that I consider myself morally superior or in a position to hand down judgements from my high horse. To write emotively on one topic does not logically confer that I hold negative views on those who have embarked up the one-way street that is motherhood or fatherhood. Please; do not send me your protestations that being a parent is both tough and rewarding. I KNOW that parenthood is something that I have no first-hand experience of. I DO respect everyone's unique set of life decisions - everyone's gotta live their own life as best as they see fit, and are able to do, playing the cards that have been randomly dealt to them.

My approach to life remains very much the same as it's always been: high risk, high reward.

I joked with a girl - mocking her - that I had fathered a string of illegitimate bastard children, and was being mercilessly pursued by the Child Support Agency (CSA) for money to pay for the upkeep of these offspring that I had carelessly brought into the world. She thought I was being serious.

So, where is all my wealth hidden? I've been a top-bracket taxpayer for most of my working life. Surely I can't have squandered so much disposable income on drink & drugs, and also been able to have a successful career. This is either unthinkable, or grossly unfair that I've had such a surplus, but yet still managed to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory.

I've paid for convenience whenever I've been able to. Why would I clean my toilet, when I could pay somebody less than I earn per hour? While the cleaner has the close encounter with the porcelain throne, I could be working on a more glamourous project that pays very handsomely. It's a false economy to clean your own toilet, just as it is to do all of the many household chores, which can be done by a professional housekeeper.

When you apply this cost:benefit analysis to your entire life, you end up spending 37.5 hours a week reading news websites and planning your next holiday; enjoying a lifestyle that is approaching the much vaunted "age of leisure".

If you think I'm lazy, you're wrong. Only a crazy person would do the same repetitive tasks that they could easily automate, or train somebody who's prepared to do the work - subcontracted or outsourced - for less money, which leaves you with a net profit AND you don't have to do the shitty job. Repeat this process, because it is scalable, and you're on the right path... assuming you want to be rich and have lots of spare time. Perhaps you LIKE punching meaningless numbers into spreadsheets. Perhaps you WANT to clean toilets.

I looked at a list of the seven deadly sins, and realised that I could be a poster boy for Christian immorality.

If you've ever taken an interest in astrology and the signs of the zodiac, then you're easily fooled by writing that is deliberately ambiguous, leaving the interpretation to the reader, to apply to his or her own life. Religion has made a healthy living out of contrived platitudes that are completely meaningless in the context of the realities of human existence. The Bible, the Qu'ran, the Torah and all the other religious texts are so written as to be [mis]interepreted by the faithful flock.

One might as well say that if you breathe air, drink water, consume fats, proteins, carbohydrates, salts, amino acids and other vitamins and minerals, as well as trace amounts of every element & chemical compound, then you're a doomed sinner. If you urinate, defecate, ejaculate and perspirate, you're going straight to Hell. The demons that walk amongst us, corrupting our innocence and threatening to plunge society into chaos and destruction, are those who fornicate, copulate and enjoy fellatio or cunnilingus. The fact that all of these things are encoded into the very fabric of our corporeal vessels - the DNA of almost every cell in our body - is a fact that seems to have escaped the notice of those who are so easily conned by priests, vicars, preachers, witch doctors, shaman, tarot card readers, astrologers and other snake-oil salesmen and women.

I imagine I'd be pretty bummed if I found out I had an incurable terminal illness that was going to cut my life short, versus my expected lifespan. What would I do about it though? Which god should I pray to?

As a wise friend of mine said, you can be tricked by your genes into believing that love and hormonal bonding are real and tangible. If you think that parents, grandparents, great grandparents - and so on - are somehow going to end up 'less dead' than the people who didn't try to clone themselves, you're wrong. Even in the most anthropocentric & egocentric of interpretations of theoretical physics, you will have to witness the death of everybody you know, as well as the destruction of the planet, the solar system and the galaxies. Eventually entropy will be victorious over the entire universe, with time itself ceasing to be a meaningful concept and nowhere for you - or indeed anything - to exist.

If you believe in god(s) capable of making man and a world fit for human habitation, then you must also accept that this power is equally capable of destruction. He taketh away as much as He giveth - you can surely see this with your own eyes. This is the other side of the same coin that says that an infinitely small point, with infinite density and infinite energy, suddenly exploded into a universe. Following the same reasoning, either the universe will eventually collapse back into itself, by the force of its own gravitational pull, or it will expand until it is so uniformly cool and sparse that it is indistinguishable from the most perfect of vacuums - absolute nothingness.

I look at the world through a madman's eyes - I've read so much and delved so deep into the realm of the theoretical, proven in physical experiments as well as experiments that one can conduct through logical thought alone. I've seen, in my mind's eye, things that cannot be unseen. As Douglas Adams joked, if you see too much of the universe all at once it will destroy you - it's the ultimate torment; the ultimate death.

In an uncaring universe, I can see why people would seek comfort in the fairytale worlds of sky monsters and star signs, but it's pure childishness and immaturity. However, I envy the blissfully ignorant; I envy the blindly faithful, unshakable in their wilful stupidity.

I've worked very hard to master the machines of pure logic and reason - the computers - as well as spending most of my hard-earned wealth on lengthy periods, where I have absented myself from the demands of menial day-to-day existence. I told you that you were wrong about me having squandered my money on drink and drugs. The vast bulk of my conscious waking hours have been spent in startling sobriety; completely crystal clear thinking.

I carved three deep gashes the length of my forearm, with blood gushing out aplenty, before the arrival of two Metropolitan Police officers interrupted me. I can give you the long and exact chain of decisions that led me to do this, which were robustly defended by a logical thesis. That the police arrived was not a surprising outcome for me; in fact I had already anticipated everything that happened that day. The only thing that surprised me was that I was able to bandage my self-inflicted injuries using an actual first aid kit, which I discovered by chance, rather than having to resort to sanitary towels, kitchen roll and sellotape.

You would think that I would be completely insane, completely alcoholic, completely drug addicted or perfectly healthy, contented and conspicuously rich. Scratch the surface, and every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.

If you think the world's gonna end, why hasn't it already? If you think everything's held in stable equilibrium, you simply haven't looked outside your front door: it's fucking war out there and nothing is stable at all. Civilisations destroy themselves and species go extinct - there's evidence of it everywhere.

Thus, you discover me - a distilled and concentrated form of sinner; completely unrepentant and embodying everything you were told in church to fear and shun; the very epitome of evil. Yet, I'm made of the same stuff as you.

I invite you to judge me; to critiqué me. I invite this criticism, because how can good exist, without evil?

Tags: #career #depression #suicide #bipolar #physics #religion