This is a story about how people respond to incentives...

The last time I was in the Accident & Emergency department of a general hospital, I got a ticking off from the consultant. It was almost as if he didn't understand that the threat of kidney failure and early death was no disincentive to the path through life I was taking. It shouldn't have been a surprise to him: I hadn't gone to the hospital through choice, but instead the police had taken me there.

This was my life for a while: being passed from pillar to post by people who didn't understand what I was going through or how to deal with me. One thing that everybody seemed to agree on though, was that tough love was probably the best option. I should be ridiculed, shamed, talked down to and ostracised until I "saw sense" and decided to change the course of my life. Why would anybody choose the life that I had?

Actually, the police were excellent, seeing as they deal with society's dregs day in and day out. The well-to-do Royal Free hospital on the hills of London's exclusive Hampstead, was perhaps less used to dealing with those who have lost their way in life. Certainly, those who were struggling with drink and addiction, that I met, were sent to more central hospitals, like UCLH on the Euston Road.

I certainly don't see hospital as the first port of call, to rectify issues, and I bandaged my own massive leg wound and would have tried to avoid hospital, had paramedics not insisted that I was admitted, on another occasion.

It is only with regret that I have consumed NHS resources, but I certainly don't feel that there was any choice in the matter. When I injured my leg one night on London's streets, alone, I pulled out the broken glass and let it heal as I lay in agony in a bush for several days, with the blood-soaked wound sticking to my torn trousers. It needed stitches and I needed antibiotics to avoid infection, but I was lucky. I saved the NHS some money and I've got the scars to prove it.

Passing the buck, and driving somebody away from their home, family and friendship groups... making somebody feel ashamed, turning them into an outcast, demonising and villainising somebody... that's ridiculous!

I picked the wrong life partner: somebody judgemental, violent, abusive. That's my fault. I wasn't equipped with the life experience to know that I should walk away. My own parents relationship was full of verbal abuse and psychological warfare, but they stayed together: commitment to a partner was all I knew. I was naïvely optimistic that things would finally work, if only I tried hard enough.

When depression worsened and became bipolar disorder, when bipolar was overshadowed by addiction... things were chaotic, and consumed my sanity, temporarily. I was heavily dependent, trusting, of my partner and my Dad, and my GP. They acted with ignorance and without consideration of my wishes. Later, my partner would act with spite and selfishness.

It's hard to recover if your partner is working against you, and has your Dad in co-operation too. But, I'm going over heavily trodden ground. I don't mean to re-iterate this. I mean instead to talk about another approach: carrot, not stick.

I was dealing with something, in technical terms, called a clusterfuck. A combination of mental health problems, an unsupportive partner, unsupportive and even obstructive family, sex addiction, drug addiction, having to find a new home, new friends, new job... it's too much to ask of somebody. A breakdown, a major relapse, becoming completely dysfunctional: this was made inevitable by the circumstances around me.

Only the police acted with any restraint. The police see lives ruined, and people enter into the revolving-doors of criminal justice. The police know that slapping a criminal conviction onto somebody makes their life harder, rather than improving their chances of rehabilitation into society, so they are reluctant to condemn somebody to that fate. However, many in the rest of society are keen to label and ostracise and destroy their fellow human beings.

We are living in an increasingly isolated society, where we are mistrustful of each other. We avoid listening to anybody's personal story, lest it instil some sense of sympathy within ourselves. To view every stranger as a potential murderer, rapist, paedophile, thief and dirty junkie, is easier than just seeing other human beings, and feeling compelled to hesitate in the rat race for a second and give somebody a hand up.

We are all competing with one another so fiercely, that we believe that it is only with intensely selfish and self-centred actions, to the detriment of society as a whole, that we can get ahead, that we can succeed. We believe that we are helping our family, by turning a blind eye to the beggars, the homeless, the poor and the addicts and alcoholics.

The welfare state is being dismantled. The sympathy of society and the basic human instinct for care and compassion is being eroded. Instead we have a culture of "every man for himself" and we'll allow incredible human suffering to be perpetrated in our names, because we are sold good vs. evil fairytales by a wealthy elite, intent on turning us into scared, isolated consumers.

I feel with certainty that the depression that I feel - the dissatisfaction with what I see in the world - stems directly from an unpleasant attitude that's prevalent everywhere I look: the collapse of social bonds, and the mistrust of strangers, neighbours, fellow human beings.

I've paid over £30,000 just to be treated like a human being, by some kind and compassionate, non-judgemental people. That's all it takes to help somebody on the road to recovery: just don't be an arsehole to them. Be consistently nice to each other, and the world won't be such a shit place that people get depressed in, want to get intoxicated and want to kill themselves.

Yes, it's true that when my life is absolutely appalling, I will probably run to drink & drugs. What's the alternative? The razor blade and the noose.

They feed you in hospital. You could try starving people, to punish them for getting sick, but seeing as that's how I ended up in hospital I can't see why that would work. Carrot works. Stick doesn't

Tags: #depression #suicide #bipolar #mentalhealth #nhs #addiction #drugs

This is a story about a fresh start...

Why do we believe we can motivate change by shaming people, blaming them, making them feel guilty, placing even more obstacles in their path, isolating them, damaging their self-esteem and denying them the basic respect that every human should expect to receive?

My assumption, from childhood, school and my longest relationship, is that I'm going to be physically and verbally abused, to get me to comply with somebody else's idea of how I should think and act.

If you tell somebody they're "bad" enough times, sometimes, that person might say "screw it" and start acting up to the bad name you've given them. If you always expect the worst from somebody, one day, they might start fulfilling your long-held prophecy.

I saw a satirical cartoon the other day, where a policeman arrests a person doing drugs, because "drugs destroy lives". That person is then tried in court and sent to prison, and of course, they then can't get a job, seeing that they're a convicted criminal. When the policemen then sees that person, now living destitute on the street, the policeman says "I told you so!".

I've been trying to escape the gravity of an abusive relationship for quite a long time now. It's harder than you think. When your partner that you love has no respect for you, and your self esteem is destroyed, you can't expect a person to get back on their feet quickly. You don't know how deep the damage runs.

I've still got the shouting and screaming and battering of doors ringing in my ears. Imagine being shut into a tiny room, with somebody raging and snarling and unleashing a torrent of vicious aggression on the other side of the door. Imagine being trapped in that corner, not knowing when it's going to end, not having any way out.

I'm not looking for pity. I'm trying to explain how a confident, outgoing, gregarious character, with a bright, sunny positive disposition, might end up becoming pale and withdrawn. How that person might end up falling foul of escapist traps, and being brainwashed into believing that they're a "bad", "evil" and "worthless" person.

I've been asked to carry the can, to shoulder a shit-tonne of blame. I've been asked to beat myself up and hold myself accountable for every 'choice' I've made, and every consequence. I'm expected to think of myself as some isolated individual, who acted entirely with free will... I'm not subject to influence of other people, circumstances, my environment. Apparently I'm the first person in the history of the Universe to be in total control of my own destiny.

I don't think it's at all useful, this idea of holding everybody accountable for unforeseeable consequences, or the unavoidable results of being beaten into a corner. Does it really make you feel better, to have subdued a person, where they just resentfully start to parrot your bullshit? Does it really feel like a victory to have abused a person to the point that they submit to your muscle-flexing and intimidation?

Feeling sorry for myself is not going to lead anywhere positive. Yes, if you do wrong by a person, you do give them an excuse to act up, to react. I'm sorry, but if you're going to treat a person like shit, you have given them the mandate to act the way you wanted them to. That's not to say that you've revealed or changed that person's character though. There's no such thing as 'bad' or 'evil' people... we're all shaped by the world around us.

It's taken a hell of a long time to move judgemental, unkind people with no compassion or understanding, away from me. Breaking the bonds with people who were supposed to care - but don't - is a hard thing to do. It's not my job to re-educate those who would rather see a life destroyed than admit they're wrong. It's not my job to soak up the abuse of somebody who's got an axe to grind, and I'm their punchbag.

I don't want to become another bitter, twisted, negative, cynical and bullying individual, out to trample other people in order to get ahead myself. If I can't beat them, I'm not going to join them... I'm going to put as much space between me and them as possible.

When we think about Game Theory, and specifically a game called Prisoner's Dialemma, what strategy would you employ? In this game, the person who rats out their co-conspirator stands to gain the most, by stabbing their partner-in-crime in the back. The person who acts in a positive, giving, trusting way stands to potentially lose everything, even though their motive is to reach the fairest possible outcome.

I refuse to switch my strategy to that used by my persecutors. I refuse to become a backstabber, because then the whole world just turns into a horrible place of mistrust and unpleasantness. I don't want to live in a world where everybody is out to screw over everybody else.

I have literally turned the other cheek. I had the trust that, having received a black eye one side, I would return my face to centre and allow it to be struck the other side, if my abusive partner wished to dish out further unprovoked blows to my head. They gleefully gave me a black eye on the other side, before planting one square in the middle of my face, breaking my nose.

Even with self defence as a reasonable just cause to raise my own fists, I'm quite glad to say that I simply took that beating and stood by my strongly held beliefs that we can't simply descend to the level of animals, and be ruled by our temper, anger, aggression, violence.

When I eventually cracked, it was with glee that I had given this vicious person exactly what they wanted, and they tried to label me as the 'bad guy'. For some crazy reason, I felt guilty about no longer wanting to be the passive punchbag. For some crazy reason I felt guilty about defending myself. For some crazy reason I felt guilty about retreating into a corner, in self-defence.

This abusive partner had the gall to talk about me infringing their human rights, when they had me as a prisoner in my own home. Violence, aggression, verbal abuse... and I was the bad guy for using a door as a shield to protect myself from the blows of their fists, and kicks. That doesn't make any sense.

That was how this horrible, horrible relationship ended, with me having been sealed into my own tomb, a sarcophagus. I had no access to a toilet, food or drinking water, but still it was me who was in the wrong, despite the fact I was completely trapped, dying, in a corner.

When the separation was mercifully forced upon this unrelentingly vicious person, a friend took pity on me and took me into his home, to release me from the place that had become my prison cell.

It should come as no surprise that there was lasting psychological damage from the sustained attacks that I received. However, the expectation - especially from my family - was that I should bounce back immediately and be absolutely fine. They were even surprised to find that given the same treatment: shouting abuse at me, while cornering me, would give the same negative response of me retreating into a position of trapped self-defence, paralysed by fear.

It was me who made the brave steps to start moving forwards. I was living with a generalised threat of abuse, invasion of privacy, being attacked anywhere, anytime. I had gone through the long period of abuse, and been psychologically scarred, but it was me who made the first moves to try and repair the damage.

I tried to allow myself to be even more open to attack. I tried to fight fear with trust. I thought that by allowing myself to be in a vulnerable situation, things would somehow improve. It's very hard to let yourself be vulnerable when you've been so deeply affected by something that's damaged you so deeply.

My attempt to open myself up to abuse by my persecutors backfired spectacularly. Psychologically, I couldn't cope with that level of threat, and it made me act in a very strange way. The net result was that I kept myself hiding in my corner, with absolutely no defence. I spent 3 days paralysed by fear, before eventually being physically attacked by a member of my family who's supposed to love and care for me. I was hospitalised with a major injury. Hardly a success.

Later, I ended up in large hostel dormitories, which meant the total loss of all personal space, privacy... living in a totally exposed way, under continuous scrutiny. Again, you can't imagine how hard it is to be suffering major psychological trauma, while being watched like a goldfish in its bowl by nosey strangers. Many people found it far more entertaining to stare at me, rather than get on with their own lives, mind their own business.

People found me fascinating to sit and stare at. Instead of leaving me alone, moving away from me and the shit that I've been dealing with, they've been drawn to me like moths to a flame. They've pulled up a chair, got out the popcorn and sat back to enjoy the show.

"Oh my god, this is awful" they must have exclaimed. "I know, we can't miss a single second of this engrossing stuff. It's so entertaining" is what they really mean. Nobody recoiled in horror, or could tear their eyes away. They were fascinated, intrigued. Are we so used to seeing pain and human suffering on TV that we genuinely consider it entertainment, a spectacle for us to simply sit back and observe, for our own sick pleasure?

One of my friends, who actually understands a bit of what I've been through, actually managed to convince people that I'm not part of the paid entertainment. I'm not a one man travelling show, for your viewing pleasure. Much to my audience's disappointment, he actually convinced them to go and gawp at something else. That helped. A lot.

Very recently, another friend masterfully diverted attentions from creating an unwelcome storm, an intrusion that would have been unhelpful. He recognised the hallmarks of somebody trapped by psychological trauma, and actually held back those forces that I feared so much, so that some repair work was finally done.

Fools rush in, and first, do no harm. These are good mottos. If you don't understand what somebody is going through, it's not a spectator sport, and you don't know what damage your interference is going to do. Hands off, back away from the person who's trapped in the corner... don't drive them deeper into their attempts to fend off the world.

There's a hell of a long journey to feeling safe and secure in my own home again. It might not seem like it, because the story is a long and complex one, but there's a lot of damage to be repaired and it takes a lot of time.

It's the rushing that makes everything take so much longer. When you expect a person to be magically back to normal overnight, and you do nothing to understand what they've been through, or try to imagine what they're dealing with... that's what keeps a person trapped in a never-ending cycle.

You might think that episodes of illness prove that I'll never be fully better again, but it's actually you who is creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you mistreat a person, assume the worst, and act on your own negative views, of course you're going to trap a person into a position they can't escape.

It's hard enough to just deal with the backlog of problems. To have extra obstacles placed in front of you, to have support withdrawn and be left to fend for yourself... those are the reasons why lives get written off, why people sink without a trace.

It's a long game, helping somebody recover, get their strength back, get back on their feet. There are no short cuts, and there are no easy conclusions you can jump to. Even when you start to think you understand what makes a person tick, and you can extrapolate, guess, and work out what their possible future is, you're wrong. As soon as you start writing a person off, you're part of the problem. You're hurting and hindering that person.

I know it sucks to care about a person who's really hurting, and is really damaged. I know it's easier to protect yourself by joining in the attack on that person, rather than taking the harder road of actually undoing the years and years of attacks that an easy target sustains.

Once you've started to be abused and bullied, you get weaker, so you're easier to abuse and bully, and so the cycle continues and gets worse. Everybody wants to be on the winning team, to some extent, and there's an animal instinct to pick on the weak.

I think we should be better than that. We're humans, not wild animals. We need to be better than that.

Damaged people need a clean, fresh start, but you don't know how much baggage they've got. You don't know how much of a burden still rests on that person's shoulders. It takes a lot more effort than you could possibly imagine to give that person a chance of a fresh start, a clean break.

Tags: #divorce

This is a story about not being anonymous...

I'm not powerless over drugs and/or alcohol. My life has become pretty unmanageable, but I don't need a higher power to return me to sanity. I don't consider myself an alcoholic or an addict and I don't go to meetings.

I certainly have trouble turning down subsequent drinks, after I've had my first 2 pints of strong European lager and I'm enjoying the company of friends or work colleagues. It's probable that I will keep drinking until I've had 6 or 7 pints and I'm reaching an intoxication limit where I'm starting to slur my words and be unsteady on my feet. I won't keep drinking though... I'll normally bolt for home & bed when I've hit my limit.

I don't think I've had an alcoholic drink before midday on any day except Christmas Day, and even then, only a handful of times. I'm pretty sure I never went more than about 10 consecutive days where I got drunk. I know I did 115 days without a single drop of alcohol. I didn't cheat once, even though there were times that I was very tempted to bend the rules.

There have been times when my drinking was getting out of control, with beer every lunchtime, long Friday afternoons in the beer garden, drinking again when I got home, drinking all weekend. I'm not sure it ever qualified as 'problematic' though. Drinking was quite ingrained in the lifestyle of my friends and the work culture, to the point that despite many years of being half-cut in the office, nothing has ever been said, except for one day I was so hungover I didn't make it to my desk until 2pm.

But alcohol really isn't my problem. Supercrack is my poison of choice. Certainly if I have this drug in my possession, there is limited chance of me doing anything sane or rational. There's the added problem of unplanned binges as well. Once you pop, you can't stop.

When I am struggling with active addiction, I tell myself all sorts of lies. The main one is that I will act in some kind of reserved, controlled way. Once Supercrack is coursing its way through my drugstream, there is very little chance of me seeing onrushing death and health damage as any reason to curtail my foolish actions.

Do we think that the many relapses that I've had mean I'm an addict for life, and as such, should always attach that label to myself, even when I'm 'clean'? Well, it's certainly true that once experienced, things cannot be un-experienced, and there is disappointingly little dissipation in the desire to continue to use a drug that one has been addicted to, if there were no consequences.

Aversion therapy, is using negative reinforcement to break the addiction to something. If you link and associate enough unpleasant experiences with your addiction, the downsides start to outweigh the upsides, and it's not so difficult to stay 'clean'. Could you be said to no longer be 'addicted'?

Human memory is a strange thing though. Negative memories seem to fade faster than positive ones. When you recall some event that was extremely harrowing at the time, each time you think about it, it loses some of its pain and regret. Humans are programmed to be optimistic and take risks. Otherwise, we would never have risked leaving our caves to hunt and domesticate sharp-toothed & clawed predators.

Another lie that I tend to tell myself when I'm slipping back into active addiction, is that there will be some way to satisfy my addictive demands with some harm-reduced and risk-managed 'lapse' that will stave off a full relapse. In actual fact, this then gives the excuse for the next addict lie, which is that the use of drugs can then no longer cease until I'm fully satisfied that I have extracted the maximum possible from the experience, even though the trend is clearly destructively spiralling downwards.

This drive to end a period of addiction on your own terms is kind of laughable, if I look at myself with a harshly critical eye. I can see that there is never any recapturing the initial high that you experience when your tolerance is low and your body in a healthy state. Your days are literally numbered while you're in the grip of a dangerous addiction, and refusing to acknowledge that continuing is futile and foolish.

Most people run out of money or run out of luck before they have exhausted their demand for their drug of choice. The common street drugs have been on the market for long enough to find a price point that has been optimised to fit the addictiveness of the drug to an affordability that ensures steady demand.

I feel very grateful that I never became addicted to Cocaine, Crack Cocaine, Heroin, Crystal Meth or other street 'hard' drugs. They say a fool and his money are easily parted, and so, the street drug addict must be the biggest fool of them all.

Or is it so clear cut? With street drugs, at least you have some direct human contact with your dealer, who has a symbiotic relationship with you, and therefore a reason to not let you tip over the edge into total self annihilation. Often, social groups might form around drug use, and there's a kind of safety in numbers. Even an addict might heed the advice of another addict when somebody says "I think you've probably had enough".

Having essentially unlimited access to the drug you're addicted to, with virtually zero oversight or social ties, is like playing a game of chicken where you're invisible to an oncoming bus driver. Only you can jump out of the way of the bus. The drug will never blink, never back down.

And so it is, I find myself able to relate to most of the stories I hear addicts and alcoholics tell, but there is something terrifyingly unknown and isolating about being amongst the first addicts to have become ensnared by mass-produced Chinese legal research chemicals, and with unlimited access to the world's hardest drugs, with a few mouse clicks on the Dark Web.

Governments have no idea what the consequences of trying to head off the cat & mouse game of criminalising novel chemical compounds will be. The invention of the Dark Web and the synthesis of these new 'designer' drugs is surely a reaction to laws and prohibition. Who could have foreseen that this would create new drugs, new markets, trap unintended types of people into the horrors of addiction and criminal justice?

That's a rock of Crack Cocaine that I was offered on the street soon after moving from North London to East London. Disruption in somebody's life can expose them to things that they've never experienced before.

Tags: #drugs #addiction #notanonymous

This is a story about being isolated from the real world...

I remember an ex-girlfriend had lived her entire life in the village centre of Haslemere, Surrey. She was completely oblivious to the existence of the struggles of lower social strata. I remember my washing-machine repairman friend, Justin, being absolutely speechless when she casually talked about her parents retiring to Beaulieu, so they could be closer to their yacht. She was completely clueless. Not her fault.

One of my friends from school said he used to like coming to play over at our house, because at mealtimes there was lots to eat and it wasn't just potatoes. I liked playing at his house, because we would be messing around on decaying railway infrastructure, climbing huge mountains of coal or precarious games that involved the canal. Oxford might have become gentrified in parts, but there were still areas that were incredibly deprived.

The number of my friends who have spent time in jail, have some kind of criminal record or have at least spent time in the criminal justice system, is surprising, given my background could have completely isolated me from the 'bad crowd'. I did go to state school, but central Oxford has enough sons & daughters of lower ranking academics to mean that in the top sets of streamed subjects you would be unlikely to find a proper 'working class' child. Our form groups were also chosen quite specifically to try and stop the ruffians getting mixed up with those destined for greater success.

I hope that I'm fairly 'class blind' and don't judge people on their socioeconomic background. I also hope that I'm sensitive to the fact that I've had opportunities which are quite simply barred to a huge proportion of society. Being taught to speak like I was to the manor born, having posh sounding schools (although entirely ordinary state entities) and being quite relaxed speaking to adults of any rank or status, means that many doors have been open to me.

In some cases, money simply prices any ordinary people out of the market, so you'll find that all your neighbours are wealthy, successful and educated. There might be gates or a gatehouse or some kind of obvious border to the pocket of wealth you find yourself in, but often there isn't such clear demarkation. In London, for example, things are very subtle most of the time. The part of a London area that has the chic delicatessen, nice restaurants, a Waitrose, tastefully in-keeping shopfronts, colourfully painted townhouses or monolithic blocks of grand Georgian terrace... these things are pretty obviously what happens over time to an area after the hipsters have increased rents which drives out those who wish to shop at Cash Converters, Argos and Lidl.

Camden Town is a strange melting pot. A stone's throw from Regents Park and Primrose Hill, where some top dollar rent is demanded, but yet the high street has more than its fair share of pawnbrokers and low priced food outlets. I guess nobody really wants to live by the market, where drugs are dealt openly on the street at night, and in the daytime is crawling with tourists and pickpockets.

S0, I find myself now living somewhere that seems to only have an abstract connection with London. I live in a gated community with a concierge who is only too happy to take delivery of online supermarket shopping, if I never wished to leave the comfort and security of this well-insulated riverside apartment at all. There is water on 180 degrees of one side of the apartment... not even any roads, with the capital's incessant sirens as emergency services vehicles make their way from one incident to the next.

Only, where there are navigable waterways, there is always the chance for social mobility. Boatloads of people on the Clipper, party boats and speedboats come joyriding and commuting along the Thames. The police boat can even be regularly be seen jetting off up-river somewhere, with it's blue lights flashing. Tugs removing barge-loads of trash, or bringing containerloads of goods, chug their way up and down through the semi-tidal water.

I used to be content to watch a massive storm batter the coast, even if I had driven for many hours in the hope of being able to kitesurf, but the conditions were too rough and wild. As my equipment improved, I was able to afford a range of kites that could handle high winds as well as light breeze. I was able to actually get on the water in a storm, but that's right at the limit of survival and you don't have any time to actually think about what's going on around you.

I don't recommend you try it, if you've never been in the water when the wind is plucking you up, and depositing you several hundred metres downwind, as a 60-70mph gust comes through, turning the top of the water into stinging spray and foamy froth.

I don't recommend you try it, if you've never been in the water when breaking waves are the size of 2 or 3 storey houses, and all you can hear is a deafening roar as they're breaking behind you, as you try to outrun them. When one of these monsters catches you near the shore, it pummels you underwater into the seafloor, which hopefully is made of sand, not rocks or coral or something else sharp. Without your kite to pull you back to the surface and back onto the beach, you're as good as dead.

Kitesurfing used to be a fairly level playing field. Now, the equipment is so expensive I can't see how anybody of ordinary means could enter the sport. I guess surfing is still low cost-of-entry but who has enough time to bob around on a floaty thing waiting for a wave big enough to be worth paddling for? The English Channel is about the 3rd windiest place on the planet, and living on an island means you can't be too many degrees of separation from somebody who has at least some sense of how to move on water.

But here I am, inland, although only a stones throw from a river which would quickly carry me to the seawater of the Thames estuary. I used to kitesurf on Canvey Island and at Whitstable, which have reassuringly brown estuarial water. The water there very definitely came from the arsehole of midlands.

It's been so long since I had to rub shoulders with the proletariat. I'm not sure it's exactly made me forget the struggles of ordinary people, to lose perspective, to feel entitled or not realise that most of my worries and stresses are pretty much first world problems. Not travelling also means not seeing people who are not just a social division below, but an entire national or continental division below my own standard of living. When you're kitesurfing you tend to be in the poorest fishing villages in some of the remotest parts of the world, and when a fisherman saves your life, you definitely can't avoid feeling humbled.

It's a strange existence, being able to glide across the surface of the water on a thin little tray, and fly into the air as if you didn't weigh so much as a bird, but at the same time, your equipment, your choice of leisure activity puts you in a very exclusive club indeed.

It takes a certain amount of insanity to shackle yourself to a kite big enough to pull you bodily out of the water and into the air

Tags: #london #kitesurfing

This is a story about feedback...

Writing this blog has driven me deeper and deeper into the examination of the injustices and irresponsibilities of the past. The people I've targeted are ignorant, delusional and virtually illiterate.

I decided to write something else. A couple of publishers asked me to show them 10-20,000 words of a manuscript I'd written. I didn't have a manuscript, but I knew what I wanted to write.  Memoirs are egotistical, biographies are for people who are narcissists.

I've written a book that explains everything I've learned about the systems and processes, gleaned from the last 4 years: Hospital, Mental Health, Crisis Teams, Police, homelessness, unpleasant wives, parents who give up on their children, sisters who want their brothers to shut the fuck up and stop being melodramatic.

I love my Mum and I miss her, but Dad is such a cowardly domestic abuser. He expects my Mum to be a mind reader, and umpteen times a day he will says something disrespectful, unpleasant, abusive to her. That's domestic abuse.

If you want to know just how much of a coward is, he spent about an hour taking the piss out of me on the phone, so I was pretty annoyed, and I said "let's talk about this face to face, and you can say those things to my face, and let's see what happens". He's 66 years old, so it's not like I was going to fight him, I just wanted him to be brave enough to take the piss out of me to my face.

When I turned up at the house, the back door was locked. Then my Dad appeared. He made no move to open the door. I hadn't travelled for over an hour to be staring at a coward behind a door. "Come on then, let's have it. Open the door and say what you just said to my face" I said. He remained immobile.

I picked up a giant stone urn and hurled it at the window glass. The urn shattered, but the glass was merely scratched. I picked up a smaller piece to throw, and that's when a terrified looking female Police sergeant appeared. She told me to drop the piece of urn, which I immediately did. She told me to put my hands on my head and face away from the door, which I immediately did. I was cuffed and put in the back of one of the 3 Police cars that were in attendance.

It seems that my Dad is such a coward he needs 6 police officers to protect him from having a respectful chat with his own son.

All in all I think 8 or 9 officers attended. According to the sergeant, they were all very scared when I was roaring with rage for my Dad to face me like a man and have a proper chat with me. She was not expecting me to fully co-operate at all.

My book is not about what a cowardly cunt my dad is. My book is supposed to help people whose lives have not been going that well with mental illness and drug abuse, to see that it's not a downward spiral. With the help of kind, nonjudgemental people, and a belief in yourself. you can make it through some rough patches.

My Dad is a criminal. He has a criminal record (spent) for the possession of drugs. I've been caught with Cocaine, Speed, Benzos, Ecstasy and α-PVP. I have no criminal record.

Draw your own conclusions from what it means that a criminal needs the protection of 9 Police officers, from an IT consultant.

Tags: #police #parents

This is a story about captains of industry...

The boy stood on the burning deck whence all but he had fled. Is my task yet done? Rats leave a sinking ship but a skipper will go down with his vessel.

There's just no way you can have a meltdown halfway up a rock climb or a mountain that's higher than a rope's length. You wouldn't be able to lower that person safely down to the ground. There's no way you can have a meltdown in the middle of the sea or ocean. There's no chance of you being harmlessly blown into a tranquil harbour.

If you have experience leading a rope party or skippering a yacht, in the hostile environment of the sea and mountains, then you tend to be quite a stoic, calm, rational individual.

I remember we broached my yacht when I was on the foredeck trying to take the spinnaker down. I was hanging onto the spinnaker pole, with nothing but sea underneath my feet, as we heeled right over on our side. It seemed to take an absolute age for her to right herself. I looked back, and my crew were up to their thighs in water that had flooded the cockpit. I yelled "let go of the spinnaker sheets" and my crew member who was gripping the ropes that held the 'kite' in full sail were still gripped in his white knuckles, and his face was blank with terror. I had to repeat myself several times, and change the tone of my voice, so that he would break from his trance and release the wind, allowing me to then pull the sock down the sail and stow it below decks. It's interesting how people respond to catastrophe and stress.

A whole expedition party that I was in, found ourselves at the top of a large rock buttress, which we had to abseil off. There was a single thin metal piton, hammered into a crack in the rock, as an anchor point for our abseil rope. This piton was clearly bending under the weight of a person abseiling. I wasn't leading that expedition, and I was told to shut up and be quiet, when I whispered my concerns to the leaders. This was a decision motivated purely by money. The leaders didn't want to leave behind valuable equipment, in the interests of safety. You should never belay or abseil on a single anchor point, as my friend Sam was to later find, with tragic consequences.

I'm completely mental, and take some crazy risks, but I don't put other people's lives on the line. When I climbed Crib Goch with friends, I took them to a saddle in the hills beneath the mountain where we could get a good view of the ridge, and I showed them the route I was proposing. I told them it was very challenging, and talked about the exposure to steep drops either side. I told them that we would quite possibly have to retrace our steps, if we couldn't find a suitable gully in which to make our retreat. I shared the information, so that each person could make their own decision about the risks. We were all grown ups.

The sign reads "CAUTION: Route to Crib Goch". The choice to continue up to this knife-edge ridge is yours. You read the sign. You stepped over the stile. You knew what you were doing. Individual responsibility.

Our nanny state is trying to protect people from themselves all the time. We have railings at road crossings, so that you can only cross at one specific place. We have warning signs on hot drinks and for hot water taps, cautioning us that hot water is hot. I'm surprised that we don't yet have laws outlawing running with scissors.

From April, the UK is going to have bizarre legislation in place that attempts to outlaw all drugs except for nicotine, alcohol and caffeine. Does this sound sensible to you? Well, it makes about much sense as banning the sale of parachutes, mountain bikes, horses, skis etc. etc. If you look at the statistics, many sports and hobbies are more dangerous than most of the drugs that are being banned.

Drugs are dangerous, don't get me wrong, but the government concentrates on making things illegal, rather than minimising harm and risk and treating those who do get into trouble. I myself became addicted to a legal high, which was made illegal with absolutely no plans around supporting those addicts who were criminalised. There was no treatment plan or alternative offered to me. I was forced to turn to the black market, and then my own savings in order to get treatment in the private sector. If I hadn't had a pot of savings, I would have been picked up by criminal justice, rather than by national health. That's appalling.

If we were to, say, make mountain climbing illegal because it's dangerous, do you think that would stop people wanting to climb? If the danger didn't discourage people, why the hell do you think laws are going to be any deterrent. The laws are flying in the face of human nature.

Imagine every mountain and cliff in the UK, surrounded by a razor-wire fence, with policemen at the gates and patrolling the perimeter. Perhaps there would be guard towers with powerful searchlights, just in case anybody tried to scale or cut through the fence at night. Perhaps the fence could even be electrified. Does that sound like a sensible plan, for the protection of society?

People talk about drugs causing an increase in crime. Yes, there is a mountain of data showing that alcohol causes monumental problems in society. Anti-social behaviour is rife in town centres across the United Kingdom. Binge drinking is out of control. You don't tend to hear a lot about fights at raves though, do you? Yes, not a lot of anti-social behaviour amongst people who just want to dance, even though they have taken loads of pills. Also, Ecstasy is less dangerous than horse-riding, as Prof. David Nutt once famously commented.

We really do need to end this war on drugs, which is a load of hot air, rhetoric, causing the needless destruction of so many lives. Being tough on drugs is just another way of saying that you're going to chuck your friends and relatives under the wheels of the bus because you're too ignorant to educate yourself about the damage of criminalising somebody, demonising them, excluding them from society, offering them no treatment and generally shaming and isolating them, blaming them for society's ills.

Prohibition puts every man woman and child at risk of slipping and falling into the death-trap of the 'undesirable' bucket. We label drug takers as undesirable members of our society, and push them through the revolving doors of a criminal justice system that makes people unemployable, while also connecting together a criminal underworld that has to survive on its wits, given no lawful alternative.

The police are being forced to make judgement calls about whether to pursue prosecution against members of the public, who have made wayward decisions, but are they really criminals? While we haven't solved violent and sexual crime, and the poverty that drives people to steal, how can we be wrecking people's lives for messing around with recreational drugs?

I bought a yacht at the age of 21, and it cost me a buttload of cash. Boat ownership is a costly addiction. Mooring fees, antifouling, repairs, insurance, fuel... all of this nautical dependency was hazardous to my wealth. Did you know that there is no legal requirement to be qualified to navigate UK waters? I could buy a boat and go and get myself in big trouble in some part of the sea that I'm completely clueless about, and then just phone the coastguard to come and rescue me. Does that not seem a little more anti-social, than a gay man taking poppers in the privacy of his own home?

Perhaps I'm not a very good mascot for the anti-criminalisation movement, because I've most definitely cost the NHS a buttload of cash, as they struggled to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. However, maybe I am. If there was actually a plan to help and treat addicts, my issues could have been resolved before I even got so sick that I ended up needing emergency treatment to save my life. A stitch in time saves 9 and all that.

I think I count 32 stitches in my leg. All those stitches were completely avoidable. It was pure ignorance and stupidity and manipulation by government and media that led to me being cornered and attacked. You're looking for victims? Try taking a look at the early deaths and health complications of people who are marked as black sheep, disowned by their own families, labelled as criminals by a 'justice' system and shunned by society, to the point where sure, the needle seems more of a friend than any of the hostile sneering faces.

Why should alcoholics and addicts have to be anonymous? Why should they have to hide themselves away in groups of their own kind, recounting tales of their own weakness, their faults, their shame and their regret. Why do you refuse to give a homeless person money, because "they'll only spend it on drink/drugs"... yes, they probably will, if that's your attitude.

We're kicking people into the gutter, and I'm not OK with that.

When my friend John had completely ballsed up the interview I had gotten for him, and he was facing the reality that life is a little bit harder than just larking around doing whatever the hell you want, he started to become critical of me. He started to attack me rather than make a critical appraisal of himself and his own choices. It was interesting that he tried to use my prior misdemeanours, that I had told him about in confidence, as a weapon against me. It's amongst the reasons why I chucked him out of my flat.

Addicts are not weak people. In fact they are probably a lot stronger than you, because they not only endure the crushing guilt they place on themselves, but they're also a convenient scapegoat for anybody else who's feeling a bit s**t about their own life. Calling somebody a junkie is a lot easier than admitting that you've failed as a fellow member of society. A junkie's life is no way easy. It's a wall of death, with the addict having to ride faster and faster to stay stuck to the wall, while gravity tries to pull them downwards to their untimely demise, destruction.

There's some stats for you, on your common junkie. 15,000 steps a day on average. That's a lot more than your average couch potato, sitting around reading rubbish newspapers, watching crappy TV and sitting in judgement over groups of people they're totally ignorant about.

Do you see an obese junkie? No. Do junkies drain loads of NHS money by giving themselves diabetes, because of all the sugary drinks and junk food they stuff into their faces? No. Junkies are hard working and resourceful.

How would you rather that resourceful intelligent people spent their time? In the getting and taking of drugs, or perhaps put to some more productive aims and objectives?

We are wasting talent. We are wasting human lives. We are destroying people's dignity. We are robbing people of opportunities to shine and show us the better side of their character. We have untapped resource and we are wasting other resource in locking people up and dealing with preventable consequences of terrible drug policies.

There are good people out there... sheep in wolves clothing. We have tarred people with the junkie brush, and it's a crime to write people off like that.

It's a crime to kick people into the gutter.

Tags: #addiction #drugs #alcohol #nhs #injury

This is a story about being down and out on the streets of Camden Town...

Performing your greatest hits over and over again drives you insane. However, the public and society expect you to keep repeating what you do best, again and again and again, like a dancing bear or a dog trained to do tricks.

Whoever pays the piper calls the tune, but I'm not a CD player. If you want to listen to the same song over and over again, just press the repeat button on your iPod. Making an artist compromise on their creativity, in order to simply be a human machine, a robot, can destroy them.

The anxiety associated with knowing you have to do something that you've done so much that it's a complete paint by numbers, starts to become an unbearable burden on your ability to be able to function. Pretty much the only way to remain functioning is to drink yourself into such oblivion that you just don't care anymore.

Alcohol is a GABA agonist. What that means is that it suppresses a certain amount of your brain activity. It's effectively making you chilled out and dumb. Yes, if you're chilled out and dumb, you don't mind doing the same stupid shit over and over and over again. If you're intelligent and creative it destroys your soul, your desire to continue living.

Is it arrogant to say "fuck this" and stop doing what your talent and experience qualifies you to do, because it's destroying you? Should I just shut the hell up and "get a job" as I've been told to do by some ignorant twats? Well, it would literally kill me.

There are 2 ways I could die right at the moment. I could kill myself or I could drink myself to death. These are both sane responses to an insane world. I'm not a robot. Sorry about that.

My whole job is to automate human tasks. My whole job is to get mechanical robots, machines, to perform repetitive tasks instead of having human slaves or human robots doing them. We have reached a point with the development of technology, computing, software, where we don't need to do stupid repetitive shit anymore. Even creating software doesn't have to mean re-inventing the wheel anymore.

So, if you ask me to do something that's just plain wrong, I won't do it anymore. If you ask me to write code that's just going to go into the dustbin, I won't do it. I've stopped writing bugs. I've stopped supporting failures and idiots who don't have a software background. If you don't know your arse from your elbow, I won't show you the respect that you don't deserve.

If you want to know how to build software that can process $1.16 quadrillion ($1,160,000,000,000,000) per year, you can pay me for my professional opinion and I'll show you how it's done. That's the most money that's ever been processed by a banking software system, so that means I know what I'm talking about. If you don't want to listen, we can part company and I'll wish you the very best of luck.

1% of 1 quadrillion is 10 trillion. 1% of 10 trillion is 100 billion. 1% of 100 billion is 1 billion. 1% of 1 billion is 10 million. Any questions?

Ignore what people tell you. Money really does grow on trees, for those who can be bothered to climb. Yes, geese that lay golden eggs really do exist. You just have to climb the beanstalk and risk the wrath of an angry giant.

Magic beans are not a waste of money. They can help you to climb the beanstalk. They won't help you climb back down again though. What goes up must come down, but you might take a tumble. More on this in a future post entitled: Self Medication (Part Two).

You've heard about doping in sport. Why would you think that the athletes of the corporate world would be any different from those who compete in the Olympic Games? The pressure to perform at the very top of your game is just the same, if not greater. The competition is fierce, and anything that gives you a competitive edge is needed unless you want to be trampled underfoot by the thundering herd.

Did you ever wonder why London drinks so much coffee? Did you ever wonder why people are prepared to pay the best part of £3 or £4 for some bitter black sludge? Well, it's because of a plant alkali called Caffeine. Yes, that's a performance enhancing drug. It helps you to concentrate, and allows you to work with more energy, stamina, than would ordinarily be permitted by your body & mind. It increases your output potential.

Limitless? No, not limitless. There is a cost involved, and that cost is insomnia and anxiety. But don't worry about that, because there's always alcohol to take the edge off the anxiety and put you into an alcohol-induced coma that is a substitute for sleep.

You are never more than a few tens of metres from an outlet for caffeine or alcohol in London. They even have bars at bus stops. Well, they don't really, but me and my friends made one. It was very popular. It was the ultimate London pop-up.

What can I get you, sir? Would you like uppers or would you like downers? Uppers in the morning, and throughout the day. Downers after work and throughout the whole weekend. Uppers again on Monday morning to get you going again. Heaps of downers on a Friday to try and calm down from the working week, to 'rest' and recuperate. Oh yes, London is a very high performance place.

So if it's not limitless, what happens when you reach the limits? What happens when you're working on the number one projects for the number one companies, dealing with the biggest amounts of money that have ever been processed in the history of humanity? What happens when you have completely saturated yourself with alcohol and caffeine?

Well, you need crutches. You need a wheelchair. You need something to keep you rolling. You become somewhat disabled, but you need to keep moving, so you get wheeled around or you have to hobble along. Why do you think your office chair has wheels on it? It's because you're probably so f**ked that you can barely stand.

Yes, globalisation and corporate culture will f**k you up. You're only playing by the rules. You're only trying to compete and stay up with the herd, but it's f**king everybody up. Setting everybody up to compete with one another is causing people to be trampled to death.

Adversarial culture is wrecking lives. Us vs. Them and the zero sum game is in the spirit of competition, not co-operation. For somebody to win, somebody else has to lose. The system is designed to have losers as well as winners, and because there can only be one winner, that means everybody else is a loser.

Ultimately, somebody is going to win. Yes, that's right. One person is going to have it all, and everybody else will be dead and buried. An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind, apart from the one-eyed man, who is king of the world. Everybody else just starves to death. Great system!

But we're all in this together, right? There's safety in numbers, surely? Well, you shouldn't put the Lions in charge of the herd of Zebra. That's pure madness. The conflict of interest between the Lions and the Zebra means that the Lions are not best placed to be in charge of the herd, even if they are at the top of the food chain.

Being an apex predator does not mean that you are best qualified to judge what the greater good is. It means that you're incentivised to be selfish. You don't want to tumble from your position at the top of the pyramid. Being one of the struggling masses is shit beyond belief.

Counter-culture does not mean sitting around smoking dope. That's just totally dumb. You might as well just hurl yourself into the Lion's mouth. Making yourself slow and stupid is just about the dumbest possible thing you could do. It's playing into the hands of the oppressive ruling class.

You think this is a bit paranoid and conspiracy-theory-esque? Well, do you feel lucky, punk? 2.7 billion people live on less than $2 a day. Would you and your family like to join them? Would you like to get to the back of the queue? Would you like to swap your decadent western life for the life of somebody in the developing world? No, I didn't think so. You'd much rather prop up the adversarial system where you're lucky enough to be near the top of tottering tree.

Yes, luck is the decisive factor here, not skill or hard work. You don't think people in Asia and Africa work hard? You don't think people in the developing world are smart and resourceful? You're wrong. You're arrogant. You're deluded.

So, why do I reject the system that I profit from? Why do I prefer to live on the street in a cardboard box? Well, it actually pains me to know that I'm part of a system that's causing so much human misery. It's actually physically and mentally damaging to me to help to perpetrate deeds that cause death and destruction. I can't bury my head in the sand like you can.

I know you'll say or do anything to defend your family. More fool you though for not keeping your cock in your trousers. There are plenty of orphans who need parents. Why the f**k didn't you adopt? Are you literally the most selfish c**t in the whole wide world? Yes, the evidence would suggest that you are. You prop up the adversarial system and you create more mouths to feed in the decadent west and do nothing to give a hand up to the already starving mouths in the developing world.

There's no pride in having made a screaming, shitting, vomiting midget. Your body is evolved to do that. You had sex because you enjoyed having sex. You had a baby because your body is programmed to make babies. You did what snakes and scorpions do. You did what sharks and wasps do. You did what spiders and mosquitos do.

If I could give you one bit of advice, it would be to have a lobotomy. Ignorance is bliss. Being stupid is brilliant. Having higher brain functions is a curse. Being conscious and able to absorb information from the world and process it using rational thoughts is a f**king nightmare.

If you're wondering why I liked living with homeless people, it's because our footprint was much smaller. We lived small. We only consumed what we needed, and nothing more. We weren't making more arrogant ignorant greedy clones of ourselves to fill the void in our meaningless lives. We were just surviving and self-medicating for the agony of the f**ked up world.

We were very cheap, in terms of our economic, social and environmental impact. When a white middle class rich person goes haywire, they normally hurt the world a great deal. That's why it's such a great shame that the west is run by such criminal psychopaths. They'll drop bombs and starve people in order to remain quaffing champagne in their palaces. I include relatively modest homes when I say 'palaces'. Yes take a look around at your home and remember that $2 a day to keep a person alive for a year is probably the price of one of your many flat screen TVs.

So am I a hypocrite? Well, calling me one from your palatial surroundings makes you a hypocrite. You can't hypocritically accuse somebody of hypocrisy. That's ridiculous. Have you been homeless? Have you lived on less than $2 a day? No, I didn't think so. Shut the hell up and go and buy your kids an iPad.

So, what's going to happen to me? Well, my current thinking is that I'm going to finish my story and then take the final exit. I can't really see any more point in existing beyond telling this story, this cautionary tale. I'm literally wasting oxygen.

I loved being homeless in Camden Town. At least it was an honest existence. At least it was true to my values (September 2014)

Tags: #homeless #suicide #frank #capitalism #drugs #depression #alcohol #london #career #banking

This is a story about my cyclical nature...

When my tale is finally told, I hope you will understand why people enter a mood disorder cycle. It's not about broken brains. It's about abused children.

Does abuse have to mean being kiddy fiddled by your uncle? Does abuse have to mean being touched in private places? Does abuse have to mean sexual abuse? Well, everything links back to sex in some way, but the web of life is incomprehensibly complex, so I suggest you just listen for now.

I went to playgroup from the age of 3, went to school at the age of 4, and stayed in school until the age of 17. It was horrific. Every single year, my Dad did something to f**k up my chances of having any self esteem and avoiding relentless daily bullying.

Yes, I'm singling out my Dad, because he's a total cunt. My mum is loving, and has tried very hard to make her children feel loved, but she's got the shittest taste in men imaginable. My surname - Grant - comes from her ex-husband, who was a heroin addict. That's lovely. Instead of being Nick Newton - perhaps a descendent of a famous physicist - I'm Nick Grant, named after a heroin addict. Brilliant.

Keith - as I very clearly remember him telling me - does not want to be called "Dad"... "who's Dad?" he would say to me, when I was only about 3 years old and learning to talk. "I'm not Dad, I'm Keith" that's a lovely thing to say to the little boy you're looking after isn't it? That's definitely going to make them feel loved and secure. What a cunt.

I think the main problem is that my parents were never outnumbered, until my sister gave birth to my niece. The penny hadn't dropped until then, that my parents lives and disgusting lifestyle needed to change, because children had arrived. Keith was so lazy, that he sat around in a house that my Mum's Mum bought for them, drinking and smoking, and sending my Mum out to work full time in order to pay for his lifestyle. What a cunt.

Yes, my mum was the breadwinner, while my Dad was at home, telling me how resentful he was at having to rear a child. He thought he had solved the riddle of life the universe and everything, and got to take drugs, get drunk and have sex with my mum. Sadly, sex leads to children. Denying that you're a Dad isn't going to get you anywhere, except making little children very sad.

My Mum and my Granny were lovely, and I do have lots of happy memories of time spent with them. Sadly, if you're a full time working mother to pay for your lazy drug addict partner, you don't spend as much time with your child as they'd really like, especially if the main childcare is hungover or on a comedown, and saying "who's Dad?".

I wasn't really prepared for social interaction with other children. I didn't used to go on playdates or have friends over. My parents had their friends over instead. And they sat around taking Cocaine and doing jigsaws. Yes, drug taking and getting drunk were my parents passtimes, not doing things with their kid. By their own admission, they used to stick my carrycot on top of the jukebox when they were down at the pub. They definitely weren't going to let a little accident like a child get in the way of their big ambitions to be drunks and drug addicts.

What happens next is you go to school, and you don't have a frigging clue how to relate to other children. All you know is how to interact with adults who tell you to fuck off because they don't want you to interfere with their high, or they're cranky because they're hung over or on a comedown. You know how to speak relatively articulately, because you've been trying to make yourself heard and understood in an adult way - because all you know is fucked up adults - but you don't know the rules of the jungle.

If you're going to be a drunk and a drug addict, at least have a bunch of kids, so that they can play with each other when you're getting high and drunk. Being outnumbered might also make the penny drop a little earlier, that your life is now fucked, and you're going to have to make some lifestyle adjustments unless you want to fuck up innocent lives too. Is that too much to ask?

Playing on your own is no fun, and you're not learning how to socially interact with your peers. It's not normal, for the development of a child, to have no other children of similar age. Humans are social creatures. We weren't evolved to sit around getting drunk and taking drugs, which is why people's lives are destroyed by those things. We were evolved to be part of a clan or a tribe that was socially cohesive. Drugs and alcohol don't glue things together, they make things fall apart.

So when I went to playgroup and school, I really wasn't properly prepared for social interaction with other children. I remember whichever toy I picked up, somebody would indicate they wanted to play with it, and I would hand it over of course, because I could understand English and adult interactions very well. After a while it became very confusing. I didn't understand that the other children enjoyed taking toys away from me more than they enjoyed playing with them. They wanted to fight with me, to test boundaries, but I was used to the adult world of co-operation. I lost, they won, and I didn't understand why.

Yes, I 'played nice' from the very outset. I just couldn't understand why other children didn't. I expected them to be little adults like me. They'd call me names, and I'd say "why are you calling me that?" and get upset rather than calling them names back. I took things right in the feels, because I never learnt tit for tat. I never learnt retaliation. I was raised to be a liberal adult pacifist hippy, by spending all my time in the company of adults.

My Dad very much discouraged friendships. I wasn't allowed to be friends with Andrew, because he was a picky eater. I wasn't allowed to be friends with the little boy a couple of houses down the road, because he was too immature. Too immature? Are you totally fucked in the head? HE WAS A FUCKING CHILD, OF COURSE HE WAS IMMATURE.

Throughout my childhood, I was reprimanded for anything approaching childish behaviour. Yes, it's good to teach your kids good manners, but they really don't understand the subtle nuances of adult society, and things get very confusing indeed for them when you're abusing drugs and alcohol, because those things are forbidden to the child and you have surrounded these revered substances with mystery and lies.

Children are naturally inquisitive, and ask questions. When I asked my parents questions about their drugs, they lied to me, and they told me to lie to teachers and other children about their drug taking. Being the keeper of your parents secrets is very confusing as a child. It's not a responsibility that you should put on a child.

You think that photo's cool? Grow the fuck up. Drug dealers go to prison, and my Dad already had a criminal record for drug possession, so the courts were not going to go easy on him. The children of criminals often go into foster care. Being such a drug addict that you're prepared to go to prison and have your children taken into care is fucked up.

Am I building up a clear enough picture of what my parents life priorities were? Am I spelling it out in plain enough English for you to understand what the consequences of fucking with your child's life are? Am I laying out my case for where a big chunk of responsibility lies, where the proverbial buck stops?

Yes, I'm shaming my parents, but why the fuck shouldn't I. I had to guard their secrets and lies throughout my miserable childhood. Why so miserable? Well, you try being bullied every day for 12 or 13 years and see how you like it. You try having your friendships destroyed and self esteem taken away, by a total cunt of a Dad. You try dealing with selfish self-centred drunks and drug addicts instead of sisters, brothers and friends of a similar age.

I changed schools 6 times. That's 5 times more than is supposed to happen. You just can't disrupt a child's life that much without fucking up their life. Especially if you do extra stuff to fuck them up too.

Lots of kids have to wear glasses, but do all their own fathers bully them about it? How many Dads out there think it's a good idea to call your kid "4-eyes" and "brains" and take the piss and laugh at your son? Let's have a show of hands. Hands up if you think it's a good idea to bully your own children, in the same childish way that they're going to get bullied at school. Nope, wrong answer, Dad. Get to the back of the class, in the corner, wearing the dunce hat. See the headmaster after school. Very disappointed with your behaviour.

All kids get bullied to some extent, or at some time or other. When it's relentless, at home and at school, around the clock... yes, life is fucking shit. I can't express to you just how shit life is when you're being bullied. I used to look forward to getting sick. I used to be overjoyed when I was throwing up such vast quantities of projectile vomit that it was pretty clear that I wouldn't be able to be in school without getting chunks of half-digested carrot all over the classroom.

I used to cry and cry and cry, when I got well. I remember breaking down crying on my way to school, after a day or two off. I was so upset that my parents actually decided to let me have another day off, which I clearly remember with crystal clarity as one of the moments of my childhood where I felt pure relief flood my entire body. I felt a 100 tonne weight of anxiety be lifted from my entire body.

One thing that my Dad used to do, was to price everything in terms of bags of drugs, rather than pound notes or the abstract measure of child happiness. Yes, child happiness is hard to measure, especially using bags of drugs. Let me give you an example. At primary school, it was close enough to cycle there as a little boy. My Dad is very clever, and he figured out that girls bikes are cheaper than boys bikes, because lots of Dads want their little girls to be like little boys, and they buy them bikes that they never ride. This oversupply of girls bikes creates a great opportunity to save the price of a bag of drugs, for merely the immeasurable cost of childhood happiness.

Yes, my Dad has done that a few times. Don't give your kids enough pocket money to be able to buy a bike, because pocket money is the same money as should be used to buy bags of drugs. Instead, you can save the money and buy more bags of drugs by simply buying the cheaper girls bike, or stealing bikes. Yes, stealing bikes is the cheapest way to get a bike of all, and it leaves the most money for bags of drugs. Drugs come first. Childhood happiness can't even be measured on the all-important drug bag scale.

Do you know what happens when you send your kid to school riding a stolen girls bike? One of them even had a FUCKING BASKET ON IT FOR FUCK'S SAKE. What a cheapskate drug addict cunt. It's a reasonable presumption that mature adults might think it a little eccentric, or even consider it to be a conversation starter. For children IT'S THE END OF YOUR FUCKING LIFE. Do you think kids forget that kind of shit? The bullies at school certainly didn't FOR THE ENTIRE FUCKING TIME I WAS AT SCHOOL YOU CUNT.

If a trick's worth pulling, it's worth pulling a couple of times. Yes, my Dad managed to pull this stunt a few times and RUIN MY ENTIRE FUCKING CHILDHOOD.

It's a Catch 22. Without a bike you can't go and see your friends and get to school independently. But then the FUCKING CUNT hasn't even thought about how you need to get to school anyway. Did I tell you that the FUCKING CUNT bought a house at the top of a massive hill nowhere near any fucking busses, in the middle of fucking nowhere?

But it's OK, because I'm not upset about having had to go through living hell. It's not affected me at all. On the surface, everything seems absolutely cunting fine. I look, to the untrained eye, like I'm well adjusted, successful, happy and content in life. Cunt.

Hmmmm. Could edit this. Not going to.

There's the smug prick. I would only piss on him if he was on fire because he seems to be an OK granddad to my niece. What a piece of shit. He only finally sorted his fucking life out once and for all when my niece was born (photo circa 1995)

Tags: #parents #bullying #childhood #bipolar #depression #mentalhealth

This is a story about piggy in the middle...

Caught between a rock and a hard place, the police have a very difficult job to do. I have nothing but admiration and respect for front line officers. I have found the police to be the nicest, kindest and most amazing people I have ever dealt with.

Maintaining the status quo by upholding the laws that you effectively voted for, when you elected your member of parliament, is very challenging. This is because you probably didn't get the MP that you voted for, because the majority of people either don't vote or don't get the person they voted for.

Yes, that's right. Here's the simple maths that proves it:

Turnout: 66%

Conservative vote share: 36.9%

Percentage of people who voted for current government: 24%

So, less than a quarter of the UK population want a Conservative government.

Some strange things start happening when so few of the population are politically represented. People can be criminalised by laws that are only in the interests of the minority rather than the majority.

It happened to me, and the police had to use their judgement to save my life, rather than the letter of the law. Yes, I nearly died in police custody, but that was just part of the story. The whole fiasco is far too complex to go into in a single blog post, and your presumption gland is already throbbing and swollen, so I'm just going to leave this hanging for now. You can start guessing. I bet you'll be wrong. Maybe suspend your prejudice, just for a minute?

Our front line police officers see first hand, on a daily basis, the result of the laws that are passed in Westminster. Things like Care in the Community for example, which was a Tory policy, which pushed vulnerable people, who are a potential danger to themselves and/or others, out into the cities, towns and suburbs.

Changes in the law are rarely made with enough safeguards in place for the impact. Care in the Community made everybody assume that their neighbour was an axe weilding maniac, discharged from an insane asylum, and made everybody put extra locks on their doors, not talk to strangers and ring the police to deal with issues that they used to resolve themselves between one another.

So, I'm that axe weilding manic [N.B. I don't own an axe, nor would I wield one]. I was clearly sick enough to be locked up in one of the few remaining Psychiatric Hospitals. So what the hell am I doing, being allowed to wander the streets wearing a nice suit and working for the biggest bank in Europe on the #1 project? I don't even take my medication. Perhaps I should be sectioned and forced to take it, in the interests of public safety?

But that can't be right, can it? Surely, there's a contradiction there? How can somebody who should be locked up in an institution be the guy that the CIO of the number one project in HSBC put in charge of the top priority item on the number one project, at the Town Hall meeting, in front of the entire department? How does that work?

Well, if you think it was lies, deception, fraud, that got me that position, you'll be very disappointed to know that isn't true at all. The programme director actually said to me that he was really happy with all my work, just before I left. He was also happy to phone me every weekend, until I said I couldn't handle that kind of pressure any more.

Yes, fundamentally, I'm only human. If you prick me, I bleed, and I bleed red. If you pile pressure on me and work me very hard, I eventually need some time off.

But everything is too highly leveraged. The cracks are showing, but nobody has allowed any contingency for stopping and fixing things, or even slowing down a little bit, in the interests of long-term sustainability. All our targets are so short term.

So an entrepreneur is somebody who throws themself off a cliff and builds an aeroplane on the way down. However, when managers try and imitate the entrepreneurial mindset, they will fail to be able to build the vehicle while travelling along without the wheels falling off and the thing crashing horribly. Never ask people to work harder than you're prepared to do yourself.

Our politicians are asking the police to protect them from an angry electorate. They are asking the police to uphold laws that hurt people, rather than protecting the most vulnerable members of society. They are asking the police to suspend their better judgement, and see people who are the wrong side of the law as 'evil' rather than 'good'.

Being human is not about good vs. evil. We are built for survival. If you starve a man and take away his means to earn money, deny him any way to get food in legitimate ways, why do you call him a "thief" when he steals an apple? [N.B. I'm not a thief... guess again, sucker].

We make the rules for the game of life. Why do we punish people who play by the rules, but there is literally no way for them to survive, beyond what would be categorised by Eton-educated idiots in Westminster, as 'criminal' behaviour? These public [private] school toffs have absolutely no idea what it's like to be a British citizen. They have probably never met an ordinary person in their insulated existence, so far removed from reality.

I actually quite liked Thatcher and Major. They came from humble backgrounds. They were actually ordinary decent people. Unfortunately, the party they led is full of the old-boys network who think they're masters of the Universe. Those disgustingly spoiled brats think that the world was made for them to scorch. They'd hunt peasants on horseback if they thought they could sneak the laws through parliament.

I'm disruptive but I'm not a criminal. The thing about disruption is that it's actually a good thing. Whenever the status quo is overturned, the ordinary people are normally the biggest benefactors. People are held beneath glass ceilings, they are oppressed for far too long. The trickle down effect is just a lie. The fat cats are not sharing their wealth.

White collar criminals are the very worst. Do you think Stuart Gulliver the CEO of HSBC keeps his wealth in the bank that he runs? Do you think he pays tax in the UK, where he works in the HSBC headquarters, at 8 Canada Square, Canary Wharf, London? Nope... he keeps his wealth in a Swiss bank account and pays his tax in Hong Kong. What a crook.

How can you defend such actions? How can these hypocrites be so influential in UK politics? It stinks.

Please sue me. I look forward to battling it out with you in court. A fair fight, in the full view of the public is all I ask.

That is all.

You don't normally get to see stuff like this. Privacy laws protect us, to make sure that prejudice doesn't destroy people who are innocent of any wrongdoing. Guilty by association... is that really guilty at all? Aren't we all connected by no more than 7 degrees of separation? (no date supplied... keep guessing, sucker)

Tags: #politics #notanonymous #civildisobedience #mentalhealth

This is a story about relativity...

So, there are children starving in Africa. That's sad.

There are lots of things that are sad in the world. It's sad that so many people are being shot. It's sad that so many people are being blown up. It's sad that most people have so little, while a handful of others have so much.

Sadness is not really relative. Neither is depression. Once you are suicidally depressed, you can't get any more depressed. You just kill yourself and then it's over. That's the limit. That's the maximum that you can be depressed.

 As a child, I wasn't allowed to cry at the sad parts in movies. This was apparently because I should have been more sad about starving African children. I was sad about them too, but there weren't many Disney movies about starving African children, made for kids.

My Dad was pretty determined that I should have a lot of stuff on my conscience, as a small child. I needed to be responsible for my part I played in the decadent lifestyle of the West, as a bourgeois infant. How thoughtless and irresponsible of me to not have martyred myself for the plight of the developing world, at birth.

So, if you don't believe I think about my blessings and how lucky I was to be born into a relatively wealthy advanced civilisation... you're wrong. It's been smashed into my skull for as long as I can remember. It's been rammed down my throat with menace.

Perhaps we should teach children about consequences, not that their feelings are wrong. If a child is genuinely selfish and unwilling to share, or even worse, if they steal and perpetrate violence against other children, then those are the antisocial traits that we would want to re-educate that child about. It's impossible to teach a child to not have feelings that they already have.

I don't think that education really needs to start with children. There are plenty of adults who are ignorant and are passing on their vile views to their children. Let's build good role models in the world.

If children see adults - who they look up to - killing each other and badmouthing each other and generally being vile, what are those children going to do? Monkey see, monkey do.

If you want the world to be a better place, stop glorifying soldiers and war, stop saying racist things, stop sitting in that chair reading crappy newspapers, watching dreadful television and ranting about a nonexistent past that never existed. Nostalgia is a lie.

You only perceive things from a totally ignorant, hypocritical standpoint. Put yourself through a little hardship so that you might empathise with the refugees, starving and marginalised people, who grew your food and made the mass produced goods that allow you to sit idle in comfort, while all the atrocities in the world are perpetrated.

If you say I'm the hypocrite, you're wrong. I'm prepared to go to jail or be locked up in hospital in support of my views. I'm not a criminal, but I am prepared to rock a boat full of fat lazy hypocrites, even if I'm going to get wet myself.

I've come from nothing, so I've got nothing to lose. I don't have the fear that you have.

This is not about me. It's not about the UK. It's about the world's suffering people who we should be sad about, because we are all responsible.

If you have children, then don't tell the developing world to stop having babies.

If you feed your children, then pay more for your groceries so that the developing world's farmers can work their way out of poverty.

If you drive your children around in a car, or take them on holiday in an aeroplane, then you might as well just drown them now, as that's what you are doing to the world with uncontrolled release of greenhouse gasses.

If you send your children to school, then don't complain about the cost of school uniforms, books and tuition fees. Education is the route to family planning. It's a gift that should be shared, not just kept for the elite.

If you give your children a roof over their heads, then don't expect refugees to live in a tent. Or maybe you'd like to live in a tent so that a bigger family than yours can make better use of the world's limited resources?

If you think that I have no sense of perspective, it's you who is totally mistaken. I would happily live in a tent or a large hostel dorm again. I feel that the world I live in is sterile and far removed from reality. It doesn't sit easily with me. I'm way more unhappy than I've been in a long time. The rich-poor divide is something I find very hard to live with.

I'm easy to discredit: I've given away all the ammunition. The tried and trusted ways of rubbishing an opponent are openly on display, here in this blog, and I plan to give you even more sticks and stones, with which to break my bones.

I've been bullied and abused so much, I'm fairly impervious to personal attacks and below-belt blows now.

I have died a thousand deaths, and I fear not one more.

That is all.

Here is a picture of Frankie, who is a happy cat wherever in the world he finds himself, provided there are no guns or bombs (December 2007)

Tags: #politics #parents #childhood #depression #suicide #mentalhealth #frankie #homeless